The Dale Jr. Download - 548 - Sonoma Caution Chaos & My Go-To Beer

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

As NASCAR returns from wine country, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back in the studio to react to the chaos and dominance race fans saw this past weekend in Sonoma. With the bump and runs, tire strategies and aggressive restarts, there is plenty to unpack:Sonoma repave was not a problemRoss Chastain dust-ups with Kyle Busch and Chase ElliottJosh Berry has a big momentToo many caution laps?Dale’s change of heart on Sonoma tripsSVG wins two in a rowRace winner Kyle Larson calls into the showIowa repave expectationsDuring the Ask Jr. segment of the episode, listeners wrote in questions regarding:The status of Dale’s Denny Hamlin bracketRyan McGee’s recent article about the NASCAR charter negotiations Dale’s favorite NASCAR Race Hub memories  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. And it's Tuesday, so it's Dirty Air. And a lot happened this past weekend at Sonoma. A lot happening in the sport of NASCAR and motorsports in general in our own lives. And we're going to cover it. Let's get started. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. You're Dale Jr. Download.

Del, Del, Jure, Download. Go, stop, row. Where are we going with it? Your download starts now. All right, back in the Bojangles Studio. Well, I'm not in the Bojangles Studio, but the rest of the team is. Andrew Curlin, Dalton, those guys are back at the Bojangal Studio,

and I'm still hanging out with my family on this summer vacation, traveling back and forth. And I'm coming to actually come back into town to see you guys here in a couple days. Man, you guys getting excited. Oh, yeah. I've been counting down the days. We're looking forward to it. A quick thank you to today's Dirty Air Sponsor Tire Pros.

Just the other day, I saw one of their mobile vans over at the race shop helping a teammate get their tires change. The convenience, man, it's unmatched. Find a van near you at TirePros.com. So let's see we had a lot happening this past weekend in Sonoma, and was a very exciting race. I guess we can dive right into that if you want to. Yeah, just what? What's your initial reaction from Sonoma?

Well, I mean, you know, I got, yeah, we had all this, we had all this complaining about the repave and, I guess, you know, the track tore up a little bit during some testing. And there was a bunch of, there was a bunch of nonsense on social media about that. And Marcus Smith and his, team took a you know this is before we went to Wilkesboro everybody was like oh they you know they're they're cheap and they're cutting corners uh Wilkesboro's going to be a disaster so we go to Wilkesboro had probably the best short track race as far as the race track and how wide it was and how

race it was the best short track race that the next-gen cars ever had and then we went to to Sonoma and any real issues with the surface of the racetrack. So I know we all kind of forgot about that, but that was pretty hot and heavy there for a while. So I'm thankful that we got out the other end of that race with not only the surface intact, but the race was great. You know, the race was exciting. There was some cautions, more cautions than I expected because, you know, when you're racing, I think Denny talked about this on his show.

On a new surface, you kind of rubber in the preferred lane, which is really only one lane at a road course. And if you get off that lane, it's either very dirty or there's no grip. And so, you know, drivers are pushing real hard on those restarts, trying not to lose positions, trying to take advantage of guys that are getting themselves in trouble and getting offline. And people would get put in bad situations that would end up creating a yellow or creating a caution. We saw mistakes, contact, cautions, and cautions have restarts that deliver more of the same. So we had a great battle toward the end, which was good. You know, some drama with the fuel on the 19 car. So even if Martin does hold off the five,

I think he does win the race, right? But I was pretty happy with it. Had some different strategies, teams electing to stay out on the racetrack. can keep track position. Other teams trying to get the fuel in the car so they could have a unique strategy toward the end. And the tires on the five made the difference. I think he drives up there and wins the race due to their strategy. So that was cool.

Had some fireworks right at the end of the race with, well, with Ross getting into Kyle Busch looks like from on board that NASCAR posted on Twitter that Ross was quite a ways back in that breaking zone downhill into four. It's a downhill

right-hander when you charge that breaking zone in the old cars you wheel-hawk in this car you can slide the rear brakes and slide the rear tires I mean lock up the rear brakes but it's downhill and so

you really try to get more, try to go further and get on the brakes really, really hard. The car's trying to tip over, really. So the rear tires are trying to come off the ground, and the further you push it, the more that happens. And so that's when you get the rear lockup, and it's kind of what happened with Ross. He wasn't, he moved over to try to get to the inside.

He wants to be able to get to the inside of Kyle before the apex, and Kyle also broke into the corner really deep, so they get into the corner relatively. Ross isn't in position, you know, so he knew right in that moment that he was in trouble and just slid the retires and wiped it, you know, wiped the aid out. Was that an accident? Was it accidental? Yeah.

Really? Oh, yeah. You didn't think it was accident? I don't know. Just like knowing Ross in his history, like I thought, like, DBC's like, you could, like the don't give a tour's back and you know it started with this you don't think so no i don't agree with that i think that i think that could ross have avoided that yes could ross have realized as soon as they

as soon as they both get into the brake pedal i think there's a moment where you can go all right kyle is going to equal me into this breaking zone and you can tell that really quickly and you can say okay I'm not going to get the spot here so I don't know if he had that choice or not but he didn't

run into the 8 on purpose you see him swing the back you see the back slip step out he corrects into the 8 and then he's like at that point I'm you know I'm just I got to go sorry this is happening to you, Kyle Bush, but I've got to take care of the rest of my lap.

And then the rest of his lap we saw as well on the, I think it was NASCAR, tweeted out the N-Car of Chase Elliott down into turn 11. I think it was really hard to tell, but we know that Ross is a blocking SOB. Ross will block, and we love that, right? We love that about Ross. We don't wear Ross to change. We love this. We don't get none of this without Ross.

I want more of it. Yeah, I do too. I like it. I'm not saying Ross needs to stop. But it looks like, now, when they get into the breaking zone and turn 11, it looked like Chase goes right to try to outbreak Ross or at least show him the nose a little bit, and Ross maybe made a move to get in front of the nine. It's hard to tell.

But watching the race all day, there was a really shallow entry into 11. There weren't a lot of cars that were using the traditional, you know, brake straight out against the pit wall and then turn in really wide and try to drive off the bottom of 11. A lot of cars were driving in shallow and tight to the wall and making a bit of a diamond in the center. And so the line that had, the line that it looked like Ross was going to take wasn't really that, unusual and then it looked like chase jumped to the outside yeah the left side of ross and i can't tell if ross made a move there i can't tell but one way or another chase was like chase was either like hey i'm going to pop you in the ass and move you up to track and take the

spot or we're both in here over our heads and i've just got to hit you to stop from you know because i can't slow the car down i'm not quite sure what happened but as i mean as far ross gets out the other end. He loses a spot, but he gets out the other end. He gets to finish the race. It's a harmless little moment. And there's a hundred of those that happened throughout the day that you probably hardly ever see at Sonoma.

He netted out because, you know, he gained a spot from Kyle Bush there. Well, yeah, it's a wash. Yeah, right. So you don't think. He can take it, you know, as well as he dishes it out. So, you know, I don't know that Ross was anywhere public. complaining about that. And so...

I think he just said he didn't, at least like with the eight, he didn't really know what happened, right? That's what he said on pit road. That's his excuse every time. It's like, I don't know what happened. I'm sorry. Yeah, is that, like, is he really sharing exactly what he actually knows what happened there? Ross is a good race car driver and he knows exactly what happened.

Right. He might not want to... I will say this, Ross is. Ross is not really always that eager to be a sound bite. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, we've tried, you know, I've had some conversations with Ross about coming into the podcast from time to time.

And the vibe that I get from Ross is Ross and me are friends, and I like Ross a lot. And even away from the racetrack, I think he's kind of a fun guy. but the vibe that I get from Ross is he's fine telling you what's going on on his terms. He's not going to let it be on somebody else's terms or he wants a little control over the narrative and he doesn't want to be this week's sound bite. He's not going to get out of the car and say something that then we're going to listen to all week long and all of us going to debate, and he's going to have to weather that storm, right? So he's really careful and selective about how he, you know,

how he shares whatever message he has when he shares it. So I kind of like all that about Ross. I'll be honest with you, man. I kind of, I think Ross doesn't rub me the wrong way. I'll just say it like that. I mean, that's kind of the difference. Like, when I think about all the race car drivers in the series, it's like, damn, do you get under my skin?

Do you annoy this shit out of me? I think you screw up a lot. Can I not stand the sound of your voice? You know, if you're not doing any of those things, it's pretty good. And so, like, even with everything that Roth seems to kind of get himself into, I'm good with it because it doesn't annoy me. He doesn't annoy me with his actions, and he doesn't annoy me with the way he chooses to handle it afterwards and so forth.

I mean, sometimes we see him go up there and, He's, you know, when Noah approached him, right? I mean, we got to see Ross handle his business right there on pit road at Kansas, I believe, wherever that was. Yeah, I think it was Kansas. So, I mean, I'm good with it. And as a broadcaster, and I think, too, as a race fan, I see a lot of fans have different opinions about Ross, but I think when you're a race fan, like you love racing, you have to realize that you want your racing series

to have a driver, at least one, like this, right? And we might not like all the drivers or we might dislike certain ones, but those guys are all necessary so that it brings some dynamic personalities and clashes to the series. you're watching or you're a fan of. So we all should appreciate everything. We're getting out of Ross as he goes through his career.

Yeah. I was going to say, do you feel like he's still the same old Ross? Like, do you feel like we're still getting the edge that he used to have last year kind of before that Darlington incident happened? Like that conversation with Justin Marks? Yeah, it feels like I feel like I haven't seen much of Ross. I haven't heard much of him recently. Well, the one thing that I'll say about Ross is, I think,

that he knows when he doesn't have the hand to play or the race car to do business with. That's a great point. Ross isn't the kind of guy

that's stirring the shit up no matter where he is in the field. Right? And so he's only going to give you that sort of that sort of action that we tend to get from Ross

when he has a car capable of doing something with and when his car isn't what it needs to be he doesn't make waves which I think is a good thing because it's a sign of a bit of maturity like you realize as man you know I don't need to be the story every week especially when I'm running 20th today my shit sucks right

I don't need to be bringing, you know, I don't need to be bringing unnecessary attention onto myself. And so, and that's kind of the way I think he deals with it out of the car too, right? I don't want to bring unnecessary attention to myself. At least that's the vibe I get. Maybe I'm not, I might be wrong about this, but I feel like he's pretty measured about all of those things in and out of the car. Now, if he's running in the top 10, he's trying to take a spot late in the race.

We're going to get Ross, right? And that's who he is. A lot of the things that we see in a driver like that, that's their personality coming out. That's that person's personality and who they are to the core playing out in how they drive the car. And a lot of those things are not you're not able to take out. You're not able to change. You're not able to, you know, you can't, you know, you're not going to fix that if that's something you want to fix. that's who that person is

and so there was a there was another big crash in the race Josh Barry trying to throw a block on the 43 car I got some text messages big one friends that said Josh Barry went bowling yeah yeah yeah there's someone

someone who tweeted like the we bowling yeah did you see that that was hilarious yeah it was it was it was it was unfortunate because

you know Josh is as I've been I've been singing the praises of Josh for a long time right and I'm a big fan of Josh and he's in a year where he's he's

you know he doesn't have all year him and all of these drivers that are trying to find jobs for next year and trying to you know all of the Stuart Hawth's charter shake up sort of has all this dust up in the air and there's all these drivers

really kind of looking for a home, and he's one of them, and they don't have the entire season, because teams want to get this nailed down in the next several months, right? I mean, we're really halfway through the year. You'd want to be able to know who's driving your race cars around, at least through maybe the end of August. I mean, this has to happen in a pretty relatively short period of time, and every race is a tryout or a job interview for all of these drivers.

And so Josh maybe didn't do himself any favors there with that. But just looking at that situation, all those drivers are coming through turn 10, and everybody's trying to take advantage of each other. Or they're two, three, four wide. You got somebody off in the dirt on the outside of turn 10 coming back onto the racetrack. And Josh is pretty low. for the entry to turn 11. There's a lane below him,

but that's not really good racetrack. And so I think Eric Jones dives to that, drives into that lane. He's going to try to get to the inside of Josh. And I would assume that that part of the track has no rubber. It's not, it's not been drove on, it's dirty. It's just not good. It's not, you know.

And so where Josh went to protect, a part of the racetrack that was probably not necessarily important to protect. And I think in that moment, you know, I don't know that I did this really well in my career, but I did learn this over time, that, you know, if you go to a road course, and this is not for just Josh, this is for literally everybody from 10th to the rear of the field, okay? when you go race at Sonoma or any of these road courses, and you know that you don't have a car, either don't have the car or the real raw ability to win the race, right?

You're not one of the better road course racers yet, and you can tail in practice and qualifying. You just don't have the pace to go out there and duke it out with Truex or any of those guys up front, right? That's okay. And so you kind of have to go into those races with this really unique mindset that you would never really use anywhere else. You go into those races and it's all about staying on the blacktop and staying in a forward-facing position. And you've got to give a lot.

And it feels sort of unusual and sort of against your code, your personal code, to begin. giving and sacrificing so much. Like taking it easy, safe fruit? Not really, yeah, it's not so much to take it easy. You cannot take it easy at Sonoma. You have to grind every freaking corner. But there's these guys out there that are going to dive bomb. They're going to get in over their head on corners like Ross.

And they're going to put you in bad situations. And in all of those moments, you have to really. realize that you've got to live to get out of the corner. Right? You can't fight that fight right then because you're not going to make the corner. Right? And so all that matters is getting out of that corner and going to the next corner and the next corner. But you've got to grind.

Racing at Sonoma is one of the more physical races that I can recall because you're using parts of your body that you're not used to using, turning left and right, use some muscles in your back and stuff. that just aren't really that used to working that hard, as opposed to going around in ovals. So, but anyways, when I would go to those races and I had good speed, I'd maybe argue some of those moments. I mean, it's easier to do that in the top 10. But when you're like 20th or 25th,

and it's nose to tell and everybody's driving like a jerk, you've got to kind of realize that you kind of got to pick your rattles a little bit. And sometimes you're going to get used up and lose more spots than you really want to in a corner. But man, those races, the way they play out, if you look at the rundown and look at a lot of the guys that finish in the top 20,

they just didn't do anything wrong. They weren't spectacular, right? They weren't, oh man, this guy was fast all day. they just didn't do anything wrong, right? And they walk out of there with a half decent result. But this is coming from a guy who, I think, finished in the top 11 at Sonoma once or twice in his life. I didn't really have a great track record there. But I think that also qualifies me to make that comment because I did all the shit that you shouldn't do.

And I did put together a couple good races. And so I've been on all. I've done some good things at Sonoma, but I've done a lot of bad things there too, so I understand how you can get yourself in trouble there. When you say you did all this shit that you weren't supposed to do, so like you didn't follow that advice of, you know, be more give, you took more when you were raced?

Right, yeah. You know, you'd get a guy that would dive bomb you that you just passed, right? You just passed a car. You know you're faster. You know if it was just you and him on the track by yourselves. you could beat him. But something's happened in front of you that's checked you up a little bit, and he's now dive-bombing you into the corner or trying to pass you back,

and he's going to – he's in position to take the spot, and you're going to go, nope, I'm going to argue this on the outside, and we're going to knock fenders and beat and bang and jump a curb, and now I've got my shit all messed up. I got a tire rub, or I'm off in the dirt, or I'm spun out. and so even though you know you just passed this guy you worked three laps to get by him and he's going to get back by you because of something's silly going on in front of you you have to let it happen sometimes and that's hard to do because you work you know you

you don't want to give up what you just work so hard to get but this race the turnover and the churn of the field throughout an entire event at sonoma you're going to get that back. And there's, you know, there's going to be so many varying strategies on pit road that are going to take you completely away from that driver at some point in the race. And so it's important to try to keep that in mind when you're running, when you're, you know, when you're not a top 10 car and you're running those races, that's how you sort of get out of there with something reasonable. Man, I'm going all the way to the West Coast to do that is frustrating. Going all the way to the, you know, we raced, we race all around the East Coast

and you have good and bad days. And then here it is Sonoma weekend. You're going to a racetrack that you don't have a great track record at or I didn't have a good track record at and I was going to fly all the way to the West Coast to get my ass kicked and get and do something stupid and get disappointed. That was my mentality every time I was, you know, getting on a plan to go to that race. How could I get out of there at least not feeling that disappointed about it, right? Yeah. Salvaged something. Yeah. So, I mean, that was the attitude. Now, you get there sometimes and be like, we're fast. I don't know what's going on. You got something going on. Practice is going good. All right. You know, and then your whole attitude changes. But

you don't know that until you get there, right? Yeah. So not only did you say that it's kind of like a physical and mental battle every time you go to Sonoma. Then you have this race, which there were eight cautions and for 22 laps, there were cautions all over the place. Are you for this kind of chaotic style of road course race or do you prefer one that's just like someone goes out there and whips the field's ass? Yeah, I don't want to watch a, I don't prefer. I do not prefer seeing a guy destroy the field. That's not, I don't, I don't go to a race going, damn, I hope somebody yards the field. If it happens, I can appreciate it. And if it ends up being that way, we went to Kentucky years ago,

and Truex beat the field by, like, what, 13, 20 seconds, it was something stupid. He was just, you couldn't catch him. I'll look it up. No one had anything for him. You don't have to look it up. People will remember that night. It was miserable.

It was one of my first, I think it was my first or second year in broadcasting. But, I mean, the race sucked because he was just so much better and everybody else. But then I got out of there and I was like, damn, man, that was amazing how much better his car was and how fast they were. I'm not really that mad that the race suck. I'm just really disappointed because I think a lot of people

will walk away going, damn, that sucked. I didn't enjoy NASCAR, right? I want people to walk away from every race going, I love NASCAR, NASCAR's the best. And that wasn't going to be the case that night. And that was really what I would. was upset about. It wasn't the race. It wasn't that Turex kicked everybody's ass and the race was you know, boring. It was that I knew people were going to have adverse reaction to it. And so

that was what I was actually bummed about. I've been around the sport. You're going to show up. Sometimes the races will be amazing. Sometimes they won't. You just go to the next. You know, and that's completely different from complaining about how the car. races on short tracks, right? That's not the same thing. But I thought that race was fun. I always say this, man. I love seeing the drivers challenged.

I know the drivers complain sometimes when the challenges are unusual or unique. When there's some variable at the race weekend that they're not used to seeing, that they would rather not have to deal with. But I love when it's hard for our guys to do. what they're doing. And I felt like this weekend certainly challenged them in certain ways and made me look forward to the next Sonoma race. I'll be honest, man, I hated going out there. I mentioned that just a few moments ago. I did not like going to Sonoma. But as I got older, I mean, you know, in the last probably, once I married Amy or me and Amy were dating even,

and she started going with me. So Amy would be like, you know, if I went to Sonoma, by myself. I'm like, screw this, this sucks. I don't want to go. I got to go. I don't want to do this, but here we go. Go out there, sit in a hotel room, go to the racetrack, be miserable. Run good, run bad, whatever.

Survive. Yep. Now when I'm, you know, Amy goes with me, we get there and she's like, all right, so what are we doing? Where are we going? We're not at the track. Where are we going to go? Let's go to dinner somewhere.

I'm like, I don't know where to hell. go around here right we went I went to Alcatraz we went I think there's this town on the on the other side of the bridge the go the the San Francisco Bridge yeah on the other side of the bridge there's this sort of like bay town called salsa Lido or something like that we went there one day and just kind of hung around um Petaluma is amazing. It's a little town near the racetrack. We stayed in a couple different resorts

over the last several years that we went in my career. And you know when I got into broadcasting we either had that weekend

off and we still went on a couple occasions. I think one year we went out there either 2018 or 19 we went to Sonoma during the race weekend and didn't even go to the racetrack. That would have been like the week before you were to start broadcasting, right? Yeah, yeah. What was the occasion just to go?

Yeah, Amy just was, Amy was a big fan of going out there and we had a friend that wanted to take us on this wine tours. I don't even drink wine. I'll drink a little white wine from time to time. Yeah. Pinio Grigio. That's what I like to call it, Pinio Grisio. It's Spanish. Pino.

That's my favorite. You don't like that kind? No, no, no. It's fine. I like pinio. But that's what I like to drink. I got some, I got some of that stuff. The first time I ever drank white wine.

I don't drink red wine. I don't, it just doesn't look appealing. But the first time ever drank any of that, I was in Australia with Paul Morris and his dad and Paul on a winery called Simmeret, and he gave me some Pinio Grigio. And, dude, I was like, this ain't half bad. This is pretty good. A wine guy now.

Simmeret, dude, it's Australian, and every once in a while I get a bottle from him. But that's, I love, and so now that's the only type of wine, type of white wine that I like to drink. But I don't drink wine often. But anyhow, we went out there one time to Sonoma and did these kind of wine tours. Super fun. Oh, man. And you get so silly. I mean, you know, which, yeah, which I'm fine doing that.

That's always fun. Yeah. That's always a good end goal no matter where you're at. Yeah. Being wine drunk is certainly different than being two drunk. It definitely is. Yeah. I did learn that.

I get the giggles when I'm wine drunk. Right. Yeah, I mean, we had... Tim's, I'm going to start calling you giggles. We had a blast. It's always fun. Everything's funny. So the, we can move on from the,

we can move on from the cup race and talk a little bit about the Xfinity race. Yeah. Pretty, I mean, aside from the very end, it was relatively uneventful. There was that one big one in the big, like right in the middle with Ty Gibbs. That was like the turning point in the race.

Yeah. So there were some conversations with me and my friends about that wreck. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, my friends were immediately like Jeb Burton. That's his fault, right? And I think I'm not 100% sure if Jeb took any ownership of it. I mean, everybody's running into the back of each other. Right? And I mean, I know when somebody's pushing me, I can't really turn.

I can't go that direction. I can't turn my wheels and go that direction when somebody's shoving me. I'm going to just keep going straight. So it was just, you know, that was a nasty wreck. Just a bad situation where everybody was just not taking care of each other. People were saying all weekend that's like the worst part of the track visibility-wise too. Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah. There's been some big wrecks there.

I've been in a few over the hill there. Just because it's blind, you're coming up over the hill. You don't know if a car is sideways. You can't lift because you think somebody might be sideways in the track. You can't just lift because you think you're going to get beaten in the next breaking zone. But that was not just one person's fault. I'll say that, that wreck. And the 19 ripped the right front off and then does donuts and this teammate comes along.

I know. He wrecks him. Yeah. Yeah, it runs into it. That was a little comical. But aside from that, the race was relatively uneventful. Junior Motorsports just kind of had a couple that worked hard to get decent results. And then we had some other cars with some mechanical issues.

And just kind of an up and down day for junior motor sports. And that's the way the road courses tend to go. I don't get too up or down for any of the road course races as we talked about it. I think I've said that I don't love the road course. road courses that much, but I don't get that hyped up for the road course races in our series. But the end was entertaining, and SVG wins, I guess, two in a row now. And so I think, you know, how that plays out with the 21 and everything that happened at Cota, that was good theater.

Yeah. Entertaining. Yeah. it was a good theater. The fans loved it. I mean, everyone on Twitter was, you know, there were memes, there were, you know, petitions and hashtags and all this stuff. People are big on SVG right now.

What did you think of the burnout on the entire cool down lap? You saw, did you see the picture of Austin Hill giving him the finger too? Yeah. What did you think of that? That was, it's poetry. Like, it really writes itself. Just this burnout and middle fingers going out on the window. It's perfect.

I, I don't know what to think about this. That was great. I mean, the race was great. The bird, the burnout, everything that, you know, how them two have interacted. SVG gets out of the car and says it best. We've both taken a race from each other. Yeah.

And I've, the all, you know, the way, I've paid attention to V8 supercar for quite a while and probably about 20 years ago, I was really heavily into V8 supercar, and the Australian and New Zealand etiquette to racing is very physical.

Racing was very physical. They would race each other really, really hard. But it was always it was I'll give you whatever you give me. And if you're if you're going to be that physical with me, I'll be this, I'll be exactly the same amount,

you know, back. And it was always really, there was never like, you know, you didn't see a guy get moved in a corner and then the next guy take him out in the next, right? It was more, the physicality just kind of continued to ramp up. Each one pushed a chip in, you know, as the races going on. and it was always pretty measured, but super physical. And so SVG gets out of the car and says, you know, I did what I did, but we can now both say that we've both done this to each other.

And I thought that really, that's the way, that's the etiquette that they, that I think that they use in V8 supercar, which is a very fair, you know, matter of fact. and I don't think SVG has a problem with Austin Hill I think he could I think he and Austin Hill could sit down right now and go

all right man we're even all right you think you think Austin Hill feels the same way about that I don't know I didn't say Austin Hill Oh sorry yeah SVG I got you I think they could if they set them at a table

and got them to agree SVG is like we're even I got you I think that that could be the end of it I guess what I'm most curious about is like where does it go from here and will SVG continue to develop to where this could play out at an oval somewhere or is it only going to be in these moments when we go to the road courses where SVG really excels there's two things there

maybe more than two things. All right. Does SVG and Austin Hill continue to brawl? Unlikely. Because right now SVG isn't where Austin Hill is on the ovals. Yeah, no. He's not. He's not, he's not.

Right? And so this probably doesn't have the potential to continue to fester, right? That's one thing. Austin Hill, what, how does he, how does he flip this? narrative a little bit that's sort of been created around his reactions to these moments. I would say that when he came into the studio and we sat down and had a conversation with him, I thought he was a great guess. And I think the guys got a pretty great head on his shoulders.

And the person that he's sort of painted himself in a corner to be in the last handful of weeks is not really the guy that I think he truly is. Would y'all agree with that? I would definitely agree with that. I think that he had this kind of like swagger last year a little bit and now it's a little bit of a, I don't know, like the- He seems to be painted more as a villain this year. Yeah, definitely. I mean, he said after the race, when they asked him about it, he said any opinion I have is always wrong, so I'll let them figure it out. Would he have given that answer last year? No. No. So that's, what does he do going forward to, does he lean into this? Does he try to flip it? What can he do to flip it? Right. Because I don't really truly believe that he wants to be that

villain. Right. He's a big boy. He has a bit of a bully vibe at times. But there's other moments when he does, he's just taking care of business. He's just standing his ground. And I can see him do something and go, yeah. I mean, if I was him, I'd have done that. But I don't, I think that, you know, everything that happened at Charlotte with him and Custer, you know, he's right about everything up until he wrecks Custer on the back straight

away. Yeah, right. Right? He's right about everything. Custer and him, race hard off the corner. They clash down the frustrated away. Custer wipes him out, he can get out of the car and complain like hell, right? But what he does on the back straightway is inexcusable, and he shouldn't have done that.

And then this happens, you know, so it's sort of this domino effect of he needs to change the narrative a little bit. You know, he's certainly winning a race and doing things like that will help. But I feel like that he's taking a little bit of a detour. He needs to go back a little bit and get back on the right. path in terms of his you know reputation how he's perceived because I don't believe that that's truly who he is right that's one thing that's concerning and that's that I'm curious is how it plays out and then the SVG part so SVG has got this opportunity to race full-time in Xfinity series he's winning some

races on the road courses which we hoped are unexpected from him and I think as he does that more people my myself included are going to pay more and more attention to the oval side and how those results are trending. I know that colleague has been a bit up and down this year, so it's hard to know when the car is struggling. I mean, you can certainly look at the other colleague cars. He's not just getting blasted by them.

He's actually running relatively close to them, if not in front of them. because SVG, if everything goes as planned, since the plan was made a year ago, he's going into the Cup Series full-time, right? Yeah. And he has a lot to learn in terms of racing on the Oval. So, you know, as he continues to win on the road courses

and that likelihood of that full-time cup ride continues to materialize, then we should start taking more stock in his oval progress, right, so that we can know what to expect from him next year. How long will it take him to, because DBC was saying he could start practicing right now for Iowa and he's still not going to match up to the guys who are so experienced at the ovals every single week? Like how much time do we need to give him of like, okay, we're Obviously, our expectations are different. You're still racing the ovals.

But, like, when is that, you know, experience level? When do we cross that line of, okay, now we're going to start expecting to see SVG perform on, you know, on all types of tracks, not just road courses? I guess the only other, I guess one great comparison would be Juan Montoya. Right. Yeah. I don't have Juan's stats in front of me, but I remember there being about a year and a half to two and a half years of him just sort of figuring it out. And when it really all came down to it, where did we all land on Juan Pablo Montoya as an oval racer? Mid-tier, like nothing memorable, right?

Right. Yeah. I mean, this was a great race car driver. Yeah, I don't know of another comparison to that. You know, a guy that's been racing a certain style his entire life, and now it's going to switch over to ovals in a stock car. I know it's not really a stock car. I mean, this is literally almost identical to what he's been racing all his life.

Yeah. Right. So, I mean, there's that part of it you hope is going to help him. be able to adapt quicker to the ovals. But the thing that's probably the most challenging for anybody, myself included, to get in the next-gen car in an oval is understanding how the air works. So now that the air goes underneath the car and back to the diffuser, how that works in traffic is completely new to anyone.

And all of the drivers like Denny and all these boys that have been racing this car since it came into the series have been learning that. And they can, some of the things that we already knew about dirty air and how the cars would react behind each other are applicable to the next-gen car. But everything about the air going underneath the car to the diffuser and how to keep that happening to the best of your ability when you're in traffic, that's the big trick. in this car. And so when you're in 20th and you got eight cars in front of you taking up a lot of racetrack,

where do you go to get as much air as you can underneath that to that diffuser? You're not going to, you know, for all our life, we went down in the corner and ran the line we wanted to run. For the most part,

you ran where you wanted to put the car. And now you have to look at everything in front of you, all of the other cars, and where they're at and go, all right, I think I'll have the most air here. So I'm going to run on this spot in the racetrack. It's not really where I want to be, but it's where I'll get the most air to the diffuser. And you're doing that every single lap, every single corner.

That's one of the things I find the most fascinating about the next-year car and the drivers and how they've had to adapt and learn how to keep air on that diffuser underneath the car. So they already know everything about oval. racing that SVG doesn't know. And they're starting, they've got a year or two on him on learning how to use this particular car at an oval. So it's pretty challenging.

And he's in, you know, he's not running that many ovals. And it's an exfinity car. Like can you even say that it's the same thing? No. So he's not, he's not getting any experience with this next gen car on the oval. So everything he's learning. about it on the Xfinity side. He's almost bad habits.

Maybe not the right word, but... He's only getting about 50% of it. The fundamentals of Oval Racing. He's going to... I watch Josh a lot, and I watched him transition and try to go run the cup car, and I watch the races.

I go to the racetrack and sit there and watch him, like, have those damn moments, you know, what the heck moments, when he'd go down in the corner and follow somebody in the corner and lose the whole car because the air wasn't on the diffuser. And he had to learn like,

shoot, I can't follow him down in the corner like I could with my Exfinity car or any other car I've ever driven in my life. I've got to offset a little bit or whatever. So there's a lot. This week, I guess to summarize what I'm trying to say about all this shit with the Xfinity series is this, the end of that race was compelling, great storyline, dramatic, good theater, fun stuff. Cheers.

I don't think the SVG all. Austin Hill thing continues. If it does, great. More importantly, what does Austin Hill do to change the narrative a little bit about him in terms of public perception and SVG, his development as a true NASCAR complete package race car driver. Those two things. Peak managers right now. All right, we got Kyle Larson calling in to the Dale Jr. download on this Tuesday. Where are you at, Kyle? I'm sitting in front of HMS right now. Are you supposed to be in there in a meeting?

Here's soon. Like 30 minutes, we'll do our five-team debrief, and then that will roll in to the competition meeting at like 1130. So, yeah, back to work. I appreciate you giving us a minute of your time. I know you got a busy schedule. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this past weekend. You were on the offense late in the race with tires.

What's your preference? in those moments. Would you rather be on the defense? I'm the kind of guy to give me the tires. Let me try to do my best to figure this out. I hate being out there on used tires when somebody's got new tires running me down. Yeah, I agree. I think at least in my past history, I feel like I do better when I'm on offense.

I feel like the times when I'm on defense, it's just, I don't know. I think you end up abusing your tires even more, trying to hold people off. and then it just compounds, you know, the disadvantage that you have and then end up doing worse. I feel like there is a couple guys out in the field that are good, really good at, you know, being out there on defense on old tires, but I am not one of those. So, yeah, give me new tires and, you know, let me see what I can do. Obviously, there's times when you need the track position and you have to do that. But, yeah, I was happy to be, you know, it seemed like at a pretty high advantage, too, on my tires as long as we stayed out.

So I thought that all worked out really well. When you got close to the 8 and the 19, how bad, it's hard to tell watching the race. And so I was kind of curious as to how much the dirty air affected your car. We noticed you lost a lot of lap time when you got to the back bumper of those guys. but you were eventually going to get by, it seemed like, and the night team runs out of gas, so that would have been a non-issue. But how bad was dirty air? Was it more than normal?

Was it not as bad as it usually is? How much of a problem was that? Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, I thought it was better than normal there, I think, because you have the track grip. And then, I mean, also, though, I mean, I was on, gosh, 10-lap, for tires or so. But, so I really didn't think that it changed a whole lot as I got closer to them.

I thought, you know, my lap time kind of was slower because, you know, I was trying to be patient. They were starting to race. You can't charge your brake zones as much, you know,

because you're not going to pass them. So you're just kind of going in there, you know, to their pace a little bit. But, like, I feel like, you know,

turn two and turn 10 there would probably be the only corners where you really struggle with maybe dirty air. And I thought, you know, in turn 10, I was, could be really close to them and felt similar on balance. So I think the track grip probably helps more than anything, you know, feel, feel like, at least for me, that I didn't lose a lot of grip when I was getting to them. We got Iowa coming up this weekend. I know you did the tire test there. Looking at the photos from the repave, it's pretty crazy that, you know, the things that we're seeing as far as how they chose to patch the race.

track and I'm trying to remain positive but it looks pretty pretty crazy what kind of racing do you think we're going to actually see there I mean I can't imagine that you would want to be anywhere but on that new asphalt and that's going to make you know it's going to make things really challenging yeah yeah I mean you're going to have to be on the new pavement when we tested there it was so slick. I mean, it took probably four hours for us to make like comfortable laps.

But then, you know, once the grip kind of came in, it was normal. You know, really grippy. But with only three cars there, there was like lots of marbles just outside the groove. So if you missed it by an inch, I mean, you would

lose a second on your lap time. So I'm curious to see if it'll be like that still, if we'll have a bunch of marbles, you just outside the groove. And I think if you do, I think that you'll lends itself to mistakes, and then hopefully that it will help with passing.

So, yeah, I'm trying to be positive as well. But, you know, we'll see. I think it's got progressive banking too, so that should help. But, yeah, I don't really know until we get there. The breaking zone into one is still really rough because that's still the old pavement. So it's extremely rough.

The front stretch down into turn one is extremely rough. But once you get to the new pavement, and it's very smooth and grippy, but we'll see. We'll see. I don't really know what to expect yet, but I know we won't be all the way to the wall. And the old pavement anyways. Yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun, I think, to see, and hopefully the race ends up pretty good.

I mean, I've been working really hard to try to get this opportunity, and hopefully the patchwork repaid doesn't ruin it. Appreciate the time you give us today, man. Good luck going forward, racing for a championship, and tell everybody at HMS and say, hey. I will. Thanks a lot. Thanks for me on. So awesome to be able to talk to a race winner again this week

and just kind of get an idea of what to expect coming up in Iowa. The repave, I go back to, I think the best thing that I could tell people to go watch is when they put this brand new strip of payment, up in the very top groove at Pocono. This was, shoot, I don't know, 2008. I don't remember when they did this, 2012. I remember it being there and being something you had to use when Harvick spun Nagano in turn three that year in the COT.

But when they put that page, up there in that turn and turn three at Pocono. We all went out there in practice and we all run the usual line. And then, you know, you're looking at the speed charts. Everybody's running the bottom of three and four like always. And you're looking at the speed charts, figuring out where you're at, okay, we're doing okay. And then somebody goes out there and you're not, you can't see because you're, you know, track's so damn big.

You're in the garage. You can't see where people are really physically, literally running on the racetrack. We didn't have SMT and stuff like that. that back then. Somebody popped up like eight-tenths faster. And you're like, damn, that's a mock run, a qualifying run. What was that? And then you go look at the, you know, another car does it. And then another car. And you're like, what is going on? Get out on the racetrack, right? And you're driving around in practice, getting ready to make another run. You go off in the corner and somebody runs up on that grip strip in front of you. And you're like, they're on that new asphalt up there, way

at the very top of the corner and you go up there and try it and it's like holy cow it's like not even close how much more grip this has and so from that moment on you had to be on it you never if you ran the bottom you were going to get beat by half a second and you know it was uh and it was like that for several trips back to that racetrack before the bottom sort of came you The top lost enough grip to where it about evened out to where you might be able to use the bottom, but it took a while for that to happen. So I'm going to be completely shocked. When we go to Iowa, what I think is going to happen is, you know, Larson made a great point about how slick it was.

He meant the new asphalt. And once they put rubber down, it started to get comfortable. and then, but anywhere outside of that little groove, that car width of a groove they were running, was nasty, a second slower, a whole second. And so, now that will get better with more cars on the racetrack. But not a lot. Think back to the very first time we all went back to Michigan

when they repaved it, how wide the groove was. It wasn't. It was one car width. and you had to be right in those tracks. And if you got out of that groove to let a faster car by, or if you're coming up on a lap car, they didn't want to get out of that groove. It was so treacherous.

And when they did, they were like a whole 8, 10th second slower. That's what it's going to be like. So you have that happening just in the new asphalt, right? You're going to have this one groove that you're going to have to be in. And then if you get out of that groove on the, the new asphalt, you're in big trouble. And then if you're, you have a third layer of treachery, which will be the old asphalt, which is, it will be, it will be a, it will be, um, no man's land.

You do, you'll, no one will ever want to be on the old asphalt. you're never going to go there with the expectation of getting underneath somebody or pulling alongside of another car to complete a pass. No chance. So I don't know if we'll actually learn just how much faster the new asphalt will be versus the old asphalt. But you're kidding yourself if you think that there's going to be multiple grooves

and you're kidding yourself if you think you're going to use that old asphalt racing a normal line. You're never going to want to be in it. Once they work that new asphalt groove in, that's where you're going to have to be to be competitive. And it'll not be

wide. It'll be relatively narrow in terms of that that groove on the new asphalt, that groove will be pretty tight and narrow. So I hate to, I guess, you know, I hate to be negative about it, but it's interesting because it sounds negative and I think it's negative, but I'm intrigued at the same time, right? I'm intrigued. It's like I cannot.

Frankenstein of a repave. Yeah. While I feel like what I'm going to see might not be what I prefer to see. It's going to be interesting. I can't wait to see it. Kind of like a car wreck. Right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you can't look away. I cannot wait to see it. And so I think the only thing that we can go, like, you know, we're going to probably be really intrigued and entertained. And, oh, man, we're going to have all kinds of comments. I think social media will be blowing up about, you know, what their opinions are. of the racetrack and the patchwork and whether they like it, whether it was the dumbest thing they've ever done, and why did they do this? Iowa, you finally got your cup date.

This is what you do. I mean, that's probably, I can't wait to read social media during the race, but we may see these moments where, you know, they're going to have these restarts and cars are going to go down in the corner, and like I told you, there'll be one groove that you have to run and there'll be two sometimes three cars trying to put themselves in it and when they can't when one of them stakes claim to that preferred line what do the other two do right right they're screwed if they don't screw the other guy right there's going to be a lot of hopefully we see it but there will be a lot of going on particularly on the restarts yeah i was going to say like

Does that the choose cone, does that greatly influence what lane you may choose? You know, if one lane is like so clearly better. Whatever you'll choose, if one lane gives you a better chance of getting in that preferred groove in turn one and two. Right, yeah. So let's just, let's just, let me backtrack just a bit, okay? Let's just assume that there is a single one-quarter. one car wide groove through one and two and three and four, right? Let's just assume that that's what you're going to get.

You're going to have a racetrack where there'll be one lane that you have to be in, and if you're not in that one lane, you're going to be at least two to five tenths slower. All right, so restart happens, you're side by side, and then somebody goes three wide or jumps on your, you know, you're at least two wide, maybe three wide, and you're all headed down in the corner, and you're all going, And I want that groove. And so does he. So does he. Right.

And so what do you do? And you've got the next-gen car with this fabulous diffuser that everybody needs air to. Right? That's true. That's good. Yeah. That screws all kinds of shit. Yeah.

It's going to be entertaining, but not in the usual way. I thought they read. I haven't talked to anybody, but I just, you know, I make assumptions. I thought that they repaved this track because of the bumps, because all my Xfinity guys say the bumps there are nasty, especially down in one and two. And I thought, okay, they must have needed to repave this racetrack because the next-gen car does not handle bumps.

Well, the drivers don't look, you know, the drivers talk about it being rough on them physically when this car goes over curbs or whatever. and Larson says that a lot of the bumps in the braking zone to turn 1 are still there. Still there and still pretty severe. So that's another thing that I don't envy for these drivers having to, man, when you got your head, you're in that headrest and it's tight, and you go, well, man, I'm across a bump. And this next-gen car rides the bumps worse than anything.

It's so stiff. God, dang, man. they're just, it's hammering you, you're banging your head against that headrest and lap after lap and you're, you can't drive around them. You got to go through them. I don't need to that. That kind of plays into what I was going to ask you is they, I believe, if I'm getting this correctly, that Jeff Gluck said he spoke with NASCAR and they said that they didn't have enough time to do the full track. How do you feel about that? Well, it's unfortunate for everybody, because doing the whole track would have absolutely been the better decision here.

But, again, like, Iowa has been begging for this opportunity. They have been trying to get this opportunity for so long, and you would hate to have to make them wait, and would they get that opportunity next year? So, you know, there's all kinds of other ideas out there floating around. I think NASCAR is trying to get to Mexico City. so that's going to cost somebody a race next year and it's like these Iowa's and St. Louis's

and all these one-offs are the most vulnerable tracks if I was to make an assumption like I love to do. So, you know, if Iowa doesn't get this race, do they ever get another one? We don't know. Yeah, like how much of a tryout is this? I was about to say it's an audition. and if that kind of seems like they're,

to use a phrase of being set up to fail a little bit in a way? Could be. I don't know. Dalton, I think that's everybody's sort of underlying sentiment, yeah. Gut feeling. And it's, you don't want to, you know, props to you. I don't want to say it. I don't want to say that.

I don't want to put that out in the universe. I want NASCAR to succeed. Right. And we may see something truly entertaining. and intriguing, but not for the usual reasons. So I'm staying hopeful that it's going to be a good race. And I guess I'm hoping, based off of what you said, that no matter what, they're going to get the thing fully repaved after this show.

I hope so, because they said it was due to weather, because it gets too cold up there. So hopefully after this, they have the whole summer. Like, there's no excuse now. Make it happen. So NASCAR announced this past October. I'm reading an article that a repave would, would occur, leaving them a narrow window to get it done in time with three months of winter

halting all the progress. And of course, they need to get it paved before they can go tire testing there. So, yeah, your window gets really close. Well, hopefully, if they have this race, regardless of the result, they do get a full pave on that racetrack. And I feel like that if they did, man, it would open that place up. I would love to go race there, but I'd never have because of the bumps, hearing about how bad they were how rough the racetrack was. Me at 50 years old, I don't need to go through that. I don't need to put myself through that.

So I ain't going to do it, you know. And I, you know, I'd love that racetrack to, it seems like, you know, the next-gen car doesn't suffer from, you know, the repaves as bad as, you know, what we might assume. Like the other car used to. Yeah, I mean, there's been some repaves. that maybe don't work out, but most some of them do. I'm not as worried, I guess, about repays like I used to be

with the next-gen car, because, man, it don't matter. These guys, that diffuser, they have to find clean air. They have to get out from behind the car in front of them. No matter what. Repave the track, it don't matter. They're going to use all of them. Arrow still. It's less about the grip, more about Arrow.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. This week's segment was brought to you by Tire Pros. There's few people who love cars as much as I do, but these tire and service experts, they equally love the drive. They offer a huge selection of brand name tires and full service repairs, from oil changes to alignments to brakes.

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Changing it up. Yeah. I got one for you if you want. All right, fire away. Amy posted an Instagram photo. She sure did. For a bunch of Instagram pictures of y'all at the beach. You look very relaxed.

You look very comfortable here. That's a great picture. For the camera right there. No, it is. It's actually like a really good quality picture. picture. It's just funny because you're like, if you've got this pink sparkly floy around your neck. And you got like this tough look about you, but like you're, you're using the. The face doesn't match the setting. That's for sure. I mean, it's like, I'm a bad ass my sunglasses, but here's my pink floaty keeping me up.

So I was in the swimming pool with my kids. T.J. was here with his family. We were all in the pool. we had a bunch of these little floats for the girls because there were probably, there were three kids, right? Or four or four kids. And so we had to have floats for everybody. Pools, the pool's rather small, to be honest with you, which is fine. But so there were four or five of these little ring floats in there.

And I just, you know, just hanging out, floating around with everybody having fun and grabbed that one and didn't even think nothing of it. Amy took that picture. And I begged her, I was like, you better not be on social media. And she waited for like three days. That's the, that's the, knock it in there in the back side of the post. Picture 10. Like, maybe he'll never see this.

But yeah, that's going to cost me for many, many years. I mean, that lives forever, right? And the further removed time-wise, the, the less context there is. And so, you know, that thing's going to pop up, you know, five, ten years from now. And it's just going to be the most weirdest thing. Right. But anyhow, I'll have to, I'll have every time, I can see, I can see me having to explain where I was, what was going on, why was there a peep float in a pool for the rest of my life.

but I always find that anything out of context is funnier so maybe you just don't give any context. Yeah. What's wrong with the picture? Hey, I mean, you know, we we are in the throttle this summer. Having a good time. Things you're going well. Hell yeah.

I saw something else. You know, I always do, I was thinking about this last night, and this is how I settled my mind, right? This is how Amy doesn't ever. make a bad social media post. I agree with that. It's calculated. I will stay confident in the fact that she doesn't make any bad, bad social media posts.

So hopefully this doesn't turn out to be as much of a mass as I think it might be. Is that your official statement? That's, yeah, that's his PR statement. We're going to tweet that quote later from his account. Yeah. Yeah. I trust in my team, you know. The best thing for me.

I saw something else, Dale. You know, you are a fan of beer and a particular kind of beer. And according to beeradvocate.com, your favorite kind of beer, the Budweiser Select 55, is the worst rated beer on that website. In the world. In the world. It is the worst tasting, worst everything. How do you feel about that?

That's amazing. You know, okay, so I've worked with Budweiser for, you know, I don't know, almost 10 years. And as a, I guess, you know, when you have that kind of relationship with Budweiser, we did a lot of amazing things. They put me on this deal where I still get beer. And so the beer truck comes by ever so often, once a month or whatever, and drops off a few cases. And when I became a dad and I got a little bit older, I still love to drink beer. And I really love to drink beer, but I didn't always love the way that, I didn't love always.

I love drink a beer but didn't always want to be intoxicated, right? Not all the time, right? It's fair. So let's just, yeah, let's just be clear about this. And so, also I was, I've been kind of on and off diets all my life and, or not necessarily diets, but counting calories, right? But those don't count. Beer calories don't count.

Yeah, right. And so I found, you know, Miller has the 64. and Bud has the 55. Outside of that, the next sort of category in terms of calories is going to be your Bud Lights, Coors Lights, Miller Lights, Corona light. All of those are going to be in the 90s, right? 90s some calories. And so I'm thinking, man, I can drink 2.55s to 1, you know, Bud Light. Right? And so they have half of the alcohol, so they're 2.4, I think.

And, you know, I'll get up in the morning, dude. When I'm on vacation, I'll have a beer at 10 o'clock in the morning. Damn right. Hell yeah. Ain't anybody will tell me what time I can drink. I'll drink what I'm on. Right. And so, and I'm going to drink some days during the summer or on a weekend or whenever.

I'm old drink all day. And so I can, you know, you can drink those 55s from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, they have half the alcohol and half the calories and not, and still be functional, you know, in the back half, you know, in the back half of the day. Yeah. It's a marathon. It's a marathon, not a sprint. You still play the, uh, the back nine all right. Yeah. And I'll, I'll slip in a, a regular beer in between a couple 55s. You know, if I feel like I need to bump it up a notch, I'll slide a, you know, one of the beers that I've been enjoying this week is natural light. I've been drinking a lot of those. And so I'll slide a natural light in there.

But, uh, yeah, I get a lot of shit for drinking 55s from my friends. People tell, some of my friends tell me that I shouldn't even talk about it, but I don't give a, I don't, I don't, I don't, uh, I don't have no shame. Do you drink them faster than a normal beer? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Okay. But I don't think so, not really. I think what has happened is, is that the older I got, The faster I start, you know, the faster I'll drink a, you know, a 16 ounce beverage. Right. Or a 12 ounce beverage or whatever, right? So just as I've gotten older, I just will drink it quicker.

And what I was doing was, you know, if we sat down and Amy would tell me this, she's like, man, you'll drink, you'll drink a regular, you know, you'll drink three or four regular beers in an hour. Like quick, like bam, bam, bam, bam, in 15 minutes, you've already drank a couple. And I don't realize it, right? So, you know, in two hours, I've drank eight, ten beers. And I'm like, you know, I've got, you know, I've got four, five, six more hours in this, you know, in this evening or this day or whatever we're doing, right? Got to save your tires. I got to calm. The 55s was a great transition, man.

I transitioned over the 55s and I can, you know, I can drink as me beers as I won't. And, you know, I like the fact that it has a little bit of alcohol, but not too much. and if I want to switch over to the regulars the unleaded and the leaded and whatever you want to call it. Stick your tires. Yeah. Yeah.

I can switch over and slide one of them in. But I'll say this, man. So the beer, the beer itself has a function. Like it has a, it has. It plays its role. And it plays a role. Yeah.

Yeah. And it ain't like, dude. It don't, it just tastes watered down compared to like a a Bud Light or a Millaright or a Coors Light. It just tastes like you just, you know, watered it way down. Which ain't it, I mean, don't make it, it don't make it the worst tasting beer in the world. I mean, honestly, I would take, I would take every single ale and craft beer and put it above 55 in terms of worst tasting beer.

I cannot stand craft beer. I think that's where this list is coming from. Like all the stuff at the top are these 12, 15% stout IPAs and stuff like that. I'm like, that Budweiser's select can't be that bad. It's not that bad. A bunch of snobs out there. I will, every once in a while, you know, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the that when I go to a, I'm sorry, I can't help this.

When I go to the craft beer places that serve only the craft beers, and I know this annoys the hell out of the bartender, I'm the guy that's like, you got anything that's kind of like a domestic light? Yeah. Yeah. And they hate that, they hate me. They hate that person. And, you know, they probably give me something that ain't even close, just because I'm there. Yeah. You come into our place and ask for that. Yeah. But that's who I am. We've got this dandelion light that you do that, I guess, yeah, I don't know. There's a brewery, There's a brewery in Charlotte, and the description on one of their beers is just crushable. And I'm like, that's the beer I want.

Yes. It's like a 4% beer. It's crushable. And I'm not ashamed. No. No. And I'm going to drink some 55s today. We're live.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Ask Junior portion of this show. And thanks for tuning in. And all the boys are back in the studio, and I'm back in the vacation home. studio. Sand Castle. Yeah, everything's been going good. We've had a great show so far.

Had a lot of fun. Talk to Kyle Larson a little bit about his win, but also about Iowa coming up. He did the tire test out there, and there's some patchwork on the repave. It's pretty interesting. But anyhow, the Ask Junior's brought to you by Xfinity Mobile. It gets you the speed you need on or off the track. It's fastest mobile service with 5G and millions of. Wi-Fi hotspots.

And nationwide coverage that will always come through for you in a clutch. Make the Switch today and save with Xfinity Mobile. They're a proud premier partner of NASCAR and a great supporter here of the Dell Jr. Download and DurnoMode Media. So thank you, Xfinity. So anyways, good to see you, everybody.

I'm going to interview Mario Andretti for our guest segment this week. Good Lord, that's going to be cool. And so excited about that, but also excited about these questions you all got today. Yes, this first question is from Scotty, and we have just finished round two of the Denny Hamelin bracket challenge. How is your bracket holding up after that? My bracket has destroyed, completely, completely destroyed.

I'm out. You're done? Yep. No one left? So nothing. I mean, I had Denny winning at all. I guess when you're a winning at all guy goes out. Yeah, that was me a week ago with Sherex.

It's over. This is fascinating because, you know, last year I kind of went all the way to the end or close to the end, I guess. I had somebody kind of in contention all the way to the end. And in college basketball, which is the only other comparable thing that I've ever done, to this. I've always kind of been in the hunt, at least till the final four.

And so, um, with this, though, your guy can inexplicably, inexplicably be knocked out, uh, in,

in one of the early rounds. And man, I'd be honestly, I really don't like it. I really ain't happy about that. Obviously. And so going forward, in all seriousness,

NASCAR is going to have this tournament. Imagine, like, you know, what this would mean for sports books, for drivers that are going after this monetary reward. Oh, yeah. Should this ever become something that would give you a automatic, you know, round one buy in the playoffs or become something that was, you know, implicating on the playoffs, this could get pretty dang cool. you know, I think it could be pretty colorful and exciting for the middle of the season.

So I'm looking forward to that, and I think that, you know, I guess my mind's cranking away at how do you fit that into the broadcast, right? How will Amazon and Turner want to weave that into what we already do in a typical broadcast for a race? So that'll be pretty exciting. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, my bracket's destroyed. And yeah, I probably, while there are many of you who are still clicking along, watching, I will be wishing you the best, but I'm out. Wait, I proudly predicted Ligano over Hamlin.

So that's my one claim to fame. Pretty smart by you. Thank you, yeah. But Truex got eliminated the first round. He was my champion. So that's where my intelligence ends. We have one sole leader at the top of our bracket challenge with 770 points G-I-A-G Warrior,

who is Larson winning it all, 15 out of 16 in round one, seven out of eight in round two. Damn. That is pretty damn impressive. Like I looked at their bracket. They somehow knew Noah Gregson was going to upset William Byron and Lugano was going to beat Hamlin. Like that is, I don't know.

That's impressive stuff. They might need to go through tech. I don't know how you pick Gregson over Byron. At a road course, right? Yeah, right, exactly. But we have Lugano, Kislauski, Elliot, Gregson, Busher, Chastain, Larson, Raddock, those are the remaining matchups for the Brackett Challenge going into Iowa. It's going to be fun to watch.

Let's see. Moving on, I have my questions all over the place today. I'm sorry, I've got it on like three different sheets. Here we go. I found one of the questions. I need to have a better organization. system here. This question's from Lewis and it's about the, you know, the ongoing charter talks. Jim France, and this is from a great article everyone should check out that Ryan McGee wrote on ESPN.

Jim France has reportedly told teams that NASCAR can't offer permanent charters because, quote, we can only support you as long as we're being supported by media networks. Like, what are your thoughts, reactions to that? My first thought is that I wished Ryan McGee did. more articles about racing because the guy is fantastic. I know. The best. You know, I hate to share him with the sports world. But he is one of the best at what he does, but also a really cool dude.

And it's awesome to hear that nugget, man, because that was one of the things that we knew the teams were pushing hard for. and probably one of the things that was stalling the ultimate, the ultimate, like, agreement. And to have Jim, you know, I haven't heard really much from Jim, certainly not a direct quote. And so to hear Jim come out and say that, like, you know, hey, I read a lot of the quotes in that article. And I've said it on the show, my favorite NASCAR was the build,

France Junior NASCAR. My favorite NASCAR was when Bill and his father ran the sport the way they thought it should run and they were so clever in how they would negotiate with the teams and how they would help the teams understand their position. And so McGee says as much hypothetically he can hear Bill Jr. telling the teams, we took something that you said was worth nothing and made it worth something, right? And so, you know, this is as far, Jim's basically saying this is as far as we can go. You know, he can't, they can't build this bridge to nowhere because there's no guarantee that the media rights will always be this lucrative and that the TV deals.

you know, will last forever. And there's no, there's no roadmap in front of us that says, man, this is where we're headed in terms of how people will consume our races. With streaming coming in and we really don't know where the value is, NASCAR spending millions of dollars on production, building a giant building in North Carolina, to try to create all of their own content. My hope is that one day we'll have a NASCAR challenge,

channel, kind of like Speed Channel or MAV TV, but the NFL network has their channel. I'd love for NASCAR to have its own channel that created all of its own content, showing old races and all of the daily shows that we love, race hubs, and all of those things can live there. And so NASCAR is making this massive investment in itself. I see Jim's point. And I hope that the teams can move forward and agree. But I also think that there'll be other opportunities down the road to bring that argument back up. The teams are always going to want to make the charter's permanent.

If I own the charter, I would certainly be telling you right now that I want my charter to be permanent. When the deal gets renegotiated down the road, however long this new agreement will be, the teams will have a chance to argue this again. And so it's not like, you know, it's not like the end of the road in terms of this conversation around making the charters forever. It just might not happen. It just might not happen this round in terms of the new charter agreement. You know, everything seems to kind of obviously as it should come back to money when it comes to the charter conversation. And Denny kind of took a stance last night and tweeted that he said permanent charters don't cost anything. in response to this.

Do you agree with Denny on that, or do you disagree not to pitch you against him or not? Just want your take on it? Well, I think what NASCAR, you know, I would have to get further into the conversation to understand, but I believe if the teams get permanent charters, then NASCAR is obligated to support those charters through the agreement giving them that amount of money per race that they're allotted to get, right, and getting that guarantee. Well, if TV rights just up and went away, right, you don't know for sure where the TV rights are going to be in five or ten years.

You just don't. The way we consume content changes so rapidly. you know, where will we go to find places for our races to live in 10 years from now? I mean, did you ever think that, you know, all these networks would be switching over to streaming platforms? Did you ever, you know, we look at the, I know this is getting out in the woods, but look at how we've consumed music today versus how we used to two years ago, right? Yeah, so, I mean, you've got to be careful. Right. NASCAR cannot guarantee and depend on those hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars always being there.

Now, if they could, if NASCAR knew for eternity we're going to make hundreds of millions of dollars on TV, they would probably be more comfortable making the charters permanent because they can then financially support the agreement forever. but until they can financially know that they can support that agreement, I don't know that they can make that commitment, right? And so I can see both sides of the argument. I promise you, if I had a charter, I'd want it to be permanent. I would not want the risk of losing it, but, or, you know, whatever. But I can also see NASCAR side of it.

and the traditional list in me really likes when Jim France, similar to his brother, knows what he wants, knows what he can do, knows what he's capable of doing, and puts it out there in front of you and says this is the deal. Yeah, definitely a lot of interesting things to follow. one more question here and you kind of this kind of ties a little bit together. This one's coming from Max. Did you have a favorite memory from, you know, Race Hub, I think, is actually today, is there a big finale show?

Favorite memory from Race Hub and just overall reaction to it moving away? I don't remember doing a bunch of Race Hub shows, to be honest with you. You know, I will say this. I, you know, I worked on the NBC side and we had our show. Race in America on the on a sports network NBC Sports Network it was fun to do that show

and I knew what numbers that show brought in they were they were decent good numbers I knew the numbers that Sports Hub would do they were good it's enough viewership to there's good demand

for this show right while Race Hub goes away, something will take its place. And they'll, you know, same as you know, anything else is when there's demand for this show, there's demand for

daily NASCAR content and someone, whether it's NASCAR and what they're producing or creating with their own production company in Charlotte or in North Carolina there, someone will

bring a daily show back to network or cable television and maybe multiple. So we just have to be patient. But I know it's probably very emotional for all of those people that are involved in that show at Race Hub and at Fox. And there's a ton of turnover and change and you hear a lot of things going on in terms of, you know, a lot of people are losing jobs. But, you know, I would not want to, I don't envy that group having to create that final

show and I imagine that that's going to be a pretty difficult thing emotionally. Yeah, no, definitely. There's a lot of super talented people on the race hub side. I'm going to miss Radioactive. Definitely. Yeah. Well, they're great. And you've had some features on Radioactive, Dale. I know, yeah. The one thing that you did say is they're talented and they'll land on their feet. Yeah. They will. Well, until something comes back, we've got Dirty Mo Media. We do have some DirtyMov content. You know, we have a show's coming out. every day, but Friday and Saturday. So get your fix here.

All right, that's a good place to wrap up Asch Jr. this week. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Hope everybody's doing well out there. We're certainly doing good. And again, I want to thank Xfinity for supporting us on 30Mo Media and the Dale Jr. Download, and they've been a big supporter of Asch Jr. for all these years. Thanks for sending your questions in to their Twitter handle.

And, yeah, if you haven't tried Exfinity Mobile, you might want to switch over today. Great coverage, 5G and hotspots all across the nation. You won't be disappointed. All right, it's time for Dirty Mo Doe with Tampa Tims. I see in this segment, Andrew, you just call it Doe with Tampa Tens. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, is that the name of the segment, Doe with Tampa Tims? You know, Dirty Mo Doe with Tampa Tims.

I don't know if we have a name, like, yeah, you know. Bet the dough. Doe update with Tampa Timbs. Bet the dough. Bet the dough. Let's get this dough with Timbs. I don't know. That's dough.

So, Alex, you, I thought I saw you mentioned this, but you bet Ligano 45 to 1. Yes, midweek before the weekend, yeah. He gets the poll and you catch. before the race? Yeah, so I didn't expect to look at it, but the Fanduil offered a cash out that was more than double my initial investment. Holy moly.

I just took it and ran. And people reached out to me on Twitter asking what they should do. I'm like, take the money and run. Even if he dominated the first and second stage, it's such a long race. I'd take the profit. I don't care.

Then he finished, what, 18th, so it worked out great. That's freaking amazing. Hell of a job by you. Appreciate you sending out of advice. hopefully several people took your advice and also cashed out. What other predictions did you have that paid off at Sonoma? Well, thanks to Steve, William Byron over Ty Gibbs and the head-to-head model worked out for us.

I mean, Ty had some issues, but still, Byron cashed out for us there. I personally live bet Larson, so that worked out for me too. So it was a good Sonoma. It was a good road course racing. And so coming into Iowa, you know, we've never had the cup car. is there. The next gen's never been there. You've got the Frankenstein repave job. What in the hell? I mean, how do you help people try to make good, positive bets here? Boy, it's going to be a tough weekend, but I think what we've seen is people that go do the tire test, like Christopher Bell, like Kyle

Larson. Yeah. They're going to be pretty fast. Also some Xfinity Series experience there for Bell, so that could help him. But yeah, I think it's kind of like Sonoma's repave a little bit. I think you wait for practice and qualifying, kind of see who's fast, and go from there. I don't think you make any midweek bets here. Do you, so the Ligano bet where you, where you cash out before the race starts, is that something you might try? Since this is sort of a shot in the dark, similar to Sonoma with the repaved, do you maybe take the, I know it probably won't be that big of a payout, I'm not very sure, but if you take Larson or Bell and then cash out before the, you know, once they go up there and grab the pole? I think because Larson and Bell,

odds won't be as long as 45 to 1, I don't think the sports books will give you such a good offer because they're hedging against that 45 to 1 odds. Maybe one of their teammates. Yeah, like Alex Bowman was about 40 to 1 at Sonoma. And I expect he's kind of been in that range all year. And we've been harping on him when he had a top 10 streak. It was like, that's some good value if you want to bet him to win. Because when he does win in a Hendrick car, you're going to get a good payout.

So I would definitely look for maybe guys, maybe where you think the book's got the line wrong and see if you can make a good cash out before the race even starts. Gotcha, man. All right, Dirty Mo Do drops every Thursday on our Dirtymo Media platforms. You won't want to miss it. It's going to be a tough week for matters, I think, going into Iowa, so you'll definitely want to tune in to hear what Tampa Tins, Steve and the rest of the gang have to say.

All right, it's time for the white flag here. Dropping Sunday night to tear down with Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. On Monday, actions detrimental with Denny Hamlin, and Doorbup are Clear got their show out on time. Congratulations to those guys. Dropping tomorrow's Speed Street with Connor Daley and Chase Holden. And Mario Andretti is our guest interview for this Wednesday. And then Thursday, DJD Reloaded and Dirty Mode Doe.

Also, round three of the Denny Hamlin Bracket Challenge. Heads off to Iowa. It's going to be pretty interesting to see how everybody continues to move forward. A lot of interesting battles between drivers going into the third round. And maybe some guys are, you know, Cinderella stories, kind of getting a little bit further into this thing. It'll be pretty interesting to see who can do what this weekend at Iowa. We'll be talking to you later.

Great show. Appreciate you guys tuning in. I enjoyed it, Andrew Dalton. I will see you tomorrow. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.