The Dale Jr. Download - ANOTHER Brad Keselowski Wreck that Dale and TJ Disagree On

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Fresh off a weekend at Pocono, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back in the studio this week for a new edition of Dirty Air. He joins co-host TJ Majors to recap Denny Hamlin’s third straight victory and the magic behind the 11 team as of late: - Race-winning crew chief Chris Gayle joins the show - Denny is consistently the best on long-run speed - How will NASCAR handle the cautions in San Diego? - The battle for the regular-season points championship is narrowing - Who was at fault in the big wreck at Pocono? - Josh Berry and the Wood Brothers are parting ways - This new practice/qualifying protocol makes it tough to dig your way out     During the Ask Jr. part of the episode, listeners sent in questions regarding: - Jimmie Johnson vs. Jimmie Jam - Calling the race from an aircraft carrier in San Diego - Drivers becoming crew chiefs - Go-to AC/DC songs - Favorite boxing matches 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.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half. I don't know if we've ever argued. Did I piss you off over the weekend? I'm still sour. Did I want the best man at your wedding? Who was your best man, Dale? T.J.

You don't need a cool best for that race? What are you thinking? Get them, T.J. Hellway is starting a show. All right then. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for a nice. Another episode of the Dell Jr. Download is Tuesday.

This is post-Pocono heading into San Diego. First time we've ever raced at the Coronado Naval Base. Yeah. T.J. Majors, here with me in the Arby Studio. This episode is presented by Arby's. Don't forget about Arby's new meat and three bucks. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meets.

Let's get the show started. We will have Chris Gale calling in in a bit. the crew chief for Denny Hamlin, who is on a heater here with three straight winds. I'm on a heater. Are you? Three d'NFs, I don't know. Three d'nets, yeah.

We're on a heater all right. We'll get into that one. Yeah, we will. to go-yota seems to be the best to-go-do. I have marveled at the way this car runs on the long run. He is not the fastest car at the racetrack when the race begins or in practice. I don't know. He starts on the pole a lot.

Well, lap. Let's qualify. That's not practice. Best score on the track. Listen. I know what you mean. Yeah. Lap one in practice, the 45 goes out there.

Blester's off a lap. He was first out on the racetrack. That helps. But when the race begins, you know, five jumps out there, grabs the lead, runs pretty good, in stage one, till then he comes down there and runs. passing. Denny's car doesn't fire off good. He talks about it on restarts.

But at lap 10, 11, 12, all the way through the rest of the run, he just gets better and better. Everyone else falls off more. Their balance gets tighter or looser, whatever. They're just not handling well. And his car just kind of runs the same speed. It's no secret to Denny's a great race manager, though. He's always been that way. So good. Yeah.

Yep. And not like tire wear at Bristol, Denny's one of the guys that can make them tires last. I thought Lattar brought up a good point the other week. No. He's like the chef that doesn't measure things. So when he's out in practice, he's not really focused on times, but he's more on the feel and stuff. That's right.

He's not trying to get the fastest time on practice. No. He knows a few he's looking for. He knows his car's not set up for that, right? And so he says it. I'm looking for a feel. And so he goes out there and runs and runs. Hey, even in practice at Pocono, he was like,

I don't like the balance. And they're like, well, we need you to run longer. because they needed to run as much fuel out of the car as they could, so they could qualify with low fuel. And so, I mean, he's working on that balance late into the run. But he knows what he's looking for. He does. That's the experience.

He knows better than the other guys. He does. So rookies, they come in there. They're literally looking at lap times and be like, they're going to look at SMT. I need to do that. They don't know what the feel is like. That is hard to do.

I spent my whole career looking at that monitor on the pit box during practice. in practice. Damn he's fast. Trying to figure out how to get myself high, high up that line. And that's not what you need to do. But it's hard. You go out, 40 cars go out onto the racetrack in practice, and you look at that monitor and go, damn, 12th, man, I want to be first.

What do I need to do to be first? And you're going, you're trying to think in your mind, what do I need to change to go out there and run the fastest lap on the racetrack? And that is the absolute wrong thing to be doing in that moment. It is. And it's hard not to do that. You need to go out there and go, what did it do at lap five? And what do I need it to do at lap five?

What's it not doing? And what adjustment could I give my car to make it, you know, do the things I needed to do at lap 10. Sometimes I wish that board didn't exist. You'd be better off if you didn't look at it. But it's hard not to. It's hard because you want to be first. You want to be on top of the board with the fastest lap and you want to have the best car. It used to be the left side, right?

Because you go in there and it split the columns. There's two columns. If you run the left side, you're pretty good. Yeah. Well, Denny's pretty good right now. And we're going to a couple of road courses, though, where he's not been, you know, he publicly says it's just not his forte. But it'd be interesting to see if he can just survive at San Diego and come out with a decent result.

I think that this is going to be chaos. If you've watched, there's a lot of videos now on social media of. some i racing laps of cars going around the racetrack there's a lot of elevation changes there's a lot of hard downhill landings yeah those guys are making it look easy too by the way some of them guys driving holy cow are they making it look easy if you look at uh you remember the downhill at road america that's yes that there's a couple of those there yeah they're very similar and those are those are inviting potential hazards and at this particular race track unlike Road America, there's no runoff.

It's a tire barrier waiting on you. Oh, no, it's like Chicago. That's right. You're going to hit. So there's a couple of downhills into some breaking zones that I think are going to be problematic of some guys. Turn two is downhill by the carrier. That's right. And down at the bottom of those, there's some bumps and so forth.

And there's all kinds of bumps and problematic issues. Two is a big, like, when you're breaking down the hill, there's like a dip. Yes. And it's like, you kind of. Yeah. I think that's going to bite some folks. There's a lot of bumps going around the track that are just going to throw cars off. Because that place is lined with those, like, I don't know what, them shipping, how they do them.

It's got them tracks. Yes. And we are going over them. We're not going straight with them. You're crossing them. You're crossing them. Yeah. And it bounces across them.

Oh, man. I mean, I like it. I mean, it gives a track character. I love it too. Oh, I love it too. The only problem is, T.J., is it's a three and a half mile course, 3.4 to be exact. Road America almost. And if we have a car that has contact with the wall and can't continue,

they're going to have to throw a caution. Yeah. Caution laps there are going to be... Five minutes. Five minimum. Yeah. A caution lap around that racetrack is going to take, let's just say, six minutes. And if we can't get, you know, if you have four caution laps,

so you've got to come by, open up pit road. It's 20 minutes. Oh, man. You have 20-minute cautions. Could you have cautions where it's just for that? area or like local yellow local yellows that's something that i think nascar is going to have to ask themselves if we're going to run these big tracks like this i think it's but if you can't move the car if the guy's wrecked and he's in the tire barrier right and he's stuck you know you can what you can't

race around race around it so my i would say this like if i have a guy that goes that gets in trouble and his car's out uh not in a dangerous spot i'm sorry pal you know i mean if there's a way for him to exit the vehicle and get off the racetrack and the car is not in a dangerous spot i don't know if that even exists at this racetrack but that might be the end of your day right there and i'm not going to throw the caution to allow you to retrieve your vehicle and try to salvage something out of the day i just don't know if i can do yeah i agree listen if the stages are 20 laps the first two you know what the stages are 20 27 20 40 75 okay 20 40 75. So if you have a caution,

I think. Right. If you have a caution in stage one, half the stage is going to be ran under caution. Yeah. And you're going to have one. There's no way that they're going to run stage one. That ought to be a bet. What lap is the first caution?

No. Will there be a caution in stage one? That ought to be a bet. I think the bet should be what like... There's a host of R in the race. There'll be a caution. That's taking a step further. But they're going to have a caution in stage one. They're going to have one. You're going to run

one third of that stage under caution, minimum. Stage two, same thing. They're going to have one or two yellows there. You're going to have a lot of caution. Yeah, I agree. Unless NASCAR can be really stingy with the yellow flag, but that would mean basically,

you know, leaving a guy out there on the racetrack if he's not in a compromising situation and not allowing him to be able to get himself to the garage or to the pits to repair his vehicle to be able to continue the race. Yeah, I don't see NASCAR doing that. I don't either. Do you think? But they do that sometimes in sports car. If a guy gets to a runoff area and parks, man, the race is going.

Sorry about your luck. Yep. So I'm interested in looking because they tell us where all the cutouts are. They give us a map and say, hey, if you're in trouble, you can turn off here. But rarely. No drivers use them. We only use them if we know you've blown. Blown the engine.

Yes, you're not going to make it back. No driver's going to pull off in any of those areas because he's going to get his assed you by his team. Yeah, you should have stayed out there. You just quit. Yep. And you're losing laps. Yeah.

So I wonder if you're going to set the tone, you almost have to do it like, hey, you know, like. You can tell them? Yeah, I mean, hey, we're not, we're not just going to throw cautious because you're creeping around here or something. We're going to, you know, like you said, if guy goes way off to the right and whatever, turn whatever number that is

and he's not in a compromising position do you just leave him over there? I would. I mean, I think I would too rather than bring another... You're not racing. Yeah. I don't want to pace. No. So... I think under this circumstance,

I think under this circumstance, if I was NASCAR, I would definitely change my protocols slightly. I don't know that I would really change any rules per se, or but I would just be more stingier.

I'd be more patient, I suppose, with throwing the yellow. Now, there are some scenarios where, you know, so it's a wreck or spin around mid-pack, you know, you don't want anybody piling in there wide-ass open. Yeah. So, I mean, you've got to air on the side of safety, but if a guy's sitting there off to the side and he's not in a bad spot, you might consider holding on to the flag just a little while.

Call for AAA, buddy, we ain't coming. Yeah. So three to go into stage. Do you let it run out? You know what I mean? like obviously depending on yeah depending on

on where the guy's sitting but I mean does that make a difference if it's three to go in the stage or three laps into the stage they do hey we've talked about it

on this show I know they call the race differently depending on what time what moment in the race it is yeah

and if they can if they can allow it to finish the stage they will they're not going to you know you don't want to the worst thing

that could happen oh man is if we had a caution with three laps I was gonna say even four to go oh no they're gonna

they're gonna then therefore have to pace to the end of the stage and then we're going to have the stage cautions. Oh, my God. Dude, it would be a 40-minute caution. Oh, man. So NASCAR's got to be careful.

And I would think that they would need to, I would hope that they're having some conversations internally about how they will officiate this event uniquely due to the length of the racetrack. I would just, I think that's a great way to put it. Let me ask you a question. If the caution comes out, they're on 18. caution comes out. Could they not say this could end the stick?

We've talked about this. This is the end of the stage. We're going to go ahead and do the cycle and carry on. Right. We've talked about that. They haven't done that yet. We've wondered why they wouldn't. They say that it, well, they say that the crew chiefs on the pit box and the engineers,

it throws all of their calculations on fuel. I know. Who cares? But I don't know. I don't know why NASCAR wants to. If it's a natural yellow. I know. I know.

I don't. I don't understand that. Maybe there's more reasons than I'm thinking. But you're asking, basically, if the caution were to come out three laps before the end of the stage, why not throw the stage green checker? Green checker right there and say, hey, the stage is ending early.

And now we're going to start that cycle so we can get back gracing. This would be a perfect example that I could think of where you would want to do that if you're forced into that situation. But they've had that chance multiple times of the last. last several years and they haven't used they haven't changed that protocol yet for whatever reason this is their chance to do it and then carried over that's right another thing with that too is could you not use uh we're forced into some change sometimes and we find out that it's actually a good thing and then use it for every race i don't agree i understand what you're saying yeah what about

using and i know this is probably far-fetched but what about using like instead of running an extra lap to cross the line you let them use the alternate start finish line that way you can open pit road. Hell no. Can't mess with that. I don't want the... I'm just saying to use that one this year. I'm sorry.

So you don't have to run a hole in the last. I understand T.J., but I'm sorry. The alternate start and finish line bugs me, as it is, even in practice in qualifying or in qualifying at Pocono, for example, putting it on the back straight away over there. I don't love it. It's weird.

I don't love it. I know why we do it, but I'm like, I know why we do it, but I think it's unnecessary. It would do it that way. At this road course, we're going to do it, and I'll be glad we're doing it at qualifying, having an alternate start finish line. Yeah.

But truly it's not... To me, it works good at road courses. It does work great at road courses. It does. But it's just not the purest in me. I struggle. I'm with you. I wouldn't want to do it in race conditions ever.

I wouldn't want to, hey, okay, this lap. And it's also too confusing for... It is. That's what I would worry about. Well, Denny Hamling, close the gap again on Tyler Reddick now within 19 points. If you look at the wins, so you get 15 extra points for wins. Bonus points.

That's right. And Tyler has five. Denny has four. Now they're separated by 19 points. That's basically the difference between the win bonus and the points difference between first and second. So this point system is a blast. I love it.

I love it. I love it. I was sitting there about five weeks ago thinking, man, I'm wondering what everybody's thinking. We got Justin Allgaier with a 200-some point lead. 250. Yep. Well, he didn't have that five weeks ago.

But he had a big lead. Tyler Redick had a huge lead. And I'm sitting here thinking, man, is everybody going to start to turn on this point system? Are they going to start to say maybe this wasn't the right way? Because now we've got two runaways. Is this what's going to happen in the chase? Is this going to be decided with three races to go?

You know? But Denny has saved the day. He has ran the man down, Tyler Reddick. Yeah, King Denny. And he's done it in the last three weeks. We're coming up on two road courses where Denny isn't exactly the greatest. And so now we get to see Superman with some adversity. Yeah.

Right. He's coming back out of the television. Can he, can he get through these two weeks and keep that 19 point buffer? Or does it expand again? Does he have to regroup and rebuild and come back, running back down? What do you think? It will expand. The question is how much.

Why are you doing that? No, no. Hold on. Hold on. Let me finish because I'm going to. You and Denny are already. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You're already giving up. You're already giving up. Hold on. I said it's going to expand by how much.

I don't know. But I will say, and you've said this. And I think you're right. I think Denny is kind of sandbag in the same way they were saying, oh, I can't catch redick and I can't get to Dale's seniors' numbers. that's kind of how Denny operates is he's never going to go out there and guarantee something he wants to under promise over-deliver I agree with you there

that's absolutely what he's doing he wants to and absolutely believes that he should and will beat Ty Dillon in his bracket he does he's not going to say that publicly he's going to go he's going to make a joke there's my crypto night he said I'm cooked

I'm cooked but behind privately to to himself, he's going, in a fucking way, I'm getting big by Ty Dillon at Sonoma. I'm not, you know, I'm going to go out. Yeah, how's the Denny Bros.

Behind the scenes here? He won't say that in the Denny Bros, though. But to himself. Yeah. No, I guess. To himself, does he think he can catch my dad's win total? He does. And he's probably considering it, you know,

he's got to make that decision for himself of whether he wants to run long enough to do it. If he wants to, he absolutely can. And probably would. wheel. Yeah, he says he's the most competitive person. Therefore, like, so I don't believe that he doesn't think that. It's just how he vocalizes it.

So I think, I believe, and, you know, to take this a step further, I think that Denny Hamlin is underselling to your point because he doesn't have to be bragg at Oceans. He doesn't have to come out of there. There's no reason for it. No. But he is, I believe what happens is. he keeps racing as long as he's winning. And I think that the new point system lengthens his runway. And I also think that that number trying to match my dad's wins is another goal of his.

And I think the closer he gets to it, the more motivated to beat it he will become. And so, you know, because it was the same way with 60, right? And here we go. Sprint's white past it. Yeah, right? And so, you know, he'll do that with 70. And then it'll be, wow, I can pass Dill Earnhardt and total wins. Let's go do that.

And so I actually think he ends up racing to 48. Yeah, I don't feel like he's that close. 48. Around maybe 49. Interesting. I think he could even be doing a one-off here there all the way through the 50. Yes, I mean, especially since you own. your own team like it's very easy he's going to get in a car

that's right yeah how many points do you think leaving sonoma he needs to be in within to truly have a shot how many are after sonoma uh there'll be eight after sonoma eight more races i think there's ten left in the regular season right i think so he's it don't it don't matter

hey you get two super speedways in there i don't care what the points separation is after sonoma eight's enough yeah the way he's running eight is enough. Even if two are super speedways where Tyler is the best.

And he's pretty good at those two. Tyler, you can't keep getting lucky. Yeah. Like he has been. It doesn't matter. Eight is enough. Even if it gets blooms back to 100 points

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I mean, I know who's to blame, but... Who's the blame for what? The wreck. The one that Brad was called in? Yeah. All right, so they get down into turn three and SVG missed the corner, running the side of the 21.

Yep. That could have ended it, right? That could have been the end of it. it right there. Could have been. Right. The 33 goes to the inside, and Austin Hill just doesn't give them enough room.

They come off off the corner. And there's enough room for one car on outside of Austin Hill, not two. And Austin Hill doesn't race a ton in the next gen. I don't know if he got tight right there or whatever, but I don't know. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe there's just a ton of stuff happening and he's getting a lot of information about being clear, not clear three wide two wide clear the 20 blah blah we listen to it and you want up too huh and you

want to yeah you're trying to finish the throttle yep i'll give him the benefit of the doubt but i don't know you know there's a lot of things that could happen to have avoided that bratt you know the 21 doesn't want to lift doesn't want to give up the spot but he could have in the middle of corner he could have said hey i'm beat um i think what the bad part is is like so brad checks up and goes actually back full throttle. Oh. And tries to clear the wreck on the outside. And in doing so, he's going to make,

he's probably going to run into the back of Christopher Bell. That's what people don't realize. Like, Chris Rebell's up against the wall and he's going to, he's going to run into the back of him. Like, Brad hits the brakes and a guy comes flying by him and goes up there. And that's the guy that isn't coming down the track and hits us. I can see the frustration there. Bubba didn't cause the rack.

Yeah. Bubba gets clipped by the 22. Yes. And so, I mean, he gets, he can't help that. Well, he could have slowed down. Not been there. But, I mean, you know, he saw a gap. Well, Freddie's telling him, top hard, top hard.

I mean, lift for fucking wrecks. Sorry to cuss, but like, there's a wreck. Lift. I don't know. Hit the break. I don't know. I think that's ridiculous. What, it breaks for wreck?

Breaking for wrecks? Slow it down for wrecks, yeah, but he sees an option. He sees all the crashing happening down low, right? No, it doesn't open up. They're all up high. Like, they're up against the wall. I'm watching it. Freddie tells him one squeeze into the fence on the outside up here.

Like right there, look at the 20. They're all down. But he didn't hit Lugano camp and hit him. I know. If Ligano doesn't, like. If Ligano doesn't hit him, what happens? This is the way T.J. thinks, man. If Ligano doesn't hit him, what happens?

Nothing. Then he keeps racing. He runs into the back of the 20 car. No, he doesn't. Oh, okay. Okay. Have you looked at it? I'm watching it right here.

What's the gap? Let's see. Watch. Here he comes. Bam, he's swerving to miss him. He's going to. Yeah, he's probably not going to hit him. He was swerving to miss the 20 car and the 22 hits him.

Yeah. So if he lives. It follows us through. It doesn't happen. But he doesn't, I don't think he has to. I just don't like the people don't lift for Rex. Yeah. Like, and I like, I think it's dumb not to, but I don't think that you can, like, I'm okay if a driver doesn't.

I mean, the 22 just spun it a little himself out. Well, he got, he kind of got hit a little bit. Like he ran into him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like, what the hell, Joey? I'm just saying, like, how much.

I'm just watching it over and over. I'm like, well, okay. It's a wreck. It's just a wreck. 22 just loses it trying to, you know, trying to not be in the wreck. He gets clipped or something, but, you know, he does.

He's coming by and just gets, like the 20's slow because he's in the fall. Right? Yeah, no, they're all slow up. That's what I'm saying. He's slow against the wall. Why are you going top hard? That's what I'm saying.

But I mean, he could see in front of him. I don't think he runs into the 20. Ah, he's going way faster. He's swerving to miss him when Joey hits him. He is. If Bubba, up he probably gets hit more right the 22 really really follow rad drives right through the middle with no nothing nearest right there no no i'm saying the 22 probably hits him still

he gets clipped in the left rear if he slowed down he probably runs in the 20s probably doors the 22 yeah that's what i'm saying if he lifts and follows us through joey's up against the wall and he goes through the middle oh you want him to follow you well i would just follow i mean even if he's off staggered joey's up against the wall i agree like joey's not coming down he's not going fast I'm just saying if you're wanting the 23 to slow down. I just think there's a wreck slow down. He ends up probably hitting the 22 in the pasture side door. I don't think you know.

Because the 22, therefore, then slides across the track in front of him. So the car that follows us through the wreck. Look, I'm just saying, watch. I'm just saying it too, T.J. I'm watching the same shit you're watching. There's a car behind us, the black hood right here, follows us right through the middle. That'd have been Bubba right there, right through the middle.

But Bubba's on the outside. He's not on the outside. He was behind us. Watch his in car. He's two, three car links behind us. I can't see his in car. I went and watched it. He gets the fucking outside wall right there.

You're an idiot. How am I? Watch his in car. He throttles up and goes around the outside into a wreck. They're wrecking. Slow down. All right. You have a right to your opinion, T.J. Major.

Freddie says you're wrong. Well, of course he does. Well, Freddie lost the top hard and how that work out for him. Looks pretty good right here. Why didn't you slow down? We did. Why didn't you slow down more? The 23 is sliding across your nose.

You run right into it. Well, I can't control the throttle. Why can't you slow down a little bit more than that? There's a wreck happening. Well, you can't slow down the guys that want to stay in the throttle. You thought you missed it. Yeah, until the guy comes around us and enters the wreck. Well, you should have slowed down.

We did. You know who didn't? The 23's exiting. Oh, man. Exiting what? Exiting a corner normally up against the wall and top. We all are. And then he started wrecking.

He said he was behind you. He was behind us. I know. Dude, I'm watching it. He was behind you, but he comes up off the corner out to the wall. You go left. He goes right. We go left because there's a wreck.

I know, but the wreck's going down the track. The problem is, instead of lifting, it's fine. If there's a wreck, you stagger. You're not going to follow the guy through the wreck. You're not going to try to. The problem is this with the right foot. Yeah. That's the problem.

All right. Do you not think so? I don't know, man. I don't. If he's wide open. He goes back to like 95% throttle. Yeah. And then hard break.

You've never gassed it up to try. to get through a crash if you saw a hole. I don't think you gas it up. Well, there's not really a hole there. There's cars in front of them no matter what. Yeah, but he sees the wreck happening down. He might not be looking at the 20. I think you look.

That's a great look at it right there. The only time I try to throttle up is when you see cars, you're already kind of making. Stroll back a little bit right there. You throttle up when you try to miss cars coming back down. This is a great look at it right here. What's the great look? This is a good look.

All right. So he's behind us. We see the wreck. They're wrecking. We go low. He's full throttle. Then bam. Yeah.

He's just trying to go through it. I just. He sees the wreck down low and doesn't, Joey's spinning up in front of him is something he didn't anticipate. No, I don't think. Well, nobody saw Joey coming back up there. I just wish people would slow down more. That's all.

All right. Well, um. Big wreck, though. Yeah, it was. Did you think that what could have been done for the wreck to have not happened at all? I mean, yeah, you always think about that. Like, yeah. SVG could have made the corner.

Yeah. Like, he used Josh up pretty hard. He damn sure did. So, and then Austin Hill just came along at the wrong time. He probably, like you said. If Austin Hill is, is, even if Austin Hill isn't there, do they, don't they still run into the wall? I don't think so. Yeah.

I don't think so. When I went back and looked at all the in cars. You think they'd make it? You think the SVG gets down? Because, I think he gives them enough room. I think Austin Hill probably drives both of them, drives by both of them off the corner. Yeah. Well, what brothers tweeted out and said.

that the SVG had been kind of going at Josh for a couple laps. Yeah. Really? Yeah, here. I thought I read that too. Like, he's in him, like. Oh, there's Joe. Oh, this is on board.

But they're three wide, I thought. Oh, he doors in him right there. Go back. Top one. Go back. Yeah, let's see this. I need to see who's, was somebody trying to dive on Josh right there, though?

Yeah, I don't know. But there was some contact that happened just before that. So, but SVG gets by here. Yeah. Oh, he runs Josh up right here too. Watch, he hangs like a right right here. Look at him. Yeah.

Bam. That's, you're not making, you're not getting high side here. Yeah. Which I mean that happens. And they went out there. It looks like. The 97 is a. He's got all the lanes covered, don't he?

Apparently he's been listening to Ross. I didn't see all this. Yeah. And that little swerve into three where Josh was going to get out there was like, eh. No. It was just a wall. contact. Interesting.

Hated it for Josh, though, too. Well, old Woodbrothers, keeping the receipts there. Speaking of Woodbrothers. Yeah. What about it? It's on our sheet. Josh Barry. Yeah, Josh, oh, well, yeah, that is

kind of old news. Josh Barry and the Wood brothers will part after the end of the season. There's speculation about who might go into the 21. Jesse Love is one of the names that gets tossed around It is, no, I've heard that You don't know

You've heard different things from Jesse loved I've also heard that Jesse You know, might get in one of them Other cars, teammate cars as well So, but I don't think that's happening Oh Like switching them Like put somebody from the Penskew camp

Goes down to the 21 and yes So centric Yeah, well, I mean Oh, you're just making assumptions. Well, Planey has an extension, and Lugano's not going. Look at you. Who else is going to go? You shouldn't assume.

Damn, you're just making assumptions. Shouldn't assume. Well, you're the ones throwing it out there. Send your fans. Your thoughts. Let's say the name. It's been, I think it's been pretty common now that. I would say, I've heard that too that it's, send it could be put down to the 21 and

Jesse Love could go in the two. I just don't think that's what happens. I don't either. I don't either. I don't either. I don't know goes to the 21. He has probably a year, two years there. if he produces,

then he gets to go. This won't happen, and I know they wouldn't, but if I was the Wood Brothers, I'd be calling RFK right now. How much do you want the charter for? But, I mean, they're not going to, but man. Man, you could sell one for a hundred.

Right now? Walk away. A hundred million easily. Yeah. Yeah, I would be considering that. I think that their peak value, value is probably 150. I would be a little surprised if they go to, you know,

in the 300, 400, 400, 500 value range for... Yeah, not yet. They're just... The business model for motorsports in general, it's not super profitable. I'm curious to see what the first, like, now that the, after the lawsuit, what the first charter goes for post-settlement.

It's still, like if this is the deal. So running a race car at the cup level is not a mega profitable business. You can do it. You can do it and break even. You can do it and make a little bit of money. In some years, there's a $2, $3 million profit. But there's just as easily a $2 or $3 million loss the following season dependent upon how much you tear up and all that and where you finish in points.

You're literally out there racing for the owner's points purse and the race purse, and your success or lack of success will determine your final, you know, profit or loss. And so running a business where you're spending tens of millions of dollars to operate, it needs to be more profitable than just a couple million bucks for the, charter itself, the actual franchise, to truly gain that $300,500 million value. They can get there. It's going to take a lot of work to get to where race teams are more profitable. And then once that happens, everybody's going to want to end.

Right. And then when you have a lot of buyers, then the value of that charter goes up. Right now, you only have the, people, the only people that are really wanting charters are the people that are already here. Yeah, it's a handful of people. Yeah. Yeah, if you don't have a bunch of new people. No.

And so, um, the business model of racing has it improved, um, over the last decades. It's always been this way and that's okay. Um, you know, it would be nice if it was super profitable. Yeah, I'd love to be making a shit on money racing in, um, a rally series, but it's just not the way it works. But we knew that. But we race anyways.

You know, we race because we like to race. But so that's why I say that $100 to $150 million values probably where it'll sit for a while until these teams can find a way to profit the, you know, the $5 to $10, $15 million annually. I get, what I guess I'm saying is, is like if the Woodbuthers did want to get out, I have not heard they do, and I don't think they do, and I don't think they will. I don't believe that they would be regretting that sell. If they sold for 100, and maybe five years from now, they could sell it for 150 million, does that really matter? No.

They're going to hold out for five years, and they're probably going to waste or spend that 50 million that they're going to probably make in waiting. But I don't believe 10 years from now we're going to go, they should have held on to it because now they're half a billion. Yeah, that's not making that jump. Not at all. But I could be wrong. I mean, NFL teams like Washington in the 90s sold for 800 million and then recently just sold for $6 billion. You know, I know NFL teams like the Panthers sold for $2.5 billion. Yeah.

It's just not apples to apples, though, comparing to them. But I'm just saying they have increased in value. But those companies make hundreds of millions. billions of dollars being NFL teams. Yeah, they make money. They make money. Yeah, each year they're guaranteed. That's our teams are not showing that.

We've seen the, we saw through the lawsuit what these teams lose and make. Yeah. It's not this big profit system. No. And until it's a big profitable business, the values of the charters are going to stall at 100 to 150, I would guess. Wasn't the lawsuit to fix some of that, though? Yes.

The lawsuit was to get the charters permanent. permanent and TV revenue I think has changed and so a little bit but you're still not guaranteed to make 10 million dollars a year no the one thing that they wanted they weren't trying to fix that I mean they would have liked to have they were basically they were more apt to lose money than they were to make money and so they did go after some more TV money to make their opportunity to break even or profit somewhat better better but the most important thing was the permanent charter because If you're, you know, there was this threat, though I knew it would probably never happen, that the charters could just disappear. And there, there's this thing that you, you can't hold in your hand.

I guess you could if it was a, you know, you've got a charter. What is a charter? Is that your charter? Here's a charter. This paper said, I own a charter. Yeah, it's $25 to $50 million. But if you give it to me permanently, now it's immediately $100 million. Now, every team wanted that.

Hell yes, right? So they got it. And that was really, really good that they were able to obtain that. Because, you know, the charters, there was, I don't think it would have happened, but they absolutely could have lost. The chartered system itself could have been thrown in the trash one day for a different idea or a different approach. Oh, that'd be rough.

Yeah. They would have been hard, hard to turn. That would have been hard to reverse and get back out of. Yeah, I don't know if they're coming out of that. The teams felt that threat for sure. Well, I don't know what happens to Josh, Barry. You know, the one thing that I was talking to somebody about this week is like, in the Cup series, you know, the silly season's not all that silly anymore.

Yeah, because it has happened. Not so, you know, an advance. Yeah. And there's not a ton of options. Yeah. And a ton of rides out there. Yeah, there's just not open stuff. No.

And so, man, I thought if you won a cup race, dude, you were going to have, you were at least guaranteed a career, right? A 20-year career. Well, you could run, you could milk that single win, like, you know, no. Lost it in. No disrespect, but a lot of guys did in the 80s and 90s and so forth. They win a race. And Derek Cope, guys like that, man, dude, they f***ed Greg Sacks. Man, they'd find rides.

They'd find something every year. They'd be in something, right? And it's just not that way anymore. There's not a lot of turnover. There's not a lot of churn. And so when you look at it, let's talk about it. The 33 is open. There's not a guarantee that it's an Austin Hill.

It doesn't sound like it's going to be Jesse. Doesn't sound like it's going to be Jesse. But there's other reasons for that too, though. It's not just that it's like I think the sponsors, I think Jesse's age really is part of that. I feel like that there's, I haven't, I don't think this is real and I don't even know that this is being contemplated.

I can't wait for this. But Noah Gregson to the 33. I've heard that rumor. Because of the Bass Pro Shop connection, they love him. Yeah. They always have. Yep. And if that relationship is still as strong today with Bass Pro Shop and Noah,

because way back when Bass Pro Shop the 19 was open, Bass Pro Shop was like, hey, what about Noah? And JGR was like, no, we're going to do Briscoe. And they were like, oh, all right, I guess we're doing Briscoe. But, so, I mean, there's that connection with Bass Pro Shopping Noah, and you could bring Noah in there to the 33, and he would be a good fit for that company. I feel like him and awesome.

Personality-wise. Yeah, I think he does. But I don't know that RCR wants this. That would open up the four where there's a potential that Josh goes there. I know that before Josh got the Wood Brothers ride, there was, you know, there was some conversation around front row as an option for him before.

There's a couple places that we're looking at him. Like the 33, there's no real opportunity. Like, come on, guys. What other cars are going to be available and open on the cup side? I mean, we think McDowell's sticking around until Tristan. JGR is not opening up, potentially Bowman, but if that's Bowman,

it's Corey Day or still. not that's not going to be available yeah I mean it's yeah so if maybe I mean this is getting down in the weeds but if Zillich does depart does that open up that there could be a seat there but maybe I mean there's still not a ton yeah you're getting pretty far down the line yeah I think whatever Josh ends up doing it's going to be a surprise because I don't think any of us have a good idea of on on something that like makes sense I was surprised that he ended up at the Wood Brothers last year. That was a bit of a surprise, to be honest with you.

I wouldn't have guessed that. Or not last year, the year before. Year before, yeah. But, you know, so it'll be interesting to see where he lands, and maybe it could be on Saturday. Maybe he could be racing back in the O'Reilly series. It'd be great to have him back. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I hate it for him, but. Guy just wants to make a living, drive race car. And he's really good at it. Yeah. you know, I think you need some veterans in the sport. You know, it's weird, though, because it looked like when Josh won that Vegas race, they were, they were fine.

They were fast all year. Yeah, they were, like, him and the crew chief, I think it was Miles, were clicking well. They were fast all year. This year, I mean, Penske's not crushing it either. This year, it's been not good. But he's been, the forwards are not good. They've all kind of struggled. He's kind of been back there with his teammates at Penske.

You know, Blaney's ran. good at time. Cendrick's, you know, done decent. But I mean, Josh isn't, like, way out here on an island in terms of performance. Like, what are you going to put in that car that's going to make it, like, automatically, like, I don't know. Well, that's the other thing. I don't think that they, I don't think there's anybody they put in that car where it runs better. That's, yeah, that's kind of what I was saying right there.

Like, I think Josh, I think Josh is doing all he can do. And I don't think you put someone else in it. You're not going to gain 15 spots. Yeah. We, the Cup series versus other series, O'Reilly truck or anything else, it's just a huge jump. Big job. I mean, look at Zillich this year.

I just don't think that the chain, I don't, that's not, you know, Wood Brothers have every right to run their program, however, they want to run it. If they want to move on, try something different, absolutely. I just don't know that, and I don't know that they're looking, I don't know that they expect performance to, like, flip immediately with a driver change. I don't think it does, but, hey, I will say this too. It was a hell of an opportunity for Josh to race for them.

They got a win in Vegas. They had some moments where they showed speed and potential that the Woodbrothers had never shown. Remember last year all the laps lit? Yeah. All that shit. There were these statistics with them and Josh that they hadn't had. in decades.

So, I mean, there was some real good stuff there. It's been a tough, tough year this year for a lot of different reasons. But when they paired up with Josh last year, they were doing things they hadn't done in a really, really long time. It tracks you didn't expect. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

And this goes to, like, I know I talked to a little bit earlier, like, once you get in a hole right now the way this system is with the metric deal, like this bothers me. Yeah, it bothers me a lot that you can't, you don't get a chance to get out of it. you don't get a chance. You're in the crappy practice group. I don't know why they do that. Why don't they have just one practice? That and...

Why? I don't know. What do they have two groups for? I don't know. I think you just don't get a chance. You don't get that little shot in the arm. You have a couple bad races. It might not even be your fault.

You're caught up in other people's stuff. And then now you've got to go out and run and, you know, this week will be a little bit different, course, but like normally you go to another track. You're in the bad group. You got to, you're going to settle for hopefully a top, maybe top 15, depending on where you go out. I mean, that's just how bad the track changes and the groups are and stuff. And you don't really get a chance to dig back out. Yeah, you do.

It's not easy. No. Danes he talked about it on it. Zane Smith's doing a pretty good job, isn't he? Is he? Denny said himself, it's hard to climb out of his old. I know. It's not easy, but it's like not impossible.

It's not impossible, but it. When you're in, you're not, not everybody drives the 11 car. Okay, but we've seen legacy getting out, like, drivers can go out there and get a good result. I'm not saying you can't go get a good result, but you can't, it's harder for someone that's not a Hendrick car, JGR car. Welcome to professional sports. It's hard. So we're going to, but you don't have to make it easier for that. Qualifying, look, qualifying is going to be the way it is. Everybody has to go out there. everybody has to run one lap.

No problem. And they could probably change the equation of how it weighs to where, you know, wherever you go out is more indicative of your points position. Not so much how you ran last week. Because if you have a bad, if you're a great car and a great team and you have a night or a shitty day somewhere, that shouldn't affect where you qualify the next week. It should be more of a body of work where, maybe it's more weighed toward where you are in the point system,

you know, and overall points as to how you qualify. I don't know why we run double two groups for practice. I think they should just start practice and everybody go out there. 50 minutes, two sets tires. Yeah, follow me. Yeah, go practice. And that would alleviate some of this, you know,

I think that that makes it really difficult on teams. that go out in that first session and then the next group goes out on a racetrack that's a lot more similar to how you're going to race like the first session really is just rubbering the thing in it is and they get their track their track changes so much because they start green and they rubber it in or they start on a rally rubber the truck rubber

and they got to wear all that shit off because it's a different tire and then they put, you know, they get the track kind of prepped for group B. Group B gets to go out there and go, okay, this is pretty close to how Sunday will be. And they just run and get to work on their car better. And the qualifying to race adjustments are a lot easier when you know. 100%. So that to me is something that could change is get rid of the two groups practice because it does, I don't know what other reason it has to be there.

But qualifying could be more weighed toward your overall points position. and that'll be what it is what it is, right? I'm okay tweaking the formula. I just don't think a random draw should be done. Random is not a good idea. I think random is better than we do now, but I'm not saying it's the right way. Random is not good.

Because that sucked, man. You would. Well, yeah, but it also helped you at times too. Yeah, but I mean, you want it to be more consistent. Like, hey, if there's enough luck in this sport, we don't need to add another piece of luck. I don't know that random, random would be fun for a fan or broadcaster. Yes.

But when we're talking about like purity and performance and racers and how should it, how should it probably truly be done, it should be weighed more toward like your points position. Like you go out around cars that you're near. That's right. You're going to qualify around cars that you're competing with and points. I agree with that more than what we're doing now. far. Yeah.

Like, way more. You know, it's going to, the, it's going to be tougher for the guys that are way down in points, but you're down there because you're not fast. You got to try to work on your shit. But if you put together a couple solid races, you're. Climb several points in the, you know, you move up. I just think, I just think a DNF kicks you so far down.

Like you're in that, the jump. The first in qualifying. So the other thing, too, is that we qualify right after we practice. And I've done this in the O'Reilly series. The racetrack is awful. So you've practiced for an hour between the two groups. Track's got a ton of rubber on it. The first five, six cars, all they do is go out there and slide all over the place,

pulling up all this rubber. And they make the track really nice and green for the 15th car, the 10th car. Group two. And as the qualifying goes, the track improves. because it gets cleaner and cleaner and cleaner. So it's just an advantage. It's naturally getting faster. It's an advantage to go later.

I don't know how... You know, one thing they did at Bristol is right after practice, they sent pace trucks out there that ran around that racetrack, like 10, 20 laps. Picked up some stuff. And nobody was like... I was like, holy shit. That's nice.

And I was watching them. I'm sitting there one of the first cars to go out and qualify. And I'm in my car and I'm watching the rubber get picked up by the pace trucks. And I'm like, yeah, tell them, keep going. Keep going. That's nice. Yeah. Go faster. Yeah. And so the track was actually improved by that. And you can see it. Like the track changes color. Yeah. And I ended up going out there. I can't qualify for, I qualified 15th. Yeah, I remember that. Going third or something. It was awesome. Yeah, I remember that. Had the paste truck's not done that, I'd have qualified 25th or worse.

There's just, there's just so much compounded on it. Like, you go out, you go out in the top five, you have a bad run because the track's bad. Then guess what? You pick, you pick your pit so you have a terrible pit. You can't bail out, get bailed out that way at all. There's just so much stuff that stacks up. Yeah. They need to come up with, I wonder if they could come up with an apparatus that they could take around the racetrack for a couple of laps that could try to pick up a majority of the

rubber that they've laid down. Like track packers kind of? Yeah. So if they had like this thing that had like two or three rows and it was like maybe 10 tires wide. Of tires, yeah. Just old tires. Just old tires.

And it's like 10 tires, three rows deep. It's this long trailer of just tires. And you go out there and this thing just runs around the track about three or four times in the groove, right, and just tries to get as much of that rubber up as it can. Yeah. That might, because I'm telling you, it's made a big difference at Bristol. And I don't see them doing that everywhere, especially the larger tracks. They don't even do it.

They just in practice and send the first guy for qualifying out minutes later. Yeah, 10 minutes. And he's out there on that old rubbered up track, no grip. And it doesn't drive anything like what he last remembers it either. No, because he wasn't, yeah. Track was green as shit when he was out there. Yeah, that's what I mean. I just think there's too many things.

It's too big of a gap. Yeah. But. All right. Shout out the legacy for their improvement over the last couple of weeks. Two top 10 finishes this weekend at Pocono. They've been gaining on it. Jimmy and his team went to the last.

long way to get the, get to where they're going, but they're making it. Why do you say the long way? Well, the rumor is, is that when Jimmy got a hold of this race team, they could take all of the tools that Toyota has, SIM, and all of these things, and use it basically all the same stuff that JGR has, but I think Jimmy and his groups decided to build their own sim and build their own programs and build their own tools. They get a lot of information from Toyota around arrow mapping and bodies and all of the wind tunnel stuff. They get all of this great same information.

But the tools they use in-house, they wanted to build them themselves. And that took a while for them to get up to speed. I believe they're also paying JGR now for some information. They may be. They're doing it the right way. It took a while to get here, but I believe this is sustainable. You're saying there's a wrong way? I think it's sustainable

what they're doing. Yeah, it's good to see them up there. This isn't a pop and a flash because they've done that in the past. No, yeah. They'll show up and just be good for no damn reason. The 43, dude, I'm in Michigan, the 43 drove through the field.

Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. Guess what? We are coming to San Diego. We got two live shows for you. Friday the 19th, there's Dirtymo Live, presented by the U.S. Navy. We will be on the NASCAR experience. stage at 1045 local time.

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Check them out on shop. dirtymobedia.com. All right, so we've got Chris Gell calling in to the Dale Jr. Download today. Chris, crew chief for Denny Hamlin. And we have celebrated Denny for a lot over the last several weeks. And we'll celebrate him some more for another win at Pocono. But a guy that I don't know that's getting a lot of credit, and maybe he doesn't care.

He doesn't mind either way. But is Chris Gail crew chief for Denny. And he's here today. So thank you, Chris, for coming on. Congratulations on a hell of a run. and, you know, there's a lot here, but one of the things that I find really interesting having been so close to the sport over the last several weeks.

Obviously, I've tried to watch it and stay plugged in best I can, but, man, being on the broadcast team, you kind of get behind some closed doors and some conversations and you really get to hear about details. The Toyota has done a great job. The Toyota Company Group, all of them have done a good job of coming together and developing an incredible car and a great engine package.

It's whatever the road map's been over the last couple of years. It's been a smart one because y'all are above and beyond the other manufacturers. But aside from that, you have extracted more speed out of your particular Toyota than the other teams. Or you found something between you and your driver it seems to really, really match well with what this car needs, particularly late in the race. I'm fascinated by that.

Denny has talked about, man, my restarts need to get better. We watch the times. We watch practice. We see he doesn't really fire off and throw a lap down. The 45's faster most often. The 20 might be faster. His either, even competitors will say that Denny ain't the quickest car on the racetrack. But man, it lap 10, 20, 30.

30, he is. He's the best car on the racetrack in the long run. I know you're keeping all this close to your vest, but how are you guys able to do this? I know Denny's a big part of that, and he works really hard at his craft. But speak to the way that you've been able to stand out amongst your peers in the Toyota camp.

Well, I think that you're spot on with that, right? So, like, I think it was around Vegas last year, right, where Denny hadn't quite run well at Vegas, and we kind of, I don't want to say stumbled across something. We were doing something at some other racetracks at intermediates that we thought, this might not apply to Vegas. It's a little rough. There are a lot of things going on here that are different than other racetracks. And we kind of took a chance on exploiting some of that there. And honestly, it worked better than we thought, right?

We were really strong at the end of that race. And we've kind of just taken that base package and exploited that at more. and more racetracks with the intermediate package. And I think that, you know, Denny already had the natural strength to where he was better on the long run, right, than the short run. He knows to take care of his tires. He tries not to push it on the front side with anything that's going to hurt him on the backside of the run.

So if anything, like you alluded to, we've almost over the last few weeks needed to work on restarts. And I think you've seen a little bit of that here lately. Now, some of that is maybe there's a very small contribution to car balance. you know, if you want to be really good in the long run, it's no secret that the next-gen cars wind up going loose, right? Air pressures build, diffuser comes up higher at the end of the runs. So we could affect that a little bit, but I think some of it's a conscious effort on Denny's part on the restarts with car placement and what he's doing there and then aggression level. But definitely, we've exploited a few things that, you know, we didn't think we're going to necessarily work out well or we were skeptical about it.

And it's turned out better than we thought. and we've been able to just bring it to more and more race tracks. The Chevroletes have a new body that they've been working on. They seem to be extracting a little more pace out of their cars. They still struggle over the course of the run, but they are getting there. You know, that's the thing about this sport that's so fascinating is the ebb and flow of competition and organizations. you know, how do you guys continue to drive yourself to keep that advantage? You know that this is a long play here, and you have the chase coming up.

You're in a really, really good spot points-wise, but you know when it comes down to those final 10 races, that gap's closing a little bit with the Chevroletes. How do you motivate your team to continue to build performance? Yeah, I mean, personally, I think it's simple, right? Like we've, those guys are really coming in with a new car and having to do a lot more experimenting and trying to find things, right? We have had the same body for a while now, right, to where we've really refined and know what we're kind of going after. I think for us, we've got to not get complacent in that, not get happy with where we are.

But I think we have a group of people around us, the 11th, Toyota, JGR as a whole, who still are willing to try things that might be on the fringes. I just alluded to a, you know, a Vegas setup thing that we tried last year. When we were running pretty well, we could have not done that, but you're trying to think forward, right? Okay, what's the next step? How do we still continue to get better? And with the next-gen car, right, you're not going to typically find the one trick that you're going to be able to get away with anymore, right? I think those days are gone. I mean, it's making the wheel a little rounder in every area, right?

And I think that's the part when you're so, you know the car so well. you know the system so well that now you can just keep implementing those little changes to like okay now we can get a couple percent better here a couple percent better in this area and you just stack them and i think that's what this racing is all about now with next gen with spec cars with you know all these things that are parts that aren't in your control anymore it's how can i take these parts and how can i collectively put them together to get the most out of them yeah that's very fascinating you mentioned how the racing has changed and how the how NASCAR at the cup level has changed. And I don't want to use F1 as a comparison or, you know, say that I don't want to speak

too much F1 around our sport, but it really is trending in that direction. I think that Toyota's doing this amazing job of collaboration among teams. I know that Legacy went the long way around to get what they needed and they wanted to create some of their own tools. But I also know, speaking with some representatives, some Toyota, the collaboration in the Toyota group among all cars is better. It's just better than what Chevrolet and what Ford's doing. And that's hard to get everyone to buy in, right? It's hard to get all crew chiefs, car owners, everyone, engineers,

everyone to sort of be on the same page, even in the same building, much less other organizations trying to stay on the same page together. How important is that to the success y'all are having and that you see in legacies find their speed finally? That's a real thing. That's not like a pop-off, you know, one-off. And how are you, what's the messaging to sell to all of the Toyota teams that we all need to continue to collaborate so that we, you know,

we're the ones out there winning these races. not allowing the other manufacturers to figure this out and catch us. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's hard for me to speak to what other teams are doing, right? I've grown up in the Toyota family. I've grown up here at JGR since 2002. So as soon as Toyota was involved in the sport, you know, I've pretty much only seen that side. I've seen a small, you know, sample size of how Chevrolet was at that time when we were kind of the third tier team and how those tiers kind of worked. But when Toyota came over, right, it was always going to be this.

one team approach across all of their cars, which started off as JGR, then Michael Walchip. And I think as that ended and has Toyota gotten more and more involved with bringing other teams back in, it's always been about, you know, the rising tide helps all boats float higher. And then we've kind of taken that approach where if we, you know, put aside some of our individual preferences and say, what's better for the collective group, how do we communicate amongst all of us so that we're not wasting time. You know, arrow program-wise, we're not splitting in different directions doing totally different things with one group versus another.

And there's more of a unified approach, you know, I think that that's what helps everything. And if you just do that from the car side, from the engine side, from the arrow side, where you don't get off on these tangents that maybe don't make sense to the direction you're going, eventually, you know, maybe there's a good idea out there on a tangent somewhere. but it's so different than the direction we were already going that it doesn't it doesn't help you get to the end goal faster right so i think it's it's kind of like pulling the rope in one direction if you get everybody on board and we're pulling this direction even if it's not a hundred percent right you get so many people on board that eventually you get there faster right and i think that that's

exactly what happens with a toyote approach here i got a question for you so i feel like every time we get to this part of the year the denny's usually pretty strong and we're all kind of thinking you know is this the year? Is this Denny's year finally? Is he going to get the championship? Is there a different approach that you think plan on taking or will take or think Denny needs to take for this to be the year to get the championship? You know, I think that this playoff format, this point system fits him well. I agree. I don't think that there needs to be a different approach. I'm of the opinion, you know, we can look forward and talk about all kinds of possibilities and how we should do this. I take it one race at a time.

You know what I mean? That is what has got us to this point. One win at a time, one race at a time, one practice session. Okay, how do we just optimize the next one? How do we do that better? I think that, you know, that has served us well in the short span that I've been as crew chief. I don't see a reason to change that to this point now. And I think that just knowing, you know, he's had, right, I think I saw a stat.

He's one of three drivers who has more wins than DNFs. You know, I think that he's very aware of how to race and how to be, you know, race savvy. And I think that all that, if we just worry about bringing good cars, the strategy about the race in front of us and don't get ahead of our skis, that that's what's going to get us there. Yeah. You can only control what you can control. Correct. You guys done a great job over the last couple of weeks closing the gap to Tyler Redick for the points lead. And it's really that one win difference, Tyler with five, you guys with four, that separates you at 19 points.

for the most part. You go into a couple road courses. Denny will publicly downplay his excitement around those events, but I know behind closed doors, he's probably very, very devoted and working extremely hard to try to perform as well as he can. Reddick is pretty solid at the road course races. This is such a unique event that we're going into at San Diego.

And if we look back at anything that we've ever done that's new, particularly Chicago street course. Anytime we try anything new, it's chaos. It is. And it's going to be just, there is so many things waiting for us at San Diego that we're not even aware of that are going to be problematic. And Denny will be an advantage to you guys because of his approach

and his sturdy and steady approach to things. You know, how's your confidence level, I suppose, going into these next two events? He's actually had a couple of solid days out at Sonoma, where he showed speed and been capable of winning that race. How do you guys continue to carry this momentum forward going into a couple of road courses, knowing how important trying to be able to claim that points lead is? Yeah, I agree with you on the San Diego thing. I don't think any of us know exactly what to fully expect, right? We can run all the simulator laps we want to run, which is a guess on grip level and everything that's going to happen.

happen. It's a simulation and it's probably as far off as it's ever been when you don't have an actual racetrack to correlate it to. I think it's going to be complete chaos. I think the track's going to get blocked. I think there's going to be a lot of stuff like that. And I think that Denny is very aware of, okay, I probably don't have the outright speed to go beat Tyler Redick here. But what I can do is avoid trouble all day. I can, you know, not get myself into some situation where I'm putting toe links on this thing because I'm getting myself. above driving above my capabilities, you know, at this. And I think that that's what we're really focused on these next two is just trying to not bleed points, get the best finish we can, maximize our day, you know, which I know sounds cliche, but, you know, at a place where it's not necessarily your strength, I don't know what else to do specifically when you're going into an unknown weekend and a chaotic weekend. You know, I think that it's going to be that simple for us. You know, Sonoma, I feel like we haven't brought the best car. And to be quite honest with you, we've had cars that have run good there, right?

Like the 20 and the 19 were really strong last year. And we'll probably lean on those two guys and pick pocket their setup a little more and then just kind of tune on it for Denny and take that approach at a place like Sonoma. But I don't know that San Diego's necessarily anybody's going to know for sure. You just adapt after practice once we can kind of tune in things a little better. Denny has a habit of having a light bulb moment in the middle of the night and jumping on Sim in the morning. And he's not afraid to try to apply this Sim. I was just talking to some SVG, for example.

He's not a big Sim guy. He'll race on eye racing at home, but he doesn't really get to the manufacturer Sim too often. So everybody, we've seen it. Every driver is across the board unique on how they trust or apply the Sim. but it seems to be Denny's very open-minded to having it be a benefit to him. How much some time have you been spending with him in preparing for San Diego? I know running a lap there. Just doing two hours, you might get 15 laps.

But how much work have you guys done in the Sim? Yeah, I mean, we're probably two sessions in, which is about a, call it three hours total, just over three hours total, which, like you said, we're only just over 100 laps right around that to this point. We'll have a big session Wednesday where we'll probably do at least another hundred laps more like hour and a half, three hours, right? But you kind of take it in steps, particularly with a new track, right, where, you know, maybe grip levels up and he's just learning the track, right? How does he get his rhythm? It takes a lot longer at a road course to kind of get where he's good enough, where he's kind of conditioned enough to where now I can throw changes at

and he can actually tell something other than he's just getting better with reps each lap. So I think that's the harder part on road course. And then you alluded to it, right? We're going to be, we think, just over two-minute laps or whatever. I mean, a 50-minute practice session, we get cautions in it. What are these guys going to get? 12 to 15 laps maximum. Maybe. Maybe.

Yeah, we've got way more tires, too. Yeah, we've got way more tires, right? Yeah, we've got three sets of tires. I don't know why. Well, there's no way you're going to have time to four or three sets of tires on this thing. Yeah. Yeah, they're going to be learning at the start of the race still. And so, I mean, Sim is kind of what you've got.

And to be quite honest with you, Denny's done a great job of embracing SIM for what it is, right? It's not perfect. It's for sure imperfect. You know, it's not perfect and it's tires. It's all these things that you tweak to make the SIM better that make it useful. And so really, it's the process of how you use it and what can you glean out of it. It's not going to be 100%, but there's going to be something you pick out of it that does apply. And how do you do that? And I think Denny's been very open to doing that, you know, and it just shows his leadership, you know, at JGR, you know, with some of the other drivers and how he's been willing to adapt and do things differently, that keeps giving him an advantage.

Yeah, I agree with that, man. I appreciate you talking about that a little bit because I do, I feel like that some guys just write the SIM off, and I know it's, I know that they feel like, man, I get in the SIM and I, and I feel like I'm hurting myself. I feel like I'm taking myself backwards. But to your point, if you, if you apply. a certain approach to the sim,

there's some things to be learned. Yeah, he's spot on with that. And Denny, right? Denny should help, you know, part of this is the driver should help you get better at doing it. He knows the field. He makes it better. Yeah, correct. So his feedback drives the development path that we make with the Sim.

Yeah, I agree. I thought Chicago was hard to learn on the Sim. Then I went and ran this place. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I know. Oh, yeah. It's going to be something.

It's true to be. Well, good luck. I really appreciate your time today. you know, we've had a lot of opportunities to talk to Denny, and I've been thinking a lot about you over the last couple of weeks and how much of a role you've played in the success of this race team. And great to get you on here and to talk to you a little bit about that. And we'll see you out in San Diego.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Chaos, but it should be a good time. Absolutely. It'll be something new. It'll be enjoyable, right? Absolutely. All right, buddy. We'll see you.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets. Ladies and gentlemen, get your better. All right, it's time for Dirty Mode. We are on our own today. Russell is busy, I suppose. He can't predict the road course. Yeah, he doesn't want to come around.

No, he doesn't want to get shown up this week. Well, this segment is brought you by Fanjew. Fanjewel, the premier gaming destination of the United States. There's no lines yet, but SVG is the... favorite. And that's the question. It's like, you know, just how badly is SVG going to beat these guys? Anytime we go to a road course that no one has been on, it exaggerates his advantage. Like, he's just going to be miles better than all these other drivers. It takes me back to Chicago. Oh, man, he's just going to destroy the field. They're just going to have to

hope that something about that car fails. Something. I don't see him making mistakes and crashing, or doing anything like that. There's going to have to be a failure of some sort. He can run to 9 out of 10 at this place and still be. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is his back. I mean, this is what he does. A name that I didn't put on here,

just remember it is Project 91, which is where SVG started, is back with Kevin Magnuson, the F1 driver. Yeah, but I don't. Do we think that he's going to be like what the typical ringers used to do

come in and kind of be good, but, or do we think that he can actually like top 10? Top 10. I think he can top 10. I think SVG's got them cars dialed in really good now. He's just got to figure the car out, but he's a race car driver. He'll figure it out.

Yeah. Because I just wonder also you've got all of SGG's information, so his setup's probably going to be, you know. It's definitely shown his input and how he's learned this car and what he needs, and it's definitely shown. I mean, we've seen it. So SGG doesn't a great job of picking that program up, I think, on the Roadcourse stuff. Who else do we think could honestly...

I think Zillich, but... I mean, he's going to be against the odds to begin with, but he should have enough raw speed, I think. It starts showing at Coda and stuff. You saw some, you know, you could see some speed out of him. I think he could have a, I think Connor could really have a good run. He could have a good West Coast trip. If he runs good at San Diego, he'll carry that momentum into Sonoma.

Well, I got some average finishes over the road courses with the next gen. Shane obviously stands out among the field with 14 starts with an average advantage of 6.7. Busher is next, just barely edging out Tyler Reddick. So I like Tyler Redick a lot to go out there and perform. I think he's under a little bit of pressure having his points lead dwindle down to 19 over his over Denny, and I think he sees this as an opportunity for two weeks in a row

at San Diego and Sonoma to build back on that points lead. He knows he's probably going to have to to be able to keep it for the remainder of the regular season. I know we're not supposed to say regular season. That's what it is. But it is what it is. Busher, I mean, I think he'll have a top ten. He's a top ten guy.

Let's put Busher down for a top ten on our parlay. The driver I thought would have had a top ten, but I'm not so sure now is Christopher Bell. Yeah. Well, it'll be tough for him. going to be very uncomfortable. The other driver that I like, and he's down this list of ways, is Ty Gibbs. Just really impressed with his speed at the road courses.

He had a good run last year at a couple of road courses. And so we went to Mexico City, for example, which was kind of a course that not a lot of us had a ton of experience at. Not a lot of our guys have had many, many miles at. And he went out there and ran really well. I like Reddick, I like Ty Gibbs, and I like MacDowell, and AJ. When you think about why SVG is going to be at a huge advantage over the field because none of these guys have seen this place.

And if you take him and the rest of the field to attract, they've never seen, he's going to hit it and adapt to it quickly and just be. faster all weekend. You're never going to be able to match him. We have other road course specialists in the field that I also believe will have that same advantage, and that's guys like McDowell and AJ. I know we talk about AJ a lot, but McDowell's a road course racer. Yeah. And so, and he had a great run at Watkins Glen, Spires on the uptick. Wouldn't be surprised to see. I like Suarez. You like Suarez, too? I like Swarres. I agree. I do. I like Swaros there. Yeah.

He's good at, he just, he's just good at these types of things. He's good at grinding them out. Like this, yeah. Let's talk about our top 10 parley. So I want to put Tyler Reddick, I want to put Ty Gibbs, McDowell, and Almondinger, all in the same parlay to top 10 this. And let's do it. All right.

We ain't working next week if it, if, if, if, if, well, we know SVG is going to, we know SVG is going to be in there. You might as well throw them in there. It probably won't move the line much, but go ahead. predicting half of the top 10. If you bet this, you bet this in a win and it hits. That vacation's going to be sweet.

So let's go. Tyler Reddick, Ty Gives, Almondinger, McDowell. Those four. Why not? No, I'm saying I like it. That's why I... I like Swares over McDowell, but I still roll with it.

Well, you know, I'm good with that too. If you want to pull McDowell and slide Swarres in there, but I'm going to try, I'm going to go with McDowell because of what I saw at the Glenn. Yeah, he did running good there. I agree. I just feel like we're, you know, I feel like at this place,

there's going to be some, there'll be some anomalies. There'll be some cars that absolutely nail the setup. And there'll be guys that run good that shouldn't. I think back to the first race at the Chicago Street course and it was a homeboy in the seven. Or no, he was racing for, colleague. Justin Haley.

Remember SVG had to pass his ass for the lead? Yeah, he was running good. Yeah. So, I mean, there'll be one of those guys. A weird caution is going to... Yeah, but also, to nail the setup. Somebody's going to, like, accidentally nail the setup. Yeah.

Accidentally. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And it'll be, there'll be a name in that top 10, and you'll be like, dang, like a Ty Gillen or something. Chicago. did have that because you had Joey Hand was up there as well. I was like, dang, where is he? Where do you go from?

And two, yeah, the strategy will vary. I think, you know, I think the length of the track, there'll be some funky things that might happen. There'll be some weird time cautions. We might end up learning that they just absolutely can't pass. And so, and there'll be a bunch of people getting junked. Like getting down into turn two and stuff like that,

there'll be some junk-ass race cars. That may happen to one of our guys that were betting. for the top 10. But I think there'll, I think there'll be a larger amount of attrition, you know, bent toe links like that, cars slapped up against the concrete. And I think that, you know, there'll be more problems with that going. But, you know, we'll just have to see. In the O'Reilly series, we got to talk about this one because there's no.

Conor Zillich, and there's no SVG. All right? So we've got a little driver list printed. So let's look at this list and talk about who could come out here and surprise because SVG and Connor's not in the race. They're going to both be racing at Sonoma next weekend for Junior Motorsports or the weekend after. I'm sorry.

So who is your favorite to go into San Diego out of the O'Reilly series? A guy that I think I want to put on my line. list. I don't know if it's Sam Mayor. I think Sam Mayer's a tenacious

little road course racer. Coming off of some good momentum from Pocono. Carson Quaple

is a good road course. He's a solid little road course racer as well. Going on down the list here. Justin will be

tough as usual. Brent Cruz will be very tough. Britt Cruz is probably maybe my favorite because this guy's run a lot of Trans Am, I believe. He has a lot of road course training, experienced, laps.

I feel like that he'll be a tough one to compete with. Let's see. I'd say Austin Green. Austin Green will top ten it with that car. Yeah, I like Austin Green. He'll just make no mistakes and go out there and do it. All right, so I'm going to probably put, I'm going to probably put Brent Cruz at the top of the list to go out there

and be the favorite to win the race. And behind him is going to be Justin Alguire, Sam, Mayor, maybe Carson Quappell, and also late in the race, Austin Hill. Austin Hill, this guy, he'll qualify 8th, 10th, something like that, but he is a grinder. He is. And you're going to have that late stage,

caution, restart with, you know, five to go, and he'll be lined up in row two. And you'll be like, where's his ass been all day? You know, because he'll be running seventh and eighth

all day long. Yeah, and he's usually not the one getting pushed out of the way. He's the one doing to pushing. He's the bowling dog. He is the bowling ball late in the race,

not the bowling pin. And it's, it's either it's either yeah yeah yeah it's either be the bowl ball be the bowling pins there's no middle ground now late in those races so that race is going to be chaos i think the truck race will as well um honestly i think the o'rally race will probably be the one with the most chaos don't you for whatever reason the truckers i don't know that they're i mean they'll have their share of mistakes i feel like they get spread out a little bit more distance between yeah the rally cars there's a little less parity in the truck series yeah i agree they were all they're cars you'll have a good little there's a lot of good road course racers in in okay decent uh cars in the rally series this is going to make that top 15 tight yeah yeah brent cruise is our favorite i agree all right um that's it for dirty mo do thank you guys and thank you fan duel for the premier gaming destination in the united states hey everybody check it out man i got some jerky boys here i've been eating on that this morning um

Jerky boys, hey, by the way, if you're in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, it's a great place to go. Take your family. They have a huge aquarium. Massive. It's badass.

But they got a lot of stuff to do in Gatlinburg. One of the, it is the biggest attraction on the strip in Gatlinburg is Sugarlands. They have the most foot traffic. Yeah. No one, no, has more foot traffic than Sugarlands.

We are now selling jerky boys in the Sugarlands building. I saw that. Yeah, so when you go in there and you're doing some sips and tasting some stuff. Get some jerky. And maybe getting some high rock vodka. Pick up some jerky boys. You make a bloody bear with high rock. Dips some jerky boys in it.

Stir it. Jerky boys is killing it. So anyhow, how's everybody doing? Let's bring everybody over here. Everybody high from central New York. Is there any jerky boys in the Tahoe? Yeah, I'm sure there'll be some jerky boys in the Tahoe. I can confirm that.

I can talk about Windale Jr.'s ride. We'll definitely put some in there. If you're looking for jerky boys, you can buy it on our website or you can buy it on Amazon as well. And we're starting to get it in some stores. Good question here. Do you stay in touch with the Yuri family? Absolutely. Me and Tony Jr. talk all the time.

I'll reach out to Pops every now and then to see how he's doing. They still go to the racetrack. Tony Jr. is still building race cars, still racing like hell. Let's get to it. We got some questions. First off, I want to thank Xfinity for raving the red flag on Internet price hikes and raising the green flag for savings. You get the speed and reliable Wi-Fi that you need. Locked in one price five years.

No surprises. No late yellows. Thank you, Exfinity, for being a badass partner here at Dirty Moe. and let's get to the questions. So I think there's two popular questions. Number one is, who is Jimmy Jam? Jimmy Jam. So Jimmy Johnson for when, you know,

I've known Jimmy since he started racing in the O'Reilly series. He drove the Kingsford number 59 at St. Louis. And he, we've been friends all through the years. And he always got accused of being too vanilla. and he race for Rick Hendrick and they were buttoned up and proper and polished and Jimmy wouldn't never really show his personality or people thought that his personality was super vanilla but I knew it wasn't I've been around him he's a wild man like to party like to raise hell but he just didn't like to share that with people and I don't know that

loz appreciated him doing that either I'm not really sure what his reasoning behind kind of keeping his personal life or his true personality so suppressed. But we used to joke, and he would tell, he told me this. He goes, man, when I go party and raise hell, that's Jimmy Jam. You know, otherwise, I'm Jimmy Johnson. And so we would joke with him like, hey, man, let's go, we're going to go do this thing. Are we going to see Jimmy Jam? And he's like, yeah, Jimmy Jam's going to come out.

so and he's we I went golfing with him one time and we're on the golf course and we're playing through a couple holes and we get toward the end and he's like hey man if you want a mulligan all you got to do is shotgun of beer and so you know three holes later we're all you know we're all in bad shape because we kept on you know shotgun and beers for mulligans and he broke his arms, you know, way back in the day because he was on top of a golf cart surfing.

I mean, this guy's a ton of fun. He is. Yeah, I could go on and on. Well, he had this viral moment just recently, a couple days ago. He was at the 24 hours of Lamont. He was having a great time. and apparently, you know, got roped into an interview that he did while he was on another planet. My man was raising hell.

And so he must have been going all day to, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that, that's, that's, that, that's, that's, that, that's, that's, that's, that's, that wasn't just a couple pop. No, no. Um, but good for him, man. Yeah, it was awesome. And I was telling, I'm like, dude. And he's so, like, like. I'll be honest, like he doesn't mind us talking about that. He doesn't prefer it.

And he wished that it wouldn't have happened. And he doesn't like, you won't get him like, you won't catch him sort of like laughing about it. You know what I'm saying? But I've told him a thousand times. I'm like, dude, I told him in the text message. I said, if you'd have done that in 2002, I would never won a most popular driver award.

You would have won it. I was like, if you could have shown that side of yourself back when you were winning all those damn races and people would have known this dude's a good time and not stiff, things would have been a whole lot different. But, you know, that's who that's who he is. That guy's, that's Jimmy, that's the Jimmy I know. He's a lot of fun. It's kind of like Derek Tudor with the Yankees. Is that right? Like you had this image you upheld and, you know.

That's right. You didn't really see him doing anything wild off. but you knew that he had fun. I remember the first time that you took me to Jimmy's house because he lived next to Jimmy Ellage. Yeah, we went over there and dude, super fun. Yeah. Like, yeah, well, you're right.

If people would have saw that side of Jimmy then, yeah, he's awesome. And, you know, and I know these days he's got a company to run and an image to uphold. And I don't think that he did anything to, you know, to change anybody's opinion about him. If anything, people just see he's a human being and having a good time while he's out there.

So all good. And, yeah, we're going to work together a little bit on the TNT side of things. We got our TNT five races coming up starting in Sonoma. So we're in this text message, and we've been giving Jimmy a hard time over there over the last couple of days. And that conversation or that video, it might come up during our five race series with TNT. We might have to ask Jimmy's, you know, on there exactly what was going on. But anyways, good stuff. Everybody appreciates Jimmy just being a badass race car driver and a good dude.

I know that he's introduced me to a whole bunch of shit I probably never would have done or took him the time to do. I learned how to ski through he encouraged me to go out to Aspen. And I'm like, man, I don't want to ski. I don't care about that. I don't want to blow my knee out. I'm not all into that. Y'all go on and do it.

And he's like, nope, nope, you're coming, you're doing it. And it's been, and now, you know, we go skiing once a year, me and my family. And so, riding bikes and trying to, you know, trying to get in the shape and do better there. I rode 2,400 miles in 2017 because of Jimmy. I never would have rode one mile if it hadn't been for that guy. Yeah. And, you know, so he's just a great dude. He's always in.

Last year he took me, the Mears, the Kansas on this trip to Ireland and London. And just he's like, hey, all set up. We got it. You know, y'all just come on, have fun. And just a good dude. Next question is people want to know how excited are you to be calling the race from an aircraft carrier? That's a real deal, man. That's badass.

We're going to get on this aircraft carrier and we're going up in the tower and we're calling the race from the control tower, and we can see some of the race track from where we're at. So we'll be able to get the vibe. I would hope so. Well, I'm just saying, like, when we're, you know, I don't like not being able to see the damn racetrack. I don't like that. Yeah, flat, too, hard to see.

And so there's, and I just, not so much, and I know there's been this conversation on, for a long time now, about being at the studio or at. at the track and all that. I'm just saying I want to be there to feel the energy of the event happening, right, in real time. Yep. And that feeds into the... Like Chicago. Good time.

Chicago was good. Yeah. Well, Chicago wasn't because we were in a... Radio stuff. Oh, that's right. I was in a... No. The fuel event was good.

Last year, I was in a rented... It was a shipping container. No shit. And we were two blocks from the racetrack. looking at monitors. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And I got, you know, Stefan?

Yeah. So I told Stefan, I was like, Stefan, come and sit in this shipping container with us, and there's a monitor over here on our right. So we got the production in front of us, the real what you're seeing on TV. And over to our right, we had a big wall of like 12 monitors,

and they were just fixed monitors on all the turns. And I was like, Stefan, you stare at those, and if you see a car stopped, or if you see anybody hit anything, I don't give a shit what you see. You slap me in the arm and you tell me what it was. And so I think I'm going to try to get Stefan up in that aircraft carrier, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to get him the access we need.

Might be a little tougher. Because I don't like the miss shit, you know. I don't like there for a car to be sitting there for 15 seconds and us not know it. Did you do a corner at Chicago the first year? Yeah, radio style. Yeah, radio style. That's right. Not my favorite.

We did radio style at Pocon. I felt so terrible. Like I felt like there's no way this can be good to listen to. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm not a radio guy. I'm just not cut out for it. No.

Yeah. But. Next question. I forget who it was in the chat. They want to know, why don't we see more drivers become crew chiefs? You want to know a funny story about radio style from Pocono? Let's hear it.

So I'm in the tunnel at Pocono. And I'm up on this perch just outside the turn. And we're doing radio style. Here they come. Coming at me. Four wide. Whoa.

This guy's in the lead. There they go. And middle, when I had my bus there. And when the race gets about halfway, my bus driver's like, all right, I'm out of here. Complete race. You're not spending the night. I'm going home.

I'm going to leave early. Bye. My bus is pulling out of the racetrack. And we're calling the race. I'm like, here to come down the straight away. two by two, oh, three wide into the tunnel. Such a such takes a lead. My bus driver drives out the tunnel, and he had one of the,

there's underneath the bus at the bottom, there's these doors and there's these storage areas. One of those doors was open, and he went through the tunnel and ripped the door off. Oh, no. And so I'm calling the race, and I turn around and watch him drive out with the door, the door dragging the ground behind him,

hanging on by one hinge. Did you commentate that? Yeah. No, but he pulls over, stops, gets out, walks around it, and I'm sitting there calling the race, watching him, looking at all that. I'm like, God, dang. And he was so embarrassed.

Oh, I bet. But I'm like, what's he going to do? How's he going to? He can't drive? I mean, there's in the storage unit now that it's exposed. He's trying to leave. He's got to figure out. So he got a piece of plywood, cut it,

screwed it in there, and drove on to the next racetrack. I had to go straight from there to the next race. But I'm sitting there in the middle of calling that radio style while that's happening. Trying not to like lose it. Lose it. Yeah. Was that the camper or the motorhome? That was a nice one.

Yeah. The fifth wheels, nice, but yeah, that camper was tough. I was like, shit. Not right now. Like we're right in the middle of this. Yeah, yeah. Back to the question. Why don't we see drivers become crew chiefs?

Because they're not engineers. What are you talking about? They do. I mean, you're literally talking to one. Oh, I meant to ask you that last week, too. Like, man, what's it like going back to your, your polka to win? Is that a real question? Someone in the chat wanted to know.

Huh. Well, I think TJ answered it, though. Wow. They're not engineers. Like, Danny submitted, Kyle Larson, like, they don't know the, they don't know how to get the car set up and stuff. They just know how to drive it. Yeah. Well, um, there's.

a lot of drivers there's a lot of drivers that do become crew chiefs you just never heard about them because they were drivers at their local racetrack and they weren't given or provided the opportunity to advance their career

and they had to make a decision to become an engineer an eventual crew chief so there's a lot of examples of guys if you went through the Cup garage or the O'Reilly garage, I bet you would find 40% of the crew chiefs have driven race cars.

Oh, maybe more. Right? An ARCA. You go to ARCA level. Oh, yeah. A lot of them. Yes. So Boswell on the three car,

raced pro cup for junior motorsports. And I remember vividly where, I mean, this guy's thinking, race car driver, I want to become a race car driver. I'm driving for pro-crup for junior motorsports. What's the next thing I need to do to get to the next opportunity? He raced an Xfinity race at Memphis for junior motorsports in the number five. And did pretty solid, qualified top 10, would have run top 10, got spun out underneath somebody got turned around on a late restart.

But I remember the day where me and him had to sit down and I said, man, I said, I think you've got to make a choice here to change. change your path and it was the hardest decision he ever had to make in his professional mind to like give up on this dream but dude look at him out he's a cup crew chief he became an engineer here he did i said dude i think that's what you need to do it's like you're going to take yourself out of this race car over here that you're not going to ever drive again and you're going to go over there into an engineer room and try to you're to find your way toward the top as an engineer.

And he was like heartbroken to have to give up on his dream. But there's, and that is a similar story for a lot of guys that are in, in that garage. You just didn't know they drove. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's good. This one goes to Bluegrass Boy, had donated $5. And he said he's going to go see ACDC this summer.

He wants to know what's one of your go-to ACDC songs. Oh, man, Thunderstruck. Oh, once you hear that, it just... Yeah. I was a big Arturo Gotti fan, boxing. Arturo was a blood and guts, easily cut. A lot of times look like he's out on his feet and hit a guy with a punch out of nowhere and win the fight.

He got his ass kick a bunch as well. He took a lot of hits. He did. But his walkout was thunderstruck. and so that's probably why that's my favorite yeah it's not bad it's good one they got so many good ones though it's hard to the beginning of thunderstruck is just cool no it's the best yeah um speaking of boxing did how big did you have like a favorite fight that you grew up watching

um is anyone that like stuck out or uh Ali and Foreman is a great match that probably influenced my fandom even though I was too young to see that in real time you know Tyson so I was really young

when Tyson was doing what he was doing that was like the next Tyson fight was the most anticipated thing going like it was you you couldn't wait

to figure out when the next next Tyson fight was going to be, who was it going to be against, and how fast was he going to knock this guy out? Yeah. And there was a moment where, yeah, the next Tyson fight was the biggest thing happening. It was like, must see, everyone knows what they were doing. Biggest thing in sports. I think he got like that with Mayweather, too.

Like, we couldn't wait because he was going to fight him next. A little, but it wasn't like. The only thing with him was we wanted him to lose. Well, because he was more of it. We wanted Mike to keep winning. Mike was like going to go box. Floyd was like a tactician avoid the hits and stuff and just win. He literally just avoided the hits, let the other guy wear himself out.

He was a counter. I mean, Floyd was amazing, but it wasn't as fun. The Tyson run was insane. But I don't know that there's a Tyson fight that stands out to me. I was too young to remember the Tyson stuff. Yeah. But if I fast forward to becoming a Gotti fan, so I would just happen to be watching this.

boxing match and I think Goddy's was not even the god he was undercard undercard not well known but this one guy's just whooping his ass six rounds seven rounds in caught his cut oh he always he always got beat up bad and this guy's just controlling the fight and out of nowhere god he called him and laid him out and I was like holy I like that guy all right write him down who is he where does he fight next and so I started watching Gotti and then Gotti became a headliner or he was the undercard on a heavyweight

and he started becoming and they were you know they were talking about him like this is the guy he's blood and guts he's you know he comes from behind and you never know when he's when he's never out of it you know yeah and he would continue

to win fights that way he would get he's just standing there just getting destroyed and all of a sudden you know, he just nails the guy with a right hook or something. He didn't get destroyed in your ring. No. He did some destroy. Yeah.

And so, Arturo's trilogy with Mickey Ward is insane. He won a few of those. He lost a few of those. But in one of those matches, he breaks his hand. So he hit, I think he's his left hook, which was one of his, he used his left the most whichever side it was it was like a big detriment but he hits him on his on his

hip bone and broke his hand and he had broke that bone multiple times in fights so he breaks this bone in like round five finishes the fight one handed and wins it and um he got he sat there for about two rounds not throwing this

hand and after a while the adrenaline and the pain and all of that kind of goes away and he started fighting with the broken hand and throwing punches with it. These dudes are nuts. Yeah he's dude I'm telling you when he when those guys hit too you don't realize how strong they are until you hear him hit in person. If they hit you once we would be on the ground yeah oh we've seen it like it's yeah yeah I mean just a body blow and you're yeah killed over yeah so Anyways, I was a triple G fan. The thing about that is, is I saw him once live. You don't want to, so the triple G deal, I'm frustrated with it because I learned about him too late.

And that's the trick is like, you got a fun, you got to stumble. I love these guys. The band that was nobody. I like the guys that are knockout artists. I want to watch a fight, and I want the fight around pulling forward to be the guy that can lay them out. and I came on to Triple G too late. He was toward the end of his career. He was such a knockout artist that no one would fight him.

So he didn't really ever get his shots until he was like mid-30s. And then he was kind of starting to lose a little bit of his abilities. I didn't watch him. And he fought Canello multiple times. And there was one Conello fight that he arguably won. And that's another thing, man, the freaking judges. Like you're going into some of these matches knowing that they're not going to call it. straight. And if your guy's going to win, he's going to have to knock him out because they're not

going to give him a decision. Yeah, I agree. I'm not going to do it. I never watched him live, but I've gone down rabbit holes of Roy Jones Jr. Yeah. With his knockouts. I remember him. Yeah. He was, he had charisma. He did. His fights were anticipated as well, not on Tyson's level, but the Roy Jones run was really fun because everybody was talking about him, you know, when you were in school and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's a good place to stop for today. Heck yeah, man, that's a lot of fun. Appreciate everybody tuning in. We have a pretty good show for you today, a real good show.

Instead of Denny calling in, as we usually have the winner of the race, we had Chris Gale, his crew chief, talked to us and give us a little bit of insight into the success that they've been having. And I wanted to celebrate Chris because, you know, we've been promoting Denny and how much he's been doing. Yeah. But there's always a crew chief on top of the time. top of the pit box responsible for the speed in the car as well.

So, and I'm sure Denny appreciates that. But great show, and hopefully y'all will tune in when it comes out later today. We've got a great guest or two guests on tomorrow's guest segment that you don't want to miss. And don't forget San Diego coming up this weekend. San Diego, I predict chaos. I just think it's just going to be a madhouse, problematic issues, left and right, cars, stuck in barriers, all kinds of chaos going on at this racetrack. If you haven't checked out any of the online clips,

there's a lot of iraicing clips online of cars running laps around this track. We've never done anything like this. Three and a half miles. It's treacherous. It's imperfect. And we're just going to be pulling cars out of barriers all weekend. So I don't think it's something you want to miss.

If you can't be there in person, thank you, Exfinity, for waving the red flag on internet price hikes and waving the green flag on savings. You get the Wi-Fi and reliability you need. One price five years. No surprises, no late yellows. Thank you, Exfinity. Imagine that.

Thank you for joining us in the Arby's studio here. Don't forget about Arby's new meat in three blocks. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meets. We'll see you tomorrow. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.