The Dale Jr. Download - 522 - Phoenix: It's Not The Package, It's The Car

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back from vacation and ready to get back into things on a new edition of Dirty Air. This episode features Kyle Larson, C. Bell, Connor Zilisch and Dale’s reactions to the NASCAR weekend in Phoenix, plus: Changing a flat tire on vacation Watching the Xfinity race with Isla Phoenix is Phoenix Larson’s make-up call Christopher Bell chats about his win Connor Zilisch talks about piloting the JRM No. 88 car During the Ask Jr. segment of the episode, listeners wrote in questions regarding: Bringing back the frosted tips Story behind the Sun Drop late model Favorite road trip snacks and drinks Favorite spots in Key West 21+ and present in NC. First online real money wager only. $10 Deposit req. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 877-718-5543 or visit morethanagame.nc.gov. 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.

Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download here in the Bojangles studio. I was off last week, so we got a lot of catching up to do. We're going to cover Phoenix, and we got a lot of drivers calling in. Larson, he has a make-up call. Also, Christopher Bell, and we got a driver announcement today. Let's get right to it. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey, everybody.

Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. The Dale Jr. Download. The Dale Jr. Download. download here in the Bojangles Studio I've got a great show for me here this Tuesday

calling him from race winner Christopher Badass Stay tuned Let's get to it All right everybody I'm excited to be back I want to thank all you guys for doing an awesome job

while I was gone McGee was fantastic Ryan filled in for me for a week we were like I've been begging Mike Davis to do a guest segment for a long time or a guest host segment and finally we were able to do that and Ryan did a good job. Andrew Dalton guys, did y'all enjoy having him here? He was great. How fun was that? Tons of fun. Yeah. I got a lot of great feedback from it. So I don't like not having a show, right? I got to

go sometime. I can't be here every week and I don't like not having a show. I feel like that it, you know, even if it's just a small guest host, whatever. But Ryan was a big get. I was surprised that we were able to do that and he was able to do it, made it work. A lot of fun, a lot of great stories. I love that. I saw all the stuff y'all did, the impressions, man. Did you like that?

Yeah, yeah, it was funny. Stephen was worried that you weren't going on like that. No, no, I don't care. Stephen could do what he wants. Yeah, if you haven't seen DJD reloaded from last week, a lot of funny stuff, a lot of impressions picking on me, and I'm all for it. But I mentioned we got a lot of call-ins today,

race winner, Christopher Bell. Larson, who missed his calling, last week's calling in. And we do have another driver calling in. Surprise, driver announcement. So let's get right to it, man. Flat tire on the way to the beach. I had a flat. All right.

This is me and my wife, two kids, driving down to have a little vacation this past weekend, Isla Spring Break. A car, we started getting this vibration. I think in the back of my mind, I'm like, man, hopefully it's just the road. You know, sometimes you'll get a little content in the road, Amy's like, yeah, what is that? Let's pull over. So, you know, I pull over and

we, you know, jump out, go right to it, found all the equipment, jack the car up. I got it quite a ways off the side of the road, so we're in the grass. A lot of traffic coming by on the interstate. We got the spare down, and me and Amy put that thing on there, put the flat tire back up under the suburban and winched it up and put everything away and got back in there probably 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Yeah, it was quick. That's pretty good. Yeah, it was really quick. That's like an old olden days pit stop right there. Yeah, yeah. No, I was real happy with speed and destroyed and destroyed. We got to our vacation spot. I got a plug kit, plugged it. Sidewall is destroyed. Not going to be able to use it on the way home. So, got to get that fixed. But anyways, hadn't had a flat tire in a long time. You guys,

I've had that experience. I've had one on the bike. Right? Oh, yeah. I've had one on the bike. That's not a lot of fun either, but not, I hadn't had a flat tire on the highway in a long, long time. Yeah. I luckily, the only flat tire, I don't have a spare, no, yeah.

Does your car not have a spare? No, yeah, it did. Lose the spare? I just, I did not buy it with the spare. Wait, every car has a spare. Like, what kind of car do you own? I own a Chevy Cruise. The Chevy Cruise comes without a spare.

The one we bought. No, it has a spare. You just don't have one. Oh, yeah. Like, it just is not there. There's a space for it to go. We bought it from the dealer. There's no spare included.

I'd go back in the car. I don't believe that. Something's wrong. Yeah. Maybe I'm just checking the wrong place. Yeah, it's in the trunk, not the hood. You got a spare. You don't know where the spare is.

Once you go on YouTube, figure out where the spare is for a Chevy Cruise. I mean, there's no way they sell a car without a spare. I'm telling you, I bought a car without a spare. Okay. I don't know. So, I'll live life on the edge. I had Amy back here. trying to, so they've got to pull these

plastic panels off the rear bumper to get to this little thing. You've got to winch the rear tire, the spare out from underneath the undercarriage of the car. So Amy's watching little YouTube clips trying to figure out how to get this panel off. We don't want to destroy this thing. And

YouTube comes in handyman. So, yeah. That's what got me through college. YouTube where the spare is for your crew. I'll check it out. I'll get back to you. As people may know, if they follow my social media. The Titanic has arrived. The Lego set that I ordered. William Byron came on the show several weeks ago. We talked about

Legos. He famously builds some Legos during the Netflix NASCAR show, and we were giving a little bit a hard time for that, but ended up buying the Titanic Lego set. It's huge, heavy. 9,000 pieces. Amy's really mad that it's in the house. You know, she was giving me a hard time. about it, but she's genuinely not liking it. I thought it was her just kind of, you know, just trying to. Right. She's not a thing. She really isn't happy about it. Why? Yeah, I don't, I'm not 100% sure. This is going to be a new hobby for a long time. This thing, Kate, I mean, it's one Lego set. It's not like I'm, you know, going to make a career out of Legos, right? I'm not going to,

I'm not going to build Legos for the next 30 years. You're not William Byron. No, I'm going to do this damn Titanic. It's a challenge. I'm going to go for it, but I think after this, I'm, I'm good. You did go for like the biggest one they make. You know, I got buddies of mine that are like, oh, awesome, you're going to do this Lego Titanic thing and they're sending me all these pictures of the Legos they built. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not building that shit. No. The little Lego stuff, like a little car, little things, you know, I ain't doing that.

Yeah. I'm not that into it. Right. But this is a big Titanic. That's a challenge. It is. I can't not try this. I think Amy's worried that, okay, the Titanic's huge, four foot long when you get done with it,

where the hell is it going to go? where am I going to build it that it's not in the way and the girls aren't fooling with it? So yeah, all legitimate questions. I'm going to build this thing. It'll set out for a while. And then I don't know. I'll throw it back in the box and it'll disappear.

Throw it back in the box. Well, eventually. I don't think that's how Legos work. Well, I bust it up. Throw it back in the box. Really? You're going to destroy it? You can't destroy the Titanic?

There's something sacrilegious about that. It's already destroyed once. I look. I'm up for the challenge. I think it'll be cool. I'm sure when it's done, I'll be like, damn, that was fun, that was cool. I won't want to, I will set it out somewhere. And hell, maybe I, you know, maybe it does stay put together. I don't know.

But in the studio. If y'all wanted in here, yeah, Amy would love that. It cannot, look, it can exist in the house. Right. All right. Once it's together, it can't be there. We can make, so that's my, that's not really my problem, but that's just the fate. It's the facts, okay?

So when this thing gets put together, it's got to go. So it can come here, or I can take it to the dirty dome where our basketball court is and set it there. They've got some shelving. It can go there. But once I'm done building it, I mean... That ship is sailed. It'll be cool. Yeah.

It'll be cool for a few weeks. And then I'll be like, yeah, okay, that was great. Yeah. Now what? I've seen some of these Titanic's built for sale on eBay. Built? Oh, that's against the spirit of the thing. That's wrong.

Wait, is there a Lego's code here? Against the spirit? You can't buy a built Lego set? That's cheating right there is what it is. Hey, what? That's, this, I'm, I can't... Does it cost more?

No, no, less. Half, it's half. It's half if it's pre-built. Yeah, because there's no fun experience. I know, but I can understand this person is doing the same, this person's dealing with the same challenges. No, they got a, they got,

They got a wife at home going to get the hell. Get rid of this. Yeah, they're just trying to. Get rid of it. He's like, okay. I'll sell it. Built. I can understand why there's some built ones for sale.

I guess. Neither one of y'all get it because neither one of y'all are married. Not yet. Right? You're going to find things change a little bit. All right. And don't make a clip out of that. I don't get my ass to trouble, right?

I'll write that down. Don't put that down. Don't button that. up into a little one minute, you know, let's throw Dale under the bus clip. Dalton has nothing for the show now. No, nothing. The weight is over NASCAR fans. FanDuel, America's number one sports book is officially live in North Carolina.

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The first road course race of the 2024 NASCAR season is coming up at Circuit of the America's track. This 20-turn 3.41 mile track in Austin, Texas is sure to bring the excitement. Camp on property starting Thursday, March 21st and enjoy the Thor camper party Friday night with free entertainment. On Saturday, March 23rd, the doubleheader starts with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series in the Expell 225, followed by the NASCAR X-FINITY series in the FocusHealth 250. The fun and excitement continues on Sunday with so much going on at the fan zone in the Grand Plaza highlighted by the Echo Park display, featuring Michael Waltrip and Kyle Petty in the Echo Park Coffee Cup experience. Pre-race concert features a party on the front straight array with a rocking Riley Green performance before driver intros. Check out all the ticket options, schedules, and information about NASCAR's only visit to Austin at NASCAR at Kota.com. You don't want to miss it. Do we want to talk about the Xfinity race first? I just have a really quick jump into it. Yeah. So before we got, who's calling first? We got Kyle Larson calling in. I think Larson's calling first. Okay. Because we don't have a schedule too. We don't

know exactly when they're going to go all, but we think we do, which is kind of how we want it. But anyways, the Xfinity Race, Heartbreaker for Justin Algar. I just wanted to touch on that for a minute. It was not the Daytona 500, but dude, this was so reminiscent of Dad in 1990, going into turn 3, lead in the Daytona 500 and loses the race of Derek Cope with a flat tire. So I had flashback. No one else is going to compare the two, and I get that.

But I had like a, oh, shit. I had a little, I had the same heartbreak, right? Because that's my car on the racetrack. Yeah. You know, that Justin's driving. So, but I'll say this, man. There was like a silver lining, if there could be, to my experience watching the Xfinity race. All right.

So Ila is five. Ila and Nicole are my whole world, like everything about. them is the most important thing in the moment. So I'm curious about how they're going to think about racing, what they, will they care about it, you know, when they start to get old enough to start to figure it out and understand what all this is around them, will it matter?

And so, you know, I'm always kind of watching them when they're in the race shop or whether they're, if there's a race on TV or whether they go to the race with me, I'm watching how they're taking, it in. So far it's been, you know, they're indifferent at this point. But we, I don't know how we got on the topic, but I was like, I'd lend the Xfinity race, Junior Motorsports has got some cars out there. She's like, Gina Motorsports has always got cars in the race. I'm not going to, no, just Xfinity race. And, you know, we had to go through what numbers they were and, and point them out

on the screen and all that stuff. And she's, so she's like sitting in in the chair watching the race. Nicole, three-year-old Nicole, was like, I want to get down, I want to go play. And I was like, oh, do you want to get down? Do you want to go, you know, with your sister? Nope, I want to watch the finish of the race. No way. And so I was like, wow, okay, we're going to sit here and watch the finish.

So me and her watched the finish of the race together for the very first time. Me and her literally sit there and watched. And so, you know, I'm explaining to her the basics. We get down toward the end. And I'm like, you know, Justin is leading. He could win this race. I was like, we don't want any cautions. We don't want anything like that going on, right?

And she's kindergarten, right? So ABC's counting, numbers, all those things. So I'm like, all right, you know, how many laps are left? She'll look on the screen. 18, 18. All right, what's next? 17, okay. So she's, you know, she's understanding that.

Following along. Yeah, she's understanding that we're counting down the laps to the very finish, you know, trying to help her understand the basics, right? So that was fun. and she's starting to fall in love with the idea that junior motor sports has got a chance to win this race right she's really starting to cheer for justin louder and louder with each lap and she's starting to understand it's starting to make sense and we're watching and all of a sudden you know he goes in the corner and he spins out crashed i cannot believe this is happening like i it's i feel like i'm having an out-of-body experience i'm like ila he's wrecked he's wrecking

and she was shocked and didn't know why he wrecked and what does that mean and boy when she started to realize that that was the end of his race you know as as she comes off this she comes down off of this emotional high of being excited and all that she got a little emotional really yeah and i was like hey man you know that happens we're going to win we're going to lose and Justin's fine and yes were sad, but we had a shot. We were in the mix. We, you know, trying to help her explain or help her understand how you talk yourself out of that heartbreak.

And I sit that video, so I videoed her during that whole process. Really? Yes. Even during the crash? I had a video, I had my camera up videoing her because I was so, I was enjoying, watching her get excited. So she's counting it down, eight to go, seven to go, six to go. And then he crashed, right?

We all had this really genuine reaction to it, and then I take the following turns. I'm like, stop recording. Let's stop recording. Now this sucks. And so anyways, I have that video, and I sent it to Justin and Jim, the crew chief. I said, guys, I know y'all are heartbroken. I know y'all, there's nothing to anybody. I'm not going to say anything like, oh, boy, we'll get them next week, all that.

But I want y'all to see this. I was like, y'all might have, you know, y'all might have be heartbroken over the finish, but my girl paid attention to the first, you know, to her first race that I know of, right? I was like, even though we had this terrible result, man, you know, my little girl can't wait to, I can't wait for Ila to see y'all have another shot, right? And now the next time we sit down and you guys go to the front and you're leading toward the end, I'll sit her down in front of the TV and go, hey, we got another shot. Justin could win today.

But I don't know if it made any difference to, of course, Justin loved it because he's dad and he's a girl dad. You know, but I don't know if it helped the plane ride home for those guys. Speaking of, I saw him the very next day running a 5K in Troutman with his daughter. And, I mean, it's all smiles, as happy as could be. So it was good to see him in a positive move after that. You know, how do you get over that when that happens to you? The one thing that I do is we have sometimes sometimes we take for granted that we're running

well that we're leading that we're that we have a shot right i've been uh i've been in this sport long enough to know there's there's it's easy to become a a 15th place team a 25th place team a 20th place team it's easy to to become a team that struggles that doesn't have shots at wins that doesn't go to the track with a lot of morale and and a positive attitude because they're just beat down i've been there and so when i when we have those kind of of heartbreakers like that, you got to go revert back and go, look, we are a, we are leading that race where we had a shot at it. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll have an, we'll have an equally good shot next weekend. We should be thankful that we are that good. We're good enough.

We should be appreciative that, that we have that kind of pace and speed in our cars that we even, you know, we weren't, you know, certainly some guys had some issues, but we didn't just luck into that position, right? We didn't, it just, you know, we know, we just, you know, we're, you know, It didn't wipe out the top 10, and there we were with a shot to win. He was a top five car all night or all day. And so, you know, I find the silver lining to try to make myself feel good about the next one. So you don't carry that heartbreak and that disappointment into the next race weekend. Because if you go into the next race weekend, with any negative energy of any kind, it's going to affect the result.

So you have to get rid of that. Let's move on, talk about the cup race. So, you know, it's been covered by several of the, you know, several of the media, and even in Dirtymo, Dirtymo's camp, the door of upper clear and Denny and those guys talked at length about the race at Phoenix. And I found, you know, a lot of drivers commented that the race, the car, the new package, the short track package that NASCAR brought didn't seem to have a big effect. But Denny argued that it did.

and Denny talked about how many cars that Christopher Bell had to pass to get to the lead and how he did that, right? All great points. Honestly, man, and this was also, I think, what Brack Zalowski said, which I really agree with is, of course he doesn't think that the next-gen car is perfect for short track racing. There's still some work to be done, some things that they can continue to try. But he does think that the racing was better at Phoenix, but Phoenix is just going to be Phoenix. That's what the teardown said too. I have been going to Phoenix for a long, long time. That's the way the racing is there.

And of course, yes, there have been more exciting races at Phoenix, but it's circumstantial. It's not anything to do with the car or the package. Honestly, Phoenix is what it is. I would have never reconfigured that racetrack. I don't love the dog leg. I don't love the bank dog leg. I don't love the cutting of the dog leg. I know that without it, it would be easy.

even more boring or it would be even less exciting without that, but I'm just a traditionalist, I suppose. If I had a choice to go back in time, when that track needed to be repaved, I would have just put a new coat asphalt on the current layout and left it alone. But not that that's the right thing to do. That's just probably my hard-headed traditionalist attitude about it. But we have what we have.

that's the way Phoenix is always going to be no race there in my mind is going to ever really be a burn burner without some circumstances that are controlled by drivers' decisions right format like a championship some format yeah right pressure of a format right

those type of things are going to affect a race at Phoenix not the package so what I would say is is yeah of course I don't go into Martinsville or these other short tracks or like Bristol this weekend with a whole lot of confidence, right? I think there's still work to be done on the short track package. I wish NASCAR would continue to push in an aggressive nature

toward ripping away the downforce from the car or trying to figure out right what the package needs to be for the short tracks to make it race better. But I do feel better. There was a tire change at the end of the year at Martinsville that we all thought was a good idea. it laid rubber down on the racetrack, which was new for Martinsville, which was necessary.

And then these changes to the physical car that they went to Phoenix with that some drivers, Denny Hamlin, Brad and others, are really saying, hey, man, it was better, right? We could pass. I will say this, though. I talked to Denny a little bit last night. When I watched the race,

the one thing that's glaring to me that is a concern that's not short-track package-related or it's not related to anything. And it might be why the car runs so good at a mile and a half. I don't know. Watching the field from first to 30th was only two-tenths. You know, at times only a tenth and a half.

So people say, okay, this sucks. If a guy that's run second all day has a bad stop and gets mired back in the field, he can't pass. Well, that's because all the cars run the same speed. It's not the package. It's all the cars are the same. right is that tire then no all the cars are the saints everything it's the car if i give you and you the same thing right you're gonna how are you going to be different by driver's skill right or is

there's the two tents is the win yeah i guess i know these are the best short these are the best oval racers or the best stock car racers in the country and they're all going to from first to 30th is about two-tenths in ability, right? Right. There's some things in setup and so forth that are going to affect the car's pace and speed, but honestly, man, looking at the field, I was watching the guys in the back, and they're really not running much slower than the guy leading the race. And especially when the field starts to get spread out all the way around the track

where everybody's pretty much in the same amount of disturbed air, everybody's suffering about the same in terms of aerodynamics. Then you really see the field neutralize. And the whole field's literally within a tenth of each other. There's no way that a guy that has a car that's a little faster can drive through the field when there's no real difference in lap time. That is not, that doesn't bode well for a short track race. it actually may be why the car looks so good on the mile and a halfs, right? Because they can use the draft and dirty air and other things to make the racing,

you know, to race each other and challenge each other in the close proximity of the lap times, keep them relatively close together. Now, if you know, if you had a half a second or three quarters a second in lap time difference between first and 30th at a mile and a half, they would spread out. But at a short track, you kind of need that much disparity in the pace of the pace of of the field so that the lap cars can really cause some issues and slow leaders down and challenge leaders. But basically, once everybody gets running and the back of the field catches or the front

the field catches the back, it neutralizes and really the whole field can run pretty much the same lap time. You'll watch a guy pick anybody, the 20th, 25th, 30th place car. They'll run the same lap as the leader, one lap, a tenth slower the next, the same as the leader of the next lap, two-tenth slower the next, a tenth slower, a same lap, it's all, and the leader's doing the same thing. That's such a funny thing because if we had that same, you know, interval on a mile and a half, we'd say it's one of the greatest races we've ever seen. That's why we, that's what, and we do. Right. We do. And then we get to a short track and

it's like, awful. The car is fantastic at mile and a halfs. It can be great at the short tracks. I don't think it's, hell, I don't think it's, oh man, let's just throw this car out and give up what maybe we'll just let them run the Xfinity cars. I see all kinds of crazy ideas in my timeline. I think that we have to continue to push to try to make this it's going to take a unique, a completely unique and different package

to make this car work as a short track. And I think NASCAR has worked in that direction. Have they went far enough? Maybe not. But I think they can continue to push. What do you say to Bell then who race from 20th to first on the final restart? You can definitely move through the field to feel the fastest car.

You can. you can but if the fifth from fifth to 30th they're all about the same race car to your point if we take the best car and put him in the middle of the field we're probably going to see him move forward but the fifth to 30th place car they're all really somewhat similar right so however you put them out on the tracks kind of how they're going to run okay and so you could strip the decals off of all of them and you wouldn't be able to tell a difference between you know who's driving what and what car belongs to who? Because they all would run so similar.

But yeah, I mean, you can take the best car and he can drive through the field. Chris Busher passed a lot of cars. He had a good car. You know, so like the top four cars can move through the field, but the rest of the field's sort of, you know, handicapped or they're going to be stifled with traffic or whatever all day long. Is that making sense? Yeah.

Okay. Which, by the way, to an earlier point, point you made. Bristol, we won't be able to use that as a litmus test because this is actually not the short track package. That's right. Good point. I'm excited though. No more dirt on Bristol going into the next cup race. I'm excited to see, you know, even though I'd love if they paved that racetrack with asphalt, I'm excited to not see dirt. The dirt thing was fun, but I don't know. I just kind of, I'd rather go to a real dirt track. And even that hasn't been great. Like when the trucks went to El Dor.

They went to El Dorr, and also they went to Knoxville. It never felt right. Not that great. El Dorr was kind of fun. Had a couple good races. Yeah. But, yeah, I think, I think I'm glad Bristol is Bristol. Yeah. It didn't feel right to take a Bristol race away from us.

It didn't. It didn't. No. Are there any other big ticket items from the cup race we're missing? Well, I want to kind of touch on Denny's Denny had media availability on Saturday, I think, after winning the poll and he was kind of quoting what the media had been reporting but he's like, if we wanted to up the horsepower,

$750, it's one phone call away and we can get this thing running in a few weeks. He went in depth on that, on action is detrimental. I don't know if we have a clip, we can play it for you. It's not a hard task for sure. it certainly Does it cost more money? The engine bills are the same

I've been saying this forever The engine bills are the same now As they were when they were 900 Jared All right well I'm going to ask you the same question We buy engines we know I'm going to ask you the same question I asked you last year is that then why not change it If it's just such a simple fix

What is the argument for not? I'll tell you the same thing I told Dustin Long Call Jim France and ask I don't know I don't have the answers for that Yeah I mean not I love Denny's honesty, and I'm glad that if this is important to him and he believes that it'll make a difference, I would hope that he would continue this argument. I can't be sure that just adding horsepower is going to make a big difference.

But Denny drives the cars, and I would trust his feedback on that. And I would certainly trust his feedback if he's telling us about the costs being pretty much flat if you were to move from one horsepower to another wouldn't change anything. And maybe, you know, there are some good reasons why NASCAR hasn't done that. And maybe NASCAR has told us what those are, you're right? If we have to go back and dive into the comments from Phelps and all those guys in offseason and at Daytona, there was a lot of conversation around this. But Denny makes it sound like there are no hurdles to getting there.

Doug Yates, who builds the Fords, all the Toyota guys, they all say they could go to $750 with no issue. And it can be before next weekend, right? It could be done overnight. And it wouldn't change durability or anything or it cost any additional money. I would love to see them give that a try at Martinsville.

But, man, I'm telling you, even with all of that, I still want them to try to work on getting rid of the shifting. Yes. I do not think that even though they're getting to where it's second nature to them to shift, having to drive into a corner and downshift and then do another shift on the next straightaway, doing that every single corner for 500 laps at Martinsville, right, that takes away from your processing on how to set the corner up, how to try to set up a car in front of you,

how to try to make a difference in the corner. I just feel like it's such a distraction, and I've heard Denny and those guys say that. They're fine doing it. They don't mind doing it, but it is such a distraction from what they really would love to be focusing on. And that's getting the car into the corner deeper or differently or trying to figure out a way to drive the corner uniquely

to be able to set up a pass for the car from them. And so I would love for them to continue to try to figure out a way to get the shifting out of ovals in general, particularly the short track stuff. You know who I'd love to hear this opinion on? Kyle Larson. Kyle Larson. Yeah.

Is he here? He's here. All right, let's get him in. Hey, man, how's it going? Kyle Larson has called in to the Dale Jeter download. You won a couple weeks ago, and we got to deal with NASCAR where the winter calls in every week, but you had something going on last week, couldn't make the call on Tuesday. What were you doing?

Tuesday. Tuesday. I don't remember. I don't remember. My last day, pretty 50. Yeah. I was doing something, though. So, no, glad to be on this week.

And I wish I could have been talking to you after back-to-back wins, but we had a pretty rough race on Sunday at Phoenix. What was going on, man? I watched the race and just saw you kind of mired in the middle of the pack there. What were you struggling? Well, honestly, I didn't feel like horrible with my balance, but it was just really hard to pass. And we had a couple issues on pit road. Left for your wheel nut didn't get all the way tight. So I had to come back down pit road.

You actually, we gained like four spots on that stop. And then again, later in the race, something happened on the run. right rear. So it was just a, it was just a rough day, but honestly, I feel like for us to finish 14th was maximizing as much as we could. So, you know, proud of the team and myself for not freaking out and crashing or something, because that's probably something I would have done last year. So, no, we'll just, you know, take it, move on, learn from it, and try and do better next time. So there's a lot of conversation around the short track package, Phoenix, the race and all that, and I think the narrative or the idea today, at least, is that Phoenix is always going to be Phoenix.

And I don't think that there's much you can do to the car to really change what the races will look like there. I will ask you, though, I enjoyed racing at Phoenix. I enjoyed driving the track. I think it's a fun challenging track, the two corners being so different from each other. But I don't necessarily get excited about watching a race at that track. That's two different things, being behind the wheel versus sitting. in the grandstand somewhere. Did you notice a difference in how you were able to, you know,

manipulate or be around other cars? Was it the same? You know, I know you kind of struggled with the, with the balance or trying to turn or pass underneath guys. But, you know, some drivers, Denny and Brats, think it was just a tick better. And some have said that they couldn't tell nothing.

Yeah. I thought it was, I thought it was just a little bit better. better. And, you know, like you said, Phoenix is Phoenix. Like, as long as I've been going there, it's been very hard to pass. And the race has, you know, been, you know, fairly similar to what we had this past Sunday. Just, you know, now with the next and stuff, everybody's cars are more equal. So it's harder to move forward. But I thought you could, I thought you could manipulate the guy in front of you just a little bit more. Um, I thought you, or at least maybe my car was just a

touch better than before, but I felt like I could create angles and stuff differently on entry to try and set up myself to get position on people. So, you know, yes, it was slightly better, but it wasn't way different. But for Phoenix, I don't really know what you can do to make it look, you know, amazing. So, yeah, this is what it is. We'll see how it is. it's, I guess the next time we would run it, I don't know if it's, I don't know if we do it on the road courses or not, but you'll Martin'sville for sure. So we'll see.

So the tire, they, you know, they brought this tire to Martinsville last year at the end of the season and it put a lot of rubber down. And I thought, you know, from my perspective, I hadn't seen rubber get put down on that racetrack in a really long time. So I thought Goodyear might be on to something. They also brought a tire with a little more tread to Phoenix. And there was some conversation about how it had a little more fall. off. And so I thought that was kind of promising. I wasn't sure if you felt the same about the tire being maybe a step in the right

direction or at least good years trying to make things better. And maybe you're seeing some of that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember what our fall off was, you last year in the spring or the fall. But it seemed kind of normal to what we used to have. Like we fall off to a point and then we kind of just continue to the, run that pace or slowly fall off. So I don't know.

I don't feel like the tire really affected the racing a ton, but hopefully they can keep working, you know, hard on trying to figure out whatever that may be to get some comers and goers and such. But I know it's a tough, it's a tough task, I'm sure, to build a tire that's going to make everybody happy. So I'm sure they're working hard at it, though. So Danny's talking about horsepower, and he's been beating that drum for a long time. I'm not sure exactly where you are on that,

but I think the question I'd like to ask you is, why would horsepower, or adding horsepower, why do drivers feel like that that would make it better? I don't know. I think maybe you're just, your difference in top speed, the minimum speed would be much greater.

So I think that would allow you to, to create different styles of how to get around the corner. I think, too, it's just going to allow for drivers to make more mistakes as you enter in the corner much faster or not necessarily much faster, but having to lift much earlier. I think it makes the breaking zones longer, which, you know, helps. So, too, and I think when you have that power,

can, like I said, run different lines and use that horsepower to accelerate. So I hope, I hope someday in my career that, you know, they can at least try it, like just take us to, I don't know, somewhere, Richmond or wherever, and go, go test, go to Martinsville, go test it, you know, try it out. You know, I feel like they've always used the excuse of, or at least, I've heard the excuse of, well, you know, we're trying to keep horsepower to where, you know, other manufacturers might want to come in. Well, as long as I've been in the sport, which is longer than 10 years, it's been the same

three manufacturers. So I, you know, maybe, maybe somebody else is coming and maybe they're the ones pushing for lower horsepower, but I've yet to see anybody new come in. And all these, you know, engine builders and teams are saying it's not going to be, it's not going to cost any different to do it. You know, I've, I've heard our, you know, Scotty Maxim say the same thing. He's like, dude, we could, we could bring a thousand horsepower next week. Right.

And it not anymore. They're, they're literally taking the engine that I won with at Vegas and making it a thousand horsepower engine to put in one of Rick's, uh, you know, personal cars. They're building right now. So they can do it. Yeah. I think that's a great answer, man. to help us understand like why a driver feels like the racing could be better

and explaining the longer breaking zones and all the opportunity for drivers to make more mistakes. That's exactly what we want to hear is why the drivers want this change. You know, you are preparing for your debut in the ND 500. What all is left on the table that you want to accomplish or you need to do to continue to prepare for that? well i think at this point um you know i've gotten to do a couple tests by myself now and that's been great you know just kind of just get me to focus on the car and and you know what i'm feeling behind the wheel but you now now i just i really want to get on track with other drivers and and you'll get behind them you'll see kind of how they do things feel how the cars feel in traffic the runs that

are made you know in the draft all those sort of things so that that is next that's what's coming in april um they have a two-day open test uh at indianapolis butter speedway so that'll be the first time i'm on track with other other drivers so i'm sure it doesn't get like super aggressive or anything but i'm sure there'll be a time where i can get behind you know a group of cars and get to feel that so yeah still got to work on all the little details though you know pulling in and out of the pit stall, stuff like that, getting all the controls to where I'm comfortable and confident with where they're at and what they do. Because all those little details, I think, is going to be the difference in whether I run top 10 or I run outside the top 20s. So,

just got to prepare myself the best that I can and hopefully it all goes smooth. Is there a driver in the series that you're leaning on to help you with all this? I really haven't talked to too many drivers yet. Tony Kannon's been the guy, you know, when I've been at these tests, that's been the one to really, you know, point things out and help me. As it gets closer, you know, I really foresee myself kind of leaning on Kurt Busch a fair amount if he wants me to. he was my teammate at ganassi for a couple years there so and he's had you know a great experience you know at the speedway in the Indy cars so yeah I plan on talking to him and anybody else you

know too who's willing to want to help me but I've never been the type of driver to like go seek out a bunch of advice you know I don't want to confuse myself with things I don't want to have to filter through what everybody's saying. So, you know, Jimmy would be a good guy to talk to just because he's done it most recently. But again, I don't want to, I don't want to overload myself either. I think to a point you almost have to try and figure some things out on your own. Well, man, we appreciate you giving us some time. I know you're busy last week. Thank you for calling in today and making that up. Good luck going forward, man. We'll all be watching. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, bud, we'll see you. I was talking to Jeff Gordon the other week, and he said that watching Larson go through this process of preparing has been really interesting and compelling. He said he had a big moment at the test. At Phoenix, too, yeah. That really was interesting. But I think everyone, regardless of whether you're a Larson fan or not,

I think if you're a NASCAR fan, you want to see him go do well. So me personally, I want him to go there and have a great, great Indy 500. And I think, too, it adds to his own legacy, right? Absolutely. We're trying to say that he's one of the greatest, if not the greatest driver in the world today. He's in that conversation. A run at Indy that's a top five, top three run even, would absolutely add to that conversation, man. And that's like, you know, Foyt and Andradey and those guys, Tony Stewart, all those guys were able to go do those things.

I think he's one of the few drivers, at least within recent memory, that's doing the double that has a legitimate shot at Lincolnpo. Perfect answer, too, about the power, adding power. Yeah. He's correct. I love that he pointed out it would lengthen the braking zone. So they added better brakes to this car. We've talked about it on the show. That shortened up the braking zone everywhere. And so the braking zone was always an opportunity to, attack, right? If you could charge a corner a little deeper, that's why all the road course guys are so good for so long at the tracks when they'd come race with us, because they could really maximize that long breaking zone. We were so skittish and timid on breaks at the end of

long straightaways at the glen and stuff, and they could dive past us. You know, the breaking zones would be hundreds of yards long. Now they're shortened way up, and so all of that ability to challenge somebody in that space has gone away. And so that's a great point. point by him to bring that up. It would push drivers into potentially making more mistakes, creating passing opportunities. He talked about how all the changes they made for Phoenix allowed him to try to shape the corner better, and it just allowed him more tools in his own driving style to maybe set up a pass. Well, he thinks that the power would also continue to do that.

So love that answer. Absolutely. I talked to Jimmy Johnson before his Indy 500 run, and it's funny. how these NASCAR drivers have the same answers because that was one of the biggest struggles he had was learning the new braking zone and the style of the car. One thing I'd be interested, once Kyle gets more on track time, Jimmy said he had such a hard time having his eyes just simply track the racetrack because you're going so fast. But Jimmy's old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an old man problem. Is that really? Yes. I know. Yeah. Absolutely.

Well, maybe Kyle Larson won't deal with that then. He should not have that problem. Not yet. Yeah. Oh. But that's not an over 40 issue. I'm not there yet. Yeah. You know, I wanted to talk about the running order. Did we want to do that now?

Yeah, let's do it. You know, I was watching the race and thinking about all the drivers that were having decent runs and all that stuff. I got a running order here for the race, the finishing order. And Christopher Bell is going to call in here in a bit. Obviously, he's the winner from this past weekend. And we mentioned, and I don't want to say two. much, but we mentioned, I mentioned earlier this year on the show just a couple weeks ago,

that it was either championship or bust for him, and we'll want to talk about that. But let's go through some other things. I said Corey LaJoy would win a race. All right. Now, I was disappointed with the lack of performance of the seven car in Atlanta. I thought Atlanta would be one of those places, right? They could steal a win. They weren't as good as they had been in the past there.

and I know it's a small sample size. We know we're just picking from a few weeks here early in the season, but Corey's runs this past weekend, right? Just kind of, you know, no better, in my opinion, than what he's been doing in the past. I was expecting to see a bit of a bump from that team. Maybe they'll get there. But right now, man, my prediction that he's going to win a race

and throw himself into the playoffs with that win is looking really good. Yeah. So the guy that I thought would be bumped out because of that Corey LaJoy win, I said, would be Christopher Boucher. He goes out there and finishes second. Had a strong run, great result. He was good on all the short tracks last year. And, you know, if you call Phoenix a short track or anything close to it, you would say that the second place finish is a good sign for success in the remainder of the year. So I might have struck out on that prediction of a La Joy win and Christopher Buescher,

the playoffs. I knew it was a hot take, but I'm not feeling that great about it. I disagree with you, so I want to, for the record, I had Bush. Yeah. I was, so I'm looking pretty good right now. Well, you took the easy road in my opinion. What do you mean? It was the right answer. Well, I mean, we're four races. The guy who's already made the playoff. You're picking him to do it again. Well, speaking to the RFK cars, I mean, look at where Kislovsky finished fourth. Brad, it was a good day for them. I said that Brad, I said the stats on Christopher, uh, Busher and Brad would flip this year. This would be Bradgier to win the races. I really, it's more that I hope for that than I really have a feeling or a strong feeling

or any kind of factual evidence to back it up. I'm hoping that Brad can have that success because I know how badly he wants it, having made the move to leave Penske to go turn things around at Rouse. So a good top five finish for him, but still finishing behind Busher, which has been the norm for Brad over the last year and a half two years, right? Yeah. So as he gets better and continues to get better finishes and results, he's still contending or going to have to contend with his own teammate.

Another driver that's been a big surprise this year, Noah Gragson. The guy was knocked out of the series entirely last year, didn't do anything behind the wheel of the 42 car that would warrant any excitement. around his potential future as a cup driver. He gets a new opportunity at Stuart Haas Racing, a team that is flat struggled all last year. There's been some struggles as well this year. There's been some other high points,

but Noah's been the shining light. The best performing car by far, in my opinion. I know that Briscoe outran him in the final result, but Noah has been, you know, his average running position. throughout these races has been really good. There's another thing I wanted to say about Noah. So, Noah race for us,

all right, here at Junior Emerge Sports. I know what kind of guy he is out on the racetrack, and, you know, he's the kind of basketball, he's the kind of player that's going to elbow you when he's boxing out for a rebound.

He's that kind of guy, right? And so he drives that way. Yeah. And he ruffles your, he can aggravate you, ruffle your feather. He's going to, he's going to use you up a little bit

take advantage of you on the racetrack that's his style that's fine but when you get in a cup series you got to be a little measured about doing that with the cup guys because they love to set a rookie straight I know Noah's not a rookie anymore

but they love to set them young guys they can't wait to teach them a lesson they think that's the veteran thing right my man to teach this rookie a lesson they love that and so Noah has been running around the top 10, right? He's like that fly that won't leave you alone, right?

He hates. Yeah, he's like, come on, man, you don't belong up here. What are you doing? Right? You're just bugging us. You're just aggravating us. But he's been doing it so well and so respectfully. Yes, he races the hell out of him.

You have to. That's the new etiquette across the board in the series. So he doesn't stand out in that regard. But I watch him. I watch him run laps. in the past several weeks. And while he's hassling all these guys in the back side of the top 10, he's doing it without getting under their skin,

which is really, really important. And so he's gaining respect. And he's gaining the ability to belong in that top 10, right? Soon he won't be that fly they're trying to shoe away. They're going to see him up there and go, yep, no, here he is again. He'll be shoing away other flies. Yeah. And so I'm hoping that this continues. And what a great story it would be if he could have this type of success throughout the year. I think a point to add to Noah is 26 in the points, but that doesn't tell the whole story because of the penalty that they got.

If he had those points back, he would be sitting 15th in the standings. So if the playoffs started today, I know we're only four races in, but Noah, I mean, top 16 in the standings without that penalty, is not a bad. start to the air. That's a great point. I think his inexperience is going to show it at a few moments during the year and the struggles that the team inherently has. They're better.

I think that Stuart Haas has improved. I love that Tony Stewart got in there this off season and said, hey, we don't want to run this way. We want to be better. I love that. I think they will get better. They're not all the way, right?

And I think some of that's going to affect Noah. some of his inexperience ultimately will affect results but take all that away and I think we're really seeing some pretty neat things here out of the 10 car where would inexperience bite him the most I mean just you know mistakes on speeding pit road right the little stuff the little the fundamentals right and and I think too he did he he's drove this car enough maybe he does, but there's some situations aerodynamically that you can put yourself in with this car that can be problematic, right? And could bite him, right? I saw that. I watched Josh Barry, right? Kind of jump in a cup car and have to figure out this thing. And it was like all these aerodynamic things

happening out there that he had not experienced ever because he never drove a car with a diffuser. You never drove a car with a raise splitter. All those things, right? And so how to make this car handle, how to drive it into the corner is all different than what he'd done his entire life. So I don't know that no one knows all of that. Might find himself in some situations there. But I'm hoping that things continue forward for him. Interesting to see Kyle Busch struggle this past weekend. I thought that was obviously, you know, we expect Kyle Busch to run really well.

I know that RCR is going to be that hot and cold sort of team. but I only bring it up as to say me personally I'm going to be watching Kyle a little closer to see if this is just a blip or a fluke or if this is a trend that this team has lost a little bit from last year so I'll pay attention to that going forward in the next several races yeah Michael McDowell

in the 34 car. Also, his teammate, Todd Gillen, ran really well throughout the day at Phoenix. He did. Both of those cars, I've talked to Michael, really surprising to hear how Michael has had such a hands-on involvement in personnel hires, really building the team up around him.

I know. Well, he's been there a long-ass time. It's like, well, how long has this process took, right? well, whether it's genuine or not, whether he truly is the one building the bricks, you know, to make that place, I don't know, but the results are there. They had great results last year. They're continuing those. They're proving out to be that good, right?

I think last year we kind of wondered, like, well, how are they, what's this performance? It's coming out of front row. Yeah. Will it last? Well, it's lasting. and now it's starting to affect his teammate, Todd Gillen, who was not running that well last year, right? He ran like you would expect front road to run, the back half of the field.

But now it seems that both cars have been affected by this boost in performance. And the alliance that they now have with Penske. I think that's huge. They had this alliance with Rouse forever. Now it's moved over to Penske. That's certainly got to bump things a little bit. Do they have a better? does McDowell specifically, he made the playoffs,

he won a race, does he have a better year than last year? I think similar. I wouldn't expect a better year. I think similar. The other thing, too, I think about McDowell is this car suits him better. You know, he grew up a road, I would argue this. I think he grew up a road racer, right? I think that's down in his DNA, he's a road racer.

and this car is very symmetrical and I think suits his style better the low profile tire all of those things would tell you if you know if you didn't know any better you'd look at this car and say that's that's an emsa GT right you'd look at it and go all those components

are road course emsa GT components this car really was kind of built off of the V8 supercar which runs road courses in Australia so I think that all of those things that have been done to move that, move in that direction, help McNaull in a performance. But, yeah, I just wanted to touch on a few drivers there. Also, Daniel Sores, man.

I mean, I know he won it in Atlanta. Everybody thought, oh, you know, it's a drafting track, and there's a little bit of circumstance that puts a driver in Victor Lane at that place. Would it matter? I thought he ran pretty good at Phoenix. They made a change at crew chief at that team. Travis Mack was moved off the pit box,

which I think Travis is a capable crew chief. So I've been watching how that might affect his team. Well, so far it looks like things look a little better for Daniel. Right now sitting, he had finished 13th this past weekend, had moments where he was running inside the top 10, 10th in points. Ty Gibbs, six in points. Yeah. He had a good day. He had a great day.

I think we said, or I said he's going to win a race this year, maybe a couple. But I think he boosts his, I don't think he's fighting on the bubble for a playoff spot this year. I think he's comfortably in by time we get down to the end of the regular season. But there's a lot of drivers. Carson Hosevar goes out there and qualifies really well, right? Makes a final round, top 10. Ran pretty good in the race, but eventually lost a lot of track position. and where did he end up?

All right, 15th, not too bad. I thought he finished worse than that. I guess he made up a lot of ground there late in the race, but I thought he had lost a lot of his track position. Is that real? He drives this car at St. Louis last year, qualifies real good, and he's running 16th or something when the brake road exploded.

Dang, man, I mean, what does that mean? Is that mean what I think it means? I mean, are the Spire cars better than we thought they were? Could be? Yeah, but what is the deal? You did say that Corey isn't really... 23rd and 24th in points right now. LaJoy and Hochevard.

Yeah. But... And Zane's 33rd. With that trackhouse backing. I don't look... Yeah, so Zanes is... When I look at Zane's car, I don't know how much mechanical involvement

trackhouse has with that car. Is trackhouse building the car and Spire just takes it to the track? That I don't know. I do not... When I look at Spire... No. When I look at Spire, I don't, I take Zane's car out of it. If I'm going to say, hey, how much better is Spire?

Is which driver's the best driver at Spire? That's going to be a conversation this year. Oh, yeah. Corey's been the guy, right? We all think Corey can do it. I've seen Corey racing, K&N, ARCA, every time he, you know, and he's a hands-on guy, knows how to set up a race car, sharp guy, good driver. but Hosevar

everything that he's jumped in he's been fast now he's a record ball out of control sometimes but can make the lap time no question and

if he can obviously get better and clean up all the other mistakes he's going to have runs like he did this past weekend what does that mean I don't think that's good news

for Corey I think it's just something we're going to have to keep watching I don't know what do you think it means why won't you guys say anything? I don't know. I mean, I think that maybe that's the reason Carson was brought in.

Give a little competition. Push Corey a little bit. Yeah, push him a little bit. Have him rise to that next echelon of where he feels like he deserves to be and everybody else thinks so. There you go. I want to keep my eyes on Carson Host far at Bristol this weekend because he led laps at the night race.

He finished 11th last year. So that, I think this week, is going to be a pretty decent litmus test on where Hosevar runs. Yeah. What does it mean, though, Dale? That's a T-shirt. What I believe is that we're going to see a lot of people talking about this. Fans, right?

Fans are going to get vocal. If Hosevar continues to qualify well and race well in this 77, that's going to create conversation. And, yes, it will push Corey. Corey is already probably feeling some of that. motivation, right? Definitely. I don't think it's a bad thing for Corey.

No. I just think that it's going to, it's definitely a new dynamic for Spire. I would say so. Yeah. Interesting. I won't Spire to be a top five team. Do you remember, I think we'd kind of take it for granted, man.

Do you remember Furniture Row, right? Yeah. God Almighty, they were awful. Embarrassing when they first started. you know, just terrible. Ugly race car, slow. And they turned themselves over the years into a championship team, almost unbeatable at times, right?

And so I would love to see Spire do that too, because I'm telling you, man, there was some times early where I thought, man, this Spire thing, they're never going to get it. We didn't believe they were a legit player. No. They started investing recently. Right. We thought they were basically just there for the charter.

They weren't there for results, performance, wins, none of that. It was just about this charter business. How can we get this charter for nothing and turn it into something and cash out? Right. That's what I thought it was. Yeah. Me too. But I love that they're running better.

They did good last year, big bump in performance and results. This year looks like even more with Hosevar out there. and so how far can they get? So like where would you put them in the scope of other teams, right? Because we know we have Hendricks and we've got Joe Gibbs, but then above Stuart Haas, like in that area? You know, like where do they fall then if there's the tier? If they're not even with Stuart Haas, they're on their heels.

Right. You know, they're probably where I would say front row was three years ago. I mean, they're not. There's a lot of decent teams in the series. It's not, there's not a lot of, you know, bad teams. Right. Right. So they still, you know, in the ranking order, you know, I think they're a little bit better than some teams.

They just, they're continuing to climb up that ladder. You ask how far can they go. I think they just miss pointing their way into the playoffs is where I think they go. Man, that's pretty good. That would be fantastic. Which one? Which driver? Corey.

Yeah, I would probably lean on me. All right. Corey, I think Hosevar. Corey's got a little work to do. Yeah, I mean, well, both of them do. Yeah. I'm just looking at the points. I mean, they're basically in the same spot.

We know Hosevar is going to, you know, run good, like the, host Farr's going to do what he did at Phoenix one week, and then the next week he's going to do something crazy. Yeah. Or, you know, something Hosevar like. Right. And we give it, look, we gave him. a hard time. But he'll get it. He'll eventually become the driver that we all think he can beat.

I got a question for you. You know, Larson touched on Hendrick just missing the ball this weekend. He was the best finisher 14th, Byron 18th, Chase Elliott 19th, Bowman 20th, like they missed the mark on an important racetrack like Phoenix. You've been a part of the Hendrick organization. Like, what, they're not going to do that again. Like, they're going to find a way to fix that. So, like, what does that look like behind the scenes on getting better at a racetrack before you go back to it the next time?

I think that they were taking an opportunity early in the season to try a unique direction. So they don't have practice, right? So they're sitting on a SIM program every day of the week. There's a driver running SIM over to Chevy building for the Chevy teams right this minute. There's a driver in that SIM pretty much every hour of the day. and that's developing ideas and theories for them to try to pursue on Sundays. They get a little bit of practice at some of these racetracks, but for the most part there's not much practice at all.

So you can't really, you know, when you really vet out these theories and ideas, and what I mean by theories and ideas is basically like an approach to setting the car up with how much wedge and how you set the car up platform-wise for Arrow, all those things. they're trying to find an advantage. It's basically like, you know, as far as they, you know, most of the teams have pretty much sised out this car to a point and now someone's got to find the next nugget that's going to set them apart, right, from the rest of the field. Well, how do you go, you know, test that in real world if there's no practice, right?

You'll have to run it on some Sundays. So early in the year is when you're going to see some of the, teams, you know, swing and maybe miss on some ideas and thoughts about what they think could be better. And the SIM will show you a pretty good idea on how something should work, but a lot of, it's still not perfect, right? You can't trust the SIM 100% because the SIM can be gameed, right? and so, you know, I think that, you know, they were, it's early in the year and they thought it was worth the risk and they thought what they were trying was, was the good, it was a good opportunity it would work.

Well, you know, whatever it was, whatever that idea was in that direction of setting the car up didn't necessarily work or pan out. Maybe they don't give up on it entirely, but it certainly wasn't the result they wanted. But I think it's early enough in the season that you take those chances. Did you see, I guess, do we want to go to the drama after the race? Sure. Yeah, Eric Jones. Yeah. Eric Jones and Chase Briscoe.

Yeah, I don't know. Did y'all see what even happened? No clue. On the track? I don't know what happened after the track. I just know Eric Jones was upset after the race. Well, they asked him a question, and he answered it. He's in a very Eric Jones way.

He's like he has an issue with me every single week, and he's going to try to give a call, but he assumes that Briscoe probably won't answer the phone. Briscoe, on the other hand, says he will answer the phone. Sounds like a riveting argument. I'm sure the media is going to ask the result of this week-long phone tag situation. This is just like the nicest argument I've ever heard. Yeah, I might give him a call. Well, maybe I'll answer.

Well, maybe I will. It will go out for a nice dinner after, too. Yeah, maybe. Maybe we become best friends. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I think that Eric Jones is a pretty level-headed guy.

I mean, Briscoe is a... They're good guys. I like them both. I've been around Briscoe comes to run some late model races with us. He's a guy to talk to. Eric Jones, same thing. I like Eric a lot. And I have this sort of, I don't know, this weird connection with Eric because of what he went

through with his dad. losing his dad at a young age, you know, I kind of thought, man, you know, I hope he, hope he can get through this, hope he can figure out his way around all that heartbreak. But, you know, so I like both those guys. And Eric had a good run going, ended up with a bad result, didn't get the finish he wanted, and you're going to be frustrated with that. And I'm sure, you know, he got used up a little bit late in the race. I've been there, too, man.

Those are some frustrating moments. You've ran all daily. you've busted your ass to be in the top five or whatever for a majority of the race. Something happens where you lose some track position, and you're sitting there in the closing laps of the race running 10th or 12th. And you know, damn, man, if this hadn't happened, I would be going home with the top five, but now I'm going home with 12th.

And then the next corner some ass-a-h uses you up and you run 18th. That's really brutal. And that's more than likely what happened to Mr. Eric Jones, is he's like pissed that he's sitting there going, I'm going to run 10th or 12th a day. I was going to run top five, I thought. And then he gets used up a little bit in a corner. Briscoe runs him wide or something that costs him a bunch of spots,

a handful more spots. And that's like... Yeah, getting kicked when you're down. Yeah. I mean, going back to like the All-Gyre, he can't carry emotions over to the next race. Obviously, and we talked about this with McGee last week, we love the heat of the moment.

That was Eric Jones. He's hot. He just got out of the car. I mean, when you're frustrated, when you were in those situations and you have a chance to calm down, the week goes on, do those emotions get less? Do you remember it as much the next race? Yeah. I don't know how every driver is, but this is the way I would do it. I would, I did not want to call this ass-ass.

I didn't want to talk to this driver this week. I don't care to hear what their opinion is or hear an apology or whatever it might be. right. I don't want to talk to them. Even if I feel like they did me wrong, I want to go to the racetrack and find them in the same situation and give it right back. Oh, all right.

Immediately. That would consume my thoughts the entire week. Dang. There are still races that I run back in my head and sort of have this sort of alternative ending. Like what? Any specific example?

No, I mean, I wish I could give you one. I really do. And I hesitated even saying it because I knew you'd want one. But, you know, I say that to mean, you know, a driver doesn't really care about the conversation or the talk or the apology or whatever. They just want to get even. And they want to go back. They want you to feel the same frustration, disappointment. You want, you know, you want them.

because you know that apology is bullshit. Yeah. You know it. Doesn't give you any more points. And all he's trying to do is diffuse the situation, so you don't give him any shit when you run into it, you know, when you meet up on the track again. But you don't want it to fuse.

You don't want it to fuse. You want to go back on the track and go, I'm going to run you wide. How you like that? You know, how about that? You know, and you can't wait to find yourself in that situation to do it. And more often than not, it doesn't materialize. that's the frustrating part.

Right. I thought, man, you know what? I got wrecked by Jason Keller in 1996 at Myrtle Beach. He didn't mean to wreck me. We're running, I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again. I've qualified in the top 10 in my first Xfinity start, right? Or one of my first Xfinity starts. I think it was my first start.

So we're running, you know, 10, 15 laps into the race. And I'm right on my teammates' ass, Jeff Green and my dad's number three car. And I'm like, oh, just stay right here. You know, I'm just going to try to keep up with Jeff. You know, I'm driving my hair on fire, right? And I have no, I mean, I'm, I am going to screw this up, right? I got 250 laps. I am going to ruin this at some point.

I'm just, you know. And so we go down into turn three and Jeff Green knocks Jason Keller's ass up the racetrack. I almost puts him in the wall. Like, I'm like, wow. Well, Jason Keller says, here I come. I'm coming for your ass, Jeff Green, and he's coming down the track like a

crazy man. And he's wanting to clip Jeff Green in the right rear, but I'm there, and he runs into the right front of my car, so his left rear to my right front, and it just spins me out. I'm pissed.

Yeah. You've, I didn't have nothing to do with that, right? And here I am, freaking spun out. And so I carried that with me my entire career. One day. Dang. One day. I'm going to get him. One day I'm going to send that

son of a gun around. I'll spin him up. I never was in the position to do it again. Oh, perfect chance to spend Jason Keller out. I just wanted to harmlessly turn him around and let him lose about 20 spots. And that was fine. That's all I wanted. But it never

happened. And I know I've talked about it on the show and I feel like an idiot. I know that's stupidest thing ever, right? harbor that sort of frustration for all those years. I know it's dumb. I bet you he didn't even know that you were upset. Of course he does. He's said this a bunch of times and he's probably like, get over it.

But, you know, that's the way a driver is. They're like, I don't care what you say. I'm just going, I just want to get you back, you know. I just want an opportunity for you to do, to have to deal with I had to deal with, you know. And so, and it's funny, I don't even have to be the one to get the guy back. If I just see him had the same thing happen even by somebody else, I'm like, yeah, serves you right. You know?

And so I got, I got wrecked. I got wrecked by a driver one year. We were, it was in the playoffs, about eight races to go. And I got, I'm racing like hell, right, trying to, trying to, I'm going through these concussions. I've had all these issues. and I'm racing my ass off trying to have a good night and I'm running about 8th and I'm taking the air away from the guy behind me and he finally gets sick of it

and we go off into turn 1 and he just bumps me in the left rear sent me in the wall I will go up and slap the wall right and then a handful of laps later I hit we had somebody blow a motor in turn 1 and 2 and I've slapped the wall again and I got a little foggy and got a little concussion from that that series of events, right? I was so pissed off. I was like, all of that was that ass fault for doing that to me.

Well, we go weeks down the road, and that driver ends up failing to make the final four. And we had this big driver text group conversation going on, and I was like, I feel better finally. I really was pissed off at you, but now I'm glad you didn't make the final four because of that shit you did to me a couple of weeks. ago. I'm finally okay. I'm finally over it.

You know, right, man, we're even. Yeah. I'm going. I'm good. I'm glad you did. Glad you're heartbroken. So, I wonder if everybody's that way, just me. Well, we have a driver that we can ask. Oh, okay. Christopher Bell is here. All right. Hey, Christopher Bell, Steele Jr. are doing all right? Yeah, I've enjoyed the stories.

I'm trying out to name many names here. I can tell. So, yeah, well, let's ask you, man. So when you, so we were talking about Eric Jones and Briscoe, and I'm like, you know, they're talking to each other after the race, how one might call the other and all that stuff. And I never enjoyed those calls. I never really cared for him too much.

I knew it was kind of the etiquette because if you didn't call, you were the ass and then they might go to the media next week and say, well, he didn't call me. He's a jerk. He doesn't care. But I just wanted the guy to go through the same thing I went through. whether I made it happen or someone else made it happen. If a guy puts me in the wall, I want to put his ass in the wall.

And if I can't do it, I want someone else to do it. And then I'm fine. What is it for you? What is it? What is it did you like to see play out? I mean, I don't know. If I'm on the giving side of it, then if it's intentional, then I just, you know, let it ride. And I can't, I can honestly think of maybe once in my,

career where I'd like intentionally wreck someone or spun them out or something like that. So it doesn't happen often. But if it's unintentional, then I am like the first thing like either post race or if I don't, if I don't see them post race, then I'm like, you know, trying to call them and be like, hey, dude, like I really didn't mean to do that. Like that was not my intention. But yeah, if you're on the receiving side of it and they don't reach out to you, it's underneath your skin, buddy, and you're like, you need redemption.

Yeah, I was the same way. Maybe I did like the call. If I was on the receiving end and I was ticked off, maybe I did want the guy to at least acknowledge it in a conversation. We want to congratulate you on the win this past weekend. You go to Phoenix, a track. Obviously, you know, you had the misfortune at the end of the year there with the breaks and everything trying to win a championship.

So you go back to Phoenix. Is any of that in the back of your mind as you're running this race? I kept thinking about, okay, they're getting into this final stage. They're going further on tires, further on brakes. Did you ever think at any point like, oh, man, I need to, maybe I need a different approach in how I use my car throughout the day to try to take care of brakes and things like that? Not one bit.

Man. Not one bit. I knew that we had a, you know, something fundamentally wrong with the car last November or whatever we went there. So, you know, I've run not near as many races as you have, but I've run plenty of races over Martinsville and Gateway and all these racetracks where I haven't ever had a break failure. So, you know, it was just kind of one of those things. And I knew that the feel of the pedal was very consistent over the whole weekend, whether that

was Friday, you know, we had a lot of, we had the full hour practice. so that was like 60 laps and then through the entire race on Sunday, you know, the pedal was really consistent and much different than what I had in the fall last year. I want to also bring up something that I haven't had a chance to talk to you about, but you were a driver that was featured in the Netflix documentary that NASCAR did. And I have talked about it at length about how well the drivers all bawled in to the idea of letting cameras go to places they hadn't been before and allow. the fans to see drivers in a unique scenario and there was probably no more difficult or touching moment during the entire series than when we were with you right after you had the failure at Phoenix. You know, I want to say first off, I want to thank you for allowing all of us to have that

type of access because our fans and people have never watched a race in their life. don't know anything about NASCAR. We're seeing that for the first time. That was a powerful moment that really shows how important this is to everybody and how important it is to you drivers. So I want to say thank you for giving us that access and doing that. But how has the reaction been for you? You have, you know, I want to say this carefully,

but you've been a driver that's been a bit quiet or private. You know, kind of you're all about driving your car. winning races and you don't share a ton, then we see you in the Netflix show where you're pretty much an open book. What's been the feedback from that? How have people reacted and what have they shared with you? Yeah, so Dale, I'll be honest,

throughout the early parts of my career and after the... Actually, I'm going to back up. Like the early parts of my career, I feel like I was really engaging on social media and I really put myself out there. And then, you know, the COVID times hit and all the things that can transpired through that window of time, right?

And it was very impactful on me and I'm sure everybody of like how, you know, dangerous it can be, I guess, and like how careful you have to be it. And it scared me, right? Like I'm like, you know what? I don't want to even think about going down the wrong road here and just I took myself out of that position where I got off the social media and just tried to keep to myself and my close circle. And then fast forward a couple years, I realized that it really was hurting my image to the public because nobody knows who I am. They had no idea who I was. And like, you know, just seeing like comments of like, you know, this guy's an asshole or

or people don't like me. And I'm like, I don't, like they don't even know me. Like how do they not like me? So, you know, the last six months or so, I've tried to put myself out there more and try to, you know, let the world know who I am. And, you know, I've, yeah. So. Well, that's that.

Did you think that have you gotten direct feedback about the Netflix? show is do you feel like that's been I'm sure it's been positive but did are you in I guess what I'm saying is if you're asked to do it again would you did you enjoy that experience and the in the positive feedback that you've gotten from it uh yes I would for sure um you know so they told us basically the middle of last year that they were going to do this Netflix documentary series right and I was just coming off the 22 which was a year that I made it to the championship race. And I had locked into the playoffs early into the 20, 23 season.

And, you know, at the end of the regular season, the camera crews are starting to come around. And, like, they're, they're not around me, right? So then we get into the playoffs. We go to Darlington, what was round one? Darlington, Bristol, Kansas. And I didn't win a race, but, like, I swept the polls. and transferred into the round of 12 and like we're trans we're going through these rounds

and Netflix still doesn't even know that I exist, right? So I'll be honest, like I kind of took offense to that. Like I'm a dude who was in the championship race last year. I made it into the, or I'm in the playoffs again. Like how are they going to create this documentary series following the NASCAR championship and not even like acknowledge me, right? So it got to the point to where I'm like, you know what?

My goal is to crash this documentary series. Like if they're not going to talk to me, then so be it. Like I hope I'm your champion and they don't know who I am. Like that became my goal. And ironically, it was Sunday night walking to the airplane after Homestead. I had just won my way into the championship. championship race again. And my PR lady is like, guess who's calling?

Guess who wants to come to your house tomorrow and get some content on you? So, you know, it was a good experience. And, you know, hopefully I got to show a little bit of my personality and put myself out there a little bit. Yeah, I'll thank you again for not doing what I probably would have done and told them to F off. and I'm thankful that you said, yeah,

let them come over to the house. Let's do this because, again, man, you added to it. You made the show better. And I think, you know, a lot of times,

my feeling about you over the last two years and your, you know, your thoughts about being overlooked a little bit, your, you know, the performance throughout the year

is, you know, you're kind of one of the 12 guys, one of the 10 guys, right? And then right at the end of the year, you pop off, you start performing. You've done this two years in a row, if not more. And I feel like that that's why you might feel overlooked or do get overlooked is because, you know, you really don't start showing that championship caliber performance until the playoffs. But this year, you know, you've got this.

his first win finally out of the way early. I think the whole narrative may change around you this year because you're a winner early and people are seeing you come off of that final, you know, that final four run last year, having the difficulty that you had, no one knows how that race might have played out had the brakes not failed. And so you go to Phoenix and win, a track that we know you're going to, you know, try to go to the championship for and battle for a championship. So if you're able to get into the playoffs, having the win at Phoenix makes you, you're in the conversation.

You won't have to battle your way into the conversation this year. You'll be one of the guys that everybody will talk about because of the success this past weekend. I know it's a long way out. A lot happens throughout the summer. A lot of things are learned. A lot of set up stuff that's great becomes obsolete. but how much confidence will that give you having this great win? I mean, you were way better than anybody this past Sunday.

That was obvious. How much confidence does that give you if you're able to put together that kind of playoff run again and get back to Phoenix? Yeah, I mean, Dale, going back to what you said, like I couldn't agree more that the regular season, the last two years, has left a lot to be desired from our standpoint, the 20 team standpoint. And, you know, and I think I've been pretty candid with you last year whenever we had our sit downs.

Like it was, it was one specific thing that was really, really hindering us the majority of the time, right? So if we can get that one item cleaned up this year, I think it's going to be a different 20 team and the conversation will be much different. So, you know, I understand where I'm at and I understand that, you know, to be, to be. one of the guys that's talked about you got a win more and uh i i want to be that guy but moving on to the phoenix win and and just knowing how important that is like it is it's literally everything man i i lived it on the other side in the exfinity car you know we won what was it like seven or eight races two years in a row and and cruised all the way to the championship race and that freaking championship race was that homestead by

Miami, and for whatever reason, it didn't jive with my driving style and our setup. And I've got a whopping Guseg and then Xfinity Championship category because of one fact that we couldn't get going at Homestead, like Reddick did. Yeah, man, that's great. I appreciate you putting a period on that, man. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you for giving us some time today and calling in. I know, you know, as the winner, you do a lot of media this week and you got your own,

you know, competition meetings in preparation for this coming race at Bristol. We wish you the best of luck. Hope to see you again, man. Have a great season, and I'll see you on the road. All right. We'll talk to you later. All right, buddy. I'm finding myself like pulling for him more and more and more.

Absolutely. Which I think is a great thing. All I want is, I mean, as a race fan, give me somebody to cheer for. Give me somebody where I feel like, man, it matters to me. and Christopher Bell's, you know, climbing into that space for me. And I think to his point, you know, I think he's talking about his crew, you know, the pit stops and the consistency or lack of over the past couple of years. I know he didn't want to point that out, so I'll do that for him.

But it feels like he's got, you know, that cleaned up a little bit. So the results. And really, man, a lot of times, unless you're a hardcore Christopher Bell fan, who's watching every single pit stop. We just look at the finishing order and say, wow, Christopher Bell, average run. Every week, average, average, average, average. And then in playoffs, boom, he's great.

Well, they make the crew changes that are necessary, right? When the playoffs come, oh, well, let's put the best crews where we feel like we got the best shot to win. All of a sudden he starts performing, right, around that time. So he feels like those issues are cleaned up now, so he should have a regular season reflective of how, he runs into playoffs. And so far, that's starting to show with the win this past weekend.

I loved his honesty. Like, I wanted to crash the documentary. Yeah. Even just like him realizing he hasn't opened up as much. He's like, I know I'm starting to show more. I really appreciate that. Yeah, me too. Well, it'll be interesting to see what he's able to do going forward.

We should have another call in here. We have a special call in and he is here. All right. So I guess we will. So we had a tease last night on social media. A new driver for the 88. The 88 cars got some pretty cool announcements going down this year. And we got another one of the day.

So I won't wait any longer. I want to say that this driver has been impressive. Young guy, 17 years old, drives everything. And he's got a lot of support from Chevrolet. which is going to help him create opportunities like he's going to get with the Junior Motorsports 88 car, so let's bring him on in here. Connor Zillich. Hey, you're on the Dale Junior download, Connor.

Thanks for calling in today. We want to make the announcement, man, that you were going to drive the 88 car in the Xfinity Series, a handful of races this year, Wichens, Glen, Kansas, Homestead, and Phoenix. And so I know that you've got to wait a little while to get behind that wheel, man, but it's awesome. It's got to be awesome for you to get this announcement out of the way. And I think the reason why you have to wait is because you're not quite 18 years old yet. But how does it feel?

Yeah. Yeah, what's the excitement around making this announcement and getting behind the wheel? Yeah, it's really exciting for me. It's honestly a dream come true to be able to race for a team like JRM and all the success that they've had in the past and the people that I'm going to get to learn from. It kind of sucks that I've got to wait, you know, five or six months, before I can race after announcing it. But I can't change my birthday, so that's going to have to wait.

But yeah, it's really exciting. And I've got a lot to look forward to working with the 88 crew and, you know, everyone that's a part of it. So hopefully I can make the most of it. Obviously, I started walking fun at the place that I know. And, you know, it's more my style of racing. So, you know, I'm excited for that one and then excited to learn at the other three racetracks I go to. Yeah, it's going to be a pretty interesting and fun experience for you.

you, but this is, you know, and I don't think it's too big for you. You know, every time a driver gets in the Xfinity car for the first time, I worry about the heaviness or the weight of that moment. But, man, you're doing everything. You're used to being kind of thrown into the fire, so to speak. I want to talk about some of the things that you're doing just this year. You're part-time in the Arc of Series. You're part-time in late-model stock cars for the cars tore in.

driving pros and supers. SCCA Transam driver and racing, you've raced in the Mazda MX5. What if, I mean, you're 17 years old and you've already got pretty much a resume that anybody in motorsports would be envious of.

What is the, who is behind and what is the idea behind you being in so many different cars driving so much different types of vehicles, at this young age? Yeah, it's honestly, you know, just the opportunities that I've gotten. It's kind of the thing that I enjoy doing, right?

I don't want to say no to any opportunity. Like, right, as long as the car is safe and, you know, it's going to drive. I want to drive it. So, you know, that's part of my own, you know, kind of what I like to do, right? I kind of want to get in as many different things as possible, you know, guys like Kyle Larson, that show,

you know, a bunch of talent and have had a bunch of success. Those are the kinds of guys that, you know, drive a bunch of different cars. And, you know, that's kind of someone I look up to is, you know, I want to be like him and, you know, be able to get in anything, you know, go race the ND 500 and, you know, come back and win a cup race at Charlotte the same day. So, you know, that's kind of the kind of guy that I look up to and, you know, who I want to be

one day is as a NASCAR driver. And, you know, I don't want to be known as just a NASCAR driver one day, right? I want to run in as many different cars as time will let me. And, you know, that's kind of the way that I've looked at things as a 17-year-old, and I'm going to continue to do that for as long as I can. You know, obviously I'm going to be a full, hopefully be a full-time driver one day. And, you know, obviously that's going to be my main focus. But, you know, I still want to get in as many different cars as I can and, you know, explore options for as long as I can.

Where were you born, Connor? I was born in South Charlotte. I'm a Charlotte native. One of the few. If you're born in South Charlotte, how do you end up racing go-carts over in Europe and doing all that? I mean, you race go-carts against some of the greatest drivers. in karting, winning some incredible races and having monumental success. Like, how does that happen?

What was the introduction to even motorsports for you? Is it a connection with your family? What was the desire for you to go get into racing? And then how do you, I mean, you went, a lot of people, man, they just kind of race Millbridge, right? You went across the globe to race against some of the greatest. and toughest competition in carding and won? Yeah, it's kind of a funny story, actually. My dad was, you know, always a gearhead.

He always liked cars growing up, but he had a single mother school teacher, so he never really had the opportunity to do anything. And when I was a kid, I grew up playing soccer until I was probably nine or ten years old. But when I was four or five, my soccer coach suggested my dad that he gets us go-karts, me and my two older brothers. So, you know, he took him up on it and got us all go-carts. because, you know, he always liked cars growing up.

So, you know, it made sense. And, you know, that's kind of where I fell in love with the sport and, you know, where I really first found my passion for motorsports. And, you know, it started out as a hobby. I would go to the track on the weekends and just drive for fun. And, you know, then I started doing some regional races. And that turned into the national races, which turned into me going to Europe and, you know, racing against the best kids in the world at that stuff.

And, you know, kids that will see an F one day. And, you know, those guys I all race against. So, yeah, it was funny how it all came about, but, you know, I'm very thankful that it did, and the stars aligned how they did. You had success in MX5 and Trans Am, and you talked about how you're not, you're not looking at this as a, as NASCAR being the target. Like, obviously you want to come, you know, come to NASCAR and have success, but in a perfect world, where are you 10 years from now? Yeah, you know, I want to race in the Cup series full time, but I still want to be able to do things outside of, you know, racing on Sundays. And, you know, I want to be able to, you know, go race like Kyle, like sprint cars on the week, weekdays. And, you know, it might not be sprint cars for me, obviously.

I don't do much dirt racing. But, you know, I still want to be able to race other series and, you know, do other things outside of NASCAR, right? I grew up, you know, with not a whole lot of interest in racing NASCAR one day. And, you know, that changed in 2020 when I met Kevin Harvick. I was teammates with Keelan on a go-kart team. And, you know, that's kind of where my interest for NASCAR came about. And, you know, I realized the opportunities that were available in this side of motorsports. So that's kind of when things changed for me.

And, you know, that's when I wanted to go be a cup series driver one day. But at the same time, you know, I still want to, you know, have my research. and still race road racing and, you know, go go be able to run the 24 hours of Daytona every year and, you know, do what I enjoyed doing when I was growing up. Not saying I won't enjoy racing in the Cup Series. I have found a lot of passion and, you know, and desire to be good on Oval's and, you know, the late model stock race that I'm doing. It's the toughest, some of the toughest racing I've ever experienced. So, you know, I obviously need to get better at that stuff and, you know, continue to work on my craft and, you know, late model racing and oval racing no matter what it is.

And, you know, that's my focus for this year is, you know, getting better on those ovals. I know I can do it on a road course. So, yeah, it's not easy, but I'm having fun with it. Yeah, it's going to be a fun challenge. But I love the, you know, I love that you're willing to get behind the wheel of anything and try it and try to learn the discipline. And I think over time that's going to suit you so well because it appears, right, that NASCAR, at least at the cup level,

it's really turning into that type of series that's going to put you in every situation and every scenario. Road courses, ovals, short tracks, mile and a half, all types of different racing, street courses even. So you'll be well suited by time you make it to that level. We're excited about it, man. We're looking forward to seeing what you can do for us here at Junior Motorsports. I've had the chance to share the racetrack with you.

You're a tough, tenacious racer. I feel like that you're going to get better and better on the ovals and continue to have more and more success, and we're excited to be a part of your career, man, and a part of this path. So looking forward to it. I'll see you around the shop. Thanks for calling in today, man.

I'm on the highway right now, and I lost signal. We're on our way to have an opportunity for letting me race through your team. Where are you headed? Sea bring. 12 hours of Sea bring. Yeah. Yeah, all right. See, this dude's all right.

always racing, always driving, even today, headed to another race. We're wishing you the best of luck, Connor. Thanks a lot, bud. Yeah, no worries, man. Hey, busy guy. Yeah, I love it. At least he got us a call in. I'm excited to be able to announce that on the show,

and, you know, we might have another announcement. Recording stopped. We get a car before the year's out, but Boba Pollard going to run at Richmond. Now we got Connor coming in to run some races later in the year. these are fun things to be able to do Connor's such a young young driver but to be able to give him a chance to see what he can do is going to be a blast for us

and all the guys in the shop they're fired up so anyhow man it's impressive at such a young age all the racing that he's already done and he's not at one not the least bit sort of overwhelmed or intimidated by being kind of thrown into all these different types of cars

to race yeah we're live Dale Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. here to Dale Jr. Download, and we are, we're doing some Ash Jr. here brought to you about Xfinity. I'm thankful for Xfinity and everything they do for us here at Dirty Mo Media and for NASCAR. They're a proud premier partner of NASCAR. And it's the fastest mobile service with 5G and millions of Wi-Fi hotspots. I see those things all over the place. And they've got nationwide coverage. And always going to be coming in for you in a clutch situation.

Make the switch today and save with Xfinity Mobile. We're promoting their mobile. I also use their internet home service, and it is freaking awesome. See, you can make it? I doubt it. It's not been one of those days, but nope. So anyways, we got some questions I missed last week. Thanks for allowing me to get away with the family.

My daughter, Ida, had her spring break, We had a blast. We talked about that on the show today, so tune in later when Dirty Air comes out. And we had a lot of call-ins day. Larson called in because he missed last week, and then Christopher Bale, the winner at Phoenix, called in, and we had another driver announcement that we made for the 88 car. That driver called in to be on the show. But let's get to your questions. Yeah, this first question seems kind of relevant for today is from Jeffrey. Would you yourself ever bring Frosted Tips Back? I already got it started here. I saw, man. Andrew went into the bathroom this morning and took some white spray paint and spray painted his hair.

It was like specifically for hair. It wasn't just spray paint. It looks ridiculous. It looks like it was not specifically for hair. Well, that's Dalton's fault then because he applied. Listen, you gave me the can, I just sprayed. And he got a little on the forehead, dude. Yes, that's probably not good.

It do need to work on the aim a little bit. That's probably not coming off. No. No, I wouldn't. I mean, I'm, I'm, no. No. No, I think it's a, it's a young man's game, frosted tips. All right.

Yeah. I've got the natural frost happening right now. Yeah, the natural frost. Not the artificial. Yeah, that's right. This next question coming from Jackie, we always love the kind of paint scheme stories. Is there any special story behind the late model paint scheme, the sundrop one, that you ran? Yeah.

Well, you know, I ran the, you know, I ran the, sun drop car, I have the postcards sitting right here behind us, but I ran the sun drop car in 1993, I think. We, me and Gary Hargett, who is my car owner, we're about to have to quit racing because we ran out of money. Gary would borrow money from the bank on Friday, he would bar $2,000 from the bank on Friday. We'd go to Myrtle Beach and race, and then on Monday he would take the money back to the bank. And a lot of times, and he was getting further and further behind because he, obviously we weren't, we weren't able to give the bank to 2000 back.

It would be like 1,400 or 1,100 or 800 or 800, right? And so eventually the bank's like, hey, you know, you're getting behind and you're getting in debt here. And Gary's like, I got to stop. Gary was also working as a mechanic, a shade tree mechanic, fix people's cars on the side. So he was trying to make a little extra money to keep, himself out of debt. But midway through the year, we needed some help.

Sundrop came in with $10,000 to sponsor us the rest of the year. So around June or July, we got Sundrop as a sponsor. And I have all the drawings at home where I sat in the floor of Gary's house and drew what this car should look like. I have all that stuff. That's awesome. I should have brought, I should bring in. Bringing in next week. Yeah, that'd be cool.

We had all kinds of different ideas. Not good. None great. But I drew a car as they do today, right, the profile of a car, and then I printed that so I could make multiple different versions and ideas. And, man, we basically just came up with an all-green car when it was all said and done. Right. And, but anyways, that was the design, the design that I raced,

the sundrop car at Wilkesboro was exactly like the car I raced in 93 at Myrtle Beach. That is pretty cool. This next question coming from Bill. This one is from Twitter. What are your go-to road trip candy and snacks? I know you just road-tripped for spring break this past week. Like any go-to? Like if you stop at a gas station, I got to get this type of thing.

Well, back in the day, it was a sun drop and a slam gym. When we go to Myrtle Beach, we would leave Gary's house and drive into, you know, Union County or Paisal and South Carolina and stop at the first gas station on the ride and get a slim gym and a sun drop and that would usually be the ticket. But what's my go-to snack now? I mean, I still do like a slim gym, but Risa Cups. probably. Freezer cups. It's a good one.

Freezer cups is hard to beat. You know what the best ones? It's like right around Easter. The eggs. Yeah. Those are the best of all the races. And they had the Christmas tree-shaped ones. Those are pretty good too.

I still got a couple of those in the freezer. Oh, I've never done that before. Freezer. Okay. Not the fridge. You're not certainly not laying out. So it's like hard candy? Not at all.

I need to help my game. So I think everything like that, especially chocolate, is better either in the fridge or the freezer. I can get behind fridge. Well, the freezer's not going to change chocolate a lot. It's going to make it super hard to eat, though. Well, a Snickers bar, yes. Like a Snickers bar in the freezer, impossible.

Snickers ice cream bar. That's a good road trip snack. Until it gets messy. It's going to melt all of a dead car, don't know. You got to eat it quick. Are you kidding me? Yeah. I don't know.

Klondike bars. Clondike bars. Yeah. I like old old school stuff. I think that's my favorite part of the road trip. It's going to get snacks. Yeah. Chips, jerky.

What's your favorite old school cereal? Oh. Honeycomb, man. Like honeycomb. Honeycomb and cookie crisp. I love cookie crisp. Cinnamon toast crunch. And the milk afterwards, the cookie crisp milk, specifically the cookie crisp milk.

The post-serial milk. But only cookie crisp is way better. I've seen places make ice cream out of that milk, like the cereal milk. Oh, man. I'm hungry. I thought it was cookie crisps. Yeah, cookie crisps. There's a, yeah.

And then there was. the, there was like a series that were the marshmallows but, I mean, Lucky Charms was pretty, pretty dang badass Free Pebbles, so good. Oh, yeah. But there was a series that, so they had Count Chocula

had marshmallows and then they had booberry. Yep. And then there were three or four of those in that same wheelhouse and they were all like the same versions of each other. those are pretty good but yeah I like those you mentioned you just said count chocular right

yeah a Florida man in the YouTube chat said it as you said it he said he loves it I got I might be a little Florida man you know how to play some QS nice I got a little Florida a little Florida man when I was interesting when I was in

when I was young enough to be eating all this crap Teresa wouldn't didn't want us to be eating all that sugar so we ate you ever had Popeyes, it's in a bag, not even in a box. No. Pop-I's is like the puffs. Oh, like pops, but it was like off-brand?

Not pops. Oh, no, no. It was like the sugar smacks. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no sugar. So it's just the little rice puff thing. And it was in a bag. Yeah, I feel like the bag cereal was never the move.

Oh, my gosh, yes. And it was bland as hell. And so we didn't have any sugar, but we had equal. and so boy I was dumping the equal which is probably really bad yeah yeah I was poor in the equal in the Popeyes that was my that was my childhood packets yeah freaking awesome yeah next question yes we yes next question sounds like an awesome childhood you uh you said you're a Florida man yourself uh let me see here shoot I wrote down. I think it was Wes.

wants to know like favorite spot in Key West. Oh man. I love this question. And we have not covered this before. I'm surprised. Maybe we have. Yeah. Yeah.

Popped up in YouTube chat. So there was a place called Grunts. It's now called Hank's. Grunts or Hank's is this little kind of a shack. You can sit inside. There's probably about 10 stools. Really frosty mug,

cold beer. they got live music out front and in the back is a food truck that's an airstream called Garbo's and it was on diners, dives, and drive-ins. I'm not sure if I got the order right. And it's also won some awards locally in Florida for their food.

But the Garbo's food truck, amazing food, and then obviously Hank's, it was called Grunts now, Hank's. That's my favorite spot to go to and it's about a half a block off of Deval. But there's a place called shots and giggles. Wow.

Little house, another half a block and a half off the wall called shots and giggles. There's about six bar stools in there. And they have a little wine room too, but we would sit at the bar and drink beer. And they got a phone, I signed a thing for them in there. They got hung on the wall. That's cool. We love going to shots and giggles. Captain Tonys, I got a stool in there.

I used to go in there a tonne. And then I come in one day and dudes like, we got just. stool, man. Oh, that's awesome. You've earned the stool. I was like, oh, this is like, I've finally made it. But I like them, I like that place because it's old school,

certainly been around forever, and can beer, just a fun place to go. And every time I go to Key West, we try to land around lunch and go directly to the half-shell raw bar. And

the half-share raw bar has the best buffalo shrimp that I've ever ate in my life and ever will eat in my life. There will never be buffalo shrimp as good as what they have at the half-share raw bar. And of course, the oysters are amazing. You like oysters? Yeah. But I have to go, I have to have to have lunch there for that. Okay. All right.

And if you want the best meal, hands down, like if you're going to go to dinner, blue heaven. It's magical, man. It's amazing. Great food, great atmosphere, amazing vibe. It's a must kind of do thing down there if you're going to go to have dinner. I could sit here and name places, and I'm going to be disappointed that I left a few off when it's all said and done. Schooner Wharf, they've got a tuna taco appetizer. Dude, it is insane.

It's so simple. It's stupid, but it's very good and goes perfect with your beer. They got a touch tunes on the jukebox on the wall. A lot of live music there, but Schooners has been around for a long time, and it's an easy place to sit at for hours. There's not a bad bar in Key West, and I love to go down there as often as possible. I'm going to make a – at least I make a trip annually, if not more. Well, I appreciate you narrowing that down to your –

Yeah, the YouTube chat, Tom says he loves Hanks. Pamela says she's seen your stool, which is pretty awesome. You know, Key West is sometimes, when I say Key West, I mean Old Town. I mean DeVall Street. Some people say Key West, and they mean Marathon and all of it, right? Everything below Homestead. When I hear the word Key West and somebody saying, been to Key West, I'm like, Deval Street, yes, DeVall Street. that's Key West to me. The rest of them are, that's not, that's the keys, I guess, but I don't know.

I've been there forever ago. I've not been there. God, it's so much. It's bucketless. It is bucketless. My dad loves Key West. Every time that I get ready to go and I'm like, we're finally going to really go,

it's hard not to want to take everybody. It's hard not to want to invite everybody that you can invite to go down there because you know it's going to be a blast. And I will also say, outside of getting married and having kids, one of the biggest surprises and greatest feelings that I ever had, this ranks right up there with when the Daytona 500, was when we had Cole Swindale in here in the studio.

And Amy and them walked in and surprised me and said, hey, man, we're going to QS for your birthday. And I was like, we are? That made me really happy. And then when they said, right now. Yeah, even happier. Oh, okay. Like that's what I want every, I wish that would happen every single day.

That one thing. Somebody walking the room. Yeah. Don't like. Somebody leaves a walk in the room. If you want to make me happier than anything, walk in the room and say, we're going to key rest and we're going right now. Wow.

That's all I need to hear. But, yeah, that was amazing. That's awesome. We had so much fun. That sounds like a lot of fun. Good stuff today on Ash Jr. All right. Thanks for, that's some great questions.

Now we all want to go to Key West. I'm not sure if that's what we needed to do for the rest of the day. Wish we were there. Yeah, being disappointed. I wanted to talk to y'all first about why we're having Jefferson Hodges on the show. So I know you probably don't know who that name, what that name is, but I get asked, we're still alive, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get asked all the time, like, how do I get in racing?

How do I get in racing? and, you know, there's never a really easy answer on how to help people get involved in racing. I had a guy hand me a resume this past weekend, and I'm going to try to take that resume and hand it to people and try to convince him to give this guy an opportunity. But Jefferson Hodges' story is the answer. If you want to know how to get into racing, you need to tune in tomorrow to listen to Jefferson. Tell us his path. He worked for Junior Motorsports for some time, but he's, He's worked for a lot of different companies as well. He's got some great stories that helped us start our Xfinity program here at Junior Motor Sports many, many years ago.

But I ran into Jefferson in L.A. for the clash. The clash. That's right. And so I was at this dinner with some friends and talking to Jefferson. And I was thinking, I need you on the show. I want to hear all these stories about how we got Junior Motorsports started, but also I want you to tell people your path. because it's really, this is how you get involved in racing,

exactly the way he did it. And it'll tell you the level of commitment and determination and sacrifice that it's going to take. It's not just turning a resume and hopefully you get a job and land that job and then off you go. It's going to be a lot of ups and downs. And so his is a great story. So I hope you'll give it a shot. and I think you'll enjoy it. All right, so a new segment, not really a new segment.

We've done some short track stuff in the past, but for this year, I wanted to do some Cars Tour recap, so Blake McAnnell is going to bring us up to date on the latest happenings in the Cars Tour. The grand opening of the 2004 Z-Max Cars Tour season spanned across two weekends to start the month of March, book-ending a week full of action during speed weeks at Luccoma, North Carolina's Southern National Motorsports Park,

with both the pro-late model and late model stocks, taking their turn at the four-tenths of a mile oval. The pro-late models kicked off their 2024 campaign Saturday, March 2nd with the running of the Egg Helm 100, led to the green flag by Auburn Washington's Tyler Tanner, who led the opening few laps until an early skirmish with the latest pro-late model winner in Caden Honeycutt on lap number four. As we see there, Chris Wright also trying to keep pace up on Honeycutt,

is trying to pick up right where he left off as he goes from there. Contact, Tanner sideways, Honeycutton, Tanner Tangle, and what a save as Tanner got straightened down by the front nose of the 51. It was Chris Wright, who inherited the race lead after that near incident, and his number 20 Wilson Motorsports Toyota dominated much of a remaining portion of the race until finally receiving a challenge from a young gun in Kyle Campbell. Nearly side by side, Campbell looks low, contact there, and Wright is able to stabilize the car and protect the lead. Campbell able to get back to the throttle though sooner side by side they'll go down into turns three and four right is not going to put up much of a fight hole cross down and Kyle Campbell lap 67 goes to the point here at Southern National Campbell went on to lead the remaining 34 laps and capture the victory for his family-owned racing operation scoring an emotional win that was his first in the ZMAX cars tour oh it means so much last year second race of the year we racked we didn't know if we were going to come back we had so many people help us it was bad fast man I've never driven a piece that good

I don't know what to think right now Jimmy Renfrew Jr. Caden Honeycutt Tristan McKee and defending series champion Cadyin Quaple went on to complete the top five in the late model stock division it was Mother Nature that played her part in delaying the scheduled start of the season with inclement weather washing out Saturday's on-track activities and postponing them until Sunday afternoon.

There was plenty of drama to be had in setting the starting grid for the Kevin Sets Yes.com 125 as 34 of the best late model stock car drivers in the country set out to be a part of the 30 car starting grid. At the end of it all, it was supplied North Carolina's Chad McCombie that captured his third career Thunder Road Harley Davidson Poll Award while making his 50th career start. However, four cars failed to qualify for the event, including super late model phenom Stephen Assie and last year's winner of the old North State Nationals in Landon Huffman. As McCombie and Brent Cruz, at a blistering pace in the opening few laps,

a tussle amongst two of the race's favorites, and Carson Quaple and Deke McCaskill nearly ended the race for both in the early going. They've got a considerable margin, considering we're coming around a complete lap too, over the third place. Oh, trouble! That's Quaple, the champion.

Up into the side of McCaskill as they came together on the front stretch. Although damage, both cars continue to run inside the top 10 throughout the race. Up front, it was 15-year-old Brent Cruz, who was the early star of the show, keeping his number 29 Kevin Harvick Incorporated machine on cruise control, no pun intended, until a restart inside the final 40 laps.

We'll see what kind of jump Cruz gets, and it's not a good one as Quaple gets the launch on the outside. Cruz has trouble getting from third to fourth gear. Quaple takes the lead. McCaskill jumps up to second. And in the accordion effect, Bobby McCarty has destroyed the front end of his race car. We stay green. Everybody pointed in the right direction.

There's McCarty. barely could see over the crumpled hood of his R&S race car entry. And he's got a teammate behind him as he looks to try to find safety on the bottom. And now there's trouble. Multi-car spin in turn one. That is Gavin Beauchel who has gone around. And another car hard into the wall in turn number two. And I believe that is Andrew Grady, who has ripped the left side of his race car off

after having such a strong day. After clearing this wreck that involves nearly a third of the field, it became a two-horse show up front between two long. time Cars Tour rivals in Carson Quaple and defending NASCAR national champion Connor Hall. After holding off Hall in the final restart with six laps to go, the two-time defending series champion captured the opening race of the season, moving his all-time Cars Tour win total into the double digits. I feel like it's not me.

It's the whole team, honestly, Brian and these guys. It's crazy what they can bring to the racetrack weekend and week out. Really fast race cars, and like I said earlier, it just makes my life easy when I have such a good team behind me. Hall's subtle for second with last year's Southern National winner, Deke McCaskill and third. Chase Burrow finished fourth, despite missing a significant amount of bodywork on the right side door of his race car. Caden Honeycutt was fifth with Brent Cruz and sixth. Minnie Tyrell's seventh, eighth was Clay Jones, ninth, Trayton Lapsovich, and Bobby McCarty bounced back to round out the top 10. Be sure to tune in to the second race of the season

for the late model stocks as the Z-Max cars tour travels east to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and the beautiful New River All-American Speedway for the running of the National Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram 250 Saturday, March 23rd. To grab your tickets, be sure to visit New River Speedway.com or Cars Racing Tour.com. Or if you cannot make it out to the racetrack, be sure to join us for live. Flag-to-Flag coverage on Flow Racing all season long. Until next time, I'm Blake McCalless, and this has been your Cars Tour recap. All right, so the Cars Tour has got their season started with their race at Southern National Speedway. Great win. by Carson Quaple, and I'm looking forward to that season continuing, hoping to get myself

to the racetrack in one form or another. I don't know whether I'll drive some races or not, but glad that the season started. Let's get to the white flag. Dropped already this week at Dirtymo Media is the Tear Down with Jeff Gluck and Jordan Mianke. They're doing a great job as usual. Action is detrimental with Denny Hamlin. I heard that show was amazing. The clips that I've seen, pretty impressive.

Denny's on a run, man. I'm waiting on Denny to flame out. I don't know why I just feel like the guy's going to wake up one day and go, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore, but it's not actually going that way. You're talking about the podcast? Yes. Why? What did you think I was talking?

Well, I don't know. Just life and general. Yeah. He's just going to wake up. So you know what, I'm done. No. You know, I just didn't, I wasn't sure if the podcasting thing was for Denny, but it's like he's getting more and more into it, the more he does it.

He's really enjoying it being a talking head. Door bumper clear. Those guys are stirring things up. What a crazy name for a podcast. week. Did y'all see the name of the podcast for this week? Did you, does anybody remember what it was? Was it like, uh, the worst track or something like that? Phoenix, the worst track. I'm sure Phoenix appreciated that.

I'm like, man, you know, when I go to Phoenix, I'm going to have to walk into the room and there will be the president of the track and they're going to look at me and go, oh, I know you. You're the guy with the podcast. Yeah, you titled it. Yep. I did not title it. That was Dale. Yeah. It was funny because Denny goes on social media and he's like, okay, here's the doorbubber clear podcast, and mine's the complete opposite, because he's all, you know, sunshine and rainbows for Phoenix on his podcast. He's very happy about Phoenix. Do you want me to title today's episode, Phoenix, the best track ever? Phoenix, it's okay. Phoenix, yeah. Level it. Yeah. No, no, no, no. We're, Phoenix, it's middle

the road. Yeah. It used to be my home track, so I like, I like Phoenix. Phoenix, yeah. Okay. I don't know. How do you spell that? I don't know. Phoenix? Yeah, there you. Oh, we're kidding, Phoenix. We're kidding.

Anyways, dropping tomorrow, Speed Street with Connor Daily and Chase Holden. Also, Thursday, Dirty Mo Doe with Steve LaTart. Gambling, is illegal in North Carolina, man. I mean, I've seen that everywhere. My timeline is full of ads about gambling in North Carolina becoming illegal. And Tampa Timbs, is he in here? He's in the room?

I don't think he's here. Tampa Timms, he's been hard at work, play some bets. Yeah, I think yesterday was the hardest he's ever worked in the office. Are we going to need to read the number? Yeah, we're going to put it above his desk. It's right there. Dambling problem? Yeah, yeah.

Somebody keep an eye on him. Yeah, we're trying. Don't let him get carried away. We'll keep him within the line. Yeah. He explained gambling to me yesterday. I've actually never felt more financially secure. So.

I'm very nervous for all of you. So let's keep, let's keep it simple. All right, out of the gate. All right. Small bets. Yeah. All right. Get your feet wet.

You know, you got those bonus bets so you can play around. That's right. All right. Just keep it moderate. It's first. Yeah. We want to use promo code Dale. Okay.

Don't dive in, all right? And spending hundreds of dollars, Andrew. I won't. All right. I won't. I like calls out you. I just feel like Andrews be the most influenced. You're right.

I put a lot of money on the Hornets winning the NBA championship this year. Okay. Well, it was good odds, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, why not? If it hits, we're all going to Key West. Yeah, if it hits, we're all going to Key West. I will not be making that bet.

Don't forget Thursday also, the Thursday edition of Reloaded. That's always a great show. Kind of reimagined what that show could be this year. And so far, I really like what it is. A lot of clowning around, not taking themselves too seriously, poking fun at me, which is always great. And so if I'm not calling in, or walking in and being a part of the show.

I'm tuning in to see what these jokers are up to. Do you guys want to comment? I know you are a part of that. Yes. I thought they were great. I did not mind it. Yeah.

I get it. That's funny. Yeah. Well, I thought they were B-level, man, C-level impressions. They were correct, but very like... Yeah.

Very what? Like a impression is more than one or two words. Right. Right. When you watch a comedian do an impression, he usually goes on for a while, right? So that you really hear the impression. Yeah. Right.

You guys were like one or two words deliveries that were like, little blips. Yeah. Blips. Anybody could do that. Yeah. Anybody. Yeah. All right.

There's nothing special about what we did on DJD Reloaded. It was good. It was accurate. Yeah. I think there's more that Stefan was holding back. He had the counting steps. Yeah. That was so freaking hilarious.

Hilarious. That was brilliant. I missed a lot of funny stuff, all right, over the years. Where's my... I'll have you know. You were probably still in the middle school. Yeah, you were probably going to high school, you know, learning English and history. Yeah, that's right.

But now here you are. You're lucky. And I know English. To hear anything funny said from this point on, you get to enjoy that. We'll be there. That's right. They, we were all, you know, we're always, if you don't, we're going to be hard on each other, right? That was me giving him a hard time.

That's my thing. Sometimes people don't like that. Also, I got this book here on my desk. This is Buster's Trip to Victory Lane. It is the, you know, it is a similar, it is the first version of Buster's trip to Victor Lane. that's the first buster book but this is the board version the board the board book i got a three-year-old at home and as a toddler she's not into the big giant books with lots of words and big long stories and so i talked to our folks uh our publisher and i was like why don't we do a board book for toddlers

and so um yeah yeah you can buy that wherever books are sold um also if you'd like to have a great vacation, we are auctioning or raffling off a, let's see, we're raffling off a seven day vacation at my Lake Norman family lake house. So this is just right in town here.

So you'll be staying at our lake house. This is where me and the Earnhardt family go to have Thanksgiving, Christmas, all types of, you know, we'll have a summer thing we do. So we use this house. And we'll have boat rentals for you. There will be a tour of junior sports.

We're going to meet at some point if you win this raffle. It's underway from now through April 29th, and you can go to the Dale Jr.foundation.org for all those details on how to get your raffle tickets. And, you know, trust me, we really hope somebody really enjoys this, but everybody that donates is helping us raise money for all of the things that we do throughout the year for the Dale Jr. Foundation. The Dale Junior Foundation has a couple of full-time employees that are always working on charitable initiatives, either in our own communities or nationwide that we've worked with for years. And so this foundation is churning along every single day, and these donations

help us be able to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish. We're already coming up with a really, really cool idea that I can't share much more. I can't really tell you about it, but I'm working on something really, really fun that we might be able to announce soon with the foundation, with these donations that I'm excited about. So anyhow, hopefully you'll go to the Dale Jr.foundation.org to try to buy your raffle ticket for that seven-day Lake Norman family Lakehouse getaway. That's the show today. It's been a fun one.

I hope you enjoyed it. And tomorrow we have guest Jefferson Hodges on the show. show, Jefferson helped us start Junior Motorsports as a race team. The late model, the Pro Cup, and the Xfinity program. He was part of getting that off the ground. But this guy, I joke, but he's had kind of like the Forrest Gump of careers. He's been everywhere, worked in all types of scenarios with all types of teams. And his tenacity and willpower and work ethic has proved successful.

is he's got a great rolling job right now with Penske, but it was a long, long road to get there. And so I think we'll all enjoy that story. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.