The Dale Jr. Download - 580 - Former NASCAR Race Director David Hoots: "Put It Out!"

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

This week Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a conversation with a man he thought he’d never get to interview, longtime NASCAR Race Director David Hoots. In this episode, David opens up about how he made decisions in the booth, his thoughts on current NASCAR officiating, including the Austin Dillon penalty, his toughest calls in the booth, and how things ended at NASCAR.That leads to the reason Dale didn’t think this interview would happen. He assumed David would be working in the control tower booth for many years to come, and that seemed to be the case until a cluster of NASCAR layoffs in January of 2019. After a run of nearly two decades, stretching back to the fall Rockingham event on the 1988 schedule, David’s reign as chief steward for the Cup Series came to an end. The story of how David came to be in the booth starts in a likely place: Bowman Gray Stadium. David explains that his family began taking him to Saturday night races at the famed bullring when he was young, and he caught the racing bug at an early age. He initially took a position scoring cars in trade for free admission to the races, but his fascination with the race cars pushed him to wander into the world of technical inspection. From Bowman Gray, he began working at NASCAR regional events for the Sportsman and Modified divisions before the series were organized into their respective tours. He would stay on with the NASCAR Busch Grand National and the Winston Modified Tour before he caught the eyes and ears of Les Richter, who asked if he’d like to give the NASCAR Cup Series a shot. That day came on October 23, 1988 at Rockingham, where Rusty Wallace brought home his third victory in a row on his way to a second-place points effort. What followed for David Hoots was an illustrious career that saw him become one of the most revered officials in the modern era of NASCAR.21+ and present in North Carolina. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 877-718-5543 or visit morethanagame.nc.gov. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download is the ally guest segment. And today our guest is David Hoots. David Hoots was race director for NASCAR for many, many years. He's got some great history in this sport. Over 30 years doing that job. So eventually, though, that comes to an end. We're going to learn all about that. It's going to be a lot of fun. Let's get David into the room and start the show. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey, everybody, Dale Jr., Dale Jr., Back again, the ally guest segment today.

David Hoots. I've learned, though, that end of his career as race director for NASCAR didn't go as he hoped. I was laid off from NASCAR. You were laid off. I would question the decision on why did you want this much experience to walk out the door? All right, so we're getting ready to start another episode of the show with David Hoots. He's outside. and we're going to bring him in here in here in a minute.

I want to thank Ally for bringing our guest segment to us every single week. And Ally does such a great job supporting us here at the Dale Junior Download and all across NASCAR sponsoring Alex Bowman and doing all kinds of great things for the sport. And yeah, we're all better off of an ally. And David Hoots, yeah, I think he's an ally. I mean, we were kind of on opposite sides back when he was involved in the sport. He wasn't out there to help me win the race.

He was just out there to make sure we had a good fair race called and he did a good job. In my opinion, he did a really, really good job. I've learned, though, that maybe the end of his career as race director for NASCAR didn't go as he had hoped. And we'll learn a lot about that. But also want to see kind of what he remembers from some of the bigger moments in his career and what he might be able to shed in terms of taking us behind the curtain a little bit on how that job is done. and his opinion about today where NASCAR is as a sport what he likes doesn't like will he be transparent about that well let's find out let's get David in the room

first off thanks for coming today well appreciate you having me yeah I watch some of the broad podcast and find some of them interested good and usually I'm not a quote a big social media fan but people say well your name was mentioned I'll go over and find out okay what are they what are they talking about 100% I would too. So, man, it's, you know, it's going to be fun to talk to you today because I don't think we've ever really sat down and had a bunch of a conversation. We've had, you know, we've had some moments over the years.

But, and I know you're still kind of out there doing, staying busy. But first off, I guess, how much do you watch these days? I typically limited most of the watching to Sundays. Yeah. Just time-wise, a lot of times with what I'm doing in the regional levels, I'm going on Saturday nights or whatever, so I don't get to see the Xfinity races like maybe I once did. And then I kind of watch what's going on on Sundays with the cup. Yeah. And I wonder if when you watch a race, do you watch it differently than maybe I might watch a race?

I'm sure I do. I'm looking for the technical correctness of the officiating, which is kind of how I had to watch the races from even before I got to the couple of them. When you were at a weekly track and you being the chief steward, you were basically the head referee, and you were watching it for the correctness of how it did. and the other thing, how efficient it's being ran. Yeah.

I don't think anybody ever paid to come watch officials officiate. I know watching football and basketball, and I'm a big basketball fan. Call the foul, let's put the ball back and play and go back and get on with it. Yeah. That was kind of ingrained into me, especially as we went down the unified TV contract, we need to be efficient with our cautions. we can't be running 10 and 12 lap cautions cleaning it up. And when you would compare it to say IndyCar,

and it's a totally different animal of how they have to clean the racetrack up to wear a stock car, it was painful to watch. So you look for ways to be more efficient. And then, again, the correctness of the officiating. Do you prioritize managing the, actions of the drivers or discipline in drivers is when you when you defined your role back in the day how responsible were you for sending sending a message to a particular driver well let's let's let's let's kind of expand on that there was there's a team of us in race control it wasn't just

one person naturally you would hear uh me make about 95% of the radio calls but in theory I was running the race for the series director, and we had input with the vice president of competition at the time. So I was fortunate we had a really solid team between Gary Nelson or John Darby, Robin Pemberton, and Mike Hilton. And collectively, we would be working together as a team along with the other officials up there. No one person can watch the entire racetrack. So as this team, if you will, with a massive amount of experience, would be watching the race, you had to trust what somebody said, whether it's in Darby's case, he would elbow me. That was a cue.

You need to put the yell out. I'd trust him. Yeah. Now, we messed up that one day at Dover, and we did that. And I said, John, I don't think we should have. What happened? leader pitted and spun on pit road we put the yellow out so for a while we didn't we didn't have a leader which this is before racing back to the flag and it it thowed the race in chaos and we we tried to

reconstruct it and put it back together and correct the errors but at the end of the day he said you know I don't think I'll ever do that again he said I don't care for cars on fire barrel rolling down the pit road. So you learn, but you have to trust the same way with you would have to trust what people were telling you on the racetrack. Yeah. If, uh, if you're three quarters a mile like you were at Talladega from turn one where race control was at to term three, you've got to trust what somebody's telling you is back there. Um, one of your spotters. One of your, one of your your spotters, one of the cleanup trucks, one of the fire trucks. There were several different methods of communications.

Talladega and Daytona were notorious for the Sonoco arrows. They did have observers up there. Yes. And I think some of that has kind of gone away which is kind of disappointing. Like the old Unicall balls. Correct. Yeah. And so when you watch races today, what do you think you see that

you think should be different? Do you see anything or you're like, you know, you said it's unfortunate some of the spotters or not, maybe around the racetrack like they used to be. But I would say that was one. I would say that also probably, and I don't remember what year it was, caught the rain shower at one and two in daytime. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a couple years back. Because of somebody making a decision of taking that line of communications,

whatever, going back 20 years ago, we had a similar situation. down there on the July 4th weekend night race that Dale Jarrett and I believe it was Brett Bodine were in a wreck down there and where the observers were on the inside couldn't see them they ended up they ended up walking back so we took actions to correct that but it just shows how big an area you can and cannot see from race control either looking down or from different observer. You need to have these observers to see things. Yeah. So, so you, you know, I think it's all right to make mistakes. You need to learn from them. Yeah. And work on things to correct them. You know, you were in the booth, uh, in, from the late 80s all the way up

until you weren't. But I want to go all the way back to being born in Winston-Salem. And a common, common line that we say in this room, you started, you were going to Bowman Gray Stadium on Saturday nights. Well, I actually grew up three quarters of a mile from there. There's so many, so many of y'all, like industry mechanics, crew chiefs, drivers that were from Bowman Gray. Well, if you think about how NASCAR was started, the franchise. family would come up from Daytona and they would co-promote with the Hawkinses, which is the grandfather of the garrisons and the Pinellasys that are there now, and they've transferred the lease back to NASCAR, they would use the Winston-Salem area as their home base in the summer.

So they would travel. You had Hillsboro Speedway, you had Wilkesboro, you had Wilkesboro, you had Martensville, all. within a very small area, hour and a half, you could beat a half a dozen racetracks. So that was kind of the headquarters unofficially of a lot of the racing. You still had other areas of racing, whether it be Canapolis in the Hickory area or whatever, but you're still within that mile range. I got taken over there when I was a young child by my parents. They were both big sports fans.

That's what we did on Saturday night. It basically got me hooked. And I've seen some great things happen over at the stadium. I'm excited about the clash coming there. When we go back eight or nine years ago, or probably further than that, when the NHL came out with the Winter Classic, we had a meeting in the offices. What is something that NASCAR could do to kind of follow along

the same suit of doing something a type of throwback. The Winter Classic of playing ice hockey outside. I suggested you run one of the exhibition races at the stadium, and everybody laughed at it. I said, hold it. You got to remember, back in 71, the cars were bigger. Yeah. They used to race there.

It's still exciting. It's a different style of racing. It's a little bit more entertainment now right now at times. Yeah. I also had the great pleasure when I was 11 or 12 of watching Bobby Allison and Curtis Turner when Curtis drove for Junior Johnson in the big, it was the banana, Holly Farms, but he did run the banana car on the short track. And Bobby had the little Chevelle, his cell phone Chevelle.

There was a 427 versus a 350. Something happened, and they got to chase and he, other through the football field. So this went back on in 61. I'm not trying to promote that, but it got its name the Madhouse realistically. Later on, probably 10 years ago, I had the good pleasure of Bobby walked into the pizza place up at New Hampshire. And I'm by myself and he's by his cell, hey, come on here and join me. He said, okay, look, I was 11-year-old child. Tell me what happened yeah and he he told me his side of it and it's like I'm a kid at Christmas in the candy store listening to something I'd watched 50 years ago now I'm fine he's you know well

Curtis would fly in he would buzz the field the team would go up the airport pick him up he'd come down there and and I'll leave out some of the details so if you've ever get fortunate enough to get Bobby on here and let him explain it and but it was great to relive that part of it. And then Bobby starts talking about, well, you know, I didn't get credited for a win there, and it's the only win that's not, you know, I said, okay, that's another department you need to talk about.

But it was great to sit there and just reminiscing this about something you'd saw as a child, because you'd wonder about it, what triggered it? And he said, I really don't know what triggered it, other than they just got to going at it, and Bobby was one not to back down to anybody. Yeah, for sure. So. When you were going to Bowman Gray, what kind of roles did you have?

I started out helping the score. Everybody always gravitates to the garage, gravitates to a race car, not you. Well, at the time, I wasn't old enough to get into the garage to get a permit to the it was a way to get in and watch. I could go through and watch something I enjoyed. I was going to be there anyway. And I had this knack of being able to keep up with the cars without writing down stuff.

Now, granted, anybody can keep up with the cars in a 40-lap feature, but even on the long-distance race. So that opened the door to get me in. From there, once I got old enough to get a license, I took over the responsibilities of selling the pit passes and understanding those dynamics and kept working my way up from that to the track steward to the chief steward and then directing a few races over there. And then had the opportunity to move into the regional races, which was the late models and the modifies in the Virginia's, North Carolinas and South Carolina. mostly Hickory and Carraway and South Boston, which back in the day you had run five or six, quote, bush races at each one of them.

Yeah. But you started elevated. When did you start doing the race, the week, you know, the hickrys and run, you know, messing with around for the sports and stuff? Probably first of the 80s. Uh-huh. But when you did that, you did dual roles. I probably know more about a 390 carburetor and most people would think that I knew about because it was one of the things I would have to expect.

Or doing the measurements under the chassis because like that. So I had an interest in the cars. I would gravitate to the cars. I was realistic to know with my size, I would never be a driver because weight was a deficit. and I've never been small. So you can't, you know, I got this saying, you can't, you never lose weight. You might misplace it for a while,

but you never really lose weight. It'll come back and find you. But I still wanted to be involved with the cars. I think everybody does, because that's the intriguing thing. There's nothing more exciting to a race fan. that hasn't heard a race car run at the year, and you go to Daytona,

and you crank them up there, and you let that grumble and growl go through the spectators when they're just sitting there island. If that doesn't charge you up, I'm sorry, you're not going to get charged up being around this sport. And then having, at the time,

they were big block modified. So you had all kinds of different experiences with the cars. again as I was working my way up, and I did it for the fun. I didn't do it thinking it would ever create a job opportunity. And it kind of corresponded with another career that I'd started. I'd got out of high school, went to community college. To say I hated it would be an understatement. But at the same time, when I went from one job to another,

I went to work for a place called UPS. and when I went there, I didn't even know what they did. But it was an increase in pain. I could work at night and I was off on the weekends. Well, it's not a bad deal. I can go to the races on the weekends, work some there, enjoy life, and get to where. And one thing led to another. Yeah.

You had that UPS job up until when? 99. So you've been in the cup garage and around the cup industry for a decade and still kept working there. A little bit longer than it. And what it was, Mike Hilton, first off, Coach Richter had listened to me called regional races at Wilkesboro and Martinsville. And he asked me to come try the cup. And then as Mike came on board, Mike Hilton, he wanted me to go full time.

I said, well, Mike, look, I've got 20-plus years invested at UPS. let me stay there until I get to a plateau that I'll get some retirement. I don't get the same retirement that the full-time guy would get, but you have to be responsible to your family. So I locked some of that in, and in 99 I transitioned to full-time. So for 12, 13 years, I did dual duty, and it was sometimes seven days a week. Yeah, that's impressive. what did you enjoy about working in the sportsmen modified series that's kind of the

i don't know i mean there's we always look back in the past and go oh those were the good old days we do that within it we'll say that about these days one time down the road but um i always really uh enjoyed or admired uh the early 80s sportsmen the transition into the you know what it would become the the the uh the what is today's infinity series but the busker national series that whole thing got a revamp. They were running, like you say, 50 races a year all over the southeast on local short tracks and a big 300 lapper at Charlotte,

and then it turned into a true pure series in 1982. I imagine you're around for that. Yep, we were there, and we went, it gets announced. It promotes two people that had a lot of impact on my career, Lance Childers. You know Lance's son Kip, director of the car series, and Robert Black, who was a longtime Bush director. And I'd known Robert through Hickory, but the beauty. I don't know that dad was a big fan of Roberts. We ran a few disagreements. I'm sure that there were several of them. I remember one driver walking into Martinsville, and he was calling out Robert's name at a high pitch,

and we'll leave it at debt, and had some adjudice in behind it. But Robert was influential on helping me and whatever. I took over for Robert at Hickory when he elevated up to the Bush series. I took over the position there and at Carraway in the short track. The beauty of it was, it seemed like, and I think you can relate to it. It seemed like everybody was having fun. Yeah. There was the element of racing, but when the race was over with, people could translate

and have fun and enjoy what they were doing. You could run Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. you thought nothing about it. They were 200 lap races for most cases. Great racing. When you start Sam Mard, Jack Ingram, and John Settlemire and Harry Gant and Jimmy Hensley, and I can name 15, your dad slipping in there, this was great racing. you only had really three major races in that category before Bush got involved.

You had the Permatex 300 at Daytona, which it was kind of an open class to any late model driver. You always got the best there. And then Humpey Wheeler had the two 300s and did a great job promoting those and bringing it out. the excitement of those two clans. And those felt like, you know, for that level race, those were the Daytona, three-day toner races. Then as Bush got involved in the need to get to bigger tracks, you started leaving your South Boston's, your hickories, your caraways.

And I think that was a shame because that's where real racing is still going on to do this day. Yeah. So I agree with you, man. There has been a bit of conversation, I think, in the last handful of years of, like, you know, man, it'd be amazing if the trucks or Xfinity could have a race at those race tracks you mentioned, particularly South Boston. I raced there in the late 90s in the Bush series, and it was just so much fun. And we, you know, we have to plot forward and continue to grow and go.

where we're go where the demands are but how we can how we don't pull the roots out of the ground is really important and and and trying to keep those racetracks alive and successful is is even of more importance these days and I think we realized back you know more about this than I do but when I got into late model stock racing and was going to those racetracks this was at the same time where Winston was still involved in NASCAR and Winston did a really good job at least optically of being connected and keeping the top series of NASCAR and what would be the Bush series at the time

connected and intertwined to that regional racetrack even the ones that didn't have a Bush race you know you'd go anywhere in the southeast and see all of the red and white Winston paint on the walls and signage. So they were investing in these local tracks, even though their main series wasn't running there. That's gone today. Now, Avent's Auto Parks does some really good work on the side

to promote the local racetracks. But for the most part, those tracks have kind of been left to fend for themselves. I've had the chance to spend a lot of time at some of them here in the last couple of years and seeing how hard those promoters are working to keep those the florences and the south boston's open and and functioning is is uh and now i'm sure it wasn't always it was always kind of that tough you know of road but uh it's it's it's it's hard to watch sometimes it's it's it's painful i i think Winston because it was a national brand didn't just look at the southeast they looked at all the track

and at one time there was probably over a hundred short track programs under the Winston Banner through NASCAR and that gradually walked array. They had significant cash flow from some of the things that had been mandated by them, but they also felt like a customer was a customer was a customer. Personally, I don't think they've gotten the credit over the years that they deserve at that level or even at the at the cup level and I'll point to the product or the the ability of the product of that it was a point of sale product you could walk in and I'm not talking about the dangers that are involved in

in smoking, but it was a point of sale product that you could find it anywhere. You could find it at a gas station. You could find it at a curb market. You could find it in a vending machine. As that left away and it was forced out, the next series of products kind of lost that vision. Yeah. The weekly promoter, the ones that were really invested into the racetracks, would put back in. the ones that were under the lease, I think a lease set up hurt some of them because they

weren't able to invest back, excuse me, into their facility. No. But Winston would be able to come in and give them a shot out, whether it's a scoreboard, whether it's the red and white paint, whether it was sponsoring one or two big events each year. There was a big master plan there to help it, and they were also involved in. GT racing, I think back with the pre-branded Emsa era and GT racing. And then they also had the golf and the rodeo.

So they were sports or under sports marketing enterprises. They were in a lot of different areas. But the weekly tracks have really, in some cases, fallen in neglect. And that's a shame because, you know, we're, I think, we're all enjoying the revival at Wilkesboro. Sure. I hope that Rockingham has the same

impression on the fans down there, and even Bowman Gray to some point. That is, what happens at Bowman Gray is that it's generational fans that have been going there their entire life.

You know, well, there's Grandma and Grandpa that's been sitting there for 40 years, and you can see it. Also, the longevity of the drivers that are racing. You've got drivers that's got a following of 25 and 30 years, where today you may have that driver in some kind of late model or straight stock. It's three or four years. He hasn't built up that following.

Sure. They benefit with drivers like you and Harvick can come in, that you've got a built-in following. It comes in, and it helps. It helps them that way. I just, I think that's been lost and everybody needs to work real hard to recover that. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Hey, NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDuel, America's number one sports book.

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Or how did that all trigger? Well, first off, I never thought I could make a career path out of this. Okay. So I'd been doing the regional races. The week before the Cup was at Wilkesboro, Coach Richter calls me and he says, hey, can you do the Cup race since you're going to be there Saturday at Wilkesboro on Sunday?

I'd like to, Cup, the coach, but I'm committed to go up to Pulaski and do another modified race and I think Tuesday night's a little late to be back in on a man that you gave your word to. He said, okay, well let's just pencil you in for Rockingham. Would you be interested?

So there was a week between Rockingham and Wilkesboro. And it was a miserable week and a half. Yeah. Who was doing this job? It had changed a couple of times it started out Bill Gazzaway primarily did it

and did that for Gazzaway was doing it in 79 at Daytona what is other than I know and recognize the name and I know that he's the guy that flips the he's on the broadcast in Daytona that incredible 1979 Daytona 500

that's so important to us what's the general reputation of Bill Gazzaway Bill was, Bill had a military background, so he was somewhat militaristic, which means that, you know, we're going to follow a procedure and we're going to do it this way. At the same time, people were seeing that we needed to transition some things to take some of the pressure off his job. When I say Bill was running the race, he was running the race, the emergency equipment, everything. thing. And we had a problem one day at Charlotte with the radio failure, and I ended up doing that in a sportsman race, whatever. It's maddening. Yeah. Try to keep up with what this is doing and what's

that doing. So the end goal was to divide the two responsibilities and work together. Competition and safety. Mm-hmm. And make both of them grow. Bill had gone from vice, uh, competition director of the vice president of competition. And they'd brought in Ray Hill. And Ray came back and helped the Bush series back in the mid-90s. And Ray's a great guy. And then Dick Beatty came on board. Dick was working there.

Dick was another hard-nosed straight shooter, but military. And with his background down at the airport, you know, he's trained, it's got to be done this way. Yeah. Now, he was a bulldog, but he was a fair to a bulldog. Yeah. I mean, you know. He was, I remember him, so I was too young to have been able to be around Gazaway much,

but Beatty was intimidating. And I will say we've made some comments on the show over the past couple of months. Like, you were too, and Mike Helton was. I always felt like that when that was in the room, we were in better shape. The drivers on the track, and to an extent the mechanics had to have a level of not only respect, but a bit of fear almost of what the repercussions might be if they upset the booth. And I don't know whether we have quite enough of that. these days but we'll get to that down the road but um i always i just wanted to people that are

listening to know that baity was baby was in you know daddy might have felt differently about it but betty to me was kind of a pretty tough guy you didn't want to play with he but he's you're correct but he was fair yeah um i remember one of the first races that i worked for dick um at Talladega, the cars were lining up going down to back straight. And there were three or four wide getting ready to go into the restart. It was double file, but not the format that's used today. Dick is pounding on the glass in the booth. Dick, calm down, because I was afraid the glass was going.

Calm down. I can get them in order, Dick. Just calm down and let me go to work over here. and we were sorting them out and we got him straightened out and whatever but he was fair he was tough but when it's time to take that red hat off

that had Winston on it he was just like anybody else and he was a good-natured individual like I said fair by the book and that's that's what has to be yeah if it's 5 o'clock and it's

closing time. It's 5 o'clock. It's closing time. It's not 5.15 or we're not going to negotiate it. And I think that's some of the things that we're, that's probably being missed right now. Yeah. I love Elton Sawyer and I think he's a great, great guy. But I do, I told him even here a couple days ago or he's on the phone and I said, I said, man, you've got a, he's always, he's almost a little too kind and soft spoken and just trying to make sure everybody's, on the same page. And I always say, man,

I really missed the Bill French Jr. going, we're going to race today. This is how we're going to do this race. And everybody wants to race, or if you don't want to race, going out the gate. But like,

here's the show, and this is what's happening, and everybody get on board. And I think, you know, that was, I know that we all, we can't always go back and go,

man, we did it like that for, 30 years, you know, we can't, but I swear there, the, the accountability that that demanded from the industry when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, head, head, head inspector when there was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, it's hard to replicate, but, um, always often found it in those guys that did have that military past. Um, it seemed to just kind of come. out.

But I was wondering when Bady was around, he used to be able to go over to the NASCAR hauler and walk up in there and see all the cheater parts that were laying on the counter. At Daytona, for example, it seemed like at Daytona, everybody wanted to bring out what they dreamed up over the offseason. What are some of the, do you have memorable moments from some of the crazier things that teams tried to pull over on you guys that were just like, I imagine. there was a time or two where you're looking at something going, you really thought that you were going to just walk that right through here?

Well, you'd sit there and think about that, and you really said, okay, they knew they weren't going to get that through. So that's the decoy. Now, what did they get through? Yeah. Is it was, I won't say it was a game, but it was somewhat of a game. You know, I'm sure you've had people on here tell about the 40-pound radio or the helmet or whatever. Right there, yeah.

Uh-huh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Or this, it's okay, you, you got caught on this. Now, you put five items in the car. They caught three. What two did you just miss? Yeah.

And so you would think that would be going on. Yeah. And I think that was some of the camaraderie, the respect. You got caught? Okay, I got caught. and the homologated car that they have today, I think, is taking a lot of that away from it. Yeah. I don't have the mechanical background or studied it like a lot of people, and I promise you,

you probably know more about the car now with the infraput that the engineers could tell you than I would. But I think the car can be soft. if we could give up the control of the car along enough for the garage to figure it out, to make it a little bit better raceable than what it is right now. That's the masterminds. You're right. But when you look at people back in the day, and you talk to Leonard Wood, he's a genius.

Now, he doesn't have this mechanical degree that the engineers that are sitting, on the pit box, but you can sit there and watch him, or you can watch Lenny and Ed take a piece of paper, and they're figuring a fuel mileage. We miss that. Yeah. You could take some of the drivers, and I won't name names, but couldn't read or write, but they could tell you ever nut and bold on that car. I need a 9-16th fridge, and I'm going to turn it two rounds into whatever.

So they knew what they're doing. They probably didn't know they were dealing with geometry and trigonautics, when they were doing all this, and they didn't have a computer to do it, but they were doing it by laying up under the car and thinking about it. Yeah. And I'm sure that that your dad, your granddad, and many others proceeded through this like it. So I think we kind of missed that. I know I certainly, I was out there in your lobby watching an older race, and I'm sitting there watching. how can people say

and everybody I respect everybody's been how can people say that wasn't good racing there was five Hall of Famers in there three car links two on the inside and three on the outside going round over 50 laps into the race

yeah that's good racing and I miss seeing that I think a lot of people miss seeing it if they will just admit to it yeah now I like the I like what you said about the the experts or the guys that build these cars, the guys that work on them every week

are the ones that can solve some of the problems. And we come off of a race at Bristol that was just, you know, it drives home the point that we've at least can say that we've got some serious concerns with the short track packages and how this car races, how the next-gen currently races on the short tracks. And who and what the answer is to fixing it. I don't think anyone really has an idea. I certainly don't.

Well, I think if it was a quick fix, somebody could figure out. Somebody would do. I also, I watched the Bristol race, and I have a feeling if me and you were sitting in the grandstand, and I'm not, by no means am I blame anybody because I'm appreciative to be able to watch the races and the effort that the broadcast companies put into it. if the broadcast hadn't been tailored to the playoff instead of to the race. Because all they were showing the majority of the race was this guy's in, this guy's out. Yeah.

This guy two lapsed down. Okay, I get it. That's part of the story. But when I was on the team that created the original chase, we were. we were given a couple of rules or suggestions. We wanted the race to remain the focal point, not the playoffs, or not the chase at that time, now the playoffs.

Yeah. So if you had covered the race differently and not focused on that and said, look, he's running this line, and they showed one time that, I forget who, Larson passes a car over 10 laps side by side, two foot at a lap. Yes. I mean, now, the car, he's coming from a car length and a half back, going past him,

getting in front of him, and he's gaining two laps. He's gaining two laps. That's pretty doggone good race. We just didn't see a lot of that. We saw X is here, and I think some of it is you're taking close-up shots, and you're not getting the true perspective. If I'm there watching, and I won't see Junior come from the auto turn two,

and he's running down the car and turn. I won't see how much. Granted, I can look at it as a stopwatch. Yeah, I know what you mean. Visually, I need to see it visually. I don't need to see it mechanically with a stopwatch. Yeah, I get the difference in a lot of people, but that's what's kind of being missed.

I'm not a big fan of stage. racing. Again, I respect people that like it. I don't see a flat out run from start to finish. I'll go back to the 300s that Humpy Wheel had at Charlotte. Great races. They came in there one year where we're going to spice it up. We're going to run heats and we're going to have a halfway break. Well, only way heats make something interesting, you've got to have a high car. account. If everybody's in, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It is a wasted effort that costs somebody a lot of money. Then when somebody messes up, it messes up the entire race. The second thing, and again, we'll use the 300, halfway was 100 laps. If I tell you, I'm running 29s,

and Dale, I want you to run 29, 29, you'll never get lapped in that 100 laps. So am I racing to win or I'm racing not to lose? And I think that's part. part of what we're kind of in this thing with that knowing that there's coming that yellow at a certain point, I'm racing that point. Everybody says, oh, it's great strategy. I'll say this, when's the last time you took your wife out on date night and went and watched a chess match? Yeah.

It's a great strategy game, but it's, is it what you want to see? No. I get there's some strategy there, but we're seeing the same strategy. every week. Yeah. I want to know back to your career, back to getting in the booth, where you handed the reins entirely right out of the gate to direct the race? Is it like, hey, man, you know, I guess what I'm asking is, is it seems like there's

a bit of a training process for the men and women who work in the booth at this time in NASCAR. There's, you know, and you had that. either purposely or not working up through the regional ranks and so forth. But when you go to Rockingham, you said it was a miserable week and a half waiting on that race to start. One, I didn't know if I had the job full time or whatever. Two, okay, if I go down and fail, I don't want to make a big deal about failing. What were you worried about failing on?

Didn't want to make a mistake. Yeah. I mean, because your mistake affects too many people. You're going to make mistakes at this job. There's no way anybody out there is not going to do it. You're going to make it. It didn't want to make a mistake. You were doing it at a level that you had never participate in.

Let's take you when you're running late models, and somebody put you in an F1 car. Yeah. You would want to go make a mistake. Did you have to speak in front of all the drivers at the driver's meeting? No, Bady did the driver's meeting and covered the ground rules to the racetrack, and we were still racing back to the flag, and we didn't have nearly as many rules. Yeah.

Okay. One of the things about Bowman Gray, and some tracks had started transitioning to some type of modified freezing of field, Bowman Gray was still racing back. Now, I will tell you, racing back is the simplest form of racing. One line, black and white, you either be X tier or there. Everything else is subjective. Freezing the field is a subjective method. Doesn't matter how much electronics you put into it, it's still going to be subjective.

So you're going out there, but now you're doing it at a level that I'm sure you can comprehend it, but you're all so nervous about it. So I didn't want to tell anybody. I would do things at UPS on my route, and I wouldn't tell anybody what I did on the weekend. Now, somebody asked me, I wouldn't deny it, but I felt like when I was at UPS, I was working for UPS, and we weren't going to talk racing, but they would be the one that would figure it out, or they'd ask you something,

and I'd try to explain to what the rule is and why we made the ruling, but I felt like, UPS, you're working UPS, over here you're working for NASCAR. Keep the two separate, nobody can get upset about it. If we go there, and I will tell you that the first race felt like

I was sitting in the electric chair with a vein in my arm and a rope around my neck. Okay, and I've got, I've got Les Richter sitting there, and I've got Bill France Jr. sitting there. And you've got three or four experienced other people in there. And these are people that you knew them from a distance. Never really had a conversation with them.

Other than I had worked some cup races when the Bush were there. We would stay over and work on Sundays. I knew Bady had talked to him, but nothing at this level. So, you know, kind of what have I got myself into? And we start the race and run the race and have a pretty good weekend. Then we go. Went smooth? I think so.

I think so. And luckily I got to do the Saturday race, which was a Bush race, which kind of warmed you up. But it wasn't Bill Jr. and Beatty, it was Coach and Robert Black, and I had a better relationship with those two where Coach had been out there when he'd traveled to the Bush races. You'd kind of get to know him, incredibly smart person. And Robert, I'd had a long-term relationship with him. So it was a little bit easier.

It kind of ramps you up, but you're still sitting there. Okay, now, I did this one, didn't have no big problem, did this one, what would you do right? what you did you do wrong and whatever, and you were always self-criticking yourself. Yeah. So we go from there, we go out to Phoenix the first time. A very first race. Very first race that the Cup had been out there. They'd been running some kind of winter classic with West. But it was totally different than what we did.

And then we ended up the season in Atlanta. I don't hear anything from anybody over the West. I make my reservations to go to Daytona, and I'm going to help Robert and them with the Bush inspection. We're about three or four hours before the, I reckon it was the clash. Oh, really? You're already down in Daytona's February? You still haven't heard even?

So I say, hey, Robert, am I going to be doing this or not? What do you mean? I said, nobody's talked to me. So we get in the car and we ride over to coaches. office. Yeah, you, okay. So I'm in, I'll call them a work uniform. Back in it was a pair of blue jeans and a dirty, greasy shirt because you'd been inspecting race car. And I go up there and walk in Daytona with radio. And I've never seen the inside this place. And Daytona is intimidating because it's so big. Now, now I will tell you, Daytona is actually easier than a short track.

got time. You have time. We studied later on that there's 32 steps in a simple caution. And what we were trying to do is do a checklist. Yeah. So we didn't miss anything. The 32 things you needed happen. You needed to happen like that. Okay. So we tried a checklist. This was this was a suggestion from one of the higher ups. And we did it about the third time. We did it. Darby takes the pencil, closes across the room, he says, I can't keep up

with his fast because he was supposed to be confirmed it. And we kind of figured, okay, and we'll put it

in aviation terms, is that I don't want the pilot that has to look at the checklist to figure out what to do. I want the pilot

to see the mountain, puts the throttle forward, and either pull up or look for the right or left and try to dodge this thing. And the cadence

has to be there. And as the thing grew with closing the pit road, and all this other stuff, you would ask a question of scoring, and I would, here's the call, moving all this stuff around,

and I would draw a breath, and I would be asking, confirm scoring, here's the free pass. The score knew he had about two seconds to answer because I'm going to hammer that radio and go back to doing what I was doing. But we had it, we had it that smooth that it worked.

And a lot of it is the credit to the discipline of the people. people on the other end of the radio because it requires discipline. You can't go in and just anybody talk randomly. It's disciplined, it's control, but you also had to keep your cadence the same way and you take your spotters, they get used to that cadence. They get used to that. They know what's coming, so nobody's got a surprise.

And it worked out. So you go to Daytona, and the only difference is, is economy to scale. You have two cleanup trucks at Wilkesboro or at a long time, one at Martinsville. You got four down there. You didn't have the fire trucks because the separation out of it, but you were working with the guy that was dispatching. And for a long time at Daytona, that was Jim Bockovin, who reminded me so much of my dad.

It was scary. Bockey to Bill Jr., they had grown up together. It wasn't Mr. Francis. Billy? But he could get away with it. Nobody else could. But he was straightforward. He'd just shoot straight with you.

So you'd get there. He'd get his stuff out there. And they're not moving, but the cleanups and the vacuums and stuff are moving. So you don't want to take that away from the spotter's ability to hear it because they're having to tell you the driver, this is getting ready to happen. So it's controlled chaos. But you had, you know, you had all this equipment down. You know, you've got two fence trucks and two safer barrier trucks and four cleanups

and eight jets and two vacuums and a partridge and a pear tree and two chase vehicles and 40 people on pit road. So it's different. But once you get it all working and it's working smooth with a bunch of dedicated people that were experienced. it's not hard. Yeah. I had a moment, I think the biggest moment that I might have had with the booth was probably

at Bristol. And I've told that story a few times where I got, me and Tony Senior got called back to the hauler because somebody broke a rotor and there's a bunch of parts on the track and I wasn't, it was 15 laps to go. We'd done, we, our team had done something. and taking our fifth place car and put ourselves in about 13th. And I needed all the laps I could get to try to get back into the top 10 and get what I thought I deserved in a result that day. And we were running caution laps, cleaning up debris, and I was raising hell over the radio.

And apparently I'd gotten in Helton, had Helton heard or whatever. someone in the booth had heard and I was asked to come to the hauler after the race and I went in there with I was going in there to plead my case I have a problem with what y'all were doing I then we should have red flagged it why were we burning laps I ran out of laps in the race I didn't get to do what I wanted to do and I was ready and Helton walks in and says you aren't talking you're going to shut up and I'm going to talk and uh that was a really interesting experience. And it changed my whole view of the way I looked at the booth. Do you remember moments like that throughout your career where, I mean, I know there's things that it's hard not to take things personal. You're not supposed to. You try not to.

But give me some examples of some times when things did get frustrating, when you had to take a guy to the side, a driver after the race or a crew chief or whatever and sort it out? One comes to mine real quickly. I had black flagged Jimmy Spencer. I know you're shocked. And listen, I got along great with Jimmy and his whole family through the connection with the modified. And then later on when they moved up to Bush,

this was when he was in Travis' car, and they were running the smoking Joe's car. So I'm going to catch it from my friends at Winston. I'm going to get it. So he comes down pit road at Dover. 23, too fast, tell of the field. Goes back out. 23, too fast.

Okay. Three times. We probably reviewed my entire family history a couple of times, talking about my parents, about me, my job, and whatever. And I didn't take it personally. On Tuesday or Wednesday, I think it was Wingo called Darby and said, hey, we sent the, we sent the tack back. it was off about 300

RPS. So we were actually right that he was speeded. Yeah. I didn't think nothing about it. And a lot of times that would happen and is, you know, I get it. You're emotionally charged.

Going back to Jimmy, they would be a car, be spun out or whatever. And Jimmy said, well, I wasn't, didn't have anything. I said, Jimmy, let's not talk about it. Let's talk about bank robberies. He said, what do you mean bank robbers? I said, you know, if five banks rob and your picture is in every one of the pictures at the bank, somehow another, I'm probably going to associate you with the bank robbery.

Yes. That's all I'm going to say. But I thank the world of Jimmy, like I said, his entire family, Ed and his dad and whatever, you didn't take it personally. I had a small relationship with your dad that I would go ask him the next week. How was the racetrack after we did this cleaning it up? I would get input from the caution car driver. And yes, we had some people that were monitored drivers.

I never was listening to. I was listening to two other things on the radio. Yeah. But to hear it kind of from the horse's mouth, did we get this cleaned up right or was this or whatever? And it, you know, so I'd go see him. Yeah. And I think he appreciated somebody taking the time to talk with him. So he's running on the weekend that he was killed.

He's running the eye rock racing. He spins and gets turned or when he goes through the dirt down in turn one in Daytona. he hadn't hit a thing he hadn't hit a thing I don't put the yell out you ain't hit nothing he comes back out he goes from about second to about four

gets back in line I see him next he just eating me alive you know if I you know if I came in and got four tires I'd have won this race I could have won this race

if you'd throw to yell Dale let's go get a hot dog and that was that was the end of it but it was you know bittersweet. Sure. Were there drivers that you did listen to?

I know you said you weren't able to listen to drivers, but was there, were there drivers that NASCAR trusted to listen to or monitor during the races? Was it a consistent group of drivers? Well, you know, honestly, we had the ability to listen to anyone. And you would, you would listen to it. with, I'd say, you try to qualify what they were telling you. If the guy was leading and it was raining, well, you know what? Noah's Ark is getting ready to come out a turn too.

We need to stop this thing, let me win it. But if it's early in a race, hey, it's still slick down here with this. You need to hit it. You would listen to it. You kind of had to weigh out. Did they have something to gain or was it just a true concern? And if it was a true concern, take it and run with it. Do you remember the All-Star race when it was wet down there and everybody went down into one?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And if you ever get the opportunity to get Kenny Schrader to explain it. Oh, my gosh. You will laugh your butt off. Yeah. So in that situation right there, who is the one that makes the decision that, hey, man, we're going to mash the reset button? Whole field.

We were sitting there, and if I'm not mistaken, it was Gary Nelson. myself. I didn't hit anything and I'm thinking damn that's half the field I don't have to I don't have to race. Well go back to the rules that if you throw the red on the first lap you get a do-over. Oh. The rules tell you that. Okay. Okay. And

so basically we go down there in turn one. We don't see the rain coming. And we don't have a spotter down there. And you wouldn't think on a mile and a half track you would need 300 yards. But that's how fast it came up there. Kenny is telling the story that he'd ran the open,

didn't make it. And he was going around to go up in condo and it's raining. And this is before cell phones. He said, well, this is going to be big and I got no way to call anybody. But Kenny is hilarious telling it. So if you ever get him on here,

ask him, but we go to, okay, we haven't, we haven't completed a lap, we threw the red, the rule book offered that up. Okay. Now, it was an exhibition race. Sure. Okay. Sometimes, and we were following the roof, but on the same token. In that scenario, like you're, I know there's probably a little more time because of the

exhibition event and everybody needed time to get their car. cars out of the haulers and kind of go through my conspection. But are y'all, I know you're not like, you're not just going to pull a rule out of your, I'm not, I know that you don't know that rule by heart, do you? Or is it like, all right, guys, what's our options here? Like, here's what we, here's what the book says. Here's what we can do. Well, I think this is one thing that, and I'm a, I'm a, I'm a devise.

just a little bit. I had the opportunity through all the years of either seeing the rule put in place or being a part of the group that wrote the rule and knowing the reason you wrote the rule, you put it in there. I would take time off from UPS and we would literally work on the rule book in Daytona or different locations. the term cut and paste into windows apple jargon. Yeah.

This was truly cut up a piece of paper, put a sticky note in it, and rewrite it. And it evolved from each secretary of the vice presidents, typing it out, but you would have the same rule written three different ways. And over time, we would get them to all read the same. So then the third part of the question is, did you know it that well? Well, that was my focus, was the two sections in the rule book, which has been consolidated, of the race procedure and the flags and how they interacted. And one of the things that we did about 2015 was we combined them to, instead of this rule being here and a continuation of it being over here and some other thing,

we worked to put them together. Yeah. You knew from your short track days, you don't get the race started. You throw the red, you come back. Now, if you come back to a yellow, race is on. Yeah, it's began. It's began. Yeah.

Interesting. I mean, there's a hundred different scenarios over the years where I was not so much in disagreement with the booth decision, but curious as to how the booth come to the conclusion that they come to. For example, and I've really had my eyes open to this getting involved in the Cars Tour. We just had the issue at Richmond with Austin Dillon. And I think I wonder, I guess, your opinion of the ultimate decision, how might, how, if at all, would you might have done it differently in the moment

and or what input would you have infused into the conversation, I guess. And then, you know, to go back and react to it on Tuesday, not an easy decision to do, but I'm, again, being in the situation with the cars tour, I know we're a regional, local show compared to the NASCAR Cup series, but you hate changing the outcome of a race days after the outcome, but sometimes you feel like you don't have a choice. Let's take the cars tour at Hickory, I believe this is the race, and apply it to Richmond. Yes.

At Hickory, and I don't know the car numbers and the name, so forgive me, but the driver has deemed to have wrecked the leader. Yes. The call was made instantly. It was done. Yeah. Put in Victor Lane and so. I think had that. kind of judgment been applied at Richmond, it would have been a lot simpler.

When you opened yourself up to penalize and I'm after the fact, you opened up the appeal process. Yeah. The appeal process is at that point, Childress Racing has to get a negative out of the appeals panel, if they appeal it again, they've only got to convince one person that it was wrong. The applying it then. In the moment. In the moment is simpler, and it aligns to what I think they've attempted to do the last three or four years.

We want the winner to be the winner when we go home. Is it? But it all goes back to the technicalities of the rule book. Yeah. So why is it hard to make that decision in the moment? I'm not criticizing the choice they made that day. I want to know as the person that's in that position, why is it hard to be that militaristic, this is fair, this is what's supposed to happen. This is the right thing to do right now. I don't care. about the repercussions of this choice? Well, I would, I can only relate to when it, when it happened to me, not so much Richmond, but it happened a couple of times. Yeah.

And, and, you had like a race where a guy wrecked somebody on his lap. And you knew it was in, you know, most likely an intentional. It, or just too. It had all the tell-tale signs. Sure. So at that point, the vice president of the conference, competition, myself and the series director talk. Okay.

And you've only got a few moments. You've only got a very limited time. And at that point, a decision's made, and you live with it. Yeah. Okay. At that time, you didn't have technology that's going to tell you all these inputs. I know that when I talked to Parker on their podcast, I said, let me ask you this. Did it look like a racing move to you?

Right. I said, I think that's what's been lost. I hear the drivers say, and I can respect what they're saying, we don't want NASCAR to get involved. The truth of the matter is, somebody's got to get involved. Somebody is paid to make that judgment. Right, wrong, or indifferent, and you live

with it. When you go back to Sonoma with Rudd and Allison, Ricky Rudd dumped Davy Allison and turn 11, or maybe it was 9, with that configuration, but y'all decided on that day in that moment to take that, you know, Rudd was not going to win their race.

Rudd crossed the finish line first, and then Davy Allison was awarded the win or whoever, else. The, well, to be correct about it, Rudd hits Allison. Yeah. Coming into 11.

Yes. With about two to go. Right. Wasn't the white flag. Coming to the white flag. Sure. He's black flag. Had he come down pit road, he served his penalty.

He could have won the race. Really? His penalty was for not obeying the black flag. Really? Huh. So, all right.

I mean, it's... No, yeah. No. I didn't know that. I mean, because we all, you know,

we put so much water under the bridge and we go, oh, well, they blackflat, they, they penalized him for doing that.

And at the time, you didn't, I forget the timing, but at the time, you didn't have pit road speed. No, yeah.

You didn't have, I'm pretty sure you had long of entry, but you could haul as fast as you go around there. Yeah. And he ended up having a pretty substantial lead over Allison, I think, at that time. But he could have came down, which the black flasker report to your pits. Yeah.

And won it. Yeah, interesting. You retired from NASCAR after the 2019 Dayton Dayton 500. I was laid off from NASCAR. laid off after the first race of the year in 2019. Something's, something's feel right about that. You would have to talk to them.

There was 50 people laid off that day. Really? After the Daytona 500. Oh, it had, it had happened in January. Oh, sorry.

They offered me an opportunity to do the 500. Okay. And you did it? I did it, but before I would agree to do it. it, I wanted to think about it. And I would say some of it is just business and leave it at that. I was offered a severance package.

I sit there and wait it out. I said, okay, I can go to Daytona and try to make some connections on some other opportunities, whether say goodbye to a bunch of people that I had worked with for 30-some years. And in the way I put it, I got to play at the Masters one more time. Yeah. Okay. Because I never looked at what I did on Sundays as a real job. Right.

I enjoyed it. Yeah. I mean, it's sometimes stressful, but you would do a bunch of stuff leading up to it. to do this. All jobs have stuff that you don't want to do. Other things, there's parts of enjoyment. You know, you don't want to go test for three hours, but you want to go race for two hours. Yeah. Okay. So same thing. So I agreed to do that. I went down there and I put just as much effort in that one as I did in the first one. You really didn't get a explanation of what boxes you weren't checking for them or?

No. Yeah. No. And was there anything going on the year before that led you to believe that they were not satisfied? No, I would go back and look at my job evaluations. And it was like a scale of four to five on five. Yeah.

A little bit over four had been there for years. Received bonuses. I can't tell you. you why? I would question the decision on why did you want this much experience to walk out the door? When one of the things I think that's that has reared its ugly head is the crew that they have in race control right now is very limited on experience. They have nobody other than Tim Berman, who is a solid race director, that's worked his way up doing different jobs around a racetrack.

You've taken people and you've put them in there and said, well, sink or swim. Yeah. Okay. I can't, you know, I don't know why. I had written a proposal to them on how to train a half a dozen people and whatever. But in my search, I wanted people. from the short track area

that had several years of experience doing different things. I will relate to Clay Campbell. Mr. Earls, his grandfather, made Clay do every job at Martin'sville Speedway growing up, whether it's whitewashing fences, not painting them, whitewashing them, taking a sickle out off of a hill

and cleaning the bush, laying brick block for bathrooms or whatever. He had to do it. He knows the facility inside out, and that's why he's one of the better promoters we have out there today, if not one of the absolute best that's still doing it. I hold the promoters, Humpy Wheeler, Clay Campbell, Bob Bear, and Ed Clark in high regard

because they had such a history in there. the rest of them now are and I'm not trying to be negative but they're more of the marketeer they don't have the operational backgrounds that these guys have and whatever but when you do all the steps from right there if your dad had you out at the shop cleaning lug nuts when you were five or six you have a better appreciation of what it takes to put that car back together than some of the drivers right now If on Monday morning, some of these car owners say, be at the shop at about 9 o'clock and clean this thing out, then clean the hauler out, you might drive it a little different. Yeah, for sure. 100%. So after Daytona, what was your plan of action? Well, I hadn't had a plan. I had a plan of working to I was about 70.

No particular reason, and I'm coming up on that. I went back and did some weekly races at a couple of tracks. How did you feel about that? Was that, did you enjoy that as much as I think you did? I enjoy it, but I will tell you it's not as challenging because, and I say that with all respect. Yeah. There's not as many procedures involved. So I did that.

I took my knowledge of the rule book and offered it to teams to come out and speak to them about the rules. That's interesting. Well, it's, I'll use, I'll use, the selling point at the time was the year that I think Harvick had the 10 wins. He didn't have about seven penalties that year. he was he was 15 penalties less than the next nearest car by studying tellway if you're not spending time on that pit road or lining up to the rear you're helping yourself so basically if you know the rule book and how the officials are interpreting it you make it yourself out of out of a penalty because you know the rule when you start deviating the rule you start deviating the roof, that's when you get into it. I sit there and you're talking about rules. Go back to Nashville. I'm still scratching my head with the bush call. You made something fairly simple, very complicated by giving me spot back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That was crazy. It is crazy. But then you're sitting there,

okay, and I don't get to order the races right anymore. You're going to go to a street course where you know you're going to get blocked, the call was never, somewhere there's somebody blocked at that street course. You go to a road course at Washington, that rule was not put in. Why was the rule put in there? And who made, it doesn't matter who made, the call was made, okay. So knowing the reasons behind and whatever, and then applying those rules, I did that for a couple years and then I felt like okay I'm somewhat outdated because I'm not playing the game

every week. I'm watching it but I don't have the ends and outs of the rulebook and how it's worded and how it's changed so I can't see how to apply everything or what's the rationale. So to me my advantage. Then I went for three years I did some work with Trans Am and in the meanwhile I've rewritten a couple rule books looking for errors and stuff to make it read clearer because you'll read it one way and I'll read it another.

Let's find middle ground that's easily understood and take out all the legal ease if we can. Yeah. So your content. Where are you in terms, where are you in terms

of content? Do you have closure? on your career with NASCAR have you know are you able to you know kind of bend those fences a little bit or I know it's not been that many years since that all went down I had no idea how you felt about it emotionally but I'm I sense that you're just you're you're you were a little bit disappointed about the decision when it happened but I want to know I guess if you're if you made some peace with it. Well, I think I have to make peace with it, regardless if I like it.

I would say for 20 years, and this was never guaranteed, but you were, quote, in a family atmosphere with a family business. And as the family business evolved into a corporation, a lot of the family assets, aspect was being stripped away. Yeah. There was this kind of unwritten saying, you don't retire from NASCAR, you die from NASCAR. Okay.

And I was perfectly content doing what I was doing. I enjoyed it. I felt like I was doing a reasonable job. And whatever. So to have this, you know, you're right, all of a sudden my plan doesn't align with their plan for whatever reason.

So I go home, I tell my wife and try to figure out what's the next step. I will tell you, I miss not doing what I was doing at that level. Because like I said, that was my golf game. I miss a lot of the friends that I'd made and you've got to remember back that some of these people I'd work with at 30 years.

You get to know people when you're out at a racetrack at 2 o'clock in the morning watching something be repaired so we can use it the next day. To me, it shows that you care about them, you care about the job that they do, and you have the respect to be out there. And sometimes it's just no fun. And I would have liked to have said goodbye. to the group that I didn't get to see.

I kind of regret that, but on the same token, I can't travel to 18 different racetracks, and there's been so much turnover in the industry now. I don't know how many of them would be there. They'll be there, yeah. So you miss that. I still watch it. I get on a text chain,

and it just galls me to watch 10 lap calls me to watch 10 lap calls. I watched the one other night that ran 10 laps into one of the stage and I said, okay, quit quit short in the second stage because you can't get it cleaned up. Yeah. Like I said, I'm not a big proponent of stage racing. I understand part of it. When I was there, I did all I could do to officiate the rulebook to the rules that my personal feeling to the rule doesn't do that, doesn't enter into it.

This is what the rule is. And you go from there. I think there's several other rules in there that I'd love to see them get rid of. Yeah. I'm very leery of the damaged vehicle policy. Yeah. Screwing up something in Phoenix. Yeah.

Yeah. Good. it was just be a damn shame. Yeah. So. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we saw a scenario this past couple of weekends where that might, you know, with the 19 car, or I mean, I'm sorry, the 12 car Blaney at Watkins Glitt and things like that,

you know, but, you know. I think, I think in that, it's the people that have put these rules in places haven't taken the necessary steps to peel through all the layers of what can have. Yeah, the repercussions. Because they're not as experienced to what was there 15 or 20 years ago. When Pemberton and Darby and Hilton and I were there, that was over 100 years of racing experience in one room.

We probably saw it. Don't mean that we necessarily remembered it, but we'd probably seen it before. Well, David, it's been a great conversation man and I've always wanted to sit down and talk to you. As I mentioned earlier in the conversation and I always had a lot of respect for you. And you

you know, you had kind of become you were certainly respected and appreciated in the industry in the garage fans even were aware of who you were and loved your we all, me and TJ used to joke about your

put it out, you know, when the cautions would come out when the caution was necessary. I always just enjoyed the way you manage the show. Well, I appreciate it. You know, there were times when, you know, there's times when your competitiveness

gets the best of you, but I never worried about I never worried about there being a mistake. I don't know. think many of us ever worried about that when you were in the booth. We knew that you had your idea of how it should be and how it was going to go. I think we all knew exactly what to expect when we got up that Sunday to race and knew we weren't going to get any preferential treatment. Everybody was going to get treated the same. Well, it was one of the things that I always

tried to do, and I never really wanted to get close to the drivers. I would try to officiate it's the 17 car. Yeah. It's not Busher. It's not Kenseth when he was in the cell. It's the 17 car. Now granted, a human's driving it. A team is putting it together, but 17 is an inanimate deal. Yeah. Take the personality out of it. And yeah, we can we can both agree to disagree and we can sit there. I appreciate the compliment about no mistakes, but we made mistakes. I would make mistakes and be just lividly mad at myself. Not anybody else. And I would have somebody walk up. Oh, you did a great job. And I'm sitting there biting my tongue. Now, you dummy, you just did this and you shouldn't have done that. And they were oblivious to what had happened.

Because I think no more, they weren't watching the race. Yeah. So, you know, it was always trying to be fair, even, level-headed. Now, when I'd unkeyed the radio, I would probably be subject to some of the fines that you were subject to when we went to broadcast television. But, and I would be questioning somebody's intelligence, and I'd key the radio back on it. back to business is norm. But, and I didn't never, like I said, I thought in any good officiating, they put the race back into the race.

Don't sit there and drag this thing out. If it's going to take a long time, stop it. If you can clean it up quickly, do it, work at it, be efficient at it, go back racing. That's what the people came to watch. For sure. It is far more complicated today in ways that it shouldn't be. In ways that it shouldn't be. I would love to see today, and you can't put the stuff back in a can,

but there's too much technology. And just let the guys have some fun. Yeah, sure. be creative. Well, I'd be creative, but I look down there on the grid and the drivers. They don't appear like they're having fun. I mean, and let's face it, most of them, if you told them, hey, go get a real job and find out what that's like.

You'd find out you've got a pretty good deal here, but you've never had a real job, but you're not looking like you're enjoying this the way you should. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I didn't realize how miserable I was until I got done and got out of it. it and then I realized how much I didn't appreciate it. You know, I'm sitting here now going, why did I make that so damn hard? Why did I make, why was I so miserable about that?

You talk, I hated testing. I'd give anything to go back and slap myself around and say, enjoy testing. One day you don't get to test no more, you know. Well, I think the lack of test. testing and especially in Xfinity and trucks, somebody needs to revisit the amount of practice they're getting. Yeah. A set of tires is a lot cheaper than a race vehicle.

Yeah. By the way they make the tires now, you can run all day on a set. But that's another thing. We won't go down that path. Yeah. But I mean, you know, I posted a social media tweet the other day about Sharpton Moore Speedway. I was just reading an old program and just found this to be interesting. For the 500-mileer in 1981, just a random example of a race weekend.

Of course, we ran 28 races a year, so we had some off weekends in between many of the races. They would come in on Sunday, have a five-hour open practice. They would have another practice on Tuesday, another practice on Wednesday, qualify a top 15. Thursday, they'd practice again, qualify 16th through 30th. and then Saturday after Xfinity race, they'd have another final practice and get the last 10 cars qualified in. And by the end of the week, there was over 15 hours of track time for the Grand National Cup cars. And no one thought that was crazy. And nobody was, they weren't mowing through 20 sets of tires.

They were probably teams out. And the thing is, is like, you know, they would flip the light on and the track would go green on Tuesday for five hours, guys were just kind of petering in and out. Some people might not even be there. You know, not everybody was just flying out onto the racetrack running hundreds of miles. Um, they were just piddling and playing, because they knew

it had all week to sort through it. Um, but you had so much track time. Therefore, you had people that wanted to be there to see it. Therefore, you had people camping all weekend. And, you know, it was a week, it was an event that you brought your family to. Because there was always something happening.

Yeah. And, uh, these days, it's, uh, You know, we all get in there at the last minute to try to get in there and run the race and get out of there at the quickest amount of time. And so we've shortened up the entire, you know, experience in terms of a race weekend that almost be unrecognizable to me and you. And I certainly miss it. You know, practice, when I first started broadcasting, we had a little bit of practice. And it was such a great storyteller and helping me understand, you know, what the weekend might look like, what the race might look like. And it built storylines on this guy was really. fast. You know, this guy who's usually not fast was fast today in practice. Let's watch him in the race

see if it gets an unusually good finish. But, man, no matter how much we talk about it and we can go in circles, things are just going to keep on changing and it's out of our hands. The evolution's always going to be there or go to Daytona on the Wednesday before the 500 and be down there for 10 days. Yes, that was amazing. And that race track, Now, I will say this. I learned to hate lights because you went from a pretty structured day at 5 o'clock, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock. Now you're there all day.

All day and all night. Yeah. Okay. Back in the day, come about 5 or 6 o'clock, especially in the fall, it was dark. Yeah. You quit. Okay. So then you could go out.

You could have some fun. You could have some dinner. to interact with the local community and build your fan base. You're in and out and whatever. Today the evolution is not that. It's simulation. Simulation to me kind of teaches some, I won't say bad habits, but you have a respect more ways than one now. And I don't bring to bring up a dark time in your life of what hitting a wall will mean. The due generation, it's not there. Yeah. I remember, and your case is well documented, but go back to when Jeff Gordon hit the wall at Texas. It was probably two years before he was running, quote, like the Jeff Gordon of old.

Yeah. Out of probably this newfound research. respect for what that wall did. Safer barriers, simulation, and lack of track time has taken all that away from them. Yeah, that's a good point. It's kind of like intermediate tracks. Everybody says it's so much better. I don't know that it's all that much better. We just don't run them as many times.

Yeah. I would be remiss if I didn't say I'm concerned about short tracks. Me too. Because it didn't matter what you had back. in the day, whether it was a bad restrictors plate set up or whatever, you could always go back and find a baseline at a short track and have a good race. Yes. Because it didn't require aerodynamics, and it just required some nerves, but, you know.

Yeah, we talked about that on our show yesterday. I'm very worried about the short tracks in the short term because we lost a race to Richmond. if the races were exciting at Richmond, they would not be taking a race away from that track. Well, we lost a race to that track if the racing at Martinsville and Bristol don't soon turn the corner and no pun intended

and start producing some real true excitement just five years ago. We had that race where Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott were duking it out and cussing each other on pit road. I left that racetrack going, if we could bottle this every week, we would be, it would be to the moon.

This is what, this is what NASCAR is all about. You can't, you won't have that race at Martinsville right now with the way things are with the car and all. So it's in, it's a concern for me that instead of trying, instead of eventually finding the solution that makes short track racing exciting, we will just lose short track racing and go to where the racing is exciting today, right? Instead of trying to resolve the. issue, we'll just move away from it.

I watched, I thought Watkins Glen and Atlanta were two really good races. Yeah. Okay. I would be concerned at Watkins Glen, not because it's Watkins Glen, but when

Ambrose and Keselowski raced, the race up there for whatever reason, they're racing from curb to curb from infield to infield, and it could have been that the racetrack were slick, the tires were whatever, but it made this emphasis. Oh, we've got to have five more of those. Of those.

Yeah. It's produced two of them in 15 years. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was a great race. You'd go back and watch those two races. You'd watch the race a couple weeks back.

Atlanta the same way. But what had we been watching at Atlanta for? for 15 years. I would, you know, you can't go back in time. I liked Atlanta when it was a true oval. I did too. I wish I'd never, I never got to run on it before they put the dog leg in it. I went there a lot when I was a little boy. I'm sure you do. Dad was very good there. And I never, I never got to run on it. And what a neat thing that would be today to have a mile and a half true oval. It doesn't exist. Every oval that's a mile and a half has a dog leg, has a bend. you would have a one-off that no one else could replicate in the rest of the country.

And the other thing about, I'll go back to short track racing. We had, you know, we had this sort of run on one and a half mile tracks. We had a run on some short tracks here recently where they've added quite a few to the schedule. Short track racing about five years ago, as I mentioned, was thrilling. And there was no run on short tracks. Which is frustrating for me. we didn't get you know we did get wilksboro back but boy that was that was like you know moving a mountain i wish i wish we could age will and i've been fortunate enough to help them up there on

something i wish we could age the surface of wilksboro of wilksboro to speed up what it's capable of showing it will do that i think it will and and steve swift and his team will do everything because it will do that. Yeah. It needs a big race. It needs a long race. The All-Star race, the short track package and Wilkesboro is not the best combination for the success of that facility. A 400-lap long race with the way they use turn 1 and 2 and move up the racetrack and they can actually move around the corner in 3 and 4 as well.

It's multi-grove. I think it would serve it better having a 400-lap event. rather than the shorter sprint style event that the All-Star race is, because you just can't really get into what makes short track racing great in that brief of a race. Do you think Enoch Staley and Jack Combs had any knowledge of parabolic racetracks when they graded? Because it's truly parabolic the way it is, but, man, it produces great racing.

Yeah, it does. I'm glad it's back. All right, man. I've really appreciated this conversation. David, thanks for spending some time with us today. Glad to hear you're keeping yourself busy. And thanks for just coming and sharing some stories with us and your point of view. I mean, it's important to your points. You got all the experience and you're sitting there with a non-biased opinion

about where the sport is today and willing to share it. And I'm thankful for that. So I appreciate you. Glad to be here and I hope everybody enjoyed it. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they did. David Hoots on the Dale Jr. Download. All right, that was a great conversation with David Hoots. And a guy, I didn't think I'd ever get to talk to him about his job in the sport

because I thought he would always be doing it to his point. He always thought he'd be doing it, too, until he retired. But I didn't know, I guess, that he was kind of taken aback or surprised. by his, you know, being laid off. And, yeah, it was just fun kind of taking a peek at what the racetrack and what racing and what doing the job is like. I've seen this sport from so many perspectives, but that definitely is one I've been able to enjoy.

And so it's kind of cool to get him in here and get us a peek behind the curtain as of how things work. And I hope you all enjoyed it. David's still out there working in. the regional level, helping with some of the smart tour stuff or what have you. And yeah, he's staying pretty busy

and still making an impact in a good way at motorsports around this area. So just thankful for him. Thankful for Ally, bringing us the guest segment every single week, no matter what you're saving for, whether it's a race tickets to the next race or a new car, maybe a home.

We're all better off with an ally. All right, it's time for the white flag. dropping Sunday after the race to tear down with Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. They covered everything. They witnessed and saw at Bristol some strong opinions about the product at short track racing. And also some strong opinions from Denny Hamlin on actions detrimental this weekend or this week on Monday. Denny got down with some of the information about what he thinks can be maybe the solution or where the problems may lie with short track package. We've all danced around this for months and months about what it might be.

might be tires, the car, maybe it's a combination of a lot of different things, but hopefully somebody's going to find the answer. Norbump are clear, drop Monday as well. The spotters going round and round about what they experienced this past weekend. T.J. talking a lot about his experiences, spot in force at the Xfinity race on Friday night, dirty air. We talked about that as well, having T.J. on the show yesterday. A fun, fun, dirty air show with T.J. as a co-host. And then dropping today's Speed Street,

with Connor Daly and Chase Holden. Tomorrow, DJD Reloaded with Asch Jr. and Moore. Ask Jr. was hilarious. I don't know how it might come across listening to it, but damn it, I had a lot of fun. And Dirty Mo Doe comes out tomorrow as well. They'll feature all the great bets to be making on the upcoming race this weekend in Kansas. Remember to leave us a five-star Apple review. We will read those on the show.

So leave us a review, please. here's one that we just recently got. I asked you guys to write us a few, and here's one we had from last week. I've been listening for several years now, and the show continues to evolve and grow. The guests are top-notch, and you can hear Dale's genuine interest

and investment in their story. Thank you very much. It's a great review. You know what? There's no name here. From like junior fan, one, two, three, or something. I think if we're going to ask people to write the five-star review, we ought to at least have their name.

so they can go, hey, all right, he read my review. What was it, Junior? It's going to be Junior. It's Junior 57309. No, it's Dale Jr. fan 308. All right, Dale Junior fan, 308, 308 fan. Or they're from the 308 area code. You're right.

All right. Well, that's the show. I hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you tomorrow on DJD Reloaded. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Thank you.