The Dale Jr. Download - 490 - Dale Jr. Recaps His Return at Bristol

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back in the studio after a captivating performance in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Bristol. He and co-host Mike Davis take a deep dive into his highly anticipated return to Thunder Valley: The pre-qualifying jitters  Changing your mindset to deal with anxiety Dealing with the prospect of not qualifying for the race Outperforming expectations and leading some laps Realizing his car was on fire and what caused it DraftKings State-Specific Problem Gambling Information:In Massachusetts, call [phone] or visit gamblinghelplinema.org, In New York, call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369). In Tennessee and Kansas, Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). In West Virginia, Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www.1800gambler.net. All games regulated by the West Virginia Lottery. Please play responsibly. In partnership with Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races. In Connecticut, Help is available for problem gambling call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. Licensee partner Golden Nugget Lake Charles (LA). 21+, age varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. See DKNG.co/autoracing for eligibility, terms and responsible gaming resources. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. Eligibility and deposit restrictions apply.  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. Wow. Mr. Dalenhart Jr. That family techniques sometimes. 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. 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 Dell Jr. Download. It's dirty air, and it's Tuesday. And we're in the Bojangles studio, and I'm here again with my co-host Mike Davis. How you doing, Mike? I'm doing well. Can't wait for this show. Oh, really? We've got a lot to talk about it.

Yeah, we do. We've got a lot to talk about. Yeah. Yeah, I had a pretty good morning. How was your morning? Morning was going pretty well. Good, good. You know, started off with some pumped up.

reads about insurance and catastrophes and stuff. No, you did. I did. Yeah, I got to do it with you. Yeah. So other than that, it's been great. Okay. Well, good.

I dropped off one kid at school. Do you do some drop-off? I did do drop-offs, but you did one kid at school, and it went flawlessly because you were here early. I'm going to tell you, man. I mean, I can't remember have we talked about this if we had somebody waved their hand. but we get there and she gets out, the teachers are at the car to help the kids, you know,

get out of the car. As soon as that's over with, man, she has her little, she has her book bag, has a handle on it in wheels, right? So she can wheel it behind her. It's, you know, it's a, book bags are different.

Not like you used to have them. No, no. They never have wheels. Well, Hearst has little wheels. It's like a little wheels. suitcase. And she just takes off. I'm sitting there and the person in front of me is pulling away. The person behind me is waiting for me to move and we're going to leave, right? We're supposed to get as soon as a kid gets out, you get the hell out of the dodge. Next, next group of

cars comes up. They're going to drop their kid off. So you've got to keep the simile line moving. But I'm sitting there and I'm like watching her and she's just headed to class all alone. So what's the problem? She's five. Isn't that what you want her to do? I don't know. She's five. It's so weird. What part's weird? She needs somebody to take her. Dude, she's fine. Okay.

Yeah. Let her go, man. Let her fly. Let those wings go. That was hard. Come on. That was hard to do. So, like, you know.

I wanted to sit there and watch to make sure she got there, but that was going to take about five minutes. Oh, yeah. You're getting honked out if you do that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got to move. I'm like, man, I want to walk her to class. What's up? She's going walking class by herself.

She'd be all right. I mean, driving away, man, I'm like, that's perfect for her. She needs to grow up. I get it. She's got to get tough skin. Yeah. But that was tough. I think you need it.

I think she's fine. I know, you're right. That was hurt my heart for some reason. Yeah. Man, that's right. You want them to, you know, there was the time when they didn't want to get out of the car and they're grabbing your neck collar and ruining your shirts and all that stuff. You're like, no, you've got to go.

But then when they go, You want to be missed. She was fine. That's what I was doing her. I was pulling out of her clothes. Don't go. Don't go. You miss me.

I heard you ran out of gas in your pontoon. Oh yeah, I did. Well, we had a gasp. We had a gas from back in the booth. We've really struck gold here. Go on, Mike. Go on. I mean, I ran out of gas in the boat.

How did you do that? I think the gas gauge is messed up. No. Gas gauge is probably fine. What they all say. Listen, I have a lot. history of running out of gas and when when they run out of gas it's always the needles below the but this one it was on the e i thought i still had another hour cruising are you serious i really did

who was with you a buddy of mine chad had chad respond chad started videoing it he thought it was he was joyful he was just laughing it was actually pretty pretty lucky that i ran out of gas right near the marina where we always get gas so i was able to pull her on the pit road but i had to have this emergency Do you have an emergency paddle or like an oar on your boat? No? I think I probably do. Actually, I do. I bought one, and my wife thought it was the dumbest thing ever.

And I'm like, you just never know when you're going to need to paddle a little bit. Well, I needed to. I need to get it to the gas boat. You paddled the pontoon. Yeah. How far? Probably. It felt like a couple miles, but it was more like a – it was about 100 yards.

Oh, okay. And then a jet ski pulled me in the rest of the way. There you go. What? Who was on the jet ski? I don't know. A good Samaritan. And you don't?

Didn't thank them? I thanked them. You didn't? I don't know their entire life history. You don't know their name? Maybe their name was Chad. I don't know his name. Yeah.

Yeah. But I appreciated it. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I actually thought it was kind of fun. Funny. Is it funny?

Do you think it's funny? Yeah. I mean, I ran it out of gas. I didn't. The point of the whole trip was to run it at, to run it low. because I'd gone a couple weeks without the boat, you know, being run. I like to run it. I like to get the gas out.

But then I kind of went longer than I was supposed to because, you know, having fun. I went all the way up north of 150 bridge. You know, you can just put more gas on top of the old gas. Yeah, I know, I know. You don't have to run every tank empty. You can actually put, you know, you can just buy a couple dollars of gas. You don't have to buy a full tank every time. You mentioned this, though, a few weeks ago.

What? There is something in us. We don't know what it is, but we are wired to see how far you can go on a tank of gas. Like it's not smart, but everybody, including yourself and people listening, have run it out of gas when they knew they had options to put gas in it. Not a boat, but maybe a car. It's something. And I don't know. There's something about trying to stretch it that extra mile.

I thought I always run out of gas when the needles below the E. I thought that there's a little grace period there in the needle gauge manufacturing that, you know, if it's at E, it's got to be below the E. There's got to be clear separation, but not in this boat. Just so you know, I want to make sure you're aware. Yeah, I won't. If it's on E, it really means it's empty. I won't be running out of gas on the lake.

I don't think. Not in my houseboat I'm going to get. Hey. No movement. What's the update? There's no update. None? Sunny reached out to the houseboat people about this little houseboat.

Yeah. That I sent you a picture of. And they haven't responded. He was supposed to call him yesterday. I'll shoot him a text and see if I can get an update right now. By the way, he's been busy too. While you're shooting him a text, I will say that you and Amy came into my office

the day after our podcast last week, and we were talking about this houseboat. Amy's not in love with the idea, is she? Well, it's, I think that everybody that knows about it thinks that I'm wasting my time. Not me. I don't need it. I'm not on that list.

That I don't need this. They're right. I don't care. I don't care. That's right. Did I tell you last week I didn't care? Yeah, you made that clear. I don't just about anything.

I'm almost 50. I'm about done caring. There we go. Yep, about done caring about it. That's right. Can't take it with you, they say. If you want to know my opinion, don't care.

Probably don't care. That's probably it. Yeah. I save all my opinions for this show, though. So keep listening. But just to be clear, he's going to probably not care. They ain't returning calls, Sonny says. Yeah, man, it's weird.

Yeah. Well, I will tell you this, and I'm sure the listeners are riveted by this conversation, but at the marina where I ran out of gas and therefore had to put new gas in my tank, the whole conversation was about you buying a houseboat. Like every, oh, I'm telling you. In fact, there is a, the one that you are looking at, there's one just like it in the marina. They were showing me. So.

Did you see it? Yeah. Just think about it. Yeah. Listen, I don't know that unless it's at the bottom of the lake, I'm going to like the boat. Oh, okay. I'm serious. I mean, you're going to show me a boat.

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I brought something with me. I ran this Xfinity Race this past weekend. This is word for word every piece, every comment and audio from the radio conversation. I had the, I handed Mike a couple sheets of paper, and it's basically all of our radio conversation from the race. And Russell did this for me, and he said, some of it was highlighted. So anyways, I thought you might want to have some phone with. that. We had a, we went to run the Xfinity race. We talked about that. Y'all know we went and ran Bristol, if you listen to the past shows. And I was super damn nervous about it. I don't think,

I've really been, I'm really sure about this comment I'm about to make, but I don't believe I've ever been more nervous in my life as I was before qualifying. Literally people were looking at me going, you're freaking nervous. Like it was written all over me. I couldn't hide it. Well, you said It was so bad, I couldn't hide it. I mean, it was usually you can hide it, right? Usually walk around and act like nothing's a matter. But for some reason, I was just really nervous. And then when I went out there to practice,

so we get a 20-minute practice and I'm going to go out there and run about 20 laps. Right away, the very first couple of corners, I was like, I had made a massive freaking mistake. This is harder than I ever thought. It could be. And this, like, all we had was, all I had the base off of was, the sim i couldn't remember i mean i can i know bristol and i know how to get around the racetrack but i can't remember physically driving around the track i mean it was six seven years ago and so

we went off in the corner for the first lap and i'm like holy cow this is this is no just ain't child's play this is we ain't mess we ain't playing here this ain't a pickup game i ran lap after lap after lap and the car wasn't comfortable and i wasn't comfortable and i was Everything's happening too fast, and I was not able, you know, I've said this for years. Every time you go to Bristol, even when I was a full-time racer, it takes about 30 or 40 laps for you to sort of start processing how fast things are happening. You've got to catch up to how quickly things are coming at you. And it's really only like that at Bristol because of the, you know, you're running 15 second laps around a half-mile racetrack. And so I wasn't going to get 40 laps.

If we ran 20, I still finished practice going, I don't have a damn clue. I'm not even close to being able to say I'm comfortable entering the corner. I might be overdriving it. I might be underdriving it. I don't think I've pushed the car to its limit on corner exit yet. I haven't found it, right? I haven't gotten to the limit. I haven't been able to go around the corner and go, got everything.

I got it all right there on that lap. So I felt like I was still way off and totally and not real sure where, how much further I could go to push the limit before a problem, right, before losing traction. And then I got to go qualify. I mean, I've got to go out first. I was a little nervous for you on that part, knowing how nervous you were when I saw that you had to go out first. Yeah. Yeah.

And so luckily for me, I don't know if they do this every week, but right before, so we've got the track all rubbered up. There's rubber everywhere. There's marbles and all kinds of stuff all over the track. Well, lucky for me, they sent. the pace trucks out there, and the pace trucks ran like five fast laps, like a couple of pace trucks running right in the groove, really quickly around the track. And they were inadvertently picking up rubber and picking up imperfections and marbles

and kind of cleaning the racetrack. And so I thought, man, that's kind of good. That's going to help me. I was watching them out the front of the windshield. I'm strapped in, waiting on them to wave me out onto the track, right? The nervous tension crescendoed to a like almost nauseating

like a puke moment. Let me finish. All right. Don't interrupt this. I'm not. And so I'm sitting in the car strapped in and my spotter Joey's on the radio

and he's like about a minute before they send you and you're sitting there. And there's an official standing at the left front corner of the car and you're watching his hands because he's going to give you a wave or some signal right to crank it up and he goes 45 seconds

but probably going to send you about 45 seconds and so he's counting down and I'm sitting there thinking in my head I'm like all right I'm going to go I'm about to pull out here it's going to take me about 45 seconds to run this qualifying run so literally in one minute

I'm going to be over this will be over in one minute and I was I was, it was, I was kind of, I was kind of like taken aback by how nervous I was in that moment. And then in one minute, I was going to be completely on the other side of that extreme relief. Yeah. And, but maybe disappointed, maybe happy, whatever, right, with the result. But either way, it was going to be over.

And I'm, I don't, dude, I don't know how, how to not get that way. I wish I wasn't like that. I wish I wasn't that nervous or anxiety-ridden. And I don't know. You'd think that you'd think that it would be easier and easier the older you get. And I think that that's why, you know, when I joke about it on social media, who do you want to, what retired driver do you want to see come back and run a one-off Xfinity race? And I tease Jeff Burton and I tease Jeff Gordon.

But I honestly think that while there are probably some good reasons why they don't want to come back and do that, one big reason is they're afraid of not succeeding. There's probably some of that fear of not being good enough. And I think that's what I'm dealing with in that moment. getting right before I go out and qualify, I ran some practice laps. I was totally over my head, in over my head. No way else to describe it. The practice laps were like trying to read a foreign language.

Nothing made sense. And now I'm going to go out there and try to run as fast as I can possibly go right to the limit of the car and hope that I get a good enough lap that will get me into the field. I was two spots away from missing the race at Martinsville on time when I qualified for that race a couple years ago. Just a couple tenths or hundreds of a thousandths and I would have been out of that race. That would have been embarrassing as hell.

Yeah. That's what you're worried about. Explain what you mean by it didn't make sense. Like were your times that far off? No. Well, explain yourself. Times were great. I mean, times were fine. What didn't make sense?

It's happening too fast and I don't, I'm not comfortable. I don't feel the car, I don't feel the grip, I'm going in the corner and not doing, everything feels like I, you go, when you drive a good lap, you go down the corner and it hooks up and you hammer the gas and you're driving the car on top of the racetrack and sliding around and you're like,

I'm getting it all out there. I'm getting everything I can get right here. In practice, I was not able to get to that. I needed a lot more time to be able to work up to that. Right. And practice was over and I wasn't even halfway there. That's fair. You didn't have enough time to get comfortable. No. And so when you don't have a in between, it's either a one or a 10, 10 being the most comfortable, one being uncomfortable. You don't usually have a five or six. If it's a five or six, you feel like a one. And so you didn't get enough time. So I was going to ask you,

Dale, you know, what exactly is the source of the anxiety? And I think you did just answer it. Your fear is not succeeding. But your, I guess I'm wondering is that in the back of your mind are you afraid of the wreck? Are you afraid of not qualifying? Are you afraid of...

Looking like a clown, Mike. Looking like just... That's it. Looking like a damn loser. I don't want to jump ahead, but we're talking to a guy that's led 47 laps of this race and had them covered. But we'll get to that in a second.

I mean, this is quite interesting, man. I'm like you you are buckled almost to a debilitating measure of anxiety going into these races and everyone around you thinks that you got a great car, you're a great driver if you just had confidence in yourself, man,

imagine the possibilities. I know. I saw this clip. It was a great quote that was someone might say that there's two, types of individuals you know I don't want to get into the argument about athletes but let's just use the word athletes for this for this there's two types there's the types that fear failure or are driven by success right right

you're either either you know is a you're either fearing failure or you're driven by success right and so it We're maybe all to assume that every driver on the racetracks running around there. And some are driven by the fear of failure. Some are driven by the opportunity of success or winning. And this, damn it, he was like one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Play for the Lakers. Magic Johnson.

No. Kareem? No. Wilt? No. Kobe. Kobe. Kobe said, he said, he said, I'm not driven by the fear of failure and I'm not driven by the, the,

the championship or the opportunity to become the greatest of all time. He said, I'm there to learn every moment. In every moment I'm just there to learn. I'm driven by trying to learn in that moment. And I thought, man, that's exactly where I was going wrong. You know, if you put yourself in a competitive situation, right, or even in any situation professionally, right, where you're trying to succeed. and I wonder if that was,

I wonder if that would work in that moment if you could figure out a way to get yourself there. Instead of being me in that moment, I'm worried about failure. I'm driven by trying not to fail, right? And I think I race most of my career that way. Like, gosh, I hope I don't fail today. I hope I don't let, you know,

I hope I don't disappoint me, myself, everyone else. That was driving sort of emotion in my racing career. Some people are like, you know, some people might be thinking, you know, I'm here to win this race today and I want to win 100 and I want to win 10 championships. That's what's driving me. But Kobe was like, Kobe said, I'm neither one of those. I'm there to learn in this moment. And I faced, I didn't, I didn't look at success or fearing failure. I was just thinking, what am I going to learn right now?

What am I going to learn in this moment? And so I was thinking, man, okay, so you go out there to qualify and just instead of worrying about making the field or worrying about failing, just wondering what you're going to learn in this qualifying lap. It sounds simple, don't it? Yeah, but I don't think you're wired how you're wired, right? I mean, like we can all wish we were somebody different. I'm sure we could do it every day. What's interesting about you is it? I'm not, I'm not comparing myself.

I'm just trying to figure out a way. so as I go forward to try not to get so worked up. Yeah, because it sounds miserable, frankly. It is. That part is. What you're through that? I mean, listen, like I said, when that qualifying lap was over, especially after I realized it was going to be a good enough lap to get into the race,

the rest of the day was fantastic. What sucked was the first half of the day, right? Waiting for practice, waiting for laps, realizing, and holy shit, we're in over our head. Oh, damn, practice is over and we're not ready. We've got to go qualify, and I don't have a damn clue how hard I can go. Right, right.

So that part was all miserable. But I guess if you followed the philosophy that I saw in that clip about, you know, that Kobe was talking about is you just think, man, what am I about, I'm just going to, what am I about to learn? You know, not, oh, I'm in over my head, or damn, I'm not ready, or is this going to go bad? Is this going to go good? But what am I about to learn?

What am I going to learn in this next couple of laps of qualifying? What am I going to learn about myself or my car? And how am I going to get better? How will I be better on the other side of it? As well as you learn from failures. In fact, most people that succeed would have had a pile of failures at which they were able to learn from

and not do again, not replicate. That's part of failing. You hope to, it's what you teach your kids. I'm curious, though. Let me ask you a question. if it's this way, and this isn't just exclusive for Xfinity Series races, it's also late model races. Florence was just a few weeks ago.

We had the same conversation. Why do you do it? Because once we got qualified, we had a totally, I mean, I had an amazing experience. Like I knew when I was clapped, I knew when I strep down in that car and got, I knew when I was getting in there for the race to start, I'm like, I'm going to have fun. This is going to be fun. And honestly, even in that moment when I'm getting ready to get in the car, I didn't know whether we'd run good or not. The last couple of races, I finished 15th and 11th, and we weren't fast.

We weren't driving through the field in either one of those. And so in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, man, you might have another night of just sort of being there, not really being an impact on the race, having much of an impact on it. But that's fine. You're going to have fun. You're going to race laps at Bristol. I've missed racing laps at Bristol. I'm going to be in competition.

I'm going to feel the rush and adrenaline of all that and running the bottom, running the top. And we're just going to ebb and flow. And I was so excited about that. So that's why it's worth going through the motion. The gamut. Yeah, the annoyance of worrying about qualifying. I'll say this too, man.

I talked about this a lot. A couple things. things. I think one thing that really helped me realize that I could go, that I could get through that part of it, the anxiety side of it is watching Chase Elliott and Briscoe and all these other drivers race other cars and things that maybe they're not familiar with. Right. Chase Elliott went to run in the Chili Bowl a couple years ago. And I mean, that is a, that is a, the long, the odds are long, right? that he's not going to make the main, right? The odds are super, you know, he's, look, I mean,

the guy's a great driver. Several people have tried the Chili Bowl lately that are just not, that's not their discipline, right? And I really admired that. I was like, okay, here's a young guy, and he's willing to go somewhere where he thinks he probably understands he might get his butt kicked. And dang, you know, I just need to go,

have fun, even if I get my ass kicked. That's the way I looked at the late model stuff. Okay. I badly, badly wanted to race late models for a long time. If I could go back and do this all over again, I'd have been racing late model stocks as much as I could over the last decade. I still don't run them as much as I think I should be. I think I still look back on what I'm doing now and think, man, I should have did more.

but those seeing those guys like Chase Elliott and I use him as an example he's only one I can really think of but seeing him go do something where he knows he might not do it well and he's probably not going to win but he's fine with that.

Really encouraged me to just stop worrying about losing and being being you know not winning going into the late model stock race and just getting your ass kick. it's okay

and so you know I think you're still wanting even though you accept that you still go into these races and this Xfinity races past weekend and you still can't help but allow yourself to get competitive

right and want to do well and not want to not want to fail that and the other side of that too is I've never been in that situation where I couldn't there's a chance that I might not qualify for the race I think that's plain I lived my whole life locked in

That's right. Whether it's points, provisionals, whatever, right? I was always going to get my provisional, or I was always going to start the race. And I think in my cup career, I mean, I think there was a couple of weeks in the bud days where we might have taken a provisional. I think there was one or two in there. I don't know. But I'm just saying, like, I never had to go into the weekend going, boy, I got to hit this. lapper, I'm going home.

But there was once. When? And when you explain it, it sounds just like that debilitating type of anxiety, the very first race, your countdown to E-day. Yeah. But you're not locked in. I'm going to tell you, I'm hearing everything you're saying, dude. And I was just like, I think that that fear of missing the race, because what I wanted

to ask you, and what I was wondering as you're talking was, how are you actually defining failure because clearly you can still have fun and not win you can you know is it being competitive what's competitive you are going to be fine going 11th to 15th in a late model race you can and so you're like I just don't want to get my butt kick but I think from everything I hear is that it's that that failure to miss the race if you can just make the race you'll find a way to have fun in it yeah um there was it was there was one other car there so there so if we didn't qualify in a top 33 we were going to lose we were going to not make the race on

owner's points we were the lowest car in owner's points right so we would have been the odd man out I think it was BJ McLeod was in the 53 car and I don't know they hit the wall or something in practice but they withdrew right when qualifying was starting to begin I didn't know that I go out there

my pants and we get done I get out of the car and they're like oh yeah man BJ and then them withdrews so we would have made the race either way and I was like damn it why did I have to sweat somebody could have told me that right yeah I mean it literally happened right as qualified was about to start but um and they had you know I think there was another team in the field that if we give if we would guarantee them our our purse money they would have withdrawn but we didn't ask them to do that okay you know so you know there was there's ways to sort of

you know there's ways to get ahead of it and we just didn't want to do it that way one could argue you didn't even need to because I know I know but I would have just not had to worry I wouldn't have to worry I don't get so miserable worrying about that I don't know how these guys do it yeah dude I walk up to you know

I've watched Timmy Hill do that so many times in his career you know and landing Castle, right? Or I watched so many of these guys and never really understood what was going on inside their guts before qualifying or what they had to, you know, what they had to deal with on a regular weekly basis in terms of, man, I'm going to the racetrack and I might go home. Every, you know, having to do that multiple times and a car that's not good. Yeah, but that's their reality, though. I'm going to tell you something, if you grow up and you're not locked in in every race

and you grow up knowing that you don't have the best equipment, and I'm not even just talking about racing, like in life, like the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, hungry dogs are going to scrap and they're going to, they know their reality and the fact they've got to fight for every meal, but they're not, they're certainly not worried about failure. Yeah. And I mean, to be honest with you, I try to, I try to find comparisons with myself. Like, you know, like when we, you know, you and I are building a media company. And we're going to come up with some ideas that are just going to flop, right?

We're going to come up with ideas. As long as we keep doing it, we're going to come up with ideas that we think are great and then they're just not going to be great. And I know that I'm okay with that because I know that if you got to swing. Yeah. You got to make swings. And I'm okay with missing the ball. I know, but there's a difference. Okay.

Keep going then. So in building a media company, I know, I haven't spent my entire. life thinking that I'm the greatest at that. Okay. So as a race, you know, growing up as a race car driver, I believe that I am the best. That's right. You would say that. Right.

You have to believe it. And so even now, I know people say, man, you don't have confidence in yourself. I got confidence in me, right? But it's like when you put the whole puzzle together, what happens, right? When you put the car in there and me and the crew and the new and the spotter. and the limited practice and the track and all of that, all the pieces come together, is it going to be good?

And so when I fail in a race car, I, you know, it's like, man, I don't want to face a reality. I don't want to face that reality of, of just not being good in a car,

because all my life I've believed that I'm great. Yeah. I'm great at it. And, you know, even when I go out, there and run mid-pack, I feel like I'm, you know, I don't go, well, I'm just a mid-pack driver. I'm just an okay driver.

There's a reason for it, but it's not because you forgot how to drive. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, everything else in life, I'm okay having failures because I don't proclaim to be the greatest at it or great at it, right? But when you really grow up in your whole being and whole world is I'm a race car driver, You just, you don't, you don't ever want to, and maybe that's part of why these guys won't come do a one-off. It's like, man, they don't want to have to face a reality of, like, possibly having lost that talent, right?

Or lost that incredible attribute. You bring up, you bring up a fantastic point, is that. I tell Jeff, I joke them with them a little bit, but honestly, man, I would love to see Jeff Burton drive of race. in a good car one more time. And Jeff Gordon, I would love to see Jeff Gordon race one more time, right? Bristol in an Exfinity car or something like that. Somewhere he was happy to be there, right? I think they absolutely would do great.

And they're just like me in selling themselves short. Like, oh, I'm over the heel or I ain't got, you know, I don't think, you know, they're just worried about measuring up or being good enough. and uh or being judge you're bringing up a fantastic judge judged judged on stuff that's not even in your control yeah because you drivers listen when you go you know uh how dale do yesterday or how jeff gordon do yesterday like whatever it was sucked he sucked or they you know i mean like you guys uh the expectations that are placed on you whether they're self-inflicted or or whether it's everything around you.

There are, you do bear the brunt of the outcome good or bad. Yeah. Good or bad. Yeah. Jeff Gordon went to Indianapolis road course about two years ago to race a Porsche and a very competitive race. So Jeff Gordon in the last,

you know, 24 months has been in a race car and competed his heart out, right? It wasn't no damn vintage. laid back, you know, gentlemen's club. He was out there and he was a bunch of kids in there racing hard, young guys trying to make their way. And he's like, man, I worked my guts out to run a half a second slower

than the guys that were up front. Wow. And so I think that, too, when you have those experiences, like I went to race slate model stocks, right, the last year. Yep. And, you know, qualifying outside the time. top 20 in a 30 or 40 car field at Florence? I'm like, what the hell?

You know, so you'll have those experiences and go, damn, man, maybe this is, maybe this sports passed me by just a bit. Yeah. And so I think something like Jeff's experience, every time I joke with Jeff, he mentions his experience in that Porsche at Indy. He's like, shoot, man, I can't do it anymore. I ain't got it anymore. Well, you know, I would probably tend to agree with him after the couple of Xfinity races I ran over the last two years

because I didn't feel like I had it anymore running 15th and 11th. But this past weekend, it's like, hey, you know, when things are right, you prepare and the car is good, and you really go into it with your whole heart and give it everything you got, you still got enough in the tank to go out there and do well. And that was a, you know, it was funny as upside down is behind and unprepared and over my head as I failed in practice, it was the complete, absolute opposite in the race. In the race, I got those 40 laps I needed. Everything slowed down.

Everything started to make sense. I was connected to the car. I'm connected to the car. the car is connected to the track. It's all making sense. And, you know, we know that went really well for the most part, except for the issue inside the car, which we're going to talk about. But let's talk.

Let's back up for a second. The race starts. Yes. Well, less, before the race starts. Okay. You know, I have, I wear glasses, right? Now, I don't need to wear glasses to see everything in this. room, right? I can see, if I take these glasses off, I can see you just fine, I can see everything,

I can read anything on any of the walls or whatever, right? I wear glasses to be able to read what's on this paper right here, this paper in front of you. I took these glasses off. I probably would be able to have to tilt my head to be able to make out the words, but anyhow, inside the car, luckily, I don't really need to wear my glasses. And I've tried to wear them inside the race cars and they fog up and I've got to talk to the drivers that do wear them and figure out how they're getting that done but because I think I'd like to wear my glasses inside the race car but I don't yet haven't gotten to that point to where I feel like my vision is so bad that I really would like it anyways we get I get in the car I've been in the car practicing qualifying but

I ain't really had a chance to look around getting the car getting ready to go out there for pace laps and so we're pacing around the racetrack and I said, hey, what switches do I need to have on? And I see there's writing on the switches, but I don't know what the writing really says. And I can't stare at it because I don't want to smash into the car in front of me, right? I kind of got a glance at it quickly and then look where I'm going. But I can see one's a yellow switch, one's a red, and one's a white switch.

There's three switches on the left side, and then there's stuff on the right side that I don't need to mess. with. I look at every switch and I know what it is. A big power switch and there's a switch for the for the ignition boxes or something. All that stuff is where it needs to be. I don't need to worry about this. But these three one's engine

fan, one's brake and then the other is a driver back fan. But I can't tell what they are. I just know there I can see the color of the switches very easily. And I'm like, hey, all right, what switches do I need to have on? Well, my

crew chief gets up on the pit box and his radio don't work but he don't know it so he's telling me but he ain't nobody hears him but he doesn't know

he can't be heard so he's just talking and I'm like y'all what switches and then nothing and then my spotter's like yeah there's two on the right side

I mean the left side it's a red gear fan and I'm like and there's no gear fan Nothing on the dash says gear fan. And so the spotters Joey, he's giving me all kinds of conflicting and completely wrong information. And then the crew chiefs talking into a mic that's not working.

And I'm not getting anything that he's telling me. He thinks that I hear him. And so finally I said, all right, guys, I don't know if I got it all right in here. you know, there's no gear fan switch. I'm just going to turn this red brake switch on. I got that on. That's the one I have on. And there's nothing coming back.

I'm like hearing nothing. I don't know that the radio is bad on the crew chief. And I'm thinking, well, we're off to awesome start. And I'm thinking, okay, so information tonight will be limited. They're giving me the bare minimum. They don't think I need that other switches, apparently. I know. So I told them, I told everybody when we started this preparing for this race, I said,

do not assume I know anything. Right. Tell me everything like I am racing for the very first time in my life. Okay. And you will never be telling me too much. I will take what's needed. And the rest will just go into the middle distance. So just tell me everything.

And so we're starting the race. And I'm like, But anyways, we get the race started. And I mean, I'm running pretty hard trying to keep it straight, trying not to slip the tire. The tire is too bad. But I'm running pretty hard. And I'm kind of running around 14th, 15th. I'm not really moving forward.

And I'm like, okay, you know, all right, cars okay. It's not great. It's not like driving through the field like a hot knife through butter. I wish we were. but it's going to be a grind. So here we go. And I'm racing with Jeremy Clements. Me and him are racing hard.

He finally, he did something where he slipped or whatever, and I got by him. And then he was right on my ass for, I don't know, felt like 30 laps. It was probably 10. And I'm like, okay, you know, Jeremy's a good driver. But I'm thinking, you know, he's going to run 8th to 15th. You know, on a good day he's going to get in that top 10. And on his usual days, he's going to finish anywhere from 10th to 15th. I'm thinking, okay, that's kind of what I think.

I'm just judging off of him going, all right, that's about where we are. That's what kind of car we are. And then as the run kept going, we didn't fade as much. We started passing a car, then another car, and then another car. And then look at the end, the whole first stage went green, if I'm right. So I learned in the first stage, all right, on new tires, we're all the same everybody pretty much is going to about

do the same lap time so don't expect I should not expect to be able to drive right through them on these restarts but if we get a 20, 30, 40, 50 lap run that's when we'll start to see our car shine and

so stage one we moved up to 10th or 9th we came in the we came on the pit road game four spots incredible and we had the nine pit crew and so they were fast all night incredible it's like cheating every time we come down pit road

yeah and so we come out in a we come out fifth or something after that pit stop so I line up on outside get a restart now we're you know we pass a couple cars on the restart now we're up to third and in stage two I'm sitting there with the 7 and the double zero in front of me

racing for the lead and I'm catching them. And that was the moment where I was like, this is freaking awesome. Yeah. Now this is this. Now we're having fun. Now, like we're having, we've gotten, you know,

we've gotten what we wanted for Christmas and then some, right? You know, you come down, you come downstairs and you're like, there it is. the one thing I've been asking for all year. And so I thought, man, I just want to run good, top 10, have some good, be competitive. I'm not going to get in nobody's way. I'm not going to race any of the championship people too hard. I'm just going to hang out.

But we were competitive enough and fast enough that I could race them without putting myself at risk or them, right? I didn't want to slip up and wreck and door somebody or flatten a tire or whatever. Right. And so the car was so good that I could race as hard as I want and toward the front and not put anybody in jeopardy. But man, when I was running down that 7 in double zero, I said it over the radio. I was like, man, this is badass. And I knew, though, in that moment, even as I was saying that, that I wasn't going to try to pass them for the lead. I was like, you know, the 7 was pretty good. He's trying to get around to double zero. And I thought as soon as he clears that, double zero he's probably going to be driving away i'm going to just try to match their pace instead of trying to run harder and do too much i'm just going to sit right here and i'm thrilled to be third let's

hang on to third right but but you but you also know that your car's good on long runs and that kind of thing so that that's what you're you're you're thinking at that okay caution comes out and i think we came down pit road again and a lot of couple guys stayed out And the idea was, is that we were going, I think it was like 15 or so laps left in stage two. So when the end of the stage occurred, we would stay out. And everyone else that didn't come down pit road would have been pit and we would leapfrog them, right? I was going to be racing a handful of cars to be first in that new group, right? Right.

So that when stage two was over and stage three began, I could start up front. Luckily, I did that. I was able to maintain my track position so that now, as stage two ends, everyone's pitting and I'm going to have the lead. That's right. And so we restart. I'm thinking, what in the hell? This is amazing.

I'm going to lead some laps. Your second Christmas president of the day. Yeah. So restart stage three. I ran really conservative on that restart. I was not, you know, I've not started on the front row and I don't know how long. I probably didn't give everything it had on that first couple of corners. And me and the 16, Chandler Smith battled side of the side a little bit,

and then finally I got to clear him. And then drove, you know, got a pretty nice little lead. We had a couple cautions that broke up that little run. I wish it hadn't. I think that we had enough fuel to go to the distance. If we, you know, if we don't get a yellow, I think we drive off and maybe when race, right? Maybe. I mean, we're all thinking it at that point, you know? I think we ended up getting like a, you know, a straightaway lead and the cost you come back out. Was that just a product of

clean air? I mean, like, I really want to know because you guys, you driving away was the thing that surprised me and it sounds like yourself, like you didn't ever see that coming. But now you're getting to drive this race car. You're learning something. What was the difference between restarting on the front in terms of the driveability of the car? Well, any. Yeah, it's a little tighter in traffic. So that was probably why I was not able, you know, now that I think about it, when we started the race and we weren't really going forward like I wanted, like any driver wants, it was the arrow. It was being behind all those cars and being arrow tight and limited to the front grip

and just being able to drive the car to the limit of the front tires. As we move forward into cleaner and cleaner air, the car turned better. and drove like you would want it to. And, you know, I think that also we made adjustments on our pit stops that were helping our car. So I went to the truck race the night before, which I usually don't do, but Carson Quoppel was racing in his first truck race for Spire. I wanted to be there to watch it. And so me and Josh Berry and Stephen went and set up in the stands to watch. Carson race

and I learned a ton watching that race and I was like so Carson's wrapping it you know driving his truck around the bottom of the racetrack and running real tight and everything and I saw him make a few mistakes that a lot of drivers were making just drive you know

getting in the gas too soon the car or the truck pushing up the track and getting out of the grip getting out of the treatment the spray and how that would slow his lap down and I'm like okay I got to be more disciplined tomorrow. I got to be more patient with a throttle. So that really helped me.

That's interesting. It really did. The other thing I did was I watched last year's fall Bristol race, the night race, twice. And it had a flow. And it had a, it had a, it had a, it had a, it had a, it had a, it was, it had a recognizable sort of personality and patience. You would think that the Bristol night race, if I don't show you the race from last year,

or you don't watch, you know, if you don't, when you think Bristol night, Xfinity, you think urgency, racing your ass off, door to door banging. Carnage at some point. You think all of those things. Sure. Right. But I, and I would, if I had not watched this race over and over,

I would have went into our race Friday night, really overly amped up and just, so on my toes and very defensive and offensive at the same time and probably too worked up, right? Too amped up. And so, but I watched that race and I was like, oh man, I mean, these stages could likely go green. That's a lot of running.

You just need to find a place to settle. There's a lot of room between cars. Once they get strung out, there's space, right? You're not, there's not somebody right on your ass all the time and you're not right up behind another car all the time and you're not. You're not on the defense all the time, and you're not always hustling and in trouble, right? And so I thought, man, this thing's got a really lazy flow to it. And if it does that this weekend, once we get under green, I'm going to find me a nice comfortable spot and learn.

And I'm going to figure out what the car can do and what I can do and how good we are. And then I'll risk assess accordingly, right? and man that's the way I ran that race it totally is I mean even when I remember hearing your radio chatter there was a point when you just really wanted to kind of study your laps and you told them hey I got it yeah I mean we were leading I think or running somewhere you were leading yeah and I'm and he's you know spotters telling me about the gap behind me and this and that another and I'm like look if it's

good if we're doing well and I'm pulling away just no need to say a word because I really so there was there was a little extra grip the yellow painted line next to the apron, 10% more grip, just a very minimal thing, right? And I had to hit that with the left front tire into the corner and exiting the corner. If I could do it perfectly, I'd stay on it all the way around the corner. But the car sometimes wants to drift up a little bit in the middle, but I needed to really pay attention to that. And when somebody's trying to talk to you while you're doing it, you're thinking, man, I'm going to miss this. I'm going to make, I'm going to miss it.

I need to pay attention. I need silence. I need quiet. It sounds like you need a precision. And the smallest little thing, it breaks that. It's hard to be precise. At that place for sure. Yeah.

And so, you know, and I've not worked with Joey a ton. He did a great job, fantastic job. He's a great spotter. He's got a lot of history and a lot of experience. But every driver and every spotter work out the, you know, I like this. I don't need this. I like that. I need more of that.

And so we'll work through those things. And at homestead, it won't be quiet as critical. I don't think. I mean, when I'll tell him, I'll say, hey, man, if I'm running the fence, like inches from the wall, I'll probably need precision and silas, right? That's right. And he would probably know not to start, you know, break, you know, not to talk in your back swing, so to speak. Right. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. And so, um, so you're being very studious and you're concentrating and you're just moving right along. You're in the lead. So we get a late restart. So there were a couple restarts in the last 100 laps

that I made a few mistakes on my choose. Watching last year's race, the bottom was no good on restarts. A lot of tires spinning. The first, second, third, and fourth car on the inside just struggled and lost spots. But this weekend, that was really good drive in the throttle for both grooves. and the bottom line could battle and hang on. They might not take the lead, but they were going to likely keep second or third at worst.

And there was a couple times where I could have lined up first car on the inside, and I didn't. I was really afraid of tire spin and losing multiple spots, right? So I chose to line up in the second row on the outside, and the restart would happen, and after about three corners, I'm fourth. Instead of second or third, right? And I'm like, damn it. So we're sitting there running forth, I think.

I'm still not racing the car quite as hard as it can go. When we would have restarts, these tires that we have would, everybody's tires cool off, their cars fire off really well. So on every restart, everybody's kind of back up to full potential. And I needed 10, 20, 30 laps before. I can start to pass. So when the restart happens, you just sort of try to maintain and then, you know, don't give up any spots unnecessarily and then wait for the laps before, you know, wait for some

laps to go by and then you'll be able to work by each driver individually. And that's what I was going to do. So I'm sitting there running. I got the leaders right there in front of me. A couple, you know, a couple car links ahead. They're battling hard to seven, I think the 20 and the double zero or somebody. That's right. So I'm like, man, I'm going to finish.

top four. No problem. And I started smelling some, I started smelling something. I think the double zero goes by and I smelled it right away. And it's something burning. I was like, I hope that's him. I think it's something's going on with his car. And then I saw a car on the inside on the apron, slow smoking. I'm like, okay, maybe it's that car. I don't know what it is. It's something smells burning. And then I started seeing smoke in our car, my car. I'm like, okay, now it's me. I know it's me. And I thought it was a a fire, rubber buildup on the exhaust.

I was telling the team about, hey, I think there's something burning, there's something burning, there's something burning, they're just like giving me lap times and talking about, you know,

traditional clear, not clear, doing good, good corner, good exit. I'm like, y'all, we are burning. There's a fire in here,

and I'm not, they're not, they're not responding the way I want them to. And I want them to say, yeah, well, we don't see nothing

or we're looking or whatever, right? because usually if you got a fire on the exhaust from rubber buildup, you'll see it through the left front tire. That's right. As a car's coming off corner, you kind of look through the wheel and you can see it. Right.

But they ain't talking. You might be able to see the fire glowing on the surface of the racetrack underneath the car. They ain't saying nothing. Then, like, smoke's getting worse. About five, six laps go by. Smoke's getting worse inside the car. And then there was this weird feeling on my calf muscle. and it was getting warm.

And so my mind thought, oh, yeah, that's what it is. It's got to be fire burning on the exhaust. But it's, you know, maybe trapped in the tunnel of the car somehow, or maybe on top of the exhaust between the car and the exhaust right under the tunnel right there. Or maybe the transmission's about to go. Maybe transmission's about to burn up. But it's getting warm, and it's my, so I got my, leg and my cab and everything slammed against the right legboard.

I am, like when I go into the corner, I push my knee and my leg and my foot and everything to the right, as hard as it'll go, right? And so I lean on the seat, and I lean on the board, the legboard. And so I'm feeling that warmth and that heat and then come up off of two. I'm getting really distracted at this point. Now I'm not thinking about where I'm at or where the cars are. I'm just thinking about this heat. So my lap time, I'm not even trying to make lap time.

I'm just kind of going around the track is all I'm doing. Which, by the way, side note, Justin Algar said yesterday when we were talking, he noticed that there was something wrong because all of a sudden you aren't racing. No more. You are turning lamps, but there was something visibly different about the way you were racing. Yes. And so now I'm totally distracted, like trying to, figure this out. And then I come up off of two and I got a

pelt a pinch on my ankle. And I was and it was, I was like, there's a fire down there. And so I glanced down and I move my leg. I literally kind of come off the throttle. And there's a ball, a glow of fire. There's a fire in the floorboard. Like they ain't supposed to be fire in the car, Mike. Nope. Ever. No. And so that's when I lift off the gas and I went left. And luckily there was nobody there.

Someway Chandler Smith was right behind me and he just kind of follows the path and goes around the racetrack. So I had I come down pit road and I'm like this is all in a second. But when I saw that fire, there's an air hose that there's an air hose that runs down into a hole in the legboard right up at the gas pedal. It's letting air blow into the full board of the car, just air from a knack-a-duck on the window, right window or something like that, right? So there's air feeding in right there and blowing in there as you're going around the track. And if you've ever seen a car at speed that's on fire, anywhere there's, you know, the wind and the air sort of contains this fire in a space, in an area.

And so I'm thinking as I'm at speed, the air coming out of that, NACA is blowing around that area and sort of containing that fire to literally just where it's burning and whatever material it's burning. And as soon as I slow down and that air and that wind or whatever's tunnel, whatever, that churning of air down there stops, that fire's just going to light up. Right. Right. I understand what you're saying.

Yeah. And so imagine you've got a campfire in front of you that's burning, right? Good campfire. All of it's burning. and you take a weed eater or a leaf blower to it. It's going to blow the flame down. Certainly there will be embers and things flying everywhere too, but the flames will no longer stand.

They'll lay down, and you can literally put all that air on that campfire, and basically you'll be just looking at burning embers, right? You literally almost blow the campfire out if you wanted to, but probably set the woods on fire. But I'm thinking this air churning, down there, has got this contained to whatever's on fire. The physical material that's burning is all the, you know, and as soon as I slow down and that air stops moving down there,

it's going to, the fire's going to grow. How quickly I don't know. Right. But it's at my legs. It's burning, it's pinching me. It's burning my skin, right? And so, uh, I come, you know, right? I mean, all this is like in, in a second half.

And so I come down pit road and I was like, I had every expectation that the fire was going to get worse and whatever was inside the car was just going to start burning more quickly without that wind sort of tampering it down. And luckily they, you know, and the other thing about why I was glad the 20, so I pulled down pit road and I'm looking to the left for who's paying attention.

I'm looking at the pit stalls as I'm coming up on one pit stall, two pit stall, three pit stall. And I'm not really seeing a lot of people that are really looking at me. Everybody's got their back to me looking at the big board or looking out to racetrack or whatever. And I finally come up on this, the Gibbs group, and they're all looking at me.

Like, what is he doing? And so I got their attention and they came over there. And the same, like, the way I get out of the car is I put my right foot in the floorboard and I stand up in the floorboard and I couldn't because it was on fire down there. Right. And so I was like,

I was trying to figure out how to get out without just, you know, not the traditional way I get out. And luckily those guys came over and just yanking me out of there. They pulled you out. It reminded me back when Jeff Clark, the big old gas man on the boat team. He texted me. Oh, did he? Yeah, he said I would have done the same thing. Right.

He could just pull you out with one arm almost, but these big old guys, they can do that. Which thankfully they do. I didn't know that this, you didn't have anything to really brace or leverage yourself out because it's on fire. I was afraid of put my foot back down there. Of course. In that space because that's where I would need to stand up in the floorboard to get myself headed out the door, but they sprayed all this stuff all over

the car, which was unfortunate. Brand new car, but they're doing what they're supposed to do to try to put the fire out. The fire was an electrical issue. Started with the main power cord, so we'd get the car home. That's right. The

legboard, so I'll tell you about the power cable. The power cable comes out of the battery box behind the seat. It wraps around the back of the seat. and down the shifter tunnel. So the power cord is like a half-inch thick wire that runs between the seat and the shifter tunnel. It goes down beside me,

and when it gets up toward the dash, it just turns vertical and goes straight up to the on-off switch on the dash. And so there's this red power cable that goes from the floorboard to the door to the dash, and it suspends in mid-air, right? well it's it goes down in between

the legboard and the shifter tunnel and when we left the shop there was inches between that shifter board and that cable it was no problem no room no issue not going to rub

right but the way that the G forces work at Bristol and the way we lean into the seed and mashing the gas and mashing lifting mashing the gas lifting. That legboard's moving. I'm moving it. That's right.

I'm pushing it over and pushing it over and pushing it over, lap after corner after corner after corner. And I literally sawed that cable in half. The legboard, the friction of the legboard is basically wearing out that cable. Right. And so the legboard is made of a carbon fiber, which I did not know would have a reaction. But somehow or another, as the carbon fiber legboard,

is sawing at this power cable once it gets to the metal of the cable itself, it arcs. And it set the foam on the legboard on fire. And so the foam on the legboard is what was burning. And it ended up burning a hole in the uniform. And that was what was the pinch that I felt. Which, by the way,

you show us that in your interview with Kim Kuhn. And that right there was frightening for me. Like your uniform was literally burnt a hole through it. Well, yeah. So if I had continued, it would have probably gotten worse. All of the foam on the legboard, which is about a one by two foot piece, all of that was going to continue to burn. And, you know, I would have, I don't know. This probably wouldn't have created, it might have created an electrical issue where it would have probably maybe, maybe, you know, ruined the MSD box or something, right?

The ignition box. I don't know whether it would eventually shorted something in the ignition itself or whatever, but basically this was kind of working like the power line. We were basically like grounding the power line on the battery. Like, you know, when you have your battery hooked up to a jumper cable and you accidentally touch the cables together, this is kind of what was going on, like, corner after corner after corner for a hundred and some laps. And so it would have probably burned all of that foam. You know, in my mind, I'm thinking, man, you know, what else could I have done? What else could I have done?

And I just don't know that I could have done anything differently to be. able to continue to race, you know. That was the only, I mean, that's the only disappointing part about all this is that we didn't get to finish where we should have. Like I said, fourth at worst. Yeah. Maybe a win. I don't know if we'd have beat Justin.

He was really good at the end. We certainly would have been able to get around probably, probably the 10 of Hemrick. And ended up running second to Justin. Yeah. A couple things. I think it's important, you know, when I was talking to our shop foreman yesterday, it's like there's a, there's a baseline question that any of us who don't know how, you know, don't build the cars would ask. And that is, well, why is this a problem that just all of a sudden occurs

to you yet on Saturday or Friday in the race? Well, it's important to note that, you know, when those driver seats are bolted into that car, like they're all different, right? And then we have a bunch of little small drivers, yeah. Right? And so the last time that you would have had a scenario where that driver's seat is, you know, requiring additional rooms or whatever you want to call it would have been like Sadler or something. We haven't had a scenario. Usually they've got a lot more foam in between the legboard in that cable and that wire. There's foam and I even looked at it. But this didn't have as much foam. And also the way you drive, driving styles and the way everybody's different, right? And you really do, like you said it earlier, you really lean into that. You are putting pressure

on it. I could understand that because you, I was fortunate a few years ago for you to give me laps at Bristol in a ride around. And the G forces, the way your body is thrown into the right of that car, every little turn, every turn is unbelievable. And there's just no way to really articulate that. But knowing that and then hearing about how you were really kind of leaned into that legboard, which that legboard is now basically sawing and rubbing on that cable, yeah, then it starts to make a little sense. And by the way, they will fix it. They've learned. They know that they will fix that and that won't ever be an issue again.

But it's very interesting. And going back to your performance, Dale, it's as awkward for you to say. It's certainly awkward for you to hear. but dang man you the whole crowd was captivated by how you were out there leading and wearing them out right even when you weren't leading you were racing for the win you were racing for the lead up there and it was unbelievable and it made me think and i know that people listening to this also echoed this you know i was there for the ultimate experience Saturday and they're like i've just got to where i don't i don't listen to dale when he talks about how nervous he is anymore because i just know he's

got him covered and he's just messing with and i'm like no he's really nervous and i'm like no he's really nervous service. That's not an act. That's not an act. But I understand what you're saying because you were I remember leading into Wilkesboro and you know the first folks. The late model race. There you are and third and going, you know, you could maybe win this thing. And then here it is. So I know that we don't want to go ever put unexpected or unrealistic pressures on you. And I know that you deal with anxiety. But man, you were at there competing and it was so freaking awesome. It was so awesome watching you in the lead. It was awesome, and I enjoyed it. Got to sign a lot of autographs after the race. There's a big old rail on the exit of the racetrack at Bristol where the fans

will hang out and got to meet a lot of fans there and got a lot of great text messages. Josh Barry sent me a cool text message after the race that I really appreciated. Oh, can I ask you about Josh Barry? Yeah. Okay, so obviously we had the Junior Motorsports wins the race, Justin Algar, but we had this other precarious moment in the race where Josh Barry gets into Sam May We have take out, take all our cars out. So Josh and Sam had a little contact on the front, on the front stretch, seconds, like a moment, not even seconds, like half a second before they crash. That, I think, cut the tire. He cut the tire somewhere.

And Josh thinks it could have been even before that, but I don't. I think it happened in that moment, knocked the side wall out the tire, and he went in the corner on the flat, on the flat right front. And it just, Bristol, there's a couple things there. I was racing for Hendrick a long time ago and battling Jeff Gordon for fifth or something like that 50 laps in the race. And I'm working up under Jeff. And I'm like, damn right, man, my car's better than his.

I'm going to pass him. I'm going to pass this boy. Right here, right now. He's going to happen. And what I should have been doing was going, man, my car's pretty good. I'm going to sit right here. But nope, I'm going to pass Jeff Gordon, boy.

I'm running my damn hardest. And so we jump up off a two and I'm underneath him and I touched his left rear just barely. Just barely touched it. And he went in a three with a left rear tire flat and crashed. I go on and finish the race. I don't know where we ended up. At the end of the race, I come down to Jeff Holler and I go in there and Alan, Gusterson, chewed my ass. He let me have it.

and it took us a long time to talk about that and get beyond that. But man was he disappointed. And so I told Josh, I said that kind of reminded me of that moment, man. I was running as hard as I could. I'm in the middle of a race at Bristol and I'm racing my teammate and I did not mean to cut his tire. But it happened. And if you put good race cars out on the racetrack and you put multiple good. we would race cars out in the racetrack, in this case four, five that night,

they're bound to run in each other. They're going to hit at time. They're going to crash. They're going to crash into each other. And Lord, we have experienced it this year, more than usual. Yes. And I have said to our drivers, guys, we don't want to do that. We'd want to avoid running into each other.

Now run into the other cars, but not each other. But it's still going to happen. Yeah. You know, and it's a bullring. It's Bristol. I sat in the competition meeting with all of them yesterday, and we watched not even half the race. We watched a lot of clips, though.

And in every one of those clips, somebody's hitting somebody in the door. But it doesn't cut a tire in that instance. Unfortunately for Josh, it did. And he goes down in the corner and can't turn. The car is going to go straight. And, you know, it goes straight into Sam. It's unfortunate for Sam, but it's not nothing Josh did intentionally. And so it sucks, and now it's hurt them in the points, but I'm not going to go.

There's nothing that tells me that somebody needs their assude. Got it. It just isn't. How are Sam and Josh doing? They'll be fine. Sam had some comments. You know, that's, you know, that's a bit disappointing. you know, you don't want your drivers going at each other in the media.

I think it's a situation where if, you know, if you feel like there's a question about what happened there, you talk to the driver, right? You go see them and you handle it. And you don't get in front of the media in air dirty laundry or say things that you might have to back up, right? Or you might have to reel in. It's easy for me to say that.

I'm not sitting in that situation heated and pissed off, right? And I've not been perfect in front of the microphone my whole career. But as an owner, I definitely don't want our drivers speaking negatively about each other ever in the media, even if they believe it. And even if it's warranted. Yeah. And as you say that, I'm thinking about people that do do a good job with that, but still it doesn't mean that they're not pissed off. Chase Elliott comes to mind.

Chase Elliott's not going to say, but he might as well. It's written all over his face, but he's not going to go try to do that about Kyle Larson or something. No, but you can say, I don't know what happened and I want to know, and I'm going to talk to. That's true. You could do that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, well, and that's.

That's something that I think you work on, right? That's something I think. If anything, needs work after all of that. It's how we communicate our opinions to the media. So, moving on, I had a great time. Thanks. I'm more excited about Homestead than I was. I was pretty super excited about it.

Now, even more. Now I don't want to get the expectations up there, but we are taking the same car. We're going to get that thing stripped down, tore apart, and put it back together. It's a good little race car, so I'm excited to be able to take it back to the racetrack. Congratulations as being, you're the race winning owner of that race too.

I did. Yeah, we won. Justin won, got to ride up the ramp. It was a great way to end the night. Assume that was an impromptu moment. You had no end. Well, I went up to Victory Lane, and I'm standing there, and I'm waiting on him to come, and I saw his dad riding on the door, and I said, I want to ride up the ramp.

I want to ride up the ramp. So we're riding up the ramp. I'm going down there, and I'm going to climb in the door like Rick Hendrick, and I'm all right up the ramp. Yeah. And so that's what we did. Oh, that's right. You did have a precedent.

You knew it could work because Rick Hendry didn't. Yeah. That's right. There's only, you know, we can cover the cup race. I was only one thing I want to talk about. All right. Is Denny in his words on his post race interview. Okay.

So, you know, Denny says, I beat your favorite driver. Right. And they go, which one? And he says, all of them, you know. as hated as Denny has become for a, you know, a portion of the NASCAR fan base, you know, in his efforts to really lean into playing the heel or whatever you want to call it, right? I don't even know what it is, right? I'll just say this, man.

To be, you know, the guy just won the race. He's feeling good. He's in a great mood. but even then to be put on the spot in front of 100,000 people in attendance and then a couple million watching at home, and to have the perfect comeback or the perfect thing to say. Rarely do we have personalities like that in our sport. You think about, you know, we've been talking a lot of wrestling here lately.

and great wrestlers are remembered not only for their matches but mostly for their promos, right? Their ability to lure you in with a few words or say the right thing at the right moment and play the character, right? And damn it, Danny, nailed it in that moment. Nailed it. Yeah. We need something to continue to carry this. season, right? We've got some cool story lines, but dang, man, if somebody

can stand up and play either the hero or the villain leading into these final few weeks, let's go. He, he, in that moment, he was polarizing.

Right? Whether you love him or hate him, he got your attention. And that was a masterclass in what we need our drivers to be doing. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Now, we don't all need them to act like Denny, but we need them to take advantage of those moments and say something that you're never going to forget. Say something that belongs on a damn t-shirt. Maximize the moment, right? There's a moment, and it goes by quick. And so, and I, and, And my best advice, I guess, to guys that are like, well, I don't, you know, I just want to get out of that interview, right?

I just want to go to Victor Lane and get with my team. I really don't care about doing that interview, right? When you're in those moments, man, say exactly what's in your heart. That was Denny. That is who Denny is. Oh, yeah. To be clear, it's a great analogy about the promos on wrestling, but that wasn't rehearsed or anything.

Hell no. And he elaborates or alludes to that on his podcast this week where he was saying that that smack talk that he loves yeah whether it's on the basketball court or the golf course it motivates him and i used to think that people would say that just almost as a cliche or just a way to rationalize it but the more he gets booed i think the better he gets yeah for some reason i like it's it's crazy yeah well i don't know if that's possible but i just know that when we're when you're you know when you're trying to figure out who your driver is and you think you know who that driver is and you think you know their personality and what they might be like sitting on their couch at home watching TV or what they might be like if you were to go to a you know a game with them or something you learn just now just then that's Denny that's the way Denny is that's who he is he loves to shoot he loves the smack talk he is really being genuine in that moment yeah not personal by the way he's not he's not trying to you know he's trying to get you know evoke a reaction

of course, but I think that's because he feeds on it. But he's not trying to make it personal. Yeah. Man, that was a massive thing. And I think, you know, is, you know, is, it sort of hopefully is, you know, what we'll see more of as we move forward into this playoffs. Whether Denny wins or not, right? We'll see more either Denny's continuing to talk and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, and, you know, hype his success, or if it does go bad, you know, the whole, you know,

the whole fan base, you know, gets riled up in enjoying his failure, whatever, right? I mean. And he knows it. Yeah, he knows he's setting himself up one way or another. That's right. Right? And he's fine with it. I think it's brave.

And I think it's, you know, I think it's a risk. He's taking a risk. True X, you know, years ago, said, well, he won the battle tonight. after Martinsville, was Glugano, but he ain't going to win the war. In that moment, Truex really believed that.

And he said a cliche that resonated with fans in that moment for the next 24 hours, that was what fans talked about, whether they were believing what Martin was saying or not, whether they were,

well, that's bullshit, he ain't going to win, or Martin don't know what he's talking about, or, yeah, Martin, go get their ass. It's not whether you liked it or hated it.

It did get everybody's attention. Martin threw down a, you know, Martin did a promo in that moment. You know, that's what it's all about. Yeah. What did you remember when, you know, do you, when Denny and Lugano got into it at Martinsville?

Do you, can you remember exactly what happened on the racetrack? Probably not, but you remember Denny getting out there and mocking Joey. Yes. You remember that. Yeah. No, 100%. And you know. You ain't going to remember from that cup race other night, but you're going to remember what Denny said on the front straightaway when he got out and won.

The same way I don't remember what Kyle Bus did when he would win all those races at Bristol, but I do remember him doing the sobbing, you know, eyes and also the bowels when he did that. Like he knew what he was doing. You do run a risk of that backfiring on you. But the key is to not care. Yeah. But, and that's, you know, I just got to say, like more of that, please, all of that, from all our drivers, like get into the moment, live this thing to the fullest. Give us your true genuine self in those moments. That front straightaway interview

where the people, some fans don't love it. Some fans want the driver to not go to the front straightaway and do the interview. But as long as it's here, while it's here, like that is the moment, man,

to really let it go. And tell us what exactly is going on upstairs. And Denny just, and he continued all night long through his press conference, all his social media content. He just leaned into all of that.

Right. Even into Monday. And then into Monday on Action's Determinal. Yeah. So pretty awesome stuff. I'm curious as to how it's going to go down for Denny. Does he win the championship this year? Does he come up short again?

I got to watch. All right, everybody. It's White Flag real quick. We talked about Al-Gyre winning earlier in the show. Well, we should mention that he does advance to the round of eight. That's a big deal. It's in the NASCAR Xfinity playoffs. And, you know, he did announce that in a lot.

this post-race interview, he will return to JRM in 2024. So everyone's really excited about that. It was also very cool to see Rick Brandt and then Sierra and Victory Lane at Bristol. You guys might have saw this. 63 Cup and Xfinity Series drivers wore skeleton gloves at Bristol for the Dale Jr. Foundation's Driven to Give Glove program. We appreciate all the drivers and teams that participated in that. The Dale Jr. Foundation's Driven to Give event is tonight, by the way, so that's going to be a lot of fun. You know, we did an ultimate experience in Bristol and some of the giveaway prizes, some of the raffles where the Buster gets back on track book. Well, Buster gets back on track is now officially out today.

By the way, Dale, you're going to New York City here on Thursday to promote that book, so have fun with that. Speaking of the ultimate experience, I want to say thank you to everybody that was there. We had a blast. It was so much fun watching races. This probably was, I don't know if it was one of the rowdies. It might have been because, you know, they opened up the suites early. They kept us there late because there were a few delays with weather, which means there was just a ton of alcohol, too frankly.

And so that was a, it was a ton of fun. Great people enjoyed getting to know many of them. Some of them we already knew because they were returned customers. So a lot of fun. Thank you for everybody that was there and look forward to the next one. Check out our Dirty Mo Media podcast. We got a ton. Actions Detrimandal was fantastic this week.

Door Bumper Clear also. Matt Weaver was amazing. Love that guy. hard-working journalist in NASCAR and in olive race and grassroots. I mean, like the dude covers it all. Really appreciate him joining those guys. Speed Street's going to drop tomorrow and a new Dirty Moe Doe with Steve LaTart. That'll be out Thursday.

We've got Justin Haley coming in on the download tomorrow. That's going to be fun. We'll have our normal show on Thursday. Next week, we are taking Dale Jr. download on the road for our Wednesday and Thursday shows. We're going to go to Learnerville for the high-limit Sprint Car Series race. We'll talk more about it next Tuesday. but we are excited about that. I know Dale is pumped.

Now, we're going to end here with an Apple review. We love our Apple reviews. If you will indulge us, send us one. Make it a five star. If you don't think it's five stars worthy, man, you know, be honest. We'll be honest back and saying that we did not appreciate it. But the fact is, we do appreciate five stars.

And Brenda 924, you gave us one. You said anyone who likes NASCAR needs to listen to this podcast. I'm with you, Brenda. but she says I wish there was a new episode every day. Well, three times a week, that's what we can give you right now. But thank you for that review. And Dale, we're going to throw this back to you, buddy. You know, Mike, after I got done with my media at Bristol, Friday night, run the race, right?

Get done with running the race and I go into the media center. I was actually over by the – I was actually – I went to Victory Lane, and then I went over to my car to talk to my – you know, the guys that worked on my car just say, hey, what did y'all learn? And hey, thanks. That was awesome. Great race. Great car. Everything's great. They came by and said, hey, we go to the media center. I said, sure, no problem. I'll do anything you need.

Go down to the media center and sit down and was just answering questions from the media. I look over and Daniel Hemrick standing there. So I thought Daniel Hemrick was waiting on me because he was going to then do his top three media. But he had already done. done it, I suppose. Wow. I didn't know that. And so he's standing there waiting. I didn't know that either. So he's standing there waiting and waiting and waiting and I was like, man,

you know, you come on up here. I'll just get up. You know, one comes in, one leaves, right? I'd been up there a while doing questions and I was ready for Daniel to take over. But they finally said, all right, we're done. Dale, thanks for coming. I get down and I walk over there and I was, I said, hey man, good round tonight, everything. He goes, I just stayed here. I didn't know. He wasn't going up there. He was done. He said, I stayed here because I wanted to tell you something. I was like, what? He goes, I wanted to tell you, thank you. Thank you for, you know,

the little bit that I ran with Junior Motorsports and how that was part of my career, part of my growth. It helped me. It was beneficial for me. What a nice gesture. Such a nice guy. You know, Daniel, I've raced with him. He's raced here.

I've raced against him. We've had run-ins with him with Noah and all that. and, you know, but as a person, man, he is good. A bit of a bit of sad news. Obviously, I think everybody in the industry is well aware this past week. Sherry Pollack's passed away. She was a great friend of everyone in the industry.

And a friend of Amy's and mine and everyone in this room. Just a very hard-to-believe sort of situation. because she had fought so hard for so many years to win her battle with cancer. And there were times when she felt like she had that under control. But it was a long, long, drawn out battle. And through, you know, her friendship with Amy and her relationship with Martin, true X over the years, I mean, I got. I got to spend a lot of time with her, but I also saw how difficult that was for her in many phases of her treatment.

She did a lot for a lot of people. That's understatement, I think, because of the charitable initiative through the Martin Tricks Jr. Foundation and Sherry Strong, I don't think we'll ever be able to measure the effect that she's had on so many people's lives. and will continue to affect people's lives long after we're all gone. So pretty incredible what she's been able to do and who she was able to transform herself into how she became more and more motivated to make a difference. I will say this, man, when she learned about her illness, she totally, you know, there's that song that Tim McGrath sings live like you were dying.

And damn, dude, she was exactly that. every day. I followed her on all of her social media. She made an effort to go be out there making memories with the people she cared about and spent so much. She really changed her motivation and effort in life that would inspire anybody. We all live and go and do and, you know, to work and back. And we have all these things that. we put ourselves through. And when she was faced with that reality with her illness, she lived the way we all wish we had the guts to, you know.

And so that to me was watching that over the last several years was really, really cool. You know, I think that she kind of worked really hard to come to some understanding with her situation. And I think she really did a lot of searching emotionally and mentally over the years to, and I don't think anyone was more prepared for what she was facing and what she would eventually face than her. But she affected all of our lives in a great positive way. She's going to be missed so badly by everyone. And, you know, it's been very impactful on the industry. and everybody that knew her.

Yeah, I think you said it best. I don't want to change the thing that you said right there. I will just add that she will continue to affect us. I mean, when I want to feel bad or feel sorry for myself, you can just think of Sherry. When you, you know, want to feel like you want to conquer a day, make the most out of a single day, you think about Sherry, right? Sherry is the one who will continue to be our role model for that.

And that's the, that's the legacy, man. If we could all leave this place with a legacy like that, then we will have succeeded, wouldn't we? Yeah. So, yeah, I'm going to miss her. I am for sure. But we'll think about her every day because she will continue to inspire us.