The Dale Jr. Download - 413 - Steve Hmiel - A Winner Everywhere He Goes

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

On Episode 413 of the Dale Jr. Download, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis sit down with longtime NASCAR crew member Steve Hmiel. The Syracuse, New York native first entered the NASCAR garage in the mid-1970s when he took a job working with Tex Powell, building race cars for drivers like Benny Parsons. The interview discusses Hmiel’s first high-profile opportunity when he was hired on as a fabricator at the legendary Petty Enterprises in 1975. Hmiel gives listeners a fascinating look at the Petty operation and what the NASCAR Cup scene was like at that time. Hmiel also provides an extraordinary perspective on the inception of Jack Roush Racing’s stock car team, which he helped form with Robin Pemberton in late 1987. Dale Jr. and Steve debrief the 1990 Cup season, where Roush driver Mark Martin squared off against Dale Earnhardt Sr. for the points championship. They also discuss events from the heyday of Dale Earnhardt Inc., where Hmiel joined as a consultant and manager in 1998. Through an organization shake-up, Steve actually ended up crew chief for Dale Jr. in the middle of the 2005 season, helping guide him to victory at Chicagoland Speedway. Dale, Mike, and Steve are able to look back at that win and what it meant to not only the team at that time but Dale’s career as a whole. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Mike, we've got an incredible guest coming into the Bojangles studio. Steve Mill comes over to DEI and was an integral part of the success there. I hate to even think about what 2004 to 2006 would have been like without Steve Mill. He was sort of the bandage that covered up wounds and scars. actually helped my career stay on the rail, if you will. Basically what I learned at school was drinking beer and how to do my own laundry. This is every week, okay?

Buckle in. Wow. Whoa! This is another one of those moments where I'm going to sit across in the table with somebody and there's something unfortunate happened. It involves. dad or dad's team. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Dale Jr. Download.

This is episode 413, and it's time for our guests this week. Mike, we got an incredible guest coming into the Bojangles studio. Steve Mill finally coming on to the Dale Jr. Download. I don't know why we haven't had Steve on here before. He's certainly an ally. One of the things that I think is incredible about Steve is the longevity of his career. different organizations that he worked for, Petty Enterprises. He worked at Hagen's when Terry Labonte won the championship in 84.

He worked obviously to create what they have as a dynasty at Rouse Racing and all those years with Mark Martin. Then he comes over to DEI and was an integral part of the success there in some very difficult times and actually helped my career stay on the rails. you will. So I'm looking forward to getting him in here. He's certainly, you know, when we talk about allies and ally, we're thankful for them supporting this segment to bring our guests to us every week. Steve Mills is definitely one of those. I hate to even think about what 2004 to 2006 would have been like without Steve Mills part of DEI. Like he was sort of the bandage that covered up wounds

and scars and some, you know, animosity and bad feelings. And he was just the one that we all could rely on. He was your spotter at first, then your crew chief. 2005 was one to forget, but then you go in, win a race at Chicago with Steve Mill on the pit box. And I mean, I'm telling you, like, that was something that was, couldn't believe it. Well, that was like the thing I wanted to accomplish in my career that I didn't know I wanted to accomplish. Yeah, I hear you. You know, went in a race, after watching him do everything he did with Mark Martin. And then when he came to work for us, I was kind of shocked that he was there. You know, wow, this guy's with us.

And then he comes on and we end up winning a race together. And, you know, I can't wait to talk to him about what that was like for him. I know how it made me feel. And I don't think we've ever really sat down and talked about it. So anyhow, we've got a lot to get into it with Steve. Let's get him in the room. Let's do it. You just look as good as ever, though.

No, I wish. He looks. He looks. Have a seat. Put on some headphones. So Steve Mill, man, it's been a long time. When's the last time I saw you? Oh, gosh.

I guess at the racetrack in maybe 2011. Yeah. Yeah. Been a long time. Yeah. So I heard that you, we got all our notes here, I heard that you started a, you started a custom truck company a couple years back?

Yeah. What are you doing these days? Same thing, yeah. What is that? Well, we build a, We've built stuff for TSA, FBI, police departments, all kinds of municipalities, blood-mobile buses, mobile. Right now we're doing a whole row of about 35 or 8 mobile doctor's office, OBGYN, dentists, and the municipalities buy them, and they'll park them at maybe a Walmart in an impore. part of the country and people can get looked at and work on, get their teeth fixed and what

have you. So, yeah, we do a lot of stuff. Did a lot of stuff for the Middle East. Yeah. That's so far removed from racing cars. Well, yeah, I had to do something. I got a couple things down in my mind. There's the reason I did it. Hopefully it will grow, and it's already growing very quickly. But I'm going to die before Shane dies. So it's about $100,000 a year to keep Shane going. So I need to have a pretty good amount of money that I can leave to him and his brother so he can go on with all his whatever he needs necessary to keep him rolling along, you know, so hopefully this thing will grow and eventually I'll probably sell it, but I'll be 80 by then, I'm sure. I don't know. You're the kind of guy that I feel like you just be in

your prime at 80. I hope so. Yeah, I feel like I'm 18 now. I mean, I'm serious. Yeah, you always had that thing about it where I feel like you could just lead something anytime you're ready I mean you're passionate about it and so like this started when with this this company 2019 2019 so it's relatively new right yeah yeah okay but we're doing well we do we do okay you know we've we've learned a lot and we've built a lot and you know we know who not to deal with now basically and who to deal with what did you mean by your impact in the middle east uh well we've built We've built bomb material detecting vehicles and bomb. You can blow up a bomb inside the vehicles.

You know, things have gone to Jordan, Egypt. A couple other places over that way. And, I mean, you started a new company in 2019 when it was probably the worst time to start a new company in the country with the pandemic and everything that we went through. And your company survived it. Like a lot of people didn't handle that very well. So yeah, well, see, here's another thing. People talk about recessions we've been through before, you know, little minor depressions and so on and so forth.

And I'm like, I don't even remember that. I was just racing. You know what I mean? So, you know, I'm pretty oblivious to the real world, actually. We all are. It's not anything to brag on, but that's just the way I'm made. Yeah, no, that's good. Well, I listen to an interview you did recently,

and you are the perfect person to have at this table because what I love to do is learn about the history of the sport. And I love where you've been and where you came from in the sport is part of the sports history that I'm most fascinated about. And that's sort of the late 70s. and so I know that you you kind of got your start throughout the 70s but your dad

owned modifights up in the Northeast pavement modified yes sir so your family so you were around race cars from the day you were born is that true

like do you remember like as a child there was a car in the garage I was born in 53 and I went to the New York State Fair of USAC championship car race in 1956.

So, you know, I don't remember, but there are 8mm films of it. Really? Yeah. So I can go back and look at it and go, and when anybody asked me, you remember that? Oh, yeah, this guy led to, you know, but I'm just full of it, you know. But you grew up around racing. Yes, sir. Working on cars.

Mm-hmm. And so what was your first job in racing? Like, not even a paying job. Like, what was the first physical thing you did to a race car? Changing quick change gears. All right. For your dad's cars? Yeah, yeah.

And so your dad drove? No, sir. He won cars. Who drove for your dad? A fellow named Brian Ross, real good modified racer. Yeah, he won Pocono and things like that. On the little track? On the big track? On the three-quarter mile track. Yeah, because they used, a lot of people don't know that. At Pocono, they used to race modifides on the frustrating. Yeah, and I actually think the backstretch is kind of like under the garage area now or something. You know, you probably went there when you were younger. I don't know, but I know what you're talking about, like looking at aerial photos and stuff. You can see some of that history. but so how do you you went to junior college yeah did you finish two years yeah you got you yeah same here so well i don't know what i i did a one and a half year so i would quite a you didn't finish i like a freshman college sophomore college what would you yggle in town michael in

it yeah mitchell what was your major in college uh automotive technology yeah same here okay so what was your your plan if you're racing you know if you didn't find a job in in motorsports that was going to, were you going to be a tech? No, I never looked past it. You never did. Yeah, I was going to go do something. And so you got a, you got a, you went to school and got an automotive degree just because of the connection to car, right? Yes, and I had a scholarship from the state of New York.

Really? There was like three people that, we had to go to a big thing, and three guys scored as high as, two other guys scored as high as I did on this particular test. And these other two guys, they were going to do this. going to do that and they said, what are you going to do? I'm going to work on race cars, you know, which was really a ridiculous thing to say. I'm sure to embarrass the heck out of my family. But I was fortunate that I did well in school. So I had a little scholarship and they paid for all that stuff. Wow. Basically what I learned at school was drinking beer and how to do my own laundry. Yeah, I never got, I didn't get to the making my own bed thing. It was always a mess.

I got that same degree. Yeah. I'm telling you, it's honorable. Yeah. That's what everybody needs. Of course, got us. Yeah. Yeah. So when you get out of school, how did you, you were going to find a job in motorsports, right? Yes, I loaded up. I had a 69 Chevrolet pickup truck, and I loaded what I had in the back of it and put a tarp over it and had a thousand dollars in my pocket that I'd saved, and my dad had given me a little bit of money to make it a thousand,

and left for North Carolina. And what was the emotion around you? you leaving from your family? Well, I have five brothers and sisters, so they were a little nervous about it. I'm pretty sure my mom and dad thought they'd see me in about two weeks. So, you know, they weren't all the pieces by any stretch. They thought you're coming right back. Oh, yeah, he'll be back. Yeah. And so where'd you go? Who'd you call? How'd you know where to go? I went to a good friend of mine that I had known previously. He lives right near where I live now. His name is Clyde Still, and he was around racing at Bowman Gray

and on all the dirt tracks up around Greensboro. And I went there and he said, I walked in. He said, I really didn't think you were coming. And I said, oh, wow, I've messed up. He said, no, no, no. And he had a travel trailer out back and I lived in that for about. It was probably six weeks before I got a job, yeah. Where was your job?

Tex racing in Asheboro, North Carolina. What did Tex do? Tex built cars for Benny Parsons. Only? No, everybody. You know, he did a lot of work. a fellow named Hank Thomas from Winston-Salem at the time. He had those Gremlin modifies.

We did a lot of stuff for Hubert Hensley, Jimmy Hensley, a fellow named Arrington from up in Rocky Mount, Virginia. We did whatever it took to keep going. Yeah. And so you're building race cars on jigs and doing all that, doing fancy stuff. Yeah. So what was your job?

What was you welding or everything? Yeah, everything. Yeah, I just, they taught me how to TIG weld. Now they call it Heliarch Weldon back then, but I could already wire weld and things like that and bend tubing and all that. But I have no natural talent for anything. I have to learn it. You know what I mean? I'm just not sharp.

But I tried real hard and I learned real hard and text once told me, he said, you know, if you had some talent to go with your passion, you'd really be something. And I didn't know if he was bragging on me or telling me how terrible I was. So Tex, is that the same company that ends up doing transmissions and all that? Yes. So he evolved to branch off just quickly. So I remember Tex Powell, right? Yes. As building rear ends and transmissions.

Yes, that's him. And who was Pollard running that thing? Larry Pollard. He, I think he went to work with, I think his, he married Harry Gantzdaher, I believe. And I think Larry had his own thing. Own thing. Yeah, but it was Mike and Tex Powell that ran text racing. So they event, they, but when, so when you come there in what year?

74. 74. He's building cars. And then eventually he's, he just kind of went to transmission to gears mainly. Yes. He, um, he did everything. We had a, we had a really cool little building down there. Sea Grove, North Carolina, which is right below Ashboro on 220.

And no heat, no air, no running water, and an outhouse. And they had dug their own outhouse. So these guys wanted to do it really badly. And I was real fortunate. I actually had spoken to Tex. And about three weeks later, I went down to sea text. I go, man, I guess I'm going home. He said, man, don't do that.

He said, I can pay you $125 a week if you just come. help us with stuff. I'm like, oh, God, yeah, man. You know, that was a ton of money in 1974. To me, it was anyway, you know. So you went to that building to work? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what we looked.

What did you think about that? I thought it was exactly what you needed to do to show how bad you wanted to do it, you know. How many people would walk in that building and not make it? I mean, did y'all have people that were coming? I mean, I imagine there was a lot of come. You ever watched Deadliest Catch? Yes.

So, like, they have the green horns that come onto the boats and some of them, want it and they make it right and some of them come on there and they bid off more than you did you have those guys kind of coming and going yes yeah yeah yeah but text was real good about picking somebody out too they wouldn't they wouldn't you know I was there probably 15 months all together and there probably was more than five right yeah man and you're living in a trailer at the time yeah yeah 56 foot long wonderful trailer eight feet wide you could be sitting on the commode washing your hands and watching the television at the same time. What else you need?

And if you reached over to the right, you could have gotten a shower. You know, it was exactly how you wanted it. Everything you need. It was $140 a month. I mean, it was having, I never forget it, had green furniture, and it was that kind of vinyl. You'd sit in it when you're sweating because you had no air conditioning, and it would, like, stick to you when you went to stand up.

You know, I was like, man, boy, if suffering pays, I'm there, you know. So you leave the job at Texx? How did you leave working there? What was the circumstances? Unfortunately, Richard's brother-in-law, Randy Owens, lost his life in a pit accident at Talladega in 75. Yeah. The water tank blew up. Yes, sir.

Yeah. And I would never go so far as to say I was handpicked. At that time, Tex was a former Nichols. engineering and Bud Moore engineering and Petty Enterprise's employee. And he had heard that they were looking to fill, if you will, Randy's spot with a kind of junior guy. So he said, go up there and see Chief. Chief is who?

Maurice Patty, Richard's brother. Yeah. How intimidating was that? Incredibly. I was shaked. I was probably the only time I've shaken that much recently is when I got caught in traffic 30 minutes ago on 40 and wound up coming here 30 minutes late. Yeah. So there's today and then there's the time you met with Chief. Those are your two

anxiety moments. Yeah, I still got cold chills from being nervous, you know. Well, that would be intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I've ever met Maurice formally, but I heard he was a, he was a character. He was very nice to me. Really? Yeah, he was incredibly nice to me. He and his wife and kids and you know there were there were times when he would have his motor home and his whole family at the racetrack and we'd be in michigan or dayton or talladay go hey state can you drive us home i go yeah we'll get you home you know and i was i was proud to do it you know he had a cool white travcombe motor home it was kind of round like they were in the mid-70s it had a petty blue stripe around it of course it did and sometimes you would tow a little uh jeep

jeepster i think they called and it was petty blue behind it so like man you you you You were solid petty going down the road. So you go up to meet him to take a job at Petty Enterprises. Yes, sir. And the economy, I'm assuming the conversation went really good. He just said, don't let your friend text down is what he told me. He said, I can pay you what you're making now, which was $2.80 an hour. And I said, man, that's fantastic.

You know, I felt like I had, I said, I'd be there until I was 100 years old, you know. Yeah. And so what was your job? Fabrication welding. Yeah, banditubing. And you're standing in the garage with the Dodge Charger. Yes, Dodge Charger. One of the coolest cars.

Oh, yeah, they were fun. Yeah. And, you know, we would build one, just to show you how the scale of auto racing has changed. You know, we would build a new car every year at the Petty's. And last year's Daytona car would be the short track car for this year. So every September, we would start seven days of week. week, seven in the morning till seven at night, just flogging on the speedway car, which was the next year's Atlanta car, so on and so forth. And what took the most time was all the

chrome Richard wanted done. You know, the cars were so nice, you know, but you're just so proud to look at them. Yeah. I find pictures of, you know, it's not, there's not a lot of photos of, of at least just surfing the internet. I'm sure, you know, Petty's have plenty, but there's not a lot of photos of the interior or that shop or even, you know, real close-ups of the roller cages or under the hood right of those race cars back then to get a real good understanding of the craftsmanship and quality but man they were from what you can see and understand those things left the shop immaculate like not a scratch on a roll bar they appeared to be just incredible when they'd roll to the racetrack richard was is super particular and has a fantastic eye and he lived in a

house next to lees was next to the shop and then richard was the next one over and he'd come wandering in about 11, 30, 12 o'clock. You know, it was really a little bit too early to, too close to lunch to go to work, so then we'd go to lunch and we'd come back, you know, and then Richard would be, and he said, when I drove into parking lot, that fuel cellar act didn't look square. This didn't look square. He's like, oh, my God, this guy's eye of his mind.

You know, you check, it's not square. And he just had a really good mind for that stuff. And he was Richard, you know what I mean? He had the puka shell necklace, you know, I mean. You know, I mean, he was, and it had cool shades, and I mean, he was just Richard Petty. You know, I always told him he was a combination of Elvis Presley and Andy a Mayberry. That is a good, that is a good assessment. Yeah.

So who's working there with you? A fellow named Richie Barr's. He came down from Chicago. How do I know that name? Well, he's, he's, he was at home in Moody's, and then in 70, when the Petty's got the Chrysler deal to come back from Ford, they gave Chrysler gave the car building deal to the petties and it previously was at Nichols engineering in I think Griffith Indiana and Richie came to work because the Ford thing was looking a little rough around 70, 71 and ultimately I think they stopped racing in 71. So he and his brother Les came to work from Holman Moody and they really, they just did things differently.

I'm not saying the petty cars were always really nice race cars. but Richie is the one who made the P-Sign headdress. Really? Yeah, Richie did all that stuff. That's so funny. You know, so how did he get in there, you know, with Maurice, right? You got Maurice and where's Dale Inman at this point? He's in there, right?

Yes. Dale was with Richard and other people were with Chief, if you will. It was almost split. It was. Like when they went to two cars in 70, okay, Richie was. With Buddy Baker? No, Richie was with Pete Hamilton in the wing car. Yes.

And Chief stayed right well. In fact, I spent some time with Richie just last Friday, and he said, man, Chief looked out for me. You know, Chief gave me a long leash, and we did it. And they won a bunch of races. In 1970, they actually won more money running a really short season compared to what Richard did running 54 or 55 races. Because they won Daytona and they won Talladega twice, I think, and Michigan once. So Richie had the full faith of Maurice Petty. And when Richie took me under his wing,

that put a little stamp on me that this guy's probably okay. Yeah. So not that I need you to try to get into it or anything, but when we had Dale Inman on the show, he was very guarded with like talking about the dynamic between Maurice, Richard, him, and sort of how all that would flow, right? And there was, you know.

And so it just, Even though, you know, in the through the 70s, what I know about Richard Petty and Petty Enterprises is a beautiful race car that won a lot of races. And they just showed up and they were the racer's edge and all the cool shit, right? And he handled our mustache. But it wasn't always this bed of roses or this smooth ride. There was tension or, you know, there's a lot of chiefs, if you will, for lack of a better, you know, no pun intended. the building, right?

There was definitely, there were definitely two groups, Chiefs Group and Dale and Richard's group. So when I knew you earlier, even when you were doing Mark's deal, I didn't know you'd ever work for Petty Enterprises until I started watching these old races and seeing you running around the car. Yeah.

Changing tires. Yeah, that was fun, yeah. So, and I'm like, this man, I mean, I knew you were part of the 44 team when Terry won a championship 84, but I'm like, man, you were with the petties in the late 70s when they were they were the thing right he's winning his finals you know a few championships and they're as good as it gets battling david pearson so

you go to the racetrack and watch richard and david pearson have what a lot of people um would say is the most incredible rivalry that the sports ever seen do you look back on that and think man what a fortunate thing it is for for me it have been able to see it i'm so envious of of anybody that was able to be there and walk around in those garages in the late 70s. And the way the sport was sort of, you know, getting ready to explode. I just wish I had been able to experience that. And you got to do that. And you got to do it with one of the premier teams.

Oh, extremely fortunate. And you can take that all the way through the 90s and early 2000s. you know, when there was a ton of money in this business and everybody got to do a bunch of different things. You know, if you could weld and drive the truck and weren't too good to sweep up and bend tubing and be in the body shop if they needed you, things like that, man, you were, it was just, it was, it was, you never went to work. It wasn't a job. You know, it was, exactly what you had raised yourself to be. That's what you want to do when you grew up. Yeah. And so, um, do you look back on your time at Petty's and, you know,

do you remember the battles that he had with Pearson and does it any of that stuff? Did that stuff, you know, do you look back on it now and go, man, I really didn't realize how amazing that of an opportunity that was for me to actually be there to witness some of those things? I look back on it and I'm really happy that I got to do it and I'm proud that I was a tiny part of it. But at the time it was all the thrill you could ever have. so it's not like I was kind of like blindly going through it.

I knew the whole time how lucky I was being. Where you also, I wonder too, if at that point you're still so new, you're still sort of like you're not 100% sure that you're locked in. You know, I guess I could compare it to when I race late model stocks for four or five years and it was by far the most enjoyment I ever got out of racing, but I didn't enjoy it because I didn't allow myself to enjoy it. I was so worried about the next thing, right, or the next year or the next whatever,

the next thing up the ladder, right, that I was so terrified that I didn't enjoy it. You know, I didn't enjoy the way I wanted to or should it. Do you look back on maybe that part of your career and think, damn, I was so scared, to make sure I did everything right or, you know, get my, you know, build some roots into this thing. No. Because in the early 70s, mid-70s, anybody who had any other job made more money than you did and was more secure.

You know, they could buy a house or have a bass boat or a nice pickup. And we just worked and worked and worked because that's what we wanted to do. I was never complaining about what I made. But no, it was, I wanted to do it, and I knew if I had. You felt secure. I felt super secure. Yes, sir. Your favorite race memory with the Petty's is which won?

What race? Probably winning the Arka race with Kyle. Because just he and I went down there and, you know, had a great car and great support on Pit Road. And, you know, we had Dale Eman and his whole crowd pitting it and all that and had all kinds of guidance from Richard. But, you know, I put the car together in the shop, loaded it on the truck, drove it down there, took it through inspection. The guys came and helped us on race day. Kyle did a really good job. A fellow named Phil Finney had trouble. He was as good as we were down there.

And I don't know what? Something happened to his engine, I believe. But anyway, Kyle won the race, and that was just fantastic. And so we loaded it up, and I went back home. Leading into that race, the feeling of Kyle Petty as a future driver or as the next air was what? What would you say? Optimistic? Yes, yes, very.

You know, Kyle had it all. You know what I mean? Big tall kids, a bunch of curly hair. Chicks love him. You know, I mean, he's a great race car driver. You know, it just. So you left, this is an interesting part of your personality. In 1978, you left Petty's.

Yes. And you went to work for Jerry Cook. Yes. An established dominant Hall of Fame. modified racer, but this is in 1978. You leave arguably the top team in the Cup series to go back to the grassroots level, modified racing, something you're very familiar with, obviously, but why? Because I didn't feel like I had experienced enough.

At that point in Grant National, well, I know it was Winston Cup at the time. In Winston Cup racing, it was starting to get where this guy did the rear-end housings and this guy did the front suspension, and you just paint the car, and this guy over here just drives the truck, and it got kind of compartmentalized, and I thought, man, you know, I kind of missed a step in my few years of big-time auto racing, and Jerry Cook needed a guy to go on the road. We ran like 104 races that year, and I never forget. We raced at Bowman Gray, and he picked me up,

and we drove to Amara, New York, Shimon Speedway that the Bodine family owned, ran there on, we drove all night, ran Sunday afternoon at Shemong and drove to Utica Rome Speedway up in upstate New York, the next that afternoon and raced again. So we were three times in 24 hours, basically. And we pulled into the shop, and he said, walking a shop and see what's going on. And it was probably 3,000 square foot shop. And nuts and bolts were chasing sandborne cans.

You know, so I said, oh, okay. So I really am going back to where these guys don't have all the money in the world, and I am going to have to do everything. And it worked out perfectly for that. And then in the fall of that year, there was always a big modified race with the Winston Cup cars at Martinsville. And Dale and Richard were there,

and Richard said, hey, man, Kyle wants to drive. You seem to have got a lot of experience. If you ever want to come back, just let us know. And that's what I did. So did anybody try to talk you out of leaving Petties to go to Jerry's? No, at that time, I don't think anybody could talk me out of anything.

You know, I mean, I just felt like I needed to. That must have been a fascinating difference in, you know, you mentioned it, you know, how Jerry raced versus how the Petty's race. But you went, Jerry's the man. Yeah, in my experience, it was, I tell Jerry this all the time, that I learned more in those six or eight months because you were thinking so quickly on your feet, you know, and you just raced and raced and raced and raced, you know. And that was great.

It was fantastic. You learned really quickly, you know. Yeah. Okay, so you, listen, I don't even know what's right to even ask about the, you know, the dissension or the tension in a race shop because you're right. I remember Dale Inman being very guarded about that. But let me just ask for somebody that's new and clearly seems to be trying to soak in every piece of knowledge that you can do to better mold yourself as a overall racer. is there tension or fractures within a race shop that take a toll on you and influence that decision to leave? No.

That had nothing to do with it. No, because everybody had it handled. It looked like it had been there from day one. You know, they were cousins and brothers and, you know, it just looks like they kind of grew up like that. Got it. Okay. That's fair. Yeah, it wasn't like, oh, my God, I can't put up with this anymore.

You know, it's like, oh, this is just, this is bad. You see, you know. Understood. As opposed to when me and Tony Jr. went to Hendrick and we would argue over the radio, everybody had these big silver dollars eyeballs looking at us like. They're like, these freaking, yeah. Is everything going to be okay? Yeah.

They were like, what? Are we good here? They listened to y'all in the radio and we didn't think anything of it. This is every week, okay, buckle in. Which you also know something, too, about how the way Tony Jr. and Dale Jr. actually treated each other. But they were family too, you know. Yeah. It works like that.

We'll get to that. So you talked about going and helping Kyle take that car. I've talked Kyle, working with Kyle at NBC's told me a lot of great stories about that experience. And his dad went to him and said, hey, if you find X amount of dollars, like 10 grand or 5 grand or something, you can go. The car is sitting in the back of the shop. He's like, what are you going to do with that? It was a Dodge Miranda, right? No, it was a magnum.

Magnum, okay. Awful race car, yeah. Right, which is crazy. But another story in itself, how the Petty's tried to hang on to the Dodge and they just couldn't dodge and have a race. didn't have a race car. Yeah. But, so the Magnum is sitting back there. And that, you know, it's funny I saw on social media.

Marty Robbins sitting on a Magnum. The last race car, I think he drove in 1980. Probably was a petty car at one time. I think it was actually a Cotton Owens car, but anyway, it was from that era. And so, I mean, it's like, man, if you knew that's a shit box, why did you buy it? Why are you, you know what I mean? By 1980, everybody knew that that car wasn't very good. Terrible car.

I got to Google the car. y'all keep talking ugly it's incredibly ugly yeah so anyways um and so Kyle tells me how he over he exceeded what his dad set in terms of putting together the finances for this for this program you I said what I did was I asked I saw a picture of the car on the internet and I text Kyle and I said Kyle how in the hell did you have valvine on the hood of your car when your dad had STP everywhere yeah and so he told me how he went and kind of did that deal but um The one thing I want to ask you about,

this is, Kyle's literally starting his racing career going to Daytona. Now, I know he ran some short track stuff, a couple sportsman races, y'all bought a dirt car. After, all that was after Daytona. His, but, and Kyle tells it like, yeah, I pittled with those, we went and did some of that, but not a bunch. His, well, the way he tells it to me is his dad was like, you want to be a cup driver, race a cup car.

100%. Yeah. Yeah, but you race car drivers think it's because it's so easy to you guys and your eyes work so well and that handles speed and things coming at them really fast, race car drivers just believe that you just need to go do it. Like, oh, my God. I mean, I look at, I was watching something the other day and you were telling the story and I've heard you tell it before about didn't you go to Talladega and took your helmet and your dad let you drive the car?

car. I mean, like, you know, so there's a classic example of race car driver going, oh, I mean, anybody can do this, right? No, no. You know, I would have been terrified if I was there with you. Oh, I was terrified. He was terrified. Yeah, I was nervous.

I'm going down to back straightaway off pit road, right? Pull out. I've told us many times, but, um, dad's like, now you got to hold it wide open. It'll burn a piston if you lift. Yeah, it was the time too. And I'm like, I didn't ask you. I was, I was an idiot. I was like, I was like, I'm thinking in my head, how do I get through the garage wide open?

Like, from a minute I leave this pit stall, this garage stall, I've got to be wide open all the time. Like I'm pushing a button, right? Never part throttle. Yeah. And so literally, I'm pulling out of the track going, what? Walk! Get out on pit road. But, no!

And I'm going down the back straightaway off of two for the first time looking down the straightaway at the turn going, you can't make it. How in the hell is this thing going to stick? It's going to wrap right out of here. No way. But I think dad was lying about the lifting because he thought I'd be scared and lift. But if he knew he – No.

I think there's some truth, I think. Oh, there were more Pistons burned coming off pit road for practice at that point in time. Yeah. Because, I mean, you're talking about 14-5-15 to one compression. And just, man, if you ever lifted and the fuel quit running in there, it just burned the top of the piston or it knocked the bearings out. Yeah. So he told you the truth.

Well, I thought he was telling me a lie just so I wouldn't lift. Because he was like, you're going to lift. You're a little lift. I know you'll lift. And he's got that strong but quiet voice. You know what I mean? There are two things about him. You know, he was quiet when he was talking to you,

and his fingernails were always perfect. And I always looked at him and go, this isn't the intimidator this he'd be all gnawed off like mine and so on and so forth but he was he was just a special guy and if he told you something in that quiet voice you would you would listen yeah perfect fingernails i've never heard that oh yeah that's the first i've heard about that he had great fingernails all the time so back to kyle so you know you richard is like yeah you can you can run this little sportsman car you can go do this but really just you know if you're going to be a cup racer get in a cup car and go race cup now it wasn't that easy he didn't you

And Kyle had to piece his deals together. And he kind of struggled a little bit, but or a lot, you know, especially trying to get into the field with those back, you know, those used up cars that his dad was giving him. But how much of a part of, like, tell me about, you know, Kyle, you know, y'all going and buying the dirt car and what was the process? What did you experience with that? Well, we had a single cab duly in a trailer.

And we just went and got whatever we, needed went to Butch Linnleys and picked up the sportsman car real nice old sportsman car richard actually drove it a couple times and uh and we went to hoss allingtons and picked up the dirt car hoss had a dirt car so i've i know hoss ellington he owns the number one uno car car i don't what has he got dirt cars i'd never heard i don't know that about hoss he had a fellow named jackie rogers that worked with him and he was a great race car driver in the early 70s he drove the lemon tree in car a couple of times jackie's a really good race car driver fantastic on dirt and we took it home and kind of made like an NDRA car out of, you know, with the big spoilers and all that stuff,

right side window and all. NDRA was like the premier wedge-de-bodied dirt series in the southeast at least. Yes, it was a big deal. And so Kyle and you ran that's? Nope, we only ran local places that paid a lot of money to Kyle to show up. But Kyle, oh, so Kyle was getting some deals. He did all that. How did he do?

with his dirt car we did really well except for the time Pearson showed up at Myrtle Beach and anybody that didn't get to see David Pearson run on dirt really missed an incredible performance

I mean he was so good I mean you just backed up and watched him you know but no we did good now we got $10,000 to go to I can't think of the name of the place Jackie Rogers won the race and it's down to

Wilmington and he like drive on a raised up dirt road through a swamp to get to it. I can't think of the name of it. I'm sorry. But it was $10,000 and Jackie destroyed us in the race. Just drove away. And the promoter came in it with a paper sack full of $10,000, $1 bills. It looked like when the race was over and says, hey, give us to Kyle. It's his show up money.

And I thought we're going to have to fight the entire pit area because these guys are probably using their grocery money to. They saw that. Oh, yeah. Oh, they didn't like that. And I said, you know, they're going to drown us or the alligators are going to eat us. You know, something's going to have it and they're just going to kill us. So we loaded up and went across the little dirt road through the Everglades.

It felt like to me and we just went home. And then Kyle was really good at getting things done. You know, he's sharp. Yeah, he was really good at that. What was your experience with the sportsman asphalt car? We took it a number of places. Kyle ran really well in it. Richard ran really well in it one night at Carraway and overheated.

Why did Richard want to drive it? I'm sure they paid him a ton to go to Carraway. It's right down the street from, yeah, yeah. So this is probably 80, 81? 70. 80. It was 80. Yes, sir. Dale Enman leaves to go to Austral and 80 at the end of the 80 season, right? No, he actually went to Daytona and he made the pick call that allowed us to beat the, what looked to be unbeatable, had won the 125 mile or won the class,

the 28 car that Bobby Allison was driving. And Dale made the pit call to just get fuel and that got us out in front of them. That's how we won the Daytona 500. And then I think, I was looking at the day I have a picture of us. We won the pit crew championship at Rockingham like two weeks later and Dale was in the picture. So I don't think Dale actually went to work at Osterland until. Well, yeah, like Atlanta in the spring of 81. Oh, yeah.

So after the season began. Yes. So he leaves and you're the co-crew chief. Yeah, me and Wade. Wade. Who is Wade. Wade Thornberg is a Vietnam veteran, great guy. He worked for Jimmy Pardue.

He got killed testing tires in 1964. And then he went to work from the Petty's. He's actually from Ashboro. And he was a longtime employee of the Petty's, very loyal person. and he was always with Dale. What's it like co-cruge even? Wade didn't, Wade was always with Dale. And so Wade wasn't very outspoken as far as what we need to be doing to make changes on the race car or what have you or, you know, cheating up a body or so on and so forth.

So Wade was super cool. I think Richard was really glad to have Wade standing there because he'd worked for him since like 65. and Wade was cool in his role. Now, he could overrule me at any time because he was the guy, but he wasn't one of those guys that was itching to become a crew chief. Yeah. And what about you? I mean, you're still what you're six years in to your racing.

Yeah, it's, oh, I was kind of nervous about it, but the thing we had going for us was it was the new short cars, not near the downforce we were all used to having. So everybody was kind of in the same. same boat kind of like this time last year with the new car you know so if everybody's on the level playing field everybody talks about maybe you could hang on for a little while and and and we did okay we we won michigan and north wicksboro that year with you know dale was already gone and obviously one daytona and uh but the next year it got real tough because we had we were the STP money

didn't go up and we were running two cars on it and it was tough so basically kyle's running full-time now out of the shop. And what was your, what spurred you to decide to do some different? Well, I had two kids. One was a month old and one was a year and a month old. And I just decided that I felt like there was a huge war inside Petty Enterprises. And there was enough money to race like we needed to race. And Dale had left.

So that told me that there was some kind of future for Richard, somewhere else. I mean, they were too tight for Dale to have leave without Richard saying, yeah, okay, I'm probably going myself, you know. I can't imagine Richard leaving petty enterprises. Yeah, I couldn't either, but if you were standing there, it was awful. It was awkward. It was awkward. It happened. Yeah, and I wasn't going to hang around for that, you know. Did you have opportunities? I actually worked for a fellow named Jay Hedgecock who ended up building the car that, well, he builds your cars. It was not. Yeah, and he built the car that Richard

flip down the front straightaway. Really? Yeah, yeah. So he's a really smart little race car builder. We actually met. He came to work at Tex Racing in 1974 the same week I did. So anyway, I worked for Jay during the week, and on weekends, they wanted me to be the, they called me and racill farms called.

And they said, can you, you won't go to the race truck? I said, I guess so. And they said, well, Bob Johnson, who's a great race. in his own right, had just quit for whatever reason. And they said, you want to be the crew chief? I said, I guess so. So we went to Daytona and run third, I guess, Fourth of July, and then we went to Nashville

the next week, he ran second, and then we went to Pocono and run third. So he's like, man, you got to move to Connecticut. That guy said, no, man. That's where the team was. Yeah, yeah. I can't go to Canada. But at the end of the year, they actually moved down

of the old Dygard shop, and David If was the crew chief, he became the crew chief, because there was no future in me. You know what I mean? I wasn't, I'm not going to Connecticut. No. But they, if they moved the shop down here? I never knew about that at the time, you know. I didn't know you worked for them. Yeah, yeah. And that was a cool car. Yeah, that was a good little car. I didn't like it when it beat Dad in Atlanta with Shepherd driving it.

But when Harry Gant and then Bouchard was driving it, just kind of like the little engine that could. Yeah, and you know, Jake was working on it. Jake Ell was working on it at Atlanta when he beat your dad. That's fast. Yeah, nice race for a car. So in 83, you got recruited to go to Hagen racing with Dale. Dale Lindman, does he call you up?

Hey, man. Because I had babies at home, and Dale would commute to back and forth to Martinsville. And he said, you won't ride home with me tonight? I said, yeah, whatever. After Martinsville raced. actually like on the Friday probably. And he said, hey, I'm going to go do this. You want to do it?

I said, sure, man. No problem. So we went over there and it was an eye-opening experience. Why is that? They didn't have much, you know, wouldn't. So this is the bud, this is, I guess it was the red 44 at that time. Piedmont's coming on board or they? No, no, the year before.

Y'all had Budweiser. 82, it was. Stratto? Well, it said stratigraph, which was Billy Higgins company. and but Texas jeans it said on it and oh it said Stacy on it too in 82 yeah and I'm sure they didn't get any money from that from what people say but anyway they they had Budweiser and they were going to go do it and yeah so we went over there and we didn't really change a lot of things they had run like third or fourth in the points in 82 and uh we just we just went in there and

spruce the shop up pretty good built some nice steel tables and got everything where it was working and right and just basically took the same cars they had and, you know, made him a little bit nicer. And Terry had a fantastic year in 83, one at Rockingham, and then in 84, we were super prepared. I'm never forget Dale Eman saying, I've never been prepared like this for a year. I said, man, you were at Richards. He said, I'm just telling you, we were never this ready. And Terry did a real nice job, and we won the race.

I won a championship. Just in turn, ready, just in terms of you guys were impressed and satisfied with. with the fleet of cars that you have or what? Yeah, everything was in order. You know, it's not like, you know, you didn't have pit boxes and all that. Then you dropped a nitrogen bottle on a Coca-Cola can, and that's what set that up. But it was just we had good people and we were real ready and cars were sitting there in the floor. Everything clicked.

It was just right. Yeah. So I kind of started paying attention around that time in 84. I was about 10 years old. And we, dad was chasing y'all. Yeah. Dad and many others were chasing y'all all year long, and the car would not break. Yeah.

Dad, I remember bawling my eyes out at Bristol. Dad was running, they were running the Bristol night race, and I don't know, Dad was having a good run, but for whatever reason, I remember. Is that when he crashed on the pit road? Well, no. He ended up spun down the front straightaway, and all four tires were flat, at least so many were flat that he couldn't really get his car going. And he gets lapped, and I'm sitting there thinking, man, we needed to have a good, night tonight and y'all would never break yeah y'all would never break was it the summer race night race it was yeah and we won yeah yeah and so y'all would win or run top five and never fail yeah and

uh 21 top five say yeah i couldn't remember another year or even i couldn't i can't say that any other season by any other team left an impression that that season left on me for the durability and quality in terms of just, you know, it was back then it was the $2 part, the $2 part. Every week somebody had a little thing crack or break, a little piece of plastic or something like that or distributor or whatever. You know, you had all these little things that just happened. And because the cars really were put to the test and the shit would break. But y'all just never had problems.

Dale was really good at make, he'd see something that you didn't see, he go, you'd fix that. What are you talking about? Who's this old guy walking around? But Dale was right about everything. And Terry's a tremendous race car driver. He is not going to crash your car trying to run third if it's a fifth place car. Yeah.

So y'all win the championship in 84. Do you know what you've done? I know we won the championship the last year. It paid $150,000 or it was a million the following year. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, we were sick. Like, what?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, but you get to go to New York City. Oh, my God, we'll get killed in New York City because these guys will just cross a road anywhere. Right. But, yeah, no, yeah, we were real pleased. Yeah, we were real, especially to beat Harry Gant in the Skoll Bandit car. Yeah. You know, that was, they were really good racers.

They were equally well prepared. Yeah. They had a weird, they were the first ones to kind of use telemetry, remember, all that. Anyways, so Enman goes back to Petty. Richard in 84 was with Kerb. Richard is not at Petty Enterprise. I guess in 85 they're all going to go home. Yes.

So are you hearing about this, you know, rumblings? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they asked me, and I actually wrote over to Petty Enterprises with Dale in one of the vans from Higgins. And he said, just come look around, you know. Oh, he wanted you to go back. Yeah, yeah. He wanted everybody. He said, I wish you'd go with me.

I'm like, okay. but it struck me that when I walked into Petty Enterprises that had been closed for a couple years, I looked around and even down to the girly pictures on the wall in the men's room, it was the same stuff that I left in 82, you know? So I didn't know that Billy was out of money. Oh.

So the Petty's, while Richard went to run Curbs car and wins his 200th at Daytona, The Pettys and Chief ran a Ford with Dick Brooks. It's like four or five races. And I think Richie, I think somewhere maybe slightly after I think Richie Petty, Maurice's son drove a couple of races. They had this white. The white Thunderbird, real super plain looking little Thunderbird.

Pretty little car. Yeah, nice little car. But they didn't race much. You said the shop was shut up. So you walk in there and you're like, man, I don't know. This don't. It's the same. Dale Edmunds walking there and going, hey, I'm home.

And you're walking. And he should. Yeah, and you're walking there going, Dale, we just won a championship. We can't, we're not going in championship here, right? Right, yeah. And so you were hesitant and you didn't do it. I didn't do it, yeah. And you stayed at Higgins.

Did you know that that would, did you become the crew chief? Did you know that that would be, you know, you would elevate yourself to the crew chief if you stayed? Yeah, they had already told me. Yeah, Billy had already told me, yeah. But you didn't know that they didn't have any money. No. And when did you know that? When we sold all the cars, all the Chevolets to Rick Hendrick

and got a Oldsmobile deal. And the way the Oldsmobile deal worked is you would go to Hutchson-Pagin, pick up a chassis in the sheet metal, and go back through the parts room, and you'd get a fuel cell and steering box and all steering parts and a steering wheel and a rear-in-housing and all the suspension and every fitting you could put in a fire. gallon bucket it seemed like oh my god and i'm thinking wow you know so we actually we couldn't for whatever

reason we'd either gotten too many cars or what have you but we got time come down to build a kind of intermediate short track car and all hutch had was a show card that he had built for olsenbill and had an orange interior and because i think it was a foight card because foyt had the same olesombeal deal and uh when we got ready to go to rock and ham i i uh i said hutch we need a car and he said, yeah, it ain't going to happen. I said, we're going to do that show car. He said, oh, nothing. He's just going to sit here.

I said, we'll take it. And we took it to poor, God bless him, Bob Labani's ultimate anxiety. He was like, we're not going to run good with a show car, Steve. What are you an idiot? No, I'm the new guy, you know. So I took a lot of beating on that. And we took it to Rockingham, sat on a pole, new track record, led the most laps of one in the race. And no disrespect to Bob Labani, who's a nice person in a great racer.

He raised two wonderful racing kids and a grandson. But you just had to do whatever you had to do to keep going. And then eventually when I saw we were breaking engines. And I talked to Dewey Live and Good, the fellow that built all our championship. And I just like, oh, man, is everything all right? He said, no, I can't buy this and I can't buy that. And there's no money. I'm like, what do you mean there's no money?

Well, evidently, Billy owned stratigraph, which isn't an oil drilling. company, but they drill the dirt. They're mud loggers, they call. And they tell you, at 133 feet, there's natural gas. And at 591 feet, there's a little bit of oil, but it's all mud in between. Well, Billy, when things were going so well in 1980, expanded in the Pacific Rim Southeast Asia. And when it all started going bad, when oil prices went down and they weren't exploring anymore, he couldn't get it. It was too big to slow down. So he kind of lost his butt on that. Dang. Yeah.

So why did y'all sell Chevys and not re-skinned them? Just curious. Why did you sell Chevy's and Red number five's that Jeff Bedin was driving? At that point, they're already white and yellow Levi-Garrett. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And I never forget, Rick Hendrick called me and said, man I appreciate these cars and go yeah that's fine man whatever we need to do he said these are the lightest nicest cars I've ever had and he was reocannock but it was at the beginning you know now he's

the king of the world you know I'm just saying it was very nice of him to call some little dumb 32 year old kid you know it's pretty nice stuff you sold us you know so um the hagen deal falls apart uh you you left there in 87 um um Terry left in 86 and Sterling Marlin comes in. Were you there when Sterling got wrecked at Bristol Baddad? Yes. Yeah. Yep.

So we talked about that with Sterling last week. I was like, hey, man, you know, that's one of the wrecks where there's a lot of wrecks where you can defend dad. And then there's some, there's just no defending. That would have been a tough one there. That would have been a tough one to defend. Yeah. But he was so much faster than us. You know, he was going to pass us down the backstretch.

Yeah. And he just ticked to school. Yeah. And poor old Sterling. I don't know if he told you, but I, you know, you know, chocolate come down. We were like two pits below, two pits toward the start, finish line from your dad.

And here comes chocolate. He's going to whip everybody's butt. I'm like, man, I'm 5'8, 135 pounds, man. You don't have to worry about me. And I said, Sterling, come on. He goes, I, I said, Sterling, let's just put your street clothes on. And we'll get out of here and go on. And he said, all right, where's the field house?

I said, what? He said, well, I changed my uniform in the field house. He was playing football. and it had hurt his head and he thought he was mixed up. He was mixed up. He was mixed up. Oh my God.

He thought he's in a football game. Yeah, he was getting ready to take the pads off, I guess. I don't know, but I'll never forget that. And every time you hurt, not every time you hurt your head, but when you went through all the concussion stuff, I thought, you know what, Sterling hit his head a number of times. And I'm not saying he wasn't a great race car driver. Having all those guys come through here,

they all have sort of come, they've all come with some, you know, information about some experience they had, you know, all the drivers. That they, you know, they didn't know. Back then, even, you know, in 98, not to get off in the woods, but in 98, we wrecked at Daytona with the bush car,

flipped down the back straightaway with trickle. And I got, I was all dizzy trying to do an interview after that and got sick, you know, got dizzy laying on my back in the shop and stuff working on. the car and I thought man I thought I laughed you know I got out and I was like Tony junior I felt like y'all are rolling the car down through the shop floor on the casters I was so damn dizzy in there and we would laugh about it oh yeah and backslap and go oh we'll be fine yeah by the weekend yeah it's up I mean it's nothing everything goes away right yeah that just goes away

that's not going to have any long-term fix and so you know I can't even imagine that's the way we were in thousand or 98 99 i can't imagine like in the 80s you're probably oh my gosh yeah yeah we'll just work through it yeah but uh i was wondering if you were you were there but i always that was one where i'm like ugh damn daddy uh i think he was trying to get around buddy he you know but sterling was laughing at errington or somebody yeah and dad was like uh squeeze in between and wrecked the hell out of him but uh there um that's another thing that happens at this table a lot as people that dad wrecked come here. You know, I'm having a conversation with you,

but there's some point in your career prior to the EI where, like, dad wrecked your race car, and it was like, it's just kind of fun having those conversations. But Sterling was like, no, man, there's no big deal. You know, he's 10 years older than me. I wasn't going to, you know, we're going to have no rivalry. That's right. Right.

So you, why did you, so you, I guess, I mean, I assume I know they answered this, but you leave Higgins at the end of the year because the writing's on the ball that the deals falled apart. That and Robert Yates had just bought Renier Racing the previous fall, and they came to Daytona with a havelin car without the havelin decals, you know, and they ran super fast. There's a cool little car, a nice little body, you know. And I was leaving Michigan Spring Race walking out through the park line,

and one of the engineers that helped, he actually helped Wadill Wilson, probably more than Robert, but he's a sure enough Ford engineer. And he said, hey, how would you like to work on a Ford? I said, yeah, sure, they look like the thing you need to have right now.

I said, we're going to have to get good motors. He said, well, you're going to be, if you take this deal, you'll be hooked up with a guy that's really super hooked up with Ford. And I said, well, yeah, here's my number and have them call me, and it was Jack, you know.

And so it looked like a great operation. And we had, Mark and myself and Banjo Grimm had been trying to put together a Winston Cup deal, because back then he could do it on like a million two, you know, and maybe if you put enough stuff together. Yeah. And we were trying to do something from Mark and just couldn't get it down, even in a million two. So it looked for an opportunity for us to all get together with Mark at Jackson, and that was compelling. So Mark is trying to come back for his second, attempt at making it at the big time.

And he talks about that first attempt and how demoralizing and just brutal it was for him to go back home and put his life back together and get his ASA career going again. Banjo that you mentioned was basically kind of the lead mechanic for Mark at the time. Banjo ended up coming to work at DEI for a period of time, which is interesting to get to know him and, you know, after seeing him around the garage for years and, you know, a long time. So the one thing that's interesting about your career is you kind of, you'll be, you'll get on,

you have these peaks of, you know, big success, racing and winning at petties, going to, you know, going to Higgins and winning a championship and crew chief roles. And then there's these valleys where you sort of reset,

right? You mash a reset button. You were never seemingly scared to do something that, you know, wasn't an automatic win, you know what I mean? I mean, you didn't know whether the Mark Roush deal was going to become what it would become, but you were willing to, hell yeah, you know, let's give it a go, right? Yeah, well, I mean, you just, you can't wait on it, you know, even if you've got to pull back, you've got to be boring straight ahead at getting better, you know, getting faster and attracting

people like Jack Roush and Junior Johnson or anybody like that. The interesting thing about Martin, even though he was coming back for his second try, I think that his success in his little bushcar had kind of reestablished everybody's opinion about his ability. I know you knew him differently. You wouldn't going to get in a deal. You weren't going to be a part of his program and build this thing with Jack, if you didn't believe he was one of the, you know, could be the greatest thing ever.

But the rest of the industry had. He had kind of rebuilt his reputation, right? Yeah, yeah. He ran really well in that Bush car. They kept it like two miles from my house, you know, so I'd go by there and see what they were doing and all that stuff. Yeah, he got married. He got married when he went back home too.

You know, he got married to a lady with a couple kids and, you know, maybe three kids. And then they moved to Wisconsin and, you know, froze their butts off while he was putting a car together. I mean, that guy's made a tough. stuff, boy. I mean, if you'd have known his dad, you'd say, well, he's just like his dad. Gillian was an extremely strong-willed person. What was Mark Martin's reputation before that that he had to rebuild? He came into, I mean, I'm not the person to be telling this story, but he came into the Cups Series, and he'll tell you that he was a bit brash or a bit confident. They had some success, set on polls, ran really good. Some of his innovation was ahead of its time,

and he brought a lot of his ideas from his ASA car that would have eventually found, you know, bared fruit at the cup level, but he didn't have the money to suffer through the trial and error. And some of the sponsor deals, the Apache stove deal. I think they ever paid. They never paid him a dime. Like he went broke, you know,

and basically had to turn around and go home. He just ended up not being able to afford it anymore. But I think people saw, I think he took it harder than, then the perception I don't think anybody went all that guy didn't have it or no he beat himself up

that makes sense so when he went back he had I mean I say he rebuilt his reputation I think he reaffirmed in that bush car that man this guy can do it yeah yeah mostly in his eyes you know because everybody like man that's a bad man right there you know in some of the notes

Jack was Jack comes up in some of the notes as, you know, very connected, but he had success and experience in other things, sports car, EMSA, and a lot of times the stock car mentality that you carry in the sports car or, you know, the different mentality in motorsports that he had would kind of clash. Oh, no question. Right. And so talk about how y'all worked through that, and what would end up being some of the end result?

Well, Ford Motor Company trusted Jack with racing money. He had always done great for him. They were frustrated with the Elliot's because they took the money and didn't tell them anything. So Ford couldn't take, you know, Ford spent an incredible amount of money, but But Moore's not going to get this information, and Ernie's not going to tell anybody else, you know. So Jack's job was to have a shop right down the street in Livonia where the Ford guys could come out and see what's going on.

Do you think, if you, to be fair, like, do you, why, that, what you're saying about the Elliot's rings, feels so real to me because I remember when he goes to Daytona, qualifies a 240 miles an hour, he's like, lights out better than anybody. Kale Yarbrow's driving his ass off. Turn it over. Right, trying to keep up with him in the, in the, in the, in the,

the Reneer cart, which was a rocket, right? And nobody, but no, I mean, Bill unlapped himself twice under the green in Talladega. Crazy. When he really needed to open it up. So, I mean, I think we'd all love to know what they were doing, but they were so good. It was like, how would they, why would they, how could they share, right? What would they be willing to divulge to, you know, but more? Yeah, understood.

Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with Ford's take on it, but I can understand why they would be saying that. You know. So Jack's first idea was, well, we just build them up here, and he had a nice shop and a bunch of good guys. And I said, we're not going to be able to hire the quality experience people. I'm not saying they didn't have quality people in Livonia, but they didn't have any experience for how this all worked. and he said okay find a shop near you and so we put it in liberty but i always appreciated jack for doing that because i thought that was pretty realistic and i made the point you know we can go to charlotte twice a year rogadenham twice a year marasville twice a year and north folksville twice

a year and we won't have a motel bill because we just drive back and forth every now i was taught that at the petties and that's how they did it and you know he either bid on it or got tired of fighting with me over putting it in liberty but we wound up in liberty which i don't think was a bad idea Yeah. So Robin Pemberton, what is his role in this whole thing? Okay. Jack's first choice for a crew chief was Gary Nelson. Fantastic racer.

We can't get him to come do an interview here. Oh, really? Was he that hard to hire as a crew chief? I think he... Was he as hard to hire as a crew chief as he was to get a book on a podcast? I've died to talk to it. I think he had just gone to Felix. And that was the original big.

big money deal, you know. I think he thinks I want to talk about Bummergate for an hour and a half. Oh, yeah. No. We were only going to designate a half hour for that. We're just going to talk about 10 minutes about that. But, and Robin had worked for Gary at Dygarton. And he said, no, but you should hire Robin Pemberton.

And the same engineer that asked me about going to work for Jack, and I didn't know was Jack at the time, knew Robin from helping at Dygart. and he said, well, why don't you just get Robin and Steve? Okay, so that's what we did. So, you know, we had nothing. We had a 6,000 square foot building with nothing inside it, not even bathroom, it's not an office, not anything. So we're going to get started doing us.

I said, Rob, you take care of the race cars, and I'll get all this stuff going. You know, we actually tunneled. It was on a concrete slab. We actually, they put me in a hole, and I had a shoveling, I just dug and dug and dug and dug and dug until I got where I needed to be, where the hole was, what we had blasted out in the concrete floor where the toilet went. So, you know, I had to do that kind of stuff. Yeah, and Rob took care of the race cars, which is fantastic.

I was going to say, the worst case scenario, techs taught you how to do the outhouse. That's exactly right. This sounds incredibly fun to, like, have a blank, well, to have a blank sheet canvas and reasonable funding to create this, shape this thing however you want it to be. Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, it's a huge opportunity. You just had to, you'd lay awake nights wearing if you were going to, you don't want to be the weak part.

You know what I mean. Yeah. And so I remember that car coming to the racetrack, Stro's Light, a cool-looking race car and a simple little paint scheme. And y'all had, you know, it was a fast car right out of the gate. Brand new team. The perception for me as a kid was, Jack Roush, he's freaking amazing.

He wins. He's going to have Ford support. Mark Martin, great driver. Matter of time before this thing starts becoming something to concern about. My whole thing is like, what's going to keep Dad from winning? This was obviously going to be one of the things that was going to take away from Dad's success. That's how I measured everything at the time, right? Tim Richmond.

Who's coming? We've got to keep an eye on. That's right. Davey Allison, all those things. And so, and it wasn't long. I mean, you guys found success early? The second year. Yeah, the first year wasn't great.

What was wrong with the first year? What was not great about it? We didn't. Jack had yet to accustom himself to building cup engines. Leonard Wood helped a lot with that. Leonard and Jack were really good friends. And the second year, we went from rear-stere-stir-cars to front-stere-cars. That's a big difference.

And we tested 28 times. Yeah. which put a load on the bankbook and a load on the engine shop and a load on our guys. And Jack bought us another tractor trailer that just tested. And we wore airplanes out going here and there. And we looked at it as just a way to increase Mark's knowledge about driving race cars, our knowledge about Mark, all of us being together with Mark, Mark being together with us.

You know, it just shoved everybody together, and shortly after that, I can remember, Bud Moore said, hey, he had that clung out of us now. I'm going to talk to France, and we ain't going to test but about 10 times next year. I said, well, why don't you test as much as we did? I'm telling you, you ain't going to test as much next year either. So they came with a rule.

I think it was 10 times you can test. Yeah. My gosh. But it helped us a lot. It really, you know, they talk about a learning curve, but it flattened ours out a lot. So when does Robin, leave. End of

91. End of 91. So the best chance that went in a championship, 1990. Yeah. Should have. Should have won a championship. So this is another one of those moments where I'm going to sit across them to the table with somebody

and there's something unfortunate happened that involves dad or dad's team in this case Richard Childers. So he goes, so there's a the team. So first off, let's talk about the team getting, failing tech for the roof being too low at Daytona.

Right. Right. And so Jack Sixth there at the tech shed and watching everybody else get teched and goes, well, what's that? What about this, right? Yes. Some things that he. That was unfortunate. He, well, I mean, did he do anything wrong?

Maybe the only problem was not understanding the culture. Yeah. And so that tick off officials, teams, who? Big Bill. Junior? I don't think so. I can't believe it ever got back to him. Did the officials take offense? Oh, no question. Buster was the guy in the template room. And at that time, they didn't have the block, you know, the red, green, yellow, you know. So you just kind of look at it. It's a wooden thing. Go on, just going. Yeah. So we went to, we went to Rockingham. And I can't remember where we qualified. But Jack was nervous about how cold it was. So we taped the, he said, I won't tape the cow shut. Air's going to be too cold.

Yeah, you're like an engine guy, you know. And we almost got a lap. And he said, what are we going to do on the stops? He said, we're taking that darn tape off. I can tell you that much, you know. So we got that off and got to running okay, and we were up there with your dad and rusty, racing and racing and racing. A caution came out with, I don't know how many laps to go,

but enough where you could gamble on tires. And I think we probably got just rights, and those two got racing behind us, which you could kind of predict. And we won the race. and it is all cool, you know, and go to Victory Lane. It's freezing cold. And get done with that and shove the car down in the garage,

and we pulled the hood open. And Richard Chilis came by on this side, and he went, it's right there. I'm like, I didn't even know it was right there. I mean, I didn't know what he was talking about. I know that, as it turns out, Jack had, because we would complain about motors, and Jack was always nervous about our drag because we were more than happy to trade. dragged for down force. And Richmond did it really make any difference?

I don't know. But Jack was always on Robin as the crew chief to make sure the cow lined up perfectly, based of the cow, lined up perfectly with the car bottom of the air cleaner. Yeah. Okay. So couldn't get it done. Rob calls Jack and says, hey, you've got a killer machine shop. Make us an inch and a half spacer.

Nope, nobody knew you couldn't have over an inch spacer. We're just a bunch of dummies in liberty, you know. You're just trying to get the air cleaner. up to get the cow, the base of the air cleaner plate to be even with the cow. So the airflow is best. Right. And it went through inspection Friday. It went through inspection for qualifying.

It went through inspection Sunday. And we're like, cool, you know, and won the race. Oh, yeah. Well, Richard had seen it. And, God, I don't want to overstate our case at all. I think after 1989, our plate cars got really good, too. So at that point, Richard's a wise old bird, man, and he's looking around same as you did about who's going to beat my dad,

and he was like, those guys could win a championship. And he knew the rules. He's a super experienced guy, and he said, here's what I'm stopping this right here, which is, I've never faulted him for that. That's uncharacteristic, though, for anybody to walk up in the middle. Like, usually, I mean, it's really, maybe I'm naive, but I don't, I thought that there, I think, and you don't even have to comment on it,

but I thought that there was like this sort of unspoken agreement, like you wouldn't roll up in the middle of a tech as an, as an, on the opposing team and go, look at that. That's wrong. Yeah. Right. Basically in the moment, right now, you might go up in the trailer and tell Buster or somebody say, hey, man, I didn't, I don't think that car fits the template. But you might have that conversation with them behind closed doors, but not out there in the middle of the garage pointing. We had actually come down from the Little Victory Lane they had at Richmond,

and we were outside draining the water out of the engine. So it's not like we were pulling the crank out. But that was surprising. Yeah. And so. But wait, but didn't this start with Jack doing this? I mean, I'm trying to put all this together. Jack started doing this.

Jack's sitting in and watching Tech. at Daytona after they failed his car should have no impact on Richard Childers. Richard Childers isn't, this is in, Richard's not doing this in response to that. Richard just saw a threat in terms of their performance, but to walk up into the garage or wherever, right, openly in the aisle and go,

that is wrong, look at that, the coming here, guys. Okay, I see the difference, but then if going back to your comment saying that that was unfortunate and maybe Jack just didn't understand the culture, I would assume that means that it did have some sort of ramification that maybe even put a bull's eye on you guys or something. I mean, do you think that's true? So maybe he didn't do exactly what Richard did going, there it is, I told you, but it probably didn't help any of the situations, right? Yeah, it was in the words of Ernie Elliott, it's a combination of things.

You know, I mean, that's 46 points they took away for that. Why 46 points? I think it made us the last car on the lead lap. I think that's what it was. Because I remember walking up in the trailer and Les Richter, who we all loved, said, hey, man, here's how it's going to go down. I'm like, okay, how'd you come up with that? And he told me, and I said, okay.

I said, man, we're behind. And he said, just beat him by more than that. And I was standing there at Atlanta in the last race going, I'm not sure we're going to beat him by more than that. So you lost the championship to dab at 26 points. Yes. But we took that. Yates car.

Yeah. That's what I want to get to. So you go to a test at Atlanta preparing for that final race, y'all. With 12 cars. Y'all took 12 race cars. 12 race cars. 12 cars. Mark drives all 12 of.

Yeah. How did you whittle that down to one? We just went back to what we'd always done. You know, this is the car we ran really good within the spring. None of the other cars. Nah, we were just. Just trying. Different body stuff.

The one that was really different was a chassis that had been developed by Ford Motor Company. In fact, Jeff Bodine, I think, actually ran one in that race. And they were all just okay, but they weren't as good as the one Mark was used to. Maybe it's the way the seat fit or, you know, but he said, I want this car. So how does he get the opportunity to drive the Roush car? We had gone to Phoenix. Is it after the test? No, we had just come from Phoenix.

And your dad killed us, and some people say he put on four left side tires or whatever. But anyway, he ran really fast. And he was the guy, you know, especially in Atlanta. I mean, my God. When he wore Adidas tennis shoes and his fire suit was too small, he kicked that butted at Atlanta. You know, I mean, he's just good. But the Yates truck comes in from Phoenix, and they just pull in to go and run a few laps. Well, he goes out and it's like three-tenths quicker

and it's like that. Like, oh, my God. So it's not because it's a Ford. It's because it's our Ford. We're not very good. So somehow Mark went over and asked if he could drive it. And sure, and he went out and he was three-tenths quicker than we could run. You know, he's as good as Davey.

I'm like, oh, wow. What did he say about the car? He said, I need that motor. And, I mean, put yourself in Jack Ross's shoes. I mean, you would never want that to happen. You know what I mean. So I never, I was like, oh, boy, I don't know what I'd have said that. But anyway, and the way it all went down was, Jack said, if you get the motor, you get the car.

Okay. So we went and got the car and painted it. So Jack says if you're going to use their motor, you need the car too, right? So he put, if you can pull, if you can check both in boxes. How do you initiate that conversation? Is it a Ford motor executive you're talking to? Or is it, I bet it was Preston Miller.

I bet Preston Miller was the goal between. Do you remember Preston? I don't. Okay, he was a Ford guy. And so y'all say, hey, man, we'd love to have the motor and the car. And he goes, I'll talk to, I'm going to talk to Roush. I'll try to make this happen. And Rouse, any reluctancy to give, let the, I know you all are going for a championship

they're not, but they still have a car three-tenths fast. than y'all's and you mean yates i'm sorry yates yeah yeah but i think they had more of them yeah yeah they were fine yeah they were like whatever you know i remember going down i said i'm going down to pick up this car jack because i don't want somebody to have to fight through it you know i'm not i'm not going to be the shy guy and go just go get that car and we'll run real fast with it you know i just went in there and go hey man and norman was there and i don't remember who of the crew chief was but they said yeah there's your car we'll help you load it and all they were super cool about it and we painted it and took it down, and unfortunately,

went to qualify and the wiring harness burned up. Oh, yeah. How did that happen? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. We prided ourselves on all that kind of stuff, you know, learning from Dale Inman. And, yeah, it just burned up.

And it didn't hurt anything. You know, it was fine. And we never did run really good with it. And then when the race was over... Wait, in the race, didn't it break? No, it broke qualifying. Okay, so it blowed the motor. Yeah.

Was that the race engine or? I don't know. Back then, they probably had different motors, right? I'm sure they did. So with the Yates power and car just didn't have a good, just didn't go like, just didn't, just had an okay race? Yeah, yeah, we were just okay. And your dad was spectacular, I imagine. I mean, always was.

So after the race you were saying? Everybody, you know, the next year at Rockingham, remember, they had the little diner at Rockingham, and you go out there and eat just outside the garage of, Junior Johnson, you know, I'd never spoken to him all the life. Hey, why'd y'all boys run that car? I go, well, I don't know. You know, everybody's like, man, even your dad, he grabbed me.

Man, that was the dumbest thing I ever seen y'all did. You beat me all year. And now you went and used somebody else's car. I'm like, yeah, I can't talk about it because you're not going to say, well, I wouldn't have made that decision, but that's not what the boss wanted to do. But anyway, Jack didn't make a statement somewhere that, it wasn't about the engine.

We needed the car because the Yates guys had figured out something in the steering. And that broke everybody's heart. You know what I mean? But, you know, be honest, it would have broken everybody's heart in Livonia, including Jacks, if we had just taken the engine. So, you know, that's kind of fair game there, you know. But that made us, and we did a terrible job of reacting to losing the chance. championship had a horrible year in 91 never won to the last race of the year really yeah why what

happened heartbroken yeah just didn't weren't mature in the way we dealt in the in the chemistry yeah didn't carry over that's interesting yeah because we had come so far so fast yeah and it's like pulling a stool out from under somebody you know we just dropped yeah it's like you know carl tying for the championship and losing by you know yeah to stewart that year and it's like you know to stewart that year coming so close, or the caution coming out, you know, late in that race that again he had another shot at the championship. That broke him. 1993, this is a moment in Mark's career that I don't know is celebrated enough. An unbelievable stretch where there were four cup wins and five Xfinity or Busker National wins in a row from August 8th all the way to

October won every race. Yeah. Yeah. But you have to know more about the springtime. Went to the Winston. Ran really, really good. We're leading caution comes out with 60-go or something. Some guy in a black car comes up alongside.

Whop-a, whoop-a, who-a, who-paw, pointing at him and all this stuff. Just like, I got this. you know and sure enough he passes us and I guess he won the race your dad yeah I don't remember and uh went to Michigan like two weeks later and had a really good car and uh racing with earnhardt in last practice and uh to crash each other mm so we're like geez we didn't we didn't we didn't run in the back of them trying to win the Winston, and now here we are crashing in practice, which doesn't pay anything.

And what the hell? You know, so the whole, you know, now the whole thing is like, oh my God, so you're constantly walking around. We got them, you know, everything's cool, everything's cool, everything's cool, you know. And it was another time that we didn't have the maturity as a team to do real well until we built this killer down, super high downforce road race car. In fact, we had to go to Jack

and say, is there any way you can lower the distributor in that car? Because they're on the front and a Ford. And he said, yeah, I can do that. What are you going to? I said, well, the hood's going to hit it. Otherwise, he's like, why would the hood hit it? The hood's not even close. I said, the hood's going to hit it, man. Because the hood was on it like this, you know. And he did it, and Mark did a fantastic job, which he's a wonderful road racer and we won there won three in a row the next three years that uh in in three years we

won every walkins glen race and then we won those four in a row and that was you know and you know i had a really bad pit stop at bristol and put them under the green and had them two laps down because i was slow and he made up for it you know and i mean he was just the example i always gave people because bob lubani always accused us of having a carbon fiber roof on the Wind Dixie car. And I said, Bob, it's not that, man. It's confidence. He said, I'm telling you, man.

When Mark climbs through the window of the Wind Dixie car, he's 10 foot tall with a machine gun under each arm. You know, he's just so confident. I got him. I got him. Well, in that run, Mark was that way. You know, not just in Wind Dixie, but in the Valvaling car, you know. But I put him two laps down.

He just made him up, you know. I mean, and when you used to have to race back, you know. You know, it's not like there was a lucky dog. Yeah. So he was at the top of his career. He was, let's see, what was that, 93? So he was a year older than the year. He was 34 years old, you know, right where you need to be when you're the best you're going to be between 30 and 35.

Yeah. And he just had incredible confidence. Yeah. I mean, I can attest to having raced against the Wind Dixie car in 98, 99, that it was, you know, you're right. you know, he would come to the racetrack, and he just knew that if he did everything right, he could win the race. Yeah.

And that really was what made him fast. Yeah. You know, he had a great car, but we had great cars. It's confidence. Yes. Yeah. I didn't climb in my car the way he did. Yeah.

You know what I mean? But you did in that. I could get there. Yeah. In the race, if I didn't do anything too bad, in the race, I could get that confidence. Yeah. But he started in practice. I remember going to Charlotte.

Actually, every time that he was going to, a race. I tried to follow him on to the racetrack in practice. And I remember following him out for practice at Charlottets, 8 o'clock in the morning. I don't think the cup cars have been on the racetrack. I don't think Mark has. I know I have it. And we go off, we go down the back straight away. I'm trying the hardest to stay with him. And he arced it into one about three car lengths wider than I would even thought and buried it down in there. Oh, yeah. Right. I'm thinking, how in the hell? Like, how in the hell?

He qualified the very first lap on the track. I needed three laps to figure out where the hell I was at. Yeah, with a little dole on the track. Yeah, I'll lay. I was like, I'll never forget that. And I don't think there's anything that Mark could ever do or say that would ever change my opinion about him in terms of his guts, his talent, and his confidence.

He whipped that thing off in there. I'm thinking, damn, he didn't even check it out. He just went. First car on the track, you know, and you can count on one hand to people that were willing to do that and capable of doing it. Let's talk about how you end up at DEI.

Jimmy Finning comes to Rouse. Jimmy now has been in the ASA series a long time. This ain't like something that just came out of nowhere. So Jimmy has been... Jimmy's good. Yeah, obviously, right? He's very good. But he had been, he was known by...

by Mark and other people in that shop because of his ASA connection, right? Mark drove the Miller car, right? The red and white Miller cars. The Ford. Jimmy and his brother Jeffrey worked on those cars. Yeah, and so Mark knew him. This wasn't some, you know, outside higher. No, no, no, no, no.

And Jimmy was concerned, had become concerned about the future of Bobby Allison racing. Remember they had something in Maine, Maine and Tail or something kind of yellow? where he was at? Yeah, that's where he was, yeah. And so they move you into a GM role or a management position. Does that, like, that doesn't seem like a very easy transition. Well, except that I still talk to Mark on the radio. I still did the debrief.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I was like the crew chiefs in terms of communicating with Mark during the race. But Jimmy, Jimmy's really good, and Jimmy's a really great guy. He brought some things that made us run faster. I mean, yeah, Jimmy's fine, but it still didn't feel quite right. It seems complicated, actually. Yeah, yeah. How long did you, when did you leave, Rauch?

September of 98. When did you come to the October of 98? Okay, so it was very quick. Yeah. Okay. Your dad had talked to me at Watkins Glen in 90. What was the first year you ran? 96 or 7.

Yeah. And he said, hey, meal, how about coming over here and help my kids? He had race and I said, no, no, man, I got what I need to do. And you got, you know, I knew Tony and Tony Jr. I said, you got great people over there, man, you know. But I actually gave him banjo's name as somebody that could probably help, you know. And then so when I got fired from Roush, and that was from a lack of performance, and I should have been fired because when Mark walked out the door and everything went to

Charlotte, I was just crestfallen. You know what I mean? I just, I did not react at all like you need to react. Mark walked out the door. Yeah, he took the team and all. Everything moved to Charlotte. Okay. Yeah.

And then they had. And you were going to have to go? No, I stayed in Liberty with Kevin LePage and Johnny Benson. Team split. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and that was heartbreak. And we ran, didn't make Daytona because we gave our best car to Mark.

They built a car for Mark. Benson didn't make Daytona. Right. I remember that. Yeah. Buddy, apparently the guys built a car for Mark down in Charlotte at Concord, actually, and it was terrible. You know, it didn't run fast.

Wasn't good in the wind tone. So Mark calls, he said, man, you got a good car? I said, well, we got one really good car, and we gave it to him. So we took a not as good car. Yeah. We just didn't qualify fast enough to make it in the 125s. So we went home. So everybody's heartbroken.

So we went to, I don't remember Richmond, we went to Rockingham and we were running. You had a good, decent run at Rockingham, right? It blew up. But it was running all right? Oh, yeah, we were second and third all day long. And then we went to Las Vegas. It's when the Taurus has kicked everybody's butt, you know. And then we went to Las Vegas and really good.

We're leading the race, and I think Johnny spent on pit road or something, you know. Everybody's super down. and people were calling back and forth. You know, people would call from... Charlotte. The teams would get on the phone with each other and say, well, you don't have this, and we have that. You know, it was both sides.

I'm not blaming any one group, but it just broke me. I couldn't do it. Why did that happen? Why did Mark take off? Why did the geography split? Jack convinced Mark that there was stuff in Charlotte that he couldn't get in Liberty.

How far is that? travel 70 miles so that was you know that'd be hell on team chemistry oh it's incredibly bad yeah yeah I never forget see they ran a bush car too with uh... Burton

down there it was yellow number nine yeah yeah yeah so uh... Where did it run out of Charlotte or y'all's place they ran out of Charlotte yeah and we still had the Win Dixie car with us really yeah yeah which is really weird yeah yeah we'd be over there putting a race motor in

to Johnny Benson's car on a Saturday afternoon. The Bush race is starting to go, hey, they're looking for you that Mark wants you to talk to them on the radio in the Wind Dixie car. I'm like, okay, so you'd leave your car. And, you know, you feel like there were times you felt like you were the only one, and I'm not saying this is correct, but there were times you felt like you were the only one that was trying to do this and everybody else was trying to blow it apart.

I'm going to tell you something. That's how I always felt you were with the DEI, to be honest with you. I've always felt you were trying to keep things together. Yeah. And everybody else was trying to make that difficult, but not to jump ahead. I'm just saying, so that's what was going on at Rouse, but then you got fired. Well, it was obvious to Jack. Somebody.

I didn't care. You know, I just, I was over. You know, in fact, he said, we're going out to dinner in Indianapolis. It's like, oh, man, I don't want to go out to dinner. He said, yeah, let's go. And we had a good relationship. We were friends, but it was, the professional part was really tough. And Jack said, you know, I'm, you might lose your job if you don't get Johnny running better.

And I'm like, yeah, I know. He said, what would you say about that? I said, it don't matter to me, you know. But I didn't care, you know. So the first person I called was Ty Norris. And I went down and I was supposed to meet Dale Earnhardt down in the. Deerhead shop? No, it was another shop that was up at the road, but I think it got knocked down when the eight.

It was a house. Great house. Yeah, yeah. And I pull into when I was supposed to be there as opposed to how I did today. And I got there on time and there's no Dale Earner. I thought, oh, man, he's not even interested. And he comes in about maybe 30 minutes later. He's all camo and stuff on his face.

I'm like, geez, you know, is there a nuclear war coming on that they haven't, you know, I haven't been watching the news or, and he goes, hey, Melio, we're going to do this, we're going to this, you're going to this, go to this, you just be here Monday, you don't worry about it. I'm like, thank you very much. You know, and that's how it went. Yeah. You won a championship. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, 90, 98. Yeah. you came on as a consultant out of the gate and then took on a bigger role in 01 when dad passed away. Is that how you would describe it? How would you describe your, listen, I want to tell me how you would describe your role at DEI from the time you got there through probably around 03-04. Because there were times when it felt like, like there were times when it, like you were always a good voice of reason.

I could walk in your office and you can make sense of. of any kind of uncertainty or turmoil or disagreements, whether it, no matter who it was with, right? Yeah. And I remember your shop being down the hall from Richies and Ties, you know, whoever the GM was at the time. And there were times when that was, who was running, you know, who was the GM that was.

Ty. Yeah. But there was some times when that was difficult. You know, TIE's been here and talked about how things were hard with Tresa sometimes. and he was put in some bad situations. After your dad's past? Yeah. Yeah, it was bad.

Yeah. But you seem to always kind of be like somebody that could kind of just see how this could go good if we all do X, Y, and Z. Yeah. That sucks, but this is good, and this is good, and let's do, you know. And so I would like to hear what you felt like your role was and how you feel like that all kind of played out. I mean, I know when he got there, Dad's alive, everything. We got this vision. Yeah.

He's going to hire all, you know, if Dad walked up to most anybody in the garage and said, hey, you want to come over here, they were going to come, right? He was going to get the best people for all of us. He was on the roof of your shop when they brought the heating and air units in with a helicopter, and he's up there, you know, no nothing, just, you know, cowboy boots and a snap button shirt, you know. I mean, he was Dale Earnhardt, you know. But I don't know. I saw people cry a lot over your dad.

And I heard a lot of people say they didn't think they could go on. And I said, well, I'm not part of the family. I haven't been here a long time. Love the guy. Go miss the heck I have him. But we have to keep doing what we have to do. And that's when I just tried to round everybody. I'm not rah-rah kind of stuff.

just to, you know, make sure everything went to the wind tunnel and make sure this was right and that was right. And we had the, you know, we knew what we were doing. All of our electronic stuff worked right and the cars ran good. We had good pit stops. And Ty was a lot of part of that until your dad passed. And then Ty spent a lot of time being frustrated with Teresa. And I don't think he was, I'm not picking on Ty. I think it wasn't, I feel like it was a bad day when Ty left.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I thought Ty was. Ty said as much. Yeah. Yeah. Ty said as much after Dale, I mean, I think his words were just, it felt like they lacked a leader. Yeah.

And he didn't know what his role was. Like, he like, am I supposed to be, nobody kind of knew. Is that right? I think Mike's in a bad situation right here because neither one of us, I think, are ones that are going to put a point of finger at anybody. Right, nobody. I understand that. No, it was nobody. Yeah, it was definitely nobody.

But yeah, but I'm not saying that some, well, let me, before I sit there and try to decide what I think, what, how would you characterize the time after 2001? What is it that when you think back to those tumultuous years, what is it that we don't know about that? Like, I mean, we all have our vantage points of what happened with, you know, all the way through 2004, 2005, 2006. But like, what is it that stands out to you in terms of the challenges that DEI as a company had? And then what was your role in that?

Like, how did you? Oh, I just felt like we'd been cast adrift. You know, we're just out here floating, you know, hoping a boat comes by and picks us up, you know. And Teresa had a group of ladies that she really enjoyed working with. They trusted each other. And it was her and Judy and another lady. and Teresa was, I would say the biggest problem I had was that Teresa didn't make decisions in a timely manner. Yeah, it took a long time for things to come through.

Took a long time. Yeah. And we couldn't, a lot of stuff needed to, we needed a yes or no today when it was going to, you'd get two weeks. Yeah, and that's just racing. You know what I mean? You got to go. It's fast. Yeah.

I didn't realize that at the time, you know, but after sitting down, sitting down and talking to you and talking to Ty and talking to Tony Jr. or anybody else that was a part of it, it's really pretty sensational that we were able to have the success that we had. Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible. Because like you say, I mean, we lost our rudder, we cast, you out, lost at sea, all that. And it had every chance and every opportunity to fail

and for everybody to lose hope, right? We lost hope, right? Yeah. Right? And, but how, I think it says a lot to all the individuals involved, you, Tide, everybody that had a critical and manager style role, crew chiefs, car chiefs, people, anybody that had real, you know, skin in the game, being able to, you know, without dad, being able to kind of be the bumper for the alley,

all those different personalities. Yeah. Right. All finding some. Different backgrounds, different specialties. Some synergy that put us on a good path. Uh-huh. I mean, in 2004, you know, if I had any damn...

Is that one we should have won a championship? Yeah. With you? Should have won. Didn't the kid from Missouri? Carl. Didn't he turn you down the backstretched Atlanta? Yeah.

I'll take a little responsibility for that. I won't because I was spotting. No, no. He drove in the back of us. And then we broke the rear end yoke at Martinsville. Yes. And, you know, those two things together kind of... Yeah.

And then you custom victory land at Taled. and they got two points for that. Yeah. But still, but still, you know, six wins for me, you know, I thought an incredible, incredible year for any team, right? So I was, and we, we come out of that year and I'm sitting, I still don't know how this is happening or how this happened or how I was, how I asked for this to happen. but I remember sitting in Richie's office going.

Was Ty gone? Yeah. Ty's gone, I think. Yeah. I'm sitting in Richie's office. Me and Tony Jr., I don't remember what happened the week before, but we get the homestead and we're racing to finish third and points. Like we got a chance to run third, right, if we did everything right?

Pre-chase. Yeah. Yeah. I think you won at Phoenix the week before. We did. You won at Phoenix the week before. Coming off a win. Coming off, we get the homestead, and juniors in a shit mood, and so am I.

And we're in practice, and I can't figure this freaking track out. They just put the variable banking in, used to be flat, and it was fun. I didn't like the new homestead. You know, I love it now, but back then you didn't run the fence. And I couldn't figure this thing out, and I couldn't get the car to go fast. We were struggling in practice, and we got. He was basically, like, tired of. my shit and we quit literally in a matter of an hour went from starting the day like any

other crew chief or car chief driver combo to not even wanting to I'm not going up in that truck to even see this asshole oh really yeah we were so mad at each other and the more by the time the morning practice was over with remember the two hour practice before qualifying we were so mad at each other we couldn't stand to look at each other probably similar to some of the things that you experienced. I was immature, didn't realize I was, I couldn't see how to handle that better and was too hard-headed to handle it in a better way. We get, we go through the whole weekend and we leave the racetrack and we get home and I sit

down with Richie and he's like, we've got to do something, man. This can't continue. I think we should, you know, we've talked about the idea of switching to teams and I'm like, that's a good idea. That, that, this shit. I'm like, you damn right. I'm going to prove them. I'm going to prove to Tony Jr.

And Tony Sr., I can go with somebody else and do you just as good. Like, I wish that somebody would have grabbed me and said, do you know what the hell heat season you just had? Are you sure you know what the hell? You have no clue what you're talking about. It was a huge surprise. Yeah. And I was all for it.

No question. And, I mean, it took me, I realized pretty early in that first year that I'd made a really big mistake. Pete lasted about 10 races. Yeah. Did you come right in? How did all that happen? I don't remember. I don't either.

I do. What happened? Well, yeah, it was 11 races. I know Pete was gone. And he was gone. And then you took over as crew chief then. But hold up. Are you saying you were completely unaware of what happened at Homestead?

because you seemed surprised by what he was saying, like this friction that he and Tony Jr. had. And you said you were surprised when they made the off-season change or, like, suggesting it. But were you unaware of that whole thing? I'm sure I was aware of it, but in the past it went away really quickly. It worked itself out. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just those guys. That's fair. You know, yeah. Okay. I remember you couldn't drive at Darlington because you weren't a good race car driver and the kid ain't worth a damn. And it turned out had a broken axle. That's right.

And I remember Jr. walking through the shop holding the broken axle over his head. Like, hey, buddy, look at this. I can drive. I don't believe anybody can drive this thing. You know, because so it was, I'm not saying it was common, but it wasn't, you wouldn't go, oh, man, we're going to, we got to step in right here. Okay. Okay. So then, then before we get into the crew chief stuff from 2005, then in the off season, you say you were surprised that this was even being suggested.

But did you, did people even seek your opinion in this? or did you have a, nobody did? Well, when I was told it was going to happen, my first question was, have you talked to Junior? Oh, yeah, he's 100% for it. Yeah. Which, taking it out of context,

you could say that, you know, but did anybody say, Junior, come here for a minute. You know, let's go ride on the farm or go fishing or something and have a dog. That would have been nice. Yeah. I didn't think I needed that ride. Well, in my mind, I was, I was so far,

I was so lost and sure that I knew what the guy was doing. Ty would have taken you on that ride. Yeah. You're probably right. Ty Norse. Yeah. So. Ty would have taken him on that ride.

He would have told me not to do that. Get in the truck. Come on. We'll go knock over. It's snowing. We're going to knock over some mailboxes or we're going to go drink beer. We're going to go fishing or something. He would have June.

Come on, man. You know. Did you have a gut feeling of what was going to happen with this change? Or were you hopeful that maybe they're right? This is going to work out great, and Michael and the Uri's are going to be fantastic, and Bill and Pete Rondo. Well, as I remember it, I think Slugger was the first choice. Slugger Labby.

Oh, yes. That's true. And I said, hey, man, you know, I remember him coming into Richie's office, and Richie talked to him and said, hey, you're the guy. You're going to be a junior's guy. And he's like, I said, man, we got a lot of work to do, you know, because I really don't know what goes on in the eight shop that much. Out of respect for Tony and Tony Jr.,

I wasn't going to go bashing in on their deal. The first day I came to work at Dale Earnhardt, Incorporated, my goal was to, there were some people that basically grew up with and under Dale Earnhardt. And I'm not going to be some smarty pants comes in here with shiny shoes on, telling you guys what you're doing wrong, you know. So I kept that the whole time. And so we'll get slugger. Okay.

And Slugger said, because I just didn't understand what they had, you know, and they had some really nice, cool stuff. But I didn't know it. Slugger said, yeah, he said, I'm taking a couple weeks off and going skiing, but when we get back, we'll get after. And I went, oh, shit. And he left. And I said, all right, man. And he laughed. And Richie said, what do you think?

I said, I'm not sure that's the guy if, you know, if I had, you would, it's Dale Jr., guys. It's DEI. You know, if they said, look, you've got to dig a trench from Junior's double-wide across the street under Highway 3 to get into work every morning, you'd start shoveling. You know, I mean, and I love Slugger, and I hope he doesn't look at this and go, man, that guy just rummed me and wrote, not at all. Slugger had the right attitude. I had the wrong attitude. So when was the decision and who made it for Pete to be the crew chief? I can't remember

because all I've remembered is that Pete was your crew chief in that Bristol in that Bush Series car Oh really? Pete was the crew chief on the blue car that we won the Xfinity Rafe

at Bristol when we swept the night It was Taco Bell I don't know Oh okay It was Menards It was a blue Menards car 81 And same thing with Lance McGrew

So Lance was on Lance crew chief My Exfinity car in like 008 At Charlotte And we ran pretty good And so when it came time to say

Hey man do we need to change crew cheese well this guy worked all right you know i liked working with him you know and we thought pete was going to be uh uh you know the next good it's it's really easy to i have caught myself being lazy about picking an employee at any level in racing when the pressure's on that you're leaving thursday and you got to go do this again yeah you know what i mean i i'm it's hard trust me you know i mean that's we didn't i mean i mean i'm i mean i'm i mean i'm that was a nod of, I don't envy Pete, right? Oh, it was terrible for Pete.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so he don't get a fair shake. He goes, now Pete goes off and goes to furniture row and. Yeah, he does fine. Liz happily ever after. But we did cut his legs off. Yes.

And so you, did you have apprehensive about like coming in and taking over the reins there? Were you like, oh, I'm not sure about this? You can be completely honest. You're not going to hurt. No, no. I thought you had talent. and I thought we had all the right things in the right place. The car was down at the other, what I call the original Xfinity bush shop.

Cars were separated. Yeah. And I felt like they were a little heavy, so we spent a bunch of money on titanium bolts and went heavy and got them lighter and, you know, did a good job. No, I wasn't hesitant about it. I felt like if you just did the things you were taught by all the smart people, you'd be okay. How long had you been spotting for me? about two years. Now hold up.

Okay. I have a question about this. Because I just remember, wasn't Stevie Reeves your spotter when you won the Daytona 500? I'm sure of it, because I remember him being on the radio telling people to go with him,

and he had a Mike Key. So Stevie Reeves started 04 as your spotter. I just don't remember what happened. He went to Menard. Is that okay? Yeah. And then you took over. That's what I could not remember when you took over.

But it was in 2004, right? I actually, when I first spotted for junior, was it in Milwaukee when they announced that everybody had to have a spotter and it was at a bush race. Remember Joey Meyer spotted somebody and, you know, people that we were like looking for people that are used to using a radio, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So when you became crew chief then in 2005 after about 10 or 11 races, who became your spotter?

I don't. Ty, maybe? No, Ty was gone. Ty was gone. Was it Jimmy Kitchens? Jimmy Kitchens. That's exactly who it was.

He got... Trying to remember all this. He got in the... Yeah, he got in the fist fight in the garage area at Talladega. I remember having the comments down. Jimmy? Yeah. With who?

Well, somebody turned around and threw a... They were taping the nose, you know, and they turned around and threw it from the next car, and it hit Jimmy rather than going in their big toolbox, you know. and Jimmy took offense. I'm like, Jimmy, whoa, whoa, they can take your card. I mean, just stop. He's a great guy.

Oh, he's wonderful. Okay. Yeah, it was Jimmy. Yeah, that's right. I would have never thought of that. So then you, y'all are fixing the cars, making them lighter. I don't remember it still being like, it was, well, there was the Yuri situation, and Tony Jr. tells it great, but, like, there was so much animosity, man, that then.

board over. That's when they locked their shop. Yeah. Nobody could go in their shop. They had all the good, pretty things. They had the springs and all the had the springs. And you were wondering what they, you were wondering about that. Oh yeah. And they wouldn't, Robbie Fuller was really tight with Tony Jr. The man who made the Springs was Tony Jr. was Tony Jr.'s like, no one gets this stuff. Right. Especially that, that group down there. Right. Because I'm going to prove these some of guns. Right. And Robbie was,

dating the man's daughter and Robbie was super intent on becoming part of the inside group on the original eight car so yeah he wouldn't give us anything what man's daughter the guy that made the springs oh I got it okay he's dating the he he knows the Draco people very very very good yeah and he's also you got to do to get a good spring oh sure he also works on the bud car with junior he's not going to cost himself his employment I remember the day that we finally got a spring. Do you remember? Yeah.

And I'll never forget this. We're, you coming, you coming to, you becoming the crew chief salvage the year for the car. No, listen. So the,

I do not have, at this point in my, at this point in my life, I don't know how to rally these guys. I don't know these guys. These are Michael's guys. Yeah. I've done ran off the crew chief that they they were answering to and and and now and they

know they can't look to me because I don't have leadership skills right and I have no confidence in me or anything that's going on and so you coming over there was like a settling calming can you know sorting out kind of voice and it made a very intolerable year tolerable, and more so than tolerable when we would, you know, have a good run or even win a race at Chicago. I mean, that win at Chicago is one of my more prouder moments because... Well, you did that.

You put me in that position. Yeah, but you had to do it. No, no, no. It was a fuel, right? It was a pit call. It was a pick call, but not only that, a lot of things, I'm going to tell you, you can ask any other crew chief that I've worked with. A lot of them put me in that position and I fail because they don't make me believe

that it's possible. They put me in that position and say, well, good luck. You put me in that position and said, we're going to win this freaking race. So you're calling me a liar, write your own television. No, I understand. I knew you would win the race. You would, you were a cheerleader. Yeah. You know, and I really succeed. And if you look at LaTart And how he ran the team. Man, he's good. He made you believe. And he made you believe he believed in you, right?

When the crew chief believes the driver can drive, that is as important as the power in the motor and the handling of the car. That's true. If the driver is sitting there and questioning whether the crew chief believes in him, that's a bad situation. Terrible. Yeah. And so you always, even before you started running the deal in 05,

you always talk to me and approached me in a very positive manner. When I talk to you, I would always try to get around you because I knew I was going to hear something good. I knew I was going to get something that lifted me up, right? And even when I maybe, even when it might have been bullse, you were doing it because you knew I needed it. Or you could tell when it needed to be sad or happening, right? You knew how to get a guy up off the floor.

And you've probably been doing that your whole life with the positions you've held in many of these companies. But we go to Pocono and we're struggling. Oh, yeah. Right? And we're struggling. And our car is not doing platformed like in the other car. Tony Jr. and them are having a good run. And midway through the race, you got a spring.

Yeah. How did you get the spring? It was hand delivered by either Tony Jr. or Robbie Fuller. Yeah. It was at a moment where they were like, okay. He's like, look, you guys are terrible. Suffered enough. Try this.

And so we come down pit road, the way I remember it is, we come down pit road. And I think I'm aware we're going to change the spring, but I don't know. I'm not visually understanding the details of what's happening underneath the hood. So we come down pit road, we unhooked the front shocks. And you're like, okay, get going. Catch up. And the pace car was coming. Yeah.

And I said, just speed, the angle say nothing. Yeah. And they did say something. Yeah. But also, the car going down that very wavy pit road at Pocono, I'm literally not kidding. It points the freaking grill. I mean, the valence is two foot off the ground. Oh, yeah.

And I'm thinking, after a second or two, I realize I better slow this damn thing down because it's going to stand on top of one of the shocks or something bad. Because the spring was that long. Yeah. Yeah. So you've unhooked the shocks and this thing's just uncontrolled. Anyways, we come around and catch up. And then I realized, okay, we're going to change the spring.

So you change the spring and then do some rounds, right? And that was a guess. And then we bolt the shocks back on or both the top of the shocks back up. And I'm thinking this is the first time I've ever changed the spring midrace. And is it going to be even better? is it going to be any better than it was? What are the odds, right, that you nail this? It shouldn't have been.

Yeah, and it was. And it was ass. Yeah, I know. I know it was insane. I mean, it was just like, oh, my God. But you couldn't say no because you were being handed a gift. You know what I mean? Well, we're putting it in.

You know, an idiot would have said, get that thing out of here and just throwing it over the fence, you know? I would love to know what your response is. I don't know if you heard, but Tony Jr.'s version of that story is that it was pops during the race that went to Tony Jr. and said, I'm tired of seeing them run like ass. You were taking that thing down there, and it was pops that grabbed that thing and went down to the pit and said, and finally got Tony Jr. to say, put this in, throw 54 rounds in or something like that, and watch what happens or something like that. Now, that's what Tony Jr. said, happened. Is that how you remember it? And if it is, what did that sense?

say about how surprising was that based off of the tension that was going on at that time. Was that the healing moment that we didn't know we needed? I wasn't told that until Monday morning. I didn't realize that Tony Sr. was at all involved. Because I'd always been so aware of not trying to break up a guy that grew up with Dale and her. You know what I mean? Who thought the world at Dale Jr.

Now he would be super hard on him telling me couldn't drive race cars, which may or may not have worked all the time. But anyway, but I felt like after that, you could go talk to Tony Singer. Yeah. That opened up the door a little bit. Yeah. So we go to Chicago and... Well, yeah, we ran second Fourth of July at Daytona. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Because the Presley girl was too, why would we, why would the, why would Elvis Presley's daughter have been around? She was there. I remember, I saw a picture of that recently. Right, it's your bus. It's your bus. Okay, during the race, I mean, we're doing all we can do.

We might even win this darn thing because our play stuff was so good, and he was so good at it. But they bring a girl across in front of the pit box, which is not what they have now, but still really nice. And they said, this girl's going to sit up here. I go, no, we just can. I didn't even know who she was. I mean, I didn't see her face. I may have known if I saw her. And, you know, it came back to me after we ran second.

That's pretty cool. Somebody grabbed me and said, you idiot, you know, she was part of something. I didn't even, I'm sorry, I didn't know that, but I don't think he could walk into the dugout at a Yankees game either. No. But anyway, that's. So what you're saying is that you wouldn't let Elvis Presley's daughter up on the pit box during the race. Yeah, it didn't embarrass me. I'm on your side on this one.

Yeah. It was a bench. It ain't nothing like we had today. It was a palace like you have. Holy s'clock. I wouldn't have let anybody up there either. I wouldn't have wanted anybody up there. No, no.

You needed your people up there. That's hilarious. This is the first time I'm hearing that story. Yeah. And we went to Chicago and we were just okay. You know what I mean? We were top three car probably. That's pretty good.

And Kansas had us killed. Yeah, he was good. Yeah. And if you go back to the things you're taught when you're young, you know, if you want to run with the leaders, you pit with the leaders. If you have the best car and it's a decision between two tires and four tires, if it's not a track that's impossible to pass on, which Chicago wasn't, you get all the tires you can get because you got the best car.

You can drive right around them, you know. So we looked at it and said, well, the only way we're going to win the race is to just get, we got two, right? And I think Blaney stayed out. They just got gas? I think Blaney stayed out and Wimmer got two. And we were third or something fourth. For some reason, I feel like I had to pass Wimmer really quickly. Yeah, you did.

And then it got to Blaney, and I thought, oh, God, darn, here comes to Kansas, you know. But then Wimmer held up Kansas, and then we got by Blaney, and then Blaney held up. Kansas and we wound in the race. But that was all about having, thinking enough of your race car driver that he's going to do this. You know, I mean, he'll do this. Well, I appreciate that, but I'll be honest with you. Most of the time when I'm put in a situation where I don't have the tires,

I mean, it's just rarely worked out, you know, and especially like from 08 through the Hendrick days, there were a lot of times when I would stay out or something in New Hampshire and man you know you've seen this work in the past yeah and it would be miserable and I couldn't I'm inside the car going I don't know what else to do I don't know how to make this it's all I got yeah yeah and well we saw this work last year but damn we're falling like rock it may have been a really good tire too you know you may not have made four tires yeah I think the combination of our balance and the two tire call and the clean air yeah we were faster at that moment in

the race than we had been all day no question and I mean, the car was perfect. I mean, Matt was a faster, but my car drove perfect. Yeah. Yeah. And what a relief. Oh, my gosh. I can't imagine another wind that was needed more at that particular time than that.

I didn't think I was embarrassed and ashamed at how we were running. I was embarrassed to the crew, right? And the crew was embarrassed to you. I didn't feel. that but you know again i don't know these guys as well as i did a eight bunch but i am embarrassed that we're to them that we're that we're that we're that we're that we're that we're that we're that we're not getting more results or this this is not going how we planned and in that moment man i never thought that we were going to have a bill the chance to to to celebrate like we did and man that was a really

cool that was cool yeah them coming out to the car and the grass and pushing it all in oh yeah Yeah, that was, that's a highlight of DEI for me, you know. Yeah. I enjoyed a lot of things at DEI, but that was, that one's different. Yeah. You know, because we were, we were in a rough spot. Yeah, and you put it, but you put a checkmark next to your name that day, you know. Yeah.

Here's a guy that can do that. So between the shock at Pocono and then the win at Chicago, healing started to happen. And then before the end of the year, if I remember this right, either Tony Gibson or Tony Jr. was back to being the crew chief. Chief. Do I got this right? I don't think so. Okay. Did you finish the year's crew chief? I don't think so. Okay.

But I'm just saying I don't remember. I got it. I'm sorry. No, no, that's fine. It's by 06, I mean, this is 2005. 2006, you did have a new crew chief. Yeah. Who was it?

Tony Jr. Right? Tony Gibson had to be in there somewhere, though. No, Tony Gibson finished out of 2007. That's right. When, 07, that's right, when Tony Jr., it was Tony Jr. It was Tony Jr. Yeah.

Tony Jr. took back over in 06. Okay. So what I don't remember, clearly none of us really remember all that sequence and all that stuff, but then I was just curious like, what happened to you?

I don't know. I mean, I don't recall sitting on a box at Charlotte or Atlanta or anything like that. I don't know. We'd have to look at that. That's terrible to say, but to me,

to me, it was such a, you could feel the sigh relief in the company when Junior carried us to the win at Chicago. And after that, it was just bliss. You know what I mean? We couldn't go wrong. You know, we had actually done something we really needed to do. And I don't know if we went other places and ran okay. I just don't remember. I don't remember either. I just don't remember. I don't remember either. I just remember everything before that. And I know, I know you won't

remember this because it's just a moment. But when I say that we needed that win, I, I just remember Indy. Do you remember Indy, the Brickyard 400? And you know how everybody, the way the team was just running it was just kind of everybody felt embarrassed like you said the team was embarrassed yeah and you were embarrassed we felt like we embarrassed him and he felt like he embarrassed us and then india i think we ran like a bag of ass and then and then you also have but the fans sit behind us oh you know on pit road yeah i don't remember and we crashed and um early in the race is that on the restart we got run in run it turned into the wall yeah that's right on the front stretch that's right real bad chain reactions still and and and and you

and I are walking to the garage. I'm walking behind you and then there's people yelling behind, you know, from the, from the pit road grandstands and some dudes smarts off. And like, this was a moment when I could see you and I'm like, Steve Mill may whip his ass. Now, you didn't, you didn't go try to do that, but I'm like, boy, he'd have every reason to. I don't remember what the guy said. You didn't let it go without a comment. But it's like, this is when I felt like, man, this is the team is at its absolute lowest right now. I didn't, I hope I didn't embarrass us. You absolutely didn't know.

That's when I actually got, like, that's when I was like, man, I, you know, we'd go to fight, we'd go to war with this guy. This is our guy, right? Like, no, you didn't embarrass us at all. Nobody knows. I was, only I know it because I was just right there beside you. But that's when I said, going back to Chicago, when, if there was ever a win that was ever needed as much, I just, I remember how low it kind of got that year. And not low because of any one thing, just as a team, everyone just kind of, everyone just kind of, of felt it, you know, and it was just, it was rough, and you got turned into the fence,

I mean, like, God, it's kind of, it was like the world put a giant okay stamp on us when we went to Chicago. That's right. That's right. These guys were all right, you know. Well, I think it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't have made the call you made on that final pit stop to take the two tires. You know, that was a, you had the confidence to make that call. You know, I say that because everything about everything that year had done, we had every reason to have no confidence to make those type of calls. But you and your, I guess, you're just the experience of all those years. And you're like, you know what?

We were going to win or run third. What's the worst could happen? That's right. Yeah. What's the worst could happen here? We'll run third, you know. And so, you know, that was a pretty incredible moment. Also, I had remembered as a boy.

I remember going with Kerry to the dash race at Daytona in 1992 and C and you and Mark. And I, you know, just always held, I always had a lot of respect for you as a crew chief. You know, not only, you know, you come and you ran a manager style role at D.E.I. for the most part. But I'll, you know, to be able to say in my career that I have won a race with Steve, was pretty something that I didn't think I would ever be able to say, you know, for one, because Well, I'm in the same position with you on that. You had moved, yeah, you kind of moved on from crew chief, you know, but to be able to say,

well, damn, you know, I've done something that I can, you know, say that Mark Martin's done, and Terry the Bonny's done, was pretty fascinating for me. I really enjoyed that. Well, I appreciate you saying it. I appreciate it more and more as I get older because of my, my, my, My appreciation for history, I think, grows, you know, and to have done something like that. I think it means more to me now than it even did when it happened. It meant a lot that day, boy, for sure.

Yeah. For you, you know, for me to work with you. Well. So your, you end up, do you remember much about your last days at DEI? Yes. What happened? I didn't like the management. Tony Sr. and I went to talk to Teresa upstairs.

It was all set up, you know. And we presented, Tony and I were basically holding hands on everything we talked about. And we saw some things that really weren't going right. And Teresa said she was going to stick with the leadership she had. And I saw some things that continued to be wrong, and I got too loud about them and they fired me. Yeah, which they probably should have. Yeah.

But it was. You weren't going to stand by. You just can't do it, man. You know, you got, especially in a place like Dale Lerner and corporate, I mean, your dad hovered over all of us, you know. I mean, just like, oh, man. You know, I got upset when Ty left. And then I didn't feel like we had the proper management group in place.

and then I saw things that were like, man, that's not how you race, you know, being the old guy, you know, and complained about it too much being the dumb guy. And they fired me. Where'd you go? Gannasi. And then Gnassi and D.I. pair up.

Yeah, yeah. And that was awkward or? I thought it'd be okay until we got in the meeting. And there was probably, honestly, 15 people. in the meeting and chips at the end of the table.

Teresa wasn't there but you know we're just sitting in a table not near as wide as this in a conference room somewhere over that over there and

where at? At Canassies. Okay. And because see the the deal about going to Bobby Ginn that was horrible. Yeah.

Because the fellow that ran Bobby Ginn before we went in with them just said, guys it's all yours you know honestly actually said guys that's all yours and walked away.

And so we're like, and it was two completely different cultures as applied to racing. And it never worked. But anyway, they came in and everybody's talking, what do you think? How about this? Yeah, we'll do this. And two of these guys at separate times from Earnhardt stood up and said, the only thing I want to be real clear on is DEI was a much better place when Steve got fired. I'm not, who said that?

You don't have to say that. Sorry. In a meeting that you're sitting in? That was like a natural reaction. Who the hell said that? One was sitting right across from me and one was sitting down a couple. They were. They said this with you in the room.

And they were people that ran departments or crew chiefs. And I thought, oh, and I just sagged, you know. I thought, really, I mean, it's a mess. I mean, junior's leaving. It's a mess. I mean. And then Chip said, well, I'll tell you this. he has come here and he's made a difference and we run better and we're going to be winning

races pretty soon and I'm not going to hear I'm not changing so I appreciate a chip saying that what were they trying to accomplish were they trying to get you fired from ganassi or were they just trying to set the expectation on who's running the this who's going to run the competition with this merger they didn't want me around so they're trying to get you fired yeah because they talked to me after that and said look man You know, you're not the right guy for what we're trying to do. We don't like you. We hate you, you know.

Goodness. Yeah. You must have really had spoke your mind before you look. No, no, it wasn't anything about them. It was all about management. But, you know, and I'll tell you another really bad thing was, speaking of how I didn't agree with management, you know, Tony Uri was senior. Tony Jr. had, I guess, gone to Ricks. Yeah.

Yes. Okay, so Tony Uri. Ten races to go in 07. Well, Tony Uri Sr. is down in what I call the bush shop. And I couldn't even tell you what he was doing at the time. But upper management at knowing that I had tiptoed forever not to upset Tony, for good reason.

I mean, Tony, they was a lifelong friend of Dale Earnhardt. They made me go fire him. Really? Yeah, I had to fire Tony Yuri. after, I don't know, approaching 10 years of making sure I never stepped out of line. You know what I mean? Not that Tony was an ass, but I always respected his relationship with big, I think, you know, there's a picture of Ralph over there on the wall.

I think Ralph built Ralph Uri's engines. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, these are kids growing up. And I'm not coming in there and I'm not, I'll show you how this is done. You know, I never did that. and I didn't want to do that. And then they made me fire him. God, I didn't even realize.

Did you realize that Tony Sr. got fired from the E.I? Like, that's how that ended? I feel like when that happened, we immediately called him to come here. He went to work, yeah. Oh, here? Here. I think so. Oh.

So did he never work at Hendrick? No. No, he came here. He came here and helped me with Brad Kiselowski. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Boy, you guys rang good. We got lucky.

No, he rang good. He was available. No, he's saying we got lucky that he became available. Yeah, when he became available, I was like, hmm, I wonder how he feels about, you know, coming here. But anyways, I'll tell you this, at the banquet in 98, the number of people that walked up to Tony Sr. That were lifelong, the Tommy Houston's and the, which you could say, that's kind of close family. But, you know, all the people that had run bush cars, late-mile sportsmen cars forever, that came up to the table where Tony was sitting at the head table. And every one of them said, man, we enjoyed racing you.

Man, we, and Tony, like, man, I loved it. Man, I loved it. I'm a little bit nervous about what I got to go do now in 99. Did we run some races in 99? And they were crying when they walked away, and Tony was crying when they walked away. That is a respected man. And you don't take some guy who's, I wouldn't say a proven outsider, but somebody who wasn't in the crowd, you know, that didn't grow up with these people

and say, yeah, you got to go tell that guy, he's got to go. my God. That's definitely an improper way of handling that situation. However, I think we could all agree, no one pops. Like, if a company was going to go, for better or worse, say this is the direction we're going with this management team, probably wasn't going to work with Pops. It may have been relief, yeah. That didn't end well. I wouldn't have wanted to bulk up that, you know, down there.

Oh, no. No, no. That would have been impossible. So it's a completely improper thing to ask you to do. But, um. Golly. Yeah. Who knows how...

That wouldn't have lasted very long with pops there anyways. When you left Gannasi's, you went and messed around with Tony Jr. at Swans. I didn't know that. Yeah, I... Tony Jr.'s running at Red 30?

Yeah, I actually got... Yeah, Dave Strammy called me, and he had told me like the year before. He was he? Yeah. He told me in 10 that, man, I guess I got fired right before you came because we won them four races

and ran really good and all that. Yeah, well, that's okay. So he always talked to me. He talked to me 11 while I was still living in Atlanta with Shane and my wife, getting him fixed back as best we could. And then he called me in 12 and he said, was it 13 when we finally did it? I got fired at 11. Yeah.

Yeah, and he said, I got this guy. He's got plenty of money. Okay, so he said, well, you go with me to Phoenix and on the way, we'll stop it. And I think he was from Dallas. He said, we'll stop and check him out. Okay. So we go out there and the fellow meets us, and he's, He's a really cool guy.

And we walk upstairs and there's a room, pretty big room, bigger than this room with cubicles in it. There's only one person working. And her name is on a piece of cardboard written on pent, pentilow of a cubicle. So, yeah, we do our deal. Yeah, okay, what about this? What about this? You want to work on performance or money? I said, I'm not going to be here that long.

Just pay me. Okay. All right, no problem. So we go. And we go to the, and I tell, when we're getting on the airplane going out to Phoenix, I said, Dave, I'm not sure about this. He, oh, he's in the old business. Okay, no problem, you know. So we run out of money quickly.

And there were plenty of decisions made about money that looked to me like it was just a party, you know. So shortly into, we went to Daytona and we went to Phoenix and I didn't go anymore. But Tony came like early in January, which I was relieved because I said, this is. not long term for me. I'm going to try to get this thing up and run and see how we do, you know. And I don't know, a year or so later it turned out that the fella didn't have a lot of money. Yeah. You know, and I'm not saying that to prove I was right.

It's just that that's how it all worked out, you know, yeah. Yeah. And then you, after that, you had a midget team with Shane. Yeah, you said midget team. Yeah, you had some good with that. Yeah, we ran real good. And I was happy for Shane. until I got checking on what we were doing for money.

And I said, hey, man, where's my 401K? Hey, man. Like, oh, you spent that midget racing. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm at the time, 60 years old, you know. I'm like, oh, okay. So then I said, we can't midget race anymore. We sold everything.

And went to work back home, you know, doing things, trying to get things going. And it was very enjoyable. I had a great time with Shane. He enjoyed it. And we ran really good. I was happy with us. Yeah.

Now you're a grandfather. Yeah. Yeah, I turned around it today. I thought, I need to get these two seats out of the back of my car. Somebody will think I'm ancient. So what's that like? Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah, my youngest son, Tyler, lives next door. And I'm there too much, you know, and I rile them up too much, you know. But we jump and we drive out into the field out back. got like eight acres, you know, we're not farmers, but we drive out to field out back and he helps me put the, thinks he helps me, put the corn in the deer feeders, you know, we do all kinds of stuff together, and we try to take them to lunch every Saturday, and it's just, it's just, and the little girl, she's cool as going to be, she's really pretty. See, I only had an older sister, so I've never been around a little girl, and I will say, a shock the first time I changed her diaper,

because I'd never changed a diaper on her girl, like, holy cow, there's parts of me, and, you know. Oh, my God. But, yeah, it's fantastic. I couldn't think of how you would ever be any happier than to have your grandchildren. I can't imagine the difference between what it feels like being a parent and a grandparent. Yeah. And they say it's different.

They say it's two different feelings, but two equally amazing feelings. When you're a parent, when I was a parent, the sense of responsibility was overwhelming. When I'm a grandparent, you can get all the good parts. give them back. Yeah, you get to have the good parts to let them take over the tan. But it's fantastic. I had babysit. I changed diapers.

We feed them. I mean, it's a ball. You know, Tyler Meal was a junior motorsports original. Yeah, you all got to take him on the submarine trip that he talks about incessantly. I saw pictures of that trip. Yeah, he would go on the Navy. You know, I've been in a submarine. I'm like, yes, we know.

I love Tyler. I mean, what an awesome guy. So Tyler's doing well. He's got how many kids? kids? Two. They'd like to have a bunch more, but we were smart enough to put them in a two-bedroom house. Got you. That's how that works. How's Shane doing? Shane does well. Yeah, he goes to therapy. He actually has a line of torsion bars for open-wheel cars and sway bars for big cars, you know, cars like we have. And he doesn't build them. You know, he's only got the use of one hand. But he gets them

He manages it. He gets them coded. You know, he sends out the invoices that, you know, they've sold a lot of stuff. And I'm glad for him because someone in that position would need to feel of value, I would think. You know. I think he's been sharing with me about his sway bars and all the asphalt stuff picking up. Yeah. Yeah, it has picked up a lot.

Yeah, and I appreciate you interface with him a lot. I thank you for that. Yeah, he's an old friend. Want to tell a story. So there's two things I want to ask you before. I'll let you get going. What would the phone call have to be for you to go back into motorsports? Oh, I just need a phone call.

You would come right your way. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You still got something in the tank. I'd like to think so, although I'm not young. You know, but I think just from an experience standpoint, I could help somebody. But, yeah, I'd be, if somebody called me at 7 o'clock at night, I woke up at 5 o'clock this morning to come here, although I admittedly got here late.

But, I mean, it's just vibrating. You're going to see the cars, you know. You're going to, I mean, it's like, my gosh, maybe they'll let me walk in there. You miss it. You know. I miss it terribly, yeah. And more than that, I miss the, I miss the competition, but mostly I miss the, it's not ambience.

It's the camaraderette camaraderie. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's just to have a, you know, we ate together. We drank beer together. And we, we did, you know, we bitched about airplanes, although we're riding on a $30 million jet, you know, I mean. That's so true.

Yeah. I mean, what's the deal? Why didn't they pull my rental car up? You know, but that's, it's like, it's fantastic. Yeah, it's like high school basketball or football or, you know, just to be part of it. I thought I was racing because I love to win or I love to race another car or a competitor. But what I ended up finding out is that what I really miss the most is trying to work with 12 guys. to figure out how to make it roll the center in practice.

Right. The part that I thought I actually hated is the part that the part that was the most frustrating. Yeah. Sometimes it's the most monotonous. Yeah. And, yeah, those rare moments. Got, you know. Going to dinner.

Yep. Or having a, you know, having a good outing or something. A hundred years ago when you'd close the lift gate door at Atlanta, last race of the year, I mean, you're like, what am I going to do? Who do I talk to? You know what I mean? Now you're going to go. testing at Dayton and all that stuff, but still, we're not leaving next Thursday.

You know, I want to get with my friends and go do stuff, you know. Do you remember taking me to your dentist? Yes. Yes. So my favorite Steve Mill story, I had a tooth giving me a problem, a real problem. We got to get it fixed. I need to get it fixed and I'm waiting and waiting, right? It's cavity, a cavity that turns into something a little more serious and I'm going to need a root canal. And so I went to my dentist and he's like, that's a root canal. And I left there without scheduling that appointment. And I go to Steve, I don't even think I went to you technically

to say, hey, man, I got to get a root canal. What do I do? We were just having a conversation. He was just saying, hey, what's going on in your life? I was telling you about this root canal that I was supposed to get and you were like what's the deal and I'm like hey man I'm scared I don't want to go get that and you're like it's no big deal it's really not just like that he's like hey I'll take you and I'm like what he's like yeah I'll take you to my guy we'll do it when you want to go and it was literally like two days from now after work we're going to drive up to high point or wherever greensboro yeah and he drives me to Greensboro or I drove myself met you there We met.

We met. After hours, go into this office. No one else in there. Guy lays puts me in a chair. Gets in there and goes to work, right? Not a problem. Get done. He's like, oh, no big deal was it?

I'm like, man, it really wasn't. And I went home, and that was the end of it. Two weeks later, the dentist was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Oh, you're a lie. You're a lie. You're a lot. day, no way. I was like, holy s' So I want to say like...

It was banjo. I want to say, though, so, you know, at all the things you've ever done on a race car or for anybody in racing, those are the things that matter the most. Something so, so easy, but you're like, any of a big deal, that's just fine. You're worrying about nothing. Yeah.

But, man, I was truly terrified. Oh. You know, and like anyone that's going to go to the real canal for the first time. Well, you were young. Yeah. I don't have a parental guide or, like, get your ass to the dentist, right. I could literally have winged that and went the totally wrong direction, right?

Lost the tooth entirely, whatever it might have happened, right? And you not only were like, oh, go on, go to the dentist, what are you doing? Come on, it's no big deal. You set it up. You had me meet you at the dentist after hours, the guy takes care of it and I walked out, I don't even remember paying the guy. No, you didn't. Yeah.

He wouldn't charge Dale Jr. I didn't pay it. I didn't pay. Okay. He just didn't charge Dale. He's like, nobody's going to charge Dale Jr. God, dang, only Dale Jr. don't have to pay for a root. So how about that?

That's, well, as you tell that story, it sounds like what a dad would do, right? It sounds like a father figure. And, you know, a big brother probably. You know, big brothers ain't taking anybody to the dentist. Shoot, no. Yeah. No, that's an amazing. That's the, that's the, that's the,

Steve mill that I've remembered from the DEI days, and that's exactly, that's consistent, for sure. I, um, I'll never forget that. And I mean, you know, you, for some reason, man, it's those, it's those moments when somebody does something that simple that is the easiest things to appreciate. You know, it's a simple, you know, it's a simple thing, but it just says a lot about, you know, kind of character somebody has, right? And, um, I, um, I know, and, um, I know, I know you remember that, but I was wanting you to know that I think about that all the time. I appreciate that. Even, and I tell it, I've told that story on this show many times, but I tell it to my wife even, you know, when we're talking about, you know, she, she had to go to the dentist the other day.

But, I mean, I've told her that story before about, you know, how, man, I was so worried about getting a root canal and it really wasn't a big deal. I had some dental work here recently, and it just reminds me of that. But, thank you. It was something so silly. But who else was going to step up to the plate and do that? No one. Not me. Yeah, you were in there.

Where were you, Mike? With your perfect teeth. Telling you to rubbs dirt on it. You're just like hell. That brings us to the actual part. Can you take Amy Earnhardt to the dentist? Yeah, yeah. Because that's what we wanted to ask.

Is it all worried? Because, yeah, that was Dale's response to Amy needing to go to the dentist and Steve will take you. But it would be really good for me because they'd think I was like incredibly wealthy to have a lady that pretty on my arm you know so you know what's that old guy doing amy's gonna love you i mean what an amazing what an amazing compliment right there i'm uh it's exciting for me to get guys like you in here and here you say that you miss it oh yeah terrible yep and here you say that you would you know you would answer the phone right away because you know i don't know i i think the sports better off with you in it i think you absolutely you look amazing i think you absolutely

have value to a program with everything that you've been through. And I hope that phone call happens. And I hope to see you in the garage someday. That would be cool. Thank you very much. Yeah, I would love that. Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming all this way.

I enjoyed seeing you and missed you. And we appreciate you. You're a big ally for us here at the show. Oh, yeah. We pull hard for J.R.M. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Steve Mill on the Dale Jr. Download.

Man, I'm really excited to have a lot. ally help us bring the guest segment every week. It's one of my favorite parts of the download. We get to talk to so many different people in racing, outside of racing. But everybody that comes in here, I want them to have had a good time. I want them to want to come back. I want them to feel like an ally to Dirty Mo Media. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the download and the entire Dirty Mo Media team.

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