The Dale Jr. Download - 446 - Short Jabs & Directions to Earth

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Dale Earnhardt Jr. returns from his broadcasting stint at the Kentucky Derby to reunite with co-host Mike Davis for another episode of Dale Jr. Download. The fans have spoken, and they love what they saw at Kansas Speedway over the weekend from the superstars of NASCAR. Dale and Mike discuss the action and more: Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson’s last-lap battle Noah Gragson and Ross Chastain’s pit road punch NASCAR’s next potential superstar Dale reports on his Kentucky Derby experience During the Ask Jr. segment, listeners sent in questions regarding: Balancing out-of-the-car obligations on race day What Dale would do if he didn’t get into racing Dale’s favorite, lesser-known music artists Dale’s love for sushi 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.

A guy once said, if you lose an hour in the morning, you'll be looking for it all day, Mike. Boy, you did a lot of looking all days for a long time, a large part of your life. What was my problem with me? I was looking for hours. What do you think? Didn't get them? I mean, of all things to say. What? Family picnic sometimes.

Get you more than just to create a salary. Are you kidding me, Mike? Oh, my God, that is hilarious. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. It's Tuesday, the May the 9th. Yeah. It's Tuesday. The May. The May. The 9th. Yeah. And that's the voice of my co-host and one of my best friends in the whole wide world. Mike Davis, how's it going, Mike? It's going well. What are you up to? Something's going on. What's up? Man, I'm excited. You're just carrying over from last week now. Well, I'm excited, man. I mean, people can't see this if they're just listening to the podcast. But you've let me change.

the door on the wall behind me. The number two door that I've been putting up on my social handles is up. I'm excited about that. I love that three door. We're going to keep it in the studio. But this, I don't know. I think I get a, I'm sensing that I get a much bigger kick out of this than pretty much everybody else that I've shown this to.

I don't know. I think it's just the coolest thing ever. What year is that from? 1979, 1980. Okay. Basically, I decowed it like the car that won the championship in 1980, last race of the season in Ontario. But, I mean, we're only talking. It's like a handful of decals.

I had those decals, extra decals, sitting around for like a couple years. So we try, you know, I got the real car from Talladega. We bought a bunch of decals. I went on eBay, got decals, contingency decals, gathered all this stuff to be able to decal and paint this car and refinish it, right? We did that and we had a bunch of stuff left over. And then I thought, man, it's time to change the door out. Plus, I've been teasing a little new project that I'm working on that has something

to do with this door. That's kind of a bigger picture or a bigger thing coming down the pipe, which we're working on, new project, excited to, can't wait to tell you about it. I'd love to tell you about it now. Mike probably doesn't want me to. You can do whatever you want. For real? Yeah.

Okay. All right. So, you know, here it is. I'm just going to put it out there. I cannot freaking wait to start working on this. We're getting ready to record the first episode of it this week. Bobby Marcos and me are working really, really hard. Bobby, our resident historian, right?

Yeah, all things producer, yeah. He is the man. He's going to help me create this piece of content that I'm really excited about. So I've got a couple vacations coming up. We all are going to take a week here and a week there throughout the summer. and I want to be able to keep putting content out, especially good content. And we've done different things over the years. We've sort of done a best of series, you know, taking some past podcast and sort of did a mash-up.

Business and motorsports we were doing. Business of motorsports has been great for us this year. It's been a great experience for Kelly. But anyways, I came up with this idea. So when my grandmother, Martha passed away, we were looking through her, house and everybody, all the daughters and the sons, aunts, uncles, you know, everybody was there just kind of like going through photo albums and all sorts of things. She had a treasure trove of boxes and cases of stuff, right? And my Aunt Kay found these two scrapbooks that she made

over 40 years ago. When dad got the Austerlin ride in 79, she started a scrapbook. She was eagerly dedicated to sort of, you know, following along with his season, cutting out all of the articles from local papers, and they were covering Dad quite a bit. He was having some great runs, won his first race at Bristol in 79. She did a full, thick scrapbook of 79 and the 80 season. And when I was looking at them, I was like, oh, man, there's so much stuff here that I didn't even know about.

Certain great quotes that add a lot of context to certain races. I've got all these pictures in my phone of that season, 1979, 1998. I got them all in a folder. And there's pictures of Dad's car with dense and damage and this and that and the other. And I'm like, you know, I don't have any context to the pictures of when that happened, what happened. And so now that I'm reading all these articles, I'm like, oh, I remember that picture. I got the picture from that. I got the picture.

I now know, you know, what's going on in these images. Anyways, it made me think about sitting down and maybe kind of somewhat basically narrating a season, the 1979 season, with a focus on dad. We're going to talk about everything, though, everything that went on in the 79 season, split up with the Wood Brothers and David Pearson and all of those things. But I think it'll be fun sort of stopgap between episodes of the Dale Jr. download. and I'm super excited about getting to work on this and putting it down on some tape and start pushing it out and seeing what people think. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with it.

I'm going to learn a lot of new stuff. I've already learned something about the Daytona 500 that happened to Dad that I didn't even know. He had a great run in the 79 Daytona 500, but suspiciously sort of disappeared from the front running pack late in the race, and there was a couple reasons for that that I didn't even know that aren't covered in the broadcast of the race, but show up in these articles.

Man, it's just fun for me. And I think it'd be kind of interesting to listen to a podcast. I know that Mark Martin does his podcast in a similar way where he's an episode a year, right? So he's like, hey, this episode's about my 1976 year. And I thought, man, that's a pretty cool idea. So we're going to try it. I hope it's well received. So that's the reason for the door.

By the way, let me just add one thing. Yeah. You come into my office a couple times a week with something new that you've learned from the 79 season, and I'm going to just tease this by saying it is pretty compelling, right? Like the stuff that you have even learned about your dad, quotes that he has said in the paper, like, I don't even want to give anything away, but it is super compelling. The fun part about it is, is I've always said, you know, man, if I could time travel, if I could go live in any error or any part of this, you know,

the sports history, I'd love to freaking go to the 70s and walk around in the garage and look at the cars, touch them, and watch them go around the track and see how they interact with each other and what the whole vibe was, right? This really gets me close. Yeah. It really does. And so, like you say, we're going to look at this. You know, you're not, we're not looking at this through the lens of Dellenhart, the seven-time champion. This is Delaar and Hart, the rookie.

This is the prequels. flawed, mistake prone. And you know, we're going to hear quotes from drivers directly criticizing some of the you know, the moves dad's making on the racetrack and how he navigated sort of gaining

that respect of Akele Yarborough and guys like that. Yeah. So pretty interesting and I can't wait. Anyhow, make sure also, I want to remind everybody, tickets are available still for the Cars Tour race next week, Wednesday, we're racing. We're racing,

at North Wiltsboro. You know, if you, if you didn't go last year, it was a packed house, if you didn't get to go, you saw all of the things that we did on social media, you could tell the vibe was badass, you don't want to miss that opportunity to do this again. You never know how many more North Wiltsboro's there's going to be, right? We don't know what the future is for this racetrack,

whether we'll be back there, whether I'll be back there racing. And so here's your chance. If you missed that opportunity in August to see the cars tour and what an incredible experience that was, here's your chance. There's some tickets available. Everything for the All-Star race on Sunday is gobbled up, I imagine.

I don't know that there's much left in terms of being able to get a ticket or be able to access seeing that event. I don't even know. I don't either. Wednesday night shows all week. I know the Wednesday night shows got a few tickets left. That's right. And they're going fast.

You know something I read on. I'm going to talk about something that I read on the internet. I follow a couple random accounts on Twitter, right? They're like, you know, fascinating information, right? Did you know that the Hubble telescope has a return address pretty much? I did not know that. Yeah. Why?

I don't know. I was watching, I was reading this, and basically the Voyager, sorry, the Voyager's spacecraft, not the hub, not the Hubble telescope. That's the same thing, right? The Voyager spacecraft carries a gold disc with music. It has human, and human brainwaves on it on this disc, whatever that, however you do that. And directions on how to find Earth. You sure, I mean, is that a good idea?

No. Right? No, not unless the directions, actually say, you know, head for the big fireball and go directly into it and don't stop until it hurts. Or less it's a dad joke, it's like turn right at Uranus. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was like, man, hopefully the directions point them in the opposite direction of birth. Go that way, don't stop. Yeah, go, just go.

Keep digging. See the Milky Way, head away from it. Yeah, who sent up the Voyager? Was that a SpaceX thing? I don't know. I think the Voyager's been out there for a while. Has it? I don't know.

I don't know. We need to do some research. And whose brainwaves? That also needs, I need to know whose brain, is it Kanye's? I mean, like, human brainwaves. I don't know how, how, how does that work. What a human brainwaves sound like, I don't know. That's the strangest thing.

All right. Well, did, so that's all, you just saw it. That's a, that's up my timeline and I got a bit alarmed. I'll be honest with you. Whoever, who's ever idea it was to give them a damn map to find us, holy smokes, you're going to, wouldn't you want, wouldn't you hate to be that guy now? sort of rethinking that decision. I might have got us all in a world of hurt here. The same guy that probably created the AI robots

that are going to end up taking over the world. Yeah, we made him too smart. There's like a group of scientists in a room, and they're like, yeah, who put the return address on there? Right. The guy's like, ugh, shit. Yeah. Yeah.

Y'all didn't want that. Y'all didn't want me to do that. Hey, by the way, if you do make it here, don't speed through McBee. It's 35 miles per hour. they will bust you. That is true. Hey, funny McBeak joke, it's Darlington weekend.

Yeah. Good job, Mike. You want. Tied that right in there. 75th, 75 greatest drivers in NASCAR history are going to be honored at Darlington on Sunday. I'm going. I can't wait. Going to get to be a part of a lot of the things going on there.

Going to hang out with a big old group of really good race car drivers. Yeah. Have all of those been handed out? I think there's three left. And it's rumored to be Jimmy Johnson, Matt Kenseth, and Joey Logano. What are they waiting on? I don't know. I think they're just kind of using the opportunity to release a few at a time to sort of drum up more and more interest to try to get people to come to Darlington.

Gotcha. You know, throwback weekend. A lot of great paint schemes have been released for throwback weekend. Everybody's excited about it. It would be a great race. They've probably been trying to give it to Matt Kenseth, but he's being hard to get, being his typical self. Probably so, yeah. The way he is with us trying to get him back on the download.

Yep, yep. That's what I choose to believe. That's probably true. Let's get right into it. Oh, I got to say, did you see the response from last week's interview with Bill Davis, Ward Burton? Yes. Oh, man, that made me sad. What? Sad. I mean, I won't. Yeah, because I love Ward. Yeah, well, he's fine. He said he was smiling. Hey, Ward, smiling in a pissed off way. Are you kidding? You did not get sad. You thought, I did. I don't like Ward being upset. You said, hey, how do we get him on door bumper clear? That's what you need to do, man.

Ward said, so door bumper clear reached out to Ward and Ward said, Ward said, bring me on. I'm ready to come set it to record straight. Yeah. No, I love, I guess I was just sad the fact that something that generated from our show. I think I'm serious about this. Like, Ward on, Doorbubbopper Clear. Of course.

Let Doorbubbent Clear do what they do. Yeah, they'll rattle his cage a lot more. He'll come out of there even spitting mad, even more spitting mad. But look, I just, I don't like that Ward. was upset about something that was said on the show. Yeah. But the fact is, is that I think that there were other people that even thought that Bill Davis was a little. So Ward went on Twitter and said, I'm smiling after listening to all the lies that were told one day soon.

I'll explain the truth about it all. And, you know, I, you know, I think that, so I tell people, and I said such, I said so much on my Twitter. I said, you know, sometimes, it's not every time, sometimes we get that kind of a response from people when they hear our interview with the guests, whatever it may be. There's been a few guests that have come on here, and people are like, that didn't believe a word he said. I mean, there were literal things that he said that I could Google and find out that they were totally incorrect and not true.

I won't really name any names, but there's a couple that stand out. I'll name them. Okay, go ahead. Mayfield. Oh, really? I thought. Yeah, Jimmy Spencer. Glanville was my leader.

Oh, I didn't even forget. I forgot about him. Boy, he was saying things. I'm like, well, I know that's not even true. Like, you know, that's like, that's not true, Jerry. Really? What was, what did he say? I mean, I don't remember the specifics.

He told us a peanut butter jelly. The intimidator made me a peanut butter jelly set. Probably not happen. Probably not. Probably it didn't happen. I mean, there was a couple things. Yeah. Anyways.

So, hey, I mean, we're sitting here at the table listening to people. And sometimes, yeah, you go, man, I don't, I don't know if I believe that. You can't say that. You can't verbalize that. because you know what you're going to do, you're going to stop that guy in his tracks, and they're going to zip up, they're going to lock down. Because when they start to feel like that you're against them or you don't believe their credibility, things get awkward and uncomfortable in the interview tanks.

And we can't have that. We can't have the interview not finish, right? And so I think, you know, while I would love to maybe call some people out or press them a little harder on some things, it's a bit of a balance. And I'm no expert at interviewing people, but I'm saying, you know, maybe I could be a little more pushback on some things when I'm like, hey, wait a minute, that sounded odd. But you don't want the person that you're interviewing to have a bad experience and that the interview tanks at the end or they, you know, they leave here wishing they hadn't done this interview. And so I also say that, and I don't know whether that's right or wrong like, you probably have a different opinion about that. but also say everybody comes in this door and they're given the opportunity to tell their truth, right?

Whether it's the truth, who knows? But you're letting them come in here invited to tell their story, you know? And so I'm not going to jump in the way of that and be going up. I don't know about that. You sure? You sure? That's what happened? Let's go to the tape.

Let's go. Let's see here. I don't know. I mean, you can't, you know, you can't really get in their way. And it's fun, I guess, to let the, it's kind of fun for me to see the public debate and bat it around a little bit. Yeah. I don't disagree with anything you said. Frankly, I don't, even if we think that it might not be true, we really do not know.

So there's not a point. There's not a point for us to go, I don't believe you. Of course it'll shut down the interview. But the fact of the matter is, we don't know anymore either. We're just fans like anybody listening to this. Now, if somebody said something that was so egregiously false that it was also. incriminating, you know, something, we would have a responsibility to go, that's not true. Like if you, you know, if somebody is literally being accused of something that is criminal or

just completely, completely false, then maybe we do have a responsibility. But I don't think that that's happened on our show. I don't think it's happened either. Darrell Waltrip sat here and told a bunch of stories. I bet half of them weren't exactly true. Yeah. So also, moving on, this past weekend, Austin Dillon's, or not this, this past weekend, but previously, Austin Dillon's team was penalized at Martinsville for a splitter

rod that was not built to spec or by the rules. NASCAR, basically, they appealed it, they lost the appeal. And after the appeal, once all of that had hashed itself out and ran its course, right, NASCAR made the part public. They had been talking about this for years, especially in the last couple of months, getting more transparent, putting the pieces and parts and pieces out there that teams are starting to manipulate. They used to do this years ago. We've talked about this. And it's, you know, you'd go to Daytona and as things got found during tech, NASCAR had them in the hauler or out on a table behind the hauler so that you could walk up and look at them.

They quit doing that for the last several decades. for whatever reason, probably had some reasons, some good reasons. One of the things that I worry about is a team looking at the part and saying, okay, I see how they made it illegal, and I see how NASCAR caught them, and now I see how I could also make it illegal, and NASCAR won't catch it. I will fix the flaw in the theory so that it can't be detected. That's the only concern, right? everybody is always trying to make a better mouse trap.

And if you show somebody something illegal and how you caught them, then there's the potential, I guess, for somebody to go, oh, I see where they went wrong when trying to make this part illegal. I see where NASCAR got them. And I can probably make this part where NASCAR won't notice the problem. Anyway, that's the only real concern, I think, or the bad, the negative side to showing all of this stuff. But anyways, regardless of that, fascinating to be able to see the parts of pieces and understand how hard these teams engineer and work and think to get through the rulebook, right?

To weave through the lines in the rulebook. Impressive. I have to tip my cap to RCR for the effort. I have said it a million times. I want my crew chief to be pushing the envelope. I want him to be aggressive. I do not want my car to be levy. legal. I want to have a clear advantage over the competition.

And so I got to tip my cap to their creativity. We celebrate that here. So there's no hypocrisy, right? In our comments. That's all we're being thrown around this week. Hypocrisy. Well, it is fascinating to see it. To finally be able to see it and understand, see a piece that's been, you know, been changed. and Bravo to NASCAR, Brad Kiselowski tweeted, hey, I have no idea what I'm looking at. I didn't either. I mean, like I saw Bob Pockrasch tweeted it, and it looks like a turnbuckle of some sort. And I saw his tweet said that it's built to appear like it's locked, but it's not locked.

It can be adjusted. Well, there's a, I don't, do you know how to pronounce this guy's name, Mike? No, I don't. Okay. So there's Bozzy, I guess. If you go into Brad's tweet that says, hey, I don't know what I'm looking at, there's a guy. Bazi that he's a race, he's a NASCAR mechanic

and knows quite a bit about the rule book and has all of this, you know, he's very good at basically detailing how the part needs to be built, how it's supposed to be built, how NASCAR expects it to be built, and what the other team did to make it illegal. So if you really want to dive deep into the weeds there, Bozzi is very good at doing this. Great follow on social media to explain,

you know, some of the details. So we do know what we're looking at. That was fascinating to finally see some illegal parts. Also, we obviously got to talk about what happened at the racetrack this past weekend. Which race track? Kansas. Okay. Because you also went to the Kentucky Derby.

Oh, I did. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about that later. All right. Derby was awesome. Kansas, man. I watched that race.

Obviously, no Exfinite. race this weekend. So there was a truck race on Saturday, I believe, and the cup race on Sunday. Great race. Great racetrack. Kansas is awesome. High banking. I love banked racetracks. They run the wall. They run all over the place. This car put on a great show. The dirty air still, you know, it's pretty severe, but the guys seem to be smarter and smarter and getting better and better at knowing how to, you know, avoid it. And we saw some great battles, a lot of great lead changes. They said it was a record number of lead changes for a mile and a half race at 400 miles or less, which that's a small sample size, but still, you know, there's not many mile

and a half 400-mileers in the history of NASCAR when you look at, you know, 500-mile races at a mile and a half or whatever. It's a small group of races, but still, it was a fantastic race. Fantastic. You had drivers making a lot of mistakes, pushing it beyond the limit. My buddy Josh Barry drove up into the top ten. I was thrilled to see the speed he had behind the wheel of the 48 car. He got himself in a little trouble, but still learning how to navigate these longer races and race against the competition in the Cup Series. It's quite different. But the race itself, man, incredible. And, you know, Ross Chastain, let's get right to it, man. We're going to talk about Ross Chastain and the punch,

and we're going to talk about the last lap. You saw the final lap, Denny, Larson. There's a balance of debate, I guess. There's a debate over whether it was too aggressive, whether he just flat out dumped Larson, whether that was avoidable, or whether it was just hard racing. It's really a mix of everything.

I think, you know, I'm not driving the car. They're out there on old tires. Larson is literally hanging on, sideways. I thought that was, I tweeted, I was like, man, if he wins this race, it might not be the most monumental marquee event win of his career, but I think in terms of just the personal, the personal satisfaction of what he accomplished in those final laps, that would rank right toward the top for him because he was hanging on.

Hit the wall a couple times, you know, in the last 10 laps. Yeah, it was so wild to watch him drive that car, so out of shape. So if he's out of control, you know Denny's car is probably similar in terms of just sliding around, lack of grip, not a lot of control. They do make contact going down the back straight away. It turns Larson into the wall. I'm sure Denny would have loved to have avoided that, but as hard as they were racing at the end, the opportunities to make a pass or get leverage or get up alongside Larson was few and far between. You know, I could see absolutely how Larson would be frustrated, especially how HMS would be frustrated, but if you're a Denny Hamlin fan, you've got no problem with it.

And I think a lot of people would look at it as really hard, aggressive racing for a win. And that's what we want to see. You know, at least that's what I want to see. I want to see good, I want to see drama. I want to see good real drama, not manufactured drama. And so... So did you have a problem with it? I'll be honest.

I was wanting Larson to win. I wanted Larson to win only because of how bad his car was and how hard he was hanging on to it and how impressive the laps were that he was putting together. You know, but I don't know. I mean, I kind of was wanting that. For some reason, I was kind of thinking, man, if Larson wins, how badass would that be?

Because he's out of control, right? Then he's way faster. I think it sucks that car got put in the wall. you know, that's disappointing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean... Did you think that Denny's, the backlash that he got from the fans that were at the race? It's a bit surprising.

Yeah, I was going to say, did you think that was justified? No. No, I don't think so. But they were there. We weren't. Right. You know, they were... No, no, yeah.

For sure. Being there and witnessing it live is totally different than watching it on the TV. And so maybe I wouldn't have thought much of it if I was there, but sitting at home on my TV. I'm like, man, you know, I don't think I'm, I don't think I'm, you know, the whole, I don't think the whole grandstand should be turning on this guy for what happened. We see, you know, we, dude, man, that was, if that was going on in the 80s, place would be, you know, rocking. That was, that to me is, was a bit throwback, that racing, the, the hard racing going on there at the end,

the contact, a car getting in the wall. I mean, those things happened with regularity back in my favorite. era of NASCAR. I hate it for HMS because I'm a, you know, I drove, I drove for that team. I don't want to, I want to see them have success. I want them to do well when I'm watching a race as a fan. I'm, you know, pulling for Josh and pulling for, for Chase and, and, and Larson and William, we've got drivers that we've worked with that raced for us in some of those cars.

And so, you know, that part's tough to see. It would have been cool. I guess, yeah, it would have been better if then he passes him. They don't wreck and Larsen run second, right? Right? If you pass them clean, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, I mean, there was, you know, there was some beating and banging. And, I mean, all race long, guys pushing it beyond the limit, spinning out, crashing. It was a wild race. Everything had all the ingredients that I want in a race. Let me ask you this, though. Okay, let me tell you what I think about it And then I'm curious about your response to it I completely understand

It wasn't just the fans in the stands I mean, listen, if we take Twitter as a litmus test And I don't know whether you do or don't But the fact is that there was some There was some pretty adverse reactions To what Denny was doing. I mean, at least of what I was catching Including your sister, by the way. She even chimed it.

What'd she say? She said that was a little foul in my opinion She's like, I didn't like it And I think that anybody that takes had an adverse reaction to it, it's completely fair. I think it's completely fair to not like it. However, I just don't think that people that are accusing him of being a hypocrite. I don't think that's accurate either.

Here's my thing. I think if I take Denny and Larson out of the cars, I don't love the car, I don't love a car getting wrecked and knocked out, right? Yeah, I don't love that. I don't love it. I'm torn because, I'm torn because that type of action, that drama, that, that, you know, whether love it or hate it, either one, it's, it's what gets people tuned in. It's what gets more of that and a bit of a, you know, a bit of a friendly rivalry that would carry on.

You know, if those two get to racing each other over the next couple of. of weeks and they continue to be physical, you know, to a point. Imagine how great of a storyline that is for NASCAR, for fans, for broadcasters, for networks. Like, we need, we need those type of things to happen from time to time. We need that, you know, that, you know, one-on-one sort of, you know, we need that. I mean, I know people probably don't like. how it went down and don't like Denny's move. But I'm telling you, man, if we don't have

some of those controversial moments from time to time, then we're, you know, we're not growing, I don't believe, or we're not, you know, we're just, it's just this kind of thing is what sends us up a notch in mainstream. Especially when it's our best drivers that are in the mix of it, you know? So, you know, I go back to the 1979 Daytona 500, right? They have a fight down in turn three. I'm sitting here. I'm sitting here.

I had a little light bulb moment the other day. I was sitting there researching the 1979 Dayton 500 for this podcast we're going to do. I was reading through all of this information for the first time as a series owner of the Cars Tour. And we've had some things in the Cars Tour over the last couple weeks that have been, man, we could do a better job there. A couple things that could have. A couple things need to be buttoned up, right? You know, in terms of fighting or whatever it may be, right? As a series owner, now I'm starting to recognize things about our race program

and the way things are, you know, the way things happen in an event, that I'm like, oh, man, I really wouldn't have cared about that before. But now as I'm owner of series, I would, I want that to go differently. So I started thinking, man, you know, CBS is broadcasting this race. They start fighting down in the corner, and CBS is probably thinking, hell yeah, put the camera on that. Woo, man. We got 15 million people watching this right now. This is amazing.

I can't believe we never thought we'd get this type of drama, this type of finish. The king is winning the race. Now we've got two, you know, three guys down here duking it out. I bet Bill France Sr. was sitting there going, what a freaking embarrassment. Right. What in the hell of these idiots doing? We're on national TV. CBS, 15, 15 million people watching.

They need to quit. They need to stop this shit. Yeah. I'm pissed. It's possible. Yes. Bill France was not sitting there going, oh, hell yeah. And then he thinks, oh, it's not Jody Ridley and Joe Rutman.

It's the Allison's and Kale Yarborough. All right. So in that moment when you have these things that happen with Denny or with Ross on Pit Road, I think there is a line that NASCAR doesn't want crossed that dips into, hey, man, this is a little embarrassing. This isn't our best look. But for the networks, they love it. And more than likely, they're going to take that baton and they're going to run with it.

You're going to see that punch a lot over the next several weeks. Yeah. Right? Yeah. When we go back to Kansas next year, you're going to see that punch on pit road. You're going to see that back straightaway last lap tangle. And so, you know, these moments, while we might not love everything about some of what happens, they help elevate the sport, promote the sport. It's ammo to really go out there and say, hey,

everybody. This is what happened here last time. Y'all might want to come tune in. The other thing I think, which I, you know, I think that's pretty much my only point about, you know, what happened on the back straightaway. But with the, this is, with the punch on pit road, I freaking hate physical conversation. I hate it. I hate conflict. I don't like seeing people getting punched in the face. But I think that, regardless of that, I mean, you know, I was watching a clip on social media, Claire B. Lang posted an interview that Justin, that owns the car for Ross. He's on there and he says, we kind of saw, we kind of knew this was coming. So I mean, I feel like that, you know, if you're Ross, if you're Justin and your whole, you know, the trackhouse group, you're, over time,

right, Ross has been getting beat up and criticized and nitpicked and every, every movie makes is sort of, you know, this divisive sort of, is it okay, is it not okay, for the last two years. And so I think Ross, Justin and all of them are sitting there going, all right, man, keep your guard up, that something's coming, something's coming. Well, here it was. Here it was on pit road. And Ross, I think, was, I think if, you know, if, I think on an average day, Ross probably doesn't get physical.

He probably just tells him to stop, grabs, you know, grabs no one tries to control him. But I think with everything that's been going on and building up, they are, they, they, the, you know, the pressure cooker, it popped. And so while I don't love the physical contact or pushing and shoving, punching for sure, I don't like, I don't want punching happening on pit road between drivers. I don't want that to become a normal thing. Here's the one thing that's key. This is the thing.

So this is NASCAR's opportunity to turn Ross Chastain from a superstar in the NASCAR bubble to a national star in the mainstream. This is it. All right. So when dad was out there doing real similar things on the racetrack, he flat out dumped people and would get out and, you know, he wouldn't really apologize for it as much as Ross does, but he would get out and say, hey, man, that wasn't, you know,

I don't know what you're talking about. Nothing dirty driving. I got into him, my mistake. People around, so people, people, around Dale Earnhardt, around 86, 87, up into the 90s, those people around him, they capitalized on his own track actions. They created a persona through marketing, through souvenirs that went nationwide, if not global. The intimidator, the man in black, you know where you saw those those for the first time? On a hat, on a t-shirt.

Dele and Hart didn't walk into the racetrack and say, Hey, from here on out, I'm the man in black. Oh, from here on out, I'm the intimidator. No. That was a marketing campaign. That was a t-shirt. That was a hat that took off, right? It became a persona.

We are, you know, we're there. Are we, though? With Ross. We're there? Where's my dropping the hammer, Ross T-shirt? You know, where is, give me, I don't care what it is, right? Where is, this is the chance. Look.

What if he doesn't ever win a championship? Who cares? It doesn't matter? We can't not. There's one thing your Dave Davis was a quick championship. Hey, we're at the doorway. We're at the doorway, Mike, for the next big boom in NASCAR personalities and all we got to do is walk right through it.

Are we not going to walk through it because we don't know maybe he ain't going to win a championship one day? So we're just not going to go there? I'm just saying, man, if I'm NASCAR, if I'm networks, if I'm Ross's people, if I'm trackhouse. I'm turning Ross into a megastar off of the opportunity he's being provided with all of the network attention he's getting, all of the comments, all the criticism. Man, I'm building around that. Well, yeah, listen, this is the irony in the whole situation is that the drivers around him are doing all the building and the marketing for him.

Kyle Arson said it last week. Nothing bad ever seems to happen to him when he puts himself in these precarious situations. He's talking about on the track. but the same thing happened at Kansas, he actually comes out looking like a fighter. Yeah. Well, we now know Ross can throw a punch. Yeah, yeah.

I bet you there's not another driver out there that'll step to him now. I don't know. I'm just saying this is a, this is a, the window of opportunity to really take a Ross, take Ross and turn him into a bigger star, someone out, someone that can, someone that can go beyond the NASCAR, bubble into the mainstream, this is it. The window of opportunity is here. And if his, if trackhouse,

if Justin and their, you know, their mental focus toward media, toward entertainment, towards sensationalism and, and really, you know, self-promotion, they should be taken advantage of this, not shying away from it, not that they are. I'm just saying, you know, they shouldn't, they should look at this as a really cool opportunity to say, hey, we're going to own this, okay, if Ross is going to be the villain or not that he, I don't think he's the villain.

I think he, if Ross is going to be a persona, right, whatever that is, if you want to, you know, they, you know, dad's marketing crew and souvenir business turned him into the intimidator. They,

they gave him that moniker. The man in black, all of those things. that came from a concerted effort and plan in the minds of people in the souvenir business and around that marketing campaign. Dad wasn't actively sitting there going, oh, man, you know, I'm going to make this persona what it became. Am I wrong?

The part I was struggling, Dale, is it's using your dad as the example. I think there's better examples here. I think there is a responsibility. Using your dad as an example to anything compared. to any today's drivers just feels like a reach to me because we're talking about the greatest to ever do it. So let me just give you another example. You're right, you don't have to win a championship to be marketable. That's a fact, right? You never want a cup championship, but listen, Budweiser did with you and what some of your sponsors were able to do. I mean, MTV, all the,

you can name it. So there's absolutely marketable. I guess the thing I want to say is that the reason, I think there's a responsibility by Trackhouse and by the sponsors to absolutely maximize on this moment for Ross Chastair. The thing you've got to run careful on is the same thing like Danica Patrick was also extremely marketable. And NASCAR and everybody else

stepped through that door in a big way. Including us, by the way, she ran here. But then again, you do need to back it up with performance. You do. You won two Daytona 500. You were backing it up. And so I can say that there's comparable things and some opportunities and responsibilities and

that we could talk about now. I just get a little... Ross ran second last year in the championship. No, no. And so I do, that's my point. My point. I'm not ready to go say the intimidator level type stuff. So that's the thing.

So I'm not comparing Ross to Dad. I'm only using Dad. I'm only sharing, I'm only telling you that the persona that Dad, the Intimidator and the Man in Black and all that wasn't this ground swell. Wasn't his idea. It wasn't his idea.

And it didn't happen. It didn't happen just, organically, it happened because people saw it on souvenirs. I know the man, Hank Jones. I remember the day he came to dad with

the intimidator or the man in black stuff took for approval. And dad and Teresa are sitting there going, I don't know, what do you think? Man, this is self-promotion thing was a bit new for dad or a little bit awkward. Obviously, you know, if you're going to go out there

and put yourself out there like that, you And so I remember when that when that material showed up and dad and Teresa had to approve the merchandise, right? It wasn't like this easy decision. Right. But it wasn't, it was Hank Jones

who was running the souvenir business at the time. It came up. He's like, dude, this is going to sell. Trust me, this is going to, people are going to love this. This is what I'm saying that Ross and his camp might want to try to activate on.

It's like, man, you're, you're a winner, you're in the conversation, whether you want to be or not. You're in it. Every week, they're watching you. They're criticizing. They're analyzing. They're, you know, you're getting talked about. You're going to do, you know, you're going to do things polarizing like you did on the pit road.

Lean into it. Take advantage of it. Market it. And you'll do exactly what Justin Marks wants to do. You're going to take trackhouse. and Ross Chastain into the stratosphere. The way your dad did with Richard Childers, frankly. Right.

Yeah. That is a comparable thing. We're right there at the threshold. Walking through the door is literally effortless to make this happen. And so that will be interesting to me to see if, because Ross, I think, you know, is a bit apprehensive because I don't know that he wants all of this attention, right? he just wants to win and drive his race car and he wants people to probably leave him alone and quit worrying about all the moves he makes and then just you know just let me go race i'm racing how i want to race that's the way i take ross i don't know exactly how he feels but that's the

way it comes across to me but i think you know it's it's it's now or never in terms of like hey man you it's an opportunity to take your celebrity and your notoriety up another notch if not even several notches, and what that would do for his marketability, I know there's rumors about partnerships and sponsors coming in already for next year, for Ross. Think about the opportunities that that would represent them going forward with additional partners. It's a win, all across the board. If he embraces it.

Yes, if he embraces it. I mean, it reminds me when you were trying to have conversations with Jimmy Johnson, where he's now doing everything on the track, but you're like, man, you are. this awesome fun personality off the track. Man, you need to show this more in interviews. And he was like, I'm not comfortable doing that. I don't want to do it. He made the conscious decision.

He did not want to go open those things up to a complete marketing opportunity the way that he could have done. His decision. Chase Elliott has all the talent in the world. He makes the conscious decision. He lets his sponsors do things here and other. But it's clearly he's not embracing that to where it's maximizing and growing the sport. So you're bringing up a very good point.

And that is, to what point did the drivers have to go? I know it's not comfortable, but it's what's best for our sport to embrace these opportunities as they are now being created. And there's a thing. Ross has got the same decision to make. If he wants to say, I'm not comfortable, I'm not going to do that. Well, that's his prerogative, but it also is not going to really grow the sport either. We need stars. Yeah.

I mean, you know, Danny was on social media the other day saying the biggest challenge for our sport right now is personality, stars. that extend beyond the NASCAR bubble. Everybody, you know, what we need to grow and become bigger is to bust out of this NASCAR bubble and get in front of new fans that don't know who we are, right? And this is an opportunity, I think, for that to, for Ross to sort of make that happen. You know, everybody, Chase, Chase,

Blaney, all kinds of drivers are absolutely connecting to new fans. Not that no one else is doing that, but this is Ross's window of opportunity, right, to sort of become more of a star in the sport. And so when he does win that championship, you know, the sky is the limit on who this guy can become. All right, let me ask you real quick. What about Noah?

So, all right, Noah. You know, I think Noah is, I was talking to Clint Boyer about this morning. We were on the phone. Clint's got a cool little bike ride that he's planning for All-Star weekend. He's trying to sell tickets if you want to know more about that. I'm sure he's got some stuff up on his social media handles. So we were talking about that. He's like, man, you know, Noah is just coming up there.

He's like, everybody in the garage has been wanting to do what Noah did. go up there and confront Ross, right? But nobody has done it. They all talk about in interviews and so forth. But Noah's like, you know what? I'm going to be the one that actually goes up to him and says something. And, you know, I think Noah's been in a few physical altercations. And I think Noah made the mistake of grabbing him by the shirt.

The grab you by the shirt guy always gets punched. If you're going to be physical, now I'm no, I'm no expert. but if you're going to be physical, I think you've got to swing, right? If you're going to, I don't know. I mean, you grab by the shirt, you're sort of opening up yourself, right? You're saying to the guy, you're really letting that, you know, you gave off, you give Ross the opportunity to swing on you. And I don't know that you want to give, I don't know that you want to give them that opportunity. You want to take, you know, take things in your own hands and act first, right?

Yeah. I don't know. the thing I thought was interesting in all this was the drivers next to them. Like Joey Legano sitting there sipping his Coke like he just got back from the concession stand and Chase Yelots in there just kind of stirring it up a little bit, dropping his comments and leaving.

And I'm just like, this is a reflection of the bigger picture here. And that is you got the rookie that's going to go in there and say, I got the balls. Ain't nobody else got the balls, I got the balls. I know that Noah is absolutely frustrated that he wasn't allowed to counter. His punch, he had one coming, got blocked, and he wasn't able to, you know, I can imagine that if you're,

Noah, you're sitting there going, well, dang, if I could have just, you know, boy, if I could have just got that one in there. So that's probably where he's at. He's had, he was having a reasonably good day at points running well in the top 20, Noah was. And it's been a difficult year for him trying to figure out how to how to get the next-gen car moving forward,

but it seemed to be having a pretty good day. Got frustrated with Thross, and I just think that he probably is rethinking what he might have done differently in that situation so that he didn't get punched in the head. Don't you think? Don't you think he's thinking, hmm, what should I have done

not to have been the one to get punched? Yeah, probably I'm thinking that, especially because he got punched. He got punched. And I know he's mad. I know, listen, we're all upset, you know, at the time of the security guard, the security guard doing his job. They are absolutely doing their job by trying to break it up.

Yeah, I mean, he did it pretty well. But he also, you know, muzzled the punch, the retaliatory punch, which I, you know, I think Noah's, which he probably drew that up a little differently. So, Jeffrey, I've, more on the punch, Jeffrey Earnhardt, on social media. So he responds, nah, that was a short jab. If you're going to hit somebody, bring it from the back 40 like Noah was about to do. All right. He says, I vote.

I would expect from an MMA fighter. Jeffrey knows fighting. He says, I vote we go by hockey fight rules. Don't break it up until they are gassed out or on the ground. Again, I would love that too. Listen, you know, I would love that too. But at the same time, hard to get mad at the security guard for doing his job on that. I mean, to be honest with you, I liked what we saw.

frankly. I just thought it was entertaining. I mean, look, can I just say this? I didn't even finish. I didn't get to make a point I wanted to make. The point I wanted to make about Denny kind of ties to this. And that is this people calling him a hypocrite. And I don't think he was being a hypocrite. I think he had been a hypocrite if he had wrecked Kyle Larson like that on lap one, not on the last lap. But like, I think that we're all kind of hypocrites when it comes down to it. If we want to just get right down to the nitty gritty here, and that fight is one of them. I like a good fight. I like it, but I also tweeted, I wish they'd let them go. And at the same time, I know that if it matters who's in the fight for me to know if I wanted to go or not. I wanted Ross and

know where to go, like hockey style. But if it's, you know, my daughter in a soccer game, I completely treat it differently, right? So, you know what that makes me? A hypocrite. And you know what? All the people that are calling Denny a hypocrite, if the, when the rolls are reversed next week, and Kyle Larson is the one that does that and I think we all know that Kyle Larson does put people in precarious positions I mean that you know he does put them into bad decisions

which means them puts them in a wall that's fine I just don't think that you can call Denny a hypocrite and not be you know and not be consistent when it happens you know the other way around that's just my feeling on that but I think we're all hypocrites when it comes down to it

because all of us are biased based off of who we like right where we're from what drivers we root for and Denny has a lot of people that would have liked him not to won that race probably I think it was a fascinating day at the racetrack It was, what a fun race

Hey Dirty Moe listeners, this is Dylan Hart Jr. It's May and you know what that means The Indianapolis 500 is just around the corner Thankfully we have Speed Street with Indy Car Racer Connor Daily And comedian Joey Molanero They're going to get us ready to go Follow Speed Street so you never miss an

episode and get ready for the greatest spectacle in racing, the Indianapolis 500. We got to talk about the Kentucky Derby. Yeah, the Kentucky Derby was a lot of fun. I ended up getting to go to my third Kentucky Derby and working for NBC. Oh, boy. So I'm just going to shoot straight here, pal, all righty. When I get, when I know that I'm going to go to the Derby, I get excited. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm going to work the Derby, I'm going to work the Derby, live television. I don't know nothing about horse racing. So I study, I cram, I learn everything I can. I'm not expected to go in there and be an expert. I get that. So I have to lean into the curiosity. I have to think about, man, what do I want to learn? All right, NBC, I really want to learn this.

And if they allow me, that's what we do. So this particular time, they said, Rut's not going to go with you. So I got really nervous and scared. See, Rudd is the one that says, you know, Rut's the one that takes the toss from the talent before, you know, they'll toss it to us. And Rut goes, yeah, we're over here doing this. Man, Dale, this is blah, blah, blah.

And I just got to react to Rudd. It's really simple. And it's nice because he's doing all the legwork. But he's not going to be there this time. So I'm thinking, shoot, now I've got to be by myself. And I've got to accept the toss and react and then talk about the content I'm going to share and then toss it to the next person or send it wherever we're going.

And I don't have a lot of experience doing that. I don't think. I don't think you do. Right. And so I was really, really nervous. It's a massive event, one of the most important events from NBC. And they have such amazing talent work in this show,

people that know this stuff inside and out. And here I am at the very, very bottom of the totem pole, just taking up some space. Man, I was. so scared. And so when we get about a week out, my vibe goes from being excited about this opportunity and how incredible this is going to be to that little kid that's walking up to the roller coaster and he's been standing in line for two hours. And he's like, nope, nope, not going. Nope, nope, I'm turning around, which where's the exit? And I'm literally like the night before we went to

dinner. We went to, we went Friday, we rehearsed, walked around, saw all the spots that I was going to be working at. I'm taking a buttload of notes. I got a pad of paper with stuff jotted all over it. And we go to dinner, and I'm just sitting there with Amy and Amy and Tony Mayoff. And I'm like, y'all, I just don't want to do this. I'm just, I don't want to do this. I don't know. I don't know. You know, I was so scared and wanted out. Every time. Every time. Every time. So, and I went and talk to my sister, uh, who's doing some speaking engagements. And Kelly's like, dude, that's exactly the way I am. Somebody says, hey, you want to come speak at this function? Yeah, that sounds awesome. And then the, when the, when the, when it becomes like the week of or a couple days before, I'm kicking myself for doing

this because I'm terrified to go do it. And now I'm thinking, why did I agree to do that? I don't, you know, and she goes, you know, you go, you do it. You have a great time. It's, it's work. Everything's fine. but man those two days, three days before, you're just kicking yourself for being in this situation. How did I get here? What did I do to say? How did I put my... And so, you know, we get up and we go to the, you know,

we go to the derby and I'm prepared. Now, I've worked hard. I've rewritten my notes multiple times to streamline my ideas and everything I'm going to talk about. and but I haven't done live TV since November. We go to our first hit and I'm going to talk to the official starter at the starting gate. This was a great experience because I got to stand right next to the starting gate

on the racetrack while they loaded the horses in and turned them loose. Amazing. It was wild. I can only imagine. So much fun. The official starter was Scott Jordan, really, really nice guy. I probably spent more time with Scott than I did anybody else that was working the derby over the two days. I spent time with him and his crew.

They were all very, very nice. We hung around their families. We spent a bunch of time with them talking about our hit and what we're going to do and what we're going to discuss. And I think me and Scott both were extremely nervous when the hit went live. And it was supposed to be a minute and 15 seconds. and I'm in control of that. Like I've got to do enough, I got to ask enough questions

to fill a minute and 15 seconds. And I got, I did about 30 seconds of work and tossed it to wherever, right? And when we got, so I asked a couple questions, he answered them and we were done. And it was only 30 seconds

instead of, you know, 90. It was clunky and I didn't think it went well. I just, I didn't feel like I did my job right. I, you know, in your interviewing somebody, I did a couple of mistakes. one mistake was I didn't have follow-up questions ready if it gave me short answers I didn't have backup questions ready and available I put the answer to his question or I put the answer to

my question in the question right yeah so he's an easy mistake right it is it's one of the worst mistakes you can make in interviewing and so I answered the question for him so again I took his thoughts and comments away from him so he couldn't elaborate And so it was a little clunky, and you probably may not have noticed watching the broadcast, but you thought, okay, great, you know, that was nice, informative, we're moving on. But I'm walking away from that going, dang it, what the hell you can do better than that? But you're talking about that one hit, right? You're not talking about the overall.

That was the first hit. The first hit. So when you're talking about critiquing yourself, you're talking about that one hip, because I didn't even see that one. Okay. So this was all in the morning portion? around 1.30. We go and did another hit talking to Valette in the next of the training room.

That went well. Good guy. Josh, we talked the day before. We rehearsed our hit and learned a lot about the goggles and the weights and the legs. I mean, this is the stuff I wanted to know. We're watching a horse race. You tune in. They get in the gate.

Ring the bell. Open it up. They take off running. Somebody wins. We celebrate. But you don't know like, hey, man, okay, the jockeys all don't weigh exactly the same. how do they balance that out? How does that, how do they make that fair?

Okay, they got these little one pound weights that go in the saddle. They got saddle pads that are weighed one pound heavier than the other, or five pounds heavier than the other. Whatever the jockey needs, they get on this scale with all of this equipment in their hands, and they have to all weigh the same. That's what the valet does. And so all of those things were incredibly cool to learn about. And you don't see it because they don't zoom in close.

enough, but they have about six or seven pairs of goggles stacked on top of each other on their helmets, on their eyes. And as they get filled with dirt, they just pull them down and they dangle around their necks. And as they're riding around during the race, they keep pulling more and more goggles down. Just like a tear off. Yeah, like a tear off. And I'm thinking, okay, that's cool. Let's show that. That was a great hit. We go to the infield, and I probably talked about this last year. So we go to the infield. There's 80,000 people in there. They've been in there all day. Our hit in the infield was about 2.30 or 3.30. and it's literally 30 seconds.

It's like, bam, bam, we're in the infield. This is what's going on today. We're excited to go. But you're standing there for about 15 minutes, and everybody in the infield's drinking, having a great time. They're with their buddies and they're being, you know, being obnoxious and just doing what you would do, right?

But I'm standing there, completely sober, thinking about what I'm trying to say, but I'm also worried about somebody running into the shot and doing something ridiculous on purpose, right? When they see a camera, there's no telling what people might do. And we're in a crowd of, you know, in the general vicinity of us is a thousand people drinking. Yeah. And I'm sitting there going, please don't anybody do anything bad, do anything, you know, I don't want to go viral.

This is not a good time to do anything silly, everybody. I'm thinking that in my mind. But that hit was good, nothing happened. we, you know, basically that's the introduction hit, the opening of the actual show. Hey, I'm in the infield and 80,000 people here. We're going to have fun. I'm going to do a lot of cool stuff. Take it away.

And then the rest of the hits I thought went really good throughout the day. There was one that was pretty rough. The last one where I interview the assistant trainer. all hit you saw that one yeah i didn't understand what he said all right well look this is all this is what happened that you don't know um we went there the day before and this is barn 42 this is the the famous barn more kentucky derby winners have came out of that barn um or have been in that barn for for the weekend uh more kentucky derby winners have come out of there since 1973 when secretary it won secretary it was installed 21 of that barn so they're going to put a camera on

on that stall. I'm down at the other end where Mage is, all right? The horse that would win the derby. I'm down at the other end. So I'm going to start the hit by saying, hey, you're looking at stall 21. We're at Barn 42. That stall is the one that occupied secretariat. I'm going to give you a stat about how there's more winners out of this barn.

And then I'm going to say there's one entrant only housed in this barn this week. The only one horse in here that's going to run the derby is mage. There's no other Kentucky Derby entries at the barn today. And I don't even know how I said that or if it even sounded worth of shit. Well, as I'm talking, I'm supposed to start walking over toward Gustavo Delgado, Jr., who is the assistant trainer. And he's the son of the head trainer. I made him the day before, but he's wearing different clothes. On this day, he's standing about 30 feet away from me, and I've got to walk to him.

but he's backlit and I can't see his face. And so I didn't know it was him standing there. I thought, man, I'm thinking in my mind, well, if the assistant trainer is probably busy, he's probably with the horse, I'm going to walk over there and he'll pop up, come out of the stall. He'll be, oh, hey, Dale, good to see you. So I'm walking over there talking about how we're going to interview Delgado Jr. And I'm walking up right to him. And I stop and I'm looking around.

I'm like, well, he's here somewhere. he's standing right next to me, two feet away. But the son's on his back, you know, so I can't see his face. And I thought, shh, and I'm in my mind, I'm like, that's him. And so I go, oh, Stavo, come on over here. Hey, buddy. Hey, so, and then I start doing my bit. I'm like, hey, man, you know, in NASCAR and racing, we have pit crews.

I want you to tell me who is responsible for this horse, who are the, whether the roles and he started doing that. We had rehearsed it and told him what we were looking for. And he starts saying, yeah, we got the groom, the hot walker, the exercise rider, I'm the assistant trainer. And so it's like we were trying to basically say, hey, every horse has these individual people that are responsible for it and work as a team to get this horse through the weekend. And we got to do this in a minute and 15 seconds. So we couldn't get too descriptive, right, about the detailed information that you would like to share about each job and what that job is all about. But it was clunky, and I tossed it to Mike.

I don't even know what I said. Like, oh, man, you know, a lot of people are, you know, responsible for these horses to get them here. It's, oh, I remember what I said. So I was standing there talking to Gustavo, and I was so, it was so quiet. we're an hour away from the race. That's what you said. And I was like, but dude,

it is freaking, you could hear a pin drop back here. There is no quiet, no silent. And you know what? We were standing there the day before talking about doing this hit. I'm with my producer,

the camera guys, we're talking about where we're going to stand, what we're going to do. And some, and Sleti comes up and says, hey, I work for Gustavo, and we would prefer that

if y'all were going to have the conversations to leave the barn. Because we'd rather not have this kind of noise around the whole. horse. And I was like, yeah, I didn't even think about that. So we left the barn and finished our conversation. So when I went over there and did this interview right at the end, I was like, man, it's freaking quiet. And that's how I didn't do it. I was like, man, it's super quiet here. You wouldn't, that was, that was profound to me how I thought it'd be hustle and muscle and

people getting ready and, oh, the anxieties and the nerves and all that stuff, tension building, nothing of that. It was so peaceful. Yeah, that worked, by the way. because I do remember you saying that. And the shots, I don't remember what it was before and I don't remember what it was after. I just remember there was this counter to what you were getting, what the cameras were giving us.

And it was hustle and bustle. And so I did think that that actually was a pretty astute observation by you. I think it worked. I know, it's such a small, tiny thing. But it sort of salvaged a really clunky, rough. I can only imagine the panic. 90 seconds.

Oh, my God. Nobody knew that I was thinking. and that and I don't know what it looked like on TV, but now that you know that, go back and watch it and you're like, oh, yeah, for real. Okay. And then, wait, the funniest thing, we go down and it's time to do my pick. That's what I wanted to ask. I'm standing down there at Victory Lane, right, next to Victory Lane, right, on the inside of the racetrack. This is the easiest part of the day, right? And I've got it in my mind. I'm going to say, I've, Mage, I didn't know Mage was number eight for one. I only

pick Mage because that was the horse that I was closest to. I had seen Mage two days. And I thought I ain't met any other Kentucky Derby runners. I'm a little pull for Mage. I'm standing there and I'm like this is easy. I know exactly what I'm going to say. I'm going to say I'm hoping for a little magic with

Mage. And then I need to toss it to Edzo. And Edzo's going to give his pick. And I'm going to say everybody loves a surprise winner, right, Edzo? Because Edzo's going to pick a 15 to 1, I think. So he's picking a surprise, you know, would be a probably a surprise winner too. There were two or three favorites that everybody thought had the race or would win the race, and Edzo was picking a horse with relatively similar odds to me, so I was

going to toss it to him that way. So we get up there, and basically I'm listening to the show in my ear, and I've got, you know, the producer also talking, and the talent starts at the top, Mike Tariko and them, and they're going to give their picks, and it's bam, bam, bam, talent to talent, talent to talent, giving pick after pick after pick after pick after pick. And I'm going after Dylan and Sonia, right? And so I was listening to hear somebody say, all right, Dylan and Sonia, give us your picks. And they're going to start talking. Yeah, these are my picks.

All right, Dale, what do you say? But people weren't saying each other's names. And I'm like, okay, I've got to try to recognize their voice to know that it's my turn next. and I was having trouble sort of doing that. It's loud where I was. The fans are starting to get excited because they're seeing horses moving around. And I'm looking at my producer and I'm going, am I next? Am I next?

I'm my next? And she's looking at me going like, what? What are you? What are you saying? And I mean, I didn't know if I was supposed to start talking because I couldn't tell whether I was next or not. But they luckily tossed it to me. They said, Dylan and Sonia were like, yeah, Dale, do, do, do.

And I thought, oh, shit. Thank God. And then I started reading my line. I was like, I'm hoping for a little magic with mage. Everybody loves a surprise winner, Edzo. And I wanted to emphasize Edzo. And if you go back and listen to this, I wanted to emphasize Edzo, right?

But I emphasized winner. Everybody loves to surprise winner, Edzo. I didn't even catch that. I know it. Nobody catches this shit. So I'm sitting there. I got done. I got done with my line and I'm done.

That's it. I'm free. Days over for me, man. Now I just get to watch the race. And I said, Tony and Amy are standing there and I said, hey, Tony, how is that? And he goes, great, fine. I'm like, man, I don't know. I emphasize winner.

For some reason, I emphasize the wrong word in the – Everybody loves a winner. And so – I know. But I watched it back and it wasn't as bad as it felt. No. The funny thing is, man, everything in TV is it's never as good as it feels and it's never as bad as it feels. But those are some of the things.

That was my, that's what's going on in my mind that whole day are all of those little quirky mistakes and missteps. And I did think some hits were really good and I was happy with them. But then there were those stumbles and things that people probably don't even recognize most of time. I got to tell you my vantage point of that. I'm at a party. I'm at a neighborhood party. And we've got the derby on. but we're just, anytime you come up,

people, somebody's going to say, there he is, there's Dale, look at Dale, whatever. But like, other than that, you know, we're not really tuned in. But here's this graphic NBC puts up. And it's all 147 commentators that they have at the Kentucky Derby. And it's, and they've got them listed, and you're at the butt-neck and bottom.

Yep. It's like, you know, everybody, all these horse experts, and Dale Jr. And they're all making their pick. And then it's putting in the graphic, the horse, and they're all picking base. basically the same three horses, you know, Tatris, what is it? Tap it. Tap it. Tap it thrice. I don't know. Tap it. And then that other one, but then it's like, so we're like, they go,

my buddies go, is Dale Jr. know any of these horses? I'm like, probably not. Oh my gosh. Probably not. Probably whoever he's interviewed last. There you go. And so, but then they go, all right, Dale Jr. and it's at the bottom. And I'm like, I'm curious on who he picks. And you're like, we're going to go. Mage, the magic of Mage, whatever it is, you said. And then they all looked at me and they go, does he have something on this that they don't? Like, does he know something?

And I'm like, not a chance. And he has nothing on it. All that to say, what you gave us was someone to follow now. Like before we're just going to watch the race, now Mage is our guy. Now I know what color the jockey's jersey is on Mage. And dang, when that thing comes around and takes the lead, we lost our.

Oh my God, we went crazy because of that. It was so fun. I was so happy that horse won. I had two people, I had a person stopped me in the driveway at junior emergency sports and say, hey, my two boys bet on that horse. One bet ten bucks and one bet $20. So, I mean, to all the people out there that put a wager on mage. Yeah.

Only because. Questionable parenting. Older. No, no. This man's got older sons. Okay. Got it. Now, to answer everybody's question, I get this asked a lot.

No, I did not bet on Mage. I did not physically put a wager on the horse. I would have. But, damn, I mean, you know, we were working so much and running around. I went from, we started the day in the infield. We went to the jockey room on the front straightaway. We went over to turn one for a hit there. We went back to the barns off the back straight away, back to the jockey room.

Back down to the infield for the pick. I mean, I was walking, I did 20,000 steps easy, in both days. And so I never had a chance to go to a gate or do any betting. That's the one thing that I regret is that if it didn't actually put money on Mage, I probably could have told Amy to. I'm sure she did. Nope. She didn't put any money on anything?

No. Okay. She did before. She did, but she was with me a lot of the day or some of the day. She actually followed us around and got to do, you know, got to see some of the places we went, which was really cool to have her do that. but I regret, yeah, I regret not putting some money down on Mage, but to anyone who did, just because I picked them, man, heck yeah.

That makes me feel better than me actually winning. There you go. I got a text from Mike. You making that pick is the funniest thing I've seen all day. It was. You had to have seen the graphic to truly appreciate it. All the NBC commentators listed down the right, many of them had the same one. There he was right at the bottom, the very last one.

only one to pick mage. My friend asked me, does he know something? The rest ain't? I said, not a chance. Then, Mage wins. That was the text I got from Mike. I was excited. That was probably the longest text I've gotten from Mike in the history of our friendship.

I'm a good texter. No. I am. We get done with the derby, and we went home. I'm already getting nervous about the next one. Hopefully I get to go, though. Write that down. Yeah, write that down.

We're going to need that. We're going to need that next year about this time. I'm nervous already. Yeah. I'm glad you put yourself, listen, I'm glad you put yourself in those situations. If you want to not be a hypocrite like Denny, then you need to be able to say, hey, Ross Chastain, you know, put yourself, mark it yourself, brain yourself, get yourself out there. Well, it's what you're doing with the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500.

You got the Indy 500 coming up, by the way. That's right. So don't let us down. All right. Don't go, I pick the winner! And then toss it over to Mike Tarrico. we're live. Hey, we're live. All right.

So it's time for some ass junior. We've had a fun conversation today, and we've been all over the board. We got a little serious at one point. Not combative, not at all. But, yeah, it's a little like last week's show, but a little different. Anyways, I am, I've said enough. Why don't we start with some questions you guys have sent in. They've been great all year long.

And go ahead, Andrew. I think every show is kind of like last. week's show, but a little different. This first question is coming from Izzy. George Russell, the F1 driver, talked about how he was distracted with all the added obligations before the Miami race. And obviously, NASCAR drivers have a lot of obligations before a race. Was it hard ever focusing on the task at hand when you were racing?

Oh, that's a great question, man. I mean, and that's a tough one to answer because a lot of times, those obligations are meeting fans, right? And so you got a responsibility to the sport, to your partners, to yourself, to go be doing these things, and usually they're fun. Usually, you know, you get doing Q&As and stuff can be pretty fun and break the tension

and break the nervous and the energy of the morning. Going to the driver's meeting actually was probably the most annoying thing. Because the driver's meeting had changed So in the 80s and 90s when I was a boy going to the driver's meeting, and I would get lucky enough to go sometimes with dad, not every time. It was literally NASCAR officials, drivers, and crew use. No one else in the room. I mean, it was like a closed off, you know, private meeting.

There might be one or two media in there, but really it was intended to be a private meeting so that the drivers could voice any concerns. and NASCAR didn't want those concerns to leave the room. So drivers could be honest and open. But, you know, over the years, you know, you started getting the CEOs of businesses and companies and all kinds of invited guests and more and more people.

And then, you know, when you'd go to like the Charlotte Drivers Meeting for the 600, man, it'd be 500 people in there. You know, and so now we're not saying anything. I ain't raising my hand and asking a question. Even if I'll just go up afterwards. say, hey, man, I had a question about this. But I'm, you know, now, and then they, they stopped, it stopped being an, you know, a verbal communication where the official would stand up there and read from a sheet of paper about the

rules. It became a video where we watch this video on TV. And then the video became pretty similar every week. And, yeah, so you'd be like, man, why are we even in here? This is, I know all this, I know all this stuff we're doing. this is more about a show. It became more about a show and sensationalized for the people that got invited to come in there. Hey, man, you're going to get to go to the drivers meeting and see the drivers, have their meeting.

And so that felt pointless and a lot of effort to get in there, super crowded, trying to get through the door and get out of there to do that. So that was probably the one thing that was more frustrating or not, you know, not, didn't feel quite as necessary as some of the other stuff you do in the morning. This next question coming from Luke, I was listening to Speed Street last week and hymae, Tim's you're going to have to help me with this pronunciation. Aliswari. Aliswari. Former Formula One driver turned music producer.

It got me thinking, what would you have wanted to do if you weren't racing? Oh, yeah. Music would have probably been in the conversation. I was I think creating a music label and being one of the scouts. You know, going out, listening to live bands, you know, because you're, I love to find music. I love to find songs that I like. The discovery, the search is, is really good.

Enjoyable for me. And then, you know, you get to meet a band that plays a song you like and you're like, hey man, you guys or girls or whatever, y'all have talent. Y'all, this is a great song. This could be a popular song. What is the, you know, what are the challenges to get that, you know, get that to be recognized and noticed, right? That would be a pretty tough challenge because, you know, there's so much good music

out there. And you, we all have bands we love that are, you know, that have a small following, you know, Or you're like, man, this song is so good. Why does this not get a bigger audience, right? How come this song isn't hitting nationally or globally? We all probably had those songs in our library that we're like, man, you know, that's one of my favorite songs. But so that challenge, I think, of trying to figure out how to get a band recognized on a global level is got to be pretty tough.

The competition and the shelf space is very limited. but and trying to get them to, you know, get the band to keep it together, right? Yeah. Like, hey, man, you know, this is your life, your career, you're, this is what, you know, you got to, yeah, go have fun, raise hell, whatever, but, you know, you do have to have some focus on continuing to create and be, you know, productive. That, that, that, yeah, I've gotten to know a couple bands and, man, they, they run, they run so hard. It's like, how can, like, how has, how's this good for the longevity of what,

we're doing here, right? Going hard in the paint. Seems like, yeah. That answer actually ties perfectly. It's almost like people knew you're going to say that. This question coming from Pete, you know, you mentioned you enjoy the discovery of artists. You know, you're a fan of the Dangerous Summer. Who are some of those

artists and bands that maybe haven't gotten some recognition that you're a fan of? Man, you know, there's a lot of band. Like I said, we all have artists in our library, in our phone or whatever that we love that just kind of hang right around where they are, right, in terms of no variety and celebrity. One of the bands was Lord Huron.

They were, they had, they've, you know, still making music now, but they had a couple records where I thought, oh, man, this is, this is going to be very popular. This, and it was. I mean, they had good recognition, but, you know, they, it's, Dangerous Summers won. You know, they've got, in, in the punk world, punk, they are, they're kings. They're, they're, they're very popular in that genre, but outside of that, that. You know, it's, you know, it's, everybody that I introduced them to likes it, but, you know, it doesn't really grow outside of that sort of genre. So it's just, it's interesting. But,

I've learned, you know, I don't know, I mean, there's, there's a hundred, hundred bands. If I looked at my phone right now, I could tell you that, that are fitting that sort of deal where they're, you know, I bet it's been fun discovering them but I've wondered why they don't sort of get bigger traction or it's even fun discovering them and then they get big and you kind of do them back on 21 pilots would be that so for my 40th birthday I'm 49 in October and for my 40th birthday we had 21 pilots come play and they were popular but they hadn't they didn't they were they're global now man they're selling out arenas all across the world and with We asked them to come play, and they were like, yeah, we'll come play. And they were great. They came, played a great show, gave maximum effort, hung out afterwards. Like, I'm standing at the bar at midnight, and the drummer comes up right behind me. He's like, okay, time to have drinks.

Let's hang out. They didn't skedaddle right after the show, right? It's really cool. And so to watch them now, all these years later, continue to be bigger and bigger. and oh it's really cool having felt like you you know you were on the train early yeah absolutely

we've got time for one more quick one you know you've always been outspoken about being a fan of sushi when did that Mike you have some opinions on that that seems like that's just funny I have been an outspoken proponent of sushi

in my bio when did your love for sushi start Um, my wife. So I was, um, I never went to, uh, I never, I was like, raw fish. No way, man. Um, you're going to cook it. I'll eat it. But, uh, Amy's like, oh, you got to do it's good.

You got to try it. You got to try it amami and, and all the things. And I would get the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, chicken, Mike. You know about this. I do. A thing or two. Yeah, man, Mike's cooked some, uh, cook some sushi and habachi. not the same

not sushi I've cooked I've cooked Habachi Habachi yeah he's professional Habachi chef

oh that's right yeah yeah so let's let's recognize that respect it so anyways hey Mike sort of like a table like this

um maybe that's why this table is so big Mike actually prefers it he feels at home yeah feels at home feels comfortable

put that an onion volcano right about here yeah did dang click click click clink clink clink clink clink clink Clink, clink, clink, clang, clang. I mean, I don't know. It's good.

I'll tell you one thing, man, when you're trying to watch your weight and, you know, lose some calories, sushi is a great direction in terms of eating locale food. If you're trying to, you know, if you're trying to get back into the onesie, as I often have to do to drive the race car, that sushi diet's a pretty decent one to be on. Good deal. And that's all we've got for this week. Yeah, I'm going to tell you. There's some interesting questions today.

Yeah. We were all over the board. Andrew, good job. Good job to everybody who sent those in. All right, so that's the show. I hope everybody enjoys it. Tuesday, May the 9th, episode 446, Mike. We got to tell everybody, too,

make sure, if you haven't, listen to Action Detrimental. And Doorbop Clear, that came out Monday. Obviously, our three episodes of the Dell Jr. Download this week. and Dirty Mo Doe. But also, Dirty Mo Doe will be out on Thursday. Also, Speed Street. Speed Street's got some cool stuff going on this entire month, right? Yes.

And so, Connor, obviously in the Indy 500, that is cranking up in the month of May. There'll be a lot of content coming out with those guys. So we get a chance to ask those guys a couple questions. All right. Connor and Joey. So I'll ask Connor. You can ask Joey. I'm going to ask Connor, and he's going to answer this on Speed Street.

Okay. All right. I want to know what's your mind. most embarrassing moment behind the wheel of a race car. Wow. All right. That's for Connor. My question for Joey will be,

what's your most embarrassing moment outside of race cars, which means all the time. Come on, Joey. He's got to have an embarrassing moment. I'm sure he, maybe a routine that bombed or something. Okay. Well, let him answer that. So Joey and Connor, we were looking for some embarrassment moments,

and we'll listen to Speed Street for your answers. All right. All right, y'all. Have a great day. We'll see you tomorrow. Robbie Riser on the Dale Jr. Download.