The Dale Jr. Download - 494 - Kyle Larson & Brad Sweet - Live from Lernerville Speedway

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mike Davis, and the Dirty Mo Media crew went to Lernerville Speedway Tuesday Night to see Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet's High Limit Sprint Car Series LIVE in action. Prior to the night festivities, Dale Jr. and Mike are joined by Kyle and Brad on stage in front of the front stretch grandstands for a live taping of The Dale Jr. Download. In this episode the guys talk to Kyle and Brad about how the series came together, the challenges of running a high-profile series, plus the future of the series.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.

Calling is a production of Dirty Mo Media. There he is. Come on in here, buddy. Have a seat. Hey, everybody. Glad you tuned in. It's time for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. Mike Davis, Delenhart Jr., the Bojangl Studio.

We've got a great guest today. Well, how you doing, Rhiz? I'm doing fine right now. This is every week, okay, boy? Uncle it. You died on that hill. Your career died on that hill and you were hardheaded. I'm a bigger idiot.

I didn't even think about it. You thought about it and didn't ask it. That makes me the bigger idiot. I think so. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download here in the Bojangles studio with my co-host, Mike Davis. How's it going, Mike?

Doing well, man. All right, man. It's Wednesday, September 27th, and we're going to take you guys to Lernerville Speedway. This week we have a little bit different of a guest segment. The High Limit Sprint Car Series has invited all of us to come out and check out what this series is all about. I'm looking forward to it. I know Mike is as well. We're going to get a chance to talk to Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet today.

We're going to understand a little bit about what this series is about. I want to thank Ally for giving us the opportunity to bring the guest segment to you every week. Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet. Brad actually race for junior murder sports many, many years ago. So both of these guys are allies here at Dirty Mo Media. And we're going to have a blast. So let's get right to it. Let's head on over to Lernerville Speedway for the Dale Junior download.

Y'all got to start it up there. I think we're good. Testing, testing. I think we're good. So I guess, you know, Mike, hold it down to it turns green. I just mashed the button and it started working, Mike. You got a green light there? All right.

You don't have to hold it. I don't think you have to hold it. All right, okay, all right. We'll get it tuned up. I guess, you know, the first question for me is what, you know, you guys have raced, y'all raced on dirt forever together or against each other in different, you know, at different times in your careers.

You end up going into stock cars and now, you know, made your way all the way of the Cup Series. I know why you race cars and, and I know why you compete, but why do you want to start a series? Tell me everything from how the conversations even started about, hey, could we do this? Why should we do this to where you are today? Yeah, I mean, that's a loaded question and a great question. You know, I've been around dirt tracks for quite a while now doing the World of Outlaw Tour 10 seasons.

So, you know, it's a little awkward to kind of step out and be a series owner, you know, being a driver for so long. You know, Kyle has a really unique ability to, you know, draw fans from all facets to sprint car racing. And, you know, streaming is a big part of the world now of racing and owning the series. And, you know, Kyle presented me with an opportunity, a unique opportunity to try something out, a midweek series, something that could get him some more races, but also helps the local tracks. You know, because to have Kyle Larson come to a track and race, it brings way more eyes. It brings way more fans.

And obviously, his willingness to kind of do that all the time is very unique. And it created an opportunity for me as kind of an entrepreneur maybe or like someone on the business side, maybe towards the end of my driving career that, you know, it was a no-brainer for me to kind of partner up with him and be that side of the business. Who brought the idea to who? So, I mean, it was kind of, I mean, well, you've always talked about, like, you need to have a series that's solely based around me or whatever, and I didn't really want that. You know, I wanted to help out the other racers, really. And, you know, I got to, really my eyes open to start in this deal when I started racing the late model.

And, you know, Flow Racing has their Tuesday night late model series and, you know, pays 20 some thousand to win every Tuesday. And it's like, man, why wouldn't that work, you know, in straight cars? The places are packed every week that I would run. And, you know, there's just a lot. There wasn't much midweek racing in sprint cars. And I just thought it was a good opportunity for others to race more, you know, make money. The owners, you'll make money, all of that.

So it's gone really well. I've enjoyed it. You know, obviously, you know, when we get great crowds like this, it's just great for all the teams, you know, with their merchandise and all that. And, you know, we got like 60 cars in the pit area to race for 50 grand on a car. Tuesday, which is crazy. So it's been great. So essentially, Kyle, instead of getting paid to show up, he, you know, brings the fans in and then races for the purse. You know, so it's great for the racers. It's great for the fans. And, you know, obviously, it's drawn a ton of new interest

into the sport. I just, I really just wanted to kind of elevate, not only just the midweek stuff, but I was hoping, you know, this would add, you know, pressure to the weekend shows to raise their purses as well. So I think we've seen a big step in that this year. I think it's going to continue forward. So I would say so far it's been successful. So entering into ownership of a series comes with a lot of, you know, challenges. What's been probably the most surprising or most difficult thing to navigate that you didn't, you know, I mean, owning the Cars Tour in North Carolina, you know, there's so many people to please.

Now, you know, when you're a racer, you show up and you worry about your own people, but now you're handling all of the other competitors have concerns, your tech folks have concerns, the track, the promoters, they had concerns. So what's been the biggest challenge? I think that, managing expectations for racers and being new, you know, making some mistakes along the way, making some people mad in the pit area, and, you know, not being organized, you know, when we had a bigger crowd than we were expecting at the ticket office, you know, and just trying to navigate each and every weekend, you know, learning from our mistakes. But, you know, quite a few things have happened where I think each show we've gotten better.

But it's definitely a challenge, you know, starting from Square One with a small team. We're just a small group of people that come out and try to run these shows on Tuesday night. So that's been a challenge book and shows. You know, each promoter's different. Each racetrack operators different. So there's just a lot of people involved in a lot of different relationships that you have to try to navigate to keep everybody happy across the board. Race teams, race tracks, you know, everybody alike. What is the, you know, what is the probably the most difficult thing about midweek races is that not only for the fans, but also, you know, the crew guys and

everybody that these are blue collar people they have jobs they have responsibilities outside of what they do at the racetrack and so you know having a midweek race how do you navigate those type of challenges well some of the things have been really good for the industry is adding some things that are traveling from race to race we're able to add a midweek show and a lot of these guys do make a living out here racing but but a lot of them don't and so that is a challenge you know knowing who's going to come to the race you know which which guys so being strategic how we schedule the races is you know, a key element. You know, fans, I think on a Tuesday night, it's always a challenge with the weather, with the streaming service now, you know, they got to go to work or kids got

to go to school. So you never know what your crowds are going to be like. So those are probably the two biggest challenges. It's just, you know, we're offering up big money, so we're trying to make sure we have big crowds and big car counts and put on, you know, next level type shows here. Knowing how much anxiety you have over different things like this, it's making me even a little nervous because this is a pretty ambitious venture right like you started a whole series and now you guys are y'all got that similarity now here's my question for you guys i know you've been racing together for a long time but had you guys ever been in business together have y'all been business partners on anything and if so i want to know what you guys think of each other as business partners that's a good question

we did you know what started this series probably a little bit too was that we took over a racetrack are both of our home track and in california silver dollar speedway i've always been an ambitious to take that track over and rebuild one of the events. The Gold Cup was always a really big event on the West Coast, and it's kind of died off. So we were able to kind of team up him, myself, and another partner, Colby Copeland, and, you know, with some other great help out there and our families.

And that was what kind of started our first business endeavor. He more helped on the likeness side and coming out and supporting, but, you know, that was our first kind of thing that we did together. And I can tell you, a racetrack is one of the hardest things. to ever do, to own a racetrack or run a racetrack is, it's like five or six businesses in one. So honestly, the series came second, and that was actually a little bit less of a challenge just because the racetrack was, you know, taught me so many lessons that I kind of knew what I was getting into. And then it also helped me look at when I'm booking races and going to a racetrack.

It helped me look at it from a promoter's, you know, lens. And that helps when you come to these places knowing all the challenges of owning a race track. So owning the track was tougher. Owning the track is tougher so far. Obviously our series is growing and it's young and we've only done 10 races. So I'm sure there's many growing pains and many challenges ahead of us. But night in and night out, owning a racetrack is a more challenging business. It's harder to make money.

It's the ticketing, the staff, you know, it's ordering the beer. It's having a restaurant, which is your food concessions. It's having equipment work on the racetrack. It's having officials. It's having the payout ready. It's having so many different things. and we just dove into it. So those were some good lessons to be learned

before doing a series, and I think it's really helped us through this first year with the challenges, for sure. Was it foregone conclusion, Kyle, when y'all decided to do this, that you would commit to every single race? Yeah, that was the reason why I have it at midweek. It's easy for me to get to, thankfully, Hendrick Motorsports is very accommodating too with my schedule

and knowing that these races are really important to me and my brand and all that. So, yeah, that was the number one goal was for me to run all of these. And it's gone well. We have a points system. So I'm leading the points right now. Rico is, I think, only 30 points behind me or so. So I would like to beat him.

But, you know, doing the business stuff has been fun. You know, Brad, we joke with him. I don't know if anybody got young kids, you do. I'm sure you've watched Sing, right? So he reminds me of, what is it Buster? Buster Moon. The promoter on there. He's like the little guy and will not take no for an answer, super ambitious, big ideas and is really successful at the end of the movie with all that. So I've learned to just let Brad's ideas go and they're usually right.

It's been fun. I feel like it's brought our families a lot closer. We were already obviously really close. you know, it's brought Rachel, his wife, you know, much closer to all of us. And it's just been fun. It's been fun getting to do it all. And in the track, you know, going to the Gold Cup a few weeks. It was a blast.

And it's just, it's been a really good time. You got to tell us. All right. We're all amongst friends here, right? We have been at Hendrik Motorsports. Dale drove for him forever, right? I've got to know the secret to getting Rick Hendrick to agree to this. How do you get them to do that?

I was so I was super nervous obviously everything happened to me and and then I met with Rick and Jeff and you know they we talked and talked and they're like well what's important to you know what do you want and what do you want of this deal if we sign you I was like I would just like to race sprint cars still that's so funny Dale Jeter said he wanted rides on the helicopter to Martinsville and Darlington that was what he that was important to him that painted sideskirts oh yeah that's right I'm going to aim a little higher. Yeah, I was like, man, this is going to be end of it.

Like, I've got this Hendrick Motorsports opportunity in front of me, and I'm going to kill it by telling them I want to race a sprint car still. But thankfully, the schedule is way different now than when you were full-time. Like, you know, back then, I mean, you were testing all the time. You're practicing on Fridays and Saturdays, race and Sundays. Now we get 20 minutes of practice, if that. Like, this week we can go to Talladegh, we just qualify in race. So I think the teams are now seeing that it's harder for your,

your driver to stay sharp, you know, with the limited track time. So I think it's a way for, it's risky, it's risky racing, letting your driver race sprint cars and dirt stuff and all that. But I think they see the upside of it, you know, staying sharp and racing and all that. So, and in 2021, my first year, Hendrick, it obviously went really good, winning the championship, and I raced more that year than I ever have. So just, uh, that's called leverage. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, it's, it's gone good. I'm, I'm, I'm appreciative of it for sure. Experience the thrill of the racetrack like you're in the driver's seat with Draf King's Sportsbook.

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See dkng.com slash auto racing for eligibility, terms, and responsible gaming resources. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. Eligibility and deposit restrictions apply. What goes around, comes around, and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. For the first time ever, Dirty Mo Media is taking its hit podcast to the streets. We'll be live and we'll be in front of real people. Uncensored, unapologetically authentic and totally unprepared, so it's business as usual. But here's the catch.

We'll be talking about our real lives and racing like we never had before, stories that we never dreamed would be broadcast in front of a live audience. Until now. And the only way to hear these stories is by coming to Dirtymo Live, Dale Jr. and Friends at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino. It's Friday, October the 13th. Go to Dirtymomedia.com slash live or Ticketmaster to join me and Mike Davis from the Dale Jr. download and Brett Griffin, Freddie Kraft, and T.J. Majors from door bumper clear.

And we're going to spill the tea on each other. When you have decades-long careers in NASCAR, you have highlights, low lights, and more stories than you know what to do with. For example, the time me and Mike Davis got an argument during the race, or the time that T.J. Majors went completely radio silent on me while spotting for me during an event. Yeah, we're going to hear those stories and more. So come out to the Westgate Resort and Casino on Friday, October 13th, to see Dirtymo Live, Dale Jr. and Friends, get your tickets on Ticketmaster or visit Dirtymobedia.com slash live.

That's Dirtymomomedia.com slash live to get your tickets, or you can find them on Ticketmaster. Come join us on Friday, the 13th for Dirtymo Live, Dale Jr. and Friends. Things are bound to get crazy. So, you know, how do you decide how many races you're going to run and how do you manage the schedule? Because I know you don't run every race, right? So what tell us how, what did takes that? Yeah, so I run the Outlaw tour, and this is kind of the first year that High Limits

has come onto the stage. So the Outlaws didn't really love the High Limit series because it's a little bit of, viewed a little bit as a challenge to them with our higher purses and, you know, middle of the week and their drivers, you know, like myself, are wanting to race these races. So the Outlaws went ahead and made a rule that you could, run four races outside of their series and keep their benefit package. So this is one of my four races that I'll be running outside of that, which is for 50,000 to win here on a Tuesday night, which is super cool.

But yeah, we chose 12 this year because, for one, that fit kind of Kyle's schedule. It was just enough that it, you know, kind of, we got to fill it out. You know, anything less, I think, wouldn't have been enough and anything more would have felt a little too much to be middle of the week because then we're out here, you know, too many middle of the week. So, yeah, I mean, we'll just learn from this year and kind of see what happens. And so when you're not driving, you're literally just a series owner navigating around and on the whole property. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I really enjoy it. I mean, it's kind of the next chapter of my life, you know, I mean, as you get older and kind of start thinking about what

the next chapter is going to be. You've mentioned that twice. Yeah. So what are you going to retire soon? Yeah, I mean, honestly, from driving, I don't see myself racing, you know, too many more years. I don't believe it. Yeah. Wasn't that life? I don't go. He's racing in our expedited car, so I know he's not too old. I'm 37 now. Good Lord. Yeah, at all kinds of time. I know, but having a little girl and being away on the road, you know, I've enjoyed, you know, kind of, I've been on the road racing for 10 years.

So I just feel like it's, I've really enjoyed kind of the art of the show, right? Like, I really think there's some innovation. I really love our product, and I really think that it could be showcased, you know, a lot better. and more efficient and, you know, I just think it's my turn to take my shot here. And, you know, I'll keep racing for as long as I need to keep racing. But I'm definitely very enthusiastic and excited about running the series and hopefully helping elevate the whole sport of sprint car racing. I had the chance to talk to Casey Kane years ago on my podcast,

and he was just getting back into racing on dirt. And I thought, man, you know, you can hop in there and get right to it and run right up front, you know, just it'll be nothing. You've got a great team, and he told me, he's like, you know, it's a little bit different in that style of racing. It takes months. You've got to be, they're doing it every night of the week over and over and over, and it takes you so long to be able to sort of get back up to speed

and understand what's going on on the racetrack and the car and the way the tracks are changing and so forth. And so I guess to that point, you can't kind of have a part-time schedule, right? and be as competitive as you want. Now, this guy's an anomaly. Unless you're this ninja eyes over there, whatever he's got going on. But yeah, yeah, no, to your point for sure,

you're kind of all in, right? I mean, if you want to be a professional sprint car racer, you have to be out here, to make a living, you know, to really make a meaningful living, you need to be out here each and every night, you know, battling it out and build a really great race team. And, you know, this is a lot of elite talent dirt racers that have spent many, many years out here

honing their skills. So, you know, I know it's taken me a long time to get to the level that I've gotten to. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the point is when you're at the top level for so long, you know, you start to, you know, it takes a lot mentally, physically for me to compete with this guy who makes it look so easy. But, you know, the reality is it does take a lot of yourself, you know, away from your family. It's 90 races a year that they're running. So, I mean, you think about the time away from home and there's no private jets and all that. So it's a grind for sure, and especially you live in California too. Most of the races are Midwest, East Coast. It's your life. I mean, it's your life on the road. I mean, you spend 200-something days in a hotel

and you're driving around. You know, it's definitely, you have to be very passionate about it. And it's definitely what I dreamt up doing was being a champion. And you have accomplished that. And, you know, I definitely am excited, you know, to have this opportunity to, own a series and try to elevate the sport even higher, which is really cool. I hear you. I do. I do hear y'all. And I believe you.

However, a few weeks ago, I saw a 48-year-old leave like 47 laps in the Xfinity series race before he decided to start a campfire on the floorboard of his car. So I'm just saying, I think it still can be done on a competitive level. Maybe be a little selective on races. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you just never really know what the future holds. You know, right now I'm committed to race. And I love racing.

I've committed to beating Kyle the night. I'm committed to winning this 50 grand. That's right. That's what we want to talk about. I'm excited. But if we're talking about the series, I can get just excited about that too. So you talk about, you know, having these grand ideas.

What's next? What are some of the things I think, you know, you guys can improve on? But what is some of the big brain ideas that you've never seen, you know, at a race like this that you want to create? Yeah, I mean, we don't want to tell all our secrets. But we definitely have some good ideas. I think efficiency in the shows could be better. So to that point, that's all I hear about high limit is how well run the show is.

And I think you guys, I would, I think listen to y'all talk about it, that was the main point when y'all built this series was to make it quick and sufficient. And so that's one of the things that everybody claims is one of the highlights of the series. Yeah, I mean, that's great that we're getting that type of feedback. I mean, you know, it's a new challenge each and every night that you come to the racetrack, but it's just trying to do a little bit. little bit of everything better. You know, it's trying to, you know, elevate the purses. It's, you know, trying to build more events. It's, it's more than just a race. You know, there's camping or concerts or whatever it may be. It's, you know, the efficiency of the show. So when a new fan does come, they don't get disengaged, you know, halfway through the night, or you bring little

kids out and they're asleep in their dad's arms at 10 o'clock on a cold night. You know, it's just doing everything a little bit better. It's thinking about you fans. It's thinking about the product that we're putting up and more consistently good because right now it's a little bit inconsistent and you sometimes don't know what you're going to see based off the track conditions or based off of what support classes are there

or who's running the show. So, you know, our brand, we want to be associated with efficiency. We have a high-quality product and something that maybe has never been seen before on a consistent basis. What has the most positive effect on your car test? Like what is the one thing that y'all try to do to create the best car count? Is it all about the purse?

What is the most effective thing? I would say a couple, I mean, to purse and who's running your show, location, middle of the week obviously helps the car count because you're not really competing against anything else. So we've definitely learned some stuff about the middle of the week shows that we maybe didn't anticipate much higher car counts than we were anticipating. You know, the streaming numbers are better. viewerships higher because you're not competing against anything on a weekend.

So definitely the midweek thing, there's been some great things about it. But yeah, the car count, I think gets affected by, yeah, just location. There's pockets of sprint cars across the country that there's areas. Central Pennsylvania is very popular. Over here they have a good, you know, local contingency of cars. And, you know, so some of that, like if we try to go too far west or too far south, you could run into, you know, way less cars available. So what is the geographic footprint?

It's nationwide, but there's just places that are like late model country, and then there's places. In Carolina, we probably couldn't have a race with 35 cars. We used to go to Charlotte and May right before the Coke 600, and there'd be like 18 cars, you know, and probably 1,200 fans. So how do you determine, so when you create the series, You reach out the racetracks, you create partnerships. Now that people are starting to see the success of the series

and how well you guys are doing, how good your streaming numbers are, what has been the response from other racetracks that aren't on the series that want to be there? Extremely high. The phone gets really busy now. You know, now that we've kind of showcased our product and people have seen how beneficial it has been for local dirt tracks in other places, and, you know, those promoters want big shows.

You know, that's what keeps these racetracks alive is, all these fans coming out on a Tuesday night and really, you know, elevating the race track. Because these tracks, they're running year-round, but there's only a few nights a year that they can actually make this type of money or be profitable to keep them running. So, yeah, we're definitely getting a lot of great feedback, and we're trying to be really strategic in how we book shows because you don't want to oversaturate any markets. You definitely want to, you know, keep the fans wanting to see us. We don't want to come here 10 times, and then they're burnout, and then, you know, or we're racing right around the corner, and then it hurts both shows.

So there's a lot of strategy to how we book them. And obviously, Learnerville here, this is a hotbed sprint car place, and they haven't had a really big sprint car race in a few years. And obviously, Kyle coming, you come in the High Limit Series. There's a lot of excitement about tonight around tonight. You know, Dale and I were talking on the way in, and we were wondering, like some of the why, why Learnerville? All we had to do was pull in this front stretch here,

and we got that answer. Be honest with you. this is an amazing crowd here. These are passionate fans. They ought to be commended for this, for sure. So that we got answered. But can you speak to the passion that you guys feel that we don't need, we haven't figured out in North Carolina yet,

but Dale and I are going to be ambassadors for you now. We're going to go back and we're going to say, hey, the guys in Pennsylvania know how to do this right. Just tell us what is it about this fan base? Honestly, Kyle could probably answer because he goes into a lot of late model races and sprint car races. So there's just dirt racing is a little bit divided. Like, I think there's like a misconception

that you can't be a late model fan and a sprint car fan. Or you either like NASCAR and you can't like dirt. But like one thing that Kyle has done really well for the whole industry is he has crossed the fans over. I used to never watch a light model race. I was a lot less engaged with NASCAR. Now I'm a lot more engaged with NASCAR. I hadn't watched a cars tour race

I turned on a cars tour's race because Kyle has that ability and that uniqueness that he makes every race a little bit better so anytime he's able to do that it helps but he knows the fan base and here's like what late model fans and sprint car fans I'm a little bit

living in this world so maybe you could probably speak on why it doesn't work in certain areas or it's just the way it's been I mean I've never raced a sprint car in the Carolinas but so I don't I don't know why it's not bigger there, but late model racing is huge there. So, but you know I have seen over the last few years since I have transitioned to run a more

late model shows, I do see the crossover and I love, I love seeing NASCAR shirts of the dirt tracks, you know, because every night I race the dirt race, you there's, I'll, I bet 10 fans that come up to me like, this is my first ever dirt race I've gone to. And, you know, that makes me happy, you know, because it makes me feel like I'm doing something positive for the overall broad spectrum of motorsports growing and I don't like Brad said I don't I don't want there to be a fan that only likes a certain type of you know category of car I want racing to just be one and I feel like you we have even scratch the surface on on getting that but you know it's it's a goal of mine I

feel like it's part of my brand and what I know what I like to do is just grow racing by racing so I don't know what, you know, maybe we just have to start scheduled high limit races in the Carolinas to get the fans. There's some amazing racetracks in the South East. Well, if they'll come, we will be. I mean, that late model show we run at Bulls Gap before Bristol is huge. I ran at Taswell's an amazing track. A sprint car around there would be insane. We would probably turn in low nine-second laps around there. So there's some awesome places. And I think if I think if late model fans, you know, would just come and experience it and see the speed and the

craziness, the danger of it, I think that, you know, they would fall in love with it. Just like I fell in love with late model racing because it's just a different style, different form, and you just got to give a chance. All right. How are you going to beat Brad tonight? I don't know. I don't even know where I drew. I don't know when I go out to qualify, any of that.

So we'll see, Brad's really good here. The last time Brad raced here, I think he won. who was a good battle with you, me, and Donnie. We were all kind of three right there at the end. Maybe Donnie snuck by you. Yeah, not that one, but I did win, I think, maybe the last Commonwealth class here might have, like two years ago. Brad's been good here lately.

He's good. And Brad's good. And Brad loves money. Brad loves money. And he wants that money. Right. He shows up. He might, he's a points racer.

I joke at them these days. He's been on the Allot Tour so long. He's just a points racer. But when the money's on the line, he can raise his, you know, elevate himself to perform. No points on the line tonight. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. It's just money on his mind.

He's points racing tonight. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right? I'm going to put it in some awkward positions. There's so many good competitors. There's so many good competitors in the pit area. I mean, gravel, Rico, Brent Marks. I don't even know.

I haven't been in the pit just. I don't even know who's here, but Brown. I mean, there's a lot of good, AJ Flick, you know, local guy, Sy Lynch. You know, there's going to be a lot of tough cars. There's going to be guys that can win any night of the week that'll miss the show tonight. That's how tough the field is.

Did it holler? Yeah. I guess, you know, let's get into tonight. What can we expect from this racetrack? The temperatures, what kind of race track we're going to have? I think we're going to see some. I don't know what the track record is. Yeah, possible track record speeds here.

I mean, the cooler temperatures, our engines are going to be running good. The track's definitely wetter than it typically would be. but they do a great job. They keep it really hard, and it's hard to ever read it because they're going to just keep packing it. So it looks pretty wet right now. I think we're going to have some high speed. You're going to want to qualify good

because I think it might be a little bit hard to pass until the main event, but this track usually, once we get to the main event, it's usually pretty racy. That's what's cool about dirt racing is you don't know. You don't know what you're going to get before you go to the track. Like, pavement race, you know roughly the line you're going to run, roughly the lap times you're going to run.

you know, wet lap the tires start to fade. Like, you don't know any of that when you show up to a dirt track. So that's what I think is really cool. I think that's what, you know, makes these dirt racers really good, too, because you always have to adapt. Yeah, and that's what keeps, like, the engineering out of it, too. Like, there's no way to engineer your car or pull it down or, you know, run some simulation because, like, there might be a hole that wasn't here last time we came here,

or there might be, it might be twice as fast, wet-wise. You know, it's just, there's so many variables that change how you do your car. the human element in dirt racing is everything. It's you, your crew chief, and your crew guys, you know, just making decisions, you know, on the fly that kind of separates the really good guys, and that's why experience is so important in dirt track race. Well, we are excited to see what happens tonight.

Thank you guys for giving us some time today in front of these fans. We're all excited to be here, right? It's going to be a hell of a show, and thankfully we've got some great weather, and, again, man, you two guys are doing some great work and raising the platform and elevating the platform of motor sports across the board. And we're learning a lot from you. I've been picking your brain, and even just tonight,

just learning a little bit about this series being here will help me go back and make our series better. So everybody's watching you guys and everybody's pulling for you. So thanks for tonight. Let's have some fun. Thank you guys. And thanks Dale too. I mean, coming into our area, we've got to give them some love.

Man, I'm really excited to have Ally help us bring the guest segment every week. It's one of my favorite parts of the download. We get to talk to so many different people in racing, outside of racing. But everybody that comes in here, I want them to have had a good time. I want them to want to come back. I want them to feel like an ally to Dirty Mo Media. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the download and the entire Dirty Mo Media team. Check out Dirty Mo Media.

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