The Dale Jr. Download - 590 - Ross Chastain: That Guy That Goes For It

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with NASCAR Cup standout Ross Chastain to catch up with him and learn more about his progression to becoming one of the front runners in stock car racing. Since his last appearance on the Download, Ross has found his footing in the top echelon of stock cars and can be considered a threat to win week in and week out. Ross explains that the confidence that Trackhouse Racing owner Justin Marks has in him plays a huge role in that and having quality cars under him that he doesn’t feel the need to overdrive. Ross and Dale talk about the modern approach to being a Cup driver which involves a rigorous weekly routine of exercise and team interaction. Ross explains that through his time with Josh Wise at Wise Optimization, he’s learned to embrace his training routine and looks forward to running and cycling in the off-season.The guys chat about Ross’ new partnership with Busch Beer and how it came about for the 2024 season. They also chat about Ross’ call with Rick Hendrick after his string of run-ins with some of Hendrick Motorsports racers, what he took away from the call, and how it shaped his approach to driving. Ross fills listeners in on his family’s watermelon farming company and what role that plays in his future. He explains that his brother Chad recently stepped away from pursuing a career in racing to help out more on the agriculture side, and he believes one day down the road he will follow suit.  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. We're back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download, and we've got a great guest coming in today. Ross Chastain, it's been a while. I've been trying to get Ross on the show. We want to catch up with him. It's been a few years since he's been on here. We've tried.

We've bounced dates around. He's finally made it. And I can't wait to catch up. Ross is coming in. Let's get started. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. All right. Ready?

Ready, camera one. Hey everybody is Dale Jr. The Ally guest segment. Ross, Chastain, I think the title of this one should be, want to hear us bull's because that's basically all we get. Your download starts now. All right, so before Ross steps in, I just want to thank Ally for supporting the guest segment every single week. They do such a great job supporting us here and all around the industry of NASCAR, sponsoring that 48 car of Alex Bowman. ally they're great people they do it right that's their slogan they certainly do and and they're

bringing us a great guest ross as uh he's been an old friend uh used to rent from us and uh for a while he did and uh we we we um always appreciated him quiet no problems that ended the road that ended the driveway where he was we didn't have any issues and uh i kind of wish he was still around you know Ended up breaking out and moving out. And, you know, now he's right in the thick of a career in the Cup series. And it's been a few years since we've been able to talk to him and check in on how things have changed in his life and some of the things that he's experienced on the racetrack and off the racetrack since his last time here in the Dirtymo Media Studio.

So he's out in the studio lobby. Let's bring him on in and get started. I don't even recognize him. Who is this? I thought you said Ross Chessain was here today. this rookie here who's this rookie that's a good

that's a compliment right you're going backwards in time you are when I shaved a couple like last year Jeff Gluck was like what the hell

but yeah Ross Chastain here on Bill Jr. Download 30 years old dude have you not had any birthdays what the f*** 31

30? 30 1 30 you're 31? 31 all right says 30 here 92 92 now you're making me

question it yeah you have to do the math I don't know that's what happens I think right as you turn 30 you're like why count

I'm one of the those. I don't need to count anymore. I know. That's young, dude. I feel like you've been doing this for 20 years. 18. I was 18 when I started. That was 2011. Yeah. First race. Yeah. Yeah. NASCAR. Feels like you've been doing it much, much longer than that. Does it feel long for you? No, I feel like that was yesterday. So I just got to run IRP again in the trucks for the first time this year. Yeah. Well, second time after that first race, I did worse. I came back all these years later and I actually ran worse so yeah um yeah like missed my pit stall did a bunch of rookie things that i didn't do that first time but no i can remember like moments like that like ever last month

you used to used to live in a home that you rented from us we have a bunch of rentals around town and one of those houses you were in for a while and so we had this kind of we never really hung out hung out but um we had i think uh there was a built a trust some sort of a weird bond between us that I've always appreciated. That was when you were racing in the Xfinity series, racing for your career, racing for your life every weekend, trying to figure out how to get your way into this thing,

you know, rooted into the series or rooted into the sport. Now you are. I mean, maybe you don't feel that way. That's probably a good question to ask you. I do. Do you feel rooted? Yeah. Feel like you're finally, finally got your hooks in it.

And so I've been on the show, what, one and a half times, I think? Yeah. I think 2018 end of the season, and then we announced the throwback scheme in 2020. And I remember, well, I forgot, but I remember when I listened back to the podcast this week, that I said in 2020, like, oh, I'm not comfortable, but I do feel comfortable now. You feel good now. And so to answer that question, yeah, I do. But, yeah, when I was living in the townhouse, that was because I wasn't comfortable.

And I had lived at Bobby Daughter's shop. I had lived with Ron Hornaday and then after about eight months he was like hey man I thought this little you know he I could have kept staying there but Ron and Miss Lindy were like so

this townhouse we heard about Dale's got these townhouses once you get up with Rambo and y'all be roommates and be cheap y'all had your rent really cheap back then I don't know if it still is but it was cheap as we can legally get it very economical the government coming at after us

yeah so yeah we're in those townhouses and then we went across the street where Josh Barry lived. And I remember my roommate and I walked over there at one point. Rambo had moved out, had a new roommate. Andrew Lackey, gas made at Penske. And we walked over there and knocked on the door like, hey, can we look around? And Josh looked like hung over. I think they'd had a big night.

He's like, no, I don't know who you are. No, you're not coming in the house now. He was racing your late model. Still eye racing a lot then. So, yeah, that house, I should have bought it. You all sold that. And at the time, I didn't. I was like one year away from making enough money to put a down payment down on it.

And at the time, I just, I raced for so many years and didn't make any money that I couldn't look at, I couldn't fathom like a house because I'd put like, I'd buy an extra set of tires on a weekend or something. Yeah. I had Blake on my partner at Filter Time, Blake, who, you know really well on the show and he raced with his son back in the day and. Some? A lot early on. Right.

And he had this great analogy of you. as a driver and I think it's a it's complimentary you put people in uncomfortable situations you know and you're a bit of a throwback so back in the you know back in the 80s in the 90s guys are really physical and aggressive with their cars more so than they are now the cars just you know you can't really worried about toe links and all these different things you still can be rough with the car but you are a bit of a You're a bit similar in how the mentality used to be in the 80s and 90s without doing anything wrong, right?

You race people hard as you can race them, but you put people in uncomfortable situations with, I think it's a really great analogy. And it's what you would want to do, right? If you're a race car driver, you would love to have everybody in the field uncomfortable all the time. And you're really good at that. but now that you have I want to ask you so you've had this fire you've had this passion this thing driving you to to make it make it make it spending every dime worried about next year worried about what was coming down the road you're now as you you know you as you mentioned you're now more confident or comfortable with your position in the sport and that you've all right

I'll compare it to my feelings coming in. I was like, even though my last name was Earnhard, I was like, if I don't win a race, I don't know if I get to do this my whole life. I just wanted to do it my whole life. I didn't have like championships and goals and things. I was just like, what do I got to do it my whole life part? And that was like, I got to win a race.

If I win a race, I see other guys around here that have one win. They milked the shit out of this. I think if I just win a race, That'll be enough to get me to do this for my whole life. I won't have to get another job somewhere else. Well, you're now in that place where you're like, I've done enough. I feel like I can sustain employment, right? How do you keep the fire?

How do you keep the same Ross that used to pasture the shit out of the top 15 in that red number four that didn't belong in the top 15? How do you keep that same fire? well I for cup wise I I studied so guys like Joey he's sitting like his diecast is sitting here so it comes to mind he was one that I studied getting into the cup because he was at the top of I thought the the pile as far as taking cars that I mean drives for team Penske but there was times that I watched over the years where he would go and take a win or or take a spot or fend off somebody that was clearly faster and he still does that I just watched him do it it to Martin at Vegas just a few weeks ago. Like for fourth place on lap 80, he's just blocking him.

Straightaway his corners, Martin's going every way. And I'm like five car links back and I'm watching it happen laughing. Like, all right, I think that's a little much. Um, but Martin gave him some grace and didn't push the issue. And I was like, wow, I feel like if that was me, I'd have been sent to the Las Vegas strip. Um, but yeah, I, um, yeah, I, I want, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, like you said, all those things. I did all that to get here. And it's a constant evolution now. But I do see things from a different lens because I have Justin Marks who says, man, you're my guy. We're going to do this for a long time. I want to do a lot of things. And he has a lot of, you know, very matter of fact, like to me goals, said what he says to me. I'm more like you,

though. I don't really have a, I don't have specific like written down on paper goals of what I want. now I do things to like think through it and like envision it and and picture myself in those moments but the the balance and it kind of shifted for me was when I got to funded cars because the mentality did change I wasn't waiting on the last run of the race to put a set of stickers on because I had had scuffs earlier in the race and now I can go race your cars like whichever one was the worst J.R.M. car whichever was the worst Gibbs car whatever was. whatever. So, yeah, it, I can let the car do the work more now. So, I mean, I still run into people. I still, I still put my car into spots that I look back and it probably shouldn't go in, but I see other guys

do that too. And I see, you know, there's mistakes all the time. I just, definitely when this Gen 7 car first came out, I think I was, I had a really fast car and I took advantage of that. and to my detriment sometimes, trying to go too fast. You had a really, really hard crash at Fontaine and practice. Yeah. How bad was that right? I hope I never feel anything like that again. I don't think 20 years ago, I don't think that you walk away from it.

Yeah. That was before all of the improvements to allow the car to be a little more crushable. And I remember hearing about that accident and kind of wondered, you know how how hard that must have been to go through something like it your rack opinion steering all of this stuff is new nobody's really busted their ass yet a couple guys have tested this car and lost it but you had this muscle memory with the steering box of what you need to do when you're in trouble with the steering wheel and so I mean when things got out of shape with that car it was doing things differently

yeah I watched harvick wreck in the same spot at the start of practice he hit it and he backed it in the fence. And when we came down pit road, I didn't think anything of it. I went back out and hit the same, like, geographic spot on bar data. Right. Left rear hits a bump, bottoms out. And instead of just spinning out like he did, I overcorrected.

And, yeah, I mean, it was slow motion, just like a lot of those crashes are. And just brutal, the hit. I mean, I was awake. Yeah. But it hurt me. My back was hurt. And they clear me to race and I race the next day, but like ice bath at the hotel that night trying to get the swelling down in a bathtub in Ontario, California that I didn't want to lay down in.

Not the bathtub you want to be in, but at the hotel that was the best I could do. And it got me where I could race the next day. Yeah. You y'all did go on and have a lot of speed. I'm not knowing anything about what's going on inside of your. building, just an observer from a distance, the new car had leveled the playing field. Everyone was coming out of the same room with the same notes to begin the day. And as time has progressed, it seems like it's been more difficult for you to put together

those days that y'all were having that first year. What do you attribute that to? Y'all will flash. You'll win races. I can wake up on New Year's Day and go, yeah, Rossler win a race or two this year. No problem. But it's the up and down, hot and cold, that is unique about your team to other. Do you look at other teams and go, yeah, they're having the same thing?

Or do you see it throughout the sport? Or do you look at your team and go, we're the only one sort of inconsistent like this? What's going on there? No, we're not the only ones. There's a couple that don't seem to fluctuate as much for sure. Every now and then they will. Everybody does. Everybody runs 18th at some point.

I mean, it does kind of stink that we're in here after a 33rd place finish, and there was not a scratch on the car at Homestead. We just struggled. How does that? So help me understand. I wish I do. I know. I know.

I know. I know. This is not fun to talk about. But help me understand. I'm so far removed. as a driver of the of the motions and the thought process in in in in your head with your team and all that when it seemed like with the older cars there were ups and downs there were there were there were times when teams got hot but it was a little more gradual and linear and and and with the next

in car, to your point. Rouse will have three great weeks and then disappear. RCR, just right as the playoffs beginning, is like, oh, they found it. And now they're not good again. It's like, what is the difference? How do, I mean, it seems like this car has y'all in such a small box, almost kind of like the, the, the COT used to be, where everybody. had to be on the ground and you had to be right on the ground, right, and everybody found that

place and all the cars ran the same. And it seems like this car is the same way, but it seems to the pace from one race to the next seems to fluctuate so dramatically for a lot of teams, your team in particular. Why so? I wish we knew. I feel like that, like you said, the old car, Gen 6 and before was, there was more gradual, but there was also a lot of. longer period where if you were slow, you were going to be slow from what I watched. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when I watched as a kid. Now with this car, like, the way, like, you talk about COT wanting to be slammed on the,

or on the ground, that's what, like, this one doesn't want, you need air under the car. So that, that was the France family's vision for it was to square them up and raise them up, get them up off the ground. So, you know, we don't touch the splitter. You don't hear that. So when I get like an Xfinity car or a truck, it's like splitter hits or the, the cross member hits, I'm like, whoa, what? What was that?

Like, oh my, that's right. Okay, that's why I'm going up the track. This thing is all in the rear, so I don't know if. Yeah, go ahead. But, like, you know, they sit like this. Right. Like, like up in the front, down in the back, because literally you want that diffuser on the ground. Close to ground as possible. You want these fins.

That's everything. Yeah. Like, if you want to be, technically, if you want to be looser, you just raise the backup and take downforce off of it. And that'll make you looser. Yeah. Like, it's a terrible, that's a terrible combination. And like, something that we talk about, how much do you want to give up back here? Because this is, this is the magic.

It's not getting your tail over. I mean, there's a little bits you can get, I think. And, you know, there's a lot of always rumors and thoughts of why teams get faster and slower. You know, what, what are we all doing? We're all pushing the limits. Yeah. But we do have the same parts coming out of the... It'd be like buying these die casts.

You buy this one car diecast. Everybody takes it to the track. Anywhere in the world, everybody buys the same one, but then what do you do with it when you get home? So with the next gen car, that platform or that the pitch of the car, where the front is in height and where the rear is in height, is not as easy to nail every single week? Is it, you know, you'll...

Do you get back to the shop and go, well, you know, we just had the front a little too high or we had the back a little too high or, you know, is it, is that the difference in running 30th and running in the top 10 is just where that pitch is and how close you got to the magic? I would have said that. Is it spring? I would have said that in the past like in 22, 23 and even the beginning of this year. Yeah, we were really, we could kind of, we kind of had a, we have a good, you know, almost three years now notebook of this car in the. the testing at the end of 21. And we thought we had it kind of understood. And then Homestead is maybe an asterisk, I hope,

because we did some things that normally free the car up. I was just so tight at Homestead. And everybody was in our group, but I was the tightest. And it didn't. The normal things, which are big changes like we stopped and just shut the car off in the pit stall

and made changes, it wasn't the Kate. Like it didn't respond. It actually made it worse. It made it more tight. It made it tighter. So, yeah, there are times where we miss the heights, and I go out and hit the ground, those rub blocks that are underneath,

aluminum rub blocks bolted. There's five of them. The only one that's not is on the left rear so that we don't get that spike in the driver's seat up our backs. But we just travel it down and hit the frame, so it didn't really solve the problem. But, yeah, there's times where we miss it, for sure. And there's times where they expect hit the ground and we don't.

there's times that we don't expect to hit the ground and I go on track and I slam the ground. So we're still, there's still like a unknown about the physics and why the tire squishes as far as it does, right? I mean, every, every, we measure a lot of things, but we don't actually measure every tire because they're brand new when we put them on. Yeah, so every, every, every, every construction is going to react differently. And, you know, so that has to play a role. That's a guess almost for some of the teams. That's the biggest guess in my life right now as a cup driver is tires at track, but the team handles that, but then coming back to the DIL, to the simulators.

You do that a lot. You run the Simulton. I just came from there. Yeah. Tuesday mornings I'm there every Tuesday. Yeah, I saw Dillon over there. I was lucky enough to go run it a little bit preparing for the Bristol Xfinity race, and I saw Austin Dillon, and he goes, I'm here three hours every week, sometimes more.

And he mentioned you, he said, you're here just as much. Yeah, I used to do the tire scaling, I call it. I don't know all the technical terms. And I told them this morning, they were asking me about steering angle and some things that are not lining up with that track. And it's a constant evolution. Like the DIL is never going to be finished. Well, that's what's so great about it. There's always more you can do and learn and continue to evolve.

So I used to do the prep work for Larson and Kirk Bush and McMurray at the beginning. and then I was doing it for me and Kurt in 21, and then I was doing it a little bit for me and Daniel, and they were following. I think in 21, my crew chief was like, you're in there too much. I had started to pick up on, like, things that are supposed to be blind tests, like A and B something, A, B, A, it,

and do different blind tests and let me just give my honest feedback, and I was picking up on things that I was, like, leading us down the wrong path because I was cheating it. And so I just go in and drive, and yeah but we spend a lot of time at the tech center it's it's awesome well you used to be in huntersville you know remember pratt miller that's right so it's a lot better it's all in one one place now the tech center is more than sim yeah i don't know what all they do in there honestly but i mean what are you doing in there just sim you work out wise is yeah gosh program yeah josh was on with you

when you when you when you go into josh's what do you what do you expect something oh i never know but i go there i start my day there every day. So even simulator days, I pop upstairs first. Tuesdays are when we're not in there, but I just, it's like, it's just like a habit. Doug Duquart told me to go to Josh every day when back in the day, like back in 2018. I said, how do I, how do I be a better race car driver? He said, you go see Josh. This was when he was at Gannasi. And so I've just stuck with that have it. So Monday to Thursday, especially. I just go there every day. And so yeah, Dan Jansson's in now and Scott Speed. Matt Spear is a mindfulness coach we have. He's more over in Davidson and we meet

him some Tuesdays, but I'm busy Tuesday morning. So I'd hit or miss with him, but fit in time when I can. And I never know what Josh is going to have for us. I just go kind of take it in. Yeah. In the workout size, the obvious part. But right. How much physical working out are you doing? Well, clearly I'm not lifting the heavy weights. I'm not, I don't want to be any bigger, stronger. You're doing endurance still. Yeah. Do you ride bikes?

I do. Really? Yeah. Okay. I remember I, well, I, I, I'd text you one time, I was looking for a road bike. Text you, I was like, hey, you want to sell anything? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I know Dale has to have three sitting somewhere.

I ain't ready to sell mine yet. I know, that's what you told me. So I bought a new one. Yeah, I bought one, when I'd signed a Gannasi contract, I'd made a deal with Josh, that I'd buy one, and then I bought a better one now, so I'm, yeah. I'm full into it. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah.

I ride with Scott and Josh quite a bit. Dan's on an old... Are you about the data? Because like the one thing that keeps me going, if it was about, like, I do like being nosy and looking in yards and shit and seeing what people are doing, different type of neighborhoods and stuff like that.

But I need to be able to ride a similar route so I can compare data from the last ride or the last multiple rides I rode, I ride Broly School. That is what I get excited about. At the end of this ride, I'm going to have something to compare it to the last ride and the ride, you know, all the, and that's exciting to me. That makes me want to go do it.

Without that, I would not have the motivation to stay after it. I don't ride as much as I should, but what is the motivating factor outside of being a great race car driver? Like, what enjoyment do you get out of riding? Yeah, it started as just for racing. Yeah. Like Josh said, do it. And Josh was my driver.

coach. So to be a better driver, I do what Josh says, and that's why I rode his loner bike, and then I bought a road bike, then I bought a mount bike, then I bought a better road bike. Now it's just like you said, it's for the competition of myself and the other guys and people that I follow on Strava and Garmin and the different things. Yeah, I get, I mean, my new bike, I had to have a power meter in the train. Like I want to see the power. And we trained by power. So Scott Speed is big into power. or even into running. We have pods, him and I put on our shoes

and we run, instead of like by pacing, running a nine minute mile, we'll run by power because they have their own algorithm for how much power you're using. So we're similar, we're within 10 pounds of weight,

similar height, so we can both train anywhere in the world. You know, as we both travel, he's off doing things, I'm traveling, but we can see each other and we talk about,

you know, each week. And like right now, he's ramping up his mileage to 30 miles a week. I'm like, I'm not, going high mileage, but I'm going to put in some more effort on my lower mileage stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, it's about the competition. Like, he put it in a good sense about a month ago. He's like, imagine after Phoenix, you get to be whatever kind of running or biking athlete you want to be because you don't have to feel good on Sunday. Right now, everything revolves around Sunday. And truthfully, I have to taper things off physically so that I'm fresh on Saturday and Sunday or whatever practice it is. So come off season, like I don't have to,

I can be sore on Sunday. I can do kind of whatever I want, right? I don't, I don't, we have a lot of travel booked for partners and things I want to do. My brother's getting married and going to Mexico for his bachelor party and things like that. But I get to run and bike kind of how you want, how I want and be sore.

Yeah, I crave the soreness now. It's funny. I used to get on that bike and just, I mean, there was time. we get done with the ride and I wouldn't even talk to Josh. Everybody's saying by, I just put my bike in my truck, drove off. Josh called me an hour later, hey, you mad? What's wrong?

Yeah, I don't like you. Do not like this. I don't like doing it. Damn. I crave it now. Yeah, you're honest. I, um, I, I, I'm intimidated to ride with them because they're, they're fast. Um, I'm, I think my best, at my best around 2017, I was kind of like 18 and a half, 19,

mile and average and I know they're that and more so I'm that's a slow mile that's a slow no that's that's on you'd be fine yeah I can't do that anymore you'd be fine I think even if you were if you were slower than that you'd be fine with us um Josh does a really good job to doesn't feel like I mean he's dropped me off the pack sure they've they've all left me um but I've got I was the weakest and now I'm not so I've had to work at that um but Alan Gustafson is my one I'm afraid of dude he's tough he rides from Hendrick every day basically and I'm going to go one day and I've talked to him about it but I'm not ready yet

I'm got to get my my speed and my cadence and my power up like I don't have the power to even if I'm drafting three guys I don't think I can I know I can't and I ride his loop he does because I can see it online and I go and I do it and I look it back and I'm like oh I need

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Team stores, official trackside haulers, NASCAR.com, the official Lionel dealers, and Walmart and Target stores nationwide. So I want to talk to you about working with Anheuser-Busch. And, well, it's not Anaheuser-Bush anymore, M-Bev, but Bush Light. So this has been kind of fun over the last couple of weeks. We got in contact with Budweiser and going to run a little race, going to have a little number eight car. It's going to be fun. I'm going to do a little thing over here. One of the things that I've learned in this brief period of time of talking to them is how important the Bushlight brand and its connection to the NASCAR fan and the NASCAR ecosystem, how important that is to them.

That is very important. They did not want that disrupted. I want to hear from your experience of getting to know, working with a beer sponsor is unique. It's fun, but it's cool, it's unique. I really enjoyed it. Even I could look across the garage at Rusty Wallace or Sterling Marlin and see them and know that they were also having the similar experience

and the, you know, the photo shoots and other things that the product they're trying to sell just it's a unique fun experience so um what has that you know you you this is kind of your first real big partner that that that that was that that was that that was going to uh it's it's going to be it's going to be a fun unique experience so to tell me about that has has that been everything you thought it would be um because you know you when you're when you're when you're driving for a beer brand the two if you do your job well

you become synonymous with it right and it becomes part of your identity really you have other great partners you know Cabota the tractor company yeah pronounce that properly Kubota how you say that

Cabota Cabota Cabota I shouldn't try so hard trying too hard I can see as you can see me struggling you've got other partners that have been great, right? And in this day and age, there are multiple partners throughout the year.

But I do want to know, since we're kind of going through this thing with the Budweiser folks, how it's been with Bush Light. You took on, again, I mean, I'm rambling here, sorry to take up all this, but you took on Bush Light from Harvick, who has, you know, he,

you become kind of part of the squad or the, you become part of the fraternity. Yeah. Like when I started driving the bud car, instantly Kenny Schrader started talking to me more. Yep. He did the same thing with me. Right? And he's like, hey, man, you're part of the, you know, you're going to love it.

And so it's kind of like a group. Yeah. Become part of. So tell me about it. When it first got brought up, really before it, before this Bushlight Partnership got brought up at the Bushlight Clash. In 2022, my dad and I were meeting with Andrew Lukinich, who was a sales guy. track house and it was our first time meeting and we'd like maybe been on a call or something going into the season maybe we saw me at the shop but at the track we were in the lounge and he was asking or

he was telling us about this crypto sponsor he was selling that was it was the craze and we were getting paid in crypto we were this we were that it was I was going to be the crypto guy and I mean I'm zoned out and I look over my dad he's just like what in the world and my dad's real quiet quiet quiet guy and he goes, you guys don't really look like you, you're into it. And my dad said, well, if I can't touch it, I don't want it. Personally, if they want to sponsor Ross, that's great. He said, well, Mr. Chastain, what would you like? And in kind of the most stern tone I've heard my dad use in a while, honestly, he said,

tractors and beer. That's, I mean, that's what we are. Like, we farm watermelons and we drink beer. So NASCAR, that's like agriculture and beer. Like, that's what we want. Yeah. So it's really cool right now to be sitting here with Cabota sponsorship and a beer on my shirt and a tractor on my hat. Because, you know, in a way we talked about that manifested that years before.

And then Andrew was incredible. Went out and we've secured both. So when we went to St. Louis the first time, I had to be honest with Bushlight and say, look, I already drank your beer. I started through a girlfriend of several years ago. She, I didn't. Like when I first turned 21, I drank something else. But be honest with them, and I'm already drinking it. I'm going to drink it, whether you sponsor me or not.

And I'm going to continue to drink it. Whether you sponsor me for a day, you never sponsor me or we were together for a long time. So that's just the truth. So, I mean, when I first switched back home, my buddies laughed at me. I mean, it just wasn't. The brand wasn't, in our little neck of the woods of Alva, it wasn't what it is now. Yeah.

We used to look at the Kevin calendar in the bar there, LJs or the Shores, both had one to local bars. And we had a conversation, me and my buddies, like, what if that was me one day, way before this stuff ever came? And now my calendar was in there this year, like race schedule. It's the race schedule. Yeah. And that's me.

That's the best part about it. It's... Or that's one of the cool perks. They put me in... They put us in so many places. Yes. It's hard to... It's honestly hard.

Like, I could never even go see all the places they put me. I don't think you could do that in a year. The beer partners are very good at utilizing their sports marketing. And it's bars, it's grocery stores. It's all supermarkets or gas stations. But they do actively promote... their drivers and their drivers are part of the campaigns that they have going on. And I know I experienced that and saw that with other drivers as well over the years.

And that's why that's one of the things I meet when I say fun. That's one of the things that's cool about it is you feel represented. Like you're working for them, but they're also working for you and helping grow your own brand. They took me to Canada and we filmed in the woods with the Bush guy, like the guy in the red flannel shirt. and that's going to be a real TV commercial, like not social, not like all the stuff we do on the racing, like on our side. That's national commercial.

And like, it's going to be short. It's, you know, it took all day to film something for a couple seconds. But that was just really, and I got to be like in the fire suit. I'm Ross, the NASCAR driver with the Bush guy, and as they introduced me next year onto the commercial side. So, yeah, it's just the things behind the scenes and then, you know, actually get to get done. and like cheers a beer to to the day we just had

and the content and commercial we just created is just something that, yeah, it changed my life. I mean, partnering with Bush Light will forever change my life. And there's been a lot of things that I've probably said that, and I think that about myself, and I've said it publicly,

but all these different little caveats to my life and career are like steering where my life's going to go, and this one's huge. No kidding. Man, that's a great, I'm glad you're aware of it and you understand like how powerful this could be for you. I did get in a little trouble though. I was meeting with them the first time and I was like, so did some research, looked up your stuff when they were with Case Kane, all the, all the, all the, I call Bushlight guys, but y'all went through different, different brands, different what y'all represented. And I asked about the Clydesdales. Yeah. And they looked at me funny. I was like, well, I think it, I kind of like leaned in. I kind of like leaned in. into it in the meeting like I think they'd be cool to bring and they're like bush light Ross not Budweiser yes I'm like oh I didn't know there I mean there's silos yeah they're siloed so

they're very competitive you won't see me in anything else you will not see me with a Budweiser I talked to him it's funny you mentioned that man so I did I did the exact same thing all right we had been we had been um maybe together for a very short period of time it wasn't it wasn't right out of the gate like that but um I came to him they weren't doing a lot of, they weren't doing a lot of special one-off paint schemes. We did a baseball car and one or, there were other people doing more.

And I was like, man, I want to do neat stuff. And they were like, nope, red car, every week, every week, brand continuity, got to have it, won it recognizable, want it easy to see, want them to see the same thing every week. I was like, okay. I mean, I get it now after all these years, but I went to them, dumb, dumb idea.

I went to them and said, you know it'll be cool for the All-Star race. They were like, what? I said, I drive a but light car. That'd be neat. They were like, no chance. No. They're like, we're, that's the, there's, they're a different team inside the same tent.

And they have a healthy competition amongst all of the brands, right? They're all vying for success in their own tent. So I could totally understand that. I did the same thing. And they immediately like, made me realize that was not going to happen ever. And that I should just go ahead and forget that idea. And that I was going to drive a red eight car majority of the time is going to look like it looked, right?

They have opened up some of our paint schemes. I see. We do hunting can, camo, farmer can, different fishing cans. So it's been cool. Let's go back a little bit to, I'm just going to pick a race, but to kick this part of the conversation off of. Darlington last lap, I believe, going down into Turn 1, crash with Larson.

This was a couple years ago. There was a lot of conversation about Rick and Justin, and no one really knows exactly kind of what might have got talked about behind closed doors if you had a conversation with Rick, which I'm sure if you did, it was productive. but was that as a big a deal in the evolution of you as a driver as we all made it out to be or it felt like? Well, we definitely had a conversation. That's, I mean, yeah, crashed a couple of his cars.

I reached out and I called him. Yeah, yeah. No, I had to ask for his number and got it. Yeah. Sorry, we had talked previously before that. yeah he was I'm not gonna go into details but he was great it was everything that I ever thought it would be and um yeah it wasn't wasn't that day it was the next day but um yeah I wanted to reach out I wanted to because it wasn't the first time that one of their cars had wrecked so um

was it as big of a deal after that I no I don't think so yeah we but Justin and I we had to learn through that yeah neither one of us had ever been in that situation Justin as a driver before he owned track house was not the one crashing people. He was getting crashed, unfortunately, by me. Sores wrecked him at Dover one time. He's got this awesome picture in his office. He's like in the air wrecking at Dover, Daniel wrecked him, and I'm in the four car getting lapped, like trying to get by the wreck.

So he's got that in Nashville. But so he wasn't used to it. I was used to it, but I wasn't to that magnitude of the five car and Mr. So, yeah, it was good. It was learning time. I was broadcasting around that area with NBC, and we would always, my stance on all of that as a broadcaster in part, so as someone in the media, I try to lean into my emotions or passion about something,

but I also remember what it was like as a driver to hear certain things. from the media. And I am not sure that, you know, that I always err on the correct side of things. But during this particular era of your career, there was, I didn't want you to change. Like, the guy that's willing to go down in the corner and hope it sticks, right? Or, you know, go down in there and try to do whatever it took. to win that race, I didn't want that to get removed out of your DNA. There weren't any other drivers in the field that drove like you.

There weren't, there weren't, there, there are not a lot of drivers that are willing to put people in these uncomfortable situations. There's a lot of drivers that try, uh, maybe do a little bit too much to try to take care of each other. There's a little bit of too much, you know, there's a little bit too much of, are you going, man? It's your day, you know? And we kind of got, we felt like way, you know, over a decade ago, even way back when Mark Martin was driving, we kind of fell into this really big, big give and take mode. Like, you know, like talking about in the 80s, it was ruthless.

It was, I'm going to drive through your ass. And then it got really give and takey, and we all were chummy and all everybody in the garage together and the bus slots together. But it's sort of weaved back toward this, I'm racing the shit out of you. I can't give you this spot. I can't afford to give you this spot. And there's a lot of, you know, not talking about what I'm seeing in the truck series and the Xfinity series where they're just kind of driving like idiots and crashing all the time or bumper cars like we'll see this weekend at Martinsville.

But even in the cup level, the racing has evolved. You've seen it. You've been a part of it. You were, you've been here long enough to feel that shift. Have you, you know, have you, how do you polish? look I want to be tenacious I want to I want to still be that guy that goes for it in term one at Darlington right

but I don't want to I don't want to crash I don't want to crash and I don't want a reputation as as someone who's reckless because you're you don't want to be reckless right you want to be a winner so how are you working through that without stripping out the good parts

that make you unique I as a fan first and a broadcaster love that you're going to bring some drama mix it up right and come out on the good sometimes and come out on the bad other times other guys don't give me that fire other guys out there just bore me to death you know so how do you because it's an asset to the industry going forward right to have those personalities that are that are colorful I mean, it's a work in progress.

There's not a, there's not a perfect answer. There is really no, I mean, I could just say, I don't know. But I take feedback from a lot of people, and I watch this stuff back, and basically I want to get, I think what makes race car drivers at any level in any race car when you push a vehicle that you're sitting in over the limit and you slip the tire, when you can bring it back, that's what makes a race car driver good. And that could be in dirt, asphalt, three wheels, two wheels, four wheels, doesn't matter.

I mean, I see the MotoGP guys now and like the way sometimes they're breaking and you look like, I think I see an air gap under that back tire. Oh yeah. But they're breaking and then they turn in, set the tire down, they're leaning on their shoulder, elbow, knee, whatever, all the stuff. And that's what makes them so good to make it to the top level of Motor GP. When it comes to four tires, I want to get there, but keep my tires on the ground and I want to not crash.

That's ultimately what I learned through the Darlington thing and is I still want to do things that I really don't, I really don't care if they're uncomfortable. And I heard this, I was told this from Elliot Sadler. He brought me Nutrienex Solutions in 2019 when he was retiring when he got out of Xfinity Series full time. And we went up to colleague, ended up, where we ended up, where we ended up that year.

And we were talking about some stuff and maybe I had a run in or something. And he said, Ross, like, man, I, just his point of view was like, I'm in Emporia. I have my family and my friends here. He used to worry about his competitors and what they thought and what they were going to think after he was done racing. And he said, it turns out I don't see any of them

because he lives in Emporia. And I believe I'll go back to Florida to the farm when I'm done. Not that I want, I don't want people to not like me. I don't want any driver or their families or anything to like look at me and like walk the other way. But we're on track. If they get mad when their helmets on because I kept my position because I raced them. Yeah. I don't.

It doesn't bother me. Like I don't. It's when I step over the line and I wrecked Larson when either one of us could have won that race. When I, you know, cause guys to crash. Maybe I make it through for a while. They're like, I was making it through. I was like, I see it like at super speedways right now. Brad pushes somebody, spins them, he drives through, and we all crash.

And that's the way it goes. Like, I mean, he's the one spinning them out, it seems like. But I was that way. Like, I was the one getting through the crashes because I was initiating them. So, yeah, I'm just trying to get to that limit and then not crash. So, yeah, it's a constant balance, though. There's not, driving slower wouldn't help, won't help. Like that's not going to, you know, just stay at the back.

Sure. I'll be kicked out of the one car. How do you deal with, this was always annoying to me as a driver? You had sort of, and maybe still have a bit of a quirky, clunky, relationship with Hamlin. There's other drivers. Like, I think maybe you know, maybe you don't know, but maybe Truex has a bit of an unfavorable opinion.

at times when he's racing you. At least he talks about it on the radio. Is there anybody he doesn't talk about? There you go. So how do you handle that part of it? Because I want to be liked. I want everybody to say, Ah, Dale's great.

I love racing them. Races hard, race is good. I like racing Dale. Safe, clean racer. You want that? I do. You still do. And you run the car tour?

Oh, no. Well, I just don't. Well, it's a little different these days. But... Why is it different? What do I want? Yeah. Well, so back when I was racing,

the media would always try to figure out a way to tie me and Kyle Bush together. If they could get Kyle to say some shit in his media session, they could come ask me about it, and I'd say some shit. You know, they wanted that each week. They try it. They tee us up. And I wanted it to go away. Kyle probably did too, but they wouldn't leave it alone.

And, you know, and it really, made our relationship difficult. I knew I was going to a racetrack where I was, he was going to be there and I wasn't going to like it. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be where he was, right? I didn't want him to be there. I wanted him to go on. And, you know, I mean, it's, I imagine knowing you, I think I know you well, I imagine

there's a tiny bit of that and the thing with Denny, because the media takes it, you know, you all have a thing. The media runs with it in it, and then there, maybe there's a tiny bit of of things six months down the road because yeah you're on the same racetrack together that's going to happen and then he has his show he says his things he says what he

says um how do you what do you think about how do you manage that do you care how you're perceived do you you tell me that you you listen to feedback you tell me you watch you know interviews or

you know you do uh you know hear what's being said and from all angles. What's your stance on, like, do you want it to go away? Do you care? Do you like, you know, beefing a little bit with these guys? Are you a stand your ground?

Do you call and go, man, I really don't want no problems. I'm just racing, you know? How do I help it? How do I get it to where we can go exist? You know, what's your sort of process? Right. Yeah, well, when it gets real bad, I go to the Jeff Dickerson playbook. So I know he runs Spire, the race team now.

We see what he's built it into, but he was my agent that got me from mid-pack to front of the pack and his group at Spire. So now David Erickson, who worked at Spire for years, now runs President of MMI, the agency that we've brought back and rebuilding that brand that Carrie Agaghanian had years ago. Carrie's retired, but he's a part of it. And so I lean on those guys. So we only call Jeff when it gets real bad. David can handle it all. There's just times where Jeff has a way to think about it or a quote, you know, a way to,

just a line that I can take and like really like, okay, that's how the thoughts in my mind, I can put those words. That's what I'm trying to say. I just can't say it. Yeah. I mean, he's just, he's the best quote in the garage. If you want it.

Like if you need a quote, you go to Jeff. So, yeah, I lean on David to help me through all the stuff. So are you kind of got, are you a kind of person like, hey, man, I'm feeling this type of way. Let me express to you. Is that, is that making sense? Should I, do I need to, you know, and it's also great that maybe you don't know how to express how you feel. You're, you want to make sure it's correct. because once it's out, it's out, it's out, right?

And so pretty smart of you to go to a couple guys that you feel like can help you kind of feel confident about not only the way you're feeling about this, but also express it. I wanted him on the show today because he could help me, David. Oh, yeah, but maybe in another four years when I come back. You got to get, well, you've got also able to fly on your own. No, I can.

I wanted to tell his story, and we just, I talk to him every day. We're doing all this stuff that you see me publicly together. And it's, I needed to insulate myself with the people that I trusted that we're going to wake up and have my best interest in mind. So he's assembled his team at MMI to do that. Hosevard trying to keep him in line as well. I mean, they got their hands full between me and him. Do you see similarities in him and you? No, not in height.

But gosh, I don't know. You do. I don't know. I mean, we both. came through Nice, so our niece's truck team, and we both worked with Phil Gould there. We're both fast. We both should have won a lot more races than we did. Yeah, I don't know. He is incredible.

It's amazing what he does behind the wheel. Yeah, he is really, really good. And it's everywhere he goes. Yeah. Everywhere he goes, he raises the bar at that team. When he gets the, when he, you know, as he gets smarter, as he matured, as he matured, chores as he gets older all the things that we all had to do man he could be pretty pretty uh pretty frustrating for the rest of the field yeah it is it's i mean that's that's why he's been

able to keep racing and why jeff and why spire wanted to why they wanted to hire him in the first place they saw what he was doing and um i never really smally is the one that knew him better yeah i mean i've met him when he got to nice but they're philip and i never really thought to compare you to and I know you're not identical in any way, but there is some similarities in terms of not, he hooks people every once in a while or has had in the past, and he's fixing that, I know, and I've told him that.

But, um, which you never wore that kind of guy, but, um, y'all, do. Well, I will call myself out here. I did Harvick. You hooked Harvick-esque. Darlington. Yeah, that was, that was somewhat intentional. You were just kind of like, F it at that point.

I mean. Because it was, you were both pretty much destroyed. We were. Yeah, we were definitely destroyed. Went to hook him. What got me was, yeah, that day was... I heard he was still on the gas when we hit the wall, so that's what got me.

That's what made you matter. Yeah. That's the one guy that if you're going to hook him, you better know what you're doing. It was... I thought I was gone. He knows how to fight. Yeah, luckily he wasn't still at RCR.

Yeah. Well, I do see some similarities in terms of like there's tons of talent and there's just some... some polishing, right, to do. And you went through that. I'm still going through it, man. I know, I know.

I mean, we all, like, yeah, I know, of course. But, yeah, that's kind of cool. So do you talk to him much? Yeah, so yeah. Yeah. So he's, if you won't admit this, but he might would say you're one of the one, one of the drivers that he leans on, communicates with.

You won't admit it. I mean, you won't admit it. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. He's got a good group. He's got a group around him. a good group that is trying to point him in the right direction. The speed is there. Oh, yeah.

It's all the other stuff that we all go through as we try to, I mean, the thing is he's in the spotlight at such a young age. If he's 21, I don't know. I didn't get in spotlight until I was 26. How impressed should we be that Spire has been able to do what they're doing? How impressed should we be? You should be because they, I mean, this on track. stuff started, they were always the middleman

between the team, the sponsor, and the driver. If they were doing this with the old car, it'd be floored. But they're doing it with the next gen. How impressed should I be? Everybody's got the same stuff. Yeah, but they don't have they don't have the support the track house has of GM and Chevrolet.

They don't. I mean, they don't have that. I mean, no, they don't get the resources that we do. So when they drive by me, I'm like, What in the world? Why won't my car turn like that? Homesteads in my mind, so that's a bad example. They were good.

They were, and they were all good. 16 was good. Yeah, college car. Yeah, that you should be, though. And just what Jeff has built and the people he's assembled. I mean, to buy KBM. How they did it. I met with him in 2012 with Newman

and tried to get them to find me sponsors, and I realize that ain't going to. They don't find sponsors. sponsors, they facilitate what you already have. So, yeah, to go from the rented third floor of the bank and off exit 28 to now, you know, I walk into KBM to meet with different people from the MMI side, and it's just amazing what you see down there on the shop floor and all the people and it's spire. Like, it is theirs. They've created it into what you see. I mean, obviously, the foundation that Kyle built with KBM, but cup cars coming out of their trucks, building chassis,

He's building this. I'm surprised they hung on to the truck situation. I figured that would just, they would get, they would like get rid of it. No way. There's no money in trucks. Come on, man. Well, there's, you know, listen, I got a team right here. I mean, it's tough.

Like, they're doing truck racing. They're breaking even probably, maybe a couple hundred grand a year. Yeah, I don't know. I don't get into business. I'm sure. I can't own a race team, man. I don't know how you do it. Like, it used to drive me crazy, like late model racing and pro truck racing.

Like the stuff Blake talked about those fast trucks. trucks, what Bobby deal had. I used to crack a fender and think that $125 fender was just the end of, I mean, it was it. Well, if you take your car to the PRI show, five star might give you a free body. That's how it works. Yeah. You got a wheel and deal.

You know how to wheel and deal. Oh, I'll wheel and deal on a lot of things. So you ought to own a damn race team. That's what's wrong with you boys. All you cup drivers, y'all all ought to have a small, junior. your motorsports working out of a two-gar garage running the cars tour or running a little pro-late model somewhere every one of y'all ought to have a little race team with some kid driving it everybody that shit is fun and it just and you just give your rides away what do you mean you're your cars

you got to go get them funded then i do yeah bass pro uh sun drop bass pro that's oh johnny morris is amazing it is mr morris is like my head you've got hero you've got friends you can find the money to be able to put some you know put some program together to help some kid out it ain't really any even about helping the kid out it's like the program will help that kid the next kid the next kid the mechanic the the the guy coming from the tech center that wants to work and volunteer his time on the weekends and just it just does all these fun little things and it's just a little baby project for you come on the thought of going to a pro late model race.

Like, you say it like it's so small. You don't have to go. Josh Barry ran 10 years. I probably went. No, not me go. The team go. Yeah. The duly in the trailer?

I'm too cheap. I mean, I'm just going to tell you. You know what a duly in a trailer calls? I know. The competition side of it. Get Chevrolet to give you a duly. When you go look at what y'all are doing, what the family teams, the Rackley oars of the...

That's excessive. I mean, you know, I mean, it's incredible. Yeah, but you don't have to go that hard. Do you want to win? Our cars tour, I know I'm pumping the cars tour, but it's 14, 15 races a year. Got every other week off, maybe sometimes two weeks.

It's not that. We can keep talking about it. Yeah. That'd be a good conversation. I need a couple of beers to talk about that. I need some of the cup guys to sprout some race teams, start getting involved in grassroots level. We all want to know.

like how do we keep grassroots racing alive? It's by being in there. You know, and that's just, that's another conversation for another day. I have a hard enough time selling truck and Xfinity races. I just got my car sold out. Quit. Quit doing that. Go run, go get your little late model stock car team going or your little, you know, pro late model team.

Do that. Put your energy there. I think it's a different conversation because to be the best NASCAR driver, I need to, I want to be on track. Other races, this is for you. This is more the fun. I'd rather go buy a piece of land or. A race shop.

Give me a race, a building. Yeah, with a late mall team in it. Perfect. You fund the late mall team. You can pay me rent. Oh, shit. Got some room in Salisbury for you. Help me understand your connection to your family business and how that changes.

So all of these years you've been trying to figure out how to get, how to become a race car driver. All the while, knowing that you might have to go back home. and work. Might not be a race car driver. So you always had this sort of connection and relationship to it, which I'm sure is still there. But now that you feel this sort of, I think I'm established, I think this is going to go. I think I could another decade, decade and a half here doing this.

Now with that knowledge or that expectation, right, that hope, I still know that you're going to go, you know, help run that, that process. down there that I don't want to know if it's an empire I don't know what you call it but farm yeah uh you know is that inevitable I hope so right I you know I've said it in the past I've said it on your on the show here before when I was on years ago and I used to say oh if I don't race I might have to go back the farm it's not a bad thing no it's great um my brother actually just made that decision last year what do you mean so Chad he's 25 now He's being on some of your social media stuff.

Yep. So he raced like I did growing up, started 11 years old and raced, and we got him some truck opportunities, some Xfinity opportunities that I wasn't wanting to take. And we curated some stuff. And just like you're talking about wanting to put some kid in a late model, well, my family, my blood is going to be stronger than anything. So I'm going to help my brother. Sure.

And so he ran some Xfinity stuff as late as last year. And just the thought of the path to try to make it was so long that we had some real opportunity at the farm for him so he's going to get married this off season wait luckily him and lacey waited on me to get done with the season so i can be there for the wedding and uh we're close we we do a lot together we're we're business wise family wise we're just chad and i we're he's my only brother and we're just in lock step on everything and talk often um the the future for me though my family knows that i want to be involved how that is is we don't know and it's constantly evolving based on my career in the family business.

So I mean there's a couple of different facets. There's the farm that my dad built called JDI Farms. And Chad has been brought in. He's brought Chad in growing into be owner of JDI Farms one day when my dad retires. You know, and we don't, we leased, well, you don't know. I hate when I say you know. It's a terrible thing. We don't own the land that we farm, so we lease the land.

because we're leasing, say, 650 acres gross, a parcel of land from a large ranch that might be, some of the ranches we're on down there in South Florida, 12,000, 6,000, 15,000 acres. We're just going into renting one block. And we go in and for one calendar year, we have it leased, and we pay them, and then we can do our crop, which will plant January, harvest, April, and May. But it takes work starting now in October to get that ready. will be done in July. So it's kind of, we have a couple months off.

So there's that part of the farm that I grew up and I wanted to be doing with my dad like Chad is. There's another piece of it that my uncle and cousins are involved in. So that's the sales side. So that's where to stay in ag 30 years ago, my uncle realized we need to grow. So he went and partnered with the Lepid family out of the Northeast and the Dix family out of South Carolina. and what they did was basically build a company strong enough that we could go to chain stores.

Used to, they packed watermelons like bulk in a semi on straw. My dad and uncle, my grandfather before them, my great-grandfather, like they would do it and then sell the week of their harvest. Well, in today's world, you need to have contracts. You need to have things. And my uncle realized that a long time ago. and so there's 30 family farms just like my dad's. So 650 acres, net watermelon you get down into the high 300, 400 acres. So on that sales side, I see a lot more potential where I can't be there at the farm for the next, hopefully, two decades.

Yeah. I'm not going to be there. So how can I help? Well, we can bring buyers out to the track, chain store buyers. That's what you're doing that now. We're doing that now. We can bring people in the industry. The watermelon industry is a lot like racing.

It's competitive. Like we compete for business, but at the end of the day, we all get together at a convention every year. So each state gets together. So just this last Friday night, I was down in Sanibel, Southwest Florida, with other farmers, other shippers,

other salespeople, seed salesmen and women, like the bin companies, the trucking companies, Worldwide Express was there. And we invite them to the races. We invite our competitors, technically.

But me, I'm in the middle, like right now. You know, the way I've done it, I've worked with everybody because the whole industry put money in to help me race. Different companies that maybe we did business with, maybe we didn't, but they wanted to chip in for the association and to promote watermelon. That's why you're able to see so many watermelons early on in my career was that's what was funding it, was all these people. So what my future is, I don't know,

but my family and our partners that are partners in the melon one side. They know that I want to be involved. And how that works out, I don't know. And the answer, the question is probably not ready to be answered yet, honestly. Yeah. Because what's so far. What could we contribute? Yeah.

What could I do? I'm amazed that you're, I'm not amazed, I guess, is the wrong word. But I am impressed that, looks, I mean, I've learned in the past four years or so, how full your plate is. If you're racing in NASCAR and a cup level to be great, it's every day. And you can't say no. You know, if they need you somewhere during a week or where you,

you're going. And you got meetings all week long. You got Sim. You're expected to be in Josh's program. There's all these things that weren't, weren't there. There was one thing I had to do as a driver, and that was a competition meeting.

The rest of the week was mine to whatever. How long ago was that? 2017. I mean, I could do more. You don't think anybody was doing? Oh, people were doing things. I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't doing it.

Jimmy would go ride his bike and shit like that, maybe meet with his team, maybe a little more than me. But for the most part, it was the expectation of the ask wasn't more. but you are knowing that this opportunity will be there but it's hopefully a decade or two in the future you're still you're still had the energy and the wherewithal mindset and all that stuff to still invest even part of your race weekend into the family business that's something we don't see I don't know you do that. Nobody, I mean, you might,

fans might hear a clue here and there that that's happening. But that you're still sort of cognizant, you know, you're still aware and eager to like continue to like, you know, flip switches, flip switches and check boxes that keep that program functioning. Yeah, we gave it kind of a name this year. We call it Aged Asphalt. So it's, and we used our, my social media to amplify that.

And so you see that like every two. Tuesday at 2 o'clock, I think we post. So I filmed up all the reeds with Pat Spinoza back in January maybe. An awesome piece of property down in Florida up near Gainesville was amazing. We spent a couple days there and we worked for like one day and then spent two more days there hanging out. It was a good time. But yeah, look, what my family and what the three families, Dix, Lepides and Chastain's have built, the group that built it, like age is just, it's just part of it.

So the group, my cousin Rachel, my cousin Trey, my cousin Kyler, my brother Chad, and a lot, like a lot more people are going to be involved in it. And I just want to do it with my family. Yeah. I want, like, I don't want to do other things. I want to grow and sell watermelons one day. Like, that's what I am. And from way before racing, before I ever.

even watched racing. I wanted to be like my dad because he took me to the farm and it was a reward. A lot of ag families that I meet and hear, sometimes the work was punishment. Now like dairy farming, for example, I think that is punishment. Having to get up and milk it, like back when they had to milk by hand and before school and all that, like that ain't, that ain't for me. Watermelons don't kick. They don't fight back. So, yeah, it's just, it's something that I was rewarded with farming. like as long as like core memory, as long as I can remember. So I don't want my dad to have to work forever. Now he's not going to retire.

Like I don't know if my dad Ralph will like ever not go out to the farm. But I want to have, I want Chad to have that opportunity. He wants Chad to have that opportunity. Chad wants to take it on and grow the business. He wants to travel and that's part of what, you know, what we're talking through now is how does the next generation continue it? because the thought of farming into the future is scary. I mean, there's less and less farms every year.

There's not good. The number is not going up. There's, so there's less people involved and in charge of feeding the rest of it. Like, I don't grow my own food. I'm a, yeah,

watermelon farmer. I say with air quotes, but it's something that we want to be involved in. And we want to stay in watermelons. Like, that's our swim lane. That's where we are. There's other veg.

There's other stuff that people do. And some of our farmers that we work with, that grow watermelons, they grow great crops. That's like a small piece of it. And they diversify and they do a lot of other row crops. Givens up in Delaware, grow a ton of corn. They had chicken houses. They do a lot of thing.

Us, we're just in watermelons. We're just going to stick to that. And I'm inspired by them. I want to do business with them. I want to surround myself with those kind of people. So I'm not, I mean, Yeah, I just, I want to be in ag. I want to own land, buildings, that kind of investments.

That's the kind of stuff that gets me excited. So that's why, like, surrounding myself and getting to know Carrie Aganian, a pillar in this sport, you know, huge legacy, was able to buy his building, his office building here in the park. I mean, that just means so much to me that he would even consider me to let me give me an opportunity to purchase that. and that we've got MMI back in there, back where it started, where a lot of your driver agencies, where a lot of the people that run the agencies now,

the different named ones, they all started working for carry, a lot of them. So it's pretty cool that we're up there and rebuilding and building our own brand of MMI. What is the hope that MMI becomes? Like, do you want to be an agency for, for the young drivers that are coming up?

I want people like me. I mean, I do. It takes a small percentage of my time. Scott Speed asked me two weeks ago, what percentage, like, how much does it take? And I gave me a number of 5%. And I've thought about that since, and I believe it.

I don't think it's 10%. It's not a 10th of my time. David, Philip, Garrett Miller, they handle the business of it. Ben does the social, does all the content. We can capture what we need. These guys are working at the office here. So it's an agency for drivers?

Yeah. Who's under your agency now? I think there's about a dozen guys, so who's far? Yeah. Going to Xfinity. You've got Ryan Ellis. And these were a lot of spire guys that were legacy guys in the spire fold, just like I was. get down into trucks

Jake Garcia up at Thor'sport Georgia kid that David met him and his family Stefan Parsons he's got some opportunities he's a guy that just keeps grinding you see him spotting for Jayhaley on Sundays you see him

sorry JJ I go back to the original name you see him doing garage tours like Stefan is just grinding I met with him last night we're going to meet with him last night we're going to meet when I leave here. He's got a lot of decisions to make about next year right now. Like this is when, you know, Xfinity truck deals are, they're happening right now.

So he's in the middle of it. And Philip and him and David are walking through that. And so how I can help, I just give him my advice. I tell him about the failures of the times I made the wrong decision and the times that I made the right decision. And the garage has changed every year. But just knowing these people and these owners. do you canton honeycut

oh kaden's a good oh gosh he's a good up and comer he's good i like him a lot yeah yeah i thought y'all are gonna get know each other even better well we considered he drove our esports

car this year guy calls me up so he's racing the car store for a while so i know really good racer in the cars tour obviously you know is he races in the trucks but race crafts is really good but he called me and goes hey man i want to race uh for your esports team

I made it into the deal, and I just wanted, I want to do that. I don't need anything. He's like, I got some people who are going to help me, and I'm going to figure it out. And I was like, great, you're hiring. So usually those kids are like, how much are you going to pay me? He was like, I want to drive for y'all. But I wonder, I think that, you know, we've never done that here at Junior Mursports. My sister, I think, is one, if there is somebody that could be really, really great as an agent,

I think Kelly has those, she just has so much knowledge and experience. And I've kind of teased with her that we should have years ago developed an agency for drivers because I always wanted to be a music critic. And I thought being a part of an agency for motorsports would be somewhat similar to where you were like, hey, saw this guy, he's got it. You know, I think he's going to go up the ladder. I think we can, you know, we can help. help him and attach ourselves to him and help him do that process, right?

Not making the mistakes at the early stages. That must be so fun. You especially having experienced what you experienced trying to make your way up that ladder, finding out what worked, what absolutely didn't work, and what you thought was fruitful but ended up being terrible and all of those little things, right? You know you've seen it all. So you can help these guys and kind of quell. their anxieties too, right?

That's probably the biggest thing I try to tell them is it's, and look, I'm the one, when you drive it in turn one and you wonder if it's going to stick, you're doing it because you feel like you have to as a race car driver. Like, I have to make this corner so I can win this race, so I can qualify on the pole, so I can, whatever it is. You know, you just, that's why we drive in the corners in a late model on the chip, turned in, just slamming the ground, just trying to make lap time. and that Caden's a perfect example.

He can just drive. Same with Carson. They can, they just have the speed, but just taking it and breathing. Now, I say it to them, and I do, I laugh at myself because I'm still doing it myself. It's a never-ending process. But the speed is there with those guys.

And a lot of, like, we don't work, obviously money drives a sport. I don't ever kid anybody or act like it doesn't. You have to be funded. You have to find funding. Somebody has to pay for tires and fuel like a duly and a trailer for a late model team. You just know what it costs and you got to do it. But the fact that Caden came out of Texas, ran some truck races for some overfunded teams,

met Al Nis, Texas guy, hit it off. Al said, I want him in the truck. And we're like, okay, we want to help him. Like, we need to refine him. He needs to, there's a lot. He's young. He can learn. And the way he's, he's young.

did it through i racing and how many laps he's put in hearing him talk about it for your esports team is unbelievable unreal i mean yeah thousands tens of thousands of laps like in just testing and they make changes to the irasing setups and i mean it's wild yeah but then he was able to step in and do some stuff at track house i mean there's several drivers that have done sim work and you know they're not paid they're not under contract but like i'm like hey i think caden would fill in this session and I'm going to be out of town. Y'all don't have anybody else, right? They're like, no, we're just going to skip it.

I'm like, oh, it's like Caden go do it. It's on a static sim. It's not moving. It's not the full motion, but he did some fuel mileage stuff, say. He ends up finishing the race at Kansas on fuel mileage, and we contribute a lot of it to some of that work he's done. He's done a lot in eye racing, and he did work for trackhouse on fuel maps and saving and, you know, how to do it.

He's learning. He's learning quickly. And so all the way down to drivers, I raced with, you know, my late models, I did one pro race this year at Cordial Speed Fest. How did you like that? I loved it. I want to race there. Yeah, it's awesome.

No back stretch. Yeah. No backstretched wall. Yeah. That's why I like Florence. That's because there's no wall. You get in trouble. You're not going to.

I told them I was going to go spin off. Bounce off anything. And I did it. I made myself. Isn't there like a creek or something back here? It's a watermelon field. Oh, shit. Way far away.

The only one that made it there. I watched Kyle Busch drive into the creek one time. He came back on the highway to get back to the track. That's funny. Yeah, I liked it. The Rackley Group's great. Harvick just ran for him out in Vegas. So, yeah, planning on running Speed Fest again.

Dawson, Sutton, Curtis's son, is running the truck full-time now next year. So that's been cool to see him. A kid that just learned on eye racing. Curtis bought a irasing rig for himself, and then his son started running it, taught himself how to race online. I bet you in 10 years, half of the race. Field in the Cup series will have had, will, will be able to connect,

not, maybe not, a lot of them might not say, yep, I got my start on eye racing, but they'll absolutely be able to connect it. Connect to it. I think if you're racing locally, anywhere in any series, you should have a rig to practice for your,

even if your track's not on there, there's going to be a track similar. They have so many, I mean, they do, they have so many tracks that you're going to find some sort of race car and racetrack combination that you could practice for your weekend racing. It doesn't matter where you're at. The other thing that I think I love about eye racing

is when you put somebody in a competitive environment, there's decisions. You're making a decision every second. You're making a choice. You're making a decision. And you can polish your racecraft on there. There's a lot of chaos and a lot of, you know, there's a lot of weekend racers on there

and just, you know, your buddy down the street. And they create a lot of chaos. right and that is good to try to figure out how to react to it right and I watched that's how I realized Josh Barry might be good at racing because not only did I you know watching car footage of his legist's car racing from national fairgrounds but watching him on a line I could see that he was smart calm measured and properly making the right choice and being being quick but careful and just having some racecraft, right? Some common sense.

You know, some people that develops late for some people. I know. You can see that in racing online. And you can see people that are impatient, unnecessarily impatient, you know, and easily rattled or whatever. But so I think that that I, you know, to your point, like if you're a young racer and you don't have a racing rig, you ought to get one. If you're trying to hone that mentality,

behind the steering wheel and your approach to driving in a race, you can certainly cure some of the problematic issues you might have. What about VR goggles versus the screen? I try, so the VR to me, the technology isn't quite there. VR is great, great, great immersion

when you're looking around in the cockpit of the car, everything's nice and sharp, but when you look out the windshield and you're looking, if you're coming off a turn four, everything down in turn one, that truck or car going down in the corners, just not quite as sharp as what you'd see on triple monitors. So I've went back and forth, and I just keep, every time I go to VR, I'm like, it's not quite there yet.

It's just not quite there. That's not quite detailed enough. The resolution at distance is just not quite where I want it to be. Think about when it gets there. Oh, my God. It's going to be awesome. And it will in my lifetime. When they're light, they don't feel heavy.

Yeah. I know. I've used them before, but I haven't ever sit there and tried to run an hour or two hour race or something like that. I imagine it gets pretty uncomfortable after about 30 minutes. We do it in Josh's program at the tech center and just drills and all kinds of things Scott has teed up for us. And you can tell who's been in there, like there's lines on our face where the headset sitting on it and you can tell who is in there longer than the 20 minutes we're supposed to be or something just right before after a workout and who actually gets into it

and like an hour will go by. And I'm like, oh, I got to get, oh, I am late. I've got to get out of here. I got to ask you, I'm doing as much SIM work as you've done. So the Sims changing all the time. And I went in there, I was in there two years ago to get ready for Bristol, had a great session, had a good session on static and on the motion, and was great. And really, really helped me qualify better and just getting a rhythm in the race.

And I went back this year, and they were like, yeah, we changed a couple of things. things are different. We change this, we change that. I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. It looks the same to me. Get in there. I'm driving it. And I got nauseous. And I was like, wow, I've done, I've gotten nauseous on it before, but it usually isn't a problem. I'm a sim racer. I sim race all the fucking time. It's no big deal. But they said they'd change the height of the horizon since the last time I'd been in there. But I was saying, maybe that's it. But what happened was, is I get in the sim and we go

and I run a couple laps and everything's fine. And I stopped. They were like, okay, we're going to make a change. So I come to a stop on the back straight away, and the car started going desolate it. And I instantly got sick because I was like... You were so into the screen. Yes.

I was sliding down the hill like I was on butter. And I was like, whoa, this is everything. I was like, oh, I got like nauseous. And, you know, and that, that nausea, that, That nausea just kind of held there the rest of the whole hour that I was in there. I was like, God, dang, this is miserable. They put you on the bicycle? No.

I've heard of them putting, I think, Bobapalor had to get on it. They have like a, you know, a bike from Walmart, and they make you go pedal around. That's supposed to cure it. I've never had it. Yeah. So you've never, like you've had a couple little, this was really light, really mild, but it was like, damn, why'd that happen? I'm not one of those, you know, I'm not one of those guys.

I know. You know? You know? I know. Yeah, those little moments where the screen just doesn't align with the rig and something's resetting. So, yeah, I crash a lot in there. I mean, I wreck and wreck and wreck. And that's what they're trying to find the limit.

Always trying to find the limit. And I'm one that wants to, I want to drive and back to those tires we talked about a long time ago. Like, tires is the biggest gray area or kind of unknown variable for me because we scale the tires. after a race based on how our cars felt and then we come back in the fall or the spring or the next year and that's the tire we're supposed to use but sometimes things get tweaked, programs get updated, something in the cloud of General Motors

and their technology and it reacts different. So yes, I've had those little moments where screen glitches into turn three at Martin'sville today. It glitched into three and I'm like, whoa, I was so focused on the curb and on the brakes, getting my downshift and then the pit wall and the grass or the it's asphalt now and they curb like it just moved a little bit and I'm like and I like slide up the track and like I come to stop right what I'm like now let me go again I just yeah so those little things we get I get so

into it that they're always evolving and so the tire is always evolving the you know they're always updating stuff why did you shave no why not that that There's more to it. No, there's really not. I mean... Did you need to go snorkeling? No. Your mask wouldn't seal?

No. We missed the playoffs. So you thought you'd shave it off for luck? And then... Changing your luck. I don't know. I was Monday, Tuesday morning. I woke up.

You decided to punish yourself. I don't know. It's like when a girl dies her hair after a breakup. Changes her hair color, cuts half of it off. Yeah. You just trying to change the... Has bangs also? I don't know.

Change the vibe. It was... It was... over before I knew it happened. Took my tremors. You're like, doing this. You didn't, did you, let me ask this, do you do the thing, like, if I'm gonna shave,

I'll shave into a goatee and be like, look at that for a minute, that's pretty cool. Had the long, long sideburns. Did you do that? Yeah, the Menards, the Paul Menards, get them going. Do you do that? Oh yeah. Then you finally, you know, finish up.

Yep, yeah, that's funny. Yeah, I mean, I gotta remind people why I grew the beer in the first place, man. Why? Make up. for guys, right? This is me without makeup on if I was a girl. I saw a buddy of mine.

I'm ugly. I got to have the beard. I saw a buddy of mine say that guys' facial hair is like natural Photoshop. Hides all the double chin and all that stuff. I'm overshaving though. It's every day. You're doing, oh yeah. Once you make the lecture trim.

I do too. I can't use a regular razor. It cuts a shit out of me. I did the first day. I was, I mean, it was a blood. back. I had band-aids when I went in the shop that day. My guys were laughing at me. I about took this mole off the side. Yeah. I'm going to let you go all day. Yeah. I did it right before I came here. I will, I'm not going to, I have it trimmed or nothing for a

couple weeks because I'm going to go hunting. And it's like, I'm going to let a rip. And, but, yeah, I kind of keep it kind of cleaned up, I think. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not an expert at that. Sometimes I'll, yeah, trim it. I mean, I have, trimmers that are super old and like, I don't know. I should be clean-shaven. That's what I should be. Why? Why should we?

Well, I don't know, because I look younger and I think more presentable. Yeah. But I'm lazy. So Bush Light asked me in a meeting. They asked you to clean it up. What I was going to do with my facial hair and my hair into the future. And I said, oh, I have a beard. This was late last year.

I said, okay, well, when we do our photo shoots, we need you to look that way, for... All year. Continuity. Like, we need you to be Ross. Just do it. That's all I remember that. Whatever you want.

That'll drive me crazy. And I'm like, yeah, I'll always have a beard. And I didn't even think about it when I shaved. And then... Oh, they probably were very happy. And he's like, do you not remember the meeting with Bush Light and St. Louis and what they said? All the PTSA stuff they've created, all the Ross standups?

So it'll give me 10 weeks. So I'm going to shave for Phoenix, race morning. And then I'm not shaving again. 10 weeks we've got. Okay. So, yeah, it'll be, yeah, for the playoffs, basically. I remember what it was. I was part of the Gillette Young Guns, and they were, you know, obviously, like, you can't have full beer, which I probably couldn't have grown one back then anyways, but I did have mustache or goatee kind of all the time,

and it was crappy. I thought it was cool, but it was so crappy. And they were like, you got to be shaving, shaving, shave, and it was like, okay. So we did that for like four years it felt like, and as soon as that deal ended, I was, It's like, no more for me, no more shaving. And I've had a beard ever since. When Justin Marks bought CGR, a trackhouse bought it, I remembered one of the first things it hit me was,

as I was trying to get the ride in one of his cars, I remembered that he had had Harries on one of his cup cars, sponsor, Razor company. I didn't know anything about him, but I just remember, it hit me. And I looked it up. I'm like, oh yeah, you ran it in Daytona or whatever. And I was worried that that,

was, you know, like maybe that was a connection he had. They were going to be on my car. They were going to want me to shave. I actually turned down an Exfinity ride this year earlier in the summer at Chicago for Mario Goslin because it was a razor company and they were great people and they talked me about it. I'm like, guys, I'm not. I'm not in a, no, I can't. And I blame, I blamed it on Bush Light, but I didn't want to. And so Daniel ran it, so he got, it was great. I mean, it was a great experience. He got an Xfinity race. Mario was happy. You know, we connected all the dots and all that. But yeah, I said no then, and then a few months later.

That's a good question. So I see you running an Xfinity race here and there or a truck. I want to be complimentary of the people you're working with. But these aren't, this isn't a track house purpose-built Xfinity car. This isn't a Gibbs or a junior motor. This is a team building a car in the shop that's running, underfunded comparable to the top five or the top ten, it's the same teams, really, that you started racing in the Xfinity Series 4

in terms of quality of equipment or budget. And why? Why go run that? I know you need the laps if it's Chicago or wherever, right? I know the laps help. But you know your back's against the wall. You know you're going there with one arm tie behind your back. What for?

Love racing. I just can't. I mean, if we didn't have the five race rule for Cup guys, I'd race 10. I mean, the realistic number I think in trucks is 9 or 10. Xfinity, you could run up to maybe 15. How many of you run this year? I'm only allowed five. And that's what you've done?

Yeah. I only got four in Xfinity with Mario. We had a miscommunication, and Dover was Dash for Cash, so Caden ran it. So as soon as I wasn't in, we're like, Caden, go, you know, go run this. and that's you're just having fun i love it um Mario was a chance interaction i raced against Mario when he was in the infinity series i grew up hearing about Mario gozzling because he's a florida guy Canadian turned florida um and he was out of the late model scene long before i got there but um yeah he called philip one day we were leaving um an advent health appearance in north

north georgia driving back down to Atlanta he called and said if you have any cup guys that want to run Kota next week. It's like Friday of Atlanta weekend and Kota's the following week. Let me know. And they hang up and I'm, oh, who's that? Couldn't hear. I didn't hear the conversation. Phil's like, oh, Mario's looking for a cup guy with funding. I'm like, well, I'll do it for nothing. Sound like Kaden. Sound like conversation with Kaden. So I, he called him right back and said, or he texts him, hey, Ross will do it. Mario didn't respond. All that night next morning I text Philip. Hey, do he respond? No. Mario missed the text. He didn't see it. So they found it the next day and responded and we ran that first Cota race.

We led laps, race with AJ for the win, and Landon Castle spun me out at the end. One of the only times, Landon actually spun me all the other times I was wrecking him. Man. Yeah.

So, yeah, him and then the Al story is, the same time I got the Ganassi ride and Exfinity, I got three races in Al's truck at the end of 2018. And then we went on to fight for a championship at 19. Yes, I remember.

When I changed points and all that. So we're, he's like another grandfather to me. So we do a lot. We do a lot together. Are you going to play spoiler in any other racing we have left? We got Martinsville and Phoenix. You did that last year? Why did I get coined spoiler, but like Bush or didn't at Watkins Glen?

I don't know. I asked Scott Graves at this weekend. It's a compliment. I know it is, but like, he even sent Scott's message to me after he won was like, congratulations you spoiler. Yeah. Like, why is it? Well, I mean, that's the freaking championship race you won.

Last year. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's like a little bit. And that's a bigger spotlight. Oh, that was awesome. Yeah, sure. That was fun.

Coming out of Homestead, I mean, it's hard to say, right? We just ran terrible, but we won just a couple weeks ago. Vegas, we could have won. I sped entering Pitt Road for the third race in a row at Vegas. Really, I got a bad idea of where Pit Road is there. What is Martin? What do you think about Martin'sville? You kind of come from the short tracks.

You should be decent. We all did, though. I know. Well, not as much of us these days. Yeah, I still, I mean, I think, I don't think I have any up here. Do you like Martin's deal? I love it.

You do. I love it. It's one of the ones I. Even with the shifting. Man, my arm is like, my right arm, I ran three and a half hours this morning in the sim. We ran 310 laps. A lot of short runs, just making changes. God, lay, man.

Martinsville's, like, the worst sim track. It's gotten a lot better. Visually and everything just about it doesn't feel right. That's one thing that my mentality, and I think a lot of drivers these days has to have, is that the SIM, if you have a bad experience, block it out, forget about it, and go back the next week and have an open mind. I've done the same thing. Oh, that tracks bad.

It's evolving. It's not the same SIM. It's not the same platform that you're on. It's frustrating, though. I wrecked a lot. You know, there's times where I'm spinning out on entry, on exit. I get my downshift wrong. I clip the curb and spin out.

That could happen at the track, though. There's a real penalty for overdriving. Underdriving, there's a penalty for. You don't place your speed right. So what do I think? I do think. I truly don't go anywhere with track house and think that we can't win. Now, that starts because early on we had just speed.

I could just drive through the field two years ago. Now it's tougher. But at one point this weekend, running 13th at Homestead and we thought, okay, we're going to have a shot here. And we just slowly worked our way all the way to the back. Yeah. Well, man, it'll be fun to see how the season wraps up for you. I really appreciate you coming today and bull-shin with me, but it's really kind of all we did,

which was a lot of fun for me. I have a question before you go ahead. We had a conversation one time and you said you didn't know why you were doing all this media and dirty-mo media and all these things. Has that gotten any clearer for you? It has. So as I don't know, you know, the broadcasting things a lot of fun.

That went from, that's going to go, that went from 20 races to none this year, going back to 10 next year. Where it goes three, five, 10 years, no clue. I enjoyed. I like being at the track. Otherwise, I don't go to the track.

And so I kind of like having something taking me to the track because I really do want to be there. But doing this, as the company Company's grown. We've got some more employees. I've gotten to know them really well, care about them, care about their experience, want them to succeed, want them to, you know, have a great time here. So like, I come to do this show with like more purpose, I guess, than I used to. I used to just sit down and go, this is about, this is for me. I'm going to enjoy this conversation and this is for me and then I'm done. But it's got a lot more strings attached to it now where it feels like a thing. that actually has real value, makes real money, and can continue to grow.

So I probably should have seen that sooner, right, than I did, but I like it. I don't, I don't really, it's not like work. Like, I get to visit with you, like I wouldn't see you otherwise, right? Like all the people that come in here and sit down, I'm just, I look at it like, hey, I'm just getting to hang out with you. You're a cup driver and you're on the, you're on the merry-go-round of the cup world,

and no one gets off to hang out with people like me, right? I can get on that merry-go-round with you, but otherwise we won't see each other or hardly talk, right? And so it's kind of cool to have you guys come in and stop by, and then I get to talk to the old heads, and, man, that's so much fun. Those are the coolest ones. Golly.

I was thinking down the way here, I'm like, I don't hold a candle to some of the guys you have. Like, what do you think about Bobby Allison getting that? I can't believe it. I was wondering what, I guess, they knew going back to Bowman Gray. I'm critical of NASCAR to, in most senses. Or I'm hard on them, I guess, in my own mind about it.

But I'm wondering if, like, knowing that they're going back to the clash, they knew that conversation was going to come up. They knew that was good. They didn't want it to be part of the conversation as y'all go back there. And so they thought, well, let's just do it. Let's just fix it. What's crazy is I just saw Mr. Allison Leonard Wood had his 90th birthday just a while back.

And I wrote up there to the shop for it and saw them. And I've just gotten known. They actually called me after the Hail Melon at Martinsville. And they were excited. I kind of thought those older generations might not like it. Leonard left me a voicemail. Like, so excited. Call me back, Ross.

It was awesome. So I've gotten to know him and Bobby came by. And it was good to see him and talk to him a little bit. And he didn't let us in on the secret. So I don't know if he knew then or not, but that was cool. No, I thought that was pretty neat. You know, it shows that I like that Jim France was part of the process. With everything going on, you know, with the lawsuit and all that,

it's kind of a, there's a little bit of a cloud around the sport. From my perspective, you know, I don't know how it feels inside the garage. but that was kind of a nice ray of sunlight for a minute, you know, in our sport. But again, man, thank you so much. I got to say, I want everybody to know, I've been trying to get you back to come on a show, and you have been diligent to like, hey, I can't because of X, but what about this? I mean, you're a freaking good dude. You are.

and I love that quirky connection of you renting that, you know, renting from us. I love having that, like knowing that, you know, somehow or another, there was any influence and that we were any kind of assistance, right, with the cheap rent or whatever, right? The worst part about living out there was. You never got to party with us. I never did. I always, when you would come back from Wins, I knew y'all were going to, and I'd be like, man how could I

we'd be like how can we get over there? I didn't have your number there Oh shit But rat legs was the worst part Oh Josh Yes He still cuts my hair Really?

Yeah Why was that the worst part? No I'm kidding He's a good guy Good guy Yeah great guy Ray City barber there man They hook us up

Yeah I wrecked McDow at the clash this year So I had to pay for his hair cut Because he goes there too Oh my God Well I'm thankful for you Thanks for coming by This is a lot of fun

I think people are really gonna enjoy the conversation and again, man, good luck to the remainder of the season. I hope you get you a win and have a great holiday season, off season, and all those things, get your batteries recharged. Start drawing up the plans for that late model stock team that's going to compete in the cars tour.

Set an example for all the other racers in the Cup series to start to, you know, dabble in the grassroots. I'll get with Mattis on that. All right. How about that? Yes. You think he could guide me? I'm sure.

I bother. I bug Mattis a lot. He's good. I call him. Good guy to talk to. Yeah. All right. All right.

Thanks, Dale. Ross Chastain on the Dale Jr. Download. Yeah. All right, so a great conversation with Ross Chastain. He sat down. We just kind of caught up like old pals. I hope that was a lot of fun to listen to.

It was certainly some things I was curious about. And we have a good pal. You know, we have a good friendship. I can rib him a little bit, give him a hard time. Try to get him to tell us the truth. Man, what a cool career he's had. Right here sitting on the table is the 77 Spire diecast, the car he raced at Darlington, where Dirty Mo Media put a little money into it.

I think we spent $10,000, $12,000 to put our name on the side of that car and paid for a couple sets of tires or maybe one set of tires, he'll find out. But, you know, now he's in the Cup Series. And again, he feels like he's finally, he finally can breathe. He's got the career. but a good dude hard racer and

hopefully track house can you know find that consistency because I think a winning or competitive Ross Chastain is really good for our sport because his personality and how he races on the track

his body language his choice is decision making is unique to him it is I hadn't thought about how he might be similar to Carson but he has him and Carson kind of have some things that I kind of see in both of them but

that's that we need we need this when the sport is great you've got you know a top ten of really diverse personalities and and approaches and you're going to get different sound bites and different interviews and responses and that's when it's great and he he's uh so we're hoping for that hoping for him to figure that They've had a decent year. I'm sure they're going to look back and hope that they're going to improve on next year.

But want to thank Ally for bringing us Ross Chastain, being a part of our guest segment. Ally has been a big supporter of our show here and supporting a lot of things in NASCAR. So we're very lucky and thankful for them. No matter what you're saving for, whether it's race tickets, a car, a new home. We're all better off with an ally. All right, it's time for the white flag. I've got that somewhere. I found it.

Dropping Sunday after the race to tear down with Jeff Gluck and Joy Mianke, giving us their perspective on the things that they saw in Homestead this past weekend, instantly after the race, a great listen every single week to tear down. Dropping Monday, doorbupp are clear. T.J. and the boys were giving us their feedback in response to the race this weekend. They had, Doug Rice is the guest. Doug has been in the radio broadcast for, I don't know, I don't know how many decades, but he is retiring.

And he deserves to be celebrated. Doug Rice, the guest on Doorbumpur clear this week, you'll want to listen to that. Action is detrimental with Denny Hamlin. Denny got home from the race, did his job and got us a great podcast, his perspective from behind the wheel, getting him a top three out there in Homestead. And then yesterday, Dirty Air, we recapped Homestead with T.J. Majors, had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs. We talked to the winner. Tyler Reddick.

If you haven't listened to that, you'll want to check in. A lot of fun stuff. too we get caught up on some of the personal stories over the past weekend that we enjoyed um speed street with connor daily and chase holden drops today tomorrow dj reloaded with ashtuner and more as well as dirty mo do all the great bets coming up for this weekend in martinsville plus if you want to get on that uh thursday night parlay uh we're getting close we're getting close this might be the week we've got a five prop parlay for Thursday night's matchup on Prime, so check it out on Dirty Modo.

And remember to leave us a five-star review, and we'll read it on the show. We've got one here from Dunman. Pops interview was Top Shelf. He's talking about Tony Sr. Love the interview with Tony Sr. The stories from the Bud Days and before sparked memories from what I consider the golden age of NASCAR. Keep putting out great content. I can't wait to see the Bud Car back on the racetrack.

He's talking about the race we're going to run. at Florence Motor Speedway right before Thanksgiving in the number eight bud car. Thank you, New, thank you, Dunman, for the five-star review. If you want to leave one, maybe we'll read yours next week on the Dale Jr. Download. We'll see you. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.