The Dale Jr. Download - 596 - Bud 8 Return: Provisionals, Prayers & The Big Picture

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back after racing the iconic No. 8 Budweiser late model at Florence Motor Speedway this past weekend. With a thrilling drive from 40th to 2nd before a fuel pump failure ended his night, he and special co-hosts TJ Majors and Joey Meier had a lot to cover:Getting the “yips” for qualifying Encouraging words from a fellow racerThe gravity of the return of the Bud 8Having Amy and the girls at the raceRunning on a prayer from the back to the frontTempers flaringThe art of tire managementCollege football rivalry weekTailgates aren’t a place for vegetablesBuffalo sauce: “You learn something new every day.”The biggest NASCAR rivalsDuring the Ask Jr. segment of the episode, listeners sent in questions regarding:Being back in the booth with Adam Alexander and Steve Letarte next yearDale’s sock choice for the NASCAR Awards banquetAmy’s deviled egg recipeThe most surprising NASCAR silly season moveFavorite holiday moviePlaying NASCAR 2003 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.

Dale, you're a morning shower guy. I am too. Yeah. Pretty much everybody's sleeping. How do you wake up and get, like, how do you not take a shower then get ready? But like, I'm not dirty from sleeping in a clean bed. Wait, I had a comment. Can I go?

Not allowed, Dale. Can I say it? If I don't shower me, my hair's all doing its thing. Put a hat. I know, but then I'm mashing it in, I mash it down into whatever direction it is. Yeah. And then. It just like festers.

Yeah, it's like a... I feel like I've... Take your hat off the end of the day. You feel like a loser? Yeah, I'm like, fan. Luser. I really am a lazy piece of... Yeah.

Kind of like yesterday morning. Yeah. At the airport. How do you do your hair? How do I do my hair? Yeah. Willpower. Just, you know, a little...

What's Willpower got to do with this? Yeah. I do. No, I call Willpower. He comes over. He does my hair. What does my hair? How does my hair?

How does my hair? That's a new sound bite. Yeah. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. You're Dale and Jr. You're a complete moron if you undo your belt in a moving race car. Moron. Five, four, three.

Tell Rally, and disregard the bird. That was unnecessary. The Dale Jr. Download starts now. Go, go, go. All right, everybody. It's Dale Jr. We're back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download and it is episode 596 November 25th,

2004. We told you that we would be we told you that would be doing some content throughout the winter and we're back from Florence Motor Speedway to yeah to talk about this past weekend. I got Joey Meyer here with me. Joey spotted the race as he does with my late metal car when I run it and TJ majors as well. TJ was at the race. How are y'all doing?

great it's a good Monday yeah it's a good Monday okay um you guys uh did y'all have fun at florence i know we're going to dive into this a little deeper but just a quick quick quick a couple words about your experience there uh yeah i wanted to go and watch just kind of and i went up onto into the grandstands and experience that and wow like this from the first race that i went down there that you ran to where the place is at now it's just it's just getting better and better i think so the facility itself yeah the facility the people like man it was packed oh yeah so i thought that was really cool to go and see and met up with steve there and and um yeah and uh just got to enjoy the show man it was fun all right joey it exceeded expectations

just every time we go down there it's so much fun 60 cars for the race you know the other series a supporting series the street stocks race was great you know the mini stocks were great it's just in the organization down there is for the amount of people they have from an association small local facility. Steve does a great job organization. Yeah. Well, yeah, you want to dive right into, we got Andrew Dalton, everybody in here. You want to dive right into my notes? I've been putting some notes down on. Yes, you found your notes. I did. And let's talk about him. Yeah. So, all right. You know, we brought the bud car back. Listen, man, I thought the idea to bring the bud car and that number eight back was really a great idea, beautiful looking car. I was excited

about all of that stuff. One of the things that I didn't think about and I don't think that you can prep for is what kind of reaction that other people will have to it. I knew people were going to like it. I loved all the excitement around it and all the stuff

that I saw from fans on social media when we did the announcement. But as we got to the racetrack, man, I kind of got an overwhelming sense of pressure, lots and lots of pressure. The response was, far exceeded what I probably thought was going to happen.

I was really taken aback by the reaction and the weekend and how it all kind of built. The first day, Thursday, we were at the racetrack where they're all day practicing. There was no fans allowed, no tickets sold. And so it was relatively calm. And you didn't get really a gist of what was coming. Friday, we had some practice track was open to fans, more fan. So the budgear starts showing up, fans start showing up. which was great.

And then on race day, you're hearing that they're turning people away. No more room for people to come watch the race, which I don't really know who might have had that experience or what that experience was like for people that might have showed up that couldn't get a ticket or didn't have anywhere to be. But it was really, it was packed. It was a lot of folks. I anticipated that, but I guess just the energy from it was,

was overwhelming. And we signed a ton of autographs on Friday and Saturday, tried to get as many people taken care of as possible. And, you know, we were working on the car practicing. We practiced a lot. There was five hours Thursday. There was a couple practices Friday. One, I missed to go to the Exfinity Banquet,

and then we had a couple more practices on race day. So tons and tons of practice. Typically, I would say that I don't think that it's, It's necessary for us to run that much. But honestly, the thing that really brought my car to life was not found until probably the last 30 minutes of the final practice. We made an adjustment on the front end that really, so these type of race cars, which is kind of common in stock car racing with bump stops, the sway bar, the bump stops, the springs, all of those things are married together like a telephone system or communication. system and it all talks to each other and they all have to be in time and when one's bound up or one's doing too much it affects all of it none of it works the way it's designed to do and we turn the right bolt

we turn the right screw and that's that's a metaphor but we made an adjustment on the left front man that made all of that stuff in harmony and man did the car wake up in the front roll the corner I was having some trouble really keeping the car right up against the barrier, the inside. I want to run as low as I can. I want to almost hit that inside barrier all the way around the turns. But if the front end's not got the grip, it tries to, it kind of disconnects from the bottom of the racetrack and then you lose time and speed. We were fighting that the whole weekend.

The car was good, but not great. And man, when we made that adjustment, it turned into a great race car. and I had all of that perfect turn and wrap all in the race. So anyways, a lot of practice, but hey, we found what we were looking for in the back end of that. Qualifying, I may, we went there with this, you know, we went there knowing that qualifying's been a struggle for me. And I was bound and determined to take every opportunity we had to run as much, as many mock runs as possible. to try to discover some of the things that I'm missing or some of the you know what it what is it that will flip the switch and the light bulb come on and go okay there that's what

I need to be doing for qualifying and we we did we had a couple mock runs and they weren't great and when I went out there to qualify I have no idea how fast the car was through one and two I felt like I did okay through there it wasn't great it didn't feel perfect it didn't feel good but it wasn't bad, but we were going down the back straightaway, and we have a chip in the car on the, there's a chip for the rev limiter, and I hit that on a good lap. We're driving this car all week, and every time I've drove it at Florence since, when you run anything under an 85, you get into that chip pretty good on the back straightaway. And I'm coming up down the back straightaway, and I'm waiting for that chip because I'm wanting it to hit it, because that's going to be the

sign that we're on a decent lap, right? And I never hit the chip. The car never ran into the chip. And I, and this is happening all in a split second. And so as soon as I get to the point where I'm hoping that I'm going to land on the chip and it's going to go, buta-da-da-da-da-da-da-da for about 100 feet before I lift, that never happened. And I panicked. And I thought, this f***lap is so slow that I didn't even touch the chip. And I'm like, that's a flat or, that's a flat or a teen.

That's really slow. and so all of that happens in a really quick moment and I lifted really early into three whatever you know I'm at this point I am totally out of it off my game like I am lost panicking not panicking just like spun out I've I'm not I've just like totally I'm thinking about not hitting the chip and thinking about how slow the

slap is and not thinking about charging turn three and trying to roll the center and do all those things And so I jump out of the gas pedal and I get to the middle of three and four and then I'm like, I'm way under speed here. I'm like way under speed, like 10 mile an hour slower than I'm supposed to be or should be. And then, you know, cross the finish line. I knew I underdrove turn three terribly. And it turns, this is not an excuse, but it turns out that they swapped the chip.

They put a bigger chip in so the chip so the car could run through the RPMs without getting into the chip, which is something that you do. from time to time, but if a drive, a lot of these young drivers, these rookie drivers, like if say we're going to take Wyatt to the racetrack and run Wyatt in a limited or late model, we'll put the chip in it to intentionally hit it so that he knows that kind of keeps them from overdrive and the entry. They'll get into the chip and they'll go, oh, let me get off the gas, it's hitting the chip. And so it's kind of, and I used to use it at Martinsville when we race a cup car.

I wanted to hit it going into turn three, even in the race. it was just really like a safety blanket or to keep you from overdrive in the entry of the corner and you would get so used to hearing the car hit the chip and you would get so used to knowing like I can hear I can be in that chip for like this many revolutions of the engine because it'll go bupup pop pop pop pop pop pop and you'll be like one two three four five lift one two three five lift one two four lift

one two four lift one two four lift one two three lift and then as you go through the run you might go one two three four live one two three lift and so you'll start you'll use the chip to sort of understand how to dial the car back as the tires are wearing and stuff like that. And so it was sort of a tool. But anyways, man, so I was hoping to hit the chip. I didn't hit the chip. And I just, I just, it was like I just, you know,

it's like I just dropped everything and just totally forgot what I was supposed to be doing next. But anyways, I would say it's kind of like for, and it's hard to admit, man, but I think right now for me, qualifying at Florence, I don't think this is. is an everywhere race track because I can go qualifying the Xfinity race and do okay. You know, I'm not, I don't have, but I think at Florence with the late model, I've got the yips, like a golfer that doesn't have his swing. And so when I got up there to qualify, when I'm sitting in the car getting ready to pull off pit road, I know there's 58, 60 cars that are going to try to attempt to qualify an effort.

We were 49th to go out. And I'm pulling up there and I'm thinking, hey know, I'm, I've, I've, I've, the top 20 are going to make it on time and the rest will run the heats. I know I've got a provisional. They've told me like you're in the race. There's 5,000 people here to see you race. You're not making the race.

And so I know I got a provisional. So if I've got a provisional, I'm not going to risk tearing the car up in the heat race. If I know I got the provisional, I'm not going to run in the heat race and tear the car up and not get to run in the main. If I'm locked into the main, I'm just going to go run my, you know,

piddle in the heat race or do whatever I want, which is what we ended up doing. But I'm pulling up there to qualify, and I'm like, there ain't no fucking way I'm making the top 20. I've already got it in my head that I'm not going to do, that it ain't possible. Just because you're doubting yourself? Yeah.

So I've seen everybody starting to run laps and they're running 50s and 60s. It's going to take a 60 to get in. The best lap I ran in any mock, I run about three or four mcks that weekend, test runs and qualifying. The best one I run was 85. So I've got to pick up two tents To make this top 20 And I just, I'm zero confidence.

Zero. And so Can you back this up, Joey? Is that, fuck? Just let me finish. Joey can back it up. Okay. So everyone in this room, Joey, everybody else can say,

Oh, you know, you just got to do this, You just got to do that. You don't know what it's like. You're not in the car. I ain't going to listen to anybody's advice in this room. I'm telling you this is how it is. And so, I mean, I'm 50-5 years old, all right? I've drove race cars for 20 years.

All right. I know when I got the yips or whatever you want to call it, and I'll figure it out myself. I'm not, nobody's going to give me some golden f***ing egg that's going to fix it. All right? So I'm talking to drivers. I'm getting information.

I know how they're doing it, and I just got to go out there and build my confidence up and make it happen. So, you know, qualifying was just embarrassing. terrible embarrassing and I'm so mad at myself and because I've

90% of the problem is me the car is good the car can do it I don't know that the I don't know that the car was perfect but the car is good enough like Connor Hall or Carson could have gotten the car and probably made it into the top 20 or close.

And so I know the car's capable. But anyways, I'm mad. And what they wanted us to do was pull the cars around to the back straight away, and then they were going to reorder the field. They were going to take the 20 that made it in time, put them on the pit road, in and in-pound. They were going to then take the rest of the field, how they would be lined up for the heat races.

So I'm sitting back there knowing that I'm putting myself in timeout. So someone else used all the, you know, for most of the other teams, a crew member is going to drive the car around there and wait for this process. And you're sitting on the back straightaway and officials like, all right, you go, your turn, go around the pit road.

All right, you go, you go. And I know I'm going to be sitting there for a while. I think Austin Green come up and talk to me a little bit. He had a really good lap. And I know his family really well and he's done some good things on the Xfinity side. So it was kind of nice to talk to him for a minute. But I was just sitting there and they finally called me over

and I pull over. And man, I mean, we literally only out qualified like three or four cars out of the many that were there. And so it was just terrible. And so I'm sitting there and pull up Matthew. Weaver figured out who this guy was and I really apologize that I don't have his name on the top of my list or right on the top of my mind. But one of the drivers, he's in his black 88. I think his name's, I want to say his first name is Gary.

but gosh, one of you guys are going to find it in this second. Gary Greenwood. Yes. So Gary Greenwood is a driver, and he also qualified around where I was. But I pull on the pit road, and I'm sitting there, and he walks up to me, and he says, hey, man, I love your show. And I was like, I appreciate it. Every time somebody says that, I tell them the thing that I always like to say, because I hear that a lot. Hey, I love your show.

I love your show. The first thing that I want to tell them is we have fun doing it. I want you to know, I don't know what the best response is to I love your show, but I want them to know, like, we really like doing it. Because I think if people know you're enjoying what you're doing, it makes them enjoy hearing it, right? Because they know you're having a good time, right? That's really important for us in this show,

is that people will enjoy listening to it knowing that we like it and have fun doing it. And so we, he said that and then, and then he said, no, man, it really helped me. He's like, I lost my dad and hearing you tell your stories and talk about your dad and hearing stories about your dad. He's like, that really helped me through a tough time in my life. And he's like, I got, he pointed to his car. He's like, I got this race car and I'm racing and it makes me feel closer to my dad. And all of those things are because of what I heard you're talking about on your show. And I thought, I love this.

I'm thankful for you sharing this with me. That's what I'm thinking. And then he goes, don't worry about that qualifying lap. He's like, that ain't what it's about. He's like, all the other things you're doing and you're helping me and you're here and you're doing all of this to be in here. And I was like, and then he started to leave. I'm sitting in my car.

So he started to walk away from the door of the car. And I grabbed him by this arm. And I was like, hey, I want you to really know that I really needed to hear this right now. I was like, you know, people, I'm thinking in my mind, I'm like, people always come up and compliment you all the time. And I was like, I wonder if in some of those moments they think that that even mattered, right? Like, oh, I'm sure you hear that all time or whatever. And I was like, dude, I really need you to know that I'm so thankful for this because I needed to hear that in this moment. and you know because as embarrassing as that qualifying was i mean there's a track announcer

making jokes on the pa about how bad my lap was i was so pissed off at that what i'm trying i'm here i'm trying to you know trying to have fun i'm trying to race i'm trying to just i'm trying to make this a great thing for everybody i want it to be good for the track and everything and god why can't this just go better and um and so anyways we end up uh standing on pit road before our heat race, trying to figure out exactly what they're expecting me to do. We're trying to learn details about the provisional. Who else is getting provisional?

And so I'm running around in the infield. I ran to the tire truck. I'm looking for the track owner to talk, Steve Zacharias to talk about the provisional situation. And they're like, and it's kind of like this, it's feeling kind of like this, hush hush thing like yeah you got a provisional man just you go out there and you just run a lap in this heat

race and pull off you got it you're in the race don't worry about it but i was like you know and i finally did find steve and i said steve i said i don't like this the way this feels i was like before the heat races we did this in the cars tour we had a race at hickory where we had too many cars we had to run a last chance race but there were some guys that were locked in on provisionals and what we should have done was tell them before the last chance race. You got a provisional, don't go out there and run this race. The reason is, there's a lot of good reasons to do it that way because, but Florence is very abrasive,

and if you can save this guy that's in this last chance race, a set of tires, it's like $800. So if you say, hey, man, you're in the race, don't run this heat race. You just sit here, you're going to start in the, back of the main or the alternative was to not tell them they go run the heat race you might wreck their car they're going to burn up a set of tires they don't make it in right and then at the end of the heat race you say hey you got a provisional so if you want to go buy a new set of tires to

start the main you can or you can start on these old 25 lappers which you're not going to want to do so now this guy is buying an extra set of tires that he didn't intend to buy that weekend so the price of the weekend's going up right and so I was like, Steve, if you're giving me the provisional before the race, can you not tell these other guys that will get the provisionals now,

that they also, too, have provisional? I feel like I'm getting a favor here, which, look, man, I mean, under the circumstances, I know that he wanted me to race, and I wanted to race, and I know that most people there wouldn't probably have a problem with me get him a provisional.

All the other competitors probably, most of them wouldn't have an issue with it. There might be some that are like, F, Jr., why does he get provisional? you know but you know for the most part everybody was going to be like yeah yeah we get it he's in the race you know this the bud thing there's all these people so but i really wanted steve to tell the other drivers too i didn't want to feel like this guy getting favors but he did he walked around and he kind of had this list on a piece of paper and he's like here's the list everybody here's the

people that are on it so now you kind of all know who needs to race and who doesn't so there were a couple of guys in the heat races that kind of knew that if, you know, if they didn't race hard and they were probably going to get locked into the race. And that's what we did. They wanted me to go out there in the heat race and run a lap and pull off. But I kind of wanted to test because I talked to Connor Hall and I said, Connor Hall, what would you do? He goes, I had to test. I'd use it at a test session. We already bought another set of tires that we were going to probably use for the race. So we were good to go. So I went out there and I fell back so in case there was a wreck, I could miss it, which a couple times that happened.

but I found out that our car was really tight and not handling good. And so we rode around, finished the heat race. That was fun. It was a nice tease. I definitely didn't want to pull off. And, man, we were so much faster than all the other cars around us in that heat race. So that was giving me some confidence, but we did need to work on the balance of the car. So we come into the pits after the heat race, and we changed the wedge, and we changed the track bar, put new tires on.

So we made a pretty big swing on balance to free it up. And then, as we all know, the car was a rocket in the race. Flo had a lot of issues with the broadcast. There's a lot of reasons why that was probably the way it was. This is a facility that manages probably anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 on a great night. They have what they need in terms of Internet and all of those things. things. I mean, Steve and his team have everything they need to function week and week out. I don't think that they could have prepared for what they were going to have in terms of how much the whole system would be loaded by not only the fans that were there.

If anybody was using the Wi-Fi staff and all them people piling on to the Internet service there. and then the broadcast feed being shipped from there to Concord, wherever NASCAR production is. So Flow is the streaming partner, the app, right? They are the front, they're the front end of the broadcast that you're going to connect to, right? But the production and the, you know, the producing, the editing, the directing is all NASCAR Productions, they just announced that they have extended their partnership. So in some scenarios, like this one, flow in NASCAR Productions worked together to bring this

broadcast to you. And I just don't think that they really anticipated how stressed and overstressed that system would be. Before the race starts, somewhere in the afternoon, the track internet quit. There was a break in the line somewhere. and Steve, with everything else going on, is like, hey guys, my system's down. Hope y'all got a good backup.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Which, I mean, if you're, I think if you're the people that are putting this broadcast on, you would have a plan B and so forth. And so apparently plan B was not working well. And so just too much happening, too much trying to go down this information pipe,

literally, to back to North Carolina. and you got a lot of people you know there's there's probably a lot of good reasons why uh the the the broadcast suffered with all of that said you know listen um i didn't watch it i wasn't i didn't experience the frustration that a lot of people did i understand that but i believe that flow uh you know is a good partner i think that they're not i don't believe that flow is skimping on quality and the resources it takes to put these things together. I believe they learned a lot of very, very hard lessons this past weekend that they probably hope to not repeat again.

I bet that they will probably make the adjustments to correct whatever issues there were going forward. I saw a great tweet from Hosevar. He's like, hey, you know, this is not an indictment on flow, man. This is the first time I've ever experienced this type of, broadcast quality from flow and I hope people don't really pull back and think man this is this this is not a good product because it is we got to remember that um and I feel I feel like we all have to you know look inside ourselves and think about how accustomed to being able to

tune into a stream we've become I remember five or eight or ten years ago when somebody said, hey man, you can watch the weekly races at Langley or Florence. And I'm like, that's freaking insane. That, you know, I can tune in to flow

at this, you know, Flow, a race in America or any of these, and I can watch and it's, you know, I'm listening to the announcer, it's one camera on top of the booth and this guy's just kind of following, and it's whatever action he's going to put the camera on. It ain't like a professional broadcast. But I'm like, it's still pretty badass, because

I get to watch a weekly show at Langley from my couch. Wouldn't a hell that that wasn't available ever, ever. You weren't, you weren't tuning into no weekly racing at a local track. Ever. It didn't happen. And then all of a sudden it just began to, to populate. Langley did it, then Florence, then all these other tracks started getting onto the flow wagon. and that was really just a couple years ago

and now we're trying to put on an entire production like an NBC or a Fox does with a really really you know kind of a really you know in some cases a very weakened infrastructure when it comes to some of these racetracks

this is all still relatively brand new and there's not a ton of money going around in all of this. Nobody's making you know a ton of money to be able to put

you know back into the resources and build this stuff up so when you go back to Florence and you got 5,000 people there you got all the things you need to be able to have a great broadcast you know so

I'm going to go easy on them and they were trying their best too I mean they even had James Pike on top of one of the haulers calling the race like it was unbelievable James is awesome yeah you know He works in the car store as a pit reporter,

and he also emcees our banquet for, you know, and he does a great job. He puts everything he can to be as good as he can into it. Sometimes he does way more than he needs to. We'll do, well, I make notes for this. I'm rambling here, but I make notes for the, I make notes for the banquet. I'm sitting at the banquet,

and I'm just making mental notes and putting notes in my phone about things that I would want to change for the next banquet the next year. James's introduction to all, all the drivers that come on the stage is like a f*** a wiki page. I mean, it's born in, blah, blah, India, from, you know, Jill and Bob. And it's like, hey, just tell me the guy I had a good year, what a couple races, get his ass on the stage so he can give a speech. 4.0 GPA in high school.

I'm like, come on. But, I mean, he's just because he wants to do so good. And he wants to do everyone justice. Hell yes. Yeah. And so when I heard about what he did to say that broadcast, no surprise. No surprise. It was cool.

Yeah. And Joey, you were saying like the connections, we were talking about this before the show, the connection stuff was not even a flow thing, like teams were even struggling with. So all weekend long, the teams used their own Starlink, their own Wi-Fi, so we don't piggyback on the race teams at all. We have our own. It worked great Thursday, Friday, Saturday morning. Once the race started, even that, even the guy standing on the,

the haulers with their different Starlink's were complaining about whatever issue, whatever congestion was there was affecting everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know that, you know, I know that when we would go to NASCAR races, anytime the track was hot, the freaking phones, your phone quit, quit working. You'd have a signal on your phone. You'd have bars, but nothing, And TJ, Joe, you know this all well. But as soon as the track was hot, whatever system they fired up in terms of the scoring and what have you,

because obliterated the cell service on the whole property, which is crazy, because it's, it's shit you can't see. It's in the air. Yeah. You're like, all right, if it's doing that to my phone, I can feel it. Yeah.

What else is going on? Tingling. Yeah. Look, 4G is over there. Yeah. Probably had something to do with the... My hair. Yeah, your hair.

Yeah, I'd blame that. Yeah, don't blame genetics. Just following years racing. Yeah, all the years of the cup races. LT. So, yeah, it's probably why I received more on one side of my head and the other. That's probably why. Get more signal on that side.

Yeah. Yeah. I know it was frustrating for people watching the show, and I wasn't watching it, so I can't understand that frustration. entirely. And I don't know how, I know it was bad,

I don't know how bad, right? Must have been pretty bad. But it is still, and we pay for it. Right? We pay 100, what is it, 150 bucks a year?

Roughly for flow? Yeah. Which they're getting the, they're getting the snowball derby now, which, what was, what was the derby on race in America annually? Probably 50 to 75. Yeah.

For the weekend, man. Yeah. And so, I mean, I still believe in my heart of hearts that flow is an incredibly great deal. It is a value. It is a, it is a, you're getting a great, great value for the money that you're spending. You get the entire car. You get everything.

There's no paywall. You don't, you don't get a, you don't have a, you don't buy a flow subscription and then have to buy another race that you want to watch. It's all in there. It's all in the sub. So you get the cars tour, all these things. I promise you when you, watch any cars tour race next year, there'll be some hiccups. There will be some problems. We are still all trying to do this, you know, do these productions and stuff at these racetracks

that weren't doing these. These facilities didn't have any of this infrastructure, you know, just in the race that past couple of years. And so, you know, it's a process and they'll keep improving on it. When we go to a cup race, no, when we go to a cup race, the entire media center outside the track is nothing but their own satellites. You know, this is nothing like we said a little short track. Everything's cat five. Yeah. So I apologize for that, but hopefully people aren't too hard on flow because they are the only

ones really that are trying to bring this content to us and allow us that opportunity to tune into. I use Langley as an example, but I mean, that's all the way up in Norfolk or Chesapeake Bay area. And I can watch just about every single weekly show from that racetrack if I want to tune in. I can watch multiple weekly shows with multiple tax. tablets, my phone, my iPad, my Apple TV, or whatever it is, my smart TV. I can watch three or four shows a night on any given weekend.

It's awesome. And so... Replays are also rate available afterwards. Yeah. And it also covers dirt, too. Yeah. Consumer Cellular is the official wireless partner, Brack Heslowski, RFK Racing, and the number six car. If they can count on consumer cellular, then you can too.

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This rate plan requires two lines of service, age verification, and credit approval. So getting back to the race, Amy and the girls were there. Ile and Nicole had never come to that facility. It was great to have them there. I was excited about them. They were dressed up. Yeah. It was awesome.

Right. So we had this auction on the Dale Jr. Foundation. where we were selling some of the stuff that I had in my storage. When we went through my storage bins to find those things, those items for the foundation that we thought we could sell to fans, they also found all these other cool pieces that the girls could enjoy. Stuffed animals, also clothes. And they wore a lot of those clothes, these vintage clothes to the race.

Amy just ate that up and loved it, right? And all her, you know, Amy's taking pictures and her family's like, oh, look at that. What is that? Is that new stuff? Can we buy that? And so, That was really neat. Nicole was in a jumpsuit, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So I love them being there because at first they were kind of scared of it, right? They were scared of the cars, the noise. They might fire up. They might start. Oh, I don't know. But now they're really comfortable around it. And I'm starting to understand that they're starting to understand that daddy drives

this car. That's when I see the car on a track, that's him in it. He's doing it. And they'll talk to me about the race and going, you know, driving up front and things like that so that's starting to that's uh that's that's starting to bear fruit is the way i'd probably explain it because i wanted to race more so that the kids could hopefully know that i raced i didn't want to not race in front of them and then when they're 15 and 20 have to go yeah check check this out i had this whole other life and and they would be like man i wonder what that was like

even looking at videos and pictures right so now they at least kind of have a taste of what racing is like. So, you know, in the next five or ten years, when I don't do it anymore, they can have some memories of what going to the racetrack and their dad being a competitor was like. So we're in the back of, you know,

we're doing the intros and all that stuff. I had no idea that they were having problems with the broadcast. Apparently they're doing the introduction and just cut the introduction to go interview me, which is probably a poor choice. But, I mean, I don't mind getting interviewed,

but they need to do the driver's introductions throughout. And so the kids come out to the car. We had a great moment there. And I'm pretty good in terms of nerves and all of that. I'm still pissed about qualifying. That's still bother me right now. But in terms of like, I'm not that nerve. I'm just glad that we're finally going to start this race, right?

We've been beating around. It's been a long freaking weekend. Long. And so the race starts, and I know the car is great. I know when we ran in practice, the car was great. Our laps were awesome. It held on. I know we're going to be fine.

Just as long as we don't get, you know, just as long as there's not like a track blocking crash right in front of us that's going to knock the nose off the car, we should be fine. And so, honestly, a lot about probably the first 100 laps of that first segment, you know, I was running smart. So, you know, the track is abrasive. It's hard on tires. If you're going to run 125 laps, you cannot run hard as you want every single lap

because after about 60 laps, you're going to be sliding around and drop into the back and getting lapped. So you've got to be smart and drive the car straight and never shear the rear tires and throttle. You can stand on the gas and drive the car sideways off the corner every single lap if you want. Like, it's really easy to do. but the smart guy is going to drive the throttle, like there's an egg between your foot and the pedal, and you're just going to be driving that pedal down off the corner and trying to be real smooth and keep the car straight,

don't spin the tires. And so I'm doing that, and passing, you know, we're really fast through the middle of the corner. That adjustment that I talked about was really paying off, and I was wrapping and right against the wall, and a lot of guys, I was just running up on them right in the middle of the corner, and I would put the nose really gently underneath their bumper cover and just kind of slide them across the nose of my car

and right off a four and then I'd be right on their left for a tire. They'd have to give me the inside into one. And so we kept making passes like that and caution would come out and Joey's like, your 20th. Costum would come out and he's like, your 15th. Caution would come out and he's like, your 10th.

And I'm like, man, you know, I can see the front cars up there. I know, I know, all right, man, damn, there's Josh, there's 88. Those are the lead cars. We're close to the front. And, you know, I was really, my whole goal really was to try to find my way into the top 20 for the halfway break. That would give us a shot at trying to drive forward and getting a top 10 finish.

Literally it was just like, man, just top 10. Let's get a good run. People will, if I do that and I get out of car, most people would come down and go, man, it's great to see you out there. Good job driving from 40th to 10th or whatever, right? I'm happy I came. That's what I was trying. That's all it was about for me was trying to, after the qualifying,

and run and how embarrassing that was trying to make sure that all those people that came didn't go home and go well fuck i wasted my time so i'm sitting there running and and uh i want to say uh and we don't have to put this in the show but um before the race started uh i'm not like i don't go to church a lot all right um but i've always believed in god and and my dad took us the church. We used to go to this Lutheran church in Mooresville. My dad invested money and helped them build some infrastructure and buildings and stuff like that. And, um, and, you know, you had church at the racetrack. And so I'd go to, I'd go to MRO every once in a while. But I'm not like a consistent, you know, church goer, but I, you know, I believe in prayer and the power of the

universe and all of those things. There's something, you know, there's something beyond what's happening here. And so I don't know where I fall on the scale of religion, but I'm on there. And so, and you know, I've always believed, and I do say some prayers from time to time, right? When I really need something, I say a prayer and I ask for it. And I never asked to win. I don't believe you pray to win, right? I don't think most people feel pretty much the same. I don't say, hey, God help me run 10th, right? Help me. Save tires. Yeah, yeah. But I said a little prayer in the car, and I wanted to share this with y'all, but I said, obviously I prayed to be safe, and I prayed for everyone else to be safe, but I prayed

that when it was over that I would be happy. And I thought, man, if I can just, if I really just wanted to be happy. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know that's not necessarily a result. There's not like, oh, what's happy? Is it 10th happy? No, it's really about that. It's like, man, when I get out of the car, I just don't want to be sad. I don't want to feel like I felt after qualifying, right? And so, um, I said that prayer and that gives me a little confidence. It gives me a little peace. Um, and I, another thing that drives that was, uh, Darrow Walter's wife. Stevie. She would, Darrell Walterswife Stevie and the MRO.

So at a racing, through my entire career from 98 to when I retired from Cup, almost every race, an MRO preacher is at the car and going to pray. And sometimes they missed you. I mean, there's 40, 43 drivers, sometimes it was rare. but when it happened it felt like you missed something right

and so I liked it I wanted them to come to my car and I wanted to pray with the preacher and you bow your head he says what he says and I absorb it and and Darrell's wife

Stevie would give me these written prayer notes on a sticky the verses yeah and I would put those in the car somewhere and I always put it somewhere I could see it and she did it for dad all through his career because apparently dad and darrell were standing somewhere to race and she brought darrell his that she did every every race and dad goes where the hell's mine it and so she started doing it for dad and he loved that and she loved that they were very close and

he ended up doing she ended up doing that for me i even have framed on the wall upstairs upstairs all of the ones from my 2017 last year yeah adam my interior guy so kind to Save those and he did that. He created that, framed that for me. I had no idea he was going to do that. It's so cool. And I have the one framed from the Daytona 500 win in 2014. And so anyways, you know, those type of things, they're consistent happening every single week.

So saying a prayer in the car before the race personally was not really a rare thing or an odd thing for me. but I really felt like it might be necessary because I was starting so far back in the field and there was so much pressure and so much, you know, looking around and everybody's hollering and wanting you to do so great. Is that hard? And I know, like, you, this is something you're used to is having eyes on you and pressure on you,

but I was at least being there at Florence and seeing all the eight shirts and the red gear. I'm like, I have no idea how you do it. Is it hard knowing that everyone's eyes are on you? I don't want, I, uh, it is, it hard is the wrong word. Okay. Hard is the wrong word. How would you describe it?

Heavy. Yeah. It's, it'd be like, so you train for your little triathlons, whatever. Yeah. What are they? You do triathons. Yeah, I forget. Yeah.

Half Iron Man's, right? You do that for yourself. Mm-hmm. Right? And I see you with your pictures on the podium, right? imagine if you did if you're getting ready for the next one right and honestly this is how it goes in my head

right I am totally unaware I have no self-aware to when we make the announcement for the bud thing I have zero understanding of what this means to anyone else I'll hear and I'll see and I'll see you get comments on social media

but I don't really know how to measure that so imagine that So imagine training for this trathlon And Showing up and the streets are lined With people chanting your name or wearing your shirt Yeah, you can't screw up Holy shit

There's, I just was doing I was just one I was just doing I'm just doing this for me Yeah That's hard to say You got something to carry now Now you're like Now I'm doing this for

Like this is bigger than me almost Yeah now I'm doing this now what Now the result I can take the result good or bad, but now I have to worry about how they handle the result. That person, that person, that person. God, amen. And so, which is what you signed up for?

Sure. But I wanted to say, I said that little prayer, and it was basic. Want to be healthy. Don't want anyone else to get hurt. And I just want to be happy when it's over. And we're sitting there and we ran that first half. And, dude, I got up to third,

and I am freaking beaming. inside the car and I am so in a I mean I'm having as good a time as you could possibly have and of course there's Josh Barry running second and I'm thinking man I wonder if I can catch Josh that would be cool because I love Josh Barry this is this dude has done so much for us and I feel like we've done so much for him we are forever intertwined in each other's lives regardless of if I ever heard another word from him or didn't see him for the rest of my life. If I didn't seem for 20 years,

I'd walk up to him 20 years from now and freaking high-five that dude and go, what the hell you've been doing, dude? What's up? He's my guy. And I'm thinking, dang, I want to get to him. I want him to see who this is. I want him to go, dang, junior's third. Here I am.

Yeah. Hey, how did that happen? And so I got up there and I caught him and I passed him. And the caution comes out for the break. And I thought about that prayer. And I said, I'll be damned. I'm happy. I was like, it happened before the race was even over.

It's cool. And listen, man, you know, saying a prayer, and you can say prayer and, you know, generally maybe you might ask, or something, maybe you don't. But when I say a prayer and I have a request in there, I'm not always like

expecting fulfillment. It may get fulfilled and I may be oblivious to that, right? And so rarely do I put a request in a prayer because you sometimes feel like that that's asking too much, you know?

But I'm sitting there going, holy cow. Like I was thinking about just get me happy at the end of the day but here we are, we're not even done and I'm like, you did it. Like I don't care what happens from this moment on. The fuel pump could have broke it halfway

and I would have been like, I'm good. I'm fulfilled. And so that was a really, between that and the conversation I had with the, what's it? Gary. Greg.

Greg? Gary. Gary, yeah, Gary. I was right. Between those two were probably the key, key takeaways for me from the whole thing. You know what's cool about that too is like not only, you know, we won't get too in the weeds on this,

but not only were you happy in that moment, but think of all the other people that were happy watching you go from the back to the front and relive in that moment. That's bigger than most, you know. That place, you have no idea what that crowd was like. I mean, that was way more than I ever could have, that was what happened in the first segment in terms of just being able to go from the front to the back to the front was way more than I could have ever,

If you'd have told me that was going to happen, I'd have said you were out of your mind. So now it's like house money. The second half. Exactly. That is exactly right. Hit past a lap car. They're like, yeah. Joey, could you hear the excitement in his voice around this point?

I knew he was happy, but the fans were overwhelming. It's like, too, you're saying it was loud, loud, loud, loud. The second half, we had a break, we get out, we change. We're going to put new tires on, everybody's doing what they're doing. We're fixing a little nose damage that we got. The car's fine. We're trying to put fuel in it, which all that is fine. So start the second half.

You've got a brand new set of tires. They're going to change the car. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worst. It's not likely going to be identical. And this ain't a Hoosier thing. This is a tire thing. I've ran all my life on Goodyers, Hoosiers. Every, I don't care what you tell me,

every set of tires drives differently. Just like every chassis. You can take a chassis and put it on that jig. You can build another chassis. on the same exact jig and they are going to drive differently. They're going to feel different. And so these tires are made by a man or a woman. They're handmade.

And so there's no way that they can be exactly alike. Now they're close. So this second set of tires had a little tightness in the middle and a little bit of a drive-off problem, but damn it, it was still really, really good, right? We did have a little bit of a different fuel load possibly, but either way, we start the second segment, and I've got great speed.

I'm real happy with the car. I'm in second place. Treyton Lapsovich is leading the race in the 7-7 car. Trayton is a young talent champion driver from Canada. Really, really solid. You might remember that name. He was the kid that won the Wilkesboro race in the middle of the cars tour season. We had that little confusion and issue with the tech.

But he won that race, and he ended up getting the win through the appeals panel. And so he is driving for Chad Bryant Racing, another quality race team in the late model stock ecosystem. Chad's been around forever. So they're really fast and he wants to lead this race and I'm not going to push him. I'm going to let him run as hard as he wants. I'm looking in the mirror working with Joey here.

I've got Doug Barnes behind me and a couple of the cars. and I just kind of want to keep them at about three car links or more. But when he gets back to five car links, I want to slow down too. So like I want that five to three car links gap and I want Joe to tell me when he's dropping further back so I can slow down because I'm managing my speed. Yeah, he's basically pacing you, right? Yes, yeah.

And so that's, I'm trying to run in second. I don't want Doug to pass me, but if Doug runs hard, I'm going to run hard. How hard are you fighting for the lead? Not you at all. You're just playing the game. You're kind of managing. Trayton can go do what he wants to do.

Now, if he wanted to get behind me, I probably would have looked past him. Yeah. But he didn't. He wanted to stay out front. And so I'm just kind of sitting there and Joey's like, three car links, you're good, three car links are good. All right, he's running, he's pushing a little bit. He's up to two. And so I'd push a little bit and then he'd go drop.

It seemed like he would realize that I was starting to go, the 88, Doug Barnes. And then Doug would go, all right, I'm just going to ride then. I'm not going to run hard to try to pass him if he's going to run hard. We're all going to burn our stuff up here. We got like 70 laps to go, 60 laps to go. It's not time to hammer down yet. And so this seems to be like just working out perfectly. This is just going on and on and on through this second half.

And I got it in my mind with 30 laps to go, I'm going to push. As hard as I can't. I'm going to push hard, but straight and smart, but I'm going to start running hard. That's when you kick. Yeah. And so if I can push the 77-Traten to use his carpet, maybe he was 20 to go or 15 to go. He starts slipping the rear tires, maybe.

That's my shot. He was really good, though. I think we were very similar and very equal. But, yeah, we had a caution that came out right around 30 to go or 32 to go, and they revert to the lap before, so it's now 31 to go. and coming to the green down the back straightaway, the car started cutting out, shutting off, shutting off, shutting off. And I thought it was, it was, I mean, it was like it was run out of fuel, which it did.

So I pull down pit road. I can run it at idle. I can fire the car up at idle. As soon as I touch the gas pedal, it shuts off. Fire it up, it'll run at idle, touch the gas pedal, it shuts off. We come down pit road, they're working on the car. They're going to find out today. exactly the specific reason.

But my guess is, so we took the fuel line off of the carburetor and it was bone dry. So there's no fuel coming from the fuel pump on the front of the engine. Either the cam is broke because the car runs funky like it's got a broke cam, but it is still idle. Like five or six cylinders are hitting. But either the fuel pump itself just broke, which would be the simple explanation, or something else that fires the fuel pump or runs the fuel pump is broken, which is maybe the front of the can broke off or something like that. So they'll figure it out today.

They're going to pull the fuel cell apart. Maybe there's something going on back there. But it's likely a mechanical on the engine that ended up causing us to not finish the last 30 laps of the race. But I will promise you that we were going to run in the top three. At worst third. Doug Barnes was pretty quick. He pushed hard at the end. I thought he had a little, I was watching the race

the last three laps, he had a little bit more than I thought but nobody had anything for Trayton. I was going to ask you that, like where do you think you would have netted out? First second or third? Yeah, yeah. I think you'd finish second. Okay. I don't think anything.

I mean, I was watching, I was watching, I was watching the lap times and Trayton's car could get off the corner when he wanted to. He'd back up a little bit. I thought Trayton was going to take off a little bit, then I watched his lap times, and he started playing off of him, I'm like, that guy's going to be tough to beat if he's doing that. Did you think, what did you have, or do you think we were running? 70, yeah, depending on the lap.

Sometimes. It's pretty accurate. Sometimes you'd speed up and then you'd slow down a little bit, but you were kind of averaging, like you said, I could see when Doug would catch you a little bit, then you'd speed back up, then he'd be like, I'm not doing it. Yeah. Because you and Joey, or at least Joey, you on Channel 2, you guys were talking about pace and feeling it was too fast in that second half.

Is that true? Well, we were so concerned with the O3 and what the other car were doing on how far back they had fallen, that we were trying to give him some confidence and that our speed was okay, but we were going so much faster than those guys that we were concerned about, that that was the conflict of, man, we're really going fast, but so is everybody in our group, what's Butterbean and what's those guys doing, and where did Josh Barry go, and are they going to outsmart us here at the end by saving so much that they're going to be able to drive back to the field? As the race progressed, they just didn't. They never pulled the switch

and we maintained. We didn't know that Butterbean was just genuinely struggling. And I used Butterbean because, I mean, if you pick a car, right? Josh dropped to 20th when the second segment started. And you would automatically, not knowing that he's really having a problem, you would automatically assume he's got a strategy that he's going to go back here and save and then try to make a run. He obviously learned something that made him change his strategy in that first segment.

and so and butterbeen's not running like butterbean typically does and so you're thinking hmm they might they must be saving they have to be saving there's no way butterbeams going to run you know 10th tonight that's just not you know their style

but man it just was the way it played out I'm sitting there watching that race in the pits going damn these guys are really just struggling tonight and we really were I mean I knew we were a top three car the way everybody ran really hard to the end of the first segment. So you're getting a really good idea of who's who. And so, yeah, there wasn't, there wasn't,

I wasn't too concerned about running worse than third at all. I thought we'd run second. You drove back away. I judge it off that 95 a lot. He's usually really good there too. Yeah. He wasn't quite as good as I thought he would be. I thought he tried to make a little run there at the end.

He did, yes. Sam Yarborough. But anyways, the one thing I will say about the failure you know I love how these cars are subject to failure

there's a ton of attrition in that race that's one thing I know this is going to sound strange but that's one thing that I like about late model stock racing is that our cars are prone to failure I remember, you know, the parts and pieces on these cars are really traditional.

When you think about NASCAR, Cup cars, Xfinity cars, sportsmen cars from the 80s, dad's cars that he ran in the 90s, these parts and pieces that we run on our cars today are really similar, almost the exact same parts. And a lot of times, there aren't people making, like the steering boxes, the manual boxes that we run. I don't think there's a manufacturer of those boxes anymore. These steering boxes are just getting refurbished by a company. They don't build brand new parts and pieces for these cars. There's just companies that take the old ones and keep rebuilding them into new ones.

But I love how delicate or prone to failure, the possibility that just a car might not make it to the end. I miss that about NASCAR. I missed that about cup cars. These cars in the cup series, they shouldn't break ever. When they do, it's really rare. You don't have engine failures that often. In the 90s and the 80s, you had tons of failures, right? And that was always when Dad was racing for these championships,

that was a major fear in the back of your mind that you're going to have some kind of a mechanical failure that was going to really cost you 150 points that day. And that was always in the back of your mind when those races were going to start. And so I'm kind of, as much as I'm, you know, You know, definitely don't want my car to break. I do love that being a part of the, you know, part of the process or part of the, you know, part of the, you know, it's just something that might have happen to you. Makes the highs feel higher, lows feel lower.

Yeah. But it just feels real. Yeah. Feels more authentic. Yeah. I have a question. I don't want everyone's take on it. This might be a dumb question, but who cares?

I was talking to Butterbean before the race. He's like, what makes this race so fun is the tire stress. and you don't really know who's got what until the very end because you're playing the game, right? And it sounds like it's fun behind the wheel and I'm sure it's fun to spot. Is limiting sets of tires something we could do on the cup side to make it more interesting, like something like this? No. No. So, no.

So you got that in the Xfinity series. There's a limit to tires in Xfinity series. and I don't, the problem with the tire, the problem with the radial in the Cup and Xfinity series and trucks is it does not perform like this bias ploy Hoosier. It don't wear and fall off and it don't suffer from abuse. You know, you can dirt track the cup tire and it'll suffer from heat, lost grip,

but it pretty much can come back, right? I mean... Yeah, I mean, we kind of got a little bit better there towards the end of the year with some tire wear stuff. Short track stuff? Yeah, like Martin's in particular.

But can, let me ask you this, TJ. So like in the truck and Xfinity and the Cup series, are you ever at any point in the year in a situation where if you go easy on the front end of the run, you can make it up in... Trucks absolutely not.

No, not a chance. Xfinity, very rarely. Right. But Cup car, yeah, we fight. we fight the heat related issues like you said if you piss the tire off a little bit just gets hot but then you can chill and it'll come back you're not really you're not really hurting your long run speed so when we would go to in 2004 i'm just picking a year random year but uh in 2000 in early 2000s you'd go to rockingham and yes you really had to be careful in the first 10 laps you didn't want

to try to make qualifying laps in the first 10 laps of the run because that would chew a ton of tire off the car in the first 10 laps that you wanted on the car at lap 80. And so if you went easy for 10 laps and then settled into a rhythm, that would pay off for you really good at lap 70, 80, 90. We did that at Martinsville, too. We would run, when I was running, you know, the bread bud car and stuff at Martinsville and we had this little great string of like top five runs. If you look at the statistics, we had a really good run there in the middle of the 040, 0304.

four or five season. I was half throttle to the flag stand and then lifting at the flag stand and using no brakes down in the corner and run pretty much the same lap time, really close, but saving a ton of car. I'm kept the heat out of the tires from the brakes and also just obviously not spinning the tires on throttle.

And if once you would get into a, you know, you'd fire off on a restart, run pretty hard, get some room between you and the car behind you and then you'd start pedaling back in up. back and off using less throttle on corner exit not even trying to catch the car in front of you you just wanted to do this for like 35 or 50 laps and then you could go or actually you wouldn't even try to have to go harder everybody just starts slowing down and like you're running over people because they're just war the hell out because they ran so hard

and that is not in our sport anymore that that our tires that we have today do not react that way anymore for whatever reason The way they build the tire, it does not suffer if you abused it. And you, like to TJ's point, take the truck series, for example, you have to run as hard as you can every single lap. There's no care or concern about what that might do to the tire because there is no penalty. But in the late model stock tire is a bias ply build that is very consistent with what NASCAR ran in the 80s.

They went to the radio in 99, I think, 90. And so this tire that we were running in the short tracks is kind of the way tires were in the 80s. And that's how, you know, if you ran a cup car in the 80s, yes, you had to drive it very carefully and smart and you couldn't, you're getting big trouble beating the tire up. But I'm with Butterbean. I love the tire management races.

I pick those tracks with those warm-out surfaces because I know a lot of the guys in the field aren't going to do this as good as I can. Yeah. Now, I might not be able to go out there in hot lap like these kids, right? I'll get in the car. Me and Carson will go test it. Me and Carson Quappell or Connor, Hall, maybe. I haven't really gotten to test with Connor. But, man, when I was with Carson Quaple last year, we go test.

Carson was a tenth faster than me all day. Anywhere we went. Florence, Hickory, he's a tenth better. all right and that's from his youth and driving that car every week and i don't care how hard i tried if i just show up at hickory on a week on a weekday and we go practice i'm just not going to be able to match his lap time i can get close but um you know so i i go to the tire wear races because i think in my mind i can save tires better than carson right and if i do that then i got a shot at beating but if it's a 75 lapper at a track with good asphalt and minimal tire wear,

he's probably going to have the upper hand for sure. So that's kind of the science, or not the science, but the thought process behind when I race and where. Now I might shake that up a little bit and try to run some of these other racetracks next year that won't have what's worn out asphalt. But anyways, back to the race, we had, you know, we, I want to, there's a couple things I guess before I want to open it up to the table.

Thank you Bud We, this wasn't a automatic yes from Bud when we called them with this idea. They weren't, you know, they didn't stop, they didn't stop us mid-sentence and go, you got us. We're doing it. This, we had to pitch them to deck and say,

because they had no clue. We call them, we're like, hey, we want to run this car? They're like, what car, where? What is this? You know, they don't, they don't know what they, you know, they're not up on what's going on with our Lake Mallstock stuff. So we had to spell it out for them. We showed them the deck from our sundrop deal and how successful that was.

And they're trying to help them understand, right? That took some effort from both sides. And it took, I'm going to say six months for us to all go, all right, this is great. Let's do it. And so thank you, Budweiser. for because listen all of the people that were there when I worked with them in the 2000s they're gone they retired moved on whatever this is a whole new company whole new whole new crew right I'm very thankful that they heard us out they were on board and we got it all sorted and we drunk

some red Budwisers after the race we loaded the car at three in the morning so I mean the race ended when a little after midnight really yeah that late I was late I didn't see I didn't I had no reference of time. Yeah. So we drank a few beers for two and a half hours and hung out with track owner Steve Zacharias and his family. Signed some more autographs, took some more pictures. And then went to bed and got up in the morning and went home. As I said, I'm going to run some races next year.

Probably four is on the schedule right now. They're all probably going to be cars tour events. and I would So talking about How big this was It was making me kind of want to consider Like I don't mind doing this again I don't mind running the red bud eight car again

Somewhere completely different And a whole other state It did make me want to kind of just go somewhere And show up unannounced Which we've done before We did that at Florence That'd be cool Yeah, we've done it before.

It's fun. It feels like you're just really, really one of the guys when you do it that way. But another thing that I pulled away from the weekend is it looks to me like late model stock racing is in a really good place. That car count there was the second highest car count next to Martinsville, which is the biggest race and has been the biggest race in late model stock racing on the calendar year. Martinsville will get 80 plus cars every year. And for Florence's South Carolina 400, which to me is a marquee race in the calendar year as well, but for it to get those 60 cars is a great sign that things are in a good place. I think not only just the cars tour, but lay model stock racing, weekly racing,

is really prime for a really great year next year in 2025. Again, I want to congratulate Trayton, Lapsovich, and Chad Bryant on a win, an incredible win, a big win. I think Trayton might have been the first foreign-born winner of the South Carolina 400. And I know that last year was a tough one for them. They had a good season, but the Wilkesboro experience was not one that they enjoyed. And so I was happy to see them, you know, win that race. if we couldn't do it. And, yeah, I am, I ended up going home with a smile on my face, got to watch some football

yesterday, unfortunately watching Washington to lose to Dallas in a really weird way. Crazy game. Yeah, Thanksgiving's around the corner. We're going to spend some time. Me and my family are going to have, we're going, me and Amy are going shopping today to get our turkey. And I hope everybody has a great holiday. I mean, that's, that's my note.

so I'll open the table. I mean, Joey, what was your experience from that whole race from your perspective? You know, we, Dale mentioned earlier. Thursday's a long day. It's quiet. It's normal. You go test and you have little expectations because you're just testing. You have no.

And then Friday, you know, we had just had the one practice session and you kind of don't know where you are. Saturday you have the two practices and you're like, okay, this is where we got to work on making him happy. And you can't look at lap times to see how good the car is. You rely on him on how happy he was. And after that one run, he's like, it's the best car I've ever had. Whatever this was, whatever screw you turn, this is great. We immediately, just like he said, you'd make an adjustment and we go backwards and you can hear his frustration because he didn't, he's like, well, just do a little more of that. Well, the little more of that was over the edge.

And then we went slower. And you're like, all right, where are we going to be? and then you qualify, and of course, 53rd out of 56 cars isn't exactly how you wanted to do it. When the race started, immediately you could see how fast you were. You know, and it was going forward the whole time, and you're just excited the whole time of the race was just fantastic. And then the Florence experiences for me,

you know, I grew up at High L.A. Speedway, it's exactly what it reminds me of being there with your guys, with your friends, and then when you go there and you run good, it's just a bonus. I posted this picture of me and Amy sitting on pit road before driver's introductions. And I like that picture a lot because it's an image of her support. You know, me doing something, selfish, me wanting to go race cars and her bringing the family there and bringing that to me and bringing that to what I'm trying to do, something that's for me

and for me alone. It was a cool picture. but two it's it's uh i feel the same way being there reminds me of exactly what it was like in the 90s when i ran um lay model stocks and i'm it's fun that it's so still so similar so that amy who's never been around it ever and our my girls and even tj right we didn't know each other in the 90s um for them to experience you know how what grassroots short track racing's light because it really is just the same. Even if the race was over back at Highalia, you always knew who ran good because there were

cases of Budweiser on the trunk where the winner or the guy at Randgood would buy, while all your competitors would come over and grab beer off the back of the decklet of the race car. Well, that's how it was with us. Yeah. You know, there's the cooler and guys that you just beat or you were beating and going to win and finish second. And all them guys you just race with come over and grab beers out and you sit around

and you bench race a little bit and talk about how great things were. Yeah. TJ, did you have fun? No, I like a great time. We watched the race together. TJ's just figuring out this podcast and how this works. So I talk and then he talks. You can talk whatever you want.

I'll kickstart this. I'll kickstart this because, you know, we give you a hard time for having the cool shirt up on the spotter stand. T.J. looked like a genius at Florence. He has a hot jacket, like a electric jacket. I'm not surprised. Did you remember that, by the way? You said you were going to do that.

Yeah, I remembered it. That thing's like gold to me. The Martinsville weekends, it comes in handy most of the time. You know, something for all the elements. Yeah, you've got to be prepared. But, no, I had a great time. It was fun, you know, kind of watching it. And I watched lap times a little bit throughout the weekend, too.

But like Joey says, too, you can't. You want to see a really fast lap time, but I know that place wears out enough that, you know, you don't really know. You got to go by the driver's feel a lot. And when the race started, I was, you know, I think the format also, like, when we ran that before, I think you could change two tires at some points. Which thing guys just say to like, they'd just fall back to where the leader was almost lapping them than to stay right there.

And now with everyone getting four tires, there was like you had a chance to move up and kind of maintain and you knew you weren't, you know, everyone was getting four at 125. So I thought that was cool. And it pushed people to get some track of position and not save quite as much. Josh was absolutely terrible in the second half. I thought he was like, oh man, this guy,

is he going to drive back to the front? and, man, it got like 50 to go or whatever. And I'm like, he's not even moving yet. There's no way he's making it back up there. But, no, I thought the race was super enjoyable. The facility, the way that things growing up were the last few years, the people that run it, they're trying. And the access that we have to it to be able to watch that on a weekly basis and stuff too,

like on flow. And, I mean, I think it's, I think this is, I mean, this has become probably the second race to Martinsville, like that I kind of like to watch now. Like Martinsville, you always kind of keep an eye on Martinsville. But this race is becoming, it's gaining a lot of prestige, I guess. It's on its way up. That's the neat thing is we haven't seen the peak when you're there.

Every time we go back, something is better. Yeah. Every single time. Yeah, and I thought the format, like, man, they get a lot of cars there. And, I mean, the race was good. I mean, the race was awesome. Had a little bit of chaos in the middle there. A little fight in there.

And so I think it was Connor. Did you know anything that was going on? I had no idea. Yeah. I mean, so there were a couple times where the wreck started right around me. Yes, you were close to a lot of them. Yeah. So the big one was right there next to you, I think. Yeah.

So we were in the middle of three and four and there was a red two. I know the guy's name, but there was a red two's on the outside of me. and he's struggling a little bit, and we're all, all of us are like, here's, uh-uh, he missed the race,

I think. Oh yeah, he did. We, um, we all were trying to, so when you see somebody struggling, everybody's like,

get by him, get by him, get by him, hurry, hurry, hurry, get by him. Because that guy's going to try to feel the next hole on the bottom, and then he'll get rooted up by some,

just this process that's kind of funny because we're all like, um, you know, a bunch of guys trying to shove into a revolving door. And every one of us is trying to take advantage of not only get by the guy that's struggling, but how can I also pin someone behind him and get by a couple cars, right? How can I make this good for me in multiple ways?

So I'm trying to get by this guy. He's on the outside. He's fine. I'm going to roll through. The guy behind him that we all pinned, we pinned someone behind him. He got impatient, I think, and turned that guy a little bit, or got three wide or something with that guy. So now I've got somebody on my right rear

and then the two's to my outside a little further up the track. Connor Jones popped me in the bumper in the middle of three and four and slid me up a little bit, and I got right rear hooked by the guy in the middle, and that guy hits the two and the two wrecks. Oh, see, you were right in the middle of this thing. I'm like, hey, did I fucking just cause a wreck? and I'm mad at Connor, so I break check Connor into one.

I wish he would have knocked his damn radio out. And, you know, in the moment, it's funny because, you know, in the moment, you're way madder than you should be. Every time in your race car, and this probably happens in other moments, people may be able to relate to this, but something happens on the track, and your anger is way more than it should be. And so there's like, it's really brief, like 30 seconds where you can make some pre-stance, stupid decisions and then you calm down right but um that that was the moment when i tried to break check him and knock his radio around his car but he was smart he saw it coming but then later well i guess he didn't hit me um yeah and so we're running along again and i'm passing butterbean

and in front of butter bean, I believe, is Austin Green. It was one of the 23s. Yeah. There was like three of them. Yeah. So there was Honeyman, Honeywell, Leland, Layland. He was in one, but I think he was mid-packer further back. So Austin qualified really good and really good.

And so great little young talent that I think a lot of people need to pay attention to, Austin Green. but I had been working on him I was just getting ready to pass him or get up underneath him and the caution came out and they went back to the lap before which I had butter bean had just passed butter bean so they put butter bean back in front of me we get to restart and we get going again

and I get right by a butter bean and butter beans on my outside and I had this really my car wrapped around three and four beautifully I mean telling you man that was the magic to this car was what it did at the 60 to 70% point of the turn 3 and 4.

A lot of times there, the car is really tight and the front pushes and you push wide and then you shear the back tires on throttle. But this car was wrapping around really tight so I could drive up off the bottom of the corner. And what I would do is I'd get the guy's bumper covers and push them and it would slide them sideways and they couldn't throttle. And I'm throttling up by them and by time we got on to the straight. way, I'd be right on the left or a quarter panel. And so I'm doing this to the 23,

but he's also got Butterbean right on his outside, right rear. And I get to the inside of the 23, and he moved up and wasn't clear. And to Butterbean turned him in the outside wall. That's what started the big crash on the front straightaway, I believe that blocked the track. The 22 that runs fifth is in this wreck,

sideways on the front straightaway, the red and white 22 car, Nelson owned car. And so, I mean, it was. It was an altering moment. Like, you know, you don't love to see people get their stuff torn up, but there's, you know, if you're in a 40-car race, you know, there's bound to be some big, big crashes at some point. And I guess Mason Diaz, body slammed Connor Jones. So Mason Diaz has had some issues with Connor in the past, and I know Connor's been on, been in the headlines here lately with a lot of things. but yeah so I don't know I guess they were they were

Mason got turned around or something by Connor into that wreck then he got shipped later on in the race I believe yeah down in turn one who uh Connor yeah yeah something happened I don't know I didn't see what happened yeah but a car hit a parked car a street vehicle yeah wait in turn in turn one so down and turn one because oh like over the hill there's no walls there's no walls in they had so many people, they were parking cars out there. I heard that. There was like a flatbed

that was parked out there for a while and they'd like someone, like, you can't park here. You have to move your car. Wow. But a red, some kind of red, you know, sedan got smashed. Yeah. Wow. And the owner of a red sedan your car stoned. You got bad news.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So yeah, there was a lot of action in the race. It was fun to watch. It was fun to watch. Connor Jones wrecked a parked car too. Yeah. You're not even safe on the street from Grotter Jones. Let me add this. That Bud 8 car that we see right there on the desk, the diecast, that, I don't know if you

even know this, that is the number one selling car from Lionel this year, 24. And anyone who has not ordered it can go check it out at lionel.com. Now, here's the best part, because, you know, we talked about on the show last year, they had to like make this tool. They had to get it made and invest into, you know, creating late model diecast. This has returned their investment on getting that made, on the tool. So now this will open up the doors for hopefully some more diecast. Nice. Other people to get their cars. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Well, the one sitting here on the table is mine. I'm going to take it home after the show. I'm not going to listen to anybody who said anything different.

You can take it? Yeah. Deal. I'd want it. It's the prototype. All right, this segment here is brought to you by Helmans. America's number one mayonnaise. We're going to talk, TJ, a little bit about tailgating, some sports, got college football going on, hot and heavy. This is kind of our Dirty Moe segment, Dirty Mo Doe segment that we usually do with Tampa Tams.

But Travis is here today. So Travis is going to help us a little bit with his, you know, with our college, Travis is a massive Ohio State fan, so he's got a lot to say about that. And we're also going to do another Dirty Modo group parlay. So get your parley ready. All right. I'm parlayed up. Are you ready?

So your Bill's Mafia, got your Bill's sweatshirt on. Are y'all having a good year? So far, a couple tough losses that I don't like, but it's part of football. Will you go to a game this year? I know you always go. Did you pick one out? No. I'm not going.

I might go later in this, maybe late December. See how things are going. Late December? Early January. Jesus. Yeah. That's usually when it's best to go to them. Well, you always go when there's like a foot of snow in a seat and you make Tamla sit.

Yeah. And everybody's miserable. Well, no, there's only probably one person miserable at that point. The rest of them are happy. Yeah. So Bill's Mafia. is well known for their epic tailgates. What are some essentials for you when you go?

I mean, I know you guys tailgate outside the stadium before the game. Yeah, I mean, most time, I think, obviously, a cooler. Come on. I would say any type of, any type of things. It doesn't, food doesn't matter, really. Food doesn't matter. What kind of food does. doesn't matter.

Like, food matters, obviously. You don't have a preference? I mean, people usually are so happy to go into the game and feeling so good. Food is probably not a priority at that point. Folding tables are usually pretty high necessity when you go there. So we know they dare, they turp a ton of fold tables. They do, yes. I've never, never jumped through a table.

Yeah. Not saying I wouldn't. Yeah. But, yeah, I would say any type of food, definitely blue cheese probably. What about chicken wings? That's it. Just play cheese. I would say, yes,

you do get some chicken wings there, but it's not really, chicken wings aren't really, you don't like chicken wings? I love chicken wings, but they're not as easy to cook in the elements and stuff like. All right, all right.

You know, I was, I'm learning like, you know, I'm thinking, you don't, you have to think about the fact that it's going to be, you know, 10, or 40-mile wins. Yeah.

So that determines. Yes. It's hard to grill and tailgate when it's windy. So I don't know. I guess there is no grilling. Not much grilling. There is grilling. Some charcoaling.

Yeah, there's definitely, definitely, I mean, it's just hard to cook. Even when you have a gas grill, it's hard to cook because the wind's blowing it out and stuff. Yeah. What about ready made stuff? Do you bring, just bring stuff? Oh, yeah. People make, they make ready made stuff all the time. I guess what might be good is like those pre-made sandwiches.

You can get some pre-made sandwiches? I think. Because that's, you know, just. Yeah, honestly, man. It's secure. It's wrapped. It's in a box. It's the kind of lid.

Yeah, I mean, you can bring anything. There's no, like, you're not going to go to this tailgate. Well, you got me, you got me a bit, you got me a little paranoid now, but to bring to the bills, you know, 40 mile an hour, 10 degree tailgate. Probably just my heated vest. If I bring. No, no, no. Like, if I bring some cheeseburgers, you're going to be like, what did you bring cheeseburgers for, man?

I think, no, I think you would. You've been in five minutes. They're already cold. And they blew away. The variety of food. there is really wild. This is what I'm trying to say. Like there's not, like, you're not going to see a cheeseburger. It's going to be everything. And nobody really cares what you do.

It's just a little. Do you have anything ever, do you have any foods that people bring to the tailgate? You're like, yeah, you ain't eating it. You know that? Ain't no good. You know what I don't like? Potato salad. I'm not a potato salad guy. Yeah, I don't think there's much potato salad up there during their games. No, that's not. What about a, let's see. I like potatoes. Yeah, people will bring those, they'll bring a, they'll bring the, um, the dip and the carrots. I'm not trying to eat healthier.

Today's a cheat day. Now, I want to chicken wings. Yeah, if you want to eat healthy and have a good time, just go to a Bill's game. Don't bring me the vegetable spread. Yeah, no, you're not,

you don't worry about that. Don't bring that. The vegetable spread is mostly alcohol. You're immediately going down my... I'm probably not going to talk to you that day. I'm into... Lose my number. I'm into going to the, to the tailgate, T.J.

I think you should do it. But if I see some of your friends, but if I see some of Somebody with a vegetable tray, I'm going to be like, you ain't talking to that person. That belongs at my tailgay. Yeah. So are you jumping through a table? After a few buds, yeah. Yeah, all right.

No, after the vegetable tray. No. I'll need to get intoxicated. But I'm sure most people that jump through those tables are. Absolutely. When they jump off the top of a bus, they're probably not sober at that point. So, yeah, the tailgating up there is, I've been to a lot of football games. Even, like, even Charlotte here, I've been to a hand.

handful, but it's nothing like that, man. And even you see the commentators and the host that go there and do that. What about the people that bring trays of multiple things like chips and pretzels? You're doing too much. You're doing too much. Leave the pretzels in the bag, right? Yeah. Yeah, nobody dumps anything out there.

You just, yeah, reach your hand in, grab a handful and take them. I mean, they cook on the hood of a car there in some of the tailgates. Like, they literally cook on the hood of a car. So that's, yeah, that's where we'll probably eat. So. Off the hood of the car. Yeah. Yeah, that's clean.

I mean, I've heard of cooking on the manifold. No, they actually have. How in the hell is the hood hot enough? They have a fire under there. Yeah. They build a fire in the In-Y department. Yeah. Something's wrong with this picture.

Something's wrong with his mental image. Yeah, it'll all work out. Yeah. Just don't ask questions. Just eat and enjoy the game. I've heard of putting little chicken in a or staking some tinful and laying it on the intake manifold and driving. and drive into the game.

Yeah, no. No, they're just going to... That'll cook it on the way. Yeah, now, they'll just cook for you. It's... You don't, like, these people are very well-versed in this stuff, so... But I'm sure we can get some wings, burgers. No vegetable trays.

We'll cancel those out. Yeah. Don't bring the damn vegetable tray. I ain't trying to eat celery. Yeah. I ain't trying to eat celery. Yeah, I'm not trying to eat celery either. I don't need...

It ain't like I need to wash my palate with some... Salaries. So if you walk home... If you walk home here a little bit, you walk by a vegetable tray, what do you grab them first? What? What do you grab them out of the vegetable tray first?

Honestly, carrots. Even though I dog them, even though I dog the shit out of them, carrots. But you know what? It's worthless in this world. Carrot cake. Oh, that's disgusting. Who's making a fucking cake with carrots?

It's disgusting. Stop it. Yeah. They need to quit doing that. I hate pumpkin pies too. Sorry, carrots. I like you carrots. You're good for our eyes.

That's why I love, carrots. Yeah. Carrots are good for your eyes. Yeah. You need more carrots. Why? What the fuck?

I've ate a lot of carrots. I do eat a lot of carrots. I guess I could look at it like this. My eye might be a lot worse if I hadn't ate so much carrots. That's true. Yeah, I mean, yeah. What is the appropriate intake of carrots?

I don't know. Hey, do you know if you eat a carrot? A carrot has a center. Did you know that? Yeah. Yeah. You ever eat the carrot where you like, you chew the carrot

and have the little stalk. It's like a little tree. It's got little branches. Uh-huh. I was showing that. to my girls, I thought I was going to make the shit out of them when I did that. Wait, it's not like the normal. I remember being a kid

and you eating a carrot. You're like, damn, there's a root in here. There's a tree. The center. The center of the tree, or the center of the carrot. It's the center of the eggs. You're like eating it like a chipmunk. And you have the stock left, right? Can't say I've ever done that. Nope. Oh my God. I've ever done it. You got to try.

I'll give it a world. The kid in you is going to love this. Oh, man. What do you call the little corn things? I mean, did you eat your Corn on the cob? No, the little ones, the ones you're supposed to eat the whole thing of. Oh, those tiny little corns like they did in the movie big. Yeah, the big movie.

Is that how you eat that? I don't know. You can eat this? Where he's like, the little tiny, the little tiny mini corn. Yeah, that's what, I know what you're talking about. It's not corn. It's not corn. It looks like it, but I don't know that it is.

How is it not corn? I think it's in the cauliflower family. I'm not sure. Wait, that's not really corn. It's not really corn. It's not really corn. Oh my gosh. It looks like a baby carrot, not really a carrot.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. We have gotten so far. According to Google, how many carrots is too many? Eating about 10 carrots a day for a couple of weeks can cause carotonemia. All right. So that's how many. Watch out there. Get an orange nose or something.

You see too well. You see things you shouldn't see. Oh my God. All right. So, TJ, as you know, I'm a big fan of buffalo chicken wings. You actually ate a lot more buffalo stuff. first moved down here than what I did. I wouldn't eat it.

Wait a minute, man. Are you insinuating, are you insinuating since you're from Buffalo or anyone from Buffalo, you're an eater of a lot of Buffalo things? You think Buffalo, the flavor? Buffalo is a Buffalo, the city thing? I mean, I think it derives from that.

Is that what I just heard? Did you always hear that? Key keeping. I didn't realize. I'm assuming this. Yes. TJ's, you really think Buffalo came from the city Buffalo?

What do you have? Where do you think came out of a spring? Chicken wings. That was it. Yeah, where was the chicken wing? Oh, Buffalo? I mean. You can not just hear what he said.

He's like, when I came down here from Buffalo was where he came from, you ate a lot of Buffalo sauce and I'm from Buffalo. Well, you would assume that I grew up would see it more be a buffalo wing, Buffalo sauce. Is Buffalo sauce from Buffalo? Invented in Buffalo? I think it's. I think it is. No. Yes.

Like the chicken wing. That's why they're called Buffalo. Wings. Yeah. This is, yeah. They got started there. Buffalo, New York, 1964. Oh my God, these are you.

Thank you. Let's bury him. Berriza. Barry him. Oh my God. This sucks. TJ's right. TJ has ruined this for me.

At the anchor bar in Buffalo, New York. Which I have. Holy shit. We are learning today. Carrots and Buffalo wings. I'm here for that. Sorry. Anytime you want.

TJ. TJ, your value in the show has just now been realized. I mean, we were waiting. We were waiting. We were waiting. We're wondering when it was going to happen. But now it is.

Thanksgiving week. I really can't believe you took that leap right there. Honestly, where did you think Buffalo sauce name came from? That's what I was saying. The animal, obviously. Not the animal. Well, then where would it come from?

I don't know why it was called Buffalo. Australia? Why would I assume that it was from Buffalo the city? What else would the fucking name Buffalo being in? No, the Buffalo wing. It's not like barbecue. sauce generic buffalo. Like, hey. I think they got lucky

that it was named. As much as I like it, I'm surprised I'd never heard that it was created. Oh, you ever have them Dallas wings? I mean, they're great. They're good at first, but they never got a lot of years. Well, hey, I learned something new. Yeah, I learned that you

liked Buffalo sauce when I first moved down here. I love it. But then it's the best. I actually turned into it, and I love it now too, so thanks for that. I wonder how I wonder if I had known when you moved down here that Buffalo sauce came from Buffalo

whether that would have changed our friendship. I don't know. Maybe we would have been closer even Yeah, you're like, hey man, you got any buffalo sauce? Hey, what's the good shit? Give me that. Anker bar sauce, man. Bring that good stuff down here. Yeah. Damn it, all the opportunity I missed. You did, man. Think of it. Man,

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you realizing this. Hey, even I. No, remember. of all things. Learn something new. You know of all. All right. Pump the brakes. Y'all are acting like I'm supposed to know everything. I just, I mean, this one's pretty common. I thought this was common. I felt like it was common sense.

I thought you were joking at first. I did too. But I mean, no, I'm serious. I did not know that Buffalo sauce came from the city of Buffalo. I had no clue. Just, just wait until we realize that's that isn't a real island. Is that something? Is that something that like just everyone, knows? I didn't know. I don't know. Thank you for being honest. Well, that shouldn't make you feel better. That measuring stick is one I would consider. He doesn't even shower today. A ginger's got to stick together. You know, usually I don't claim being a ginger, but I will in this moment. You teach that ginger to shower?

Oh my gosh. That's the name of the podcast. Teach that ginger to shower. What am I getting into this week? Oh my God. That's a t-shirt. That's a 100% of it's insured. It probably would not sell very well. Put the eight on it. All right. I'm trying to get you here. When we eat buffalo chicken wings,

a lot of times I get asked if I want any blue cheese or ranch, right? I know which way you're going to pick. So, what do you prefer? I prefer blue cheese. All right. Do you know that you can make blue cheese with Hamlins' mayo? I absolutely did not know that.

Yeah, you can. But it actually sounds like it would be delicious. Yeah, you can make it with, you can mix the little Helmand's in there. Perfect. It changes it. That's what we're going to take. It changes it. We're going to take Helmand's blue cheese dressing to the tailgate.

That's what we do. What happens if you ask for a ranch in Buffalo? You don't want to do that. Yeah, I mean, you might as well get you chiggling with a rubber glove on too. What do you get? What do you get when you mix Helmonds, mayonnaise, mustard ketchup, and some deal relish? Thousand Island. Boom.

I did not know that either. I didn't know that. Oh, it's good. Now I might be down for the vegetable cream. Why are you telling me that years ago? I mean, all this time. You're from Thousand Island. Now I might be talking to the guy who brought the vegetable tray.

If he brought some of that. If he mixed, if he made some blue cheese with some Helmonds or the Thousand Island. All right. So some guys hollering. Hey, I got this vestry with your special dip. Hellman's and blue cheese. Is he in the stadium like a hot dog collar? He's like, vegetable tray.

Helmand's blue cheese. Dude. I went fishing with Rick Hendrick and we caught some Kobe. And Kobe is kind of like a tougher or it's not like a fish that falls apart. It's like a steak almost. And you cut it into nuggets and deep fried and a little fry daddy. And so they were like. Is it electric?

I was kidding. They were like, what? It's just a funny name. I don't know. Friday. They were like, my nickname in high school. They were like, mix this here. Some Helmonds, mayonnaise, and mustard and ketchup.

And put some deal relish in there. And I made that. And I was like, I am a freaking chef. I am a, I am a, I am an expert. Now, because that shit was good. Now it's your recipe. And it's like one part of each. It's like the simplest.

thing in the world it's good. I have to try it. Yeah. I don't eat fish, but I got like that. And you're like, because I'll get like a, I remember when Amy first moved in with me, she's like, what do you cook? And I was like, watch this. Liver mush.

And I'm like, I cooked a, I cooked some, uh, a chicken breast in a frying pan, chopped it up. And then I got like a vegetable soup, can of vegetable soup. And I cooked it on the stove and I put some salt paper in there. And then I took that chicken in there. I'm like, check this shit out. Look, what I just made. Yeah.

We're in a feast. Chicken didn't come in the can. No. I put it in afterwards. I was smart enough to make the chicken separate and add it. Gordon Ramsey's Jones. I've taken this amazing soup and made it better. Yeah.

Welcome to Flavor Town. Yes. Yeah. One of the best things he ever had. I am a pro, boys. You are. One of the best things he ever had at his house cooking wise. He had the best frozen pizza cooker that I've ever seen.

Remember that thing? Wait, seriously? Oh my God. What made it so good? I don't know. It rotated. I don't do it. So it spun?

Spun the pizza. Oh my gosh. It was so good. It didn't get cooked too much on one side. We got to see this. I don't know who got it for them or where he got it. Because it's one of those electric jobs that has like the, it looks like a neon light. That little electric thing that runs underneath the heat with the tank.

And that little things, that little thing ain't perfect. It's kind of cooking it too much on one side. But it spins the pieces. So it's like perfect. And it had a little neon heat lamp. on top too. It did. A little neon light tube. You pulled the whole thing out at once.

Made the top crispy, bottles crispy. It's like 20 bucks on Amazon today, I bet. I got to invest in one of those. We race and whoever went into the kitchen at like 11, just put the pizza in, whatever. I mean, that thing was so good. Boxed thin crust pepperoni. Yeah.

Memories. Some of your best chef work. Dude. In my mind, I'm thinking about those pizzas we used to eat when we was gaming all night. And I'm like, those things, were so good. And I go to the store and buy one. I can't get them. And I make

it and I'm like, it tastes like shit. Yeah. I know. I think. No. This ain't nothing like it was in my mind. I love frozen pizza still. Yeah, but I'm telling you, this thing. Some red bear in. Do you cook in the oven? Yeah. It's terrible. No. It's not as good as what this was. Nisphalges. But it's still

frozen pizza is still good. This is like the epic steakhouse of pizzas here. I disagree. I disagree. When's the last time you had one? Been a while. I had one yesterday. Yeah. Sorry. No, I was...

I think... That's what I needed. My theory is if you quit for 10 years and then had one, you'd be like, bleh, what the fuck is it? You'd be like, this ain't good? I remember these being good. He's out of pizza shape. Did you have a vegetable tray, too?

No vegetable tray. Nice pepperoni pizza. I'm telling you, this thing that cooked these... This thing made a difference. It did. Because we tried it in other... We tried it in other cookers and I'd be like, ah, get that some bitch back out.

Yeah. Throw this in a way. This name is good. It didn't do it. It didn't do it. This thing was amazing. It was magical. I got to see this thing.

It's going. Oh. Yeah. It's terrible. I'll watch our YouTube video or something. We just talk about it now. R. IP. Some things, man, just worked really good.

You remember the Foreman Grill? Oh, of course. Those things cook a damn good steak. There was one problem with it, though. There was no on-off switch. Yeah, and unplug it? You had to unplug it to turn it off. It's the most annoying thing ever.

Not really. Yeah, well, what's the difference? Full the plug? What's the difference? You got to unplug it every time. Turning a knob or unplugging it. Why would you turn it off and not one plug it anyway? I felt safer.

Do you unplug all your devices when you're done? I felt safer if I unplugged it. Yeah. I honestly. Even if I had an on off knob, I'd still probably unplugged it just out of safety. I mean, it's just a little form of you put it back in the cabin anyway as you leave it out. You just have your devices or your equipment on the counter. You just leave it.

Like the blender just stays there. No, that ain't going to fly at my house. Yeah. We ain't leaving the damn. Air fryer stays out right now. Well, the air fire's too big to put in a cat. The formal was just like this little thing. You just cleaned it off. Let's ask Amy how she feels about the former grill sitting on the counter.

Yeah, that's not going to happen. It's not happening. Still, though, just give me an on-off switch next time. I miss that, man. I had the former grill. That thing cooked the hell out of a steak. Steak. Steak.

Okay. And chicken. I thought it cooked. Anything. It cooked everything. Burgers, whatever you needed. Terrible at pizza. Yeah, you're not doing a pizza in the foreman.

What is your favorite y'all guys cook steak one from time of time, right? What is the, what is the, what do you do seasoning-wise? Salt pepper butter. That's it. That's it. I feel a good steak, that's all you need. Have you ever had a steak suit? Yeah.

Stop with that shit. Oh, come on. Stop with that. That's like the, that's like the A-1. Like, oh, it's a good steak. It doesn't need anything. I don't want to bring this up with you again. Don't need anything.

Don't say that. Just say, all you had to say was salt and pepper is all I put on my steak. Because now you've said, I don't need anything. It's a good thing. Now everyone else's answer is beneath you. I'm just letting you know where I'm at. Now you're like, you put yourself on this little pedestal. Listen, people who got different tastes, somes are better than others.

Stop it. You don't need to say that. Just say, I choose this. Not yours is different or yours is better or worse? We can both be right. Have you ever had a steak suvied before? Sorry? A suvade or whatever?

A suvades where a vacuum sealed is in a vacuum sealed bag. Water and get the perfect temperature that you want to. I am curious what seasoning that you put on your steaks. I'll go. Well, apparently all I need is salt. Right? Don't you feel insulted if you've not even gave your answer yet. Yeah.

Right. Good job, Dalton. I screwed him up. I can't even think right now. Give us a seasoning. Yeah. What is the McCormick Montreal steak? That's hard to be.

beat. That's a classic. It is the most common thing you can pull off the shelf. Yeah. I've tried. I've like seen all these other different ones and I'm like, God, they got to be better right. Nope, McCormick's. It's the same. It is. It is, right? That's what it is. I use that because I mean, I'm like, whatever. I'm not going to, I'm not going to beat this. I might get a little wild and do some Lowry's garlic salt every once in a while. Easy there, don't. Apparently, you said you don't need that, though. It must not be a great steak. No, that's my. That's the bottom shelf steak, you know. You had to add back.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think I've got a seasoning salt that I use and I use it every single time, but there's nothing else. Like, you might get some, I'll tell you what's good is when you're done is you put some of that like, like Wagu tallow on it, let it like a butter. Beef tallow and let it melt on there a little bit. It's like butter. Gosh, that's really good.

Nice. Yeah. McCormick's. Montreal steak. Tough to be. Because I would take a steak. Cormix Forman grill

Bam Boom Yeah Instant Classic Did you cook Amy a steak On the foreman

She wasn't around This is Amy came in The foreman left Back for me I walk in the house And I'm like Nah

I ain't doing the stove Too much work Foreman grill What's your go-to meal now to make Amy's been getting these ready made factor meals

We eat those some I don't really have a preference. I just try to get the ones with least calories, around 580 calories. I've been on this sort of, I've been trying to lose weight to get, to run that race so I can fit in my seat

and fit in my uniform and all that fun stuff. And I feel like shit. We talked about that on this show. And so we've been eating a lot of tuna. I'll get tuna out of the can. Two of those, about 150 calories apiece, mix it up with some mayo and, deal relish,

mustard, and have like a 350, 400 calorie lunch out of a bowl. So I've been eating a lot of that, which is good. I like it. I like chopping up

deal pickles or deer relish and putting it in that. It's pretty good. If you add pickles to something, I'm going to be happy. Been eating a lot of grilled nuggets from the Chick-fil-A folks.

Um, get a little grilled. Fine folks over at Chick-fil-A. You get to eight chicken nugget grilled and then one of their little buffalo packs from Buffalo City. Yes, shipped directly from Buffalo. And you pour that into the little cup, shake her up. Man, that's a meal. Exactly.

But I, you know what? The soups made by Amy. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about? I do. The brand. They're like kind of the organic style. Yes.

Yeah. They got a no chicken noodle soup. I think it's called no chicken noodle soup. Why is it called that? I don't know because I think there's little pieces of chicken in it. They do a lot of like vegan stuff and stuff like that, so that's why they do. Yeah, no chicken noodle. Dude.

It's a blue can. Yes. That shit is so good. I would eat that anytime it was available. I don't know why, but like I like, I like, I like, so. soups are easy, just dumping into a pan and heat it up. And I got some Slappy Mama hot... That is unbelievable.

My dad swears by it. It is. So I always have Slappy Mama around and... Excuse me? That's why they named it that. Take it out of context. They named it that so you can have some fun. You did what?

I'm a big fan of Slappy Mama. So I take Slappy Mama. Isn't it sound like I'm insulting you know? 100%. So I slap your mama. Yeah. There's some people in this room I can't even look at it. I can't wait to try. Kick my grandmother in the teeth.

It's so good, man. It's so good. Gosh, have you put that kick your grandmother in the teeth on your baking? Yeah, whatever. Oh, my God. So I'll put some slap your mama in that Amy's no chicken noodle. And it turns it from a damn 10 to a 20. That's awesome.

But I put that on everything. A lot. And it's almost like I'm, built up this really dangerous tolerance for it. Because when Amy tries anything, she's like, what the hell? This is ridiculous. It's inedible.

I'm like, I can barely taste it. What's you talking about? It's so funny. I'm addicted. It's a slapy mama. Oh, my gosh. No. All right.

We're having fun. Yes, we are. It's rivalry week. I can't say it. It's rivalry week. It is. Say that three times fast. Rivalry Week, rivalry week, rivalry week.

You did it, but it was a start-off. All right. Travis, the Ohio State University of Michigan rivalry. We don't use the M-word this week, Dale. It's team up north. Thank you. What happened? We don't use that.

We don't say their name. We block out every. You went to a game. Denny Hamlin. Yeah, I was there the IU game on Saturday. Yeah. Who'd they play? IU.

Indiana. Oh, sorry. Just use the long form, please. The University of Indiana. Thank you, sir. I'm trying to. The old Hoosiers? Yes.

Yes, thank you. So, yeah, I'm not familiar with the abbreviations. Yeah. But how was that experience with Denny? I got to give him credit. He showed up in OSU gear. He was completely bought and he'd never been to a high school. He's been to like some smaller games, but never like a true, like a blue blood program.

game. So he was all in cheering, having fun. So it was awesome. Who all went? He bought some stuff. Yeah, he, I mean, he had an Ohio State flannel, a hat. Like, he was all in this. Who all went? Well, I'm getting there. Was it in a big group? No, it was him and then two other friends of his that went. So there was four of us. So it was a fun trip. Yeah. I asked if they wanted to do it again next week and go to the game. Where is it next week? It's out of Ohio State too. Who? Versus Michigan. Oh, he said it. said the M word.

Because I have to say it because Dale's going to be confused. So that's, so what's, what's been the, what is, I know, I know you want Ohio State to win,

but in all honestly, in all honestly, I haven't really followed Michigan this year since they got a new coach and everything, but what's the chances of Ohio State pulling us out? They got a good shot.

I mean, we should. We're favored anywhere between 20 and 23 points. But the problem, the thing is though, we've, there's been games where, you're supposed to win.

Like anything can happen in it. Like when it's a rivalry, throw the records out. And so like, right... I did a 25 prop parlay on all the favorites and got 20 out of 25. Wow.

So, yeah. Like Alabama lost. It was devastating. So, like, right now I'm calm, but as the week progresses all... You don't seem very calm. This is like qualifying for him. It's like, you know,

the week before he gets into it. He's got the yips or whatever you call it. Yeah. Yeah, you look and sound extremely nervous. Well, I think I'm still also recovering. So it's like recovering plus... Recovering from... The weekend.

Ah, you're so nervous. Oh, I am. You're nervous. You're recovering from being nervous? No, from having fun on Saturday. Yeah. I'd be nervous too. And the thing is, though, I can't even enjoy...

Do you have a fun hangover? Oh, yeah. Yep. But I can't even enjoy that win because this win on Saturday doesn't mean anything if we lose this Saturday. Like this is the season. Like you can't lose to them.

No. Especially, you know, they cheated for three years. Stop it. They did. There's no factual evidence. Yeah. But there is. Oh, there is.

All right. My question for you, though, is, so it's rivalry week. Yes. What's your favorite NASCAR, right? Like Ohio State Michigan is everything to me. Well, so first of all, I mean, my favorite NASCAR rivalry, is going to probably be, y'all will probably name some where I'll go,

oh yeah, that's a great one. But I am so Uber, like, focused on dads. So I've forgotten, like, the ones that are outside of that bubble are not top of mind. But Dad and Jeff Bodine, Dad and Darrell Waltrow. Those two were good. So Dad and Darrell Walshup, the wreck at Richmond, I had Daryl's race car from that wreck in my graveyard.

and so they had a run there where they really were upset with each other. And Darrell was a formidable rival because of his ability to be good in the media. Now it wasn't as volatile and as wild as the Bodine rivalry because I think there was absolutely was a period of time where they both did not like each other. And so, and that bled into, like, even the families. Like, our, you know, me, our, you know, uncles, aunts, grandma, everyone, right, was all Team Earnhardt on this fully. And every time, especially when we went to Charlotte, they were even closely to tell them the racetrack. You didn't, it wasn't like what might happen.

It's like, how's, how, you knew there was going to be something. You knew it. And there always was. Even there were times when you're like, damn, y'all didn't even have to do that. But they couldn't stop it. They hated each other or wanted just to screw each other over so badly. And it was more dad than Jeff, I think.

Jeff hardly instigated it, but dad was always one that will, dad would run into anybody if he wanted to, right? He didn't have a lot of, you know, self-control. TJ, what about you? I mean, honestly, I think, though, Those are really good ones. I wish I didn't get to live it kind of like what he did, which I think that had been awesome to be kind of living,

looking back at it now just to kind of be a part of it and see it happening at the time. I don't know. I kind of came in. I think the rivalry between, like, Jeff Gordon and your dad was big for a lot of kids whenever. Like, I was pretty young or kind of young when that started happening. And I thought that was really cool because you were either one side or the other.

You know what I mean? Every race, it was either you were a Jeff Gordon fan or a Big E fan. You just kind of, there wasn't, I mean, that was it. So I thought that was kind of cool to watch. And it was kind of like a rival, also kind of like mentor as well. I remember there's times, you know, that time Jeff went out to qualify. And your dad's like, ah, you shouldn't run right here. And Jeff goes out there to qualify in Rex.

And it's like, man, that guy's smart. You know, but I thought that was a really cool time to kind of witness and be a part of. of. I wish Denny and Ross hadn't buried the hatchet and kept theirs going. Yeah, but they're playing nice. Like I don't, yeah, I wanted that to keep going. Maybe it will. I hope so. We still got a chance. There's still a chance. I'm hoping for it. Yeah. You know, we could just wheel it into existence. I mean, plus we have some, you know, we're close to Denny, so we could probably inadvertently put it in his head. Yeah, but I think Ross is trying to play nice. Yeah, but we could tell him some shit. I don't get Denny to start it.

At the podcast and make it sound like he said something. We could get in his ear and be like, hey, man. I don't want to name any of his, but Ross is up. You can't believe you let that happen, man. Can't believe you took that. You know why that happened? Because you let it, Denny. We could be, yeah, we could just constantly be like,

man, I can't believe you just folded for Ross then. Got it's soft, man. So this is over? You just kind of let him win. The old Denny. He's like, what do you mean? Let him win. We could just keep that going.

And eventually in his head, he's like, I'll let him win. You'll lay there and think about it Yeah Yeah I mean I don't know how Denny sleeps That's what I mean We can wheel it into existence All right well let's get the going

And you have the You have very close connections Yeah I'm on it You could have done that a couple times Maybe once a quarter You're in the Ohio State Indiana game Man

Indiana is Yeah a little bit Anya you're an ass kick like you Versus Ross When it was you and Ross Remember that thing you all had Remember that thing Where he got the best of you?

I was too locked into the game. Do you still check your closet for Ross at night, Danny? Yeah. I mean, Ross's got a pretty good punch. We're already halfway there. I mean, the rivalry's almost back. Yeah. Right?

I feel it. All right. Any other rivals? I like Tony Stewart versus the media. Day. Yep. Yeah, that was good. Yeah.

For sure. I liked the Robbie Gordon time when you and him got in a little bit. That was kind of fun. Yeah. A couple little ones. Yeah. Kyle Bush for a little bit. Yeah, Richmond and all that.

I enjoy that. I think Kyle Bush rivaled everybody. Well, that was him versus the field pretty much. The one that was, there were a couple that were, I'll be it brief. I mean, most of the rivalries in probably the last 20 years were relatively brief comparable to like what it was like in the 80s and 90s that some of them were career long, you know. and but some of them let's talk about some rivalries that were maybe not so great or or kind of pointless like Newman and Lugano. Remember they had like a two or three, four week deal?

Remember in I just saw a clip of this the other day where Newman and Ligano were in the garage and Ligano's like trying to literally just be like talked to him like, yeah, why are you racing so hard and Newman's like, don't touch me. learn to drive, learn to drive. And I'm like, these two are like having two completely different conversations there. It was really funny. Yeah, that was always a good one. And then there's some inner teammate ones too.

Like there was Jeff and Jimmy for a little bit. You had Carl and Greg Biffle that whole the fake punch thing. Oh, Matt. That was Matt. I'm sorry, Matt. You're right. I'm sorry. That was weird because that was teammates.

Yes. That's what I'm saying. Like you had him on teams. And Carl doing the fake punch? Wild. What a wild move. That was like high school playground. That was.

That's teammates too then. He brought that strategy back at 30 years old. That was a little strange. Major flinch. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. I win.

I owe you won. I mean, you did walk in Kyle's lounge and tell me you're going to kick his ass at one time. Yeah. That was a little off. That was kind of the end of our robbery. That was kind of like a fake punch, kind of. I mean, no one really ever does that these days. I don't know.

Yeah. well I mean it just oh there was um Harvick and Biffel was a good one did you mention that that was really good no that was real Harvick and Rudd was so serious yeah so Ricky Rudd as we all know would be like the kind of guy that like would show up to work the next day with a

black eye like you wouldn't be surprised but you'd be like damn how'd that happen and um he there was Bristol, I want to say it was Bristol, Mike, Dylan, and Ricky Rudd, or something. It sounds familiar. Yeah. Ricky Rudd got punched in the, and he was having an argument with somebody,

and somebody punched him in the garage before or after, or I mean, in the middle or after a race. I can't remember what it was. And I'm like, damn, Ricky Rudd is like a little. He'll get in the middle some stuff. Thanks, and then, yeah, him and Harvick was when, when, when they were smashed side-aside at the end of the race at Richmond that time and Harvick's out of his car and they're harlaring across the time. I'm like, man, this is serious.

These guys hate each other. Even the crew guys were ready to throw down. Yeah, that was some serious stuff. Harvick and Lugano was pretty brief, but. Harvard's shipping him in turn three at Pocono that race. Harvick and Kyle when he shipped his car away in the pit road at Darlington. Oh, man, yeah. That was one that I was really happy to see.

Well, Kyle, you know. That's fun to hear. Well, no, I mean, I guess is like when you're, so you line all of the cup drivers up, right, on a wall. And you get to pick who the guys are going to rival, right? Would you not pick Harvick and Kyle Busch? A hundred percent. To have a rivalry? Yeah.

To see who would get the best of who. which volcano would erupt the most. Yeah, because they were really both, at that point, especially two kind of really volatile guys. And both guys, especially Harvick, like, you know, he walks in the fucking garage and puts fucking Carl Edwards in a headlock. Right?

I mean, who does that? Yeah, no one. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, Harvick does, Harvey puts Carl in a headlock. He jumps across the roof of Fibthel's car, Bristol. You know, he's...

Crazy man. Unhinged at times back then, you know? He started the Texas brawl. That's right. Oh, yeah. Harvicking. Pushing Brad.

Yeah. Harvicking. Harvicking. Yeah. He's, uh, I'd say the repeat offenders are probably mostly Kyle and Harvick. They were probably the most. And Lugano gets wrapped into a lot. A lot of people hate Ligano.

Well, he's, yeah, because he, like, he doesn't start the rivalry, but he's been in a lot of them. Yeah. Well, maybe he started a couple. He started a couple. Yeah. Yeah. I will say, man, when you're talking about rivalries, especially in modern ones, it's hard to articulate exactly how it begins, who's at fault, who's right and who's wrong.

Yeah. Because they all kind of well together or, you know, it's kind of like not a clear picture or an image of all that stuff. Like Lugano has, is there, you know, when you look through the field, of cars. Lugano's had a run in and a conversation and out of the car moment with a lot of guys, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There's been a lot of them. Chase. Chase and Harvick there for a little bit. Oh yeah. That was a good one. They were like two seasons because I remember it was like Bristol. He was blocking for Larson and then the roval when Harvicks won him and then Mary off season. Mary off season. That was a good one.

I wish that one was still going on. well, Harvey's retired now, but, yeah, Denny and Lugano was a good one. Denny and Chase was a good one. But again,

those were... Martinsville. Brief. Yeah, those are little moments. One race rivalries, almost. All right, so we want to do

another group parlay. You want to dive into that? Yeah, let's do it. So, Dirty Modo is a... You know, we've had that Dirty Mode

podcast and on our on our Dale Jr. downloads, we've done some Thursday night football parles. We've not had a lot of success with that, but hopefully everybody out there is just betting small units and playing along and having some fun. I'm certainly doing that, especially when T.J. and all these other guys are putting their two cents in. I have to help T.J. with his prop from time to time. You have one today, actually? We said we could choose just games. Did you bring your own thought to this is what I'm Yeah, I'm looking at the stuff right now.

I have my own thought. All right, so I got to give it a hard time, man. All right. You too, Andrew. Do you bring your own thought? I have a thought. Okay. One singular thought.

Yeah. Y'all are going to clown mine because it's not a, it's not going to be a popular one. Oh. Oh. Is it yours? We're going to build a group parlay. It can be any sport, right? Yeah.

Well, football. I thought it was football. Okay. College football, NFL. Player prop. Money line, whatever, right? All right. Travis, go.

Give me Carnell Tate, Ohio State receiver, over 46 and a half receiving yards. You're going to lose now. You can't bet. I don't bet on my own team. You don't bet on your own team. Ever. You just jinx yourself.

I never do that. Wow. I want to. That's an L. How's that an L? It's over. And he said Michigan on the show too. All right.

I like it. The guy knows his team. I'm feeling confident about that choice. They're going to double Jeremiah Smith. He's going to get single-cover all day long. Do you know what the odds are on that? Minus 1.14? Zero now. Damn, dude. You're not even getting the alt. You're not even going to the

alt, like a safer. We don't need it. Okay. 46 and a half, over 40 to 6 and a half receiving yards. Yep. For Tate, Ohio State. All right. All right. Let's go with Andrew. We'll save you, Dalton. Give me on Thursday the Green Bay Packers money line over the Miami Dolphins minus 176. Go Pack-Pack. Man, I thought we were friends. All right. Whatever, dude.

All right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give mine now because I'm right there close to you. Commanders versus Titans, I'm going with Washington on the money line. How are you doing after yesterday? Just, not vibes are not good. Yeah, I mean, that Washington, that was bad. What would you tell the kicker? Oh, he's fine.

I mean, I'm not as much mad at the kicker. It's really where the offense was, where was the offense for the first three quarters. We went out there and scored every, both teams, I think, scored 41 points or something like that in the fourth quarter. We, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, could just, you know, move the ball at will. It's just what's going on? What is the key to unlock the offense in the first three quarters where we were very effective for the first seven games or so of the season? Kicker had yips. I'm not worried about the kicker.

I'm just saying it doesn't matter. No, for sure. can't even get an extra point if we can't get down there and put a ball in-zone. So it was pissy, man. That's a team sport. Yeah. I mean, you can't just rely on. Hey, I'll say this. I got to remember where we were a couple years ago. We got it. There's good potential, good things that happen in the future.

We were, maybe, you know, I have to kind of tell myself, maybe I'm expecting too much too soon here. Just let it play out. But anyhow, dog, go. All right. I am taking the, dolphins and Packers game as well, but I'm going to do the under for total score. It is calling for snow in Green Bay on Thursday night. So under 47 and a half at minus 115. For Green Bay in Miami.

All right, TJ. I'm going Thursday, Detroit, Chicago. It's in Detroit. I'm taking the Lions. Right now, this spreads 10 and a half. I think the lions will cover that pretty easily. All right. Oh.

See, this is the best part about my pick. If we get to my pick, I'm cashing out. You can't. He's already got a contingency point. I didn't know, though. I picked mine is on Saturday. Everyone else has, like. Got to be right or die.

Yeah, that ain't how we're playing this. The hell we are. We're all in. If we get three legs in and we're good and there's two left, okay. Cash out option. All right. So.

You said yours, just yours, though. All right. So to gather it all up here, T.J. is taking the lion's spread at 10.5. I'm going to take the commanders to win outright, and Andrews taking Green Bay on the money line as well to win outright against Miami. Dalton is going under the total score of 47.5 at Green Bay and Miami, try to get that quick, because if it is a snow game, that number may drop. And Travis is taking Tate from Ohio State, 46.5 receiving yards on the over. and that's the... Plus 1,300. It's a big bet.

Plus 1,300. Plus the total parlay. 13.04 is the exact, but... All right, I'm still going to bet a single unit. $5 would win you $65. I love that. Hey, Black Friday. My unit is $5.

So let's get it in there. Plug it in. We want to take a moment to talk about a true kitchen staple and partner of Junior Motorsports for 16 consecutive years. It's Helmonds mayonnaise. They're the number one selling mayonnaise brand. For over 100 years, Helmonds has been creating mayonnaise that is not just creamy and smooth,

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So check out the scoop on bowl season, presented by Helman's own Dirtymo Media on all of Dirtymo Media's social media channels. You won't want to miss it. Helmans, they are the secret ingredient that makes every meal feel a little more special. So next time you're at the store, grab you a jar of Helmand's mayonnaise and taste the difference that real quality ingredients make. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. and we are here at the Dale Jr. download in the Dirty Moe Media Studio for another episode of Ask Jr. And thanks for tuning in. And TJ is here with me, and Amy is texting me because we're going to go shopping for our Thanksgiving. turkey after this.

So how much more do we have? I'm going to text her. We've got Ash Jr. And then we're wrapping the show up. All right. 20 minutes, you think? Yeah. Okay, and we'll send her that text.

All right. Oh, and then you have some... We've got some rates to do, too, so maybe 30 minutes. Yeah, all right. Okay. Some behind-the-scenes stuff. So with the show today...

Oh, wait. Steven just texted me that she already went shopping. No problem. All good. But anyways, we got some great questions. Andrew's here, Dalton, TJ, and let's get to it. Yes, this first question coming from James, the booth lineup was announced. How

excited are you to get that going with Adam Alexander and Steve next year? Of course, everybody knows that I love working with Steve. The one thing I'll say about Adam is I've never really worked with him, but I've known him a long time. When I started broadcasting, most everybody in the NBC bubble was very

supportive of course, always, you know, giving me great feedback and that was awesome. Outside of the NBC family, Adam was really one of the few people that constantly was texting me and just saying nice things and just being supportive and for no reason other than just because he's a good guy. And before that, I really had no real relationship with the dude. So it just speaks to his character. When we made this announcement, I got a lot of text messages from people in the industry saying how much I'm going to love working with Adam. And so, of course, I'm so thankful to hear all of this because, look, I do enjoy broadcasting. Don't get me wrong, but I don't want to broadcast with people that I don't enjoy being around. I don't want to do anything in life around

people that I don't enjoy being around. And in a broadcast booth, you're really close in proximity throughout the entire weekend with those individuals. And so absolutely, I want those relationships to be great. And it sounds like that that is absolutely going to be the case and then some. So I was, I just, I guess what I'm trying to say is I wanted to share with y'all that, man, there's a great respect and appreciation for Adam. in our industry.

And I'm so grateful and feel fortunate that we're going to have a lot of fun next year in those 10 races we work. So look forward to starting to get in the process of prepping and making sure that we hit the ground running when we start our shows in June. I was going to say prepping. I remember you guys would a few races before your NBC season would start. You guys like you, Rick Allen, Jeff would all kind of pretend to call the race. something you think you're going to do again this time around? I think we should. So one or two of those just to get a little vibe of because.

And you work with Steve, but. I've worked with Steve, but you learn people's cadence. You kind of learn, I'll learn how much heavy lifting that Adam wants to do and where he's comfortable with me, bringing, coming in with what I want to add to the show. And, yeah, it'd be good to get that, get an understanding or comfort there before we actually start working together. because, you know, the one thing you want to eliminate is the talking on top of each other. It's inevitable that's going to happen. But you want to try to learn somebody's body language in their cadence

so you can understand when they're dropping it, when they're offering a break or, you know, allowing someone else to take over. Yeah. This next question coming from Al, at the banquet, what socks did you end up picking? They had skulls on them. Hell yeah. Crossbones. Yeah, that's sense of message.

A tie had skulls and crossbones on them. Really? It was just a complete theme. Yeah. Did anyone see these socks? Probably, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah.

That's... Well, when you're in a... That's fine. When you're in... Slacks, slacks are inevitably... You want to show your socks when you sit down. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Wow. Yep. Very exciting. Very exciting. Cade wants to know, and we've gotten a lot of these questions. This might be the most asked questions since Amy was on the show last week. And I don't know if you know the answer.

but do you know what Amy's deviled egg recipe is? Yeah. You do? Yeah. So I can text her just to make sure. People are dying to know. He's all over the YouTube comments, getting tweets about it, Instagram comments. Everyone wants to know.

TJ, have you had these? I don't eat deviled eggs. You don't need deviled eggs? I don't like them that much, yeah. I think you're about to. I mean, I'll try it. It's that good. I know Dale mentioned last week that they had soy sauce and,

and wasabi and stuff like that? That's right. A little bit of an ancient kind of influence. Yeah. Didn't she say that... That's right. Yes. Yeah, we did talk about it last week.

Instead of the... I believe instead of like the yoke of the egg or any... There was something else that was substituted in there. I can't remember. I do remember her saying something. I just don't remember what it was. We'll have to get her to give us a legit recipe. She's reading the text right now.

It's coming, dude. I'm telling her. I'm sitting on my hands. Or I could call her. Put her on live, no. You think she'll like that? No. Well, you are live.

Yeah. Well, the deviled egg recipe is on the way, and I'll read that in a minute. We'll jump to the next question and come back. Okay, sweet. Let's see. This next question, I'm sorry, I missed a name, but what are your thoughts on, I guess a few of the silly season moves that have happened? Riley Herps going to 23, 11 and the 35, Ryan Priest to RFC, even Jeremy Bullens, is with Kislauski, Chris Gavehart is leaving Denny's as crew chief.

Like silly season, there's a lot happening this past week. What's your thoughts on it? What surprised you the most? Yeah. I guess the Gavehart, Denny Hamlin change was a big surprise. They seemed very, they seemed really bonded in sync. Denny is in a really good position to compete for championships. This year wasn't one of those years where we felt like he was a contender for the title,

but it's been pretty much every year he's been one of the guys we thought could have a shot at it. And so for them to mash the pause button on that and make a complete change, a shift in a whole different direction was really a surprise. I guess the idea is there to you know the future for Joe Gibbs racing is is the most important thing and this strengthens that and Gabe Hart and those guys I mean those cruechies that those guys man they Gabe Hart is the kind of guy that in my my eyes he's so incredibly talented and good at what he does. And it's because he sinks every thing he has into it. The details, the prep, the work, and it, and guys that are that devoted to it,

you know, when they, when they say, it's time for me to do something different, it's really time. And, you know, and his, I guess his work ethic and attention to detail will serve Joe Gibbs racing in this new role and capacity,

and I think he will absolutely be a massive asset to them going forward. While it's probably not the best thing for Denny or the 11 team, I mean, they'll be in great hands, and Denny will probably be very competitive, and it's not the end of the road for him. But, yeah, I mean, it was surprising, but because, I thought Denny might have one or two more years and then Denny might say I'm done and so Gabe Hart

not fulfilling the end of Denny's of course I could be completely wrong about that but yeah I think you know I just knowing just watching Gabe Hart and those guys over the past couple years

TJ you've probably seen it too with crew chiefs that are like that like Chad Canals and those guys that just live it as hard as they live it you know there's everything takes a backseat everything it's prioritized all the time when they get to the end of that road it's that's the end of it yeah they make a they make a hard turn for the exit ramp and um because it's so consuming right and they eventually have to say i need a change right i'm not i'm and uh it would be interesting though to hear Gabe Hart's opinion about that and what were some of the driving factors towards making

this change himself. I bet he's got some pretty cool things to say. Yeah, definitely. Denny was surprised by it. Yeah, he said I was shocked. I was surprised to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Denny didn't. That tells me that he hit the end of it, you know, like you said. Um, all right, we got time for two more quick questions. Kind of fun ones. Lopez from the YouTube chat, favorite holiday movie. Dang, that's a great question. T.J., this is open to you, too. I don't know. I always like the Christmas story.

I just feel like that's just the classic and that sets the tone for... This begs the question. Uh-oh. Die hard, I knew you were going there. Why is it a Christmas movie? Takes place on Christmas. I wasn't asking you.

Oh, I'm sorry. I was asking you. I was just joking. I, um... Man. Let's ask the YouTube chat. Yeah, is diehard to Christmas movie. It is a Christmas movie because you're like you said

It's based on Christmas. There's Christmas music playing at some of the things they go on to. I haven't seen it. You haven't seen it? Homework. Yeah. Oh, man. But anyways, favorite Christmas movie?

Favorite Christmas movie? I'm curious about this because I don't know what's... Yeah, I mean, there's just not... I think probably Christmas vacation. Oh, that's a good one. I wasn't even thinking of that one, but that is, yeah, that might be my favorite too.

So many good lines in that movie. I'm surprised yours isn't home alone. Home alone? He lived it. Yeah, I live it every day. He's from Chicago. Yeah, it's the whole, it kind of works, actually.

Yeah. We're seeing a lot of yes. It's a Christmas movie. It is. Yeah. Just because I saw something on it. It's a wonderful life. Someone else just said.

That's a good one. A big fan of Elf. Elf. Elf's good. Elf's good. One of my favorites. What about the classics? Like the classic, like Frosty or something like that?

Like the Claymation ones? Rudolph. Those are classic. Yeah. I do love. They're nostalgic. I do love putting those on and I don't, I won't really pay attention. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know. I'm trying to see if the kids will watch it. Because, like, kids that are watching that's, like, kids watch that older stuff. And sometimes they're like, this isn't good you know there's yeah yeah so used to the like what we have now which is crazy animation yeah yeah these little clay figures are right and they're like yeah this isn't good we're missing some good ones though gosh there's some the santa bad santa home alone bad santa's pretty good yeah bad santa's a jingle all the way oh arnold swarston ain't like bad santa you just can't

put it on and walk away though because that's not a it's pretty it's a wonderful life and getting a lot of it's a wonderful life. Yeah. Eight crazy nights. Yeah. All right. Time for one more question. This is from Olivia.

Do you still play NASCAR 2003? No. No. Yeah. Lost my CD key. Those things were like gold, man. I still have all that stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I still have my discs and all that stuff. Because you went pretty hard at NASCAR 2003 for a while, right? Back in 2003. Really? People are still saying, people still like play that though. Oh, yeah. A lot of folks.

do. They're all right. All right, back in 2003. When I racing came out, Lillen Eye Racing went live in 08. Yeah. I was done. I made the switch.

We always moved to the next sim like that. So there is leagues with it still, though. Like, there's a, I guess there's a dedicated website that has, like, all that stuff. Here's your recipe. Ready? All right. All right, you want to buy it? You got to get hard.

Of course, you got to get hard, 12 hard boiled organic eggs. One large avocado. was it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. One tablespoon of wasabi paste, one tablespoon of Dijon mustard, one half lemon juice, a dash of salt to taste, and you can garnish with fresh dills spigs. Mm-hmm.

Cut the eggs in half, remove the yolks, and place in the food processor. Add avocado, wabi, dijon, lemon, and you mix all that up until smooth. add a small amount of salt and then spoon the mixture back into the egg white but before you put it in put soy sauce in the bottom of the egg white just a drop and then when you put the paste in there

it sort of coats the bottom of the egg and the soy sauce um you um amy also said she adds a little minced fresh minced ginger uh to the mix as well

a little soy sauce in the mix as well and she tops with sesame seeds and still. Gosh, that sounds good. I'm going to have to try one of those. They're amazing. We have one more quick shout-out in the chat. There's a guy from Hawaii. He said, Dale, my son, Noah will be born today.

He's wearing his blue 88 zip-up hoodie for some skin-to-skin time later. Have a happy Thanksgiving. That's awesome. So, congrats to you. I don't know how to pronounce your name, but all the way from here to Hawaii. Well, anyways, that's a good place.

And Ash Jr. All right, it's time for the white flag. And we have some more content still coming out this offseason. We've got some DJD classics. You've seen some of these long-form interviews popping up on YouTube. Forever, people have asked us, where's the YouTube? Where's all the YouTube? From all of our shows from years ago.

Well, we recorded them. We have them in the bank. We're starting to release those. Every now and then, you've seen Kenny Schrader or Kenny Wallace come out. When we announced the Herman Wallace show, we decided to release the full Kenny Wallace. YouTube version, but these will be coming across our feed on podcasts, but as well as our full episodes on YouTube.

Business of Motorsports is going to be coming at you. Kelly's going to be interviewing a few people over the course of the off season. Those are always amazing. And then Herman Schrader coming out Tuesday tomorrow. Another episode of that. Those guys are having a lot of fun. And so also, Speed Street will be coming out with some episodes this off season as well. keep your

you know keep your eyes glued to all of a dirty mo media's social media handles for all this content as it keeps getting developed and what we've got going on we're going to have a lot of fun this off season again great show today hope everybody had a lot of fun

hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving I can't wait to talk to you again check out dirty moe media on Twitter Facebook TikTok and Instagram