The Dale Jr. Download - Ain't No F**king Single Lugs Out Here

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

 Dale Earnhardt Jr. calls in from the beach for a brand new edition of Dirty Air. He joins co-host TJ Majors to unpack all the major storylines from NASCAR’s weekend in Iowa:Reaching out to Rod OsterlundCARS Tour crown jewelKaden Honeycutt is released by Niece MotorsportsConnor Zilisch has an on-track incident with Justin AllgaierThe Next Gen car continues to struggleDuring the Ask Jr. segment of the episode, listeners wrote in questions regarding:Old photo of Dale Sr. riding a bicycleVictory lane checkered flagsCurrent status of NASCAR 252026 NASCAR Cup schedule changes  And for more content check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaDirty Mo Media is launching a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Dale Jr. Download merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuffFanDuel: Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York.Consumer Cellular: New customers get a $5 credit on first five monthly invoices. Visit https://savings.consumercellular.com/DJD for details. 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.

Glad we got that single lug wheel, boy. Would you get rid of that? Yeah. You don't like it? No, I ride down the road all day and see nothing but five lug wheels on all these passenger cars. Ain't no single lugs rolling around on the street. Where's the single lug crew at? The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media.

I'm still sour, man, that I wasn't your best man at your wet. When will you start mentally, like, getting ready for the race? Can you not tell I'm mentally ready? Travis has some dumb ideas, but I agree with him on this one. It doesn't sound like you know what you're talking about. You haven't scratched the surface yet, no, boy. I mean, what the fuck do you won't? I just think the last few laps, it was just like stop every time.

You're picky. This ain't walking in and have it your way, motherfucker. All right? This ain't Burger King. Travis is like, f***ing wrapped us up. They all have no fun around here. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another.

episode of the Dale Jr. Download and with me is T.J. Majors and Travis. How's it going guys? It's going good here. It's a nice rainy day. Probably not as, obviously it's nice and sunny where you're at. Let's go. Get some energy. It's an awesome day. I went to bed late. Someone told me we were starting the show later today. If somebody messed up our morning. Oh, mess your morning up, did I? I went to bed late later than normal one. What happened? You went to bed late? Not my fault. Somebody told us that we're going to start at 930. 8.30 is not doable, T.J., right? My calendar says 930.

I'll see you guys then. Yeah. Well. See you guys at 8.30. I woke up this morning, ready to go. So here we are. You in a better mood today? I was in a good mood yesterday.

Didn't sound like you were. Why not? How can you inter... That's the way I took. Did you not sense of bad mood? I mean, when you end it... with see you at 8 see you at 930 there felt like there was some

tone there was tone there was definitely some text tone you can't read tone and text silly the fuck you can't I I read text tone you were text toning us you can't read tone and text I felt like we could read it

but glad to see you're in a good mood I mean you know what next time he next time he gets like that with us I'm just going to like will you go smell some jerky please and this is the dumbest conversation. Well, we're ready to go. Now, I'm glad that you got up. I'm glad that you got up good and you're ready to go. Yeah, yeah, brother. I got to tell y'all something, man. This is pretty

badass. We've got a few things to talk about today, but one thing that I wanted to tell everybody. So I don't know if any of you have been listening to the Becoming Earnhardt series. We ran, we put the series together. It's about my dad's 1979 and 1980 seasons. Rick of the Year, his first full seasoning cup, then championing the next. And we dove deep into the stories around those two years. And we have two seasons of Becoming Earnhardt for y'all to listen to if you all want to go check those out. I would really be surprised if you didn't love it, especially this newest season. We really learned a lot in season one, season two, I feel like so just a better product. During those two years, my dad drove for a guy named Rod Austerlin. And this is before

the Richard Childers days. This was, and Rod was the guy that gave my dad the first full-time break. I have never met Rod Australand, and I have never spoke to that man, ever, and he's still out there. I got a phone call yesterday and spoke to Rod Austerlund for the first time in my life. Wow, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, long story short, I got into, you know, some of his, his, his, his daughter. granddaughter, uh, reached out and were, they knew that I wanted to speak to him and meet him. And, uh, so we had a lot of conversations with the girls,

uh, about their dad and their granddad. And it was great. Uh, they're great people. They sound like awesome, awesome people. And I think,

uh, in doing the, becoming Earnhardt series and sort of, you know, doing the Earnhardt documentary and all. all these things we've been doing over the last several years just trying to learn more. I'm just trying to learn more about dad and learn more about his life and who he was and decisions he made and stuff like that and his experiences and the people that were around during

all that too. And so, you know, I just got curious to really want to tell him thanks. So that was really cool for me. Yesterday, Rod Estreling called me. I answered the phone. We talked for about 30 minutes. I told him he said well I don't know you know what what you need for me or what you're looking for I said man I just want a relationship I just want to be able to text you and say hey or check in and

I want to know you and I want to also um before we hang up the phone tell you thank you and um because what he did for my dad is changed dad's path and dad went down this road and everyone that was ever connected to dad benefited off of that decision that Rod made to put dad in his car. Everybody. Anybody that was ever connected, we're sitting right here. And the way I think about things is like all of us sitting right here are a result, right, of that decision. And so it's like this domino and this long line of dominoes. and, you know, so I was just like, hey, you know, I don't know what our life would have been like had you not done that.

So I just was really wanting to tell him how much I appreciate it. And I don't know that he's had anybody tell him that in a long time. And so he's the guy who kind of took the first jump, you know, and went all in on a rookie that was pretty rough around the edges. So, yeah, that was a pretty neat conversation. and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk more. Super cool guy. A lot of fun to talk to. And that was a pretty cool deal.

So what took so long to actually talk to him? Do you think? You know what I mean? I just feel like that he, I'm just going to say, T.J. that I think that he had kind of intentionally been, you know, moved himself out of the conversation. and made he sounds like he's kind of a guy

that for a long time really didn't want to talk about it didn't want to be asked about it he didn't want to go into detail and do all those things and it seemed like he's a guy that just kind of wanted to go on about the rest of his life I think selling the team in 81

was really hard on him it was a hard decision that he didn't want to make but he had to make and maybe that story will get told one day but I told him I was like look man I don't want I don't I don't I'm not trying to get you to come on my podcast I'm not trying to get you to sort of you know spell out your whole story for me to to to record and show everybody but um he's like hey man I might be into that you know I might be curious about doing that they might be open you know something I'm I want to do or we can do down the road and I'm like if it happens it happens no big

deal. I just really wanted to say thank you, know you, text you, how you doing, what's going on, appreciate you. And so I don't know, I'd love it if he did want to do a podcast. Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah, I'd love it if he wanted to do a podcast, but it's not, not something I'm going to push. Moving on, we're going to talk a little bit about the car store. The car store ran the throwback classic at Hickory. And it was a historic race because there was 30,000. for the pro late model and $50,000 for the late model stocks. TJ, I don't know if you caught any of the action on Sunday night. I caught a lot of it.

Did you? Okay. I did. Well, the race was rain delayed and the series worked really hard to get it in. And it was tough on everyone there. The competitors sitting around waiting and waiting and waiting. Everything about the weekend was a bit of a grind. and that happens sometimes when you, you know, you're,

you're kind of at the mercy of what the weather's going to do. But we did the best we could so that we didn't postpone it and have to have everybody leave and then come back another time. We tried to get it in and we did. The pro late model race was exciting. Great side-by-side battle to the finish line. Jack Baldwin and Spencer Davis. Spencer Davis wins the 30 grand.

Pretty awesome deal. Side-by-side racing. If you want, you can see a little. bit of a more detailed conversation around the cars tour race on on flows socials i cut a video for them earlier that uh that you can check out um we move on to the late model stocks and uh everything was going pretty good tristram mckees leading the race and then we had a late restart uh kaden honeycutt jumped the restart and uh you know he might not admit to he's just trying to be aggressive and it he was wrong he was not yeah he he he jumped restart so uh and then like uh he

he jumps to start the booths trying to determine if that is the right call because you can't make the wrong call there they are determining that that you know that is exactly what we're going to do we're all we're all in communication that we think that this you know black flag in the 17 is the thing to do at times they throw yellows too If you jump to start, he'll throw a yellow and then put the car that jump to start to the back. Or a warning, you know, depends on what you want to do. It's different. Different things have happened in the series over the course of its existence.

They never got a chance to do that there, though, right? Yeah, because the caution came out. Yeah, they come through turn three and four and Lynn and Lewis move the seven up off the bottom. They're side by side, and they make contact and down the frustrate away. There's two different opinions here. one opinion is that Tristians out of control and they wreck right and to frame it up for those who didn't see it the seven is on the outside and he is in the door of Landon Lewis and they're and driving them down the track and so I don't know if he's doing that intentionally

steering a car left trying to drive into the side of Landon Lewis and he's just he's just fucking lost his mind. Or is just out of control? Because it happens so fast, they get together, they touch, the cars turn sideways, and then the overcorrect back up into the outside wall and they collect a lot of other cars in the crash. So either he lost control of the car and they just wrecked,

or he intentionally right, hooked him. There's a real good video of this, this tails away from turn four that to me, makes it look more like a dumb accident, a dumb, you know, racing accident, not really something that was entirely intentional. But, because if Tristan's trying to right-hook him, driving into the door number of the car ain't a way to do it.

But anyways, pretty nasty. He wasn't trying to right-hook him, I don't think. Yeah. I think he was just pissed off, then he got moved on the track. You know, if that's the case. that's a damn shame because it tore up a lot of race cars. And he shouldn't, if that's the case, he shouldn't, he shouldn't do those things and make those decisions inside the car.

For sure. But there could be the case that he just lost his damn, lost his ass and spun out, you know, wrecked himself, you know, and wrecked Landon and everyone else in the, in the process, just ran out of talent, you know. So it's one of the two. Anyways, after that, Minnie Tyrail was able to inherit the lead and had a great restart, run the last couple laps, wins the race. Good for many, good for the series to get it in. And thankful for Flo and everybody that wanted to try to make an event like that reality.

The idea of the big money race was Flo's idea, and they put a lot behind it to make it happen. and hopefully they saw enough that they want to continue to invest in the cars tour one way or another because I feel like that that's that's really been a great success for us to be partnered with flow and we've been able to get a lot of momentum and traction so anyhow as a spectator of I thought it was great yeah thank you the racing at the end there before the big wreck I was highly entertained I mean those guys were putting on a great show and I mean it was fun like you didn't want to look away and that's right that's what you want i don't want to quit watching yeah i mean you know we've had some events that have went much worse oh for sure sure at least they all shifted correctly and

yeah sometimes yeah right i get it speaking to caden honeycutt um per bob pocras uh a lot of people know about this but niece the truck that he drives for has announced that they released caden honeycut because he's signed with a different team and manufacturer for next year. Connor Zillich will go in the 45 truck at the Glen. Bailey Curry will drive it the rest of the season. I'd expect Honeycutt to find some rides to try to get himself through the playoffs. And the Tri-Con Toyota connection is most likely where he's going in 2026. Honeycutt is 73 points above the cut line for the playoffs.

I don't remember ever hearing anything like this before where a guy got a new job for next year and so you fired him. I'm sure it's happened. I'm sure it's happened. But it feels like this is something that maybe went down in the 70s or 80s. It's nothing that's happened recently. Yeah, it hasn't really.

Look, I've been reading online and there's a lot of back and forth people mad at the team. people even saying Caden, you know, could have handled it differently. I have zero problem with a driver getting a different deal and going somewhere else. Now, you know, you'd like some loyalty, you'd like some commitment. You've given Caden this chance. Neese has given him this chance, right, to get into the truck series. well he used that opportunity and he's going to go somewhere better and different.

He's going to go drive a truck. So this tells us a little bit maybe about what may be happening with Corey Heim. So you would assume, and you could be wrong, but you'd assume that Corey Heim is going to move out of the trucks and go on up to the cup level, maybe racing for 2311, or maybe he goes into a Gibbs Xfinity car, who knows. But Caden is going to probably take that seat. This is the best truck in the garage right now.

So you can't blame Caden for turning down that opportunity. They may have reached out to him and said, hey, best truck in the garage. You want to race it next year? Who would say no? Does Nees have the right to get pissed off and cut him? Yes. Sure. I mean, if that's what they want to do, it's a little silly across the board, I think, for everybody.

Why Nice couldn't have said, you know what, Caden, I'm kind of disappointed that you're going to go somewhere else. But, yeah, let's finish the year strong. You know, it makes you wonder, I guess, I guess it makes me wonder what kind of relationship, Caden, niece, the team, everybody has. currently, that it wasn't strong enough to sort of at least get to the finish line, right? Yeah, it seems like something happened or their relationship was already on the rocks because to just say you're sending three points to the good and we're just going to figure this out is odd. So during the year when you get a driver like Caden in your car and this is what I try to do,

and it's inevitable. You get a driver that comes into the team, and during the season, inevitably, you develop this relationship. You become the driver's biggest fan. You badly believe that in the right scenario, this driver can get the job done, and you as an owner feel like, man, I got to give him the tools, and I'm not going to give up until I can figure out this equation

or this package that he needs to be successful. And so, like, I guess I'm just saying, like, to your point, there's more to the story or that their relationship from driver to team or owners never did flourish, or it wasn't to the point to where everyone could kind of look past, you know, the decision that he made to go drive. for another team next year and say hey let's stick it out let's finish this year strong hate you going to move on it sucks for us we we we invested in you gave this gave you this chance

but i get it you know you got an opportunity caught got a call from the best truck in the garage i think you said it there when you said they invested in him in my opinion because i think niece gave him the opportunity to run a year to, you know, to be successful in the trucks as much as he has been. And I think they, um, obviously to me with him, them cutting him like this and he, he must not have been a lot of support himself to the table. He must have been. And I, you know, he's not, he's not paying to be there. Yeah. I get, I mean, I hear you, man, but I mean, what did they not? What about? You can't really blame him. Who?

You can't blame him for he thinks buttering himself. Yeah, I mean, I know it sucks to say this, but I see kind of both sides. Yeah, me too. I mean, if you're Caden, you're trying your hardest to get, you want to, you're trying to make a living driving race cars. And if the best car in the garage calls you and offers you the ride, how can you turn that down? I mean, I don't, I don't think you can in his position, but the thing that makes me worried about it is Corey Himes won how many races in that truck. and he's still in the truck series. And he, you know, he's been in there for so long.

I know, like, it all, this all depends on what Corey does. Like, what's Corey's path here? Is Corey running a truck's in another truck, or is he going to Finney? Is he going to cup? Like, who knows? You know, Mark Martin has told a story about when he came into NASCAR in 1981 with his own car and he ran about four or five races, set on the pole a couple times, ran into top ten. And he's like, man, I can do this.

I got a great program. I'm building this. It's all my own, and I can beat these guys. And then Reneer called him with the 28, and I think they were getting rid of Benny Parsons or something mid-season, and they offered him the ride in that 28 car, this badass, fucking fast race car. And he turned it down.

He's like, nah, well, you know, guys, I appreciate it. I like what I'm doing my stuff. And it was, he, you know, he's like, what a fucking idiot I was. Because I didn't, you know, realize, like, how, what a great opportunity that would be. and I could go drive someone else's car, and it's Waddell Wilson, one of the fastest cars on the racetrack. And so, Caden, you know, would be a fool to say, yeah, I'm going to turn down this opportunity

and we'll stick with these guys and boy, hopefully that's going to get me to the Cup Series one day. That's, you know, no, taking this call and taking this opportunity as pretty as it is for Nice and as tough as it is for a lot of people to comprehend. you got to go do it. Yeah, that's how sports goes. Yeah, you got to go do it. And so,

niece needs to, you know, and try to learn what they can from the process and try not, you know, try to put themselves in a situation, I suppose, with the next Caden Honeycutt where this doesn't happen. But I just wonder, like, why the relationship wasn't strong enough to finish the year.

I can understand them being frustrated and mad about it. But why there wasn't enough of a relationship that had developed over the course of the time they've raced together because they've done some good things together, Caden and Nice. So how come there wasn't enough to finish the year? To finish the year, yeah. Who is it? Who?

Who's the one that couldn't step up and, you know, like, is there something wrong? Is there something wrong with Caden? Is he not, did he not develop that relationship with them? Is it the owners where they not... I don't know. He's been there a while. Embracing him. I know.

So it's hard to think that he doesn't have a good relationship with, you know, the owners or anybody there, really. Yeah. I also question Nis doing this because now our other driver is going to be like a little cautious. Like, oh, if I go there and then a better opportunity arises I want to leave, they're going to do this to me. So do I go drive for another truck? No, no, no. I think what you learned, what I learned from this is if you're going to go drive for Nis, your ass better be loyal and you better be committed to the damn process.

And so I kind of like plans. We don't know he wasn't loyal, though. He's leaving them after the end. That doesn't mean he's not loyal. Well, I mean, maybe they had bigger plans of moving up or making a thing bigger, you know. They gave him his shot and he is going to cut bait and go drive for a better team. Cut bait is if his contract is not up and then he's just. leaving, that's one thing.

But if his contract's up and he's moving to another, I don't think that's cutting bait. Like that's sports, that's life. We don't know either one of those. That's what I'm saying that you can't say that he's not being loyal if we don't know. I feel like that. I mean, he's leaving. That's the way they feel.

Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. You're thinking along the lines of like Major League Baseball and NFL. And ain't shit. It don't work like that here. NASCAR's different. It's like a free agency and, his contract ran up and you give a guy a break trying to get into the truck series is hard trying to get your opportunity caden trying to get a chance to drive a truck is tough yeah i mean to

to get paid to drive the truck i'm assuming you know like and nieces sitting there going hey man we're the people that let you know gave you this chance how could you do this you know how could you want how could you leave us i know why he left him he left him for the right reasons he's going to drive a better truck. He's going to drive something that might get him into the next level, because that's what he wants to do. He's got to prove himself. He's got to be selfish, and it's a selfish, you know, a little bit of selfish move, but he's got to be to be able to make it to the top. Let me ask you this. If he wasn't racing well, would Nice have kept him around? Would Tracon Toyota hired him? But what I'm saying, though, is you can't get mad if a driver, if it leaves you,

be, if he was driving bad, they would have cut him. They wouldn't going to be loyal. So like, it's a two-way street here. If you don't have a job, Travis, and I hire you, and I take you from not having anything to drive and put you in a full-time paid position and you drive and you work for me for a while, and then you bounce on me in the middle of the season when I feel like. I didn't bounce on you in the middle of the season. Well, when you tell me you're leaving me and you're going somewhere else in the middle of the season.

But that's the nature of the sport is they have to have these contracts, sighted like but there might have had there might have been a handshake deal he's like yeah man i'm going to see you we're going to ride this thing out we're going to make it great and then oh by the way i'm leaving i mean we don't know what's being said behind there or what's going on i mean i'm going to be mad at you if you leave me especially if i feel like we're building and you're in the playoffs or i'm going to be mad i think that kaden did the right thing but i do for himself i do understand hell i'm not i'm not bothered that nieces but heard about it being an owner i guess i got a i got a of an understanding why Nice would be angry about this.

And I would just say that I understand why they're mad, but I still think I would have tried for the good of my reputation, for the good of the team, for Caden, for everything to finish the year. Why couldn't they, why couldn't they just finish the year? And then sit down, have a conversation. I think, I guess, I guess what I'm saying is, don't you believe that like 20 years down the road when you asked everybody involved,

would you have done it different? They're probably going to say they would have. When Caden got into the trucks, he wasn't in the niece stuff to begin with, and when they took a chance on them and put him in their stuff, we all kind of, they put Caden on the map for us. Yeah. Yeah, Caden's good and talented.

And they knew that, and they put him in their truck, and they got some results. Because he wasn't running that good in the trucks in his own stuff. Like whatever he was driving in the beginning, I remember seeing him run his own stuff, and he'd run okay here and there,

but nothing like what he did when he got in the niche stuff. Yeah. Well, it's pretty interesting. Hate that it had to happen and go down like that so publicly is all. And we don't see that a lot. No, we don't.

I think Caden's best, the best thing Caden can do going forward is to just spend the positive man. Hey, look forward. to the next year going to do everything I can. Stay out of the negative, stay out of the social media back and forth. And, you know, even if, you know, even if Neas says something, which I don't think they will. But I would just say, look, man, let's just try not to get this, let this get too awkward and ugly.

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We kind of stepped on. Each other. Each other. So this is the tough part, man. And it's a sucky part about being an owner is your car is running into each other. But, yeah, Connor went down in the corner, three wide, missed the bottom, got loose, and hit Chastain. And Chastain got shoved up into Algar, and Algar got spun out. And it feels like that every, it feels like our,

Algar gets run over by his teammates at least once or twice a year. Two weeks in a row. Two weeks in a row? Well, you could say that, yeah. But I'm saying, like, the young guys that would have come into our program. Yeah. The young guys, like, no, man, I can't. Every year I've had to sit down with Justin and say, man, you know these kids, man, you know how they are.

They're going to make mistakes. I'm sorry that you're the guy that keeps getting run over. I'm sure they don't take better care of you. They ought to. They're in cars that run really good and your big reason for that. Justin's kind of been there orchestrating this whole deal with us. It's a very valid point. These kids come into the program and they benefit from all the work that Justin's done.

They ought to take better care of them on the racetrack, it's my opinion. Have you had that talk with Justin lately? No. No, not lately. but I mean I talk it's coming up after after Indy I put my arm around him but it's good I hadn't had a chance yeah I haven't had a chance or do you think that we could see Justin drive with his elbow is that a little more races coming up or do you think he's just he's gonna do what Justin does that's not I mean it drives with his elbows out already

yeah I don't think he has any list or anything like that but he's uh he just Josh's a hard racer all the time this is just these circumstances that happen when you get you got these young kids coming up through the program. It's just like the cars tour. They're going to make mistakes. They're going to race hard. They're going to do things. They're going to get it wrong every now and then.

Connor Zilich, we know he's an extremely talented guy, but he's not done making mistakes. He's not done putting himself in a bad situation. He's 19. He's going to have a lot of fucking experiences over the next several years. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of things that he'd love to have back. And as an owner, you'll have to weather it as a teammate you'll have to weather it um i look to see how connor reacts to this

when the shoes on the other foot you know what i mean like yeah connor's like he felt like he got done probably like this in chicago right yes suppose yes so and it probably was a little less than this too because i don't think chicago was really that bad at all you know this is probably a little bit worse than that but yeah you can sit down and tell them i've done it you can sit down and say hey guys hey guys we got to be great teammates. We weren't good teammates. In the off-season, I had a conversation with all our teams,

all our teams at Junior Motors Sports, and I said, I didn't think we were great teammates last year. I want everybody to work on that. I want y'all to be better teammates to each other. And that's the example of not, you know, being a great teammate. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, you know,

is like, hey, I expect y'all to race hard, but take care of each other. and the thing about a guy like Connor and even Sammy, when they're young, they're not trying to be great teammates. They're trying to learn. They're trying to get better. They're trying to win.

They're trying to impress. They're trying to prove that they belong there. And being a good teammate, if that happens, it's just by happenstance. because it's not something that you, I don't think I even put a lot of effort in that in the first half of my career. You know, I had teammates like Martin Trix Jr.

And Michael Waltrip, and if they benefited from anything I did, great. But I didn't go out of my way, you know, to try to help them. And so, yeah, I wasn't trying to be a great teammate. Maybe I wasn't a great teammate. I mean, you did have some run-ins, the Charlotte deal with the 15 there.

Yeah. Things were tense for a while. that during that point in time. 100%. And so, you know, I just feel like that when you're young, you don't really know what it means to be a good teammate. You don't really know what that's about. I went to Hendrik's second half in my career.

I realized that all the drivers, you know, you kept some things to yourself. You didn't tell everybody everything you knew, but the teammates that I had at Hendricks showed, me how to be a good teammate. They did, yeah. And, you know, Jimmy, for example, being a good teammate for Jimmy was, hey, man, why don't you, you know, why don't you ride bikes getting better shape?

Why don't you go, you know, hey, this has helped me mentally, be a better racer. Why don't you try this? Or, you know, Jimmy was always kind of, Jimmy wasn't coming up and going. I like this sway bar. I just put in my car. Or I changed something in the interior that makes my job easier. You check it out. He wasn't that kind of guy.

Jimmy was the kind of teammate that was going to take you and show you what you could do during the week to be better or enjoy life and be a better, be better mentally and be a better racer. I feel like that whole 48 car going over there, they were all from chat. Everybody was open arms. Like they were very inviting and great teammates in general. Like it was great. Yeah, so I think, you know, becoming a great teammate is a process, and it takes a long time for a driver to develop, you know, good habits, I think. And it's not, so I'm not too surprised.

It's, I hate to see Connor go down and there and door those guys and get up the track and screw everything up. But it's part of being 19. It's part of learning the ropes. And it sucks, though, that Justin's the guy on the outside to get spun out because he don't deserve it. Do you feel like Connor is slowly pushing his teammates away at times? Because, I mean, this isn't the first time that he's got into a teammate this year.

I mean, at Cota, he drives into one and gets a couple of them there. I mean, we're kind of having some repeat, some repeating things. Yeah, yeah, he did do some things at Cota that weren't good for his teammates, that's for sure. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you got to sit down. I think you can sit down with him and say, all right, man, we got to, we got to, knock it off. You know, try to finish this year without, you know, making your teammates' day worse. Yeah, and it's not like he doesn't have a win now.

He's stacking wins this year now. He's tied for the lead. It's regular season championship. He's got a great, and honestly, a bigger brain move here is to get through that corner without getting in anybody and finishing better than race, you know. I mean, if you, listen, here's, here's. another piece of advice. And I haven't talked to Connor yet.

I will. But if you are going to go three wide into term one, under your teammates at Iowa, you better fucking wrap the apron. Especially if it's your teammates. If you're making that decision on corner entry, you better adjust and make sure your ass can wrap the fucking apron and not get loose and get up into your teammates.

I don't mind you trying to go three wide. I don't mind you going for it. For sure. Wrap the fucking bottom. And if you make the pass, you make the pass. That's kind of the way it is. That was my instant reaction when it happened. Was why in the fuck wouldn't you just go down in the corner and wrap the bottom?

And don't charge the corner and get your ass loose underneath them. Happened sometimes. I mean, I think the last race I ran at Holstead, a door to shit out of fucking Josh Barry. Didn't even know who was up there. I know. You didn't door us. I wrecked you. Yeah.

You didn't do it. Oh, yeah. I was on that car, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it happens. But it just doesn't always have to, we just, you know, we just try to say, hey, let's not, let's not make this a habit. We've been meaning to sit down and have a talk with you about that. Statue of limitations is up.

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We're always adding new stuff all the time, especially like when we say something silly on this show. we'll put it on a t-shirt again check it out at shop dot dirtymomedia.com all right moving on to the cup race i'll be honest i kind of was not too uh what'd you think about it i wasn't too entertained i was kind of a blah race for me boring as shoo i will say in person uh it was a different in person i looking back there those guys are in a it was a battle man yeah you're locked in you're telling your driver no but i'm no i mean it wasn't I'm talking about like where the pack was. Like, you know, when you go to Martinsville,

their show, you know, you see the leader up front, whatever. But like, man, in the group there, there's something going on like every lap. Like there was somebody getting loose or somebody crossing lanes or trying to do something different. And there was more, I thought the action in person was fairly entertaining. Really? Yeah. I mean, I did. Yeah.

Is that a product though? These drivers, they feel like they have to do something because it's impossible to pass? and then this track is limited on how many grooves there are. And so that's why you were having these issues, but that doesn't make it a good race. There's always going to be a preferred groove. No, but I'm saying these drivers are trying things because it's like, well, I can't pass,

so I got to roll the dice here. And so that's why you're getting that stuff happening. I mean, I think the beginning of the race, so from practice, start from the practice, everyone was screaming loose in. I mean, you have Kyle Bush wrecking numerous guys up the racetrack in practice. There was a lot of guys having some handling issues.

So a lot of the debriefs, I'm sure, were, man, you got to fix the loose in. You got to fix this loose in. A lot of drivers complain about that. So they start the race, and everybody's tippy-toeing for a little while. Like, no one wants to wreck their car the first 30, 40 laps of a 350-lap race. So you're not going to have all these wrecks in the beginning. They're not going to tear their stuff up. But as the race goes on and track position becomes hard and hard to get, you've got guys taking more risk, you know, putting guys in worse positions,

trying to move up the racetrack a little bit, but they're also still battling those handling conditions, in my opinion. You're still fighting the car too, because guys were getting loose and going up the racetrack. I like seeing that because we don't see that a lot with this car. We don't see guys fighting the cars like we used to. Like, we used to go to the racetrack, and every, every practice, like once a practice or twice practice,

somebody would rack, get loose in or something and back it in. We don't, we don't ever see that nowadays. And these guys had their hands full. And I thought as the race went on, they were getting more aggressive and more aggressive. And a little bit to your point, Travis, they were taking more and giving less. And when those two meet, that's, you know, they're going to hit. Love being a broadcaster in this sport. I love, I am a big fan of NASCAR.

I'm a big believer in NASCAR. And I read a lot of the dialogue online. I see what Brack Haslowski says. I see what Chris Gabehart says. Kenny Francis and Colpern and all these people that I really respect Denny on his show. He's driving the car. So, I mean, I have a lot of respect for all these people and I believe what they say. And I see what I see with my own eyes.

I want to say that I don't love the next-gen car, but it's here. I don't love the next-gen car. I don't love. It's an MSA car. It's a sports car. It's got a diffuser. It's got low profile tires. It's got big rims and big brakes.

And it's a sports car. It's not a NASCAR stock car. But it's here. Everybody's invested. There's millions of dollars already way down the road. And the car is here. It's on the track. It's not changing.

It's not going anywhere. And so it doesn't do any good to, it doesn't do me any good to sit here and bitch about the fucking lack of tire fall off or the amenability to pass. It's frustrating.

But the lack of tire fall off, they could have brought a softer tire too. There was actually more, so the thing about this race is you go to last week they couldn't get side by side. Like even with new tires, you could barely make ground up or anything. Here, you had got them guys that pitted late.

They could actually knife through the field a little bit. Yeah, Bubba Wallace drove up through the field. I mean, look at Blaney. Blaney restarted in the back, passed his way up through there, got to fourth at the end.

Yeah, but, so Denny said they had a tire that had a fall off of 2.5 seconds that they obviously didn't use, and he had tires just courting at the end. I mean, I'm all four tire fall off and being able to, you know, big separation.

If you had tires courting at the end, the tire that he, wanted them to bring that would have had all that fall off would have likely had some issues. I'm guessing so. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of courting from a lot of cars. Well, if that, the foul off is great. Two seconds of fall off and 25 laps is awesome. But if the tire they brought was courting, that tire that would have fell off would have been in the cords sooner, which I'm, you know, I don't give a shit. Slow down.

Yeah. Change. Come down. Yeah. Get down. Pit road. Put tires on. Whatever. I am all for that. You know, that shit that happened at Bristol. Was amazing. I was great. I was good with it.

It was awesome. Slow to, yeah, slow down. Manage your tires. You know, I don't know what to do about it. So now, so when I'm in the booth, there's this, there's this feeling of, I'm part of the, I'm part of trying to pull this thing in the right direction. I'm part of trying to make sure we show that the race is good and the product is good. And do I, and I see things during those races like, uh, getting down into term one,

Eric Jones behind somebody, maybe Byron or somebody. And Byron shut the damn air off to the 43 car and fucking up the racetrack. Eric Jones went. And I'm like, God, I fucking hate this car. You know, but then there's moments where I enjoy watching the races

and I don't mind the car or, you know, the car puts on a great show, you know. But would I have ever built a NASCAR stock car that had a diffuser. Never? No. I answer that for you. I know you wouldn't.

And I wouldn't have put a low profile tire on it and change the sidewall so the drivers can't feel the fucking tire. Don't know where the limit of grip is and can't trust it. We hear the drivers talk about that all the time. They go in the corner and they don't have any clue where all the grip is in the car and it's tough, you know. Just snaps. Yeah.

because of the sidewall, the tires are short. The brakes, what the f***? Why do we put all these great brakes on? Now the braking zones are so fucking short. Oh, yeah. You know, we used to race at Martinsville, and the brakes would fade, and you'd have to take care of your brakes,

and the breaking zone was long enough to be able to kind of charge into a corner and do things different to try to make passes. But you could also take care of those, too. You know what I mean? Breaks were also that you took care of. Yeah. Now the brakes are just,

so incredible they're awesome they're too good yeah why why did we do that but but it's all here it's it's here it's bought and pay for there's no change no changes coming so if you know that nothing's going to change they ain't taking the fckon diffuser off they're not changing the tire they're not changing the brakes and if you know that then what good is it to sit here on this podcast and bitch about it and dog it because at the same time i've I believe in a successful NASCAR, and I want NASCAR to succeed and be the best thing going. But I'm not an influencer on what they're going to do with their race car.

I wish I was. I wish that they would, you know, hire, you know, not necessarily higher. I wish that they would bring in a couple guys that could help them maybe make a couple changes or steer the thing in a different direction. That's not going to happen. But you speak, I think you speak out and others speaking out will help. Help what? get some, I think there's, you're not going to get, they're not going to change the car itself,

but I think some changes can be made if you're talking about it. Like, why wasn't the track fully repaved? That's, there's, that's one thing you could have. They got the fucking money. NASCAR, they got the money. No, they're not. NASCAR doesn't own that fucking race track. They're not, I'm not, if you're at, if I, if you're going to ask me to pave your

driveway, well, if you're, I don't own your fucking property. I'm not paving your fucking driveway. What are you talking about, Travis? Then don't go race there. Tell them to fix the, the track. All right. I do. I do see Travis's point.

Like, if you're going to repave a corner, don't just do one lane. At least try to do the whole straightaway, but at least do the corners in. Was that ridiculous how they paved that track? Yes. Absolutely. You know what?

It tells me that this place is really on fucking thin ice. If they can't afford to pave the whole racetrack, I don't believe they're sitting on a pile of money. But was it a money thing, or I heard that it was a timing issue. Maybe it was a timing issue. They did. They've had time to go back.

We went there last year. They've had time to go back and correct it. They haven't. You know, I don't know. I mean, who gives a fuck about the racetrack? Well, what do you mean? It's in the rearview fucking mirror, and it's one racetrack in the whole calendar year. There's bore problems, bigger problems than how they paved Iowa.

I agree with that as well. I mean, there's a- God, dang. Both can be right, though. Why are we worried about that? I mean, I don't think repaving it. fixes the whole problem. You're still going to go back to the... Yeah, the racetrack ain't the problem. It doesn't help.

So it ain't the problem. So what made the race, like in your opinion, what made the race so bad? Was the Xfinity race bad because of the track? No, but I mean, we know that the... We're not, none of us are saying that the car is... Like, I'm not saying the car is fine. I'm just saying that fixing the track is a small thing that can help. Nah. I'm not worried about the track.

To TJ's, the fact that the only way that Brad was able to pass was when they finally got to lap cars and, like, that shouldn't happen. That's a car thing, not track thing. I'm fully fucking aware of that. We got Travis cussing now. At that point did I say that the car is fine. The car is the major issue, but there are small things that they can do to help out. Yeah. I saw a decent amount of passing compared to the week before.

Well. And you could get, you could get side by side. You can't compare anything to Andy. That's what I'm saying. But you could get side by side. Was it hard to pass? Yes. Are these guys super good and accurate where they drive now?

And I mean, these guys are so good when they're racing. And I don't think they get enough credit like William Byer and Ryan Blaney, Briscoe, where they can place the car and be so accurate with it to make it so hard to pass is really impressive. Yeah. I mean, that's something we have to talk about now. it's, you know, it's definitely a part of the sport, the defense and all that good. I was thinking to myself if the mirror would have helped. If they take it out. If they put the old school mirror back in and rely on the spot or more.

You know, you know, they race in some parts of the country at Oval Tracks with super late models with no mirrors. None. I do think that would help because, I mean, those mirrors, like you said before, the digital ones were so big. I mean, the driver just throws that thing into the corner. Travis, there's one thing that I think we could change today is to take the mirrors out. I agree. I mean, I don't know why they can't just take them out. That costs nobody nothing.

Could you get them the old school mirror still? Just the old school one that you used to have? I don't put the fucking whatever you want in there. I don't give it. But no digital mirror. You know, the teams will bitch that they got all these damn high expensive mirrors sitting on a shelf. But I mean, that's. Sal Mn Mn Mesa.

Yeah, Selimsa. Yeah, that's funny. Yep. Yeah, I mean, I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that, you know, we have races like this, and the car's just, the car's frustrating to watch, and you know what the drivers are dealing with, and you know what the drivers are struggling with when it comes to Arrow.

I just wish the get the car behind had some sort of off. offensive weapon airwise. You know what I mean? Like didn't wasn't it such a deficit to where if you're following you know if you're leading and I'm behind you you know if you turn down in front of me you're not you don't want to do it because you're just going to get you out of shape. Like I just wish there was something that we could do that would create that. I know that there's there's an answer to the riddle of how do you get the lead car deficient how do you make the following car have have better opportunity give him more tools. know that it exists because I drove it.

And I know that it exists because I hear about it from Mark Martin and all these other guys. You can see it. Yeah, you can see it in some of the races too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you definitely can see it. We're just, the answers are all laying right there in our past. We're worried about being modern and having a race car that all the kids are going to love, you know, with cool diffusers and

mag wheels and I know you missed that wing you miss that wing a lot don't you yeah that was one of your favorite pieces of a race car that COTU the single lug wheel boy we had we had we had

glad we got that single lug wheel boy would you get rid of that yeah you don't like it no I ride down the road all day and see nothing but five lug wheels on all these pasture cars

every car parked out here on the street got five four or five lugs on it holding each wheel on ain't no single lugs rolling around on the street not to mention i feel like there's a lot of issues with wheels coming off with a single lug there's somebody that put a stat up on social media more wheels have come off since the next gen car than you know than a good chunk of time back when we had five lug nuts holding these things on you didn't have them come off very much back then you i mean you actually had a buffer right when it got loose you actually had

time to recognize it. It was rare, but it was still pretty nasty when it happened. Oh, it was not fun. Yeah. I was driving down the road the other day looking around at all the cars on the highway thinking, ain't no fucking single lugs out here. Where's the single lug crew at? Where's the single lug gang? No. Not yet. I don't think streetcars will ever get to the single lug. I don't think they will. Let's hope not. Somebody's to be coming off going down to 77. Yeah, 77 would be terrible at that point. Oh, no, no.

We don't need the general public going through that experience. Oh, that guy is spending it for a week. He's not going to be able to drive his car for a week. He can't go on to work. Yep. All right. We're going to talk about Hosevar and Zane Smith. I know you're excited about this.

I'm exhausted talking about Hosevar. everyone. I really wanted to move on and skip over this one, but apparently the rest of the crew is just all just really enjoying the host of our. The train, the IDGAF train. Yeah, happenings. The hurricane train or whatever he's their calling. Hurricane host of arm.

Yeah. So he got loose and I guess he got loose underneath Zane and wrecked him. and then Zane tried to wreck him back, missed. He did miss. You can't do that, though. And then Zane's crew chief come up to Carson on Pit Road after the race. Man, I mean, it's like we've seen this before, multiple times. Yeah.

What do you think about that? What do you think about the crew chief approaching the driver? I don't mind. I think he's fine. I mean, that's his race car. Yes, yes. I mean, a host of our needs to hear from somebody. So I'm fine with that.

Zane Smith almost became the hero of the week. but he can't hit him I mean he was That's embarrassing Yes You should get fine for that Good gosh

This was your chance Like the cup garage Would have Rejoiced You into Watkins clit on a throat It'd look like Rudy Going to the airport Yeah

Instead you just whiff And look like an idiot Also what do you make though That I get that Carson's done some dumb things Is it just because He doesn't have the benefit of the doubt

that we're reacting this way with this incident? I know what you probably shouldn't do is get on social media and poke the bear some more. So that's the next question is like, I love it. I'm not a cup driver. It's entertaining. Dale, if you're driving, what do you think that like you and the other drivers are reacting to seeing this post that he's putting up? Well, that part I do like.

So our support needs personality and he's got a lot of personal. And I don't, some of the stuff that he does or has done or does in the future, I'm not going to love all of it. But I like it because we need, we need people. Sturs the pop. Yeah, we need people like, hey, yeah, we need people that are like that. Yeah, we need guys that push the envelope a little bit that push guys out of their comfort zone. I think if he would try to calm down a little bit, though, he would do a little bit better.

you talking about just in the car or all the way? Yeah. Or overall. He needs to, I think he needs to clean it up a little bit, you know, in terms of look at his results in since Nashville, you know, just a lot of incidents, a lot of contact, a lot of problems, a lot of rough finishes, bad finishes. And I think that, you know, if he would, he needs to come. kind of like take this. I'd like to see him take the next like step in polishing his craft.

Yeah. Maturing. You know? Yeah, not, you know, I don't want him to change anything he's doing off the track or not really. When you say maturing, people are going to go, you know, they're going to think you're talking about the off to track. No, I mean, social media. I mean making better decisions in the race car. Here's his results since Nashville, 29, 34, 18, 10, 35, 32, 35, 10, 8. yeah like what the hell and he hasn't done himself any favors during most of that time as well well i'm just saying like let's let's let's kind of get back to basics let's get back to racing let's quit let's quit like ruffling a feather every single weekend let's go run a complete race

he's got quick cars he's got good talent um let's kind of get back to building this team helping this team get to where they want to go. When you say building the team, you mean finishing races. Finishing races in one piece. No extra things. You know, wiping the car off going to the next race with it and not having somebody pissed off at you. That's right.

I think he needs to work on that a little bit and take a little bit of time just to, you know, let the dust settle. Around Nashville, we were, he was arguably the hottest. Yeah. Dude, Nashville, the Charlotte race, kicking ass. Yeah, everyone's talking about he's going to win soon. He's going to win soon.

Yeah, but he just feels like it's just a little bit too ugly now. The races that he runs are just a little muddy. He's not making future races any easier on himself. You know what I mean? When he does start figuring us out, he's like, oh, man, I'm going to run third today. Then this guy, oh, that guy hit me. Oh, you forgot. You wrecked him.

That's true. I mean, he's not making the future races any easy. easier. And you've got to imagine a lot of these drivers don't trust to be around him. And so they're not like even if he hasn't pissed off a certain driver, they're going to race differently because they don't trust him. Right. At some point somebody's going to be like, oh, there's, there he is. Oh, wow, got into him. Whoops. You know, and they won't feel bad if they, you know, put him in a bad spot and he wrecks because I'm like, well, he's put half this field in bad spots. All of it might not catch up with him, but some of it will. I just think he needs to try to get him a little five to ten week run of just trying to get good results and not be in the middle of the shit. All right, so we got William Byron calling in today, winner from Iowa this past weekend. Congratulations, William. Thanks for giving us some time today. Yeah, man, no problem.

So, listen, man, I'm seeing, I know the answer to this, but I got to ask anyways. Since I got into the broadcast booth this year, we had a couple of races where fuel mileage was. was a big deal. The 19 Briscoe at Pocono. He left a pit box early on their final stall. You saw the emotion from the

crew chief, James Small Cussin, upset. Knowing they ain't got enough fuel to make it to the end. Well, he makes it to the end, right? He figures a way to do it and he gets it done. We had at Indy, Bubba, and several other people

stretching fuel, not sure if they can make it. You were one that. actually ran out of gas. And then, you know, we come to the race this weekend and we have another conversation at the end about, man, it's tight on fuel, not sure if he can do it, not sure if he can do it. And the fans are saying,

how serious is the fuel mileage? Is it being played up by television? I know the answer to this, but I'm kind of curious, you know, how nervous were you about how much fuel you had and whether you could save enough, whether you would be able to be aggressive enough saving without losing your track position, how dire was that situation?

Yeah, so I think, I mean, it's a clear thing. Like, it's definitely, it's a razor's edge that we all are kind of on. And I think some of it, a lot of it has to do with tire fall off. You know, this week there wasn't a lot of fall off. We knew that in practice. You know, we were going faster as we ran, basically, especially group one, took about 20 laps to get their quickest lap and for the track to kind of clean up. So we knew there was probably maybe half second a falloff in the tire. So that was really

a lot of the strategy. And then, I mean, yeah, as far as the fuel goes, like, it's a razor-thin margin. I mean, it's very track position-dependent. So if you're out in the lead, you're burning a lot more fuel and, and, you know, we're just up against really tight windows. So, you know, when you're playing sort of the track position game, especially this weekend, it's like you're trying to make that window as long as possible. So, yeah, I don't think we, without the two cautions that happened, you know, the last two cautions, we definitely wouldn't have had a chance to make it, but those caution laps gave us a window. And then I think we were maybe anywhere, anywhere between one to three laps short and, you know, we were able to save that mostly in the last,

like, 25 laps of the race once we got a bit of a gap. So I was extremely surprised how much feel I could save and still make lap time at the end. I think I just, I had enough rear tire left. My rear tires weren't super hot, so I could kind of just float a lot of speed into the corner and had a good, you know, confident entry to the corner once I started doing that. So I think Iowa was one of those perfect tracks to save some fuel because you have kind of a shortest tradeaway and long corners. And, you know, Pocono kind of wraps into that as well. But, yeah, I mean, we've been on the wrong side of it a few times with not saving enough

or not having, you know, maybe the most accurate way to know when we're going to run out. So, yeah, just been improving all that stuff. Yeah, it's been pretty fun to kind of see the teams get smarter, get more information and get more confident in the data they're getting so that they can really be more aggressive. And we have some of these pretty cool moments, you know, nervous moments about fuel mileage. I know the fans think sometimes the TV sensationalizes the,

the challenge of fuel mileage, but it's actually, you know, we can see it in y'all's body language, at least the team's body language and the crew chiefs. But it's been a long time since you got to Victory Lane, man, which is weird because you've had a good year. I'd forgotten that it had been since Daytona that you'd actually won a race, and I don't know how that's felt for you. But every year, every year, every year. year, I feel like that you get a little bit better. And you, I know from people that have told me

about your work ethic, that you're 100% focused doing all the work necessary and then some throughout the week to be ready and prepared. You're a student of the game and you do all the hard work. But I see you sort of like get just a notch better every year. And so I'm sitting here thinking, Man, the guys, you know, he's in a really good spot. The team's performing well. I think that you're, if I'm saying, there's, you know, who are the four guys that can battle for this championship? I'd put your name in that hat, easy.

But does the lack of wins concern you, or are you feeling like you're on pace, you're on the path you're going to need to be on? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I think the lack of wins was starting to kind of get to us a little bit, honestly. Like it was, you know, if you look back towards last year, I mean, we won those three races early. Martinsville was the last one, and that was a huge win. And that was just kind of an aggressive, you know, decision there at the end.

We had a good car all day. So we were bringing speed, you know, all the time. And it just seemed like if we put ourselves in a position to win, we won. And it was like, man, you know, we just keep doing this. We're going to rack them up. And then we went through a low last year where we lost some speed. And we had to kind of sit down and rethink some things. And then we got in the fall in the playoffs and we never finished worse than six.

We were incredibly consistent, you know, always running in the top three, really. But we didn't win. So like we were always there, but we weren't really leading a lot. So that was our goal this year was, hey, let's lead more laps. Let's try to be the fastest team. and we came out and we started doing that a lot and then the winds weren't coming still it was still things that would happen and some of it just out of our control and some of it just situations and so then it started to feel like okay now we got to just do everything right and that was putting a lot

of pressure to just for everything to go right and honestly this racing is not it's some of it's not in your control like you just have to do the best job you can with the cards you're dealt. And so I think we kind of reconsider that and took some pressure off and said, hey, let's just try to do everything we're doing. Our process is good. We're fast. But let's just kind of, you know, the result is a little bit out of our control. And it's just nice to see one kind of come back our way this weekend. I mean, that's why I was kind of laughing a little bit as I crossed the line because it was like, you know, finally kind of just went back the other way. like yeah we had a good car on sunday i think we're a top three or four car um but not probably

the dominant car i thought brad was really strong and um you know we just kept in the position and and some things worked our way kind of opposite of of some of the races that have not been that way so i think it gives us a ton of confidence going forward at some point when you stayed out and you were you got up you got that track position um you were obviously i don't think you were planning on all the cautions in a row i think at some point you were going to have to you thought you were going to have to come down pit road were you dreading that part like thinking you were going to be in the you know back there because chase the 21 pitted all them guys decided to come down were you know what was

what were you what was the thought process like that part of the race were you planning on just trying to get tires late and trying to make up some ground like some of the guys did or you know before the point of okay maybe we can make it here because there had to be a point where you were like man we're still going to have to pit and come down here yeah Yeah, no, it was so, yeah, we were like right on that edge of, of, yeah, so we had pitted, you know, more recently than a lot of guys. So we had fresh tires. So we were passing people, you know, getting back up through those guys. And yeah, we, there was one or two cautions that had kind of made our bed where it's like, okay, we need a long run and we need to, I wouldn't say bank on a caution late, but just get a long run where tires start to wear. and guys start to have issues and that's going to put us in a position where everyone now has to

pit later on. So that was kind of our goal was we just need one long run. And so when the long run wasn't happening, it was like, okay, now we're kind of making our bed more towards, you know, just stretching this. And then it was like, I think before the last two cautions, he felt pretty confident that if we just got one, one, maybe two more cautions, there's a potential we could just make it to the end. Yeah, you committed to it and the other guys. No one else. I think you were the only car that really committed to that long strategy. Yeah, because we, we were like one of two or three guys that pitted at the end of stage two. And a lot of those guys took right side tires. So we had, we had four and we had more fuel. So, I mean, it was probably me and the 19, which the 19 actually

ended up pitting again. So, yeah, it was just, it was just over. Yeah, the 48 might have been in that boat to you. Yeah. Yeah. William, I appreciate you giving us some time today, man. It's awesome to see you have some success, and it's fun to watch your career develop, man. And I think you're on the cusp of becoming a champion, and I believe that that's going to be a reality for you, if not this year, in the near future, man. But good luck going forward, and we'll see you to the racetrack. Yeah, thanks, man. I appreciate it. You all have a great summer, and hopefully see you again soon. Next week, same time. Appreciate everybody tuning in.

This is the Ask Junior portion of the Dirty Air, our Tuesday show on the Dale Junior download, presented by Xfinity. I am currently streaming using Xfinity Wi-Fi as we speak, and the speeds are amazing. Their new tag is the word booming, and their speeds are really good. So really thankful for Xfinity Wi-Fi and everything to do for NASCAR.

The power of the speed that Xfinity Wi-Fi provides in your home is unmatched. And you can choose the right plan for you. And you're off to the races for the best streaming experience from NASCAR to all your favorite sports or whatever it is. Your kids are watching because Xfinity Wi-Fi is booming. they don't raise the bar, they stream and overdrive, Xfinity Proud premier partner of NASCAR. This first question is from Todd.

And there's a picture, Dale, going around of your dad riding a bicycle pretty weird. I think he was riding it backwards and sitting on the handlebars, and he wants to know how did he learn to ride a bike like that? Practice, I guess.

Yeah, but how do you even start that one? Did he do that at the track all the time? I think whenever he, saw her bicycle he might jump on it and do that but not all the time he didn't bring his bicycle and start riding it around he wasn't like riding his it's not like

you know dad over here during the break in the action riding his bicycle backwards while Morgan Shepherd's roller skating on the other side of the garage um you know Morgan used to bring his skates and skate all the time

he fell that one time oh man oh I'm it's so strange it was a strangest thing because he skated like he was listening to the Bee Gees. He did. Yes. Yes. He fell at like Louden

or something or on Pitt Road. Yes, he fell. Yes. Of course. I'm sure he fell multiple times. Yeah. Were you there or did he practiced it? I I don't think I think I seen Dad do that one time in my life, but I know there's a couple

pictures of him riding a bicycle on the handybars backwards. I'd like to see you try it. Yeah, have you ever attempted it? There's no. I haven't. Never, never had occurred to me. Right. That's what I think is just, that's what I love about the photo is you don't really look at a bicycle and be like, I'm going to try to ride it this way, you know, but it was unique. You know, that was before, that was before tablets and all the cool gadgets and gizmos is when you had to go outside and just make it up. Tape a football card to this spoke, so it made a different noise. Yeah. Katie wants to know, you know, we've talked about your trophy collection.

and where you keep certain trophies and kind of like what you have at your house, where you have at Junior Motorsports. What do you do with the checkered flags when you win a race? I got a bunch of checkered flags stuff down into this cup that I won the I think

the Xfinity Series championship in 99 was a big like vase kind of cup thing. And I've shoved a lot of them down into that. they're ever they're just here and there and everywhere i don't know the flags i don't frame them or put them up anywhere they're just kind of stuffed in different locations i feel like the flag should be something that the driver gives to like the crew chief or spot or something like i know in golf the golfers give the 18th pin flag to their caddy as like their their trophy oh he never gave me one of them you never got one tj i have one i do have one checker flag from a win it was uh

you got a damn grandfather clock i did yeah Yeah. That's like a hundred. Except for a lot. Yeah. I do have one checker flag from win. It was the first win with Lugano at Fontana in the Xfinny race. First race we won in 18, and I've got that checker flag.

But no checker flags from Dale. No, he won't come off anything. He's got, he's got trophies. Where do you get extra checker flags from? You don't need an extra. Yeah, I mean. There's only one checker flag. Yeah, you could give that to the end of the race.

They get rid of the driver, the check, the checker flags. The trophy, the trophy, everything. I don't even know where the checker flags are. Like, that wasn't ever... So after every race, it wasn't like, here's the checkered flag every time you won. So, like, there's some races where I don't even know where the checker flag ended up.

I say most time you get champagne bottles. Like, like... Like, sometimes I think Steve LaTartre took a couple home, maybe a couple crew guys got one here and there. This next question is from Kevin, who wants to know what was it like being able to finally play NASCAR 15, and they also saw... 25.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm 10 years off. NASCAR 25. What was it like to play NASCAR 25, finally, and how hard was it to narrow down the soundtrack? Because I saw you were talking about that on X. Yeah, that was a fun conversation. on social media. The game is going to be great.

And people are wanting to see some gameplay, and I should have recorded it because I'm one of the guys I think could get away with posting some real game, some actual own gameplay. I should have. You should have. I don't know why I didn't.

But it's, you know, there's still some work to do, and it's not, it's, not finished. There's still some work to do and I know they got a release date in October, but the team, I guess the team's working extremely hard to get everything wrapped up and done. There will be a lot of Dale Jr. download in the career mode. So me and T.J. recorded about 30 or 45 different scenarios that can play out for a driver, like, you know, hiring a new crew chief or losing somebody important on their team like an engineer or gaining a new sponsor or getting themselves into trouble or whatever and so you know when this scenario sort of happens or you choose

this route you know you'll hear from us and what we think about it and with the soundtrack um this was something that i was really heavily involved in um i offered up some ideas on songs that we could include. We had a budget. The featured song that will be on the game is system of a down. And we actually had to write a letter to their team to tell them about what the project. They didn't know what the project was, but they didn't know what we were asking them and why we wanted to use the song. So I had to kind of spell it out for them and say, man, this is going to be awesome to hear this song. The first thing you hear. in the menu would be this song.

Now, then the other songs will shuffle through. And this song that we chose is an idea of somebody internally with ir racing. It wasn't a song that I proposed. It was something that came from within the staff and employees at irasing. There's a lot of songs that are, there's 27 different artists. so assuming 27 different songs. And if you, we tried to, you know, have a lot of different genres represented. Rap, rock, country, a little bit of history and nostalgia and mixed in as well.

I did learn that when you go to buy the license or secure the license from a song that has a lot of samples in it, which a lot of rap has a lot of samples, you have to pay almost twice because you have to pay for the rights of the rap song that's created, and you have to pay the talent and the publishing company. But you also have to go and secure the rights to the sampled music. So it's super, super hard because everybody's got to say yes. And some of them argue over the percentage of what they think they should get versus the other parties involved. So getting songs with samples in them was really, really tough. There were a couple songs that I wanted that we didn't get. One of those was stunting like my daddy. I wanted that in there. I love that

song. I like Lil Wayne. And that's one of my favorites from him. but we couldn't get it. We have to use the clean versions. And basically that was that kind of omitted the all of the, all of the song. So like, yeah, when we got the clean version of something like my daddy, there was a lot of gaps. But also,

there's a person that clears the music for us. So there was this female, she's awesome. She went to all of the artists and the publishing companies and everybody to try to negotiate, right? This is what she does for a living. And she also said, hey, you know, we have some, we have a gigantic, freaking library of independent artists. And she knew the kind of, you know, after a while, she kind of got an idea of the kind of music we were going for,

and she threw a bunch of ideas at us. And so I would get like 30 or 40 songs in a big chunk, and I would listen to all of them. And I'd go, okay, let's try to get this one, to get this one, to get this one. And they were really affordable. And so there's a bunch of, I think, good songs in there from some independent artists that I'm excited about

because this could be a big break for them. for this independent artist to be on this sort of soundtrack or in this game with a, you know, killer mic or system of a down or whoever it may be, that's a big deal, right, for their, for themselves. So I don't know. The soundtrack's going to be good for a lot of people. There'll be some people that are disappointed. Some things aren't in there. Some songs aren't in there.

And some people won't care. Some people will mute to music as soon as they start playing the game. So the soundtrack's not for everybody. but I always like soundtracks, and the reason why I got involved in this is because I learned about a lot of music listening to playing video games like Fight Night on EA Sports and Madden.

And you had the ability to turn off certain songs and play other songs more frequently in some of those games. And, you know, I actually have songs in my library on my phone that I learned strictly from, specifically from games. I remember Grand Theft Auto used to have a, you could switch the radio, that was awesome. Right.

Yeah. Dude, yeah. I've got a lot of, I've got a lot of those songs on Grand Theft Auto on my phone. Oh, for sure. What did you think of the gameplay? How did it drive? It drives pretty good.

I didn't really, I drove a little race and, the career mode's pretty cool, how you jump into the career mode, and you got a, you got to sort of, you kind of, the career mode reminded me a little bit of the introduction to the career mode, reminded me a little bit of like the gong show that Rosh did.

Yeah. Where they had all these drivers come try to prove themselves. And so what we do is we plop you into this Arka race at Rockingham, and you've got to achieve a certain result to start, get your career going. So it's kind of like, hey, man, you're a local short track guy, and you're getting this chance to run this Arka car. you need to improve and impress to continue your career. I think it's also cool that there's certain Xfinity drivers.

Like there's, you can race as Ross or SVG in the Xfinity series. Like that's a cool added detail. It makes me mad that I didn't, it makes me mad that I didn't run an Xfinity race this year. Yeah. So I could be a car in the game. I know. Yeah.

There's still time. Yeah. I go go start and park an Arka race. Maybe I could get into Arka Field. Yeah. Well, I saw Cletus is in the Arka Field, which is pretty awesome. I know I saw a lot of people who are excited about that. Yeah, I text him and asked him if he would want to be in the game,

and if he mind being in the game. But, yeah, I mean, it's been interesting to see how all this all comes together and how you, it's a lot of work behind the scenes to secure all the cars and all the people's approval and everybody's, you know, Everybody wants to be involved, but it's a lot of legal involved too. This next question is from Marcus. They saw Jordan Bianchi reported that Chicagoland could be coming back next year. What's your reaction to that?

Yeah, I feel like that was the worst kept secret. I'm excited about that, and I think it'll happen. And I don't think the schedule's finished. I wouldn't, I'm not trying to like, you know, get things stirred up or anything. There could be nothing else that comes out about the schedule. It might be, you know, San Diego and Chicago land comes back and we lose Mexico City and Chicago Street course and that's that. But I've heard about some other things that might happen.

And if they do, boy, that'd be fantastic. so, but schedule is going to be, schedule is going to keep changing every year. And I like that. I like the fact that we can get Chicago back. I think that getting Chicago back, Chicago land back is going to cost some money. It's going to take, you know, five, ten million dollars to get that track back together and get everything fixed up and cleaned up and ready to go. And, but I think it'll put on a hell of a show.

And it's going to be slick and worn out. Oh, it's going to be abrasive. Oh, it's going to be rough. It is. Yes. And so it should be pretty awesome. Wide. They'll be all over the place.

That track also has this really, really, really nasty bump in the middle of three and four, T.J. And you know how these damn next-gen cars are with bumps. Yeah, I think it's going to be a freaking handful. Where the tunnel is. So they'll have to run the cars at a certain height to be able to get through there without crashing on the blocks and all that crazy stuff. And that'll make the car drive like shit everywhere else.

And so that's good. That's a good thing. So I'm excited about Chicago land. I feel like it's going to be a race that you're going to want to tune into and you're going to be entertained and enjoy. In the same article, too, Jordan said we're not going back to Mexico. Does that surprise you? Would you like to see Mexico return in the future?

Yeah, I thought Mexico was fine. But I'm, it was, you know, I don't love, I don't love, the travel was really a challenge for everybody. Logistically, just, you know, going through customs and all that stuff. And so it was a bit of hassle, but so I'm not too heartbroken about it. But if it pops back up on the schedule and it happens to be in one of the races that I broadcast, I'm not going to be sad about it. All right. Well, that's a good place to rap as junior this week. All right, man.

Appreciate everybody tuning in. Thanks for supporting our show and everything we do here. Thanks to Xfinity. You know booming speeds when you see them. Xfinity Wi-Fi has booming speeds like the roar of a NASCAR engine on race day. It gives you the power and speed of NASCAR in your home. Choose the right plan for you. And you're off to the races with the best streaming service for racing, for your kids,

whatever they're watching on TV, all your favorite sports. They don't just raise the bar. they stream in overdrive and they are a proud premier partner of NASCAR. We'll see you all later. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets. All right, it's time for the segment called Dirty Bowdo, where we bring you some of the best bets to make this upcoming weekend.

We talk about our previous failed bets from the weekend before. All this is presented to you by a fan duel. Yeah, we'll get right to it, man. we just cannot hit the top manufacturer. We can't do it. It's tough. I don't know why. We had Bell,

Bell, Larson, and Priest, and we didn't even get close. Priest was close. Yeah. Close don't pay. Bell's spinning out hurt us too, but yeah, tough. Well, we're coming into Watkins Glen. This one may get a little simpler, I don't know.

We know SVG is going to be at the top of the model as the Chevrolet. Who else is looking good, Russ, out of the Toyota in the Ford camp? Christopher Bell from the Toyota camp, and then Busher is your Ford guy on the model. But SVG for sure as the Chevy guy. All right. I mean, I'm pretty comfortable with those three. Anybody got an objection?

No, I like those three. I like those top of my list. All right. So Christopher Bell, Chris Busher, and SVG will be the, manufacture parlay for this week. Is there anybody that you'd bet on not named SVG to win? I actually like Christopher Bell a lot this week. I think this is the week someone takes down SVG.

I'm feeling that too. Yeah, I think it's a little bit, I think the stretch is over. I think somebody's going to take it. T.J, remember you were doubting SVG? I didn't doubt them. I just said we're going to some of these places where our guys have been to it many times. We're getting better. We're going to get him. It gets harder at these places whenever we go there.

These guys, I mean, we have a lot of really great road course racers. Yeah. What do you guys think is a fair expectation of how Connor Zillich will run on Sunday? I think inside, I mean, maybe right around top ten-ish. Yeah. Maybe I think it's going to be challenging for him. Again, he's going, he doesn't have a ton of time in this car, and these guys have been to this track a lot. and I do think if he keeps it

I think a successful race for him would be top 15 but I think he could run top 10 if he hits everything right Tim's at this number they have him second at plus 370 so top 10's probably not even but he's just an avoid for you right? Yeah I was just going to say like betting wise I just wouldn't touch him there's no value on him you know if he wins great it's but it's plus 500 and that's he's a long shot in my eyes just because he doesn't have a lot of I can't believe that his odds are they got to

it wrong because I honestly feel like that he's going to do well if he can finish in the top 20 yeah he's going to find out that you know as he has every time he's ran in the cup series it's a different ballgame I think it's the books trying to just protect themselves I get it yeah Russ where do you have him on the model on the I know it's hard because of limited races yeah on the model he's 22nd so it's I think that's actually really really really I guess yeah yeah And he could end up better than that, but I think that's realistic for right now. Yeah.

I'm with you, TG. I think top 15 is what he should be gunning for, really. Yeah. I also agree with that. Is this a race where you would live bet instead of betting like Bell or somebody pre-race? I've just seen this year that the books have been a lot smarter with live betting, and they have made, if you're running in the top 10, you have like, you know, plus one, plus 200 plus 300 is really no value in live betting for me unless you're taking a shot on a guy

who is on an alternate strategy and you're way ahead of it i just haven't seen the value in there but if you're going to bet SVG i'd wait till after after practicing qualifying because this number's not going to move it's like plus 160 that's that's not going to move much so just wait all right any dark horses even for top tens top fives yeah i ryan preese is plus nine hundred nine thousand to win true I think that's like that's a super underdog, but I mean, he was really good at Mexico City. He's had a couple top tens, I think, on reports this year. He finds his way. He finds his way to the top five to ten in almost all these races now, no matter what.

I would definitely bet him top ten. But if you want to sprinkle a little bit on that plus 9,000, I like that a lot. He was the next car to go a lap down at Iowa at one point. And next thing you know he was in the top five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they have him as the 22nd rank driver. by odds.

All right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right, man. Anything else, guys? Russ, you got anything that, like, stands out? Well, I like Kyle Bush for like a top 10 this week, like, or even top five possibly. Like, his two top five finishes this year are both on road courses.

Like this, if you're going to bet Kyle Busch this year, this is, I would do it on the road course. Yeah. What about a William Byron, someone like that? He's got a little momentum now, and he's been. pretty good on road course is what are his odds uh his odds to win plus 1,000 yeah plus 1,000 I think he's a guy also like if he starts to win he he kind of gets that momentum and he can he can rattle off two or three here pretty quickly so I would mind him either what about uh chase elliot road course king

that was the last car too last car yeah they're a little iffy on strategy to be honest with you every time there's a strategy race and there's I think they're always on the wrong side of it I mean, did he win a race by strategy? I don't know. Did Atlanta? I like, I like, I like a top ten parlay for putting priests, Kyle Busch, and who else?

Who else, Russell? Do we, does it, like, what about an almond dinger? Ooh, that's pretty decent. Or even a Chase Briscoe. McDowell. Oh, Briscoe. Briscoe, yeah. What about Maldow?

Whatever the best value is. I like McDowellowell. Honestly, if you bet Briscoe top three, He's finished second, what, like four or five times this year? You're probably making some good money if you bet Briscoe top three. Yeah. I think Briscoe is a good oddball to throw in there that could turn some heads. Yeah.

All right. Y'all done? Yeah. This dirty mode though segment was brought to you by Fanduel, the premier gaming destination in the United States. All right, it's time for the white flag. The Teardown was live on YouTube and Twitter following the race. Action is detrimental dropped on Monday.

Denny didn't hold back with his thoughts on the race about the race car and doorbook up or clear was also out on Monday. My interview with Santino Ferrucci drops on Wednesday, and Herman Schrader and Speed Street also dropped tomorrow and another episode of Bless Your Heart will be out this Thursday. Hope y'all guys have a great week, and we'll see you tomorrow.