The Dale Jr. Download - 478 - What's The Fishing Net Caught On?

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back from the Racing Capital of the World to join co-host Mike Davis for another episode of Dirty Air. After a compelling NASCAR race weekend in Indianapolis and some new developments in the life of fatherhood, the guys had plenty to unpack: Isla’s first day of kindergarten Michael McDowell’s emotional win How did the road course ringers fare?  Is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval coming back? 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 do you make? I am weird. You are weird. What? Mr. Dallan Hart Jr. That family technique sometimes. Gives you more than just a tomato 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. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download.

Let's see, it's Tuesday, August the 15th, and I'm in the Bojangal studio again with my co-host, Mike Davis. How are you, Mike? I'm doing well. What you've been up to, man? You were gone. I went to New York with my daughter. Yeah. Yeah.

While you were working in Indy, I was just beating the past in New York, man, having fun, seeing all the sites, doing all the stuff. Yeah, that was pretty cool. that I didn't know you's heading up there I sent you a text message just trying to touch base and you showed me some of the things y'all were getting into and I guess right away I started thinking man I'm going to have to take some notes here because one of these days I might be taking my girls

on a trip like that to see some of the great things we have across this country success I imagine you're back I'm back she had a good time she had a great time and I would say that Best part? Best part for me was crazy enough. Ellis Island, the immigration story.

I really got into that. For her, she loved the Broadway shows. I'd never been to a Broadway show. Neither. Yeah. That doesn't sound like something I would actively seek out. Yeah, but I mean, you enjoyed it? Yeah, we had a good time, man.

Well, you think I would think about a Broadway show? I think you would enjoy it if your daughter wanted to do something like that. It's all about the one-on-one time. What if you and I were at a Broadway show? Be weird. Okay. Well, we want to thank Ally for sponsoring this week's Dirty Air segment. Ally has been a part of our team and our family for a long time here at Dale Jr. Download and at Dirty Mo Media and bring our guest segments from time to time.

Mostly, that's what they do sponsor. But since we're sort of, you know, between guests and becoming Earnhardt episodes, Ally's been very flexible. But they bring this episode to us today. So thank you, Ally. We certainly can't do any of this without our partners. So let's jump right into it. Today was my oldest daughter's first day of kindergarten.

So that was really cool. If you don't have kids, taking your kid to school is pretty emotional. And so I remember taking Ayla to preschool, that was something else. She didn't like it, so when they get emotional, it makes you even more emotional. And Amy reminded me last night that I didn't hold it together in that moment back then when we were taking her to her toddler class. Well, you do. So you're not alone. You know, I freaked out.

So I freaked out. Right. You know, and we were both clinging to each other. Amy's thinking I got a couple of kids here when I was going to preschool. The other one isn't. Well, what happened was is we were like a couple cars away from dropping her off. So the teacher comes out and gets them from the car. This is back in her toddler

days about three or three years ago. And so I said to Amy and not thinking, man, I don't want her to go. You know? And I was just speaking out loud and I'll have heard that. And it was a little, you know,

it was during the pandemic. And so the teachers had masks on. I imagine, I'm just thinking for us it was all making sense, right? But for her, she's like, that's it. He doesn't want me to go. These people are wearing masks. Can't even see their face.

What is going on, right? Yes, she's like, do I want to go here at all, right? So it was kind of, it scared her, I think. I think I messed up. And then she got upset, and then I was, like, freaking out, like, you know, what do I do to fix this situation? Today. How to go? Totally different.

Okay, good. So we had an orientation yesterday and basically taking her into class and she gets to meet her teacher. She gets to see her desk and who she's sitting with and meet some of the other kids in the class. And I think that was a really, really good thing. So when we got there, she was totally fine. Good. She excited, ready to go. And so I'm excited about that.

That was good. It went really well. So I wish, you know, all the things that we do that are that high pressure would go so smoothly. Well, guess what? I've got, you talk about orientation. My daughter's going into high school. I'm terrified. I mean, I am literally terrified of it.

And she's got orientation going on right now. And it's just, I don't know what to do. I mean, I know a lot of you folks listening to this podcast right now have gone through that. but first kid going to high school, man. It's just such a big jump. Yeah. It's a proud moment, man. It's a proud moment.

Everybody's, you know, a lot of my friends are sharing what they're, you know, they're great, every grade, you know, everybody's posting on social media about what's going on. And it's, I get it. I get it, man. You're a proud, proud parent. We drove away. Amy's up, Amy's crying. It's overwhelming for her.

And I was happy that, you know, it just went smooth. Ila didn't have a meltdown and pride, you know, they have to get pride out of our arms. Yeah, your collars are looking good today because I remember last year. She's hanging on to your shirt. Yeah, my collar was all messed up. So that went good. But anyways, I wanted to clear up something. I owe it to, I owe it to the professor.

Good. All right? Because they went at you on their show. I owe it to the professor on Dirty Mo Doe. Russell is his name. He's our statutes. guy with racing insights sits in the booth with us every single weekend at the NASCAR races for NBC Jimmy as well he's also working for racing insights one of our stat guys all of these people

I mentioned and were at this dinner with me in Pocono when I was giving them a hard time about medium plus stakes and so we go to Harry and Izzy's we wanted a seat a table for eight St. Elmo's was not able to accommodate us with a table of eight for Friday night so we went next door to Harry and Izzy's and we had a great meal but they ordered the medium plus and it was the lady was like yep you got it no problem and so I said okay Jimmy said I want a medium minus and she said there's no such thing and so we try to trick her but the waitress was on to us she said so you mean a medium rear plus that would be what you're asking for so there's no medium medium

minus there's no medium minus there's a medium there's only pluses there's a medium so i'm going to give it to them man all right here's where here's where i stand on this there is a such thing as i want to admit there's a such thing as a medium plus this is a big day for you you're admitting something but it's it's all in the higher end uh stakeholders that have those options obviously you know i probably don't frequent those type of establishment it's often enough to to pick up on these type of things but i'll give it to them they're right they won they won they took a pretty uh pretty a hard approach at you on dirty mowed both steve and the professor did i could give a crap less who takes a hard stance on me even but let me finish i can't admit when i'm wrong mike you can yeah all right all right well

let's it i'm curious if you're going to order a medium plus no never never no not even curious not even try it no it doesn't i don't need it it's not important to me so it exists but not in your This cook the damn thing. When I eat it, I don't want to get sick, all right? That's all I care about. Here's the better question. You're admitting that it's real. Also, putting some A1 on the sum of guns.

That's right. It doesn't what temperature it is. That would be funny. You order a medium plus with A1. Here's how much I care about the temperature of my steak. All right. Amy's getting ready to cook dinner yesterday. All right.

And so she's going to cook some taco. shrimp tacos. And she's like, hey, man, I'm about to start dinner. I was like, I'm going to go do this thing. I got a little housework to do. She's like, well, that's going to take a few minutes. I said, yeah, I don't care. Go ahead and start cooking.

She goes, well, I'll wait until you're done. I said, no, no, cook it now. I'll eat it when I get done. So, I mean, it's a, and I ate room temperature shrimp tacos last night. Yeah. Could give a crap less. Didn't bother you.

Didn't bother me. Look at you. Good job. You're growing up. So this is my question. We can admit that there's a medium plus. Like I'm learning as I go here. You're teaching us all this stuff.

I didn't know that. But I will say, and this doesn't, I don't think Steve or the professor care about this, but it's still very pretentious. Can we agree on that? It's pretentious thing to do. Yes. It's still a thing. If you can't get by with rare, medium, or well done, whatever it is, medium well,

if you can't get by, that still doesn't suit you. You are a bit of a diva. That's right. to be honest with you, even Steve doubled down on the initials on his collar. He said even that's a, no problems having his Steve, the S and the L on his collar. So, you know, look, he has no problems. You have no problems admitting when you're wrong. He has no problems being a pretentious.

I think that names are, you know, name tag or any kind of, those things are important. Yeah. When you're working, when you're talking to a service mechanic at a dealership. But I don't need to know your initials. All right. Right. You're turning into your parents. Right.

You're not going through their contract. It's initiating all the important parts of the contract. Yeah. Well, that's fun. Kudos to Jim. Was it Jimmy that did the... Jimmy did? Yeah, kudos to Jimmy.

He's the real hero of this story. Jimmy is. Yes. We had a great weekend in Indy. Had a lot of fun when the broadcast got going. I worked the pre-race. countdown to green, which is I rarely get to do that. And I thought that went really well.

I thought all the work we did was good. I thought the race was great. One caution for three laps or something like that. And I didn't care. You know, a lot of times when we have a race with you, when you look at the statistics on paper, you'd imagine that people would not appreciate a race like that. But I'll be honest.

There was a lot going on. And we had a great. finish. That was suspense. Chase Elliott trying to close the gap. Michael McDowell trying to win in an underdog story. And I saw Michael today in the line at school. Oh, really? Yeah. Roll my down, and gave him a good clap. Nice. Awesome. Yeah. So it was a memorable weekend. And I'll be honest with you, man. I don't know if it was the fact that my girl was getting ready to go into kindergarten on Tuesday, but that was, that was an emotional win. I thought, I got emotional watching that happen. So

let me ask you that, man. Everybody in here, right? When you watch that race and you see an underdog story like that, a guy right on, you know, he's got, there's so many variables here. You got a guy battling on the bubble. You got a team that was a back marker that's developing into a competitive winning team. You got a young, young crew chief. Who's a friend of ours and used to be at Junior Motorsports. Yep. Yep.

You have Michael McDow who is driving starting parts just to stay relevant, just to be there. And all of those things coming together. You're at Indy, one of the most historic racetracks in the world. So a win there for anyone is incredible. So all of those things piled into one. I felt it, man, it was emotional. When they crossed the finish line,

and his family become a part of that, hearing him tell us about, you know, how they have to kind of pick and choose, and they weren't there for the Daytona 500. All of that happened, and right there, man, was really, really what sports is all about. Right. And it was a butt-wopin. I mean, the fact that this underdog story, I mean, they really did. They ran great all day, they earned it. They let a lot of laps, right?

It was a legitimate, legitimate win. Very emotional. I'm glad you said that because, yeah, I felt that as well. I like a good underdog story. you like a good underdog story. When we have people that we know and care for on those race teams, it certainly makes it more. I tell you, Michael went on Denny's podcast on Action's Detrimental this week.

Did you get to hear this? I have it. Listen, it makes me appreciate it even more hearing about the resources they lack compared to the resources that the Gibbs and the Hendricks and everybody else bring to the table. And it's like, you know, Michael was talking about this moment where he's like, you know, if I do my job in this playoffs, then we're going to be able to get a hawk eye. And then they go through and explain what a Hawkeye is, and I won't go into it here because, you know, go listen to actions detrimental. But very important for a race team to be competitive and get through tech and all these other things that they do.

And so they know whatever money that they earned this year, they already know how they're going to spend it. Bob Jenkins knows how he's going to spend it. They're going to go reinvest in the company. Good conversation between Michael McDowell, but it made me appreciate the accomplishment even more because they don't come to the fight with the same ammo and the same. same artillery as everybody else. It's not like it's night and day, but if everybody else is a 10, the A-lister's, they're a seven. And then they went in there and led the most laps and did what they did. It's a great story. It is. Bob Jenkins ought to be commended just for sticking it out. And, you know, you have an owner who was, you know, doing everything he could financially to put a team out on the

racetrack. They have had success. They've won races. Pocono a couple years back with Busher, a win with David Reagan at Talladega. I'm trying to rack my brain and get all this right. And then Michael's Daytona 500 win. So they've had these moments, but Bob has, and Bob has spent a lot of his own money, and I don't know him well. I sat in a, I sat in the conference room here at Junior Murder Sports about a year and a half, two years ago, talking to him about charters, right? And trying to, you know, me and me and Kelly were investigating the sport as a whole in terms of charters and how to get involved and how to get to the cup level. And he was one of the conversations that we had. And he's, he's, he ought to be celebrated, man, because it's hard. If you don't,

if you, you know, they always say how to, how do you want to make a small fortune in motorsports? You start with a big one. You know, and, and it's expensive and costly. and a lot of times not profitable. You can certainly make tons of mistakes financially and not be profitable. If you're smart, you've got a good business model, you can make money in this sport. I'm not saying that it's a place where you can't succeed financially,

but he had to put up a lot of the money himself just to get in. He took the risk, right? So he ought to be celebrated. And they're turning in, and he just resigned both his drivers. the week before, McDowell and Gillen. So he decides, hey, man, I'm sticking with my guns here. We're moving forward. We're growing.

We're improving. Pretty incredible story. Kobayashi and Kostecki, all of the international guys never really played a massive factor in the end result of the race. I was thrilled that they were there. I was hoping that they would all have successful runs. I want them to come back. I don't the reason why I want them to do well was because I wanted more people to to come right it was pretty exciting to have them there was a great storyline and it was compelling to think about

man how good could they go um SVG Shane Van Ginsberg who was on our show last week ended up running decent I think the lack of cautions uh in the inability to really kind of close the gap hurt their opportunities I would look down at the lap chart into lap times just periodically every probably 10 laps or so, probably even more often than that, and see how they were running compared to the rest of the field. And Kobayashi and Brody, SVG, obviously they were all running at times some of the fastest lap, some of the top five lap times during the race.

So the speed and the pace is there. They didn't stink. It was an interesting, you know, the way the race played, out without yellows was a challenge for anyone. If you got behind the least a little bit, look at the 16 of A.J. Amendinger had some incredible laps in the final stage. Had he got a yellow, he's a top five car. But due to the troubles he had during the race with Blaney and so forth, you never can't recover from that. Plus, Kobayashi never really got a fair shake at it. I mean, he got

turned on, like, was it lap two or lap three? And then he spun out again with contact with Stenhouse, I believe, there towards the... end. Yeah. So, like, I mean, he was faster than what his finish, which was back in the, you know, what, 33rd. He was. He was faster than that.

Of course, she was. Yeah. Yeah. I hope they come back. I hope more people will try to race with us. I like it. I enjoy seeing, just as I will enjoy when Larson goes to Indy, I mean, you know, it's going to be a challenge.

How good can he go, right? I enjoy seeing drivers take on monumental tasks, such as coming into a new, new discipline. or a new series. SVG, get used to his name, man. He's going to be around. We're going to see him again. We feel all of us, I think, if you've been paying attention to the news over the last couple of weeks, we all feel pretty confident that he's going to be around quite a bit

next year. But hopefully the rest of those guys will come back and get another shot at it. SVG ran a truck race at IRP. I thought he did a good job. He lacked a little pace, went a lap down a couple times. But you didn't make the traditional. mistakes. I mean, never ran a short track race before, never ran an oval before. That's a bullring where you can get yourself tore up very easily. He did none of that. He just kind of

stayed out of trouble and learned. And that's what you've got to do. Run all the laps. Finish the laps. Yeah, just run all the laps. I know it's, you know, it's hard to help people understand. It's hard to, it's hard to help drivers understand that that's a reasonable goal. They want to go out there and just shock the world. They want to, you know, you put a rookie or a young, young talent out there on a track like that. They want to surprise everybody. They want to run top 10, top five, and they end up getting themselves in a lot of trouble trying to do too much.

Obviously, with his age and experience, he's smart enough not to do that. But you can find yourself in some weird situations trying to get underneath people and getting raced hard in the truck series is a common thing. Incredible, I thought, that he tore nothing up. that he ran the whole race, that he didn't make any real big, massive mistakes.

And he didn't ruin anyone else's race. So that's a great first step, I think, toward his oval, you know, crash course, if you will, in trying to figure all this out. He's going to try to come over here and end up, his goal is to be a full-time Cup Series racer in as short a period as time as possible, right? Yeah. And so he's got to learn oval racing in really an unprecedented. precedent an amount of time.

No one's ever really, no one that I can think of has ever came over here. Maybe Montoya. Juan Pablo, that's what I'm thinking about, right? You know, there's a couple examples that, and they pick it up pretty fast. We'll see how it goes. What was your, what's your reaction to his 10th place finish, though, at the Indy Road course? Because, you know, we had a lot of handicapping and debating and discussing in the weeks leading up to it, and you thought that a top five, anything short of the top five, was not

going to be satisfactory for him, given that he just won at Chicago. So now that he finished 10th and the way the race unfolded with no or hardly any cautions, were you, is it a successful weekend for him? Yeah. I think the lack of yellows prevented him from getting the result that he probably deserved. I'm disappointed with 10th. I think he probably is too. I think the team probably is too because they know they were better than that.

You know, he raced with Christopher Bell all day. And that was the way that race played out. It was, you know, without any yellows, everybody raced the same people. Kiselowski and Denny ran against each other all day long. I mean, everybody that, you know, if you watch the battles throughout the day, it was the same people racing each other. And had a yellow came out or maybe one or two yellows came out in that final stage, you know, SDG gets this, you know, the opportunity to better his position

and get that result that I think he should have got. think you finish where he should have, but I don't know that it was entirely his fault. Right. A couple things happened over the weekend. The Cars Tour fired back up. You know, the Cars Tour is, you know, just over a dozen races. They take a couple weeks off, so I'm curious as to how, you know, we came out with a bang when that series started this year, a lot of excitement around the new ownership group and

all of that. And now we're kind of in the guts of the season. in the dog days of the summer and trying to keep people connected and remind them, hey, man, the car store's still going. Here we go again, firing back up. Ace just ran this past weekend.

Tric counties next weekend. That's a $30,000 to win race at Tri-County. That's a Saturday. Yeah, 30 grand. Kenny Wallace was going to run that. It was rescheduled because of weather, and he can't run it. He's got to run the SRX.

Kenny's running that. but then he's going to race at south boston in the cars tour later this year so we're still going to get him uh on the tour but anyways um 30 000 purse give us an idea of what that is uh in in relation to what normal purses are like how much more is this seven to ten is a normal person yeah that's a big payday then for everyone's this so i'm excited about that um uh ace was a good race uh car uh carson uh quapel in our car won he ran at ace earlier this year to win uh it's been a while since we won a race on the tour but had a good run i got to uh nfl's cranking back up you know i'm a big commanders fan um and they had their first preseason game i caught a couple plays

not the entire game but that was fun to be able to watch some football seems like football takes forever to get started up yeah man the off season for the nfl just feels like it's a long long offseason am i wrong did they get some sick wide receiver now i saw some highlights of some receiver for the commanders and I didn't know they have several deep deep are they deep yeah wide receiver yeah okay they got some good ones all right um so that's exciting if you're an NFL fan i know you're probably excited as I am about that kicking back up can't wait for um for fantasy football and all those things um so another thing that uh was interesting to me is um a lot of conversation around the Indie Oval. They had a test there. They're testing today.

And it sounds like we're absolutely going back. They've already started to advertise next year's ticket sales. Right. And what is that screen grab? Go look for that screen grab. It's like the phrase on there. It's like go to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Twitter handle in the in the ad or in the advertisement to sell tickets, it says something about coming back around. Yeah. Which is a nod to the Oval. So, yeah, we're going back to the Oval next year.

I think it's not, is it been officially announced? Probably not, right? Well, if they're doing that, then if it's from the Indie Twitter handle. It doesn't say anything about it. It doesn't say specifically, hey, man, we're racing on the Oval. I've thought it's been official for weeks. I mean, we've been talking about it. Well, the schedule for NASCAR has not come back out.

So then it probably isn't official. I don't think it's sufficient. Right. But, I mean, I think it's pretty well known that we're going back to the Oval and ditching the road course. What do we have in the producers room? Do we got any? Yeah, they're already saying that the tweet was, got a big 30th anniversary celebration in store for next year, renew year, hashtag the brickyard tickets now and score the best seats at the best prices for an event that you do not want to miss.

Currently reading the article, it does not say anything about the overall yet. It's a graphic. It's a graphic on the tweet. Yeah, that's what it says. Look at where the cars. What's the direct? What's the graphics say? Come back around.

Come back around. See? All right. There you go. And the car is in the direction of like the oval turn. It's not going backwards. It's not going backwards. Sly dogs.

What do you think about this? Do you like this? Yeah. You're good with it? Oh, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a, I, you know, we went and raced on the road course.

That was fine. Look, it was fine. But we, having. The fact that how do I articulate this? I don't want to really get into a deep dive on this one, man, but it's like this. I sort of do, but go ahead. Sort of do.

So we ran on the Oval. Indianapolis Motor Speedway has over 100 years of history, the Oval. All right? This is basically where motorsports started in our part of the world. And it, when NASCAR, there was so much talk for two decades about getting stock car, would stock cars ever run there? Could they ever run there?

Bill France, Senior, Bill France Jr., were having conversations with the Speedway for decades about how to get there, how to get us there. And finally, in the mid-90s, there was a test. I remember how, like, in Christ. insane and hard to believe and beautiful. It was that we were going to get to go there. Before we ever saw a car on the track, your imagination just ran wild.

You couldn't believe this. NASCAR at Indy. And I remember that test. It was publicized just as much as almost as a race itself. I mean, that test, your dad was there. All the main guys were there. Everyone was there. Yeah.

The test was massive. It was, it was, imagine that happening today, right? And social media would have exploded with something like that. So it was a big deal. We go race there and it was, you know, everybody wanted to win that first race. All the drivers that were, you know, the next three or four or five years, you could tell immediately right out of the gate they were winning a race that was as important in their resume to them as any race ever that, you know, this race, you know, it came pre-packaged as, I hate this term, but a crown jewel. It automatically became one of the top three most important races that any driver would want to win because of the track's history and all of that.

When we moved to the road course, you lost that almost entirely. You know, for an Austin Cendrick or a Michael McDowell or someone connected to either Indy, the area, open wheel, whatever, you still really wanted to win in Indy no matter what. Right, road course oval. Still get a brick. But, you know, you talk to Denny or any of these other NASCAR, stock car guys that grew up in, you know, stock cars, they want to win on the oval. The win on the road course is great, but it's nowhere near like what winning on that oval would mean. and so

you know I you know I get I don't want to disparage NASCAR or anybody this is not a knock on anybody

but leaving the Oval to go run the road course is much like you know leaving the Charlotte Oval to run the Roval it's like saying

man you know this microphone don't work so let's move all the furniture around in this studio let's rearrange the room because my microphone's broke or let's just go to another studio entirely instead of just fixing the microphone right and so we left the oval

because the racing wasn't good well it wasn't a track's fault you know and we left the you know we don't run two oval races at Charlotte Mercer Speedway no more because the racing wasn't good and it's not the track's fault. Now the racing with the next gen at Charlotte is one of the best races of the year.

The last couple of two or three races at Charlotte on the Oval have been amazing. And so I think I'm excited that we're going back to the Oval and I hope we never leave it. I hope we were so lucky, so, so blessed to be able to be invited. there to race there and we literally gave it away. Boy, I got a lot of thoughts on this. Well, everybody wants to hear it, Mike. Let's go back and just diagnose this. Why did we leave? Because the racing wasn't good, right?

Okay. And that's true because I'm having a hard time even remember the last good race at the Indy, at the big course. And so the argument, if I remember correct, correct me if I'm wrong. It was these cars don't race well on this track. Was that not it? that you know the NASCAR you know

if I can remember correctly the cars had good races there you know we we race we had good races there good moments there when you're looking at you know the bulk of it you know they had the tire race that where that was just a bad situation man you know that's not a car

that's just a bad situation we won't blame that on the table no right that's just an anomaly that's right that's totally screwed up. Yes, it sucked for everybody. But that was fixable. I remember the race, I believe it was the race that

Casey Kane won. I remember Brad Kislauski and Jimmy Johnson. Jimmy going three wide, smoking down the back straight away from contact earlier in the lap. I remember Brad Kislaski and Denny's slamming

fenders down the back straight away. In one of the last, you know, one of the handful of races toward the last couple of, you know, we had another race at the Oval where we blew a lot of right front tires. Denny blew one, hard hits. But then we changed the horsepower. We went to that really low horsepower thing and put them really big spoilers on the back, then big ass spullers.

That's right. And we got way off base. Right. You know, what they were doing was trying to make the cars basically just draft past each other on every straightaway. They were trying to recreate what you could basically do in any car where, you know, if you were close enough, you were going to be able to pass the guy down the straightaway. If you come off the corner in a reasonable distance, you were going to go by. They wanted to try to replicate that.

And we kind of got away from, you know, it made the racing worse. Yeah, it did. And yeah, and then we just, so we just bailed, right? We just bailed on the track altogether, a track that, like, we were so lucky to get to, so blessed to be able to have that on the schedule. So anyways, it's coming back. I mean, go ahead. My concern on this, listen, first of all, I'm with you.

I wish we'd never left the Oval. I love the Oval. If you like history and you like the historical significance of it, then you like the Oval way better than the road course. The road course obviously gave us some exciting moments. It's my worry is like part of the thing is that it feels like, you know, we can't ever have anything nice because we, you know, ticket sales were not that good. No. I mean, I felt like that's why we went to the road course to begin with.

There was a lot of empty grandstands in those races, even the cup races. So I felt like they had to, they did something different. But now we're going back, I don't know, does it start to feel a little bit like the clash or the All-Star race where it's like, okay, what's our identity on this? Like, let's stick with something. Let's figure it out and stick with it. And I hope if we're going back to the Oval like we all think we are, then we stick with it. And if there's a problem with it, don't incriminate the racetrack,

figure it out on the cars, which I guess is what we're going to do. But I don't want us to overreact anymore. We just overreact every week. Was this race good or not? Was it exciting? You know, the fact of the matter is that we had a weekend this past week where there was only one caution for three laps. I think we could get away with it because it was a road course and there was just action all over the place.

If there's only one caution for three laps on an oval, people react differently. So if there's only one caution on the big track, yeah, they're going, this race sucks. We shouldn't be here at the big track. And that's what worries me is that if we're going to go back, we just, you know, we are so short-term thinking and react to the sample sizes that we end up lacking an identity. And that's the thing. So I hope we go back. I hope that we stick with it. We are.

We are. We're going back. I hear you, man. I think it's a, I think it's a, you know, no one's ever going to blame that racetrack. That's Indy, man. You don't blame Indy. You don't blame those things that have credibility, credibility and history. And it's always going to fall on NASCAR's shoulders, whether that's right or wrong, you know, which is the car,

whether we got the, you know, what do we need to do, the tire, Goodyear's going to carry responsibility. It's never going to fall on the tracks of shoulders because Indy is Indy. And so, you know, hopefully, hopefully the next gen runs good there, race is well there. I think it should. It should. Yeah, I think it should.

And either way, I think, you know, I think you bring up a good point, Mike, about the crowd. if you're a track owner like Marcus Smith with Charlotte or Indianapolis Motor Speedway and you've got 300,000 seats and you're only selling 100,000, you've got to do something. You can't sit still and hope that someone else figures it out. You can't go, well, I hope good years tires better or different. I hope that the car race is different. You can't. You can't afford it.

You're losing your hemorrhaging money. And so the move to the road course sparked some. hey, renewed interest, probably sold reasonable tickets. That's what the Roval did. The Roval did the same thing. People got, hey, well, I want to come check this out. This is something new we've never seen before. And the Robles had some great moments.

I don't have anything against it. You did last year. You did not like it. You were very critical. Well, the racing's so good now at the Oval. I wish we would not. Sure. You know, anyways, I think it's a good conversation, man.

And I hope that I'm excited about that. one of the other things that that snuck into the conversation this weekend Denny Hamlin's still not signed at Gibbs Now Gibbs and Hamlin and all them are talking to talk You know we're going to get this done

Danny said that he you know It is late He would love to have had it finished by now This is actually later than he'd rather You know he would rather Have this done by now And I know Danny's part of the dirty mobe media family But it is a storyline

And he's going to want that contract because the Dirty Mo family is not going to pay in what Joe Gibbs could pay. Yeah, funny. But this feels similar to Kyle Bush, and I know I'm not trying to insinuate that Denny's going to end up somewhere else, but why is this not done, right? I mean, Denny's worth it. It seems like this should be pretty simple. So what is the holdup? I'm just curious as to what is the delay. and getting this finalized.

And the risk, in my opinion, kind of falls on Joe Gibbs and his team that this drags out any further. Because Danny has options, his own race team. Now, I don't know whether he'd really, I don't know whether he'd really drive for himself right now. But I think at some point, gosh, I mean, if you own a cup team

and you're in twilight of your career, right, He's got, let's say, five amazing years left. You've got to want to run a couple of those in your own car, right? I would think so, right? Like to finish your career in something you built would be incredible. And they're good enough. They're fast enough. And so what if, like, you know, imagine, I know they haven't this year.

They've kind of, they haven't outperformed gives this year. but imagine if they had imagine if they were winning right you know imagine if they were in a you know a couple wins for each driver cars running good and we're sitting here with Denny unsigned that'd be a damn big story

don't you think we'd certainly expect him to allude to it all the media would be hammering oh we'd be yeah every week hammering every week I'm a little surprised are they is he getting hammered right now I know Joe Gibbs brought it up the other day the conversation started yeah when he won a few weeks ago Denny won at Pocono, and Joe Gibbs was talking about how he's going to sign Denny Hamlin for the rest of his life, or he made a big joke about it, but the fact is it.

This weekend is the first weekend. I really started seeing quotes in the media where Denny's having to say, hey, man, yet, here's, you know, it's not done. I wish it was done. It should be done. It's taken long. This is late. We should have had it signed sooner. Don't, you know, and he had a couple, you know, vague references to it being delayed.

and everybody's like saying all the right things, hey, I want to retire here. Jenny, you know, Joe Gibbs Racing is saying Denny's definitely going to be racing here next year. And I'm, that sounds great. And more than likely, hey, that's what happens. But I'm just damn curious as to what's the holdup? What's the net called on?

What's the fishing net called on at the bottom of the ocean? Look, my theory is usually when these things are delayed, usually these things move at the speed of the sponsorships and all that stuff. Not to say that they're looking for money. I'm not insinuating that, but I just know that usually that's the other, you know, cog in the wheel, right? But it's interesting.

If that's the case, that would have been the same scenario that Kyle Bush was in. It was, they lacked the funding, right? Or they had the sponsorship stuff hold up. And that did not end well that had Kyle Busch go and do another race team. So would Denny leave? JGR to go yet to his race team.

I hadn't even considered that, but yeah, that's interesting. He certainly has options. Well, he'd need a charter. He'd need a charter, you're right. That's probably the biggest hurdle. If there was one to be had, man, I think he would have to consider, maybe already considering it. Who knows?

Denny is certainly, you know, brainstorming. but I you know listen we were I remember when when the deal with Kyle started rumbling in the media the story the talking points were all the same man Kyle's gonna be here we're gonna make this work we're gonna figure it out we're gonna put it together yes it's we got some hurdles but we all want him he wants to be here all the same stuff yeah especially Truix just signed a couple weeks ago so now all that attention is now only on Denny's the only piece left for them yeah so it's it's it's going to be heightened over the next couple weeks. Yeah.

It is. That's a good point because you also have, again, you know, you have the Toyota, there's seats available at Toyota as well. And you've got John Hunter and Ivichick that's kind of sitting there in the wings. He's going to drive the 42 next year. I believe so, right? Is that confirmed? Is that just what you suspect? I do too. Yeah. Yeah. He'll drive the 42 next year. That's what I think. At least that's what the 42 and Toyota would probably prefer. you know, that John Hunter do that. And John Hunter's probably got to see

what he needs to see to make that commitment from the team, from Toyota, that things are going to improve there. Because he's already done that. John Hunter's already got in in a car that he, you know, shuffled him back to the truck,

you know, the truck, or, yeah, the truck series and then now Xfinity. So he's done this cycle to cupping back. He's not doing it again. He's not going to get in another car

in the Cup series that doesn't perform. You recall that, Mike? Yeah. Let me ask you a question, though. So, again, you're going to probably get mad at it for asking this. It's a complete hypothetical. What you said, wouldn't you want to drive your own stuff, especially at the end of your career?

And I'm curious, the first thing I thought about was, do you think that your dad would have ever left RCR to go run a DEI car at the end of his career? Like, would he have ever done that? I don't know. Probably not. Yeah. I didn't think so either. Yeah.

So I do think there are scenarios. And, you know, Denny and his history with Coach Gibbs, yeah, I would almost, it would be something. It would be something for him to ever leave JGR. I just can't imagine it either, frankly. I don't think, yeah, I don't think my, if I was going to have to put money down on this, I'd say I'd put my money that he signs with Gibbs. Sure. But I certainly think that, you know, we ought to, it's a story that I think it will get bigger

unless they can get this contract done. Yeah. Yeah. Chase Elliott almost come back and got himself in victory lane. He's in a must-win situation. Came really close to winning this past weekend. It's the first time we've seen him have a shot at winning a race since he's come back from his injury. And he's going to Watkins Glen.

This is probably, to me, the biggest lead going into the next race. Chase Elliott almost winning at Indy, coming up short, and then going to to the glen where he's you know he's got better stats he's probably yeah I think they're going to be all in it's going to be the it's like this it's kind of like you know John L. Way

on the two-yard line he's got 98 yards to go under two minutes left for the Broncos remember those days yeah and they're down six they got a score a touchdown yeah I mean that's where we're at with Chase Elliott. He's going to have to have one of those Elway moments.

And he's going, you know, with the way they ran this past weekend, I might just go ahead and say it, man. I'm picking him to win. Going all the way here. Yeah, why not? Making the prediction. Why not?

Well, you whiffed on that Kobayashi one so bad that you do need a little bit of a redemption here on your pitch. What did I say, though? What was the width on Kobayashi? Well, you thought he was going to be the best of those, uh, of those ringers. Yeah, and he was last. Was he the very last one?

Yeah. The worst. Wait, worst? Yes. 33rd. Jensen Button was 28th. Rockinfeller was 24th. Brody Kostecki 22nd, Shane.

He was last, but not the worst. Again, you were very specific about those, the out-of-towners, you know, the guys coming into the sport. I'm not, if Kobayashi, I mean, I'm, look, man. So, Chase Elliott. Wait, you want me to not rebuttal to? You don't have one. You just missed. You whiffed on it.

There's no, there's no excuse for it. You don't have one. Yes, there is. Okay, God, let's hear it. I don't have an excuse, but I don't agree with your assessment. Well, let's hear it. I mean, I think he's the best. I still rank him higher than the other guys in talent.

Wow. Man, he's a freak, man. He's an alien. He had one test where he said, you know, nice speeds and nice things, and you crowning the best of that group. He's also won LeMont and several, Daytona 24. You didn't cite that stuff. out of the test. I'm just saying like he's done more than just had a good test.

Well, look. Okay. So, so. He's kind of a freak of nature, Mike. But that's not an excuse. That's not a reason. You're not backtracking. You're just, no. Okay. I mean, you know, look, he didn't get a good finish. He got spun out early. I think if we can roll the tape back in this very episode, you mentioned how he, he kind of got put behind the eight ball early in a couple, couple incidents. Um, that's true. So, um, damn it. I said And the cautions didn't do any favors. Yes, it wasn't a good result. It wasn't.

But I'll be honest with you, man. Dude was humble. I've watched some of his post-race comments. You know, he didn't bash the sport or the car or get out and say, this sucked. I don't want to do this again. He said he wants to come back. Yeah. Yeah.

And I want him to come back because I think that he can show what I believe is true and that he is a one, he's a one-of-a-kind talent. Yeah. Hey, if it's any solid. Wallace, you didn't whiff as bad as Steve LaTart did because I was listening to Dirty Modo on the way back from New York and this was Sunday morning. I was a little late to it. And when they brought up Michael McDowell, and again, look, part of the fun of having these sports betting shows is to be able to go back once the results have happened and see how

bad they missed. And that's fun, right? It's what he signed up for. So I don't have a problem. Say it. They brought up Michael McDow. His words, he can't win. He cannot win.

And then he goes, well, I mean, that's harsh. but he's just not going to win. And man, if that guy didn't go in there, I mean, I said, we have a new definition of Rick Allening. You know, if Rick Allen is a verb that says something positive with a negative result, Steve LaTartre just basically willed Michael McDowell to a victory there. So he missed that one pretty good.

He did it at Michigan, too. He said, Bush Rink going back to back. He did he go back to back? Yeah. He's now with it. One other thing I wanted to talk about it, Andy, was Brody Kostecki. and Brody didn't finish well. He pitted late in the race gave up some track position,

but it ended up coming back, I think, 22nd. Is that right? Yes, 20 seconds. So a lot of people, if you're a hardcore fan, really kind of paying attention, you saw all of this that I'm about to say. But Brody, to me, was probably the most impressive of the weekend. And the reason is he had not

ran a lap in a cup car when he showed up to Indy. He had test, he'd ran some Sim work. He said about 15 hours total of Sim work, but that's, you know, and that's great. I mean, you know, let's not, let's not belittle what the Sim work can do.

But when you can, the only way the Sim really helps is when you can kind of accompany it, accompany it with actual time in the race car. Right. And so driving a SIM without any real world experience, you kind of miss in a lot of elements that are critical. But anyways, I mean, the guy never drove a lap, showed up for 20 minutes of practice.

They had a problem with the car that cost them a ton of time in that 20 minute practice. They end up running a couple laps. Then he goes out in qualifying, literally like three laps on the racetrack and sets it in the top 15 almost made the final round of qualifying I could not believe that he

and you never seen the you never been around the track or any all of this right this is elite man yeah this sport is elite it is tough and he went out there and measured up

a right away and so then broke you know he wrecks which was sucked it sucked he wrecked his car in qualifying because then he had to go to a backup car that probably was not going to be as well prepared,

not as meticulously, you know, combed over at the shop, and it's not the primary, it's just not. And it raced like, you know. Now, he made great lap time. He ended up with a decent result, considering there were no yellows. Should have probably, with his speed, finished about 15th. But, so,

Brody, man, he doesn't have this pathway that SVG does. SVG is already entrenched in a plan that's formulating, right, for him to come back. SVG is in the middle of this sort of this head-on plan to switch over to NASCAR. Brody doesn't have that. Brody's not planning that.

Brody's leading the points in Supercar. Brody's in a young career in the Supercar Series in Australia. And I'm just wanting so badly for him to get another shot to come back to show what he can do. And I don't know if he will. I really, really don't. It could be for me one of the bigger what-ifs of this year. And beyond, if he doesn't get a shot to come back and show. show what he can do. That was pretty incredible. Just being able to find the speed that he had,

and I think he was giving it 110% that bit him in the ass and qualifying. But, you know, he settled in in the race. He didn't have those type of mistakes in the race. And I think if he's in his primary car starting up toward the front, Brody runs top five with the speed he had. So I just want to make that mention. The Dirty Moe Ultimate Experience, is coming up. We talked about it last week. It's at Bristol. That's right. There's two suites full of like-minded individuals. If you love Dirty Moe media, all things Dirty Moe, you'll be hanging out with people that are just like you. That's right. And there's only two seats left. As of the time we're taping this, right. Right? Two seats left. Yeah. Two,

two seats. That's right. The fact of the matter is there's two seats left. There will be a waiting list, and I will say from last year, the waiting list did actually end up. Yeah, there'll be a waiting list. Once it sells out, it goes into a waiting list. And the waiting list, actually, we did have to tap into that last year because, you know, some people. A couple people. Yeah, their plans change, something is that they can't make it. Okay, so hop on that waiting list.

So, yeah, even if you're trying to buy and it's sold out by the time you hear this, I still think that it's worth your while to get on the waiting list. All right. All right. I hope you enjoyed the show. That's Tuesday. tomorrow, episode six, Becoming Earnhardt comes out,

and then catch us Thursday. We'll be reacting to all things that's been happening this week and looking forward to Watkins Glen. We'll see you then. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.