The Dale Jr. Download - 474 - Radically Changing Richmond

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Dale Earnhardt Jr. joins co-host Mike Davis back in the Bojangles Studio for another edition of Dirty Air. After the weekend at Richmond, many are offering up their opinions on the latest short track showcase of the NextGen car, and Dale was ready to provide some insight: New steakhouse discourse  Fords looked strong at Richmond PJ1 vs. resin Dale responds to Denny Hamlin and Carson Hocevar 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.

What are you make? I am weird. You are weird. Bob! Whoa! Mr. Dallan Hart Jr. That family techniques have got. Gives you more than just a potato salad.

That's the voice of my co-host and one of my best friends in the whole wide world. Mike Davis. We're screwed. What was that me? No, we're not standing in that box together in our underwear. Are you kidding me, Mike? Oh, my God. It's hilarious.

Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. Welcome back to another episode of the Dale Jr. Downlow. My co-host, Mike Davis, is Tuesday, August 1st. July's gone. Which is depressing because the summer's going. I've had a lot of fun this summer. School's back in session. School's coming back.

That's always the big indicator. Yeah, we're getting ready to start kindergarten in a couple weeks. But we're here in the Bojangles studio today. and we're happy to be here. Looking across the table, still no Lionel diacast late-mile stock car. Do we have an idea when that's coming? No idea. You haven't told them?

No. That we're looking for it? Nope. I assume that the diecast people can be responsible for the diecast manufacturing and the schedules in which they are distributed. I certainly thought that they might be giving us a heads up since I ask for it or since I ask for it every week. I haven't heard a heads up.

Coming soon. Sounds good. You'll be the first to know. I doubt it. All right. So we're going to, we're going to do some industry topics here about Richmond. We're going into Richmond.

But first off, I got into a debate with some friends over something that I'd never heard of. We went to dinner in Pocono. And this carried over to this past weekend in Richmond. When you order a steak, Mike, what do you get when you order your steak and they say, hey, what temperature do you want it? Medium. Okay. And what are the other options?

Well, there's well done, medium well, then medium, and then there's rare, medium, medium. Yeah, rare, medium, yeah. That's what I thought. So we're sitting there at dinner in Pocono, and I get a salmon plate and a couple, pretty much everybody else that gets a steak. And the lady asks, well, how do you want it cooked? And the guy says, medium plus. Hmm. I haven't heard that one.

And I said, what the hell? And he's like, yeah, medium plus. I'm like, I mean, he's like, is that like medium rare? What the hell? Why don't you just say medium rare? That's silly. Plus, what is this? I've never heard anybody say, I want my steak medium plus.

and yeah everyone at the table started going oh that's just made you made it sound like this totally common term like they just been it's just been there all their lives right i'm 49 this year and i'm hearing medium plus for the very very first time and you want answers and so uh apparently medium is a hunt you know medium plus is like now 10 degrees warm warm warmer than medium, but it's not medium well. Like it's right in the middle between medium and medium well. Okay? And so if you want to get on to Google for us back there in the back,

give us the temperature on medium, medium plus, and medium well. And so while we're waiting on that, we're sitting there having this argument. And I'm like, well, why do you want to be such a high maintenance? and just and ask for a medium plus, you know, is the, when you order that, is a chef back air pumping his fist going, hell yeah, I'm looking for a challenge. Right. You know, or is he going? I'm looking for an inconvenience today.

Right. And the medium plus guy just gave it to me. Yes. And so I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know, of course, you know, now after this conversation, I learned that there's specific temperatures that, uh, that note which one is which, right? So, all right, if you're asking for a medium plus, I suppose you're cooking it to 140 degrees or something like that.

So is a guy back there going, all right, nailed it, 140 degrees? This one's coming off the plate, you know, coming off the grill and onto the plate and out the door, there's your medium plus. And it gets to the table and you're like, all right, you know, it's, it just seems like an unnecessary extra step. Yeah. Am I? No, no, you're not wrong.

That's, that's, I have never heard it myself. Right. You're saying, though, that your friends that were at the table have heard of it. They didn't, or at least that they didn't think that this was anything unusual is what you're saying. I want to say, it was everyone, it's LaTart, Rick Allen, and our stat guys, Russell, one of them who was on, yeah, the professor on Dirty Mo Doe. The professor on Dirty Mo Doe was the first one to order Medium Plus. Oh, he did. Yes.

But everyone else at the table, aside from Jeff Burton, I want to say Jeff Burton, was on my team here. So I'm like, what the hell is this medium plus stuff? And so, have you got the temperatures yet? Yes. All right. So medium is. Medium is, what was it, 135?

Medium plus. 140. No, medium plus 145. No, it's 140. See, they can't even agree behind the producers room. I give you a fucking simple task. 144. Yeah.

Okay. Just start. This is what I expect out of the medium plus. Medium. Medium. Confusion. Stop, stop, stop. Medium's 140.

Yeah. All right. Medium plus. 145. And then medium well. Is like 150. Yeah. Five freaking degrees.

I mean, are people? Like Google says 140. All right. It's right up on the screen. I hear you, buddy. All right. So medium plus 140. But you're getting different answers depending on where you're going.

Yeah. Yeah. As you would. As you would. I saw horse. So. So there's medium. Look, man, there's, this is, you know,

this is on Wikipedia? This is just Google. Just Google. The degrees of meat. That's so yummy.com. That's pretty reputable. That's so yummy.com. That's a reputable source.

So, I mean, was, I, look, I'm ready to be schooled. If I am also the guy who thinks, you know, you can put A1 on any steak, so I get it. People are going to go, hey, what the hell do you know? so because apparently that was a big that was a big no-no by a bunch of people. You can't put A-1 on a good steak. Oh, did you get kickback? Tons of kickback for that.

Wow, interesting. You don't put A-1 on a great steak. You're only allowed to eat it plain. So, which is a whole other argument. So medium plus should not be a thing. Why should it be a thing? We're talking five degrees here. Five degrees might mean a world of difference to some people, I guess.

I mean, I'm just saying, I'm trying to... But the time it comes out on the plate and it's in front of you and you're eating it. I mean, you know, you're chatting with your friends and you're waiting, you know, past the butter or whatever. You know, you're losing temperature. Let me ask you a question. How do you order your steak? Well, usually medium. Okay.

I'm like, you know what? I don't give it. That's my answer. Hold up. Cook it however the hell you won't. Hold on. I want to ask this. So let's just say you order it medium all the time.

Have you ever had a steak where you were like, that was a lot of? that was a little bit just too rare or a little too done. I mean, like, just a little bit. Like, have you ever just made that? Not that you're going to send your food back. Not that it ruined your day. Just an observation because you certainly let people know what you're thinking all the time. So would you make an observation going, you know, the steak was okay, but it was a little too done?

When, when every single time a steak is in front of me and I cut into it, I'm going to have an, I'm going to have an, I'm going to have a, initial thought in my head about whether I think it's cooked too much or too little. Right. But not a freaking word comes out of my mouth. Especially not to the server. I would never say, hey, my steak is done more than I expected. Wait. So I'm not going to say anything to the server.

And I probably wouldn't say a thing to the people at the table. I would just, I, I would never make a comment. I would never say a frick of word. I'd just eat my steak. I'd put more freaking A1 on it. I'd do whatever, right? But look, that's just the way I am. That is not the way you are.

You would make a comment. I mean, to somebody at the table, you absolutely would at least let somebody know that you are mildly displeased. No. Yes, you would. Stop. Don't even try to make that argument. That is not true.

I want you to prove this by going to dinner and having steak. with me. I have gone to dinner and had steak with you. Have I complained about my steak? Probably every time. You do not know. Probably. You do not know the answer to that. Most likely every time. Listen, here is my point. My point is this is that if you had even, I'm not saying that you made the comment, but if you had in your mind the thought that it could have been done a little different, I have maybe, hold up, maybe medium plus or the plus or the minus, whatever you want to call it, fixes your problem. Maybe it's the solution that you didn't know you had at your disposal. I know, Mike, but like, if I ask for medium, right,

if I ask for medium, I understand there's temperatures out there in the world of Google that'll tell you, hey, man, this is what medium is. But when I ask, you know, my experience has been everywhere you go, there's different interpretations on medium, medium rare, right? So why do, when I sit down, this is the way I think, right? I'm not trying to tell everybody this is the way.

I'm just saying, you know what? I've seen lots of different variations on medium rare, medium, well done, whatever. I'm just going to sit down and go, medium, man, hit me with the middle. That's why I do. And I'm going to be on, I'm going to be one way or the other. That's right. I don't know what it's going to be.

It's going to be fine. I'm going to eat it and not complain. And for someone, for my buddy to go, yeah, medium plus, please. I'm like, what a freaking high maintenance. What are you doing? You know, you're really putting a lot on this guy's plate back there in the kitchen, man. No pun intended. But you're like, I saw this gift the other day.

This was the best thing ever. I saw this gift the other day, and the guy is at his grill in his backyard, and he's pointing to people out on the patio, right? And he's like, yep, me, I'm looking at everybody saying, how do you want your burger cook before I cook them all the same? Yeah, man, well done. Okay, you got it. Okay, medium rare, you got it, buddy, no problem.

And then he's cooking them all the same. He's like, I'm going to just act like I give a . Right. And so, you know, if I'm the chef and somebody's, if the medium plus came across the kitchen, oh, man, I would have some fun with that one. Yeah, you would just give it to them. You would cook it the way you would cook any of them and give it to them.

We're like, nope, that's what you asked for. You got it, medium. Yeah. I wonder if that's what happened. And do you know if the professor liked his steak? Was he satisfied? He don't even know. He doesn't know.

He doesn't know. He don't know. He doesn't know. He probably waters his lawn and probably does. What is he so? He's scared of medium. He's worried about medium being too rare. Well.

And he didn't want to say, you know what? I think I know what the answer is. You know, so anytime you go and order a steak and you're like, I want mine medium well, it's sort of like this. What? The only way to eat a steak. is medium rare. Everybody says it, right?

Yes. Only way to you steak is medium rare. How dare you... And you're judged if you don't order it. How dare you overcook this piece of meat? Right. And so I think that he's like scared that it's going to be too rare, but doesn't want to get out for asking for the medium well.

Right. Right. So he's found this sort of neutral. Well, how interesting. He's insecure on how he order steak, and yet he gets judged by you for ordering medium plus. There's a no incitredued. situation for the professor.

I'm sure that this is a no win for me too. Do we want to make a Twitter poll out of this one? Or a Twitter expole? God, what is that these days? You know what? The same people that change the branding on that are the ones that order medium plus. All right.

So, Mike, you had never heard a median plus. No, I hadn't. Okay. Anyone else? No, never again. Right? Anybody. So everyone in this room had never heard of this.

And so we're at the table and they're like, oh, yeah, sure. This is a medium. Plus been around forever. That's the only way I order mine. Medium plus. Latart. Medi Plus.

Yeah. You see, that feels like a Latart thing. Yes. It really does. Yeah. Hey, you know who's ordering medium plus? Guy was his initials on his sleeve. Right.

Or his collar. Yes. Yeah. Unabashed medium plus guy. If you're walking around with a button down on and it's got your initials on it, every one of the medium plusers. Yeah. You know, the one with your last initial is bigger than your first in your middle.

You know, that one sort of like a diamond. Yes. Yeah, that's the, you know the tart has a few shirts like that. Yeah. So does, you know who else has that? Is it my kids? They have that on their backpacks. Well, yeah, but there is an age in which that works.

They're two and five, Mike. They do outgrow it. Yeah, you can outgrow it. There's people that. Yeah, I am never wearing a damn button down with my initials on it. That's weird. Dude. You know what?

Speaking of which, you had these white dirty, dirty-mo media shirts. Remember those? Mm-mm. Yeah. They were sort of this beige off white and they're just black Dirty Moe Media. Beautiful. Yes. Man.

The first one, the very first shirt we had, yeah. I believe that that might have been the best shirt that Dirty Moe Media ever made. Wouldn't everybody agree? Okay, well, what's the point about it? They had Dale Jr. on the back. Right up here. Right. That's the part you liked.

That is the part that said, I can never wear this. Yeah, listen, I mean, admittedly, you do have a complex you always have about having anything with your name on it. I wouldn't expect you to be the initials guy. It made sense when I was a technician at automotive dealership. You know, have my name on my shirt. Like, hey, you're a mechanic over here, Dale Jr. You more or less had your name on the sign. I'm just saying, like, that would be the one time where your name on your shirt would make sense.

Right. A name tag. Listen, okay, can we just all agree, though, that maybe you're not the media plus, medium plus, but all of us have some sort of tendency. that makes us a high-mainance. 100%. Everybody does.

Oh, God, I got lots of them. Yeah, we can own them. We can own them. So, in other words, what I'm trying to say is that Professor and Steve LaTartre shouldn't feel bad about the things that make them a... It's fun to make them feel bad. Okay. Well, then there's that.

Well, that's your tendency to... Yes. You like to make other people feel bad about themselves. I like to give people a hard time. Yeah. This week's 30 Air is presented by Ally. We want to thank Ally for their continued support of all things, Dirty Moe Media.

they've been a great partner for us, a great friend for us. We can't thank them enough for being part of today's show. Now let's get to some dirty air. All right, so let's get into Richmond. I just had to get that off my chest. So we do need a couple of polls there, I think.

A, have you ever heard of medium plus as an option in ordering your steak? And I think there needs to be a C, which is have you ever chosen that? I don't know. do you put your initials on your clothes? Do you put your initials on your clothes and or would you? Embroitered.

I mean like yeah like putting your initials on your clothes is not what we're talking about. Kind of. But it's the ones that. That'd be weird. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's a couple of good ones there. But anyways, let's get on to Richmond.

The Ford's were strong. A couple weeks ago. dude, I'm taking notes all the time, getting ready for the next race and thinking about storylines and what's going on. And we're going into Atlanta a couple weeks ago, and the forwards had won two races and they weren't doing what the Chevys and the Toyotas were, right? So we're like, I'm thinking in my head, hey, man, here's a storyline, the Ford's. Can they get better?

They were just a touch-off, right? And if they find that, they get faster. And I'm talking to some of the Ford drivers and they're like, yeah, we're kind of struggling with the body. And there's some things that there's some updates and so forth that have been advantages for others and not for us. And so what they were telling me is like, you know, the way the body works, it should run really good at Atlanta. It goes to Atlanta and they ran great. They ran good there earlier in the spring. But when they go to the high downforce tracks, they struggle.

But, you know, the last two races, they've been good. Have they found something? I think so. They were really strong at Pocono and then again at Richmond. And so the Fords are back. And look, I'm a Chevy guy through and through all my life, but when we sit down here at this chair, we call it straight. When we're up in that booth, we call it straight.

When the Chevys are down, the Chevys are down. When the Fords are up, the Fords are up. I don't think really anybody's down, anybody's down right now, but some of the Chevys have struggled here lately. The Fords are now, you know, if they can keep this going, I think that will be extremely impressive. And what it does is it launches new players into that championship conversation. A guy like Joe Lugano, who basically snuck into the championship race last year

and won the championship. Ryan Blaney, who has struggled over the last several weeks, who it came out of the box fast. And I still have him pegged as my championship driver this year. I'm not going to – that's who I picked. Not going to jump ship middle of the season. But as the Fords are getting stronger, this certainly pushes some of the Ford drivers back into the conversation

of who can win the championship. Six of the top 10 in the race at Richmond were Fords. The winning driver, Chris Buesher, drives for RFK. and you can't say enough about what Brad has done and what RFK as a group has done to build that team back up into a contender. Man, it was just a couple years ago. Trevor Bain, Ricky Stannhouse Jr., are running in the very back of the pack, struggling to outrun starting parks.

That's right. They were bad. and then Newman gets in the car and they had a couple reasonable days with Newman but mostly still struggling all the way up until Brad becomes a part of it and right at you know the team's just continuously getting better in a pretty decent rate

like this isn't taking forever Busher I thought Brad obviously is leading the most laps in the race and I'm like all right dang it here it is finally Brad's going to win his first race as an owner this is going to be a huge huge milestone stone for him personally. Dude, this guy, why is it important for Brad to win as an owner? Well, his family, his family has raced their whole lives.

Brad grew up watching his dad race his own cars, right? So Brad, this is full circle for Brad. This is Brad becoming his father, right? This is Brad doing something that he saw his dad do for the majority of his life. So this is really critical for Brad to go to Victory Lane, driving a car that he owns. And so I thought that was actually going to happen. I was hoping it would happen for Brad. I'm hoping that happens for him, and I think it will.

But Chris Busher, man, got the job done, gets out front, gets a clean air, and nobody could beat him. Busher's a hell of a driver. And, you know, I thought it was a popular win. Yeah. my question for you is do you think like yeah it feels like the fords have found something and i would love one day this is not for this episode i'd love to just be able to grill you and get your opinions on how how race teams and manufacturers go about trying to find find speed that they're lacking and how long that takes and that kind of stuff because it is pretty

evident that when one of them it's not like just one of them starts running well usually the whole group of them do and like in this past week Gibbs was down Hendrick was down, like the Chevy. So my question is going into Michigan. Like, how much do you overreact if you're Chevrolet or how much do you think Ford that carries over when you got two completely different racetracks from Richmond to Michigan?

So Chevrolet is reacting now. They're reacting to the performance and the lack of performance. They're reacting now. They were reacting going into Richmond, you know, talking to some of the teams, principles behind the scenes the Chevy Camp

is making maneuvers to improve. They realize, look, we need to step it up. So that's already happening before we went to Richmond. We didn't really see that change anything about how they ran at Richmond.

But I think they're actively working and realizing like, hey, we're not where we need to be. things got to change if we're going to really have a shot at, you know, racing for a championship with any of the Chevroletes. I thought Gibbs was pretty good at Richmond. I know that they, you know, I thought Denny was fast, and Ty Gibbs was quick at times.

And so I, and Martin was up on, Martin was on such a unique strategy that it was hard to really compare him to the rest of the field, but at moments I thought they were good. And so I wouldn't, if I'm Gibbs, I don't, I don't leave Richmond too concerned. Like there's a problem or something. I don't think so. I don't think so.

Yeah. But I think the Chevrolet's got to be like, hey, man, okay, we need to, you know, for this track, you know, and for Phoenix, for short tracks and tracks that are under a mile flat, we need to get some urgency, I think, in what we're doing. Not time to panic, but certainly if the fords are going to run like this, it's no longer just, you know, us versus Toyota. versus everybody. And so Pinsky did not match what Brad did this.

No. They did not match RFK this past weekend. Is RFK the new top forward? I don't think it's time to say that just yet. They keep doing this weekend and week out. Give me three weeks of RFK consistently beating the Penske cars. Then I'm going to think, oh man, how had they done that? How had they toppled Penske?

Brad Kiselowski went over to Rouse and has somehow organized a team into a better performer than his former boss. That would be something. Yes. We only had one natural caution during the race. Obviously, you get the two stage break cautions. The 99 get spun out by Noah Gragson late in the race. If that doesn't happen, we don't have a natural yellow at all.

The entire field, even with that going on, all of that green flag racing, the entire field finished the race without someone falling more than five laps down. So the last place car, everyone finished, which was unique. And the last place car was only five laps down, which had never happened in our sport. That's pretty phenomenal. I know a lot of people were, you know, critical of the race. We, we always are. When we go to Richmond, we're always like, oh, hope we don't get another race like we had the last time.

And we do, right? We get the same race. I love the long green flag runs. I love the fall off in the tire. I just don't love, obviously, the short track package right now doesn't work well anywhere. There's efforts to fix that. They're testing yesterday and today at Richmond.

New splitter, new components trying to figure out how to get the short track package to work better. This is that big test that you talked about a few weeks ago, talking about the most important test. It's an important test. It's hugely critical. Yeah. So let's unpack it. We know the car is not good.

As far as a short track race car, the package that we have on the car does not run well at the short tracks. And maybe it's some of the tire, whatever, right? Good Year tire could probably be different to try to help us. Anyways, there's effort to get that right. The teams are testing today, tested yesterday. Goodyear's got some tires there to try. So there's efforts. All right.

If they found anything, that won't be here until next year. Right. The parts to be able to make enough for all of the series and have backup pieces and parts, they won't be able to, they can't give those to the teams until they have enough for everyone. And that won't be available until sometime next year. So what do we do until then? You know, I think that we're going to have to stomach. the idea that nothing's going to change the rest of this year.

When we go to Martinsville, we're probably going to see what we've been seeing there, right? I don't think that there's a lot that can be done. The tire could change. That would be one of the things that I think could change, but it would be a small compound change, whatever. So if we're going to sit here and wait for this test to provide some answers, hopefully it does right now up until this morning, drivers and comments from people on this test that they did yesterday and today was that it's not a home run.

It's not a fix-all. It's not having as much of an effect on the cars as they thought or hoped. But still, you know, I stay positive. All right. So we learned that what we brought to the racetrack to test didn't move the needle enough. So it helps us at least understand how much more aggressive we've got to be. This was a bunch of new big pieces that they wanted to try. The splitter was completely different, and it did hardly nothing, right?

Or it did very little. So it lets us know, man, we've really got to tackle this. We've really got to get aggressive on this. And if it likely benefits us very little, if we come out of this test with very little answers and not a lot of confidence that we can change the car, we have to look at, you know, some other alternatives. And I mentioned one on social media after the race,

and I've thought about this for a long time. So this is specific to Richmond. All right, so Richmond's been a bit of a bit of a tough sell. Decent crowd, but a lot of seats weren't sold, right? Looking down out of that booth, look, man, they had fans from one end of the track the other, but everywhere you look, there was a row of seats here, a row of seats there, missing people. How do we get Richmond to be like, you know, as exciting?

It's called the action track. How do we get that track to carry the momentum that we've built over the past four weeks? And so one of the things that I've seen work relatively decent is resin. And resin and PJ1 are not the same thing. So the PJ1 we tried years ago, I think, is awful. use it anywhere. I don't think it works good. You got to run on it to activate it. It's this weird hard stuff that sort of gets tacky as you use it and heat it up. I don't think they should put it on any tracks anymore. And they don't. They may apply the resin at Bristol right around the bottom.

And they do apply at some at Nashville Super Speedway. And they've used it, I believe, at Phoenix. and so it's been used at several tracks to mixed results, mostly positive. I think that it doesn't get enough credit for how well the racing has been going at Nashville Super Speedway. When they race there years ago before we started going back, it was a bottom groove racetrack. There was no outside groove for the most part. But man, they put the resin up there, and we've had some great races at the Nashville. Super Speedway the last couple of times.

Multiple grooves, great passing, and good racing. And so I'm almost at the end of my rope with Richmond. In terms of what we got to do it. We got to do something, right?

We've got to act on Richmond. We're going to be going back there next year. We're going to be running two races there next year. We've got to do something. And now hearing that maybe this short track tire test isn't bearing enough fruit. We got to look at what are the other options, right?

And so I say on social media, maybe it's time we did a little resin at Richmond. You said it right after the race. I mean, did you send that from the booth? Yeah, you were leaving? I think it's leaving. All right. So, you know, and I've been thinking this for a long time.

A lot of fans reacted to my tweet saying seal it. so they used to put sealer down on the racetrack. I'm a little nervous about that idea. So the sealer, if you read all the articles about when tracks used to get sealed, if you want to hear a lot of complaining, read the driver's comments about that sealer. I mean all the way back to 1979 at Rockingham, all the way through the 80s and the 90s when they would use this sealer, drivers would say, man, it feels like grease.

You know, it would slow you down two, three, four seconds at a place like Rockingham because it was so treacherous. And you dare not get outside of the one groove that they would develop. It just bust your ass. And so putting the sealer on Richmond, which they've done in the past, would have bad results in terms of the first two races there would be single file step outside a line and you're going to bust your ass racing

and you're going to hear nothing but complaining from the drivers. Rightly so. This is awful. This is treacherous. You can't race here. You can't pass. You can't get out of line. That's all you'd hear for the first probably two or three races.

Now after that, it would improve. The sealer was good when we had worn it away from that bottom groove, worn through it, back to the original asphalt, and it became tacky on the edges.

And so you chase that tackiness up the racetrack over time, right? As we would run higher and higher, we would wear the sealer away and continue to chase that tacky edge. And that's what gave us that higher groove is to put the right rear on that sort of tacky edge of sealer.

And so I'm afraid, you know, as much as I think the sealer would give you a great chunk of racing, the first two years with it would be nothing but garbage. But if it's that already, why not just go ahead and play the long game if you're Richmond? Listen, the one thing you do not want is a, you know, your social media timeline full of drivers, and negative comments. Even if there's a great idea, if the drivers are going to bash it, it torpedoes the whole thing.

And so you can't do things and you've got to be careful what you do because if the drivers come in and blow it up, it's not going to work, not even the best plan. And so I know that putting sealer down on that racetrack is likely going to produce nothing but purely, purely

you know, they will scorch earth complain about this. And so nobody wants that. And I wouldn't be able to blame them, like, for complaining about it because they'd be right, you know. But it would eventually result in some good racing, in my opinion. But to get there would be pretty tough, pretty hard to. Okay. So that's the sealer option. All right.

The resin. The resin is sort of this sort of, you know, you spray this stuff down and you can do, you can do a little here and more and more there. You can do various amounts of it. And it doesn't really stain the racetrack or ruin the racetrack, in my opinion, the way that PJ1 does. And you could, you know, maybe if you're, you know, if you're me, I'd go out there. I wouldn't put any on the bottom. I'd put a little very, very light coat around the middle and maybe even a little bit more around the top.

And I would sort of have this varying levels of application in the corners. And then I would just leave it alone. Never do it. I would treat it once and leave it. And let them race there for multiple times and just see what happens, right? And that would be a stopgap. That as, you know, that would be a placeholder until we. get the answers with this car from testing, right?

Until they figure out what fixes this car at Martinsville and all the other short tracks, we need to do something at Richmond. Because, I mean, how do we go back there next year and expect people to want to come see what we just saw, right? Look, I know the drivers love those long green flag runs and the strategy, and I do too. It's interesting to me. but I think this only is cool to the hardcore fan,

which drivers are hardcore fans of what they're doing. It only reaches the true hardcore fan base. And even some of them may not love this, right? And so that's awesome if you're trying to sell to a small group of people, but we need to really, you know, we had a lot of momentum. And I think some even very slight adjustments such as, putting a little bit of that resin down would make a big difference on the next show we saw there. So there's obviously varying opinions about that as well.

100%. Yeah. I mean, Denny was vocal. I actually, I don't know if you listened or heard Denny's comments. He was very anti-resin. But at the same time on Door Bumper Clear, I thought Carson Hosevar was on the show this week. And he was like, I'd like to see what the resin would do. But then again, T.J. Major is just abruptly go, nope, not the answer.

Not the answer. Reson is not the answer there. Yeah. So obviously... This is the guy that spotted for the winner of the cup, Urgwale, spotted for the guy who led the most laps of the cup race. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yeah.

By the way, side note, even more interesting was he called you his idiot of the week. Do you know that? DJ? Yeah. Why? Because of something that you said, you were using an example last week about how he would say take all you can get. Oh, God. Yeah.

So anyways, let's not get diverted. Listen, here's my point about Richmond. I think you're right about this. It does start to feel like there's a bit of an urgency to save it. I mean, Texas sort of feels that way. Now, I mean, Texas isn't a huge market. Richmond's in a great market, by the way. You don't want to lose Richmond.

And I know that we're dating ourselves, but listen, Richmond was my favorite racetrack for a long time because when it is good there, it is fantastic. All that to be said, I don't want to be. want to call it life support. I don't want to call it, you know, dire circumstances. But there is an identity problem, which we talked about this with Atlanta. In Atlanta, Marcus, made these radical changes, didn't he? Radical changes. And so I definitely agree that there's something needs to be done to start radically changing Richmond. Well, let's listen to Denny's comments. Okay. You did respond to Dale Jr. on Twitter. He said the top groove looks like it needs some

resin. Oh, God. Yuck. Isn't that just a band-aid? It is. And now, you know, what happened was we would all be running in a train up against the wall and nobody would see us all day. Like, that's, it's not it. I know what we're, what he's trying to say. And we're trying to replicate the days of the sealer.

But we don't have the same cars as what we had when sealer was around. And what I'm trying to say is that. when they paved Richmond, they then put sealer on it afterwards. And so there was a lot of grip in the sealer. So as the cars ran one line, they wore the sealer off. Then they kept

moving up the racetrack to chase more sealer. It was almost like resin. But again, the cars are different. The drivers are smarter. There's no refuting that because we have more data. We're not smarter naturally because we were born that way. We're smarter because

we have more information and data. to help us be faster and smarter. So what will we do if you put up one lane to resin around the racetrack? We're going to run in that one lane around in a train. Hey, I mean, you know, he would know. I actually kind of appreciate his input there. I didn't think it was as critical.

I heard, I saw the clip on social media, but, you know, I think that even if he's right, I'm willing to take that gamble. and that risk, even if he's right. So on, you know, I think you would have to figure out how to, you know, I think you would have to get pretty scientific about the application of this resin, right, to find out how to just barely improve the middle groove or the top groove. You know, if you're going to just walk out there and just paint it down,

he would be absolutely correct without a doubt you'd just have so much grip you wouldn't you'd be forced to run in it right you'd have to run it to survive but if they could figure out a way to water it down somehow you know to where that application was was was just bumping up that grip just a just a little bit maybe there's a way for them to to find a you know find a some kind of a solution like I say until we can fix the car right he's says, hey, that's a band-aid. The problem is the car, the tire. I hear you, Denny. I agree that, damn, we'd all love

to snap our fingers in this car race awesome at the short tracks. And he and I probably know what, you know, that the car and the tire is the problem. Is that going to get fixed tomorrow? Is that going to be fixed by the time we go back to Richmond? No. I don't think so.

I don't have the confidence that it'll get fixed that quickly. I think it, you know, I think it could be a while. It could. It could. And he didn't really give us his suggestion to fix it, did he? Of course he didn't. Right.

Yeah. So. I mean, I don't mean that in the disparaging way towards Denny. I'm just saying that in this critique of it, he, listen. That's the thing. We're looking for solutions here, especially immediate solutions. Yeah. And you at least put one out there.

Look, he, the one, it would be awesome to, it would be awesome to debate with Denny and a handful of drivers about the resin, right? And say, you know, they ran it at the Nashville Super Speedway, and I heard a lot of great comments about it from drivers. And then I think they tried it at Phoenix, and some thought that it was too much, and that they all ran the wall in three and four, you know, and it became, it became, and they didn't like it.

It was too much, right? And so, you know, I think if you sat down with them and said, hey, man, I'm going to, you know, what if we could figure out a way to control how much was being applied and to make, you know, make a very small amount or a small adjustment to the surface of this racetrack? Would that matter, right? If they had real control over how much and where it was getting put down, right? I would not want to put resin down at Richmond without not only impact, not only feedback but actual effort and input from the drivers on how to do it,

where it should go. And so, boy, you'll get a lot of different opinions if you do that, though. Well, you don't take all the drivers. You don't just take a handful. I'd take, you know. Denny's. Danny, probably. Kevin.

For sure. Harvick, yeah, I'd probably take him. I don't know. You know, you just take a handful of guys. But we're going to go to that. racetrack and we're going to do something. We're leave, we're not leaving that race track without doing something. So let's all get together and figure it out. Um, now you have to have the track on board and they probably would, they probably wouldn't be, but, um, it would be their bill.

Yeah. But I tried to, uh, you know, I tried to figure out a way to make sure when, listen, Denny's not wrong. I agree with what he's saying, but damn it, we, I don't, we can't go back and do this again. Right? So when, so Denny, like, what do we do before we go back to Richmond? Give me those answers, right? Tell me,

all right, Denny, here's the tools in the toolbox. And, you know, if your car's not different, if the car doesn't change, and if the car is not better and we don't find answers there, and we don't find answers in a tire, we got good you know if we can't have either one of those two what it's what it's left what are you

going to do to make the racing better and he's going to say oh it's great i love the love the green flag long runs it's fun strategy that's pure racing he even said it on pit road he's like you know purists and people there's people that love what we what we did today and there's a lot of people that did help me understand this it sounds like though you and denny are actually talking about two not different things but separate he's talking about you go put resin down you know, along the top and everybody runs that line. If I heard him right, that's what he said. But you actually are suggesting that there's some sort of application of resin,

you know, not just one lane here, but like in areas that would maybe induce better racing in different lines and that kind of thing. And is that even possible? And am I understanding you right when you say that? Like would you just do one line of resin around a racetrack or would you go apply it in different places? Well, so, I mean, that would be. what you'd need to sit down and say, hey, man, do we need to put resin on entry all the way in around the wall, all the way to exit? Probably not. No, right. Do we need to put it maybe just in a,

you know, in a pie right in the middle of the corner so that, you know, you drive off in the corner, get the rights in it, get the grip you need to throttle up and you leave the corner and you, you know, if you do it right, you'll, you know, you'll run a, you know, you run a little bit faster lap than the guy running on the bottom. You'd have to be careful because you'd make it nearly impossible to pass. You know, you'd basically, anytime you got underneath somebody, they'd just beat you off the corner running the resin, right? So you'd have to be careful because he, to his point, right,

if you put it down the wrong way or you put too much down, that will be where everybody runs and you will not be able to pass. So, yeah, I think that if Denny and I went to the racetrack with a bucket of resin, I think we could figure out a balance between our two opinions. You know what it would be? What? Resin plus. Oh, Jesus.

You'd have to listen to the first part of the show to understand that joke. But, you know, I think it's, you know, I don't know what else to do. Yeah. I don't know what else to do for Richmond. The track's not in terrible show. shape. It doesn't need to be, you know, it doesn't need to repave because the surface is in good shape. It's not deteriorating or falling apart. I think one of the, you know, North Wilkesboro might be getting repaved, so that would be a good, interesting comparison. So, you know,

Wilkesboro, worn out slick, didn't put on a great cup race. Right, with the All-Star race there, the Cup race was, you know, the five Larson drove through the field and it was over. But they're going to repave that race track more than likely, and if they have, you know, when we go back there, if we have another All-Star race there, we go back there for the All-Star race next year, how will that race look with a complete repave on this particular car? Does this, you know, we've been sort of programmed in our heads thinking, man, old worn-out tracks are the best. Right. We love them. Right, tire fall off, all that stuff. Maybe the next gen wants a brand new,

maybe the next gen likes a newer short track surface. I don't know. That actually leads me to a question I actually wanted to ask you. So often, listen, every week I listen to the tear down, which is Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi, because they give their immediate reaction from the media center right after the race. And so Jeff had an interesting take, and I want to hear your opinion on this. He says this clearly the Richmond problem is absolutely

has nothing to do with the car, nothing to do with the car. It is absolutely 100% the track. Whereas I was thinking, well, look, it's a combination of both, right? Like the car certainly doesn't race well on short tracks. That's obvious. And then Richmond has had its, you know, issues over the past several years. So, but he's like, but the Richmond problem is not the car because any race, any series at Richmond ends up being the same. Yeah. Boring, no passing, no cautions. It's the same. Do you agree or disagree with that? I think he has a great point and I think he might be right.

Yeah, I mean, we've seen, you know, the truck race there, the Xfinity race. I think he could be right. I think he could be right about what he's saying there. I don't know. I mean, I feel like that this is pretty, I feel like this is a common sense

situation, man. Common sense. All right. Everybody's saying any changes to this car and improvements even if we hit a home run from a test that's going to fix the short tracks it could be a while before we have all the components ready we can't sit around and be waiting on that you know if i'm richmond if i own the racetrack i damn sure ain't putting all my eggs in that basket got to do something right right now is what you're saying if i'm richmond and i own the racetrack and i'm looking out there and seeing 40 percent of the seats available got to do something i'm doing something

Well, that right there is the biggest indicator. It's not what people say on social media. And to me, it's not even what drivers are saying, although there's a place in getting the driver's opinions are important. But if I'm Richmond's president, it's that, the ticket sales, that is the biggest problem for me that means I have to do something now. Yeah.

So if I, you know, if, you know, I think to, you know, to the end's point, if you put a bunch of resin down, everybody's going to run in the resin. Well, don't put that much down, right? Don't apply so much that it's just this dominant groove, right? Do a little research and some science and figure out how to marginally change the grip for that higher line, right? And even if it does become the preferred line laid into a run, right, if I can turn underneath you and get beside you, I'm driving up the racetrack at the next corner to get to it. And I'm going to move you on up with it.

Well, Denny would never do that. Of course he would. So you mentioned Carson. Hosevar on door bumper clear and I heard that he also mentioned about, mentioned a little bit about

me and him having an interaction at the shop. Yeah. Yeah. So Carson, right? Young driver, we've been watching him in the truck series

and just won this past weekend at Richmond in the trucks and he's getting some interest from Xfinity and Cup teams. The rumor is that he's going right to the Cup series possibly. And so, one glaring issue with his racecraft,

and that is he likes to intentionally wreck people. And so, you know, he's done it multiple times. So he revealed a conversation that me and him had this past Monday on door bumper clear. I don't know if it's the arrogance as a race car driver or whatever. Like, oh, I'm not the problem, right? And then I want a race. I'm like, oh, everything's going to fix itself.

My hands are clean. Everything will fix itself. And then go to Martinsville, and then all of a sudden I'm having these conversations. I'm like, I won a race. Like, why are these conversations still? It didn't fix it. Why are these conversations still happening?

And then got sat down, had more conversations, had the big piece, humble pie with Dale Jr. And then I'm like, whenever it clicked, it clicked. And I'm like, man, I just showed up in this guy's shop, idol of mine, childhood dream. And that's the first thing out of his mouth. What did he say? He said, hey, man, like, when do you get to stop tearing up? Like, that was his conversation. Owners don't like to spend money on fixing stuff.

He's like, you ain't going to do that in one of these cars, are you? Like, he's like, man, you're better than that. I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, six-year-old me's like, all I see is a six-year-old me just sitting there. Like, I was envisioning, like, he was talking to six-year-old me. I'm like, man, I got to fix this, like, really fast. Yeah, so that was a, I'm glad to hear that, left an impression on him, right? He remembered it.

Yeah. Carson's a very talented driver, really, really talented. And whatever's going on in his mind when he gets in those moments, he's got this short fuse and he mashes a button and he takes a guy out, right? And I understand the frustration, but, dude, you know, you can't do that. People are going to eat you up and you get this reputation and it goes everywhere with you. And it hurts opportunities for you going forward. And so we were talking, you know, we're talking about running him in some extended races with Spire.

Right. So we're going to help Spire with some cars and they're going to go take him to the racetrack. And he's coming into our shop. I see him in the shop for the first time. And we're back in the hallway in the Creechee's hallway. and he comes in this room and I was like, hey, I said, man, I got to ask you, when are you going to stop wrecking people? And he was like, what? Yeah.

And so I was like, you know, you just need to stop that. I was like, I don't, I don't, I didn't even reference our cars or him driving our car. I was just like, look, you just don't need to do that. I was like, stop doing it. I know you're mad. I know you're angry. But look, you cannot be. this guy that's always going to be intentionally wrecking people

and you're going to get this reputation and you're not going to be able to fix it. I said you're at the point right now where if you try to change, you can change and you can earn back people's trust. But if you don't make an adjustment and make a change quick, it's going to be a problem for you. And honestly, like, you know, if we had an opportunity to bring him here and him racing it,

a junior motor sports car, he's talented enough. He would be an awesome get for us. We'd be excited to have him, but he'd have to stop doing that. Yeah. He'd have to have that out of his system. But anyways, I'm glad that sunk in. And so that was fun to listen to. Well, can I just say one more thing about Carson?

You know, him being on door bumper clear alone said a lot to me about him as a driver and a person because there's been nobody more critical of Carson Hosevar than the door bumper clear guys this year. In fact, he even joked about how he's probably been the idiot of the week more than anybody else on that show. And he's probably right. They've been very critical of him. They've caught him every name.

But Carson just exhibited exactly what I wish most people would do when they have a problem with something that Brett or Freddie or T.J. say on there because they've got their opinions. And they're not always right, but they also don't professed be right all the time but carson was a grown up and he goes on the show and they have very good conversation this week on that episode and i and it it told me a lot about cars and hoes of our most people including most kids probably stay away from the place that's been mean to me and said bad things about me they don't go up they don't give him a time of date he ends up really kind

of making an impression on me and i hope other people yeah i think the jury's still out you know I think he's, there's, Carson for me, I got to see another year of racing. Yeah. Where he ain't turning somebody into the fence. Right. Give me about six months at least where you don't do anything even questionable. And I'll feel like you've made, you've made gains. That's not too much to ask.

And, you know, if you're going to have a, you know, 20-year career, that's your hope, right? That's your vision. Give me about six months to a year without incident. Yeah, give me drama, drama free. Yeah. Just win. We'll be happy with that, man. No matter who he's driving for,

whether he's driving for, you know, junior motorsports or somebody in a cup series, I don't care. But he's good enough to be a winner and champion at any level, I believe. Every time I see him getting into, you know, dirt cars or anything, he's fast. So, you know, and I think he's actively trying to make better decisions. So that's great.

And, yes, we're thankful to have. have him or any guests come on to the door bumper clear shows or any interact with any of our dirty moe media content all right so man great show mike um i think we cover pretty much everything we miss anything no i think we got everything that we wanted to talk about all right let me make sure man um i want to thank ally for uh sponsoring dirty air again this week typically they sponsor our wednesday guest segment but since we're in the midst of becoming earn heart and that series launching new episodes every Wednesday. Ally is sponsoring our Tuesday show.

So thank you, Ally, everything you do for Dirtymoe Media, and everything you do in NASCAR. Everybody, don't forget tomorrow, becoming Earnhardt, episode four. And then Thursday's show, which is a bit of a recap that will have also As Junior. And that's the week, man. Y'all have some fun.