The Dale Jr. Download - 528 - Richmond At Risk, Amy Joins, and Denny Hamlin Talks Restarts, Scooters & More

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back from Easter vacation to recap the weekend happenings on another edition of Dirty Air and his wife, Amy, drops in. There was a lot to react to, from rain-tire strategy to jumped starts to Easter festivities: Starting the Richmond Cup race on rain tires was a long time coming Race strategies spoiled by untimely caution Richmond’s second race may be on the chopping block  Race winner Denny Hamlin calls in Dale reacts to the Richmond restart Amy stops by to talk about spending Easter with her family in TX in the new camper An audit of the NASCAR Cup season so far During the Ask Jr. portion of the episode, listeners sent in questions regarding: Memories of Dale Jr.’s first Cup win Least favorite household chores New records for Dale’s record collection 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. We got Denny Hamling, the winner at Richmond, calling in. Amy is going to be back on the show talking about Easter and all our fun we had this weekend. It's going to be a great show. Let's get started. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Who's the new guy? In the studio for Dirty Air. My wife, Amy.

Hey. Hey. We got a big week for you here. Hallelujah. There are some voices on the show. that you're going to hear Andrew. Also, Dalton.

I feel like I complain too much. All right. We're back in the Bojangles studio for another episode, and now through May 5th, you can get your hands on two free Bojangles bird dogs by using

promo code Dale Jr. When you place an order on Bojangles.com or in the app at participating stores. That's Code D-A-L-L-J-R for two free bird dogs with your online

or Bo-J-L-E-E-R. app order, get them while they're hot. You know, every single week we're getting ready to do this show. I'm like, what the hell are we going to talk about? We've got to get in the notes. I've got to come up with some shit. But, man, it's been easy this year. NASCAR and the sport, you know, and the drivers giving us tons of things to discuss.

There's no shortage. No. Of topics to discuss, and we're going to dive into it. Denny Hamlin wins the race this weekend, jumps to last restart. The funny part about that, man, is... All right, so there's a lot here. First off, today's Dirty Air Segment's brought to you by Tire Pros, whether you know a lot about cars or a little.

The pros at Tire Pros are a go-to from an oil change to an engine repair. They've got you covered. Visit your local Tire Pros today. They're such a great partner, obviously sponsoring us here in the Xfinity Series in Junior Motors. sports but I love that they're part of this the Dirty Mo Media efforts okay diving right into the cup race

starting in the damp they I'm really happy that this is happening finally we're racing on damp racetracks ovals man you know I feel like we could have done this years ago I really do I mean these tires I don't know had rain tires for quite a while now

Goodyear knows how to build a wet weather tires, not like a new concept. But it's just kind of, you know, I think a little dragging of feet, maybe feeling like it might not be necessary to, as a sport, to race on a damp or a wet racetrack. Where the cars ready for it? I don't know if the older cars would have handled that as well. But finally, regardless of how long it took us to get here, we are starting races in damp conditions. That's a good, that's good progress. I think we'll eventually get to where, you know,

we're racing a little more confidently in these type of conditions where it's not so much apprehension. You kind of feel it as we're building up to the start of the race. They're like, we're making the right call here. It's just going to be a disaster, right? Everybody's tuning in. I'm tuning in thinking, oh, man, what the hell is going to happen? They go down in turn one.

They're going to fly into the wall. What's going to, you know? And they just went right around the corner. I'm telling you, man, the damn rain tire is amazing. It's really soft, got a lot of grip, and it drives really, really well on those damp racetracks. And my whole thing is that I hope NASCAR will start to allow these teams to have a little more control over when they switch to the dries.

I totally understand that the pit stops have to be controlled because it's a wet pit road. Drivers don't have a lot of experience coming down those wet pit where we do not need cars sliding into pit members. We don't need damage, you know, cars hurting individuals on pit road. I love the safety aspect of that and being conservative with that is very, very smart. But I really do wish that they would allow the teams to determine when they'll run a dry tire or a wet tire. And hey, man, you know, these are experts.

Crew Chiefs, engineers, they know what the hell they're doing. Let them do it. You know, let them choose. And just take that out of, you know, take that out of the NASCAR booth, right? That'd be one thing that I love to see going forward. And I hope that NASCAR will get there. That is a bit tough to do, I think, with the controlled stops. And it's not that, I don't think it makes it that challenging.

as long as there will be controlled stops until pit road is safe, until they deem pit road's safe. I think, you know, the tire strategies straightforward. Not a big challenge for the crew chief. So just let them have it, I think. Right? I don't know. I think just having the option, but, you know, you have to have a controlled stop. It just seems like it would be difficult to merge the two, just because, like, I guess the only time.

we really have the option is NASCAR's deemed competition caution, right? Yeah. But, so NASCAR is going to throw a Compiolo. They don't have to. You know, comp yellow is probably not that necessary. They did have tires that kind of chunked and, you know, fell off really, really bad for a couple guys at North Wilsonboro during an All-Star race. But the track dried up and they continued to run, right, on a dry race track with a rain tire. That's not going to be good for that tire.

But it's what That's what the race is about, right? Let it play out. Let the damn race play out. So, you know, let the teams decide what they can decide, what they put as much in their hands as you can, I think, outside of being, you know, outside of the control pit stops. Like, definitely, you know, wait for pit road to get dry.

I think also, so I would say good job NASCAR, good job. good year on the tire, good job. Drivers, teams, everything there went really, really well, and it was compelling, good racing. And it shows you that, you know, the tire plays a major factor in the product that we see on the racetrack. You know, I think I'm jumping a little bit ahead

because this is steering me toward the conversation around whether Richmond should have a second date or not. You know, we end this race. Jeff Gluck's pole was literally, you know, somewhat like 50-50. A lot of people checked it was like 51-49 or something like that. A lot of people didn't like the race. A lot of people didn't enjoy it. I was, I enjoyed it.

Yeah, I thought it was a good race. You know, we had the starting and the damp. We had getting on the slicks and figuring that out. But eventually, yes, everybody went right to the bottom of the racetrack and it was single file and it was, you know, dominated mainly by true X for the most part, but you had some other things happening, some races, other races happening on the racetrack,

but, you know, Richmond, somebody who said it earlier this weekend, it's an acquired taste. It's like beer. Like, I hated beer forever until I, you know, got a sponsorship from Budweiser, and I'm like, I've got to like beer, and I learn to love it. I just feel like blaming the track is the wrong thing to do here.

100%. It is not the track, man. There has, so I will play you. Everybody says that Richmond sucked for the last 20 years, okay? I can go back. And they were running along there at one point with the rain tires, and they were way up the racetrack and which we love to see, and cars were using all kinds of different lanes.

And Clint Boyer said, I've never seen them run this high. Well, I remember a race not very long ago where they were running the fence on both ends. And so what determines that? The tire. Goodyear can bring a different tire and absolutely it changes where they run on the racetrack

and how they use the track. And so look, man, I don't know what type of tire they need to bring. I don't know what the compound is or the sidewalk construction or what triggers a great multi-grove Richmond racetrack. But it is in that tire. it's kind of like a Cairn and a Corvette because it's got a bad spark plug.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you're really... Be careful what you wish for. There ain't no freaking telling where we're going to end up going when they take away a race from Richmond. And that's probably not going to be somewhere I want to go.

Is the tire conversation? Because I think Bristol opened our eyes so much with how valuable a good... Or, I mean, I guess in that case, it was a bad tire in terms of... of where and how long it would last. A great tire. Yeah, so it just makes it a good tire.

Is the tire conversation almost more important than the actual car package conversation that we've been having for years and years? Yes. So the race at Bristol showed what a lot of us already knew. If you've been in this industry for 10, 15, 20 years, racing cars, even going further back, you already knew what. what everybody, a lot of people learned about the tire and what it can do for a race like it did at Bristol. And so now the Bristol tire is an extreme example, but that showed you that what went away, right?

Arrow type. Not a, no, can't pass. We had guys bumping each other in the middle of the corner. When they're all on the throttle and running their ass off hauling ass through the corner, they can't even reach each other. You lose the nose before you can get to a guy. If I told you, if you're following a guy down the back straightaway at Richmond or Bristol, and I tell you, I want you to hit him in the ass in the middle of the corner, you couldn't do it. You drive off in there, and before you get to him, the front tire is going to start chattering,

or the back's going to step out because of the arrow. But when you had that tire we had at Bristol, you could hit the guy in front of you because everybody was having to take care of their tires and, you know, to kind of underdrive the car. And so, which is really what everyone was doing in the 80s and a large portion of the 90s. That's how every race was. And so the heyday, right?

The time of NASCAR where we were sort of building this massive audience where we peaked around 2004. And so, you, If you find the combination that gives you something similar to what you saw at Bristol, if you find that combination of Richmond, you won't want to lose that second date. Racing on Easter is not helpful. I mean, I know other sports play on Easter and other things happen, but I'm not going to those.

I'm not ever going to be at a sporting event on Easter holiday. I'm not. Yeah. Not happening. It's not entirely necessary that we do that. That is not going to help your walk-up crowd, your ticket, you know, sale. That is not going to help. And it's, I don't think it really helps your TV audience.

People are doing shit on Easter. Time slot was, I felt like that was purposeful for the Easter, like almost like recreating a Thanksgiving evening. Hey, let's turn on some football like this is the Easter, you know, night race so we can tune into. I suppose that works when it's. tradition. Yeah. You know, like when you, you know, every Thanksgiving, you're going to turn on the NFL and you're going to see Dallas and the Lions play.

Right. Every freaking year. Seems like that's only, you know, there were a couple of games playing, but I mean, I always remember like Dallas and the Lions playing, Dallas and the Lions playing. Dallas and the Lions playing. I'm like, damn it, this is boring as hell, you know, for a Washington fan. But there were a couple times Washington and Dallas played, I think. But my point is, is that was, that's a tradition.

You know, you're not going to, you're not going to just all of a sudden, you know, hammer this round peg in a square hole and say, hey, man, now we're doing it. Yeah. You know, I don't know, man. I'm probably, this is probably pointless to make this argument, but I hate to see all of these things that work against Richmond. The track is completely innocent in this. The track is perfectly fine. and it would be, with a couple changes, a very kick-ass place to race.

I've told them for years about sealing that racetrack. If you go back and look at the races that we all loved when Ricky Rudd was wrecking the hell out of Harvick and all these crazy things were happening at that racetrack, they either had relatively new pavement or they had sealer on the racetrack that you were chasing and running multiple grooves with. But they won't do it.

They refuse to steal that racetrack. I don't understand that. What's the, they're going to lose a date. They're going to lose a date because of how like, um, stubborn, I guess they are about it. And to point at the track and,

and even the car, I got to kind of give the next gen car a little bit of a break here. Um, you know, and, and it's not that Goodyear builds a tire. They just got to figure out what the combination is that's going to produce good multiple rate. That was no rubber putting down on a race.

track. A tire did not rubber in the track. Was that because of temperature? There's some temperature, there's maybe some temperature issues there, but that's not the only answer. I mean, you got to be able to rubber in a racetrack. I don't care if it's 50 degrees or 100 degrees outside. The tire should be able to rubber in.

This is, it's pointless to bring this up because it's never going to change, but when they went to the green tire, they took a bunch of oils and chemicals out of it. If you look at the short track tire that a lot of series run across the country. It marbles different. It rubbers the track in differently. It's a traditional

tire that has all of those chemicals and oils in it. Goodyear went to a green process in building their tires and it absolutely had an effect on how that tire works with the racetrack and how it rubbers up the racetrack. The tire doesn't really paint the racetrack like it used to. Yeah. Right. It used to paint it dark. Right. Now the tire rubber that comes off of the tire comes off in a very dry,

sort of shredded consistency. And that is not painting the track and rubbering in and working itself into the surface of the racetrack. And that's suffering, you know, the product suffers a little bit from that. Is Goodyear's hesitation the fact that, and again, it's like the classic PR look of like, well, they want, they're in the tire business, right? So they want to make it look like they have reliable tires. Is that still the conundrum that they're in? Is that what's holding us back from this type of Bristol tire again? Yes. I read about this, maybe a year or two ago. There was a past tire manufacturer that would not, that chose not, they had an opportunity

to be an F1 and they chose not to be there. And every, Everybody, you know, they were asked, one of the CEOs in this, in this tire company was asked, why won't you participate? And they said, well, they want us to build tires that, that wear and, and, and, and potentially, you know, have issues like chunking and failure. And we're not in the business of building that type of tire. We build tires that last. We build tires that are durable.

And we're not going to build, we're not going to build a tire that showcases. how it falls apart or wears out or only last a couple hundred miles or whatever, right? And so I was like, okay, put yourself in the position of the CEO or the person running that tire manufacturer. Yeah, you probably wouldn't want a tire that makes your product look bad, right? So people are going to go, well, all those damn tires wore out and they blew out and they fall apart. I ain't going to buy one of them on Monday.

I'm not putting that shit on my truck, right? So that is a bit of a tough situation that the tire companies are in. Yeah, but see, I disagree because if, in my opinion, if Goodyear can come out and make a tire that works specifically for NASCAR, like, what is that, shouldn't that be more? Like, it's like, oh, wow, you're even more innovative. That should be champion. Yeah, it's like you have the capability to do something different. Oh, wow, what you, I imagine you could do something even better for my road tire if you have this technology. Well, you're right.

but then the driver like somebody and maybe even me, you know, I've done this, you can't get out of the car when your tire blows out and blame. Good year. And shit on them. That, they can't avoid that PR, right? If a reputable driver and his legion of fans,

they're all going to be like, hey, my driver said your tire sucks. Right. Tire sucks. Yeah. Yeah. You know. That is just, that. It's a tough situation.

I don't envy that situation because that's a damn fine line. I'm telling you, man, all of these things are going to cost Richmond a date, and it does not deserve it. It deserves to have two dates, and here we go. We're going to lose another short track race and probably end up at a road course. How in jeopardy are we? I mean, this is, I feel like... I think it's going to have done.

I think this is the last two years. Let me ask kind of going back to the, you know, was it a good race question? how much of the finish and the exciting end to the race, the restart, Larson Spinning, Denny winning, how much of that plays into your feeling of, oh, this was a good race? Because I feel like that kind of saved it for me. Yeah. I feel like that we forgot how much fun we had those first 100 laps. Yeah, I would say stage three kind of lost me.

Stages one and two with the varying strategy I think was interesting. Well, I mean, the tires. It was, dude, we were really set up for a pretty interesting race in terms of strategy until the freaking yellow come out for Kyle Bush. Yeah. That f***ed everything up. Literally. That was so frustrating.

I could not believe that. I was like, that was the caution. Here's where, this is my biggest hold up on it was, didn't they not throw yellow at Atlanta because it was going to interrupt strategy? And this yellow got thrown and it interrupted strategy. Now I'm not saying, Those are the same instances, but I don't know. Yeah, I don't, well, I mean, I just don't understand.

I don't think you could make me understand why the yellow had to be thrown right there. Elton Sawyer said it looked like he had a right front down or break failure, which is why we threw the caution. Yeah, and he ended up, where did he finish? I remember seeing later in the race he got back into the top 20. when he hit the wall I thought man he's probably bent the toe link and then I saw he's running

18th 19th and that made me even more like that they threw that yellow because I mean his car's not even hurt I mean he drove the thing right back up into the top 20 look you know we there's going to be yellows that don't necessarily need to be yellows

that's absolutely one of them I know they're going to happen it's just frustrating man because yeah Yes, the strategy was looking, that was, if you said, hey man, why are you entertained right now, right? If you had a list, if everybody's watching the race right before this yellow comes out, why are you entertained?

Yeah, it's watching the strategy play. Strategy is going to be in the top two or three answers of everybody that's watching the race. And that got like freaking completely wiped off the face of the experience. That kind of seemed to take it out of Larkson's hands. It seemed like it was Larson's race the first half, and then second half, Turex benefited from the caution more than Larson did, and it was a Turek's afternoon up until Denny stole the whole thing.

We got Denny on the line? We do. Denny the winner of the race, he's calling in. Let's go ahead and get Denny up here. All right, so we got Denny Hamlin calling in last weekend's, or this weekend's winter at Richmond, and thanks for giving us a few minutes today, Denny. Yeah, I appreciate it. So where are you?

Is this at home, or is you? Are you at your race shop? I'm home. No, I'm at home. Looks official, hard to tell. Are you, how busy are you this week? I feel like you're going to be busy. I'm about the same as I usually am.

You know, I try to get one day off a week. That's usually Friday. Friday is the only day that I don't technically have anything going on. But, yeah, every day this week, meetings upon me. upon Sim upon just never stops. What was yesterday? What did y'all meet about yesterday? Yeah, I mean, had 2311 yesterday, had JGR yesterday, had the Sim yesterday.

Who did, is JGR comp meetings in person? Yes. Did Trix come? He never, I can't imagine him. Trix had come to a JGR meeting in three years. I know. He was probably sitting under a tree somewhere. on a on a on a on a on a at a fishing camp or something he's all every time i've ever been around him on

he's always doing his uh he'll go out uh away from the we got this uh hunting camp and he'll go uh walk out and sit under a tree to do his competition meeting um so uh all right so that probably wasn't too awkward since he wasn't in person um i know you i saw some of your stuff where you you reached out to him and was like man what's the deal um but you feel like um but you feel like like that that's all good. Yeah, I didn't think I did anything wrong to him. Right. And is he, is he going to be okay? I think he's going to be all right. Yeah. I think he's getting the therapy he needs, which is out, he's out in the woods or he's fishing, and that's what he needs. I think he needed a night to sleep on it and get over it. I definitely understood. And I

empathize with him a little bit, just listen, as rightfully so. You were, You were upset for a vast majority of vast reasons and you deserve to be. Yeah. I've been buddies with him a long time and I've always wanted him to be more aggressive or, you know, like, so think back to when Lugano run over him at Martinsville and stuff. And then, you know, he's like, well, he's not going to win the war. And then I sit there in the booth for NBC watching the homestead race and it comes down between him and Turex. and here comes the 22 and drives right around outside of him. I'm like, damn it, why didn't you hit him or something, right?

You know, but so I guess that's not as his DNA. It's not. It isn't, right? So, right? So he comes out, he's bashing into the five car on the back straightaway, coming to the checker and all that stuff. And I was like, whoa, he was hot as I've ever seen him. I think we've got to understand that that was the sixth time that he had led over

100 laps of Richmond and it has not won. So he had had enough. Yeah, I agree. So you put the tweet out yesterday, joking a little bit about, you know, April Fool's and you somewhat, you might have been joking, but you somewhat admitted that you jumped to start. That was an April Fool's joke. I know. All right.

I think I'm taking it as an omission of guilt. So what does, the question for me now is, I'm fine. You got away with one. You got to try to do everything you can. every, I mean, if you take every, maybe not these cars, but over the past 50 years in NASCAR, if you really wanted to take all the cars back to the R&D center, you could find something. There's something on all of the cars that have ever raced a race that aren't going to be, you know, past perfect technical inspection.

So, I mean, we've been pushing the limits and you've got to push the limits as a driver. What does NASCAR need to do now? That's my biggest question because you and me have been doing this a long time, and we would have situations like this where the drivers sort of would discover a loophole, right? The drivers would take advantage or abuse a certain situation, and most of the time NASCAR would then come back and say, you know, at the next driver's meeting or whatever. All right, guys, this is what we want going forward.

Do you think NASCAR needs to say anything? Do you think NASCAR needs to clarify? or make it understood because, all right, for me, all of these years, I always thought you had to go in the box. After what happened the other night and the conversation with NASCAR, now it seems like it's a little loose. You know, there's not, it's not, the zone's just a suggestion, right? Does NASCAR need to come in and say anything?

because I know maybe you might not ask the question at the drivers. You know there's five or ten drivers going, okay, well, what's the deal? Are we going to be able to, you know, bend it a little bit in those scenarios or those situations? And so what would you want NASCAR to do? I'm not really sure, honestly. I mean, I think that we've just gotten so smart when it comes to the drivers, I mean, in understanding how to get good. good restarts, how to take advantage of the system.

We've really got educated on that. And it's through people like Josh Wise and whatnot that educate these drivers on, hey, here's the rule. And here's how we're going to get around that rule. You know, if you're P2 or P3, we're going to roll up on these guys. And you're going to carry that speed and you're going to be able to take over first place entering turn one. And so as we come up and we keep getting smarter in those situations,

then the leader then needs to counter with his. own strategy to throw those guys off. So that's what I was trying to do was throw those guys off and say, well, I know what you plan is. I can see it starting. And I'm not going to, I ain't going to let you dictate this restart. And so I was trying to go early in the zone. I was not trying to go before the zone. And I, and like I said yesterday, I can see that through video and on TV, it looks, it looks one way and it felt another in the race car. I can tell you that for sure. I'm looking all over the place. I can barely see anything in my dash,

but I can't see that I'm four or five foot early or whatever it was. Like, it was really small. But I don't know what they can do other than make the zone bigger because otherwise everyone's just going to continue to creep towards the leader as we approach the zone. And the zone is so small in the sense of, you know, they know that if you go early, we're going to time it perfectly there. If you go late, we're going to time it perfectly there.

So it's other than if you made the zone bigger, and I think they experimented with that at one time and then they cut it back. I think they had a mess during maybe the roval or something. I'm not really sure what track it was. But yeah, I don't know what you do other than, you know, it's kind of a, it's a zone. That's all I can say.

It's a zone. So NASCAR did expand the restart zone I think middle of last year. or coming in the last season, they doubled it. So that would be a great conversation to have. Maybe the restart zone could go away, or there could be a line, you know, coming through turn four that you can't start before that line,

but then you have, you know, you have several, several hundred yards all the way to the flagstand to go whenever you wanted. And to your point, like you take, you know, if you're the leader of the race, you want the advantage. Maybe they put the leader out there by himself, you know, and you double file behind the leader.

So I thought about the restart, you know, maybe it's not so much NASCAR clarifying what needs to happen going forward with the current situation, current restart box and all that, but maybe they could change it. Maybe it just does need to evolve a little bit physically. The restart zone itself could change quite a bit. Do we need to be reactive about this, though,

or everything is that? I worry I yeah maybe we don't need to get crazy and change but I think that NASCAR certainly has to step in and go well we need to clarify what's fair what's a good restart

and what's not because I thought right right I thought you had to go in the box NASCAR is now saying eh it's it's whatever you know and so is it so if NASCAR doesn't say something in the next driver's meeting or sent out a bullet

tend to the teams or whatever, I think this could get crazier, right? And then what's going to happen is, and we've seen this many, many times, somebody's going to do exactly what you did three months from now and get penalized, right? And then it's going to be, well, what the hell? It's inconsistent. So that's the only thing I'm worried about. Not if they say we're going to enforce it line to line from now on. Right.

It's so different than NBA. A rest, right, when they say in the offseason, the owners or whatever it might be, they want to emphasize on this call this year. Yeah. So then they start calling that call. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think, you know, you bring up a valid point that I think, you know, you do, if you say nothing, then, then it definitely can get, it could get out of hand.

But if you do say something, if NASCAR says something, it says, from this point on, we're going to look at it closer, then you can't, you can't bitch about the call that comes the next time. I think when they paint, you know, they painted those lines on the walls. It was kind of, you couldn't never really specifically say, okay, he went, he went a foot early because there was no real perfect reference. The line on the walls were just a suggestion. And when they paint them on the track, that's when things get a little more, you know,

precise. Take those lines off the track. Just leave them on the wall. go back to making it a judgment call. If you're going to have the lines on the track, it's just like, to me, it's just like the commitment cone box. You can't touch that. You can't touch the choose box.

You can't go before this line. I mean, that's where, in my mind, when NASCAR put the line on the track, they were making a defined area. And so I love them to clear that up. For sure. So moving on, man. Hey, I just want to say, you know,

my position is really, against NASCAR and what will they do? I guess I'd be watching to see what they do. But, man, you know, you got to weigh one. You got to do that. And like I say, there's, you know, drivers out there every week trying to take advantage of everything they can. And so I don't really fault you for what you did there and you made it work.

My next thing I got to go to, we talked about this last week. It's the scooter gang. What is, I know, all right, Cota is a long racetrack. So is there a scooter deal? Does 2311 have a scooter deal? Because everybody's got scooters. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, there's, I think there's nine or ten scooters that they carry around. Yes. Do y'all have a deal? You'll have a scooter sponsor? Okay. We do. Yeah, we do not. I noticed that Kurt's scooter looked awful.

like awful lot like a city scooter like he was renting that one um it looks a lot like it's electric yes are you not is it like bad for them to have electric yeah you can't have any motorized vehicles i know that's the rule but for me then that's not motorized that's electric it's like a restart rule yeah oh it's a little gray let me ask this question so what role Does Kurt play with the team? He assists the drivers in, you know, certain situations where, hey, be looking out for this. Yeah. Or be looking out for that.

He'll also make comments for us in our driver's meaning about what he saw other drivers doing. Yep. So he's kind of just our eyes and ears out there, I guess you would say, for our race team. It's kind of like a consultant, I would say. because he i see him man he's all over the place he's like on some sort of a sabbatical or some kind of a tour um when we need him to fill in you know sarah driver's got you know two sponsor ask at the same time you know kurt will help fill in those roles as well um the shoes redick does the does the every week he does the scooter in the shoe post yep is he on a shoe deal

he's on a shoe deal yeah he think about it like an engine program he might be on the B program right now the B engine but he's on a program which is good so I don't know that he gets kind of one of everything that they make that's like the A program that's what you get I get a lot of stuff yeah so but I think that he's he's he's slow working his way into that program. Yes.

I got you. I saw a little conversation where this comes up from time to time, which I kind of like. Apparently there's a little clip of you talking about South Side Speedway. Maybe you mentioned had somebody asked you something about that during the post-race winner's press conference at Richmond. And you still are of the position that should the opportunity present itself for you to be involved in the future of that racetrack you're interested?

Oh, 100%. It's just, you know, where am I going to get the funding to do it, right? That's the challenge. And so, I mean, I've had, you know, Zoom calls with different legislators and with, you know, the county and both the state on, you know, kind of trying to figure out the best way to approach this. But, yeah, I mean, certainly from a tourism perspective, it absolutely, as a revenue generator. It's just how do you quantify it is tough part about it. But it's a it's a short track that's sitting in there right now. It's got the land to you know, it really needs to kind of

be revamped in a big kind of way. But it needs, you know, a few million dollars worth of true work done to it. And so I'd love to do it because it's such a great area. I mean, if you look at our television audience, weekend, week out, Richmond's always. always one of the highest. So you have people that are very interested in short track racing in that area. It's just a matter of, you know, it's a matter of who pays for it. I told them I'm okay with running. I'd love to run it and help them bring some different touring series there if I could, but it's going to come down to whether they deem that property valuable as much as us racers do. Yeah. Well, that's pretty interesting.

man, I'd be, it'd be cool as hell to see that place come back and for you to have your, you know, your image and reputation behind it. Man, I really appreciate you giving us a lot of time. I know you got a lot going on and just incredible start to the year. One last thing I got to ask you before I let you go. You started 2311 and the team has gotten better and better and the resources and building a new shop. and it's really at a fast pace in terms of how this team has grown and what it's become. And I think you made some comments recently that suggested that, you know,

you might, you know, you might daydream about driving for that team. And I know that you probably, you know, you certainly don't want to create any, unnecessary confusion with your you know with JGR and all that stuff my dad uh kind of found himself in a similar scenario when he was racing at the end of his career with RCR and he's building DEI and they're like wow would you ever drive for yourself and he's like oh man you know I don't want to I got to say the right thing here um and so you know were those comments things did you did you have to clarify those comments did you know did you go back to Joe and say hey man you know no you know you don't have nothing to worry about i just i think that it's a given for anybody

that builds a race team and that's still a driver you would you would always have some like uh you know you know interest in driving your own stuff um whether that really really happens or not i mean i don't think we know but um you got to be careful there because those comments could create unnecessary confusion with your own current team, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, Gibbs' reaction is that, hey, we want you longer than your current deal. Let's start working on that. That's how he started that conversation.

But, yes, I, it's a daydream, right? I mean, you have to have so many things in place for you to win and just say I'm going to start another team. and go drive for it. It's just, it's very, very difficult. I mean, obviously this weekend, the pit crew won me the race. Well, they've been in the development stages at JGR for five years or something like that. Like, it's, it's, it just doesn't happen overnight.

And so it'd be very tough for me to leave the situation I'm in where I know I can win every single week. I think the daydreaming about driving your own stuff, I hear you say the stuff, it was different back in the day. DEI, he hired these people, and then they had the minds to develop a car, build a car, design a car, and put it on the racetrack. Today, we all drive the same modulated car. So I don't, it's probably a little different, you know, it would be more of a name than anything. Those guys at 2311 drive, you know, just as good of equipment as the guys at JGR.

It's just all the other parts and pieces of building a team. I mean, I'm still going through it now with the 23 car, right? They had a bad pit stop on the last stop. I mean, this pit crew stuff is taking and is going to take years and years for us to get to a top level. And I just, I don't want to waste the last few years of my career, whenever that might be building a team. Especially when I'm already in an established team that can win every single. single week. Man, that's what I thought.

That's a great answer. Appreciate the time today, bud. Enjoy the success on the racetrack and off. And appreciate everything you're doing with Dirty Mode Media. Action is detrimental every single week, out every Monday. We love the access hearing a current driver and his thoughts on what's going on in sport. And good luck this weekend, man. Martinsville coming up.

Yeah. All right, buddy. See you. I'm hopeful that NASCAR will, I think the only thing that I need is, for NASCAR to say, hey, here's what we expect going forward. Just clear it up a little bit. I'm a little confused. The NASCAR rule book says the initial start and all restarts shall be initiated within

the restart zone on the racetrack, within the restart zone, on the racetrack. The lines on the wall and on the racetrack designate the start of the restart zone. If the lead vehicle does not restart in that time, if the lead vehicle does not restart by the time it reaches the exit of this zone, then the starter will initiate the restarted the race. So, you know, that last line's not relative to this conversation. Quite the opposite of that. Yeah, but it's telling me that the start happens in this box, not before it.

You know, and like I talked about with Denny, we used to have painted lines on the walls and exactly where the zone began and ended was debatable. But when they paint the lines on the track, that suggests a defined area. And when you do that along with the wording of the NASCAR rule book, you have a clear definition of a good or a bad restart. And Sunday was a bad restart. You can't hit the choose box or you're going to be penalized.

You can't clip the orange commitment cone or the commitment box coming to pit road. You're going to be pitilized. You can't pit your car over the line of your pit bulls. stall during a pit stop, are you going to be penalized? You absolutely cannot fire before the line of the restart zone. The rule is clear as day. NASCAR should have thrown a yellow or something like that. They give Denny a warning. Rack them. Have the restart all over again. As of this morning, Elton Sawyer on Sirius XM said, there's no doubt he rolled early. If this happens at lap 10 or 50 or 300, the call could have been different. Listen, man, going forward,

We need clear messaging from NASCAR, and that's not helpful, right? To me, that's, that's the biggest problem. That's muddying the waters even more. They've got to settle any misunderstanding about the restart rules, specifically, when you're allowed to fire as a control car. And... I think the rules are clear. I think they just missed it.

No, wait a minute. I, they've got to come out and they've got to say, We didn't get that one right. He went early. We've looked at it. We do believe he went early. We missed the call. The results are stand.

But that is a bad restart. That will get you a black flag. That will, you know, that will, whatever they want to do. I've seen them throw, I've seen them penalized drivers. They've black flag drivers. They've thrown yellows and rewracked them and gave warnings. Whatever they want to do, they've got to react. They can't just let it go.

And so, look, I didn't see it. No one did. No one did. Like in the moment, when it happened, the race goes, well, Fox didn't show it. So you definitely didn't see it. Yeah. Yeah. But if I'm there in that booth and I'm curious,

I mean, I know they only got maybe a minute before the race is over. So they got to act fast. But look, we've got all this technology on pit road that can even without a human can designate somebody that's got a, you know, has an infraction or a penalty on pit road. We got all this technology. That should, if we have the shit for this restart zone, that technology should have been here already.

It's no different than the tech at Kota for track limits. It's the same, their position in the car at some point, it's the same thing. Exactly. I don't get it. I agree. I mean, it's just like. the commitment line on the pit road.

You've got to do that properly. If you clip it, they're getting your ass. Right. This is, and if they're going to have that line on the racetrack, I see that as a defined area. Yeah. Right. That is not a suggestion. That is not a lose.

And so, and so just come out and say, the rule is you go inside the zone. Right. Don't make us come after you. Right. Yeah. I'm of the camp that I don't want more rules on this sport, but there should be some rules that are black and white.

To come out and say, I think if having on lap 10, we'd have called it differently. That makes me even more angry. Yeah. Why are you calling the race differently depending upon... Circumstance. The lapse.

Yeah. That's not... Yeah. The rule book is... The rule and the book... It's black and white. It's on or off. It's yes and no.

It doesn't change at lap 4 or 50 or lap 5. The rule for, you know, the rule for engines, bodies, all those things are consistent. They don't change depending upon the lap of the race. Right. Yeah. What other rules are ebbing and flowing with the laps of the fucking race? His car was outside the box,

but it was the last pit stop. So we'll give it to him. It doesn't make sense. All right. I got to calm down. All right, this week's segment was brought to you by Tire Pros. There are a few people who love cars as much as I do. These tire and service experts equally love the drive.

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Amy's here. Should we bring Amy to the table? I think we should. All right, so my lovely wife, Amy, has joined me at the table, and we're just coming off of our conversation around the cup race and we're trying to calm down. Got a little amped up there. Yeah, just, I guess.

I get a little frustrated, but that's what we do here. This is therapy. Is that what this is? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you come in here and yell at the clouds and get it all out. Yell at the clouds. Yes.

And he's been saying that at home, by the way. Has he? Has he said. Yeah. Don't worry about me. I'm just yelling at the clouds. So I wanted to bring Amy on the show because me and her, we've been sharing on social media,

little bit about getting a fifth wheel camper, right? And we talked about it on this show. I did all this, you know, I did a lot of inner homework and thoughts about like what should we get, what would we be happy with, what would suit our family and our needs. I've had, I've had these buses for a really long time, sort of in a position of transition, right, where I don't necessarily not a full-time driver anymore. I got a big, you know, I got a family that did. the what we've had doesn't quite fit.

Maybe we can make some adjustments in some things. And I wanted to get something that I could work on. I can fix anything. I can, I can drive it, I can take it, and we can do this together, right? And so we got to looking around. And at first I was trying to figure out how I could get my family comfortable with a truck camper. But it's, I don't even know what the square footage on them things are, but it's like a hundred.

Not a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, the kids are little, but that's still too small. We looked at, uh,

the vans, you know, the conversion vans and all that stuff. And, and then we looked at, um, you know, a drive,

you know, a camper you're driving. Uh, so I mean, you know, we, I, we explored all the options. Tong.

Yeah. tongue pulls, bumper pulls, and my point of, my position when he's going through his process is just the smile and not, oh, okay. Are you sure?

Okay. And just wait, because there's going to be another idea that pops up. So until he gets like a little bit of buy-in for me, he just keeps looking. So that's how we shop together. That's all right.

You can't say no because then it's going to show up in the driveway. He does not like to be told no, and that makes him want to buy it more. We did know with the bus. And now we have the boat. Right? Yes.

Yes. And so, anyhow, I was trying to avoid the fifth wheel. It's a lot, right? It's a big, it's a big, you know, they're, you know, 30 to, you know, however long you want to go. Feet and the duly and all of that. I was trying to try to go another route, a more practical, smaller, minimal route. And man, to be honest with you, it would have been. been a mistake.

Going with the fifth wheel is what we need. It's a good fit for our family and there's some great affordable models out there. And we got a Cougar, which is about 36 foot. And it is a, it's a keystone. That's a brand that makes this thing and they're going to be thrilled that we're talking about it. But, you know, I'll be honest with you, man. We've had our first trip this past weekend.

we took it out to Texas. Yep. I still have my bus driver, Kenny, he's nearly, he is beyond. He's essentially retired. Yeah, he's retired. His last year was going to be this year. And so I called Kenny and I said, hey man, you know, I'm going to get this fifth wheel and I'd like you to help me with it a little bit and just walking me through the process

of buttoning it up and laying it out and what are some of the things that I need to avoid and learn? I don't want to tear and break and make mistakes. right we can skip through all that I mean it's not rocket science but you know I've never I've never emptied a you know a gray tank or a black tank and there's a process right and so for example right you probably wouldn't even y'all probably wouldn't know this neither that I but it makes perfect sense when you hear it's like if the your black tank first that's got all your pee and your poop in it of course the gray tank the gray tank he woke up thinking about that

today. He was really concerned he did not know that yet. The great tank is your sink water and your shower water, so it's just soap, right, and water. And so when you empty that, it all comes out the same pipe. And so that is then washing out the materials from the black,

from dumping the black, right? And so, yeah, it can, yeah. So, that will flush. Yeah. So you don't want to, if you do black last, yeah, you got some of that stuff lingering around in there, right? But anyways, there's just little things like that that I would have to learn on my own. And Kenny's been helpful. And Kenny did take it out to Texas.

People are going to be disappointed that I didn't drive it to Texas. Well, it's far. And we had the kids in school. So, I mean, there was things happening. Yeah. We really couldn't do that. So he's still on the fringes of employment with us. And, yeah.

And so I was like, yeah, why you're, you know, we're not doing nothing this year. We were going to, you know, broadcast a race season. Well, that's not happening. So he was still going to do this year with the broadcasting that we did or have been doing. But since he's not doing that, he took it out to Texas for us. And Amy's family has this farm that's been in their family for generations, and it's got an old 120-year or older farmhouse on it that they still use. It's about 100 years old.

Yeah, we still sit in there and eat and enjoy being together. and play games and stuff like that in this old farmhouse. I love sitting in there, man. It's so nostalgic. I sent you guys some pictures of being in there. And so outside of that is all, it's cow pasture, right? The farmhouse is fenced in probably about a half acre. Yeah, it's not big.

Right? And then the rest of the farm, man, it's just cows. There's roaming around. And there's some buildings and outbuildings and tractor and farm equipment and so forth. Yeah, Barnes. And then her dad put in the electrical for us to be able to plug these, you know, plug multiple fifth wheels into. Yeah, my sister and brother-in-law kept bringing theirs and eventually they wore them down.

They're like, you know, it would be helpful if you just helped us get here. They were plugging in like a conventional outlet. Yeah. And everything out there's old. You know, the house wasn't wired originally. So it's a little risky, you know, doing that. And I think that dad finally was like, all right, I need to fix this so that they keep coming. Yeah, so they got power pulled off the pole and put up a little grid for us to be able to plug into.

But literally, we all share the same water hose. So the water hose comes off the spigot from the house and then goes into a three-way out to these fifth wheels. And so when you turn on the water, when you turn on the water in the fifth wheel, it's like a drip because you're sharing water with everybody else. If everybody's trying at the same time. Not a lot of pressure. Yeah. But it's awesome. We had a blast.

Easter with Amy's family. I can't imagine doing Easter any better, to be quite honest with you. Before he went the first time, I tried to explain to him what this looked like, and he literally just could not wrap his head around it. We pull the Spanish moss off the trees, and we make Easter nests in the yard for the Easter bunny to come fill up with toys and presents and candy. And there's about... Growing up, there was just three kids.

Now there's 11. So the yard was chalked full. Yeah. So one kid will build a nest about half the size of this table. And then... Not that big. All right. So it's about...

It's big. It's big. It's close to half the size of this table. And so... And then they put a little fringe. What's stuff on that? So granny gets garlands and fake flowers and things. When we were little, we used to pick the wildflowers and do that.

And we'd do it like day right beforehand. But it's too much to do now with all the kids. So, yeah. She gets a bunch of junk from, like, the dollar store, and it's just decorated and bright and whatever. So you have the Spanish boss. That's your nest. So it's covering the ground in this little space.

And then each kid has their own nest, right? And they're dotted out through the yard, right? And so we all help them make their nest. And then they go, get in the back of a truck. It's dad's duty. The dad's take them on a trail ride to find the Easter bunny. And while they're gone. the women scramble and lay everything out and hide the eggs.

They get to the house and we pass out their buckets as they're getting to the gate and they run around the yard and do their Easter hunt and then they get to like plop down and somebody's dressed in an Easter bunny outfit. I was going to say, yeah, do you find the Easter bunny most times? Well, that just started last year. My sister Lacey, my youngest sister, dressed up as the Easter bunny. And one of the kids kind of questioned that a little bit. Oh.

And so instead of lying to her, I just told her that was Aunt Lacey. and that's not the real Easter bunny. You never get to see the Easter bunny. She's like, well, she did give me a thumbs up. Do bunnies have thumbs? I'm like, no. That was Aunt Lacey, see? It's just the thing.

So this year, a different person dressed up and they got to see her through the mask. Yeah. So it was fine. My daughter... You can't pull one over, especially when there's that many. Somebody's going to see.

The girls run up to the Easter Bunny and they all believe that it's the Easter Bunny until they get right up on it and they go, it's human! It's gone in there. It's human. One of them kept saying that. It's human.

It's human. It was funny. But we get to eat a little candy. We shoot off, we fire off a lot of silly string and everybody. We chase each other around the backyard. They pummeled me with a silly string. It was in my drink and my hair. And we have confetti eggs.

So that was, Nicole had a really good time with that. Confetti eggs. Oh, yeah. What is that? Never heard of that. Really? Yeah, no. It's just what I think it is.

It just explodes. You don't never, you've never played with a confetti egg? No? Didn't even know that was a thing. Tell how you make one, Amy. We don't make them, you buy them. They're called chittaron and they come in. They're a little 12-packed like an egg carton,

and they're boiled and emptied or emptied and died, and they have dry confetti in them. And it's like tissue paper over one in, so you can just smash them on each other. That's so much fun. That sounds like a lot of fun. Are you kidding me? You've never done. I genuinely, that was, I thought you were making it up.

I'm going to bring you some. Okay. Yeah. We should have put an Eastern house on the table. Yeah. Next year. We should have. I mean, we watched a lot of NCAA basketball tournament, and we watched all the races.

We had a lot of great food, grilled out right there at the campers. Enjoyed just a damn fun time, man. It's hard to beat. What's the traditional Easter meal? What do we eat on Easter? We don't really have a try. tradition. So everything is like cooked outside because everything works inside, but it's just too much for the house to have all those people in there. So Kobe, my brother-in-law Kobe is the

girl master and we cooked fajitas last night. I don't burgers one night. I mean, I don't remember. Yeah. They get four-wheelers and they go take all the kids on full-wheeler rides all day long. All day long. So Ila's like, I rode the four-wheeler four times today, you know. And it's, they shoot a little bit. They got some guns and they'll go out there and shoot a little bit. car to practice, things like that. The kids are constantly trying to get close to the cows as if the cows are going to let them pet them. And there was a ton of babies, so they were

doing that most of the day too. But the camper, man, I think the camper is perfect. So everything worked. You know, sometimes you'll get some campers and they got a few bugs, but this was a 2002-3 model that didn't sell. So it came on,

it was marked down for clearance, which is nice. That's on the clearance rack. Yeah, it was. And, uh, Dale Jr. Special. Man, I'm always looking for a deal.

So I was like, well, why didn't this, you know, you're just every, just like when you're buying a used car, you're like, why, um, what's wrong with it? Why did they get rid of it? Yeah. Why is it brand new and did not sell? I think it's cool. Yeah. You know, why don't know people think it's cool.

Um, we didn't have any surprises. It seemed like it was just fine. It's good. Yeah. Everything worked and, uh, kids loved it. So, um, Nicole, we had a breakthrough this weekend when Nicole, she doesn't like to brush her teeth. She's got this thing about toothpaste.

She doesn't eat syrup. She doesn't eat ketchup. She doesn't like anything in that consistency. So brushing her teeth, it's like performing an exorcism. She doesn't want it. We have to hold her down and she screams while one of us brushes her teeth. I'm the same way. And honestly, we're just emotionally distraught afterwards, just as much as she is.

It's an experience. And in your day like that every day. I've unlocked the key to getting it done. We had two components that changed it. I forgot to pack toothpaste and toothbrushes. I was mom fail. But my sister and brother-in-law had extras. And so we used their orange cream sickle-flavored toothpaste for kids, which she liked.

And then Dale started singing 99 bottles of beer on the wall to her. And instead of starting at 99, they just start at one and they go up to three. By then, she's just about done brushing her teeth. But she's totally into that. And now she just sings it. So she's going to go to school singing 99 bottles of beer on the wall after Easter break. She's putting the bottles of beer on the wall. She starts at one, two, three.

We're stacking them up. We're not taking them down. Recycling. That's what she's doing. You could have given me 100 guesses as to what song it was. I would not have been able to guess it was that. I was shocked too because he did that the first time and I was outside. How did that come about?

You're like, I got an idea. I've got the perfect song for this. I drank about 99 beers that day. I don't know. It's a good idea. It's the only thing I can think of was. And she just kind of shut up and just looked right up at him like, ah. Yeah.

She's like, what are we doing? This is a game. I like this. This is fun. Yeah. So we've got a killer combo now. Yeah. So far it's working.

Three nights in a row. We've had no one of us. Three out of a thousand and it will take it. Yes. What was the toothpaste before that she hated? We've gone through a few. Like they're all kid tooth mace and she doesn't care about spicy stuff. So like the peppermint doesn't bother her.

It's the thickness. So if it's like this one's not quite as pasty, it's a little thinner. So she likes it. Yeah. Wow. I put an air tag in the camper so I could watch it come home. Okay. I took an air tag out there with me.

I should have put it in the camper when it left the house, but I forgot. You ever use one of those for like your luggage and stuff? It's pretty neat. I've, uh, my parents all have one. But I'll always get the notice. that I'm traveling with an air tag, even though it's not mine. Just like, hey, there's an air tag. Is it in their car?

There's an air tag near you. Yeah, yeah. It's like on someone's keys that I normally travel with or like someone's wallet has it and I'll drive all through town. And they'll be like, yep, this air tag has been with you X distance. So it'll connect you to anybody's air tag? It'll just let you know that you've been traveling with one. Yeah.

Interesting. Oh, so that you're like being trapped. So I bet it's a safety thing. Yeah. Yeah. People can't be tracked, you know. Yeah. Kind of crazy.

But to answer your question, no, I've never used one. No, I've never used one. I hear people put them on their dog leashes or the collars. That's a good idea. Yeah. Kind of fun. It's fun. Yeah.

Just start doing it to random stuff. He put six in my socking this year for Christmas. Six. Yes. Wow. That's why we have the pile of them. We've got a lot to. What am I going to do with these?

Is that on clearance? We've got to come up with some ideas. They must have been on clearance. That's what we need like a. An Amazon Prime Day deal. Dirty Mo Media. post on Twitter, what should we put our hair tag on? That would be fun to know what people use them for. Besides like expensive things or a gun or something that they're really, you know what I mean?

Yeah. I just think, I thought it was like just for, like you could put it in your kid's car. You could put it on your luggage, things like that. They have bracelets. You can put them on your child also like if you're in a crowded area. But I've never used them for that. No, maybe we should. We've got to take our kids to like a carnival or something. We got to first we need to take our kids places. That would motivate us to take the places. Let's go see if the air tags work. Let's lose them.

Really stressful scavenger hunt. Yeah. All right. We leaving out anything on Easter break. Did you like the camper? I love the camper. It did everything I thought it was going to be, or everything I thought I was going to do. And it was actually real easy to get around in and use.

It didn't feel like I was without. anything. Yeah. Where's round two? Oh. Where's round two, Dale? Yeah, Amy might go with me. We haven't announced this yet. Oh. Yeah. I'm going, I'm going somewhere. Okay. To do something. Okay. Round two might be. Sounds slow. Dale related. Yeah. Okay. It'll be very soon. But we're going to tag along. Yeah. I'm anxious to drive at places. I would love for us to meet Kobe, your, your sister and brother-in-law. I'd love for us to like meet them halfway somewhere. like the, you know, Western Tennessee or like kind of, they're coming from Texas, right? So like if we could find like some middle ground of some sort of.

Maybe we could meet like at the beach in Alabama or like a national park. Or the beach in Alabama. Yes. The Florida Panhandles. That's a great idea. And both, you know, that'd be so much fun. The only problem is like, you know, our girls, that would be about a 10-hour drive. So, you know, we'd have to break that.

up at a couple soaps so we'd need a week a week well I mean to get there I thought you meant like a week to get there yeah I'm thinking about the travel still we need 30 minute increment we'd need at least one oh we'd need at the least an overnight to get there yeah and an overnight home you think yeah yeah because if you're gonna you're gonna bust a 10 hour trip up with the kids right I don't know I feel like a first try first time I probably just try to see how far I could get with them yeah I mean this is so when we traveled as kids my dad works just worked so he literally knew how to stay up all night. He was good at that. I feel like you're probably about the same. Oh, so you think we're driving at night and they're sleeping. So what he did is he'd put us in the car at like 5 p.m. feed us,

and then we'd fall asleep and we'd get there in the morning. And then he didn't have to hear us complain about how far. So if I do that, do I get to sleep the next day? Yeah. If you're going to drive. But I'd probably stay up just out of concern of you falling asleep. I don't know. That would be And then we're both going to be tired and cranky. But we have the camper and they can just play and we can sleep a little bit. It should be easy. You can let them run around, throw some air tags on them. Throw some air tags. There you go.

We'll find them later. It's easy. They're tagged. That's hilarious. West Virginia. No way. I'm losing. West Virginia with an air tag. Get ready, NASCAR fans.

The Auto Trader Echo Park Automotive 400. A triple header weekend at Texas Motor Speedway is coming your way. April 12th through the 14th. It's featuring rocking races and concerts, awesome tailgates, and endless family fun, Dalton. It all kicks off with the Speedycash.com 250 on Friday night with the Craftsman Truck series. On Saturday, the Xfinity Series drivers will compete in the Andes Frozen Custard 300. Then on Sunday, crank up the volume with a pre-race concert featuring legendary Southern rock band 38th special. And be sure to hear those engines roar for the Cup Series race on Sunday, the Auto Trader Echo Park Automotive 400.

Kids 12 and under get in free on Friday and Saturday. And for just $10 on Sunday, make sure you get your tickets at Texas Motorspeedway.com. And fans, you cannot miss Michael Waltrip in the fan zone at the Echo Park Coffee Cup Experience. Michael will be on the main stage there with incredible prizes, celebrities, and driver interviews. This one-of-a-kind event will make your AutoTrader Echo Park Automotive 400 experience, one to remember. So get your Texas Motor Speedway NASCAR race tickets and go see the Echoes. Park Coffee Cup experience before the races. It is free and open all weekend.

Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. And here we are for Ask Junior on this Tuesday. And I've got Amy with me and my wife. I thought it would be fun for her to sit in on Asch Jr. We talked a little bit about our Easter vacation. We talked about the Xfinity and the Cup race and a lot going on there. Looking forward to the questions you guys have for us today. So let's get started.

Yes, first question coming from Jordan. It is the 24 years ago today to your first Cup series win. Wow. What do you, I guess, just what comes to mind when you hear that? What do you remember about the day? Well, I remember a lot of weird, a lot of tiny things, but I about busted my ass one time on the outside of Ricky Rudd. I think I was putting him a lap down in turn two.

I don't know why that stands out to me. but I was leading the race by half a straightaway or something and by wrecked. We had a really, really soft left front spring in that car and a really big sway bar. And so it was all to pin the left front and do some work arrow-wise. And so when the race started or when we're getting ready to start the race, I was talking to Tonya Jr. and I was like, dang, man, I'm a little nervous about that left front spring. It's not a lot of spraying.

I can't imagine that's going to work. And he's like, you know, he's all confident because they had siced it out and were ready and confident. And man, we just, the setup of the car was the difference maker. And sort of going in that left front soft big sway bar setup that would dominate the series over the next several years. We were at, I don't know, we were one of the first teams or early teams to start picking up on that. this is one thing that I don't think it's talked about enough. I brought it up a few times. So we had a pit stop.

I don't know when with several laps to go, and we come down to pit road, that's our final stop, right? But it was, we had enough laps to left in the race that if a yellow came out later, we would all probably come back down and get tires. Luckily, the yellow didn't come out. But we're running along, and I'm racing like hell,

and cross the finish line, win the race. Come, you know, get off the gas, go through turn one and two, come down the back straight away, slowing down, slowing down, get ready to come to pit road, right? And just out of my mind, thrilled, happy, can't believe this is happening, come on to pit road and I go to mash the clutch pedal

and it ain't there. The clutch pedal broke and was in the floor. sometime during the last I don't know 60 or 80 laps the last I mean it worked it was there when I came down pit road for the last stop but sometime between that and the end of the race it fell

into the floorboard and was not going to work and so I went to mash it in my foot there was nothing there and I was like holy shit down there and the pedal was gone and I was like man I am glad

that I didn't have to use the clutch, right, to come down pit road, getting my pit stall, or anything like that, or accelerate out of my pit stall. We'd have lost the lead. We'd have not gotten off pit road good. And so we'd have probably not won that race without a doubt. Do you have any idea when it happened?

No. Not the last time you used it. It probably broke off. The last time I used it was coming off pit road for the last pit stop. Okay. And so I guess the vibration, something, something, allowed something it didn't like about you know I don't know how it fell out or how it broke but it

was completely foobar yeah and so that I always think about that and um yeah I mean just a always fun to see um always fun to see this is what I love about social media man they you're gonna like I'll see that post today Somebody will post it a fan or NASCAR handle or somebody. And I love that, you know, I always love going back and watching races and remembering moments and reminding myself about what I was involved in and things I was a part of. And so it's kind of be a fun day today. Is that when your dad stuck his head in the window and was like, enjoy this?

Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, he's, you know, that was a cool moment. and some of the best advice you could give somebody. It really is because when something great happens to you, it's hard for you to absorb what's going on, right? And as race car drivers or anybody, you're already looking toward the next thing, right? And in a very, you know, you might celebrate in that moment in Victor Lane,

but once you're starting to button up and wrap up and get ready to go home, you're thinking about tomorrow or the next race weekend and all those things. And dad's like, hey, no need to do that. Enjoy this. Like, let it sink in. And so, that's cool. Yeah, it was, it's just good advice because you could screw up and not really enjoy the moment and move on too quickly, right? And so there's no shame in taking them beat and letting yourself have some fun.

and you're not going to, you know, some drivers and some people that are that laser focus or that committed to success are already, you know, moving on to the next opportunity or the next race to win. This next question, and I'm being interested to hear both of your answers on this, is coming from Suzanne's least favorite household chore. Oh, laundry. For me. Really?

It's always been laundry. I don't mind doing the laundry, but putting it away. Yep. And I think you could tell that by the side, you know, by my side of the closet. Oh, yeah. It's a mess. And it's clean. It's just hanging over there.

Yeah, right. Stacked. Yeah. It's like, you ever go to those places like people travel to people travel or like when we went to, we went down this long trail on our trip to Hawaii when we were in our honeymoon? And we go out to this beach. It took like three, it was like a two mile walk to get there

and they stack some stones, people stack stones. That's Amy's closet. Like the, yeah. I keep hoping his OCDness will someday get in there and help me put it away. Me?

I don't know where this stuff goes. Yeah, you do? I, I, uh, dang, which one do I not like? Um, I hate doing the dishes. But, you know, it's, I don't, it's probably not the one I hate the most.

Probably feeding the dogs. I don't know. I mean. What is your list? You got like four things? Yeah. I don't have a lot. I feel like feeding the dogs would be easy, wouldn't it?

Feeding the dogs is easy. It's just a new task that he's tasked now with remembering. So that's probably why he doesn't like it. No. The dishes is always, I mean, it's not fun, but I can't stand having dirty dishes in the sink or, like, having food sitting out. So, like, the closet thing doesn't bother me because it's clean. stuff and it's not going to create a bug problem, whereas the dishes will. So like, I get real

annoyed with Dale because he'll have a pan soaking. I've just cooked dinner and he'll just go put his clean plate or his plate he's just used in that soapy, nasty water. So now I have to fish it out. And that's really annoying. Yeah. I'm with you. That's not what you ask, is it? My least favorite chore is emptying the black tank out and then the car. Dush. That'll make sense. That will be a paint. I'll say this. That will be one thing I don't look forward to is getting the camper back and having to clean it up. After we've used it, you've got to clean the floor, you've got to wash the outside of it and all that. Yeah.

So that whole process is probably not going to be as much fun. This will make sense to all the YouTube people in a bit. Listen to the full show. We got time. Amy, are you still good on time? Sure. We got time for one more question. Any new records for the record player? I know you play. Do you use it very often?

My friends at the Danger Summer coming out with a new record called Gravity, I think that's the name of the album, but I'm a huge fan of those guys, and so they got a new record coming out, so I'll probably buy that. But I'm good. I mean, I have, you know, unless new stuff comes out like that, right, that I want to buy. Red Clay Strays, they just, I think, signed a new record deal, so they'll be probably pumping out some records here over the next couple years.

But so like new stuff of bands that I enjoy, but I'm good on, I think I'm pretty good on all the things historically that I wanted. When he wants to get a collection of something, he doesn't just like kind of him-haw and linger about it. He goes hard and he buys all the things he likes.

He makes a list and he's got it cataloged. And so he's got it all in a tub the things we're going to take to the beach. And at home, like the record filing, system is full. Yeah. And it's all lettered, you got the dividers and all that. It looks like one of the record stores in the mall. I know you guys have not seen before in your life, but yeah. You used to go through and flip. I've been to a record store. Oh, yeah? Yeah. We had one at school. It's organized.

At school? No, at college. Oh. No, we weren't that cool. Wow. That's neat. All right. You good? Yeah. All right, man. I appreciate it. Thanks everybody. There's some great questions today. Appreciate everybody tuning in. Anyways, thanks, Amy, for coming in here and balancing out the mood. Yeah, she brought things back. One of the things I thought we could do today is a bit of an audit of the NASCAR season for some of these teams. You know, just between Andrew and Dalton, Alex Tim back there in the back, if you want to chime in.

So up to you, buddy. But surprises, disappointments. you know, kind of what stands out. I will go, let's go with surprises. All right. All right, let's start first with surprises. Surprise by a good. Right, good surprise.

Yeah, good surprise. So I think my, my biggest surprise this year is probably how much better, how much better the 51 of Justin Haley and 15 of Kaz Grawler, or running. Rick Ware racing. I think, you know, I talk about our short attention span and us forgetting things easily. I think we forget how terrible this team has been for so long. They, I mean, if they're running last in every race, if BJ McLeod wasn't there last year,

you know, no disrespect to BJ, but, you know, they didn't, they were not going to, they were going to be probably at most times the slowest car. And then Rick Ware was like right in front of them. And then there was the rest of the field, right? I feel like that when Justin Haley sat here at this table and was all excited about going to run there, I'm thinking to myself, man, I don't know. How could you be excited to go there? They don't run good.

They've had moments where they have like a good qualifying effort. but for the most part, they always kind of faded to the rear of the pack and struggled to sort of battle around those final few positions, never really having a good day of, you know, they never really were one of those teams that would pop off a 20th, right? But he was excited to leave Colleg and go there. I thought, what hell does he know that we don't know? Well, I think that they are showing,

I think they're running really well, and I'd say that's probably one of my big surprises. I hoped it was going to happen for Justin because I thought he was very likable. I did a great job at our interview here at the show, and when he left the room, I was hoping that this was going to work out for him, but I did not have a lot of confidence. How much better? I mean this in no disrespect, but they're 32nd and 33rd in the 3rd in the state. standings out of 35. Yeah, I know.

Is that like... Well, they're, you know, they're ahead of Harrison Burton. They're right on... And Zane Smith, like, that's it. They're right on Ryan Priest's heels. Listen, I... If you look at the piece of paper in the numbers and statistics,

it looks the same in terms of performance. But if you watch the race, right, and you're watching where the car runs, I see them I see them I would love to know their average running position compared to last year

because I believe that might that might be a good stat to say okay that shows me they're running better consistently week in week out it's you know they're not necessarily shown up

on the point standings but they're passing the eye test you know you see the cars more often on 51s up there running in the top 10 at Bristol and stuff like that yeah I don't know for me like and I

I did some research on this. Justin Haley, first seven races this year, average finish 26.4-2 compared to Cody Ware first seven races of the year, 27.7. So he's running a position better, the first seven races of the year? I know that's not necessarily what you're saying is the determining factor. It's the eye test, but still, I don't know. That's where I just don't necessarily see eye to eye in terms of them. being this great big success compared to last year.

Well, when I, all right, and I like you have a great point. When I look through the list of trying to find something that's a bigger surprise, I don't really see it. Look, Carson Hosevar, 24th of points, I think he's done a great job. Am I surprised by that? It's probably higher than I would have thought. Todd Gillen sort of stepped it up this year. some moments where you're starting to see that team run better and comparable to Michael

McDally's teammate. There's things like that, but I just think that just in, I mean, Rick Ware Racing, just, they were, in my opinion, I don't, I hate to say this, but to make my point, I think I have to, they were mailing an idiot, man. They were, they were just there for the charter. It wasn't about race down. results. They ran that as a business to make money. And it didn't matter as much. I mean, their finishing result was definitely not the priority it might be for other teams. And it seems

there's been a shift in their approach and how they want to manage, you know, their expectations. They seem to be putting more of an emphasis on performance. And I think that I see that in the race. as I watch it. You know, are they, are they a whole lot faster or a whole lot, you know, they're certainly not getting the results. To your point, Andrew, their results don't show that. But there was a, there was always a year. There was never a time in NASCAR when you didn't have a really shit team or two or three or four

that were just always going to be battling for that last position. and not doing much to change, right? Whether they were financially strapped or what, they didn't have the means to improve. You always had the independence, you always had the people that were doing so much more with way, way, way less. This is probably the first time I can remember ever

in the history of NASCAR where there is not a forgettable, unremarkable team in the series. I think that's fair to say. I know that there's time. Listen, I know that there's people are going to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's races where I forget this driver's even out there.

I get that. Now, there might be unforgettable, unremarkable personalities. I'm just saying organizations, nobody's mailing it in. nobody's there for the check nobody's there for the charter and the long-term you know benefit of

that you know results seem to matter to pretty much everybody who's unloading a race car for the first time in the history of the sport I don't know and so that's why I think that I got to celebrate Rick Ware Racing because they've sort of

been the final team to sort of make that step they've put you know They're out there making that effort. At the risk of, you know, at the risk of the financial hardships that could come from that, right? You wreck a lot of cars. When you race hard, you tear up more stuff. Things get expensive, and then you go from a guaranteed profit to potential of a loss.

You really start to, you know, listen, the way we run our race team is, We could lose money. We could win money. We could lose a couple hundred thousand. We could make a couple hundred thousand. We're running to break even. We've built it to break even because we want to perform as good as we possibly can. So we got this much money and we're going to spend it all to run as good as we can run.

And we're going to try to spend it smartly so that we're as fast as we can be, right? Well, some teams have X amount of dollars, but they're only going to spend this much because they need to make sure that they are profitable and they expect a profit and they want that profit. Rick Ware seems to be willing to get a little closer to that break-even. That's fair. So I think you can celebrate that.

I went a little long on that one. But any surprises for you guys? For me, it was, and it's someone who, I mean, you said you look at this sheet and it's like, all right, well, the front runners are running up front. It's kind of what you expect. This is a guy who I think went from good to great this year in his sophomore year. Ty Gibbs, fourth in the standings, I think stands out to me. He was second in the standings, I think, last week. He's consistently this year versus last year. I don't

think he's a player, I feel like, in more and more races, at least to start this season. Yeah, I like that one. I expected this out of Ty Gibbs at some point in his career. and it's good to see it happening. He seems to be more and more mature as the days go by, and considering everything that he went through with losing his dad and the tragedy of winning that championship and then the loss, all of that, I just worried about him personally how he could move forward, right, and what mental fortitude and stability he would have going forward.

and it looks like he has been handling that amazingly, right? When you hear him on the radio and you hear him talk, he's improving and maturing and believing. And so, and people talk, man, that this guy's talent is pretty limitless. So I think that the way that he's putting pressure on his teammates is good, right? he's pushing that whole organization to be better. So now he's now becoming more and more of an asset to the other teammates, the other team cars.

So this is all great things for JGR. And I think we all feel like that wins right around the corner. Yeah, I would say one or two this year. Right. Yeah. It's coming for sure for him. Yeah. My surprise is John Hunter Nemechek.

Because he is right outside the playoff door. and that team last year was not good. Not good. You're right. He is doing pretty good. I ought to give me a little credit. 17th and points. Team made Eric Jones 22nd points.

You know, there are only about 30 points or 20-something points between them. I, yeah, this team looked awful last year. That's all, you know, to their credit, man, you're changing manufacturers, you're losing all these assets, right? When you decide you're going to leave Chevrolet, they still. stop, you know, they turn the faucet off. You're not getting resources and things anymore and support. And now, and becoming the new guy in the room with all of the other established Toyota teams, right? All of these teams are vying for those resources, and it's all money and time.

And the manufacturer is only going to give you so much. And each team's going to be in this sort of pecking order, right? So they're sort of the low guy on this totem pole. And they're doing a lot with that, right? And that's what you have to do for like Brad Kislauski and his team, right? They were kind of below Penske and they've sort of elevated themselves with better and better runs. Now they're sort of vying for Ford's attention, ford's resources, forge time, forward's money. And so that will be the one thing that will allow them to catapult.

them toward the top of the standings is that manufacturer support. And so Toyota, John Hunter and Imechek, Eric Jones, that whole organization, they're fighting for that same attention from Toyota. And if they continue to outperform some of the other Toyota teams, that's how they'll get progress in that organization and they'll continue to move up these rankings. But John Hunter is a, John Hunter has good talent. Mm-hmm. All right. There's some other, there's some things that I don't know.

There's some things about his driving and his racecraft that are a little raw. And if he can clean those up, sky's a limit. Or, you know, not the sky. What's the limit? There is no limit. No, the sky's, I mean, there's a limitless. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Yeah. That's a good. Yeah. The ceiling is the ceiling. The ceiling is the roof. Yeah. Oh, man.

I'm trying to be nice. You know, the guy, sometimes some things he does on a racetrack, they kind of get under my skin a little bit, but, you know, because they're things that hurt him too, right? You know, it's like the thing on pit road at Daytona with Josh, you know, he spends Josh in his box,

like, just give that up, right? Get in behind Josh and let Josh in, and you go on. but it costs him and Josh the draft. Yeah. That's just little things like that where he's like hardheaded in these little moments where he doesn't need to be. He's like bullheaded, like, you know, stubborn. You know, there's this little sort of part of his personality, right? Yeah.

And those kind of come out with us in the truck series during, you know, when he gets into the deep playoff runs, there's these little things that kind of come the surface and I think he's got to work on that. He's got a chip on his shoulder, right? He's been trying to make it all his life. He's finally made it. He's still got a freaking chip on his shoulder and he's like, got to prove to the world. I would say this is definitely his best opportunity he's been handed thus far.

Yep. I don't know if this necessarily surprises me, but it's a standout. What do you think of Daniel Hemrick in that 31 colleague car 29th in the standings? All right. Is it positive? I mean, are we going to the disappointments? Maybe we're going to the disappointments. Is that what we're doing?

Yeah. All right. Let's go to our biggest disappointments. I would have to say that I have to wonder, like, what is the collic, right? So what are they, what is the plan? What's the plan going forward? I, fans do a lot of, fans do a lot of, you know, spinning of the rumor meal. in terms of, oh, man, you know, there's these rumors about charters, right?

And you always hear colleagues name sort of dropped in that rumor meal about charters for sale and whatnot. And it seems like that colleague came in with Chris Rice and all of those guys, and they were chasing trophies, chasing trophies. I mean, even as recent as last year, man, they would have, they were moving, Amending around just to go run tracing trophies at the Xfinity series. Right. Missing practices and so forth. Making decisions like strictly based on trying to win this race today. And then in the offseason, has something changed in this organization?

Has something changed in their, have they gotten more conservative in their approach? Have they had, did they mash the reset button? Yeah, I don't know what the, I'm really, I'm really curious as to where this team is in five years. It's, I just, you kind of said it like, what direction are they taking? I thought AJ, like, he won the Roval last year. He's a proven winner in the Cup series if you wanted a playoff contending opportunity. And like even Chris Rice said it, like, AJ Almondinger belongs in a cup car. Like, can we win every week?

No, absolutely not. But can we contend, yes. And that was with AJ in the car. It's like, well, there's so many road courses now. I feel like with AJ and a cup car they could win, I don't know. I just don't see their decision making and just don't quite fully understand why they put certain drivers where. Yeah, me too. I would love to know what AJ wants.

Yeah. Right? Does AJ want to run the cup car every week? I don't. I wouldn't. It is age. And where that team is, yes, you can go to the. road courses and have a chance.

But man, the rest of the season, you're going to be more frustrated than not, right? And do you necessarily have to put yourself through that? Going back to the Xfinity series where their cars are competitive and there are road course races to win, he had a lot of fun. Look like he really enjoyed himself when he was racing full-time in the Xfinity series for colleague, right?

Was that more interesting? for him where he is in his own personal life? I don't know. I'd love to hear from him. Because, yes, A.J. was the one thing that sort of was helping that cup team get traction, right? And now, you know, I know that he still comes back and, you know, he'll have a spotlight run here and there in that second car. But he's not in it every week, right? And so that, the, if you, if you, you know, a part-time team in the Cubs series is going to struggle.

No matter who foots the bill, right, a part-time Hendrick car is not going to run as good as the other four. No matter who's driving it and what emphasis they put behind it. You've got to be out there every week, always learning, staying on the leading edge of technology and knowledge and all those things. And so that's got to suck for Hamrick to not have a teammate like AJ, right, to be sort of leaning on and helping him push forward and make some progress. It's going to be a long year for Daniel Hemrick, I think. I think you're right. Anybody else got any other sort of disappointments?

I mean, I feel like you could make a case for like each kind of grouping. Yeah. Like, you know, in the top 10, I don't know, I'd like to see Ross a little bit more in the hunt to win some of these races. Sure. I just think that he's around, but, and he's doing a good job, obviously, getting points,

but I don't know. You got Cendrick. Cendrick and Joey Lugano at 19th and 20th. That's kind of a little bit shocking for Joey. It's shocking. Yeah, a little bit shocking. All right. I think Joe Ligano,

his season and how it's went and where he is in points, 19th measures up even with my disappointment, I guess, for like a colleague or my confusion around like, what is going on, right? I think Joey's even, like, you can see in his eyes, like, when they cut to him, like, mid-practice or any time, you know, he seems to be like scouring the earth for answers on like, what in the heck's happening. Yeah, I wonder if this is a lot of, like, a run's going to come later, like he did when he won his championship, right? Like it was like, yeah, lackluster season, all of a sudden he takes off. Yeah, I want to say, I'm actually not too worried about Lugano.

Not worried. At this point. But, you know, when you have Blaney at 5th, who's running the same equipment. Sure. And then you got Joey at 19th. And Chase Briscoe's above him. John Hunter Neumichek's above him. Yeah.

You know, I think he's a better driver than. How long a runway does Austin Cendric have before he gets, what, put it on the hot seat? When is he on the hot seat? Yeah. soon. I would say pretty soon, yeah. Someone might say he's on the hot seat soon. Others might look at, you know, Joey Legato or even, you know, William Byron and say,

well, you know, those guys took their, took time to sort of find their way. Could tie Gibbs, though. He didn't take time. No, he didn't. No. My last one is because I'm such a fan of his, Zane, I'd love to see him get him. off that bottom spot. Yeah.

But it's going to be tough. Listen, I know that I guess track house has got some involvement in that car. How much, I don't know if we'll ever know. But I think Zane is a very talented race car driver with a bright future. And whatever's going on with that deal, they need to get it right. I think seeing, I think he should be neck and neck with car. Carson Hosevar. That's what I think he's capable of.

And if that car is getting support and help, like I think it is, I think it should run there. Who's your dark horses for this weekend? I know one. I don't know if he's a dark horse anymore after this past weekend. Going to Martinsville. Who runs good there? Martin.

Martin Trex, Jr. Dark horse. I know. Dark horse? Who runs good at Martinsville? Blaney, Blasano. Dark horse. Dark horse, Chase Briscoe.

Nobody's going to pick Josh Berry. Josh Perry's going to too, yeah. Tell you. Josh Perry, that's a good one. I think if you're, you know, I think Alex, if you're going to, um, can you, like, I'm an idiot. So can you, like, play, you can place bets for, like, X driver to finish top three, top five, right?

Top three, top five, top ten, yep. I think Josh Barry should be in some of those bets for that. He is, on the last couple weeks, he's been on Dirty Mo Do's radar for our top 10 because he gets pretty good odds at plus money. Right. So he's on my radar every week. Well, Martinsville is kind of his home track. It's where he won the 300 in the late mile stock race there. He won his first Xfinity race there.

I don't know what it is about this phenomenon. But wherever you win your first race truck, Xfinity Cup, you tend to. to have steady above average success at that track above any other. Like Texas, right? I go win my first affinity race there, go back, win my first cup race there. And every time I went to Texas, whether we did or not, I always had a better disposition, a more positive attitude, and more times than not we'd have a great result.

I think really the only top five I had in my last year in 2017 was, Texas. And so I think Martinsville's that track for Josh. You know? Yeah. If you can get him now, say,

say he goes on a, you know, he progresses and gets better or better, his odds are going to. They can keep going up. Go up, right? And so I think now's the time

to attack on, on Josh Barry at Martinsville. Your best finish in 2017 was Texas. Yeah. Fifth. Right. Yeah. And so,

yeah, I think, that that's kind of the dark horse for me this weekend he ran so the thing for him has been he had to go out early

and qualifying I can't remember where he was in points going in to Richmond but if he if so if Josh can so you know

you don't want to be like the first in the first five five or so cars to go out and qualify but um I don't know. I think that's kind of what hurt him this past weekend because they had a really good car in practice,

goes out early in qualifying, has a bad qualifying lap, and then drives through the field, kind of like Bubba Pollard, right? Bobb Pollard goes out first and second off the fucking pace, man. I was like, what's going on? But it's just that bad going out first in practice and qualifying. It's just that bad.

And so if Josh, my point being, if Josh can qualify this car in the top 20, he should have a really, really good shot at a top 10, top 5, even a top 3. Well, hey, since we're kind of talking about previewing the upcoming weekend at Martinsville, I mean, Dirty Mo Doe, that's kind of what they do. Should we bring in? I know we kind of heard from you, Tim's, but maybe we haven't heard what the bets are. Yeah, what are the bets to make this week?

All right, so asking Tim's about Josh Barry and. I know that So how successful were you last weekend? It was hit or miss. I kind of went ahead, a different strategy. I picked a lot of race winners and was trying to use the cash out option

that Fandu offers to try to get multiple winners in one. And it worked, I got Lugano, made some profit off him, and then I bet Hamlin using that profit, and he ended up winning. All right, so that's something I'm curious about. So you, before the race begin, bet Ligano or who?

I bet a couple guys. True X, Larson, Ligano amongst others, Blaney, but he didn't know. To win? To win. Yes. So you got multiple bets, single bets to win. Yes. And you cashed out on one?

Yes, I cashed out. Lugano was running second, third all race. Never even at the speed. What was the bet? The initial bet. The initial bet, like, amount? Yep. $10.

All right. So what was the cash out? I made $14. So it was about $24. Wow. Yeah. And then you take that 24. And I put it on Denny Hamlet.

And put it on Denny to win. What are the odds at that point of the race? It was right after that final pit stop where he was a little later. And his odds when I got it were, I think, plus $350. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's a little good payout. Yeah.

That's how you make some profits. It's two winners. So that's something that I never even heard about. And I don't know how long ago that started his live betting. It's a newer feature. It is, yeah. For NASCAR at least, yeah. I'd never used it before either.

So I tried it and was like, oh, this is nice. So it was a nice little learning curve. Interesting. Yeah. All right, so what are the bets this week? This week, I do like Blaney, do like Ligano. They're really good here. We mentioned Josh Barry and Briscoe.

Those are guys I want to target more in head-to-heads and top tens. You know, right now the only lines out are race wins, and Barry's actually 25 to 1, which is the highest or the best he's been all year. So they have responded to his good run at Richmond, which stinks, but it's still good value. But one guy they have kind of left off the table is Alex Bowman. And he's right now 30 to 1 to win. And he's, he didn't finish well last week, but he's had some good runs.

Sneaky good at Martinsville. Sneaky good. He's a guy I'm going to watch too as the week goes on. The odds come out for top 10 and stuff like that. Gotcha. Well, I think that, I think, you know, I think that'd be a good bet for a top 10 because he had this blazing good start last year.

Then he got hurt, broke his back. and when he came back, he just couldn't get it going. Reset seems like the performance, at least, you know, I don't know about the results, but the performance is, you know, he's in 11th and points, three top tens, or three top five finishes out of seven starts. I mean, that's kind of what, that's really as much as anyone else. So, I mean, the performance seems to be improved on Alex. so I think that would be a good

I'd be too nervous to take him more than a top 10 Yeah he's a safer bet for a top 10 Yeah even if he qualifies well Yeah well Be interesting to see how all this Pays out Did you

March Madness is starting to wrap up We're coming down to the final four How are things going there? We didn't do well last weekend My bet's good to not cash No Now Clemson is in fact a basketball old school now. But Alabama

beat them, so that's good. I still got my Yukon guys in, though. And that's my heavy favorite to win right now. Well, we'll see how that works out. I watched the Iowa LSU game last night. That was pretty good. That was good. Yeah. Anyways, man,

appreciate everything you do for us at Dirty Mo Doe, Alex, or Tampa Tens, as he's known. Dirty Mo Doe drops every Thursday on all Dirtymo media platforms. You don't want to miss it. They preview all kinds of sports but also the races. Steve LaTartre given his expert analyst on some of the bets.

Do you guys keep a running tab on like who's having more success? I keep a tab of mine. I don't know sure about the other guys. In terms of like, obviously, you know, really just in terms of like your claims, right? Yeah. Steve feels the way you feel the way. Yeah. Right.

Who's been right more often than not? I would say, I mean, I don't want to say me, but me and Steve actually agree more often than not, which is, I don't know if that's good or bad for Steve, but. So the professor, Russell, comes with factual stats, right? How often do the stats and the facts back up reality? Recently very well. He's got, I think last week at, well, Cote of the week before,

he had like six or seven of the top ten correct. Really? Yeah, so he was on it. Damn. Yeah. All right. Well, then you need to pay attention. Watch the Dirty Mo Doe.

They're going to give you all the information. If I was going to be gambling any money, that's the guys I'd be listening to. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Thank you. All right. White flag. Time for the white flag.

Dropped already this week to tear down with Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. Action is detrimental with Winter Denny Hamlin and Doorbupor Clear. hopefully with everything going on this weekend none of those shows got us into any trouble dropping tomorrow Speed Street with Cotter Daily and Chase Holden and then Thursday Dirty Bodeau with Steele of Tart, Tampa Timms and the professor they're going to

tell you everything you need to know about the upcoming race weekend in Martinsville. DJD Reloaded is on Thursdays as well last week we had Parker Clingerman and Jim Pullman joined the show and they discussed about crew members' roles in post-race altercations and things, man. Got a little interested?

They did. Got heated? Tense. Weird? Awkward? Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Well, you just never... It was very entertaining for me to listen in. I will say this, man. The Thursday DJD Reloaded Show has been the most unpredictable thing we've done this year. It is... You never know what you're going to get. Leading the charge. Yes.

You just don't know what's going to happen on that show. the beauty of it. It is. And that's, yeah, exactly. So anyways, it's been a fun show. I feel much more relaxed, getting all that frustration off my chest. I am a, I love NASCAR and I'm looking forward to this weekend. I enjoyed this race weekend at Richmond. I had fun.

I thought it was a great race. And look forward to the next one. And looking forward to tomorrow with Bubba Pollard. Make sure you tune in. We'll see you then. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.