The Dale Jr. Download - 47 - Martinsville: Hurt Feelings & Bird Fingers

Episode Date: April 1, 2014

With Dale Earnhardt Jr. in studio & Steve Letarte on the phone, we break down Martinsville and ask the important question: Can Keselowski fight? 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.

This is Dale Jr., and you're listening to Dirty Moe Radio. Whatever you do is working. Do you see the guys coming back to you? Your patience is being rewarded. Well, pit when it's over, 8822. The Dale Jr. download, presented by Spy, starts now. With Mike Davis and Amanda Troutman, I am Taylor Zarzer. Steve LaTart will be calling into the program here in just a little bit

as we recap what happened with Dale Jr.'s third place finish at the paper clip there in Martinsville. Mike, typically, we get a message from Dale Jr. on the plane on the way back home. This is no April Fool's Day joke. You're telling me we don't have that this week? It's no April Fool's Day joke, man. He actually sent it. We played it on Amanda's yesterday, but why play his audio when he's in studio with us this morning? Right?

I think that's probably a better idea, yeah. If he's sitting right there, we should just have him talk instead. That's a good idea. Hello. Welcome to your studio. Yeah, this is nice. I come to check it out. All right.

What do you think of it? It's pretty neat. I think we could. Spurs it? Yes, work on some. The interior decorators. You know of an interior decorator, don't you? Yeah, Amy could come in here and turn it out a little bit.

Yeah. It's nice. The room is nice. Yeah. And I like that, you know, it's part of the store. So when the fans are here, they kind of see how it's done. That's it. See, yeah, it's not that hard to do, I guess.

Come visit us fans to junior nation retail store. and you can be part of Dirty Mail Radio. Nobody here. Pretty quiet today. It's early. We tape this early in the morning, so junior fans don't typically wake up at 9 o'clock. That's right. That's right. But certainly we do want them to come see us in the future.

And we got a lot to talk about this week, my friend. That was an interesting race. And I know that you probably might have been, I don't know if frustrates the right word, but unsure of what to expect there on Sunday, given that you didn't get any practice time on Saturday. I know we're disappointed in qualifying on Friday. So what did you expect on Sunday? Yeah, Friday was really, really frustrating.

We have, you know, I don't know what the reason is for our performance on Friday, but that's typically our MO is to, we struggle in practice and scramble. like we're scrambling and and pouring over notes and doing a lot of unnecessary worrying the night before every race and then on Sunday everything kind of turns out okay so it just seems to happen that way I don't know why we didn't have you know we usually the way the reason I was concerned is because of all the tracks we run at where we practice poorly martinsville's actually one track where we always practice well and we were we were on the top of the charts last year and we're always in the top 10, one of the faster cars in practice there.

So I was pretty worried when we weren't putting any laps down. We were running laps just outside the top 20. Just didn't have any speed. But it turned out that you didn't have to be fast on Sunday. You just had to know how to take care of your left retire and survive. I got a question, though, for you. Your verbiage on Twitter, Saturday after practice was rained out, was we're going to have to throw darts at it and see what sticks, see if it works out.

Now, that's probably not the most encouraging verbiage I've ever heard. Yeah. But how accurate was that? I'm trying to learn how to, that's pretty accurate. And I'm trying to learn how to work. Because you know me. Like when I think we're not good, I'm going to say, hey, man, I don't think we're good. And, but I know, like, when you're trying to talk to your fans or interact with your fans on Twitter, you can't just say, hey, man, we're stink.

We suck. We suck right now. Because then it's like, and then you tag Steve LaTart. Yeah, talk to him. That's right. Number one, you know, your fans don't, I want to be honest, and it's my, it's my first instinct to say the truth. And then HMS, PR, and Steve, the guys on the, you know, everybody on the team,

they're like, man, what's the deal, man? Why are you so bad, waste it down? Why is the negative? Oh, did they say that to you? No, but they will. Okay. Like, if I say, hey, man, you know, we're not running good, I'll go out. to the car for practicing and my Jason

Bradette, my car chiefs would be like, man, why are you talking us, why are you talking us down like that, man? It was the deal. Cheer up. Man, sensitive, huh? Yeah, so I kind of got to watch, you know, how I word things, especially when I'm trying to update everybody on Twitter because fans really like that.

I'm starting to learn all this stuff. Like, after you practice, they want to know how the car is doing. And sometimes I'm on there, telling them how it's doing. Sometimes I'm not. Normally when I'm not, like when you don't hear from me, it's because we're scrambling. Okay. Noted.

Noted. We're playing darts. Well, I appreciate that, though. You want to be honest, but you don't want to come across as angry. Well, you know, I think I can't help but just be genuine about how I feel. And a lot of times I'm going to, a lot of times I'm going to be, you know, worry warped about it and probably more concerned than necessary. but, you know, I like the, I want to run good. I want to win practice.

I want to win qualifying. I want to win races. And when we're not the fastest, you know, you start scrambling in your mind trying to figure it out, even if you're just looking for a little bit. Friday, we were struggling pretty bad. And we looked at the setup of the car and the notes and all that stuff and looked at our teammates and who was fast and tried to diagnose what about their setup was making them fast and see the, you know, the glaring differences between our stuff and their stuff.

and we found things that we thought were going to help us. So by, without having, you know, what's weird about racing and what's weird about this weekend is without even turning a lap, we went from freaking out to, man, we're pretty confident in 24 hours without even being on the racetrack. So, you know, you do some excessive worrying for no good reason. I think it should be noted, and I know I'm only speaking for myself, but the team is so good, and you're so good at this,

that even when you are worrying on Twitter, it seems like I just assume on Sunday the team's going to be pretty competitive. Now, maybe that's not the accurate. Maybe I should be more worried. I'm just saying this team runs too good right now to think that, oh, we're really going to be a 26-place car on Sunday. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, Steve and Kevin Meandron and the guys,

they are really good at helping find, you know, 10 spots. you know on the racetrack they're you know somehow some way we're going to finish you know better than the car should finish better than we should finish just just on their strategy and expertise on top

the pit box during the race and another thing too you know it's like Steve was talking about this the other day just when we're talking about looking at the other setups that you know that we're able to look at with our teammates Steve and Kevin aren't too proud to use those ideas.

And, you know, Steve mentioned it to me other days. Like, some crew chiefs are almost bullheaded about using something else on somebody's car pride. Yeah, they're like, man, I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to make this work. And even if it won't work, I'm not going to admit it and put your stuff in. That's the problem.

Yeah, and so, you know, we're not too proud. You know, we'll lean on our teammates and we use that to our advantage. That's what it's there for. I mean, that's what you're trying, you're there to help each other. That's a huge coup. I mean, to have that because in all walks of life, there's so many examples of people that are going to be bullheaded like that.

But that's a great thing to have. Four top five finishes for the year, more than any other driver and a points lead here after six races. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is proud to have innovative eyewear brand spy on board this year as a sponsor of the Dale Jr. download. Learn more about spy at spyoptic.com. Junior, before we bring Stevie in here, one last thing for you, is this the track you want more than any other now.

I mean, given your, all the success that you've had there, all the top five, top three finishes, all the laps you've led at the paperclip, do you want a grandfather clock more than any other trophy at the moment? It's hard to say, which race I'd love to win the most, but it's definitely, you know, it ranks right up there. I think the clock means a lot. Like I've said before, you know,

I grew up in a house with one or two of those things going off. every day at noon and you know it's just it we had one when we lived in the lake house we had one right next to the front door

and it went off you know at noon and at midnight on the hour it would ring and you all never forget it and that was a that was just one of the you know one of the things

you remember things from your childhood and I remember you know the Bristol trophies and how big and unique those were compared to most trophies and the great. the clock from Martinsville and how unique that was, the Schenaltique boats that you would win at Atlanta,

and Dad had a few of those in a warehouse. And just, you know, those things that you never, you know, forget and you associate with winners and success in the sport, and that clock's one of those things. So, yeah, I think, you know, it would mean a lot to me to be able to get one of those and be able to put it in the house somewhere. Did you see that NASCAR.com story yesterday? It was the headline that says,

they cost me an expeditive clock yeah i don't even remember saying that i knew that would be the case i knew like if somebody did i even say that i don't recall you saying that i was listening to radio but i didn't know if maybe you did because since you used expedive they would have probably bleep that out on the uh yeah on the radio thing i don't think um i'm you know i'm not calling let's pretend you did what driver were you talking about no i don't even think i said that and i may have but I don't really, I think that was manufactured. We had some lap cars that we caught. You know, we were passing at the end of the race,

and a couple of them gave me the outside as an option, and that's their, you know, their right to do. They were just trying to, you know, be courteous and give me some room, and I would have rather ran, went low, and had been to shorter distance unless wearing tear on my tires, and I had to go around the outside of them. And when I'm, you know, when you're trying to catch Jimmy Johnson and Kurt Bush in the final few laps, you're dealing with inches,

You don't get car links back in the corner You get a few feet if you're lucky And when you got to go around the outside of somebody in the corner to lap them You know you lose about two or three car links To the leaders and you just can't make that back up So that was that was kind of you know they had to deal with traffic to Traffic too but it just seemed like those two things there Really took the wind out of ourselves trying to get around a couple of them guys

But that's um So it's feasible it's you didn't say it I didn't say that we could have thought it Man, I have good manners on the radio. Of course you do. Yeah. All right. Let's bring our buddy Steve LaTard on here and talk a little bit about his thoughts.

Again, four top five finishes for the year, more than any other team and a points lead as well as they head to Texas. Steve, you feeling pretty good about the way things are going? Yeah, I mean, it's been a pretty solid start to the year so far. We've got to win. That makes the rest of the races seem a whole lot less stressful. But we've had fast cars. Had a little bit of trouble there. a little hiccup for two races in a row, but we kind of got it back on track at Martinsville.

Sorry, I was, uh, junior was just showing me a tweet here, Taylor, so I tapped out this conversation for a second. Damn, it's only two-fix folks. Stick with us, but I mean, come now. I'm having a hard time processing. I'm being part of the podcast here, and y'all got to pay attention and ask a question. I'm sorry, I could be a doctor. I think he has ADD, folks.

Oh, all right. So, well, what was the first question you just asked? am I supposed to be asking you the question? That may work. Steve and I'll do the interview. Yeah, I'm sorry. Okay, I got a question for Stevie. Y'all ready for me to ask it?

Yeah, go ahead. Stevie, all right, talk us through this decision on lap 219. So much was made about it. You're not aware of this unless you've watched the race. But your decision to stay out, and Junior actually took the lead, but you're opting to stay on what? I think it was, what, 10 or 11 lap tires at the time? Yeah, I mean, basically we've had a good car all day, and you were kind of riding around there towards the top five,

and there's a little bit of an accordion, depending on where you started, outside or inside, you fall back to eighth or ninth, get up to the top five. And really, with 11-lap tires, there's a couple things in the back of our minds there. One is we were trying to save a set of tires. We were going through them pretty fast, and when you tires were going to be a premium to the end. And, I mean, to be truthful, I thought five or six guys would stay out. So it was a chance to kind of get the lead and run some laps up there. Unfortunately, only a couple guys stayed out, which made it a little more stress. than it needed, but fortunately we had a good enough car to allow it to work, and we stayed

near the front because a couple guys tried it the next cycle of pit stops, and it hurt them. So we got lucky there. If we could go back and do it again, I'm not sure that was the call we would make the second time around, but it worked out well for us. So you were a little nervous, maybe? Just a little. You know, the problem is it's kind of like, you know, there's nothing you could do at this point, the decision's made, so we just kind of stick with it and see how it works out.

Junior, did you think he was nuts? You know, it's never fun being out there. You like your tires, don't you? Yeah, when you don't have as much as good of tires. But I know that when Steve makes that call, it's kind of fun at the same time because I know he believes in the car, believes in us, and expects us to be able to, you know, do what he, however his strategy is going to play out, he's seeing it in his head.

Yeah. He's a gambler out. He's got a vision. And it's kind of fun to understand that he, he thinks we're good enough to be out there. I mean, he's a gambler. Let's just be honest. Well, I mean, he don't, you know, I've been in situations where, you know,

you're told to stay out and you're like, really? Like, really? I've heard you ask that on the radio, as a matter of fact. You're lying. You're like, come on. Nine times out of ten, you know, with Steve, it's, you know, he believes in our ability to, you know, make this strategy work and, you know, and every time it pretty much works out in our favor.

And Steve, to what Dale Jr. is talking about right there, how much of your decision at Martinsville was based off the fact that you already have a win? You said you'd take more risks after that victory. Did you consider that when you made that decision on Sunday? I mean, it sounds good to say that that was in consideration, but no, not really. I mean, these races are so just involved that you kind of plug yourself into them, and you're totally in the day. You can't really think about the season or the year, the this, or just, you know, we're trying to win Martinville. Any way we can try to win Martinville. And, you know, that's kind of a thought, you know, and that wasn't really a huge gamble. You know, even if it didn't work out, we were only halfway through the race.

It wasn't going to change the whole course of the day, but it was an opportunity to try to improve ourselves a little bit, you know. I mean, yeah, when you stay out on the fuel at Vegas, you might think about it a little bit. But really, no, you just try to win every race. That's our goal. I know the fans don't believe that, but, man, we tried to win them all last year, too. So it's just, you know, that's what you're trying to do every week. Stevie, let's back up a week. I think I speak on behalf of all rednecks saying that your solution to fix that bent splitter brace was an act of beauty.

It deserves its own corner in the Hall of Fame. I just, I got to know the origin of that, though, because you sort of talked about how that was something you guys tried at the shop. whose idea was that and how much beer was involved when you guys came up with that idea just to kind of just drop the car? I'll be honest, there was no beer involved, which is really quite amazing for such a creative idea. But anytime we bring a car back with any sort of damage, we always kind of get the shop to walk around it and just, hey, you know, how could we do this better? We have a lot of smart guys that work here, and sometimes you can make things really complicated and sometimes you can fix them pretty simple. And I remember we had a car at the middle of last year where we had the rack and the splitter got pushed down, and that was kind of our problem.

I think it was Kentucky when we hit that piece of debris. It kind of bent the splitter up, and we were trying to get it back down, and we started talking about how we could move the splitter around. And someone here at the shop, the great idea, man, it's not that strong. We just need to drop it on a piece of tungsten or a piece of lead. And we did, and amazingly, it moves pretty easy. So that was it. That was our new splitter plan.

And, you know, sometimes, you know, simple is better. And it worked. It works actually really well at California. So I can't remember who exactly came up with the idea. But sometimes, you know, you can overcomplicate stuff. We're just simple folks, man. We just try to keep it easy. What would that feel like, Jr.?

Well, it wasn't as jarring as I was expecting it to be. Because he said it's going to be violent. Yeah, he was like, prepare yourself. He was given the legal verbiage. Hey, in case of injury. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was, I was, you know, when they were dropping, I was like, man, this doesn't work. We're going to look like idiots.

Was there a chance that you were going to cause more damage? No. No, we hit the wall at 160,000. Right, yeah, it's pretty low at this point. The, uh, yeah, Dale Jr.'s description was pretty good. The left rear tire went down and the right side of the car went into the wall. That's right. Yeah.

You're going to Texas this week, Steve, and obviously this is a chase race. And when you go to a place that you're going to go again in the chase, does that change your preparation at all, just given how important that race is later on? Well, you have to be careful because a lot will change between now and November. I'm sure we'll get a lot smarter with the setups and things will change. But it does, to a point, you know, you need to make sure you take some really good notes when you come home and understand what you would have won, you know, what you would have done different. And that's really why having a good car, Martinsville on Sunday really helped us for the fall, I think.

And, you know, Texas is one of those tracks that, I mean, I love. It's old pavement. It's really rough. There's multiple grooves. You know, there's a ton of ways to get around there as a driver. If your car's not going quite like you want, there's a bunch of options as a crew chief to kind of adjust on them. So it's a cool racetrack. It's a fun race track to be at.

But without a doubt, since there's the chase involved, when we go back the second time, that we'll want to make sure that we maybe try a couple different paths. packages in practice, maybe try some bigger changes. It's a pretty unique schedule. So that's going to be a big difference for us this week. You know, we practice on Friday, practice again on Saturday, then we qualify, then we race, which is, you know, odd for us. So we'll have to try to adapt to that schedule and make some good decisions. One question that I was, we've been talking about, I've been talking about how we went from, you know, being so poor in practice and struggling and worried on Friday.

And in a 24-hour span without even making a lap on the track, we were, we were, we were pretty confident by the time race started. What's that process like for you as a crew chief? And what are some of the things, what is your go-to remedy in a situation like that where you can't practice? You know the car needs to get a whole lot better. Like what are some of the things that you know you need to do?

Well, I mean, you know, the most stressful night for any crew chief, or at least for me, is Thursday night. Because, you know, we never unload with a setup we don't think it's going to work. And we do all this work leading up to these races. But until you go practice on Friday, you know, we don't really know. And it was unfortunately pretty obvious really quick on that practice on Friday that we didn't have what we needed. And, you know, we had plans to try to fix it, and those weren't working. So you kind of grin and bear it through Friday.

And then when the rain starts to come on third, it really happens before the rain comes on Saturday, because our goal would be to make big improvements by Saturday. So we kind of, you know, we dig into your comments, we figure out what you're saying about the car, and then instantly we go to our database of information of our three teammates. We try to look at what they're saying, see if they're describing the same issues, see if anybody changed anything. And then, you know, Kevin, our engineer, does such a great job of really looking through, I call it like the woods.

You know, he digs through all the trash to try to find the parts and pieces that really affect that part of the corner or that part of the car. And it's kind of like a puzzle. You know, you kind of, you start with the outside of the puzzle. You try to find all the pieces that have a flat. on them and you make the ring of the puzzle and you fill in from there it's really the same way with the race car and you know we take the foundation parts of the car the geometries the suspension items the big items and we start to fill in the outside of the puzzle and once we have that

figured out then we could start zooming in on the really small parts and pieces that you know those are what makes a difference from a 15th to a first place car you know it's not huge parts anymore you know Dale can can back me up on this it's frustrating sometimes in practice to change the small things you change and have them make such a big difference. And that's the race car we have nowadays, and that's what makes it really hard when you're off to try to find speed come Sunday. And in the spirit of April Fools, do you remember what the biggest prank did anybody's ever pulled on you is?

I don't know. I must not be a very fun guy or I'm always laughing, so they don't really get a lot of enjoyment out of pulling a prank on me because I can't remember any pranks that's really been pulled on me. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No pranks have ever been pulled on you? None that were memorable. Yeah, we got to change that.

Oh, well. I'm just, you know, well, here's the thing. You know, 85 people who'm around all day long work for me. So that knocks the edginess out of the pranks, I'm guessing, quite a bit. And then, you know, I avoid all the rest of y'all that I know are going to prank me on today. So I try to keep myself, you know, off the radar. But no, no, I'm not much for prank sort of guy. So I think the other 365, I tweeted it last night that, you know, real pranksters,

scoff at April Fool's because all the amateur is trying to play along. That's right. So, you know, us that enjoy life, the other 365 days a year, this isn't a real special day for us, isn't it, Mike? That's a good. No, that's an excellent point. I mean, what you call April, April Fool's day, we call Thursday. That's right.

That's right. Another day in the week, ends with why. We're going to have some jokes, someone's going to laugh. Right. But you are, we only have seven or eight months, Mike, to do this, though. Yeah, we've got to do something. It may not have to be on April Fool's, but we've got seven or eight months to do something.

Stevie's a target. Well, perhaps, you know, just keep this in the back of your mind that, you know, I'll have a lot of time to get even. So just be careful of how aggressive you get. What, you're going to call us out on TV or something? That would it took, I would. Oh, goodness. I can't wait to see what kind of commentator you are.

Like, to me, you're going to be like the guy that wears the suit from the waist up but has, you know, the jams and the shorts on underneath the flip-flops. Yeah, oh, yeah, I'm going to put my rat tail behind me. I'm going to wear my shorts from the waist down, but I'll have a, you know, a suit and a coat on for you. Oh, well. Good stuff, man. Thanks for calling in. Hey, man, I appreciate them.

I'm finally glad you get the studio done, so I can call in and harass you all a little bit. We'll do it again. All right, guys, thank you. All right, before we go to reaction theater, since Junior, you asked Steve LaTard about April Fool's, do you have one that's happened to you or you've gotten away with before we go any further here? My favorite prank that I pulled on a buddy of mine was I put a thousand crickets in his bedroom. And I always, I thought that had to be pretty miserable at night for a couple days at least. We had a couple other pranks where we would sneak into people's bedrooms and throw a bucket of water on them than a bag of flour.

That happened, yeah. Yeah, I happened a couple times, but it was such a tough mess. Probably got mad. Yeah, it was making some people mad. He said he went to the hospital. I don't know why. They couldn't see the fun. See, those are tangible jokes.

I mean, like, that's real life right there. Like, my nine-year-old daughter was saying that she wanted to pull a prank on mom, and she wanted to do something with cockroaches instead of crickets. And I said, see, that's a real deal. Like, she's really going to be mad. That's not a, like, hey, we're going to go somewhere. We've got this going on, et cetera. You can say, I'm just kidding.

April Fool's. Like, that's the heavy-duty prank. The heavy-duty pranks, you've got to be ready for people not to see the fun in it. That's right. You know, you've got to be risk versus reward. But I think the worst prank that ever got pulled on me was about 10 years ago. A buddy of mine got, had a couple that were expecting and had the girl produce a positive pregnancy test and left it in my bathroom. And I walked in there just doing something, you know, normal day, go in there and look on.

laying on the counter. I'm like, what's this? And I got looking at it, and I was like, what the hell? So that was a very rough moment. Oh, that is good stuff. That was the, I mean,

that's probably the best prank ever. Yeah. I could not. I can't imagine doing that to somebody. That was the worst. And that guy that pulled that prank is actually employed here. He still. He's still here.

So he didn't lose his job. Wow. That was a. rebuttal to being getting a bucket of water and a bag of flour. That was his comeback. So you have to take it another. Never mess with him again. Wow.

That's some funny stuff there. But it takes some stones to do that. All right. Well, it's time now for a reaction theater. And we reward the happiest caller we did last week with a pair of Spies, Happy Lynn, sunglasses. And guess what? We're going to do it again this week. And thanks to our sponsor, this happy fan will be receiving a pair of Dale Jr.'s

signature spy dirty-moe sunglasses with the happy lens. And you can learn more about the happy lens at spy optic. Dot forward slash happy. Here we go. Reaction Theater. Hell yes. Steele Jr. kicking ass and taking names to that. Where you don't, bud.

No thanks to T.J. You stupid ass. Get you some damn pit. We can't be losing positions because you've got a P-P. That's awesome. What was that with that? T.J. like in the fourth cost, he goes, hey, guys, got to go to the bathroom. I'll see you.

And we're like, is he okay? Is that code or something? What was funny? What was funny is, like, so you're Matt, you're envisioning in his head running to the bathroom. And then, like, 10 seconds later, he's like, Lucky Dog's coming on outside. And I'm like, is he doing that from the urinal? I wonder if he watched his hands before he said that.

He'll get the call from NASCAR that the Lucky Dog's coming. So I imagine he's standing at the urinal. Right. He doesn't actually have to see the Lucky Dog coming around. I'll tell Del Jr. Lucky dog's coming around. I'm like, no way. That's hilarious.

I knew a reaction theater caller would catch that. They were not going to be able to let T.J. go into the bathroom during caution. I love it. Stay on T.J.'s. That is funny stuff. Don't even see the track. Lucky Dog is coming.

All right, what we have next? Who knew Brad Keselowski had such a long middle finger? I mean, he drove that some-fitting car around that place for two laps, one-handed with his middle-fing. out the window at Kurt Busch and Fox showed the whole thing. Cracked me up. You guys kicked ass today. You're coming back from, what, 26th away from the front?

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. What'd you think of that, Jr.? Kislauski and Kurt Busch? Yeah, Brad was really upset about what happened on Pit Road, but I thought Kurt was just, you know, trying to get by. Saw two guys getting tangled up there and just went to, he can't stop.

Who knows what's behind him? So he was just trying to get off pit road. You don't have to say who, but have you flipped anybody off this year? Maybe. You know, it happens. Yeah. I don't know if you remember this, but we were watching in-car footage years ago in the bus,

and it was funny because you're sitting there driving. I think it was like an Atlanta or something. You're driving off, and you just hang one right out the window at somebody. You're passing them. Sometimes I don't really flip people off. Like if somebody does something, I'll just put my hand out the winter like, hey, what the hell? Because years ago, Rusty Wallace was talking to somebody, and I was standing there listening,

and he said the one thing that really bothers him is to be flipped off. Like, you know, you can do anything. There's a lot of things you can do, but don't flip me the bird. And so I definitely reeled it in after that. Yeah, wow. It'd be cool if you could just use an emoji and, you know, flash that on your car. All right, what we have next.

Man, what a great day for Stevie and the boys. Welcome back, PJ. Man, he earned his paycheck today. Hard racing by junior. Hard racing. and they finished third. We're going to Texas with the point fleet. And man, bum, bum, bum, bum, I'm loving it.

Wow. How about that? She's singing right there. Yeah, we need to get Hogue in here. Let's give me my headset. Yeah, what did you think about that Hogue? Hogue. I think we've got people starting to sing now, and I think we have you to blame for it.

I heard the, I listened to them all yesterday. Oh, did you? Oh, look at you. Oh, he's ahead of it. Yeah, I guess so. Hey, I found the DJ one. That was good. That's right.

All right, what we have next? Kurt Bush, that whiny bitch, I wish you would have quit like he said he was going to earlier in the race. You had something, man. You had something for all of them. They haven't said what the point standings are right now, but I've got to bet you're number one. It's an amazing race, Jr. I'm so excited. I've eaten all my fingernails off.

I drank all my beer. This is amazing. Man. We need to send that guy some potato chips. Are you talking about it? Yeah, well, that was a happy guy right there. Yeah, I mean, just the fingernails that saved you. That's right.

That's a good idea. That's right. He's a contender for the Happy Lens, Dirtymoe sunglasses there. What do we have next? I'm so happy. I'm so happy. I'm so happy that they got their place. Anyways, I just want to say great work of 88 team coming from starting position 26 all the way to third. Great work.

Keep it up, guys. What have you done, Hogue? That was a different version of Happy. Oh, so this is Hokes. Hokes' idea? No, he started singing last week. And now all of a sudden, this is a good. just a big musical best.

Man, reaction theater isn't what it used to be. Right. It's better. Oh, you think. Yeah. Speak for yourself. Next. Let me tell you what's got me wrong on up today.

I heard Brad Keselowski talking shit after the race of Kirk Bush, talking like he was going to whip his ass. I bet my brother-in-law 20-fitting dollars. If Brad Keselowski's never been in a fist fight in his damn life, I need a bucket of shit if that guy's ever been in a fist fight and won. I know if Kezalowski's around 30 more acres, over there's got to know if he's ever been in a fight. There ain't no way that boy's ever been in a fight.

That's our boy, Dan. That's our boy, Dan. I think the junior fan, we'll see him in Texas. We'll see him in Texas. I think Brad Keselowski said that he told me or mentioned a couple of us one time that when he was in high school, he was in fights often. Really? Yeah.

Come on. That's what he said. I may be speaking out of term, but I think he's been in a few. I don't know whether he was, you know, just. Just a, you know, feisty guy or, you know, on the end of some comments, people pushing him around or whatever, had to stand up for himself. But I think he said that because we were talking about, you know, I don't think we were as excited as that guy was, but we were talking about Brad and fist fights.

And I think he was like, yeah, when that's high school, I was used to be in quite a few. All right. What a shock. Hogue gets this one in here. What we have? Because I'm happy. Junior's back in first. Oh, yeah.

Oh, man. I don't know about that. I got us confused. He must be it. He must be April Fool's. Yeah. I don't come in here to get heckled. Well, you have all your...

You got nobody to blame yourself. Yeah. You have your three fans that all called into reaction theater here. You know what? Their last name is Hogue, too. Is Hogue giving away free hats without telling us? What was up with that, by the way? Yeah, so I saw this on Twitter.

Anybody that calls in and tells it says I'm cool, gets a free time. What was that with the Junior Motorsports hat, though, that you pulled off the trailer that Junior was saying it was the ugliest hat? That was the Harley Davidson edition. Yeah, yeah. Hashtag one ugly hat. With the story behind it, he was like, man, we need more stuff to give away. Well, we didn't have any, a lot of giveaway items on the hauler, so I ran on the merch hauler. And I asked our guy working, I said, merch hauler.

What do you need help with selling? We'll sign it. We'll boost sales. He gave me this hat. It was the ugliest head on there. I'd no wonder they couldn't sell it. Came back, he signed it. 30 minutes later, he's texted me saying people are coming to the hauler asking for it, so it worked.

Oh, okay. You merch guy. Yeah, boy. You're a merch. You're a merch. Spend much time at the merch holler? That's funny. Hold up.

Stop. Before we play the next call, I got to say, Hogue told me the funniest thing yesterday. Do you care if I bring it up? I know exactly what you're going to say. He says that I guess you guys run the helicopter coming back. and Junior just flately just, you know, spits out an observation, and he says, oh, tell him what you said. What did you say?

Part about the potato head. Oh, well, it started. He said, my stomach hurts. This is earlier the weekend. I said, what's wrong would you eat? No, I was doing abs. Oh. And he called me, he said, you look like Mr. Potato Head.

We were driving in the main Saturday. Yeah. All right. All right. And T.J., I was talking about working out and how my stomach was hurting. I didn't know you were working out. He said my stomachers. I thought he ate something bad.

You said something about working out, and T.J. said something about his little arms, because he's got tiny arms. And then so we said, yeah, he looks like he looks like a misnipatia head because, like, his torso and arms and legs don't match. It looks like he's... I'm proportionate. It looks like he's six different people. Like six different parts.

I'm proportionate. I don't look funny. It's like you got... You're going to give me a complex that you're going to do. It's already happened, right? That's the whole... Let's play one last call here on Reaction Theater. Evidently, yelling, Joe Jr.

I mean, if you get yourself kicked out of a media center, that ought to win you some signature 88 collection spies. Do you all agree, Jr.? Yeah, agreed. A couple points. Amanda, what do you think? Oh, yeah, definitely. I think that's the one.

All right, that's the one. If Dale says, yeah, that's the one. There you go. All right, so we'll be contacting you, homie. Amanda, we're going to reach out. out to him, get him his sunglasses. Thank you to Spy for doing this, and we'll do it sporadically throughout the season and also give away other stuff.

So you guys got to keep calling Reaction Theater. Call us and stand out. Make the cut. The crazier you are. Be ridiculous. The more likely you will be on this podcast. All right. Reaction Theater is open 24-7.

All you have to do is call toll-free, like Mike Davis likes to say, like it's 1983, 1853, 1855-740-1902, and leave us your voicemail message. and we'll play the best each week right here on Dirty Mo Radio. All right. Now, before we throw the white flag, I want to remind you again this week on Wednesday, check out Fast Lane Family with Kelly Earnhardt Miller. That show's going great. Friday, you've got J.R.M. 360, the podcast.

Tune in if you need a good laugh going into the weekend. Lord knows you'll laugh at Mike Davis, if anything else. And on Monday, we always recap the full weekend. Amanda Troutman does a great job with that. Junior Motorsports nationwide and late model teams and Dale's Sprint Cup series run. in Texas. That's not all Junior's doing in Texas. Mike Hogue, let's throw the white flag.

White flag right there, white flag. Hi-de-ho, Junior fans. This is Mike Hogue, and I am the man. April fools. Dale Jr. will leave here this morning and head to Hendrick Motorsports for his usual competition meetings. Other than that, it's light Tuesday. On Thursday, we'll be flying to Texas

as nationwide series practice starts that evening. You miss something on here. We're going to a clean coal appearance in Mississippi on the radio text. Hey, hey, Hope, keep reading. Shoot. That's right. Junior is in the nationwide series race this weekend, but before we get to the track, we'll make us stop in Mississippi to visit a coal mining plant.

This is all on behalf of our friends at American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Apologized. I'm sorry, I jumped the gun. All right. Like I said, Thursday night, Jr. will have a couple of practices in the number 88 Raghu Chevrolet. He was one of our four junior motorists. sports drivers in the race. J.R.M. has never had four entries in a race.

That's a little factoid for you in case you're asked. Thank you. Also for junior motorsports. Kevin Harvick will be the number five hump brothers pizza Chevrolet, Chase Salli, the number nine Napa Auto Part Chevrolet and Regan Smith and the number seven taxlayer.com Chevrolet. If you haven't done your taxes yet, my God, what are you waiting for? You got like two weeks.

You'll go to jail. Friday night's nationwide race starts at 8.30 p.m. Eastern on ESPN 2. Dale Jr. will be the in race reporter. Sunday's Cup race is set to start at 3 p.m. Easter? Oaks. Easter? 2 p.m. Central on Fox. Dale Jr. will be back in his familiar National Guard paint scheme. This is Mike Hoag, and my job is done here.

There you go. Both races, by the way, on PRN, shameless plug. Looking forward to that on Friday and again on Sunday. Good to work, my friend, Hogue. We have started a monster here, Mike Davis. People are asking for Hogue to read White Flag every week now. I only contribution. Well, if he'll read whatever you put on this paper, I see why.

Yeah. Well, a year ago is Taylor, I'm so nervous about coming on this podcast. Now it's, man, the guy's turned into a star. That's all it. He didn't have a microphone earlier. And I was, it's awkward. What's it awkward? We'll fix that.

We need to get another microphone in here. All right. Well, Junior, thanks for coming by today. We're having a blast doing this. It's been a lot of fun this season so far, especially. And the fan interaction you're having with everybody on Twitter has been tremendous, I know, and here on the podcast as well. So we're very grateful.

I appreciate it. All right. Thanks as well to Mike Hogue for stopping by. Amanda Troutman, great work as always. For Mike Davis, I'm Taylor-Zarzer. You've been listening to the Dale Jr. download. Thanks for listening to Dirty Moe Radio.