The Dale Jr. Download - Beatin’ and Bangin’, Cheatin' Death & The Curse of the "She Said No"

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

The Dirty 30 brings you the best 30 minutes from Dirty Mo Media every Friday — the funniest, wildest, and most jaw-dropping highlights from your favorite shows. This week, Dale Jr. has high praises for Goodyear and thinks maybe we didn’t realize just how important the tire is. And, why he loves when cars are beating and banging against each other.Dale sits down with Truck Series mainstay Ted Musgrave where he talks about his near-death flight, battling cancer while racing for a championship, and the championship that got away.Plus, Dale and Amy recap how their boat day went that had Dale cussing and Amy worried they might be stranded on Lake Norman.  And for more content check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaDirty Mo Media is launching a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Dale Jr. Download merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuffFanDuel: Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, I'm Dillon Hart Jr., and this is the Dirty 30. The best highlights from all of our podcast this week, 30 minutes every single Friday, The Dirty 30 coming at you. Let's get right to it. This happens from time to time. We get ourselves a little bit mired in the conversation around, you know, the direction of the sport, and we do that from time to time. Well, things are good, things are good, and then something will happen.

There'll be a race. We got all riled up and social media gets us riled up. Yep. Man, it happens fast. Happen's fast. Things are great. Oh, sky's falling. Oh, things are good again.

Sky's falling. You could have five great races and one bad one, he races them all. Oh, yeah. But, and, you know, so I admit that. I admit we do that. But we got into a conversation and a debate with, you know there's a big there's a lot of people on social media

that have opinions about NASCAR good and bad right and of course I think everybody wants NASCAR to be awesome right and their version of awesome whatever that is right everybody wants NASCAR to succeed now there there might be some people out there

that won't NASCAR to fail but we don't pay attention to them people everybody that's in the room that's conversating whether they agree or not is in the end wanting the best for NASCAR, right? A successful NASCAR. But I'll tell you, you know, I've been talking about the short track package and how they need to act and they need to be working on it,

improving it, trying to make sure it's as good as it can possibly be. And they go out and have a great race. That's short track. Is there no problem? is there a no is there uh is the car the next gen car okay it short tracks now the tire like you were you were fighting the tire so much that you didn't have the grip the one thing that i asked for um at the short track races was for the guy if he was you know mad enough or aggressive enough if a guy wanted to drive down in the middle of corner and running the back somebody and knock him up

the track i wanted them to be able to do that even if that's not the wise decision i want those drivers to be able to make some fucking dumb decisions. And I mean, in the 80s, that's what I loved about NASCAR. And I loved that guys could run into each other and push each other around, you know, even in the 90s or, you know, all

my life growing up in NASCAR. NASCAR was hitting, pushing, shoving. My dad was very aggressive. Yeah. That's what it was built off. Yeah, I loved it. And with this car, my complaint a couple weeks go was that, you know, a guy

can't drive down in the corner and hit somebody in the back bumper and push them up the track because they would get arrow tight and lose the grip and they knew that that wasn't realistic. But they did it this weekend. The 99, Sorez knocked into the 54 up the track into the 45

hell of a wreck. You know, big drama. And I watched some of the race. You know, they're driving right on each other's asses in the corners. So maybe The tire is a bigger part of this than I realize Yeah, Goodyear's been crushing it first

Helping save NASCAR really You think about it Come on, man, it ain't saved it NASCAR is not dying Not like not saving the sport But like with this next-gen car Goodyear has been progressively trying more I think it's just that

The tire may be a bigger part of this than I even realize I think it's a huge part of it. Right. You know, I still, would I have built the car this way? No. And I said it, you know, four or five weeks ago, it is what it is. It ain't changing.

You know, a lot of money's been spent to get down to this far down the road, right? You'd have to spend that much money to get back, I'd assume. But the car is what the car is. So if we got what we got and Goodyear can do what they did, this past weekend. Maybe we kind of have an opportunity. Maybe this is light at the end of the tunnel. This is maybe this is the path toward something we can all appreciate.

What I did hear from Goodyear a couple of over the past probably two or three months, T.J. Is that they are pretty much at the end of their rope in terms of how soft they can build this tire until they can retool at the plant. So they want to go softer, even more. And a lot of opportunities throughout the season, they can get softer. But they need to be able to change the tooling at the plant on how they build the tire to be able to actually make it softer. So like they have exhausted themselves to be able to do what they did and provide us what

they did this weekend, which I appreciate they should be applauded. job good year and they want to go softer and try to get more aggressive but it's going to be it's going to take some time to be able to get what they need in their plant to be able to do it that's at least what I was told and that might be the tools to actually make the tire are actually the materials that the tire is made of but either way they're they intend to continue to travel further down this path so I'll I'll give credit where credits do man apparently you know this This one did really good on the gluck good race pole. I think 83, 86%, second overall Richmond since the pole's been taken.

Some shit like that. So anyways, either way, great race. And so, yeah, maybe the car really looks bad and frustrating when the tire is hard and not, you know, and not allowing the drivers to really, you know, do what they need to do. What other races are we going to get this tire from? Because I think that will help other future. Like, isn't New Hampshire getting the same tire? Look, I think going softer is great, and Goodyear needs to keep doing it.

And I think it's going to help us at a lot of racetracks. Awesome. But I couldn't tell you what to expect when we go to these races with this tire. Because the temperature seems to matter a lot. honestly when it's colder it seems to to do odd things right like it did at Bristol that day I'd have never assumed the cold temperature would have increased tire wear but what happened is is when it's cold the track don't rubber in the track don't adhere to the rubber and so it just stays green the track for the most part stays very green and very abrasive and so it just

continues to wear every tire you put on it and when the track when the track when the track is hot, for example, like the summer race at Dover, it rubbers the track in, gets really dark, and tire wear is bad until the track's rubbered in. When the track rubbers in, tire wear or tire durability improves, you know, you don't have tire wear as severely throughout the date. Is that something the teams can manage? Like, is that something you just say, hey, this is a soft control the weather? That's what I'm saying, though. Is that something like, hey, but Goodyear doesn't have to say it, we've got to bring a hard tire here in case it gets cold? You know what I mean? Like, is it something where, hey, this is a soft tire, manage it correctly?

That's my, that would, if I was good year, I'd be like, here's a tire, hope it lasts. Make it work. Yeah. Yeah, it's on your team. Yeah. Figure it out. I'm in agreement with that, for sure. I was not expecting the race to be as good as it was.

I guess I'll eat a little bit of crow. My NASCAR that I love, everybody's is different. The NASCAR that I love is, I love tire marks, donuts on the NASCAR. on the side of each other's cars. I loved walking into the shop and seeing, all right, if there's donuts on the right side, we're passing people. If there's donuts on the left side,

we must have been getting past. I love looking at a car and seeing the scrapes, the marks, the story. The fact that you could get to them points and have that. Yeah, and man, you know, the way the car has been racing, it's been tough for the drivers to be able to, you know, be aggressive with each other.

Now it's a tough little race car, and when they can, they beat the shit out of each other. They do, yeah. One thing that I could see differently as race is I could see the guys. You could see the guys fighting the handling on the exit of the corner. They could spin the tires. See the car boblin? You could see the car. And I went back and I was watching some in cars and I listened to Bowman's.

I was watching Bowman's in car. And, man, off of four a couple times. I mean, he was like, whoa, like how it used to be where if you just leaned into the throttle a little bit too much, it stepped out. Oh, yeah. And I love to hear that and see it. Yeah, I mean, making the cars harder to drive and more out of the racetrack at a place like Richmond or any of the short tracks is going to be beneficial. Tell me about the plane story, flying with, I guess, Mark Martin in his plane. There was a bit of a close call.

Well, when you said plane, I don't know. I had so many of them. Really? Really? Well, kind of. You know, D.K. Alrick, we're up there flying on our landing gear, ain't falling down and this. And one time, the motor half quick.

But this one here, we had a plane full, and we're going to Talladega to test. Jimmy Fennings on board and everybody, you know, Mark was going to meet us there. So we took off out of Greensboro, I believe, with everybody. And it was foggy, kind of rainy down there, Talladega. And we made an approach coming in to land. It was Mark's pilot, actually. And we had a rental plane. It was a king air.

and we started to land, and I'm kind of wondering, I heard the alarm go off, you know. It's like 200 feet or whatever. I just still can't see anything. I said, this ain't right. Right. So at the last minute, I looked out the wind, and we started hearing it said, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It was tree tops. Damn it.

Yeah. We were hitting the treetops of the trees, the wings and everything. Luckily, Captain Ron, what we call them, throttled up real hard, pulled us up out of there. We were just, we were like way off the, the run. way landing. We were in the trees. Damn it. So, oh, man, that was close. So you made another approach and finally got in there? No, no, uh-uh. We went to Birmingham.

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. We went to, you know, took a, there was an ILS there and stuff. There was damage to the plane. Yes, there was damage to the plane. We couldn't fly it anymore. The FAA had to come out. I mean, there was stick stuck in the oil coolers in the Frank. Oh, yeah. There was, I mean, that's the closest you're going to get. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Fenningley, I could see his eyes were about biggest saucers, too. I've had some pretty bad experiences with. planes and I can imagine knowing sort of the cowboy style of some of the pilots

that we had back then and we were all in those king airs and just just you know not really to your point like you know you didn't you know you'd take off and be like yeah yeah we should be good you know the ceiling's a little low where we're going to land and you get there and you're like it's really low oh you know and you would be like oh 300 feet that's not a problem and it'd get there and it's like 150 feet well it's changed a little bit We're still going to try to get in there. That was the scariest and closest to death, I think we've all been.

There was another time flying with Mark Martin back when he was living in Florida, got his own plane, and I traveled with him back and forth to the racetrack. I think he was, I'm not sure it was the king air or his jet, but he had a pilot with him. No, it was the king air because he flew left seat. Mark was starting to learn how to fly. So I get on board, and I'm sitting in the back, and I look and all some marks in the left seat.

And I'm like, oh, he's captain. and he's flying this thing tonight. I'm like, oh. So we get going, and the day was fine. It was no storm, don't know nothing, but we took off and we got up and we started getting pretty heavy clouds. So I see Mark struggling,

and all of a sudden I see him go, lift his hands off, and he goes, I can't do it, take over. You know, he got this hoary, and he wasn't used to the instruments and stuff or whatever. I'm like, oh, geez. Yeah. Yeah, you would have a lot of success.

You know, your cup series, was your cup career was over, but you would have this entirely new complete chapter through racing in the truck series. You got seven wins in 2001, second to points to Jack Sprague, 2004, from 2002 to 2004, your third in the championship points each season. But in 2003, you announced that you were fighting bladder cancer. Well, yeah, I had that. I don't remember that. I didn't remember you even having to go do that. I mean, you don't, you know, it's just everybody has their own little deal. How did you manage to, how did you discover what was going on?

Well, actually, how I discovered it was Jimmy Smith took myself, Jason Leffler, and we all went up to Salt Lake City, Utah, for snowmobiling. I think, you know, even having Walker Evans was there. And, you know, we had a great time. I went to the bathroom. And I had blood. Like, oh, oh, this ain't right. So it continued on.

So I'm like, I better go. see a doctor about this. So I went to the doctor and they said, yeah, you've got bladder cancer. You've got a tumor in your intestines and this and that. So I was like, oh, great, you know, here we go. Is this something that was a, I mean, did you know about your family history? Was there any kind of connection? No, no, no, no. Nothing that made this sense. This was just completely out of the blue. Yeah, completely out of blue. So, yeah, they had to go in and get this golf ball size tumor. broke up and pulled out of me. I'm not even going to tell you where or how it came out, but it was not nice.

Yeah. So I was in a hospital for a day or two there. Then I had to go back and do a chemo, you know, for like a month or two months. So this was going on while I was right. I'd go do chemo on Tuesday and then go race on the weekend. Yeah. But it didn't bother me that much. Really?

No. Yeah. No. I was, even the first time they even had a backup driver from Martinsville because Jimmy Smith says, I'm going to have somebody here just in case you can. I was fine. I think it was the best Martinsville race ever ran. So you got the cancer taken care of, and that's a... Well, here's the thing. I was going back for my last treatment, Dr. Cass here in Morrisville.

I was going back to his practice for the last treatment. I went there and the place was closed up. I'm like, what the heck happened here? He was killed. He was health nut. you know, run a bicycle all the time. Yeah. Got hit. Oh, shit. Yeah.

So I never got my last treatment and then to find out what was if everything's okay. So I'm like, I hope it's okay, you know. Oh, shit. Yeah. You have no idea. That hadn't bothered you? No. I never go see a doctor.

I never, I don't have a doctor. I never go, I never go doctor. I don't take, if I get a headache, I don't take aspirin. I don't take anything. Really? Yeah. Hey, foot to the floor until it's done. That's crazy.

I guess it got taken care of. Yeah, I guess so. Thank goodness. Yeah, they're kidding. There was a controversial finish to the 2003 championship, and I was really surprised at your ability to put this behind you. You were penalized in the very last race for passing to the left on a restart and scored last on the lead lap.

There was a lap truck in front of you that NASCAR deemed that you'd moved left to pass, and you lost a championship to Travis Quaple. Me and Travis are good friends. His son's race, my late models. Doing good. My exfinity career. Yeah, great kids. Y'all waited 10 minutes, the whole field.

You know, whole series waited 10 minutes after the race to find out what NASCAR was going to do, and they decided that they would uphold the penalty. And you were scored. If you had not been penalized, you win the championship, the penalty would cost you the championship. Well, here's how it is. And you well know, too, because he raced on there at Homestead. And the late day, looking on the front straightaway, that sun is right in your eyes. You can't see nothing.

It was the last caution of the day, like five laps ago or even less, maybe three. So I'm lined up, and I'm right behind Mike Bliss, which was the second team truck for IWX and Travis Quappell. He brought another, you know, Mike Bliss is driving it. So I'm lined up right behind him. and I've got to pass him and I think one other truck to win the championship, no matter whatever happens, everything else. So I'm right behind him. We're going on the front stretch and get the green, and you can't see the flag man

because it's just suns in your eyes. I just listened to Spotter, and Spotter's like, green, green, green. I took off, and the next thing I know, everybody lurchs forward and then locked it up. There was a stack up. So instead of running in the back of Bliss, you know, because he locked it up pretty good, I moved to the left real quick to avoid him. because if I hit, I would have knocked the radiator out, have been done. So I jumped to the left,

passed him, and everybody was so slow, I kind of kept going and blending the line. So it took like a lap or so, and then I hear over the radio, Eddie Thrap, my spotter says, hey, you've got to get back behind Bliss. I said, what do you mean? He got back, man.

So I'm looking, and he's quite a ways back. I figure if I let off and go all the way back there, there's no way I'm going to pass back all the way back up here. It was like the end of the race, was like the last lap. I had no opportunity to really get back. But if I would have thought about it at the time, if I moved to the left,

oh, wait a minute, that's a penalty to do this. Maybe I would have had time to do it. But you're thinking, okay, I've got to pass you to it. Got to get this somehow. It slipped on us. So we had a boat trip yesterday. We haven't, we've got the, she said no. It's a, for those that don't know,

she said no is a fiberglass hole, houseboat 2002 Gibson and it is in really good shape and so pretty cool interior top deck all that and I was looking at this thing on the internet we were sitting on it yesterday on the lake

and I said man I cannot believe we're sitting on this boat after staring at it on the internet for like six months she goes more like a year it was at least a year we had discussed it I talked you out of it and then all of a sudden it's in the driveway yeah lo and behold

it found you again yeah it was weird how that happened so um I was just I just I'm a

I'm one of those kind of people that like to just look on a car trader and just I'm not looking for anything I'm just kind of curious is what's out there

and boat trader RV four wheeler whatever ATV I'm trying to see what everybody's got and selling and all that stuff

and what things are worth um I do that with houses zillo stuff. So I saw this, I missed my old house boat, but I didn't love it. I didn't love the interior of it, certain things about it, but I did miss having it. And we had a pontoon, had a lot of fun with that. But, you know, I wanted something to spend a night out on the boat, on the lake and stuff. So I thought one day maybe I might get a boat that we could sleep in. So I started looking

at all kinds of boats and different things, and they're very expensive. But I saw these I saw this Gibson and looked at the other gibson's and saw the price and thought it was good. I showed Amy, and I'm looking at this thing and looking at this thing and looking at it every couple of days I look at it. And I'm like, oh, man, that thing does look good. I wonder what it smells like. You know, I wonder what, is it, you know, is it smell okay? Is it smell bad? It didn't smell good.

No. Anyways, I'm good. The boat's out of my life. I actually went back on the internet. It's gone. The listing was gone. Somebody must have bought it, right. All right. That's probably better.

You know, somebody else buy it. I'm glad. It's disappeared. I didn't need that. I didn't need to do that. That's my, you know, it's okay. And months go by. And my niece, Carson, says, hey, boat you're looking at. I talked about it on our podcast. She says, the guy that has that boat still has it for sale. I was like, man, you can't be talking about the same boat.

I mean, of all the boats out there. How do you know? How did you, how did this guy get back to you? And I was like, send me a picture of this damn boat you're talking about. And I'm expecting to get a photo and not be the boat and go, hey, it's not the boat. This guy don't know what he's talking about. Sure enough, sends a picture and it's the picture. Wow.

It's the boat. I'm like, all right, this is the universe. This is fate. It's a sign. It's a sign. It's calling me. The boat needs to be in my life. And so the boat needs me.

The boat needs me. The boat needs me to fix it. So I made a long list. I made a long list of that I needed to know about this boat. Does it stink? Does this work? Does this work? Does this work?

I don't want to buy a boat. I got to fix a couple of certain things that we're going to be really tough to fix. Yeah, major things. Long list. So I send Sonny and a boat guy, a boat expert, Marina guy, out to Gatlinburg to look at it. Sonny gets on it. sends me videos.

He's on it. riding riding on it tells me everything's fine so we bought the boat and took a while to get it over here it went to a ship it went to a marina and set in the yard jacked up on stilts and we worked on it and cleaned it and fixed a lot of things and put all new carpet in it got it ready we furnished it and um we called it she said no because amy because this is just joke yeah yeah and um Yeah, until recently, I think Amy just finally, it finally clicked for Amy, I think, in the last month or so. Yeah, I mean, I've been going to enjoy the boat. It was fun.

It was fun going out yesterday. We decided we were just going to take Wednesday since there was nothing on the calendar and go hang out with no kids. Awesome. They had school. It was great. And it was great. It took me a solid four hours, so like truly relax. I asked Dale and like, what time is it?

Because I actually just stopped thinking about all the things I have to do. And it took about four hours. It took him about an hour and a half. Yeah. We get on the boat. And we get out of the slip, no problem. We cruise. Dale throws the anchors out.

And then all of a sudden, the boat dies. Oh, no. The generator goes out. I mean, he had cracked one beer. And we had just sat down upstairs. Then he's like, there's no motor. There's nothing's going. The radio stopped.

Everything stopped. And he's like, oh, crap. So he goes downstairs. And I stay away just to not get in the business. and he's got the deck flap open and he's looking around where the engines are and everything, the batteries. And he's tinkering and mess in

and I feel like he's going to figure it out at some point because he just is good at that. You know what I mean? I was not worried whatsoever. I was getting a little hot up there. I'm like, oh, crap, I hope he gets it moving soon. All of a sudden I hear his pitch, like he's got Sunny on the phone and he's FaceTiming,

just trying to work through it together. And I hear his voice get really high-pitched. and I didn't hear what he said, but I knew it wasn't probably something nice. And so I, like, slowly slink down the stairs and, like, get a little closer. I'm like, is there anything I can do to help you? And he's like, not unless you can fix a fucking generator. I'm like, I'll just get my broomstick and go get my one, and I'll be right back, and I went back upstairs. And just sipped my wine and was, you know, texting with Sonny and Katie.

It was like, oh, gosh, this is bad. This is so bad. he's laying on his belly with his hand in there just pushing buttons and pulling on things. Oh man, I'm sweating up a fucking storm. Oh, he's red in the face. Because you've got to get down in the engine compartment. We just ran the shit in things to get out in the water.

Yeah, and it's got a little water and sludge in the bottom. It's just part of it. It is what it is. It's just part of it. So, I'm like, oh, no, he's going to have to get down in that. The generator has an autumn. The generator has the start switches on, you know, it has a little starter box mounted at the top of generator.

And on that starter box is a couple, amps and you can start the generator there or you can actually go up to the front of boat and the exact same switches and system is up there as well and one of those amps had kind of came one of those amps had kind of jarred itself loose and so when I'm I was trying I don't know why the generator quit running but maybe because the amp with the amp comes out of that starter box it just shuts the generator down but I finally figured it out and um that little wouldn't stay screwed in there.

It's spring loaded. And so I got a couple, I got a pair of pliers and finagled it around and got it to where it would lock in and stay and cranked it up and all was well. But it took me a while

to figure out exactly why the generator had zero power. Like it had no, like it didn't have a battery hooked up to the starter. It wouldn't turn over at all. It wouldn't mess. It wouldn't do shit.

So I got really hot and mad about it. And I was sitting down there with Sunny and I was like, it was like nothing ever works nothing ever works and then I got I got upstairs

after we got everything running and I sat down and she goes she goes yeah I heard you getting upset I said yeah I was like you know what I asked for this

I bought a 20 year old I took on a 25 year old boat I wanted it I begged for it you know I got it and here it is and this is what I get you know

it's going to have problems never going to be perfect it's going to have there's going to be things that it doesn't do right or... I couldn't believe you just got so mad. So I haven't seen him that mad in a really long time. And it happened fast. Well, we had just...

We had just sat down to relax. And I try not to do this, but I had thought about that going... I had thought about going out on that boat for the last 24 hours. And you built it up in your mind. Yeah. And I'm like, man, this is going to be so much fun. Me and Amy by ourselves out on the lake. We're going to have six hours.

towers to just sit and man we get out there and I'm like well I guess we got to go back to the dock I mean I can't run the generator can't run air conditioner can't run nothing it's saying it'll be that comfortable you know but how would we have gotten back to the dock oh the motors run fine oh the boat would run we could have just we're going to have to swim home well we could have you know we could have motored around on the lake but you know it would have been we could we would have we would have been able to be fine out there without the generator but like yeah like nothing would you wouldn't have power to nothing you wouldn't be able to you know the refrigerator right would all the fredgerator all the food and all things would be

so all the beer would be cold and refrigerator we had some ice on us but we could have figured it out yeah it would have been fine I wasn't nervous I wasn't worried because he's always good at fixing things I just knew he was going to figure it out he came back upstairs like I can't believe he got so mad about that he's like I just don't want to have to work with work on something every time we go somewhere everything's always there's always something to fix i was like i know but you're good you can fix it you fixed it i can't believe you got so bad he's like you're just telling me that to make me feel better i'm like no i'm not going to smoke up your ass but is it working because calm down check out dirty more media on instagram facebook ex and tixom