The Dale Jr. Download - Dale Jr Defends Throwback Weekend, DVP Impact & Highest Charter Sale Ever?

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Dale Earnhardt Jr. returns to the studio after spending the weekend in Darlington for another edition of Dirty Air. He is joined by special co-host Jordan Bianchi to recap the action from the weekend and major stories around the NASCAR garage:The future of the Throwback WeekendNASCAR's caution call for Keselowski's wheel nutDale practices with his new TV booth teammatesThe first race affected by new DVPWilliam Byron loses the race on pit strategyPenske needs a breakthrough winNASCAR meets with the Xfinity driversThe latest on the 8-trademark debacleRace winner Denny Hamlin calls inDuring the Ask Jr. segment of the episode, listeners sent in questions including:Dale’s favorite generation of stock car to driveCombatting gray hair or letting it rideRaces that meant a lot to Dale that others might not rememberFuture concert plansMust 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. Dirty 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 stuff.And for more content check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia 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.

This is sacred. Hands off, right? Nobody poo-poo's on throwback weekend. Okay. And, but it was a, but it was a honest conversation. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. I'm still sour, man, that I wasn't your best man at your wet. When will you start mentally, like, getting ready for the race?

Can you not tell I'm mentally ready? Travis has some dumb ideas, but I agree with them on this one. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Doesn't sound like you know what you're talking about. You haven't scratched the surface yet, no, boy. I mean, what the f*** do you want? I just think the last few laps, it was just like stop every time. You're picky.

This ain't walking in and have it your way, motherfucker. All right? This ain't Burger King. Travis is like, you're wrapping up. They all have no fun around here. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download here. It's Tuesday.

It's dirty air. And T.J.'s not here. T.J. is going to miss this show. We got Jordan Bion. you coming in to substitute for TJ, and I'll take that any day. I appreciate you dropping in and fiddling in for TJ today. I appreciate you have me on. This is quite the call. I wasn't expecting this. Well, you know, hey, you're kind of part of the, you and Jeff are kind of part of the team here, so whenever we need to go to the bullpen, we got some really, really great

pitchers. So thankfully, you know, we're able to get in here, and I'm kind of eager to hear your opinion on a couple of things. I know you guys do the tear down after the race. Great show. And it's a great reaction and kind of a, not a real easy show to do because, you know, even after a couple of days of sitting on this stuff and thinking about it, you have,

you know, you still might not have all of the answers. Oh, yeah. Right? But you've got to make a call. You've got to make a decision to go one way or another on some of the debates or some of the things that you see on, the racetrack in the moment with kind of limited information or just whatever you've gathered.

The beauty of the show is it's instantaneous. It's right after the race. Things are fresh and you're digesting it. The beauty of the show, though, is also the problem of the show is sometimes you don't get the full story. Whether you have conversations with people, sometimes you have to go back and actually watch things multiple times. And I find myself will have opinion on something and I'll go back and like, well, maybe I don't need to be, I didn't need to be as hard on that or I was completely wrong. Do you correct it or just let it? It depends on what it is. If it's something major, I'll go back.

Like, hey, we talked about this a week or two ago and I was wrong about this, or maybe my opinion shifted in years why. And other times I'll dig in my heels even more. I'm like, no, I was kind of soft on this. And I needed to be even harder on this. And there's times. And a couple weeks ago, the Infinity Series race at Martinsville is a great example of that. Like, I looked at that and there was a lot of consternation in the industry about that race.

And it was a terrible, you know, bad look for the sport. But I also don't think it was nearly as horrific as a lot of people made it out to be. and I was like, okay, and I wish I would have had that back a little bit, maybe being that one person who said, listen, can we all just calm down a little bit and take a step back? And this isn't like an Xenity series problem overall. This is one race. Overall, that series is really pretty clean and good.

They had a bad weekend. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I tried to, you know, I went into that race at Martinsville knowing, like, our guys can probably come here and run really good, have a great day. But I know the last 10% of that race is a, show.

It's a street fight. It's awful. Yeah. And awful probably, depending on who you are, it might be great. But, you know, for a fan, they know what they're getting when they show up. And that might be worth the price of the ticket for them. So maybe they like, you know, the uncertainty or the chaos that might develop. And but I don't like going to a racetrack as an owner in knowing that that's what's going to go down.

knowing that you're going to have to dodge all of that carnage and hope for the best, right, instead of just saying, hey, man, we've prepared the car. It drives good. The driver's good. He can navigate himself into a great result. You don't have that luxury at Martinsville, right? Because of what goes down late in the race, you just kind of got to get lucky and not be one of the guys gets wiped out. And so that's not always fun.

And I knew that going in, and it definitely stepped over the line into, you know, severe. For sure. Ugliness, right? But, yeah, we've seen it before there. And I was with you. I kind of was like, you know, I, I kind of want to overreact. Like I, like we all have kind of tend, you know, we've all kind of got this habit of, right, overreacting and just being like, ah, you know, fire and brimstone. And I was like, I'm not going to do that.

And it is, you know, it was Sammy. I didn't want to, I didn't want to come down on him too hard and then have to reel it back or dial it back, right? or feel like maybe I'd, you know, because how you handle Sammy, I think, is critical to his growth, right? And that's such a dang fine line for me to walk, man. I've got to, you know, I'm going to come into the podcast and talk about it. I might, if I'm working a race, I'm in a booth talking about it. And I know it.

Man, our drivers, my guys here at Junior Murder Sports, my buddies that are racing in a cup series, they don't get it. They don't understand why, why did you say that about me? why'd you have to go talk about me like that? You know? And I'm like, well, it's odd because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you have a lot of hats. You have a lot of rules you have to balance. I was an owner yesterday today.

I'm, I'm, I'm in the media, right? I don't even know what you would call me, but I'm not a journalist, but, uh, I'm an analyst. Yeah, you're an analyst. And so, even in this podcast. So, yeah, it's, uh, it's tough. I, um, we'll have a, I have another example of that later in the show, but, um, The cup race this weekend, the throwback weekend, frustrating to see, like, I guess, Friday or Saturday as we're leading into this race weekend, the conversation sort of shifted

toward the value of throwback weekend overall. Do you know how that conversation kind of cropped up? Was it the fact that there were only, you know, there were 19 teams that didn't participate? Yeah, it was kind of an organic thing where throughout the week as teams are putting out their paint schemes and everything. It became realization of 19 teams weren't going to be doing this. And then it was like, wait a second, that's more than half the field, right? Why are they not doing this?

And we have seen this number incrementally kind of increase over the years. And so then the question became, why aren't teams doing it? And maybe has the weekend lost its allure a little bit? And I think it's a conversation worth having because I think it's a conversation to say, okay, throwback weekend, I think, is important. You have to honor the sport. And there's no better place to do that, I think, than Darlington. But can you do it maybe in a war?

way can you expand it or continue have it evolve in a way where it doesn't feel the same year after year and I think that's where the conversation ended up it was just interesting how we got there yes yeah I um I have uh my you know an instant reaction of oh man you know how can you not love the history of the sport but then when you dive deeper into it so I was kind of not offended but like I was kind of taken aback that anyone wouldn't be on board with something like this. But when I walked into the media center just because I told Jeff Gleck I would come by and say hello. And I didn't, I wanted to do that. But I, uh, thanks for coming to say hi to me, by the way. I appreciate that. I didn't know if you were in, you were there. Jeff was like,

hey, I'm going to be there, you know, and he's not always at every race, you know. So I was just like, hey, I'll come say, hey. And I also wanted the opportunity to, to speak a little bit about the number eight debacle, if anybody was in the, in the room. wanting to talk, which we'll get into here in a bit as well. But back to the throwback weekend conversation, I was initially like, how dare anybody be, you know, why are we having this conversation, you know, this is, this is sacred. Hands off, right? Nobody poo-poo's on throwback weekend.

Okay. And, but it was a, but it was a honest conversation, right? I didn't think about some of the challenges that the landscape presented to the sponsors these days presents. It was lost on me, I guess, that some of these partners might have just a couple of weekends a year where they're a three-race sponsor or a five-race sponsor, and they're like, well, I don't want to change all my stuff up for this race. I mean, I want my logo as it appears with my colors on the car. And, yeah, I don't really understand the throwback, you know, history and nature. And I don't, you know, and so we're not going to participate, which I get, you know.

And that's fair. Maybe there's a balance of, you know, look, I'm not, I don't get upset when somebody doesn't participate. Hell, junior motorsports didn't participate every year, you know. It was quite a while where the seven didn't. run one. And when they do run one, it's a throwback to something company related, not NASCAR or even motorsports related. And I never loved those deals. Like the 22 car for several years would do a throwback to something totally unrelated to NASCAR, you know. And Josh Barry throws it back to Jim Clark. Yeah. Right. It's like, yeah, all right. You know, I wouldn't,

I would keep it inside the, inside. inside the NASCAR box. Some people go outside that box and do things that don't make any sense to me whatsoever. That's why, to me, I look at this weekend, is like, I think we need to get away from the pain schemes a little bit, because this weekend is so about, oh, pain scheme, paint scheme, paint scheme, that's okay, we need to move away from that. We've done that, and it's kind of, it feels exhausted.

Let's celebrate the history of the sport. And Roger Caruth, I think, had a really good idea, which is like, let's make this a retro weekend. And I think that's what you do, where you celebrate the history of the sport in various ways, expand it actually, blow this out. And if teams want to do throwback paint schemes, then they can.

And if they want to do it to different errors, they can. And then even on the sponsorship side, there could be a company who maybe is only on the car for a handful of races that says, you know what? We're going to go back to our old school logo or from our origins. And I think it just opens it up it a little bit. And you can still have this weekend,

which should be a celebration, and you bring in the Hall of Famers, and you do all of these things. But it's just not about the paint schemes. And then last week's conversation, and really the conversation throughout the race was paint scheme, paint scheme, paint scheme. Instead, let's talk about the history of the sport.

Let's do that and blow that out. Throwback weekend can still remain, can still exist, can still be important to people. But yeah, maybe there is a balance between, look, if you want to participate, if you want to come with a design of a paint scheme or a rap that's got some history to it, that's embraced.

The Xfinity series does a really good job. of energy there. But also to your point, maybe shifting a little bit more of the focus on some of the vintage cars that show up. Some, you know, we've always got, we've got Richard Petty Pace in the field one year. This year, it's the Wood Brothers cars with, with Harvick and Clint. And there's a lot of, you know, they have the alumni deal where all the, you see drivers from from the past on pit road during intros and meandering about the facility throughout the race weekend so maybe there's a greater focus on on it being a bit of a trip through the Hall of Fame if you will right and not so much about like who did it the

best in terms of the scheme and does it look exactly like it you know like the old cars um Cobbush had a comment said it's not for us it's for the fans I thought that was a great that's great to hear you have drivers that say you know chase Elliot and Byron and even Bubba Wallace were saying that it's overdone agreeing with you to a point that you know maybe it could be rebranded or rethought and

go in a new direction Brad Casaski was pretty adamant that he thinks the fans are excited about it and they're dressing up in the older gear which would you know I think throwback weekend is evolving right and everybody just kind of needs to get out of its way even the track even NASCAR right I didn't like years ago the track in NASCAR I guess the track probably more than anything would say this year it's 90s yeah and I'm like why do we even have to do that you're putting people in a box yeah don't put guardrails on it like let people do what they want to do and I think if

you allow that creativity to flow you're going to see some really cool things instead of forcing something down someone's throat where and I think that's where this idea needs to to continue to evolve to. Right. Can we all just agree, Darlington, when you go into that place, I was reading articles from 1980, where my dad's like, man, when you go into Darlington, it just feels like you're going back in time.

And that's absolutely correct. And then let's just let it be that. And if you want to have an interpretation or expression, go for it. If you don't, nobody's going to care. Yeah. I didn't care. I didn't mind that the 19 guys were out there running around with their non-throwback schemes.

And there was some really good-looking stuff out there that was cool to see. But I think we just kind of all got to get out of the way and let throwback weekend be what it wants to be. And again, though, I do think that Darlington should, you know, outside of what we see on the racetrack in terms of the design of the cars and stuff, I absolutely think that Darlington has to continue to lean into that vintage retro feel so that when you go there on the weekend, like the Darlington parade. I know that maybe a lot of people don't even know that happens, right? The town certainly does. But a lot of our, you know, maybe a lot of our fans that are traveling from in out of town don't even know that's actually a thing that they can experience, right? and it has a very old throwback small town feel to it right i've actually been in that parade a

couple of times with our NBC teammates riding on a float throwing candy and yeah it does have that it does feel like you sort of step back in time a little bit or you're kind of part of a small town vibe and i think they should absolutely absolutely continue to lean into that i'd hate to say it go away, I guess. Or, you know, be this thing that we're like, yeah, every other year we're going to do it or whatever. I don't even know how you do that. A lot of people want it to be the Southern 500. That's not possible. Can't happen. You can't do it for a couple reasons. One, it's the Southern 500, and I feel like it has its own identity. And this goes to a bigger thing to me is you have 38 races on the schedule. And some of these races, the 600, the Daytona 500, they are what they are, right?

Not every race has an identity, though. And the one thing that Spring Darlington does have, which makes it unique from a lot of the others and separates it is its throwback weekend. Plus, the Southern 500 is generally the start of the playoffs. And that's a really important time. And then we talk about sponsors and branding and everything like that. Sponsors don't want, they want their main branding on a car come to playoff, period. Yeah. And, yeah, that's a premium for sponsors those playoff races.

And so, yeah, the Southern 500 is not an option. But, yeah, we'll see what happens going forward. I hope that it's something that continues. And I think the drivers, you know, I think some of the drivers, you know, just don't have an affinity for the past or the history. You know, some of the younger guys, certainly, it took me a while, I guess, to really kind of find a, I guess a passion, for lack of a better word,

for the history of the sport to really get into wanting to learn more about it, watching old races and stuff like that and learning about the pioneers of the sport. Hey everybody, you want the latest Dale Jr. download apparel? Visit shop.dirtymohmedia.com. We're always adding new stuff all the time, especially like when we say something silly on this show. We'll put it on a t-shirt. Again, check it out at shop.dirtymoomedia.com. Moving on. Brad Kozlasky's wheel nut comes off in the middle of the pit cycle.

That was a pretty big deal. So do you know the question I would ask you? Jordan is that wheel nut that was down on the apron of the racetrack, is that the sole reason for that caution to come out that latent to the cycle? To the best of my knowledge, I mean, I saw them pick it up and it was, I don't, it depends how far out of the groove it was, but it was a piece of debris on the racetrack. And that's where the question is, is it worth throwing a caution for. And to me, it warrants a caution. There's a piece of debris on the track. It's a caution. And it's unfortunate that it's in the middle of a pit cycle, but at the end of

day, caution is a caution. If it's caution here, it has to be cautioned then and there. It can't be changed. And it sucks for some of these guys, and it helped Byron out a lot at that time. It also helped Hamlin, by the way, because it put Danny in the spot where he could recoup a lot of track position he had and allowed him put him in the spot to eventually win the race. I don't have a problem with it. It's unfortunate, and I don't know how big a lug nut, you know, the wheel nut, but it didn't look small on TV. Yeah, I felt like it was personally, from what I could tell, in the race. I thought it was far enough out of the way that they could have waited for the end of the

pit cycle. And I've seen them do that in the past. I've seen them understand, all right, we can't turn the field upside down. This situation, we have to handle it, but we can give it a few more laps. And I think that another thing that happens, too, is the spotters around the racetrack, NASCAR officials, will have this chatter on the radio. And then the spotters, for the teams are up on the top of the tower, talking back down to the crew chiefs and so forth, saying, hey,

they're talking about this, right? So is there a way for NASCAR, inadvertently, to encourage teams to get their cycle finished? Is there language or a temperament or a delivery or a tone in discussing that debris down on the apron that would get the team? Because some teams will go,

whoa, we're not pitting. They're about to throw a yellow. We'll stay out, right? Is there an opposite effect that they can have? Yeah, I mean, I get that. But I'm also, If I'm William Byron, if I'm that team, I'm like, no, the debris's fine.

Like, yeah, or, you know, I want that call. In an instance, you want the caution and come out. Like, no, no, that's right in the middle of the race track. For sure. We're going to cut a tire. Like, I'm screaming and hollering. And there's a couple other teams in that same boat. So it's interesting.

Now you get politicking, and I don't know if that's what you want in the middle of race. It would be entertaining. To me, that's where it comes down to, like, if you're going to, if something warrants a caution, then throw the caution. And it sucks that it comes in the middle of the pit cycle, those are the brakes. Right. All right. Pretty awesome camera work from the guys at Fox to catch that wheel nut flying off.

I was really impressed by that. Watching the coverage, we actually, me and our TNT teammates got together at the NASCAR Productions facility, which is the first time I ever seen that. We sat and watched a race Sunday. Wow. Beautiful place. It was. It's awesome.

NASCAR's put a lot of effort into it and a lot of money for, you know, content creation and all types of things. And so that's, we're, you know, we're going to see quite a, I think not a shift, but a, but a lot of improvement and growth in what NASCAR creates with their content going forward. And I think that's also where the CW does their races when they're not at track. When you walk in there and see all of the TVs and everything that that crew has to use and has available to them when they're doing.

those broadcast. It's extensive. It's everything you would need. It's more than you need. If you're an analyst standing there and you're like, okay, I'm going to do this race off-site. You got everything and then some to be able to do a good job with it. I know there's some opinions out there with fans in terms of, well, we need our announcers, analysts at track in the booth.

It is amazing to be able to actually look out a window and see the race happening. that's a great vantage point. They say in broadcasting, they, you know, they don't, they're kind of like, hey, don't look out the booth. Don't look out the window, right? Don't do that. Look at the screen. Talk about what's on program.

But I cheat. And I go out there and I'm looking at the battles and I'm like, hey, you know, this is about to develop into a battle. Let's get the cameras there before it happens so we can talk about how this driver's setting a pass up. And that's the one thing that you miss, right, when you're in a studio, is just being able to look out the, window, right, and get a different perspective, a 40,000-foot view of what's happening.

But, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, to, if we're going, there's a great race, there's a great race at Chicago that's going to happen this year, right? Our booth that we're going to be in at Chicago, we ain't going to be able to see the race track. No, it's a street course. There's no way. Yeah.

We might as well be anywhere, right? Doesn't really matter. I don't think it makes a difference. will affect the way we do the race. But, you know, when we're at an oval, we can literally look out a window and see the entire track, that's a different story. So some of these races, it makes perfect sense

to maybe not travel the booth because they can't see anything anyways. The first couple of Chicago races we did, they did from a shipping container sitting down in the paddock. They did? Yes. Wow.

You're just sitting in a shipping container. Yes. Rick Allen and Steve were in a shipping container and in the paddock, nowhere near a race car going at full speed. And they were at ground level. Like it was like, you couldn't see a thing. You're just in a box. And so...

Literally. Yes. I mean, that was it. They might as well been in Charlotte. They've been more comfortable. You slap a sticker on there. You just ship back to Charlotte. That's right.

So people would be surprised. Is there still something to being at the racetrack and be able to communicate and walk through the garage? Is that still where the value is? going to the racetrack? Yeah. I think the garage time is limited, comparable to what it was like years ago

or when there was practice and so forth. But there is still some time to get in there and you get a lot of opportunity to see crew chiefs more often than anyone else. So yeah, there is a great opportunity when you're at track. And I'll say this too, man, like there's an energy that you feel.

Just being on site. That's not something you can recreate anywhere else. I can't do my job. but do my job without having in-person conversations. And I always say my favorite time of the week is actually from the time the garage opens on Sunday morning to when drivers get in their cars. Because everybody's around. Team owners, team executives, drivers, cruchees, and have those conversations. Actually, when I'm at the race, I'm watching it off a monitor.

I'm not up in a press box or anything. I'm watching it off TV. And that goes back to our earlier conversation. Often I feel like I'm missing things because I'm not being able to take in everything or I'm forced to watch what the presentation on TV is being sure. showing me so I miss other things. Yeah, you do feel like you're playing catch-up, but that's just the reality of because you can't do anything about it. A lot of these tracks don't have press boxes anymore. Darlington doesn't. And if you go to a road course or street course, again, there is no vantage point where you can see everything. That's just the way it is. Yeah.

I do, I am looking forward to to our broadcasting with TNT and obviously Amazon on Prime. we're starting to gear up and prepare and talk and all that good stuff. We even went into a booth and mock broadcasted me and Adam and LaTart with Marty. We all sat down and kind of did a mock broadcast for almost half of that race Sunday. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was fun. That's a good opportunity to get some reps in. Shoot, dude, I ain't done it.

It feels like 14, 16 months. Did you feel like you have to knock some rust off? Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're apprehensive like, how easy is this going to, how natural is this going to go? Did it feel natural? Did it feel good? By the end of the race, I was like, okay, I feel like this is going to work just fine.

But when you first start out, you know, I've never worked with Adam. And Steve, I've never really been in the same booth as Steve. So me and every year, every race, 99% of the races that I did at NBC, I was in a booth by myself with Burton and Steve and Rick Allen were in their own booth, maybe even out of sight, right? So we couldn't even see each other. And so being in the same booth with Steve, and Steve's, you know, with a four-man booth, we all had to kind of be, we all had to kind of give each other a little room, right, and be a little more disciplined with our own comments.

Because, I mean, Steve, myself, Adam, I think we could all talk. Steve talk? No, yeah. Right? No. We can talk all day. But you got to give the other guys a little time to jump in there. And so, but it's interesting.

It's going to be fun. I think those races are going to be great. By time we get through the Amazon stuff, Amazon's going to be cool because they're going to come in with all kinds of new bells and whistles, right? I think that fans should pay attention to what they're seeing on the screen and some of the kind of cool gizmos or whatever widgets that they come up with because they're uh they're kind of those they're kind of excited about those type of things right so the presentation will be cool and then by time we get to t-n-t i think we'll be in a rhythm having worked five races together at amazon and that

should you know we should be probably really really grinding it out but then but uh i'm excited about that and it's awesome to be preparing for it back to the race um late in the race there was a debate a couple debates. Bubba spins Larson. And you can see clearly as they're exiting turn to, Larson just kind of powers down. Yeah, big time. Big time, yeah.

I wonder why he did that. Reddick got on the wall. I saw, I know, but I mean, that was so far in front of him. I don't know if he panicked or what. Are you in that situation you don't want to maybe. Reddick just got into the wall. It wasn't going to be a caution by itself. And I don't want to step into Larson's mindset here.

But his thought is probably, I don't want to get into him and cause a caution. because I don't want to create an incident. But is he overcautious? He was over cautious and by being over cautious, he created a caution. Right, yeah. I know, I'm watching it and I'm like, I've watched it over and over and I'm like, hey, he's a long ways from Redick. I wonder why he powered down so hard.

He just, you know, middle one and two just kind of went by Bubba. So he knows Bubba's right on his right rear full steam. So that was surprising. Everybody was like, oh, Bubba did it all purpose. But he did not. The other conversation is this is the first race directly affected by the new DVP policy. So with the new policy allowing Larson and his team to go repair the car, people are like, oh, well, look here.

Now is this a, I guess some people want to look at it and go, now we've got a new problem. No, this is not a new problem. This is the way actually it's been for 70 years up until, you know, the DVP policy came into effect. cars could get out there and do this all the time. And then if they weren't creating accidents like this, parts were falling off and cutting tires and all kinds of things were happening. Or they were just flat getting in the way

and slowing somebody down and creating a battle for a position that would not otherwise have developed. I love it. I have no issue with this. This is how NASCAR was for a long ways. And I do like the fact that teams have an opportunity to make repairs. We saw a year ago with so many incidents where guys had minor damage and they could have been back on the race track,

but they didn't have, they expired the seven-minute allotment, right? And so this is a change. It's unfortunate, but this is the way it is. And people are like, well, why is Carl Larson out there? Why is he running out there? He can't get any points. Well, no, he couldn't get any points. But that team has a mindset.

And you know Cliff Daniels so well. His mindset is, listen, we don't know when we're going to be in this situation again. There may be a race down the road where we have a damaged race car and we can gain points. And we have to fine tune and use this as a practice session to make sure we get that car in pristine condition as much as we can and get it back on the racetrack as quickly as possible. That's part of it. This is real-time opportunity to do that. That's why Kyle Larson was out there.

It sucks that he caused a caution, but it is what it is. That's racing. Yeah, I would say the number one thing, if I go back to the years that I raced where we had the ability to really fix the car if it was repairable, we always did. There was no questioning, should we fix it? Even if we knew that there was nothing to gain similar to Larson here, even if we knew there was not a position to gain, your ego and your pride wouldn't allow you to throw,

to toss in the white flag. You don't want a DNF on your resume. No. So in my mind, you mentioned a lot of great things about why they would want to get the car back out there. and I'm wondering, I guess, if that, back in my time, that was the driving motivation. You didn't want a DNF and you didn't want to quit. You didn't want a team to quit. You're looking around, you got, you know, eight, 12 guys that are working on this car

and you didn't want any one of them to see you give up, right? You all held each other to a certain standard. And it's like, man, if we can fix it, we're fixing it. We're fixing it. We're getting out there. Driver, have your ass ready. You know, when a car is ready to go, we're going back out there running laps. And there wasn't nothing.

There was no debate. And especially, I mean, that's how Tony Senior and Tony Jr. were. There is, I would wreck destroy the car. And I'm like, you know, this is obviously going to be a 50, 70 lap repair. I'm not going to be surprised by them wanting to fix it. but in the fury and hustle in which they went back to repairing that car was always a bit of a surprise to me. They were fixing that car as fast as they could so that it got out there only 48 laps down instead of 55. Or, you know, they were, as soon as the car came in, they're already jacking it up, throwing, you know, jack stands under it and already starting to cut and cut and pull and unbolt bent stuff.

and I'm like, wow, you know, like our day is screwed and we're, yes, we're going to fix it. Yes, we're going to go back out there. But you guys are working like it's a pit stop, you know? And that right there showed me that the teams would do anything in the world they could to avoid walking out of their feeling like they didn't try their hardest. even in those scenarios. They weren't going to leave that racetrack thinking, yeah, we just kind of gave up, you know,

wasn't nothing to gain, so we just kind of quit. And I wonder, you know, when the DVP policy came in, that was my concern. It's like, man, you're going to normalize giving up. You're going to normalize quitting. Quitting. Yeah. And it's going to, it's okay to quit.

And I'm like, I never did sit well with me. I did also. like the idea of a team that didn't need to be out there, not being out there, right? Man, your shit's destroyed. You're not going to gain any points. I get it. Let's just save everybody a little money and go home. But the mental aspect of it was what never set well with me because it would normalize

guys just sort of saying, all right, yep, we're done. Let's just go on home. And the driver's home before the checker flag falls. So I kind of like this, right? And maybe Larson doesn't, I'll tell you, a driver. is not excited about driving a wrecked race car, especially at a place like Darlington. Larson, you know, I could think maybe one more track like Martinsville, where you don't want to drive a car that's off the pace because you can't get out of the way.

Same thing at Darlington. You can't get out of the way. And that's what we saw at the end of the day when he tries to slow down and not be a part of what's going on. He ends up being a part of what's going on. So that sucked for Larson to have to drive that car. But I promise you, that team, being able to repair that. car, put it back out on the racetrack, go back to their pit stall, finish the day. That probably

is what they would prefer over loading it up and going home while the rest of the field is still competing. That's the mentality that Cliff Daniels carries in that team. And that is why they are who they are and they are as good as they are. And I will tell you, and I will bet you dollars to donuts, come later this year in a playoff race, they're going to have an incident. And having this experience of having gone through this, of having to repair a car like that, will serve them, and I will bet you they get a point or two in the playoffs at some point that will help their costs. Yeah.

So the question then goes to William Byron, leading 243 laps. The situation is, is William's leading the race. He's got a pretty comfortable lead over most of the field. I think, if I remember correctly, Reddick is kind of held up by the 20, and, um, Denny's kind of back there, but nobody's really catching William. And William and his team are going to do some math to understand that as these other teams short pit or come to pit road first, he knows, okay, I can be out here X amount of laps before I need to pit and come back out on pit road still in front of these guys. Right? And not only is that happening on the pit box,

there's a war room back in Charlotte, Hendrick Motorsports. They got a big old, all these teams had these, where there's a couple dudes sitting around, six, 12 people and engineers and all kinds of people at laptops and big screens and calculating all of this information, double checking, verifying, and sending that back to Rudy and his team on the pit box going, yep, we got to do it this way.

If they pit now, we got this many laps, we got to get the pit road then, you know? So, I mean, there was not a lack of, of information, and it wasn't a guess. Like, Rudy had all of the details. Wouldn't you assume? He did. And I talked to him after the race, and he said, the way we calculated it was we were going to be, I think he said, a second ahead of Bell.

They had about a three or four seconds. How did they miss that? And so there's a couple things. And I had to go back and look at the times. One, they may have had a slow pit stop. Two, Byron may have gotten on and off pit road a little bit slower. And so you combine that with the fact that Bell did pit before that, so he's going to eat into the time naturally.

they ended up coming out a second behind. And so it can go quick there, as you know, on old tires, and it was not at all what they anticipated. And he was beaten up afterwards. I mean, he looked demoralized. I know. I mean, even though they allowed Bell to cycle in front of them, I think the one thing that was masks,

the one thing that was sort of unknown or unrealized was how quick Reddick was. So Reddick had drove through the pack after being a victim of that cycle, right? Lost a lot of track position during that one caution during the middle of pit cycle. Him and Blaney both. It took Blaney no time to drive back through the field. It was a little tougher for Reddick. But Reddick and Blaney were two of the cars that I thought showed early in the race that they could run with Byron. Byron's car lost a little edge as the race went on. He lost a little pace. He still was pretty dominant. but he was vulnerable or beatable. And as we're watching Blaney kind of marched through the field,

everybody's like focused on Blaney, Blaney, Blaney. He's got the speed. He can do it. And nobody was really looking at Reddick. And Reddick was really fast, drove up to the back of that 20 car and got stuck. And that's when I think they forgot about him. Because when he pit it before the 20, he cycles in front of him. Now he's not obstructed.

Clean air. Clean air. and he obviously put himself in a position that was absolutely concerning for Byron late in the race. And then when Byron gets up to the back of the 20, he kind of struggled there for a while. It was such a change for Byron because he had clean air all day. He really controlled the right. Literally, 243 laps consecutively, he never had to get really in traffic. But you could see when you watch his in car, he would get in behind back markers.

He couldn't blow by him. He had to work on it a little bit. At one point, he was trying to put Christopher Bell down a lap early in the race, and he had to work and grind it out. It was hard to pass, and when you got back in traffic, it made a difference. That was what changed for William Byron, whereas Reddick and Blaney had that experience throughout the race, particularly Blaney, as he was able to really, really do well in long runs. And so it wasn't hard for him to come at the end there because they had a stretch there where once Byron got behind, it was like, whoa, this is a whole different game for us. And the car we had is no longer the car we have now. Yeah.

That, to me, those moments, like, you know, the caution in the middle of pit cycle, how that flipped the field, how those guys worked our way back through the pack, how were they able to get by particular cars than when William Byron is taken out of the lead and out of control of the race and put, you know, put behind some people. All of those things is what made this race entertaining to me. I know that the great, you know, the good race poll, they're very un-surious. Oh, it's serious. It's serious. It's unscientific. But, you know, there was a point where he was like, should I keep doing this? You know, I remember that.

So that's why I say unsirious. Well, that's just Jeff in general. Yeah. We take it very seriously. I think it's a very good, you know, temperature on, you know, the fans' opinion. the race and our you know our thoughts about it is and and my I vote I've always voted and so and I'm always curious I was surprised that this one was as low as it was because really yeah I thought it was going to be lower really oh yeah I mean so little passing I just I like the strategy element and actually

I was rooting for Byron to like have a perfect game because we've never seen that in this in this car in this era um but I thought it was actually going to be lower 45.9 percent said it was a good race I was in a studio completely like locked on it, right, and paying attention to it and obviously doing the fake, you know, doing the mock or the fake broadcast for half of it. So, I mean, maybe that's why it was more entertaining to me is because I was paying that close of attention to it. Now, if I was at home, right, watching from the couch, you know, got the kids here doing what they're doing and different things going on, taking the dogs out and, you know, in between different activities that somebody's doing, maybe I wouldn't have been able to really be that,

you know, locked into the strategy. That, that aware, I guess, of everybody's situation. I'd have been like, yeah, okay, I'm losing interest here. I've kind of, you know, got up and now I've got back down. Why is Blaney back there? What's going on, you know? But to watch it the way I did, I was really entertained. And to what, I think what makes a great thing, race for me there's a lot of things obviously that make a great race but when you can fact when you can factor in like a an emotion or multiple different levels of emotion by the end of the day so you're you're looking at Rudy he's he's he's got to face the music right and take some responsibility you feel terrible for this guy he felt horrible he had a badass race

car and nobody's going to remember that blaney another insanely really really really good race car. The year of near misses for him continues. Yeah. And so you have all of those, the emotions tied to those two, those two performances. And then obviously Denny sneaking in there and stealing one. His pit crew, literally being the stars of the day, we only really see the crews, there's a couple times during the season where this may happen, but mostly their time

comes during that final event during championship weekend, right? That's when we really go, okay, let's meet the crew. Let's see who these guys are. They're going to play a role today. Well, they did it. They won that race for Denny outright. And so you have all these cool little things going on. Larson wrecking out, first lap, you know.

Just a lot of things happening that brought a lot of emotion to that race and drama, theatrics. and I thought it was just a really good race. It was fun watching the tires play out exactly as you wanted them. You can jump people on pit stops, and then you're comers and goers, that felt like a classic Darlington race at the end.

I will object to that, though. It didn't, though, because we didn't have a lot of passing. Again, like, Darlington is supposed to be guys sliding around, and when they manage their tires, again, you have comers and goers. And Danny Hamlin said this afterwards, because I asked him this question. I'm like, why do we not see a lot of passing and stuff? He goes, one, the groove is much smaller at Darlington.

It's not multi-grove. You kind of, everybody has to run in the same spot. And two, when the tires fall off, they fall off at the same point for everybody. So if everybody's losing tire wear at the same time, no one's really coming and going. And to me, I like the strategy element. I think this was a compelling race. Where I push back on this, though, was I want, this is supposed to be drivers like pushing it and really wrestling around the car. This is where you see how good drivers are.

And it just didn't feel like that way. And that was part of it. And maybe it was also part of like, it felt like, unless Byron's. somehow messes this up, it's a foregone conclusion he's going to win. Well, you know, that kind of sort of happened. But it's just in the middle part of that race, really, it just kind of was like, this is not what I want to see at a darling game. Why is that the case?

Because like last year, Southern 500, 26 lead changes among 11 drivers, the fall race or the spring race a year before, 16 lead changes among 10 drivers. Like, why was it harder to pass this time around it almost seemed like? Well, I think as we run this, car and keep learning about this car, it's going to continue to get more competitive and more difficult to pass. So there's a little bit of that. To his point, the groove at Darlington, there's really like one or two options. In one and two, you really only have one way to go around

that corner. In three and four, there's a bit, you know, you can run the bottom and even the apron like Blaney was doing and get away from the other cars and get away from the dirty air. This car, the next-gen car relies so much on the air that goes under the splitter and gets back to the diffuser. A driver is relying heavily on being able to get air under the nose of the car to the diffuser. And when you're on a track that's literally only a lane and a half, two lanes wide, there's nowhere for you to really go to find the air, right? and especially if you got two guys kind of running side by side in front of you, there's nowhere to go. You just don't have any grip.

You can't go forward. You can't drive up to them. You have to wait for them to sort out what they're doing. And then you have to go find the clean air again. And drivers also are getting smarter about how to defend that from in front, right? Well, if I just try to take away his line, then he can't get the clean air under his car to be able to advance and pressure me. and when you're at a track like Darlington, you don't have a whole lot to have to block.

You got a very narrow race track, and you're like, hey, I'm just looking in the mirror. My spotter's going to tell me where he's been running. I can go try to attack that lane and make him go somewhere else. And so there's a lot of that happening. I like that, so we used to not defend. The guy caught you. He ran you down.

You'd be like, hey, go ahead. You know, I'll see you later. Maybe I'll run you down. You let me back by. there used to be not a lot of defending, racing hard. But it's so important now that you battle for every single position. And there's also sort of in this culture shift with guys like Chastain,

whose car is sitting on this table right here, that will defend every single spot. We'll race for every single spot all race long. And that's sort of permeated through the whole field now. Nobody gives up a spot. Nobody says, hey, you can have this spot right now and I'll get it later. There ain't none of that anymore. They race the shit out of each other because they don't want to be behind any more cars than they have to be

because this car struggles in traffic because you have to have that air coming underneath that splitter to get to the diffuser. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of way because guys have to defend more than ever before, which makes passing even harder. And then they're more of more inclined to be even more aggressive when they do it. defending, which again makes processing harder. So it's just, it's kind of in this vicious cycle. And I think the other thing to note about this as well, we haven't had any rule changes with this car in the over the off season. So it's allowed the bigger teams, the Hendrick, the Pansickees, the Gibbs, even 2311, to really fine tune this a little bit and really hone in.

And you're starting to see a little bit of separation between them and everybody else where you don't necessarily have the track houses or the RFKs. They're running fine, but they're not running at front. They're not leading a ton of lap. Those four organizations have just kind of pulled away a little bit. I was really impressed speaking to RFK how well they've been running, and particularly this weekend, again, a couple cars running up to the top 10 for most of the race. They're over, they're outperforming.

I think the expectations I think the rest of the world has for them. Trackhouse on the other side of it is underperforming. Yeah, I mean, Chastain finished top 10 this week, and he grinded it out. They do not have speed in the race cars right now. He's not qualifying well. And just in general, trackhouse seems like they're searching right now. And that Chastain is having as good a year as he is,

is a testament to what Chastain is. And it's why he is defending so aggressively on the racetrack. Because when you don't have speed in your race car, what do you have to do? And that's interesting, too. Some drivers, when presented with the challenges that trackhouse is dealing with, will roll over.

Hey, man, this thing won't do what I needed to do. And Chastain, on the other hand, is the kind of guy. it's like, well, I'll just race harder. I'll just defend harder. I'll just try harder, which is a rare quality in a guy. It serves him so well, though. It does. And it pisses everyone else off, but it serves him well.

At the end of the day, that's what you have to work out for yourself. And it puts him in good positions. Yeah, it does. Colleague, another team, I want a shout out colleague, who's made some gains this offseason and seems to be improving their performance on the cup side. We talked about Byron. you know, kind of giving the race away there late.

Blaney, you mentioned his unlucky start to the 2025 season, blown engine at Phoenix, crash at Vegas, blown engine at Homestead. Bad caution this weekend, but still was in position to win this race. Yeah, but didn't. And that's the problem is they have had all the speed, the Penske cars, right? They have zero wins. You look at their season as a whole. Austin Cinderick, Joy Lagano, Ryan Blaney.

They've let a lot of laps of season. They were in control of the Daytona 500. They let a lot of laps and led the most laughs at Atlanta. Blaney should have probably won homestead, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And they haven't been able to convert it. And that to me is the difference between a Joe Gibbs racing where, yes, Danny Hamlin was dominant at Martinsville, but he wasn't dominant, Darlington. They capitalized.

Christopher Bell wasn't dominant at Cota, but he capitalized. And he pounced at the end and got Kyle Bush. Penske hasn't been able to close out. Joe Gibbs Racing has closed out. And I wonder, as we see these sea shifts throughout the course of the season, where teams have speed some weeks and then they don't, you wonder if Penske's going to look back at this stretch at the beginning of the year, going, man, we left a lot of wins on the table,

and it's going to get later in the year when they don't necessarily have the speed in the race car and go, man, we're in trouble now. And we didn't capitalize when we did an opportunity. If I'm Penske, I'm really frustrated with where I'm at right now because Ryan Blaney should have won Darlington. Pit Road cost him dearly. He should have won probably homeset, blown engine. you just you continue to let these go and you look at the number of laps led they let 125 laps combined at the Daytona 500

131 laps combined at Atlanta that's an insane number of laps zero wins Jordan to your point lost 19 spots on pit road yesterday that's horrible that's where they need to probably be concerned is if you're not you know I think pit road is such a critical you know part of being successful and if you're consistently some issues there, they absolutely should be concerned and there should be not panic, but there should be some conversations, some hard conversations happening. I would say, though, that the speed on the racetrack should, you know, should allow them to have some confidence going forward. I know that they don't have the wins.

They're leading all these laps. I would be resting on the fact that we've got speed. The speed in the cars are there. Let's just keep doing what we're doing. Let's not change anything. We may need to do some things different on pit road. We may need to move some people around on our crews, so forth, to try to find some balance.

Because I'm sure that while Blaney may be struggling on pit road, his teammates might not all be struggling. And I think, you know, I'm not sure about Josh. Barry's team and how they're performing, but they seem to do a relatively, you know, decent job. So, I mean, maybe there's some, you know, moving and mixing and matching of different people to find a little bit of a balance across all four cars. But, and the other thing, too, is I always look at Penske as the team that, you know,

is sort of finding themselves throughout the season, and then they come on in the playoffs, and they have more speed, and they, when it counts, they're the, there, you know, and then they get the results. I'm a bit, and I'm a bit happy, I guess, to see how quick they are now. And if they continue their typical trend of how they race throughout the year, they might be in really, really good shape by how they come around the playoffs, but we'll have to see. I agree with you, though.

They are leaving a lot of points, playoff points, things possibly on the table that could benefit them later in the year when they get into the playoffs. But Blaney, running this well, running this quick early in the season, is a good sign for that team. He's still seventh in points, despite the blown engine crash, blown engine, bad caution. So, like, they have the speed. And to your point, I think speed is, like, the hardest thing to find these days. So it's like if you can, this is almost a good problem to have because the problems aren't what's on the racetrack. You need to clean pit road up.

You need to clean some other things. Like, at least, is there a little bit of comfort in knowing that you have the speed? No, no. You don't have a win. Okay, but you're not, let me an example. Let's go back a year to go, Martin Trick Jr. Started the year off very strong, right? Should have won Richmond, didn't.

And they had all the speed early in the year, and they didn't win a race. Well, come later in the regular season, they didn't have a win, and we had all these surprise winners, Chase Briscoe, Austin, D. I know Austin did, but whatever. All of a sudden, Martin Shirk Jr. finds himself on the bubble because he's the one guy who doesn't have a win, and you're like, damn, we had a really good year. We could have won this race. You know, he missed the playoffs a few years ago, and he was top five in points.

Ryan Blaney barely made it fourth in points. You need to win during the regular. season because you cannot take it for granted that you're going to get in the playoffs on points. And that's why this is an issue. I hear you, but I think you will. I think you will too, but we don't know. You don't know. I know.

If I was a betting man on NASCAR, I would put money on Blaney winning before the regular season. I would have said the same thing about Trucks a year ago, though. I wouldn't have. Oh, man, he had some wins last year that he should have. I just felt like that they were, yeah, I don't know. I don't feel as confident, I feel more confident about Blaney's speed and their team's ability to keep, you know, keep digging it out every weekend, showing up and showing up with these type of race cars than I did with Truex. But, you know, I hear you. Some of this stuff, they can't clean up.

Two blown motors, a bad luck on a crash, you know, I mean, a bad luck on a caution this past weekend. And some of that stuff is just not even their fault. and so now the pit pit road stuff's concerning you know that that reared its head at the end of the race this past weekend so I mean you could sit there and say the caution really wasn't what cost them to live in

it was the fact that they couldn't get off pit road fast enough yeah it's unfortunate but you have to circumstances work against you you have to find a way to overcome them man well let's move on to the Xfinity race great some people didn't think it was great I thought it was a great cup race looking forward to this upcoming weekend

but Bristol should be a lot of fun don't you think I love Bristol you love Bristol we'll see what the tires are like Bristol's still Bristol it's still one of those places you roll into They're going to treat the track They're going to treat the track and it should be good All right well I'm looking forward to that one You know that feeling you get when you're watching

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They had an all-driver's meeting before the race. And I guess hopefully that those drivers have heard the message from NASCAR. 8 a.m. by the way. 8 a.m. Boy, that's getting it. There was a reason. And you know why they had it at a.m. Damn right. Some of the drivers had to get up at 4 a.m. to get there. To get there. Drive down.

That's so. That's old-school. That is a power move. That is. Well, you know, I think that I think that it's great for the series to have those kind of, you know, conversations with the drivers. Do you know much about the tone of the conversation? I do.

Yeah, well, let's hear it. As one driver explained to me, it was an ass chewing. NASCAR came in there and was very clear about what is acceptable and what is not. And they basically called out Sammy Smith and said how he drove at Martinsville is not acceptable. As I was told, it doesn't, take talent to drive the way he did at Martinsville.

And this needs to clean up. And a couple things out of this is one, NASCAR made it very known. We go back to Martinsville in the fall. If you guys drive like this and there's incidents, we're going to react and we're going to park people at Phoenix. Championship be damned. And the other thing I think is this is how someone explained to me is NASCAR said we don't want to be in the business of making balls and strikes calls.

But if we have to make a call, we're going to call strikes. And that was kind of the tenor of the conversation. It was good, though. Austin Hill and Justin Allgaier were the two drivers who spoke up. They're both veterans of the series. Austin kind of acknowledged his role in some of the things. Oh, he did? Yeah, he did.

And he said that afterwards. You talked to the media and everything. And Justin, you know, said, hey, we need, you know, do a better job. So it's a good meeting. It's a good clear of the air. But honestly, I don't know if it's warranted because this meeting needs to be held a couple days before the fall Martinsville race. Yeah, they probably should.

As a reminder of like, hey, let's knock that off. Yeah. And we need to now be, you know, cleaner going into that. Yeah, that's for sure. I heard that Austin Hill had spoke up to offer his time to educate the younger drivers and had a little fun with that on social media. The truth of that is that Eric Peterson actually reached out to Austin and asked him to be vocal in the meeting. Oh, all right. I did not know that. Yeah, that's what Austin shared with me. So, yeah, interesting choice, Eric. But I'm just kidding. Do as I say, not as I do. I'm just kidding.

I, Austin Hill is one of the most aggressive guys in the series, and he had some moments during that Martinsville race that, you know, Sammy sort of, you know, ended up taking a spotlight from. And I race against him, and he races hard. And sometimes our car is running into each other, and sometimes I blame him. But it'll be, you know, and I do think that, you know, the series is, the series is exciting. Fans love it. Fans love what they see there with the racing. They obviously don't love what they saw at Martinsville, and I hope that NASCAR and the drivers can figure out a balance of good, hard, aggressive racing that you wanted a short track and still deliver a great finish, one that everybody wants to see. And I think it is a Martinsville problem. It's not a series issue. Not a series issue at all.

And so, you know, when we do go back to Martinsville, to your point, it might be worth NASCAR. having another meeting and, you know, another 8 o'clock meeting and saying, all right, guys, you know, this is what we expect today. I'm glad they did that and it does have a very kind of old school feel to it. It's certainly what, you know, the guys that were running the series and the Cup series and the Xfinity series back when I was driving, they were very open and honest and transparent and stern and strict when these situations would come about. But the race itself, I felt like that, you know, I got there and watched the race from the pit box of Sammy's team and enjoyed kind of seeing how they were operating that day and thought the radio conversation with Sammy and everybody was good.

The week before, I sat on top of the one pit box. And I just kind of listened to the spotter communication, driver communication, tone, delivery, crew chief, how the pit crew seems to be feeling. Are they viving with this crew? Is everybody good? Because we're using like Hendrick Cup guys and their connection to the Exfinity team is literally just for that moment that day. They're not over here to shop and stuff like that.

So it's kind of a, you know, you got to work as a driver and I think a crew chief to like bond with those guys so that when they come down pit road, they're going to want to do a good job for you. You got to treat them with like you value them and you appreciate them. They're not just plugged in for the day and they're your, you know, that's who you get. So I'm kind of paying attention to all that stuff throughout the race itself.

But I felt like that Christopher Bell was going to be the guy to beat. And everyone else would be racing for second. When the race started out, Christopher's car looked like he was struggling a little bit, not really as comfortable as I thought he would be. Our guys had relatively decent speed. Didn't qualify that good. I was kind of concerned with our pacing qualifying. I thought that Justin Ourgeyer was his typical self,

giving him a reasonable car or a great car in this case, and he's going to do a great job. I feel like, and maybe nobody else has really picked up on it, but I feel like, if we look back over last year, I feel like that Justin is racing with more savvy and less intensity. So Justin last year was making, a few mistakes.

And I think he just felt a lot of pressure to try to win a championship. He felt like the sand in an hourglass is running out. Now that he's got that locked in, I just feel like he's calmer, letting things come to him, not pushing the situation, not putting his car in the fence at Darlington and stuff like that. So he had a great day. Carson, Quaple, worked really hard to get a good result. Sammy worked really hard to get a good result. We put five cars in the top ten.

Chastain was fun to watch, but he ruffled some feathers, pissed off a few guys. Chase Elliott, and I know he pissed off Christopher Bell, got squeezed into the fence there by Chastain late in the race. And I asked Chastain, I said, hey, when's the next one? Because I'm on the bettable whether I'm coming to that one. You might need a higher security for them. I might miss that one, but I'm just kidding. He makes it entertaining. It is, yeah.

I mean, it's like Austin Hill. you know if he was driving my car right dude i would be all about what he's doing and how he drives but i race against it right and so when i raced against chastain in the exfinity series i did not like the way he drove i did not like how he drove around my cars because he could easily lure uh justin algyr into a damn a fist-to-fist battle around wakins glenn and there we are duking it out for 15th beating a shit out of a race car but when he's in your car you're like yeah man

hell yeah slide him slide them. All right. Squeeze them into the wall. All right. Tough luck. He was, that was Christopher Bell. He's pretty fast. Now he's squeezed into the wall. It's one less, it's one less guy we got to worry about. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I know it's, it's, but when you're the car owner of that guy, it's kind of like, hey, yeah. So now that you, I was going to ask you that, because, like, we talk about Chastain's aggressive driving style, but now that you're directly benefiting from it. Like, you, can you justify it more in the Cup series now? I think since So I've got the luxury of seeing everything that he went through

And everything that happened in the Cup series And all of the you know the turmoil and dust that that stirred up How How I would have handled that I don't know if I would have handled it as well as Justin Marks did But I feel like you got to stand by your guy He's in your car

And he's in the car and your sponsors and everybody's committed to him, your team's committed to him. If you show any kind of like doubt or, man, I'm backing off or I'm going to keep you at arm's length, the team responds to that. The crew chief, the pick crew, everybody goes, hmm, the owners, the owner's putting some distance.

And so I'm unsure about this as well. And so you've got to stand by that guy, even if you're like, hey, I don't agree. with what he did. He made a mistake. We're going to try to give him the tools to fix it, help him going forward. You've still got to, you know, you've got to show up and stand beside them and show them that you're still, you know, you're still hoping that they're going to turn out

and win the race today and have a great season and all those things. And the crew needs to see that. They need to know to stand beside him and support him and we're moving forward. And, but I, that's kind of a Sammy conversation. But with Chastain, man, it's. Fun. He qualified bad. I don't know why. I get, yeah, he went out second, so that was probably why he qualified so bad. But, man, watching him work through the field, I walked up to the car.

I love this. This is one of my favorite things. So I got four drivers that run full time. I talked to them when I'm at the racetrack, talk to them at the shop, see them all the time. When a cup guy drives our car for a one-off or doing something like Chastain and walking up to their car or seeing them, you know, me and Chastain's been texting back and forth, joking about the race and for months, right? Hey, man, finally driving your car. I never thought this day would come. And, you know, we'd laugh about it.

And then you see him on pit road. And I was like, hey, man, the front's that way. Like, what are we doing back here? Just in case you need to know which direction it's up there. Motivate him. Yes. And just laughing, you know, as he's climbed in the car. I think someone got a video of that too.

And he's sitting there smiling. He's like, man, this is going to be fun. I was like, I hope they got it turning for you. I know you're tight in practice. So, I mean, just having kind of a good fun conversation. He's in a good frame of mind. He goes out there and drives through the field up front. Now he's racing for the win.

If he wins, he wins. If he doesn't, he doesn't. But I would call it a success at this point, right? We're sitting here late in the race with a shot at it. And that's all I won't, because I get nervous that these cup guys are going to get in my car, and the car ain't good, right? You put a damn talented. Yeah, you want to give him good stuff.

You put a talented elite cup level guy in your car and his car can't run no better in 10th. That's a feeling. That's on you. That's on me. Yeah. And so that's what I'm worried about, but the car went out there and performed, and all our cars run good. Anyways, I wanted to mention, though, Brandon Jones. So he ends up being the guy that would take control of the race late and drive away from the field and get the win.

Brandon Jones raced here at Junior Motors for two years and went winless. And we struggled to find speed. We struggled to find comfort for him. There were races where we ran good. but just not great. And I will say that through all of that, never once did he complain. Never once did he say anything bad about our car.

Never did he come to us and go, I don't like my crew chief. I need a change. He would have rode out any scenario that we put him in and been hopeful that that was the way that we were going to find success. And so I just want to commend him, man, because look, you know, it did not feel good to see him get into Joe Gibbs car and go win. Because we couldn't do that for him. We couldn't give him that.

We couldn't provide that. Now, I believe I love our cars. We're good. We're a great team. We're going to win races and all that stuff. But we couldn't do it for him. We couldn't give him what he needed. And so we, yeah, I mean, for lack of a better word, we failed.

We failed him. And, you know, so it was tough to see him get in a get in the gift. car and get the victory lane but at the same time I'm happy for him and I'm glad that he's you know I'm glad he's able to go to one of the toughest tracks a driver's track and go out there and put his foot down and get that win and so especially because I know what kind of character he's got he's a good guy and you know we didn't we

did not have a good couple of years when he was here and he never you never would have known it you know what I mean so I appreciate that and went to Victor Lane shook his hand told him I was happy for him and look forward to racing him the rest of the year you know seeing what else what else he can do it was a it's nice to see have those moments where drivers who are really under the spotlight for a lot of different reasons and people like why are you with this team you're not having a success and then you get that win it's like he deserves that he works hard it's right he reminds me a lot of Riley Herbs in that sense.

Of like, you know, Riley has had a period there where he wasn't having the success. It's like, what is Riley doing here? Why is he with this team? But then you see Riley break through and win at the break yard. You see Brandon Jones win at Darlington. Like, hey, he does have talent. Like, it's not like something like he backs into it and that. It's like this is why.

That's right. And those guys like Riley and like Brandon, they are, when they're not running well in that two-year period, we saw it. I mean, I saw it. The criticism, the outside criticism of their, you know, that they belong, did they deserve? You know, they catch some tough criticism. And that makes it easy for them. I think you couldn't blame them for being vocal about what they're struggling with

or putting the blame somewhere else. But Brandon never did that. never did and I don't think Riley did either but Brandon never did say man I would do better if my pit crew this or my car this or my team that you know he doesn't point fingers doesn't point fingers never he honestly it's a lot of self-reflection of I need to do better I need to do this you hear that a lot from Brandon that's right let's go ahead and talk about a couple things moving on from Darlington the eight trademark situation with Lamar Jackson and I think it's kind of cleared it up now at this point, but to kind of give a timeline, if you will. So we learned that the

Budweiser number eight trademark is not going to be continued and renewed by Teresa. And we were a bit surprised by that because she kept the one trademark. But, you know, haven't talked to Teresa. I don't know why that was her decision, but we saw an opportunity to pick up the number, see if we could get the trademark. Without the trademark, we can run the number. Anyone can. We can use the number, no problem. Did we have a trademark for the current number eight junior motorsports number that we've been running since 2019? No, there was no trademark for that number. So we filed for the Bud 8 trademark. We have successfully succeeded in that process, and we are near the finish line on that with the Bud 8.

We also, as a backup plan, filed for the trademark on the Junior Motorsports number 8 that Josh Barry and all those guys have been running for the last couple years. That was sort of a plan B because we assumed that this Bud 8 thing might get murky or might not even happen at all. And so we filed for the other number. When we're like, as I said, we're sort of right on top of the finish line in closing out the trademark. writes for the but eight and in doing that at some point we would probably abandoned the application for the junior motorsports eight we just hadn't done that

well I learned on social media about the same time as everybody else did that Lamar was contesting our trademark application he wasn't suing me he's just contesting it and there's a there's a there's a part of the trademark process where if you believe somebody's applying for a trademark and it's going to hurt your brand, you can oppose it, right, and say, hey, I need this, I need y'all to look at this first. And what happens is our application for our trademark would stop and the board would check out what Lamar is concerned about and agree or disagree. And then the process would then pick up and continue. Well, when I learned about it, I thought for sure it was over the budd eight.

but when I dug into it, I learned that it was that Junior Motorsports font. And we weren't ever going to use that again, ever. And so after some conversations with Kelly and our team, they're like, yeah, we're going to abandon that. And so, yeah, it's not an issue. It's a non-issue. Much to do about nothing.

Much to do about nothing. So, yeah, in a few minutes, you know, we, in the next day, actually, we filed the paperwork to abandon the acquisition of that trademark for the junior murder sports eight and yeah we got what we wanted and we're down the road I was not going to argue with Lamar over something that I didn't plan on using and I wasn't going to spend you know thousands of dollars with my lawyers to fight for something that I didn't need but I did find it interesting when I went to Lamar's website where he's has this era eight clothing company.

There's like three or four different fonts of the number eight just on the front page. And so I don't think that he has a trademark to a stylized eight, but his trademark is for era eight. And so it's funny because he's, you know, they're arguing that our, you know, I are seeking for this trademark of the junior murder sports eight would be problematic for them. And, yeah. but we'll never get to the bottom of it.

But I thought it was interesting. A lot of people were worried. A lot of people thought it was obviously the butt eight. I did too initially until I dove into it. And so social media got all riled up and pissed off for a bit. That never happens. I know. And that's one thing that I was most worried about is like, okay, this isn't a big thing.

It's going to be gone tomorrow morning. And I know what's going on and I'm good. And I, you know, Larsen's or Lamar. Lamar's folks can carry on with what their plan is going forward and all as well. But the internet was going to get nasty. Yeah, they're going to get a little nasty about it. And I didn't want nothing to do with that. And that's unfortunate.

But I don't know Lamar's team and him and never met the guy. And I didn't want to see this get nasty for no reason. Yeah. So toward either side. And so, yeah, all that got sorted out. The other thing, too, is this Legacy Motor Club and Rick Ware Racing Charter dispute. Do you know the backstory on this? Go ahead.

Yeah. Legacy and Rick Ware had an agreement to, Legacy was going to purchase a charter from Rickware Racing. Rick Ware contends that it was for the 2027 season. Legacy says, no, it was for the 2026 season, and that is the contract that Rick Ware signed. And so now Legacy is suing Rick Ware saying, no, we have to, we're enforcing this contract for the 2006 season and purchasing the charter that we agreed to purchase, Rick is saying no, the deal was for 2027, and that's where they're at. We'll see how this all shakes out. I do have a piece of information for you that I think you're going to find interesting. I've talked to a lot of people involved in this. Do you know how much legacy paid Rick Ware for the charter? 50 million dollars.

45 is what I was told. Forty-five million dollars, which would be a new high in this sport. The previous high was Spire Motorsports paying 40 million to BJ MacLeod a few years. years ago. And we saw last year with Gene Haas when he was selling his charters with a fire sale. He basically just wanted to get rid of them. That number went down to the mid-20s. Now, 45 is seems like that's going to be the new floor for if you want a charter in this game, you're going to have to pay probably more than that. And that'll go up in a month. Yeah. Yeah, that one. I've already gone up, I think. Next one's not going to be cheaper than that. No, because this is the bare minute. I mean, this is theoretically one of the worst charters if you look at

performance. So yeah, if you're going to be in this game in the charter business, you're bringing some money. Yeah, I think I would say that the charters are probably increasing in value anywhere from, I'd say anywhere between $2 to $4 million every month, and they're going to continue to do that. So to get two charters, you don't even have a race car yet. You don't have a shop, a part, an employee. You spend $90 million, $100 million to get two charters. And then you got to build a race team if you want to go racing, which is another probably $100 million investment all in. And so it's pretty shocking, honestly. I'm torn in two about this because part of me, part of me is very happy that a race team

can you can start a business and then you have some value to sell prior to the charters. and literally in the Xfinity series today, if I wanted to sell this company and these four cars and everything we got here, you're selling it for pennies on the dollar, and you're getting no real true value except for the land and the building you own. You're getting no real value out of everything in it, all the parts and pieces, the equipment, all the machines, and all the fabrication, all that stuff is going to be sold at a very big discount.

But now, and so that was the problem. You get into racing and when you want to get out, you've got nothing to show for it because you can't. None of this stuff is that valuable to anyone outside of this building. And so now teams have a charter that they can sell and sell equity in, even part, you know, 30% or whatever equity in the charter. And you got real value. If you get into the sports, you might sell one day in that charter maybe three, four, five times what it's. worth what you paid for it. That's awesome. I love that. But it has created a very, very challenging barrier of entry for anyone that's

not a billionaire. You know, and that, it was, it was possible for millionaires to go racing just a bit, a couple years ago, but now it's a billionaire that needs to be involved. You're not going to have, you know, you see it with all these teams bringing in the private equity. that's massive money. And that was behind what legacy was able to do in purchasing this charter. Yeah. Because they had that investment group come in. That's right.

And that investment groups, you know, a couple of hundreds of millions of dollars that they have the opportunity to invest into the sport. So it's wild, man. And what I think will happen, and this is good, is, so I believe the value of the charters is well north of $150 million. that ceiling, I don't think anybody can predict. Would you have ever said 20 years ago that NFL teams will be selling for $6 billion like Washington sold for? Dan Snyder bought them in the 90s or late 80s for $700,800 million and sold them for $6 billion, 20 years later? So in my mind, that's a very, that's similar to the model that we're seeing with these charters. If I was a billionaire, I would buy charters right now.

Every day that you don't buy a charter, it's getting more and more valuable. If I was a billionaire, right, that had no ties to racing, I would buy all these charters and then turn around and flip them five, ten years from now. And we've seen that. And it's going to be interesting if you look at it going forward now, kind of the state of the garage. They're really, I think it's fair to say there probably isn't really a charter that's rudely available. We've kind of seen the charters that you think.

think would maybe be available, whether it was a BJ McLeod, or Rick Ware, they seem kind of spoken for at the moment. So that means if you're going to come in and you want a charter, you're going to have to make an offer to your point. That's going to push this up to astronomical numbers that years ago you would never imagine. 100 million sounds extreme. It's not. People have been saying this for a while.

Work to that point now. Because if you want a charter, you look at the charters that are out there, these teams and the value for them, they're not, one, they're not looking to sell, and two, the numbers attached to them, you're going to have to come in and blow them out of the water. That's right. And I think Rick wears in the best seat, because that guy could take the money and just turn around and walk. I mean, he's a racer.

Yeah, and I don't want to say this about Rick. He's like, he wants to be involved in sport. And that's what the basis of this kind of thing is, is he doesn't want to leave. And the way it's situated now is he's looking. at it, if this deal with legacy goes through as is, he would have to run as an open team for 2026, which is a money-losing proposition. And he wants to be in this sport, and he wants to continue on. And that's where he's at right now saying, I don't want to lose my charter. I have two of them. I want to keep them because RFK has got the lease on the other one. Yeah, but I don't

know, man. Somebody walked up and gave you $100 million for two. I'm on the beach the next day. I know, right? Or you could wait about two years and you're getting $300 million for $200 million for two. that too. I don't know. I feel like that when the litigation with 2311 and NASCAR gets settled, this is a hunch. I have zero real knowledge about what's going on with this, but I feel like there'll be some compromise made. I don't think it's going to be a landslide for a landslide when one side gets everything they want. I think there'll be a compromise, but I think it leans heavily toward the teams. I think if I'm 2311, a win for me would be that I'd get permanent charters, right? Yeah.

I think if they say, hey, man, your charters are permanent. They're yours for the rest of your life. I'd go, oh, great, we're done. I'm finished. Now, NASCAR will tell you that we didn't offer permanent charters, but we offered, I think it was 14 years as the number I heard. So we were able to go long, and then we heard from some teams, no, no, no. We don't want that because we don't want to go past the next media.

rights deal. So it's it's like you want permanent and we're willing to give you closer to that, but you're not. So now we're back at seven. Yeah. Well, I wonder if you, if the part, if the charter is permanent, does that not almost nearly double the value of that charter? Potentially. Because you know, and that that's what 2311 is arguing. It's like, we know that in seven years, we're not going to go down this road again where NASCAR for whatever reason says, hey, this charter thing isn't working out for us. We're getting rid of the system. And then all of a sudden, we're screwed. And so, but if we know that this system is in place permanently, we know we have value and we can turn around to the market then or to our sponsors or whomever and say, it ain't going anywhere. We're here to stay, invest in us.

But is there a world that even exists where a team's sitting on a $50 million asset? And there's not a world that exists where NASCAR would say, yeah, charters don't exist. I mean, and a team's going to go, I had a $50 million asset today and tomorrow it doesn't even exist. There's no world where that's possible. Well, without massive legal ramifications. There are legal ramifications. And I don't think that's a winnable case for NASCAR. I get to be very careful I say this because you don't know how these things play out.

But if you have a contract and that contract for the charter system is for seven years and you get to the end of the contract, you're not forced to renew the contract. There isn't a gun to NASCAR's head saying we have to continue the charter system forever. And that was part of the last negotiations where they were like, listen, this deal is going to end at the end of the 2024 season. We don't have to resign this. And that was essentially how they compelled the teams to sign the charter agreement because the teams were worried, well, wait a second. Hell, if this thing gets to the end of the deal and we don't resign, there's no obligation for this system to continue. That was the hammer that NASCAR had in negotiations. It's pretty wild.

It'd be interesting to see what happens with this legacy motor club and Rick Ware situation. I guess Rick Ware said they agreed to sell it for 2007, but the contract that was sent had the different years on it. I mean, it's literally that simple. I've got to be careful how I say this. As it has been explained to me by people involved, particularly on that side of the equation, there was language changed in the contract not to their knowledge.

Well, the one charter, one of Rick's charters, he has two. One is leased to RFK Ryan Priest in the 60 car, and the other one they are fielding on the racetrack with their own cars. So pretty interesting, man. It's going to be a wild week. Bristol upcoming this weekend. Do you got any favorites? We're going to talk about our gambling habits, our terrible gambling habits and Dirtymo Doe later. But I kind of want to get your take on who you think the favorites are.

I don't know how you go against Denny Hamlin. I mean, he's won two of the last three. Can he win three in a row? He's never done it in his career before, but he's won two of the last three races at Bristol. And if it's going to be a tire management race, who's better than saving their tires than Denny Hamlin, be really hard to bet against them right now. Momentum is a huge thing in this sport. Give me two dark horses, and they don't have to win.

Give me two guys that are going to get a top ten this weekend. Those are my kind of bets I like to make. Chris Busher. Former Bristol winner a few years ago, I wouldn't be shocked if he wins. had a lot of speed in that race car. They've been feeling we talked about how RFK has been really well. And Bobba Wallace, like Bristol's been a good place for him over the years. You know, to go back to the Richard Petty Days.

That team has got some mojo right now. I know the Darlington didn't go how they wanted it to. Don't be shocked if Bubba has a really, really strong day. Is this a weekend where we finally see Cobbush and eight car up in the top ten battling? I mean, it's kind of a track to see where he can actually make a difference. Yeah, I mean, it's like Darlington. They got a top 10 there and they ran well. it's a driver's track.

I mean, if he's going to get one of the, you know, a win and snap this streak, Bristol certainly would be a good place for it. All right, man. Hey, Jordan, we're going to cut you loose, man. I appreciate you coming in today, giving us some time, all your insight. Thanks for what you guys do for Dirtymo Media. You and Jeff, you are great teammates. And, yeah, I'll see you to race track.

Appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. Denny Hamlin on Dell Jr. download, man. I guess you're at home. I'm assuming this looks homie. When did you win that trophy up there over your right shoulder? That's an interesting one. You're right.

Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good. That's no trophy, Dale. Oh, it's not. I don't know what you can see. Okay. The, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, the dancing. When did you win dancer? Best dancer. Yeah, that's just, that's just an art piece. Oh, that's not an art. I'm not in my office. I'm in Jordan's office. So she, this is her. Oh, amazing. Well, hey, yeah. It's a good looking room. How, uh, how's the last couple of days? been, man, you were on a tear, two wins in a row. You got to love being able to capitalize late in a race like that. You're sitting there thinking, hey, man, we're going to have a reasonable day

here. And then things go down and you have to drive the car. You have to win the race. And I want to get to your pit crew here in a second. But you've got to love the races that kind of fall into your lap like that, for lack of a better word. Because it doesn't happen often. Usually us drivers, I was just talking about this. I feel like that all those late yellows always screwed me over. I can't remember a race where a late yellow benefited me. I'm sure there were plenty, but we don't remember those. Well, I remember a lot of races, and the ratio is still like six to one.

I mean, you know, that's why when the caution came out, I came over the radio and was like, oh, come on, Kyle. Like, I was like, you know, because at that time, I'm just thinking about, oh, how are we going to lose this? finish not you know how we're going to come out of pit road first and win this race you know so i thought there were too many lap cars between us all this other stuff so i'm like you know i'm sitting here just grieving over knowing what's inevitably going to happen which is going you know i'm going to get knocked around on the restart and have a bad day but um man yeah it's it's they don't happen often um it definitely seems as though uh you know if you if you play this game long enough that the tail, you know, the scales will tip a little bit, but, you know, I still don't think it's

even. That's the guy who's pretty selfish about it. So the crew usually, I'll say this, usually we do try to introduce the teams and the crews to the fans. Fox does a really good job of this, of highlighting them as individuals, they actually get to speak into the camera and tell you who they are, where they came from. I love that. but we really, really don't shine a light on them until Phoenix in that championship race

because we know they're going to play a role there. And it's not often that we see them shine as brightly as they did this past Sunday at Darlington. I know that you realize how much they played a role in the finish, and I'm curious as to what you do about that. Is there something post-race or something that happens in the next couple of weeks, where you're going to let those guys know how much you appreciate their effort on Sunday. Yeah, absolutely. The first is making sure that each and every one of them gets that same trophy.

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's an important one, no doubt about it. It should go in each one of their houses. And so getting replicates for all those guys for that is going to be very important. And obviously, you know, we have a group there that is very, very young. They've come together. You know, I went through my pit crew strategables between 2019 and 2021. The record, the tally actually on the, you know, the pit crew, you know, possibly kept us from winning was, you know, up in the 8 to 10 range.

It was pretty high. But, you know, this group has come together now, and it's just, they're just doing an amazing job of, you know, keeping me up front and getting me up front. And, you know, you mentioned, like, you know, this is the group. great way for them to shine you know it's a it's a unique situation because most race tracks that you go to um the money stop it's just somewhere inside the last fuel window right so it could be with 50 to go 60 to go and the driver still has an opportunity to screw it up at that point and so for them when it comes down to a green white checker at a place like a richman where you know everyone's pitting or or Darlington where you know everyone's pitting that is their opportunity to say if i

get my guy out first, we're winning this race. We can win the race right here, simply because there's just not enough laps for someone to kind of overtake you. So this was the perfect Super Bowl type scenario for a team like that. And, you know, the crew chief, Chris Gale

said that as soon as the caution came out, these guys were pumping their fist, couldn't wait to get the car on pit road. Damn, that's awesome. All right, well, we're going to Bristol. You're going to have a shot at one in three in a row for the first time in your career. does that matter? I mean, I know it'd be nice, but does it add any kind of extra little

layer of excitement or pressure or anything? I mean, sure, it does. I don't know about pressure. I mean, you know, we're certainly, it'd be a great accomplishment to have. It makes no difference if we don't. But yeah, it'd be cool. I'd never had three in row in my career. I didn't realize that I'd gone back to back twice before this. Again, it was eight decades ago when that happened but it's still you know it's it's a cool thing to talk about and and certainly three in a row my teammate just did it earlier this year so you know he's only like his you know it feels like fifth year of cup racing so um i don't know just uh it would certainly be special and bristol is a track that you know you want to win at anyway but this one would be extra special yeah um one of the

things that i think is interesting about your situation you guys uh joe gives racing's kicking ass right now one of the best teams in the garage, going out there, running well, closing races. You're at a unique point in your career where you need to start thinking about how you kind of finish this up, right? We've seen guys, I've always said, I guess, that around the age of 43 is when we see drivers lose their performance. And it's for various reasons, some out of their own control. You're in a really great spot to keep winning races. You're winning races. You're in a really good spot to do this, I believe, as long as you want.

And we've had guys like Bobby Allison, Harry Gant, thinking way back into NASCAR, that could win races into their late 40s and 50s. I mean, I can honestly see you being capable of doing that. Even if it's a young man's game, it takes a nerve and edge and perfection and sharp, sharp skills. you've got to be freaking elite with your reaction and what you're thinking about. But I think that you're one of the anomalies that's going to be competitive and be a winner is probably as long as he wants to run. So that's the question I have for you is, are you shelving that thought of,

how do I kind of want to finish my career? It's an incredible career. Due to the success you're having, do you put that on the shelf for? for now? Not right now. I mean, you always have to plan for it, and you want to give the team proper time to come up with their next plan as well.

And so, you know, I think that, you know, running some at 2311 is something I'd like to do. You know, Joe Gibbs Racing's been amazing to me over the 20 years that I've been with them. Just fantastic. Couldn't be any better. Joe and that whole group's just been amazing. But, you know, there's certain, there's things that are different, right?

I do have a race team. You know, I really would like to just, you know, even if I phased out in ransom there, that would be a cool goal of mine, you know, just whatever it is. If it's five races, 25, whatever it might be, it'd be a cool way to phase out versus just stopping. I think I would have a tough time, you know, just stopping. But I want to be competitive when I do it. I don't want to do it when I'm already past my prime of winning.

And so, you know, it's however that timing works, that's how I would like for it to work, but you don't always get to decide. I mean, that's the thing is sometimes, you know, the people that employ you, they got a business to run. And sometimes it just doesn't make sense. for them anymore, right? And they bank on your decline, not necessarily what you're doing. So, you know, we never know how this thing's going to end up, but certainly you always have to look towards the end and how you want it to go. Absolutely, man. Well, you're winning races,

and we're wishing to the best this coming weekend in Bristol. I know it's a racetrack you look forward to. Hope you go down there and have fun, man. Thanks for giving us some time today. Of course. Thank you. We'll see you. Our live. is Dale Jr. And this is the Ask Junior portion brought to you by Xfinity. I want to make sure that you all know about Xfinity Mobile. And customers there now get exclusive access to Wi-Fi speeds of up to a gig in millions of locations nationwide.

And with its coverage, you know it will always come through for you in a clutch. Take NASCAR everywhere you want to go with Xfinity Mobile. They're a proud premier partner of NASCAR. Let's get right to the questions. I'm excited about this. Andrew, what you got? Yes, YouTube chat's popping off already. Dean is commenting from Canada, so that's the furthest away. I wonder if he's the east or west.

Yeah, well, Dean. I've been to Vancouver and Ontario. I've never been to... Where's the race track up there? Montreal. Montreal. Never been there. I'm hoping we get to go to Montreal, and I hope that's a race that I get to broadcast. Could it be my first trip?

So pretty cool. I've never been. Canada sounds pretty awesome. Yeah. Good folks up there. Absolutely. This first question come from Twitter. Tyler is asking, what was the favorite generation car that you got to drive?

Oh, I mean, I would say... Car of tomorrow, right? Probably. I would say, I mean, that car from 2004, that was my best year, I think, in terms of how the car felt drove I just liked that car. It had a lot of down force, a lot of grip, but it was all in the body, and we had the bodies twisted up in a certain way

that in traffic it was still relatively decent. And so, you know, you kind of, if you needed a little bit of downforce on the front, all you had to kind of do was get the headlight out. You could still kind of be directly behind a guy, but just kind of show the left front fender or the right front fender and get some turn. And so that was a great race car, a lot of fun, good looking.

So probably my favorite. I have always wondered what it was like. I watched these old races, especially let's just pick 1979, for example, 79 or 80. And I've got a car right here from 1979, 1980 that dad raced. And I am so tempted to get this car outfitted and take it somewhere where I could go 100, to 150 to 160 miles an hour and see how it felt now would it feel exactly like what dad was driving maybe not um but it could i just would love to know like what what trying to drive one of them big boats around michigan felt like right or bristol even and um were they comfortable were

they hard to drive or they you know what what was that feeling like um from those cars in the 70s any any year in the 70s i would love to have driven something. like that in competition. What's the hesitation? Is it like the fact that you could crash it? In my mind, I mean, I don't know what you would, if I took this car, if I got the, I've got the engine and the engines over in another room at Junior Motor Sports here. And if I got the drive train in it and got it running and actually had it out driving

around and then took it to Barrett Jackson, I don't know what it'd sell for, but I'd say it'd get near a million mark. Yeah. You know? That type of car? That's the car that he crossed the finish line with at Ontario and won his championship in 1980. David Pearson won in the car at Darlington. Dad won in Atlanta in 1980.

Pearson drove it in 79 when dad had his collarbones broke. And so it's got some really, really cool history. They only had probably four or five cars back then. And this one ran most of the Michigan's, Charlottes, Atlanta's, the big tracks. And so pretty cool a race car with some real, known history and I think it would its value is tough to predict so I don't think I'd take it out on the track and run it hard

I rebuilt that Nova right and we put it on social media how we took it out and drove it around Charlotte right yeah yeah yeah and I was nervous about that I mean this it's not I just watch this car get you know fixed and rebuilt over the course of a year right and then you got to jump in it and go out and drive it around Charlotte which I wanted to do but it's like how fast do you go right if you bust your ass man you're going to be sad

they do that before the indie 500 they bring out all the old cars and have all the legends and I just can't imagine the pressure there must be to drive and that old stuff's problematic right yeah back when it race there was a team of six guys or so that made sure every nut and boat was perfect

yeah right and now you're you know it's like there's a little bit of attention there's a little bit of attention to detail but it's nothing like when it competed right so you can't go out there and confidently mash the gas going, hey, is the right rear shot going to fly off? I don't know. Right. And they haven't running a while? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point. I'm seeing a lot of gen 4s are people's favorite in the YouTube chat. I'm so damn confused these days. I guess Gen 4 is the 0304 car. So, yeah.

Yeah, because we're at, I'm almost, yeah, I know, right? So now it's next gen. Yeah. So what comes after that? I think they're just trying to confuse us. Gen 8. Right, right. It's like how many iPhones are there these days? They didn't go Gen 8 or Gen 8 or Gen whatever. Next Gen. Next Gen. Right, Gen X. Now they're... Now they're... We're driving the Gen Z's next. Now they've lost count.

Yeah. We got them. Um, this next question, uh, is from all out NASCAR on Twitter and they're looking for some advice. So this guy, my hair and beard are starting to gray. Should I dye my hair, uh, to stay young or should I let nature take its course? I, I'd let it go, man. Um, let it run.

I, yeah. I mean, um, do you, you have your hair? I'm assuming you have a, let's just assume this person has a reasonably decent hairline. Sure. I would be happy about that and just let the rest go. You know, I've got buddies that aren't as fortunate. And some of them, you know, I've had a few friends where they get to that point in their life where they're like, yep, just going to have to shave it all off at this point. And then they, yeah, they go from what little hair they had to totally bald.

And that's the rest of the, like they're getting really no choice in this matter, right? So to have some hair, I feel lucky. I'm not going to color it and be vain or yeah is that the right word yeah be vain about it yeah I don't know sure yeah so yeah so Carly Simon you're so vain yep yep yeah yeah you don't know you're too young that's the problem I don't know yeah I mean you got to listen that song man apparently she wrote this song you're so vain about uh who's the guy that played Dick Tracy what was name gosh somebody in this chat I don't know

he was an actor but anyways somebody in this chat will know keep your eye on that but she wrote a song about this dude and it slaps I mean she goes after him but we're getting off on a tangent

Warren Beatty Yeah Bady Bady Bady Bady So yeah she wrote a song about him and them dating and boy she was not

she didn't have a good experience apparently Oh Yeah, my hair is getting real gray and my beard's gray. And I don't care. I kind of like it because when I shave my beard off, it's like I get younger. Yeah. Right?

So you can throw that curveball when you let it gray out. Yeah, and just shave your beard all together. Let it gray out. And all of a sudden show up one day, clean shaving. People go, hey, whoa. You did that like a real good today. You did that like a year ago and it threw me off. I'm like, who is this guy?

You're coloring your beard. Let me tell you this, too, man. If you're coloring your hair, it's usually noticeable. Right, right. So it's like it's, you got to, if you color it, you got to catch it at like the first side of gray. If it's noticeable, are you really doing yourself any favors? Or are you just walking around with paint in your hair? Right.

And people are going to be like, yeah, it's not his real hair color. Like, if you're not fooling everybody, what's the point? That's true. That's true. whatever makes you feel yourself, I guess. This next question is coming from Nancy, and they were listening to the Casey Mears episode, which is awesome.

If you have not listened to that, go check it out from last week. And they said, you said there are races that you're proud of that nobody remembers that you didn't win, but were like big moments to you. So like, do you have any examples of that? I know you talked about the third place finish at Sonoma,

being a big deal on Bless Your Heart, but like what are some of the runs that meant a lot to you that maybe don't get as much appreciation or credit. Well, the Martinsville race, we've talked about a terrible amount of times here, so people are going to recognize that race right away where the cars tore all to hell. But I mean, you know, shoot, man, I don't know. I think most of the time when you come close, you're disappointed. But there's only like one or two where you're like, you know, we got lucky today or

Or, yeah, I mean, most of the time, I felt like late-race yellows screwed me over. Never do I remember a late-yellow. And I'm sure if we've got some really die-hard fans in the chat, they might remember some races where late yellow helped us. Now, I would like to remember those races because I don't. But, you know, usually the late-yellow's came out, and I'd be, like, kicking the floorboard so pissed off about it. if you're sitting there running, you know, I was always thinking about it like this. 500 mile race, you really literally are busting your ass to try to work hard every corner for 500 miles. And then Kosh comes out.

You're sitting there in fourth place, fifth place. And you're like, what shit? I had a fourth or fifth in my hand. And now I don't know what I'm going to get. And if I get a tenth or an eighth out of this shit because this late restart, I'm going to be pissed. You know, and I hated that feeling. So now other guys might look at it like Hell yeah

Running 4th 5th late yellow Chance to get third chance to get second That's not how my brain worked Right or wrong probably I would say that's the I always thought the wrong way But Some guys will be like You know like a Ross Chastain will be like

Hell yeah here's my chance You know And I wish I had that trait But I don't know I Yeah I don't know We ran second or third at Michigan in a range short and race.

I think Carl Edwards run second in Casey Kane won. And it was in that beige number eight, Ralph Earnhardt throwback. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was happy about that. I think that car was a little, it was fast enough to see what that, you know, I would have, the car was fast enough to like, hey, it's been interesting to see that race play out. But Michigan had kind of been a tough track for me off and on. And so to come out of there with a good run,

I don't know why that one kind of sticks in my gut, but I was kind of like, hey, man, I wonder what would happen if we'd have let the race play out, but it's awesome to walk out of there with a good result driving that paint scheme, that car, because it was cool-looking car. Yeah, we got time for one more question because Denny Hamlin will be calling in here shortly.

But this one's from Kevin. What's the next concert you have tickets for, if you know? I don't. You don't. No. Weren't you just, you posted on Twitter that you were hanging out with,

was it Red Clay Strays over the week, past week? No. No? Who are you at GoPro with? A band. Amberlin. Oh, okay. How was that? Well, so the Danger Summer is a band that I'm a big fan of and got to become friends with those guys

and they are touring with Amberlin and I like Amberlin songs too. There's some great songs from like 0708-09 that I listen to from them. But so they're touring around. They're kind of finishing up right now down in Florida. But they were coming through Charlotte, went to GoPro on their off day. It's a hell of an off day.

AJ Pridomo and the guys from Danger Summer like, hey, man, we're going to meet you at GoPro. Come out. I was like, I get done with everything I'm supposed to. I'll see you out there. So I go over there. I didn't call or anything. But I go over there. Apparently, AJ and the guys were too hungover to get out of bed.

day. They ran a little hard the night before, but the rest of the, you know, the rest of the group was there, Amberlin and the rest of the tour was there. And so I got to meet them and we took a picture and sent it to AJ and those guys, voicing our displeasure about them not showing up. And, no, but it was cool. I don't know when I'm going to go to a concert. It's always kind of like last minute. We saw the red clay strays in Charleston and man, it was awesome. if you hadn't seen them out, I'd go see them. I'd like to see Stephen Wilson, Jr. Oh, I'm seeing him in July.

I know. I'm pumped. Got a buddy of mine is supposed to see him soon, and it's like a 7, 800-person venue. Oh, and that's where you want to see him, too. The small freaking rooms. So the funny thing about Stephen Wilson Jr. Man is I started listening to him because Tim Dugger sent me his song 1994.

Yes, year to be young. Probably two and a half, three years ago. Yeah. He sent me this song. I'm like, yeah, awesome song. I listen to it a lot. Yeah. Didn't listen to anything else.

And I checked out the record, and I didn't really vibe with anything right away. But now I'm listening to all of the record. Like, he's got so many songs on that record that are really good. Yeah. And so it's interesting because, I don't know, I love music, so I do this all the time. But I have some friends, right, in several bands, and they'll send me their songs or this demo or this album. they're working on and I'll be like, I don't know, but give me a year, right, and I'm in love with the whole thing, right?

Right, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you hear a song and immediately the moment you hear it, you're like, I love that. Give me all that, all day. I want to listen to this over and over, right? You love the song, right, and you play the shit out of it. And then you'll hear other stuff from bands you like, and maybe right away you don't love it, and it takes several listens to sort of, like, for it to click in your head. I always kind of thought that was an interesting phenomenon,

but that's kind of the way it was with Stephen Wilson, Jr. Yeah. So his stuff's so good. Oh, man. Like, I had the same exact discovery as you. I'm like, I listened to a song, like, all right, yeah, this is okay. Then you really dive into it. And like, he's a freaking genius.

He's good. Yeah. Well, awesome. That's a good place to Endash Jr. Today, and thanks to our friends at Xfinity. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. This was a little bit of a quick one, but Denny is getting ready to be

to call in so we want to keep him waiting. Thank you, Exfinity Mobile customers. You get access to the most powerful Wi-Fi network on the go with speeds up to a gig. NASCAR fans, this means faster downloads for turn-by-turn action, smooth live streaming with fewer pit stops and a strong connection from the parking lot to the grandstands for more laps and less lags. Stay connected with Exfinity Mobile. They're a proud premier partner of NASCAR and absolutely essential to being able to do what we do these days with our with our smartphones and our iPads and everything else everywhere we go.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets. All right, it's time for Dirty Modeau. And coming into the studio to tell us all about who we need to be betting on this weekend at Bristol. It's Tampa Tims. How you doing, Tampa Tims? Hey, what's up, guys? This segment of Dirty Modeau is brought you by, and we love this.

Fandu. It's a great app. Great app. Phenomenal. First off, Final Four recap. We've got to talk about basketball. Do we have to? Yes.

So I had, let's recap, I had a really good run. You did. I did. I had a really good run. I had a lot of fun during the tournament. But when we got up into the elite aid and the final four, man, things really slowed down for me. It's a lot of, really novel. a lot of bets that I really would make.

I don't really, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't make gambles. Yeah. But I kind of go for the sure thing, but so when all that kind of went away with the final, you know, a few games, things got tight. Duke, we had a parlay, me and you both. Yeah. Where we had Duke in Florida and Duke let us down. Yeah.

Collapse. Absolutely collapse. You know, I think about that and I'm like, God, those guys, like how many of those kids are going to be able to get a chance to try to fight their way back next year. It was very similar to maybe like, I hate to bring this up in Elliot Sal was going to hate it, but his loss to the Xfinity Series Championship, right? He comes so close to winning the Xer's Series Championship when racing his whole life. He just wants this one thing. He doesn't get it. He comes down pit road and you could see it in his face. You're like, I don't know if he's going to recover

from this. Yeah. But a lot of these kids, like for Duke, they had this game in hand, right? And some of them might not get that chance to go back and try to redeem themselves. No. Their careers for all, I mean, they may go on overseas. Some will go to the NBA maybe, but not all of them. It's going to be a completely different team next year. And they may go play ball somewhere else and maybe be able to have success. But this has got a stick in their gut, man. To be on that main stage like that in front of the world and have that go down. So close to. I don't envy that situation. But that's why sports are so great. People are willing to get up in front of the world and put it on the line, win or lose, and some of them have to lose in spectacular fashion.

Yeah. Houston moved on, and so last night, a couple of us did a couple different things. You went and bet Houston to win. Yes. I waited until the game got going, and I felt pretty good about Florida winning overall, but I wanted to – their line wasn't all that great before the game, so I waited until maybe Houston got up in the game for a better – some better odds and that's what happened you did a that was a great strategy too i didn't want to admit

because i had houston but it was a great strategy so when they i was sitting there with amy and i was like they're down before i was like i could get in right now at about a hundred plus one 10 but i might wait and see if they can get like down eight down 10 and so i got them at uh i forget what it was but they got down eight or 10 points and i made a money line bed on florida they come back man barely like in the last minute and a half kind of got themselves in position to to to make things difficult for Houston. Yeah, that's how they've done all tournament, though. They had that graphic that every round they've had like a huge, like up to like six point,

you know, deficit they had overcome. One was 13, so actually very smart bet by you. Dude, I wasn't much of a live better until, you know, you've got to talking about it quite a bit over the last year. Yeah. And I've been really enjoying the live bets, especially when there's not a lot going on. So when this basketball tournament ends, there's, you know, people like me, they're casual with this really don't know where to go next, right?

Yeah. Where's the next kind of fun? easy, low-risk, kind of casual place to play. And what I've found is going to Major League Baseball, oddly, and playing the half-innings. Yes. No runs. Yes. So, you know, I don't even know much about the pitchers.

I guess I could do a little homework and find some more information to kind of have a better, more confident decision on who's this team pitching against. but to sit there and look at some of the teams that are just not having good years and going up against a strong team and say it's the fourth inning, fifth inning, middle of the game, chances are, you know, they're probably going to struggle to get anybody home. Yeah. And I love those bets, man.

You pick some bad teams like the Rockies, White Sox. You just put two or three those teams together in Parlay. You get some plus money odds and there you go. You're home happy. It's this is what's called like the dead zone for betters. Really? No more college football, college basketball, college basketball. basketball is over. It's really just baseball.

Yeah. Well, I'm enjoying that. I won't even parlay them. I'll just sit there and put, you know, a dollar or some real small change on a no-run inning and just to be doing something. Just to be kind of enjoying the thrill of it. Amy laughs because she's like, you're not even winning money. I'm like, yeah, but it's like the win or the lose.

It's not really how much I'm winning. You're invested in the game. Yeah. I'm like sitting there going, come on. Yeah. Get him out. Strike him out. Strike out. Strike out. Strike out. The Mariners. Throw the curve. I'm like, I don't even care otherwise, right? And here I am carrying. Exactly.

Right. Well, there is some great options and good gambling to be had in the NASCAR space. Yes. We got a race coming up. All right, first off, before we talk Bristol, I want to see how things went for Darlington. We talked about that a little bit, but not great. Not great. Not great.

It was tough to pass, you know. I mean, that kind of really, and the track position was tough to have any value betting-wise. So not a great week, but I'm excited for Bristol. Yeah. So with Bristol coming up, what are some of the best bets? in your mind? Well, the top five average finish, best average finishes are the guys you expect.

Larson, Hamlin, Chase, Bell, but the fifth guy, Chris Busher, he's being super undervalued to win. He's plus 3,200 to win. That's interesting. You mentioned him because that is exactly what Jordan Bianchi said. Yeah. Chris Busher was a great pick. Yeah, I think he's a great pick this week.

I've already bet him to win. If you can find a good top 10 odds when they come out, definitely do that. A couple other guys I like for top 10s, Ryan Preece. I mean, RFK is really good there. So I think he's a, he's a lock. And Michael McDowell has a really good average finish, 9.8 in the next gen car on the concrete surface. That's seventh best. So I think he could sneak in there. Spire has had some speed, so not terrible there. His win odds, though, are plus 11,000. So maybe a little sprinkle, small, small, maybe 50 cents a dollar. See, you know, what about, you know, this is a guy that maybe you would have considered

five, ten years ago, but Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Bristol's always been a track where he just sort of shows up. That's not, that's a track where he can get it done. That's definitely a driver's type of track. Also, like, the tire situation, he could help him. Yeah.

Can you get, I know we can get top tens. What's far, like, what are some bets where you think you might could put Ricky Stenhouse in? So I'm not sure if they don't offer it every week, but the finishing position over or under. They usually set his in like the mid-20s. This is a week where I would go. Yeah, exactly.

Or it would be under, but yeah, definitely. I was thinking Stenhouse, my only worry is his last couple of finishes at Bristol, 27th, 33rd. He got a 10th in 20th, 33rd, 23rd, 20th, 40th. So like his last, I mean, like two top tens since July 2020. Sounds like to me he's due. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sounds like the books are going to have low on him.

I know, too, but then I started looking up the stats. When you guys were talking about that early, I'm like, no, that's great. But you know me, like when I think about gambling, I love the underdog and trying to find, you know, somebody who's going to be the dark horse. Bubba is relatively good. Jordan thinks that he's a guy that you'd want to look at,

maybe as a top 10 or a top five for Bristol. Grew up racing on the short tracks. They're very competitive this year. He's very consistent. this year. Can he continue that streak and get a good result? Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. So I wonder what the value might be for Bushier just in top 10. Probably not good. You know, because he's plus 3200 to win, I would say he's probably going to get a plus money, maybe plus 120 when it comes out, which I would hop on now because I think he'll qualify well, he'll be

up front. Like it. Parlay him and Bubba for top tens. Oh, yeah. And then try to pick a winner. Yeah. Add to that parlay and, well, you'd have something. I would have something. I'll be honest, I think it's going to be a Larson or Denny win. But, you know, he takes some risks. But top tens is where I'm going to try to. The way things are going for Denny this year, this feels like another race that he's going to be telling everybody he beat their favorite driver. Yep, exactly. We got the Masters as well.

Yes. So what are you, you know, I've got a little note here on my phone of just kind of fun bets to make, you know, stuff that's just kind of enjoyable to do. That's relatively quick and easy. I've got nothing for golf. So I don't necessarily want to hear who you think are some good bets, but give me some way to approach golf as a casual bet. So for me, I don't really mess with the outright winners or the longer, you know, you had to wait off the whole tournament to figure it out.

I like going round by round. And my favorite bet is round score over under, where they might place that what the par is, like 71, 72. And I pick a good golfer that normally goes under that under par, usually, and bet that. And I bet it every day. I'll bet a head-to-head matchup where it's just two golfers in the same group going head-to-head, see what they go after. Yeah, that's, and you can do round leaders and stuff like that. I'll mess with that. I'll really just stick with those two, head-to-heads and the round score. I love playing those day-to-day. Man, that sounds like a lot of

fun. Do you have, do you have any ideas on some of the bets you might make? Well, I do have, I do like playing the top live golfer, because I think it's fun. and Bryce and DeShambeau is so fun to watch. I just bet him. But I'll probably have that. They don't have any round scores out yet, but there's a couple guys I'm watching. You know, like a lot of people think

Colin Warcow was going to have a good week, so that's a guy. All right, man, that'll be a lot of fun. All right, this 30-modeo segment is brought to you by Fanduel, the premier gaming destination in the United States. Thank you, Tampa Tennis, for coming through. And, yeah, we'll see how it goes. Yeah, let's do it.

All right, it's time for the white flag. as Jordan and I were talking, the tear down came out post race, Darlington. You'll want to listen to that here about everything that Jordan and Jeff Gluck were talking about and thinking about post race. Always a great

listen. Action's detrimental. Denny Hamlin, the winner of the race, telling us about everything that he went through on Sunday and everything else going on in the sport. Doorbumpur Clear also came out Monday. A great show with those guys this week. And Wednesday, our guest show,

As we have Tony Kahn and Kyle Larson coming in to talk about Kyle's double. That's going to be a lot of fun. Herm and Trader Drop as well, along with a new episode of Speed Street. It's a busy day on Wednesday. Thursday, Amy and I will drop a new episode of Bless Your Heart. And then also, Dirty Moe has launched a new e-commerce line. We want you to check out our awesome Dale Jr. download merch on the site, plus a lot more. There's shirts, hats, t-shirts, all that stuff for all of our.

All of our shows, bless your heart gear and everything else that Amy's helping design. So shop.dirtymobedia.com. That's the website. Shop dot dirtymomomedia.com. Check it out. Also, I want to say we're thinking of Shigatori and his whole family. He passed away over the weekend. Truck series owner, truck series owner, and champion.

He did invest a ton into this sport and kind of did it all the hard way and had a lot of success. helped a lot of drivers, crew chiefs, mechanics, tons of people come through his organization and move up the ladder through the NASCAR ecosystem. And so we're thinking about him and just a tragic loss and seeing a lot of great comments on social media. I did not know him all that well, but there was a lot of people that he directly affected in a positive way that are speaking some great things about him as we remember him today. Media.

Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.