The Dale Jr. Download - DJD Reloaded | The Great Short Track Debate

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

What makes a short track great? Former DJD producer, Matthew Dillner, and DBC's Freddie Kraft square off in a spirited debate on all things short track. Our anonymous driver poll gives insights on what drivers want in a short track race and we listen to the best Dale Calls of the week. Ryan Preece calls in to share his thoughts and dishes on the most overrated short track in America.Check out and subscribe to the Dirty Mo YouTube channel. 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.

Well, you may have heard about this debate, but maybe never quite like this. Today, we are asking a big question about short track racing. And it is, what is the most important element, the single most important element for a short track race to have for you to consider it a good short track race? And what is a debate without an old friend? We got Matthew Dillner back in the Bojangles studio. Mr. Law Speedways himself. He's here to weigh in. Plus door bumpers clears Freddie Kraft. He's not done arguing from DBC. earlier this week. And we had to get a driver's perspective.

Ryan Priest, known for short track racing. He's going to join us a little bit later. We'll get to it all right now on DJD Reloaded. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Welcome to DJD Loan. Yeah. So I have to remind myself, short track racing was in jeopardy. It's in trouble, especially the next-gen car.

But before the next-gen car, we're losing short tracks. All right, as promise, we've got Matthew Dillner here of Flow Sports rejoining us once again. It's good to see you. It's good to be back in the dirty mo here. I know. And Freddie Craft is equally as excited to see your face right now. A door bumper clear joining us again, obviously spotter for Bubba Wallace. Guys, are you ready to get into this short track debate?

Do you know what you signed up for first? We've done this for 30 years, so we're ready. Yeah, we'd be poolside having the same conversation, you know. And get equally as heated, I hope. Just by the sun. Yeah. All right. So let's talk a little bit about this.

We're talking about elements, right? And we saw a great short track race in Bristol this weekend. A lot of varying opinions really came out of this. So let's talk about elements of a short track. What makes a good short track, Matt? It depends on to me if you're looking at like Cup Series short track or we're looking at like short track like local short track. But to me, you know, it's the character of the racetrack, how difficult it might be to race.

you know, if we're talking about the track itself, you know, and, you know, the ability to pass. You know, what type of style of racetrack will it be? Will it be a type of track where you have to move somebody out of the way? Or is it a side-by-side racing track? So, you know, the shorter the distance of the track, to me, the better race track you have. You know, I'm not a big two-mile, mile-and-half guy. Yeah, to Matt's point, I think side-by-side racing is what you're looking for. You want multiple grooves.

You want some kind of strategy. You want it to be hard to pass, but not so hard that you have to get to beating and bang. I love to see beating and banging. We both come from a quarter mile short track, Riverhead Raceway. That's a bowling. You beat and bang there. But, you know, you play multi-grove places. The ability to pass is important.

Tireware is obviously important. Cummers and goers. Some kind of strategy, whether it be pitch strategy. We grew up modified racing where you used to watch Teddy Christopher come on and bolt four tires on with 25 laps to go in a race. and it was the most exciting thing in the world to watch him drive through the field. Or it could just be tire strategy like you watched Dale Jr. at North Wilkesboro last year, you know, save your tire, save your tire, and then drive through the field. So any kind of comers and goers like that makes for the best short track for me.

Short track racing is clear for fans, right, that are familiar with it. But is it easily defined in the NASCAR Cup series because we've kind of gotten away from that? It used to be easily defined and somehow it got pretty blurry. I heard Dale talking about this yesterday where Loudoun is not a short track. Phoenix is not a short track. Oh, gosh. Sorry, LaTart, but you're wrong. I even teeter on Richmond for me is...

It doesn't race like a short track anymore. I think, like, you're... For me, a short track lives in that half mile or shorter range, in my opinion. Yep, 100%. So that's not a... Phoenix is not a short track. So I think Cup fans don't know what a short track is anymore. Right.

And I think it's even been exaggerated with the new car. You know, the fact that I took my little guy to... to Martinsville and they're shifting at a short track back. Like, like, no, what are we doing? So, you know, yeah, short tracks for cup is a blurred lot. Yeah, what a shame too, because that's where it kind of originated from. We'll get back there. Yeah, hopefully we will. Dirty Mo Media really did well this week as far as getting insight from drivers and where they feel that short track racing is right now. What makes for a good short track? We have an anonymous poll from drivers. And if you're thinking, hey, who did they ask? What driver did they ask? The answer is

probably yes. We asked current Cup champions. We asked current drivers, past drivers as well. And so we have the poll results. And 30% of these guys say that a good short track race is defined by clean pass opportunities. Make sense? Yeah, I agree. It's side by. For me, it's, like I said earlier, side by side racing is what you want to see at a short track. You know, you want to see the places where you can run multiple grooves and guys can play off of each other. Off throttle time is also very big. We harp on that about cup racing. You want to see these guys have to race each other and not just, you know,

beating and banging is obviously a big aspect of short track racing, but you don't want that to be the end-all be off of what you're trying to accomplish. 100%. Off-throttle time is huge. And I don't care if you're on a little bullring or where you're, you know, using so much a break, or if you're on a mile and a half. I'd love to see off-throttle time in any. race that I go to. All throttle time also mentioned by some of these drivers. Tire degradation.

23% of the drivers said that that defined short track racing. Rubbing and contact, 18%, under 3.4th of a mile. You kind of mentioned this, right? So no Phoenix, not in that definition. And then 14% said other. Now, here's some other interesting boats that the drivers had out there. Minimal arrow impact. That's kind of what we're talking about. Complete enforcement of rules. What do you think they mean by that? Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, Freddie.

Well, there's some places like Dillner's Circus that he runs up there that... Oh, I have a race track? Wow. You speak at, at least. You cover weekly. I knew this band-aid was coming right off. I don't know. I mean, they probably enforce the rules so they don't have any.

I don't know what the rules are, but they don't enforce much of them. But, yeah, like the big... For me, one of the biggest aspects, and I think it came up in there is it's the tire wear. And that's why we're having this discussion is because of Bristol this week. In Cup. That's the biggest issue. But I think it's the same across the board.

I think you look at some of the best tracks, you know, short tracks across the country. A lot of them are gone right now. But, you know, let me tell you, this might not be a popular opinion. But Wilkesboro a year ago is going to race a lot better than Wilkesboro will when we go back there this time. Yeah, yeah, but give it two years and it's going to be lights out. But it's just, but why is that? You need the tire wear. It's not going to race now

But you know The Myrtle Beach was phenomenal Hickory is still phenomenal You know places Pensacola like places that wear out Put on the best races And it's because of tire wear And you have those comers and goers

And you have a pitch strategy That you need to Or a tire strategy that you need to follow Until the track gets too far Yeah you know Some can argue that Hickory My opinion

And a modified doesn't put on as good Of a show as a late model Light models are great with tire wear Racing in my opinion whereas modifies are meant for, say, a hard-charging type track a little bit more. Myrtle Beach's surface was perfect for late models, but it was almost getting too much. Pensacola and Florida, almost getting to that point where it might be too much. It's a very fine line, but I still, I'd rather you take it and beat it to death as a worn-out race track than pave it,

because then you're going to spend four or five years trying to get back there. You know what I mean? Sometimes it's necessary. Wilkesboro looks good, though. Wilkesboro was next. That pavement's not going to take long, dude. Yeah, I don't know. It's going to, I think it's going to be away. It's fast.

It's real fast. It's going to be, they need to get cars on it and put cones down on the inside and let them practice, do practice days. We'll talk to Ryan about it because Ryan was there yesterday. Me too, two seconds faster. Is that what we're hearing? Probably closer to three for a modified. For a modified, it was over two seconds faster. And they think they could dip down into the 16s.

So, uh, when they, when they qualify. So it was absurd, like ludicrous speed. But if you step out of that groove, even like, Like on entry and three, Luke did it because he hopped in the bar after Ryan. And he was just like a scosh out of the groove on entry and drove it in a little bit too deep. And it's dirty. You know, it's not just pure marbles, but it's dirty. And we see that with other places get paid once you get out of the groove.

And that's why I'm concerned about the racing product when we go back there. But it'll come back eventually. But it's just, it's tough to see a surface. And they needed to do it. But it's tough to see that surface go. One other anonymous driver mentioned that it was hard to pass. That was his vote of what makes the short track. I don't know what that means.

That was Dillner. Dillner called that in because he watches that every Saturday. Driver, I mean, I'm like a washed up street stock driver, bro. You must have disguised your voice or something. I don't know what happened. All right. Well, we also asked some of the fans out there to answer this same question of what makes for a good short track. So let's go ahead and listen to this week's Dale's calls.

I don't know if you're wanting dirt or asphalt, but to make a short track on dirt, a short track. You got to have tailgate parking. One of the things I can remember growing up as a kid at Wyss Raceway and with Field, Virginia, was going to the race there. My grandfather was parking with our tailgates down. And I was sitting in the bed of the truck watching the race. It's a man, that was magical.

Yeah. Dillner and I used to have a hell of a tailgate. Oh, wait, hold on a second. Can we tell them? Yeah, yeah, you can tell them. I mean, you can tell them. I'm not telling them. You're not going to tell them about the legendary fried chicken tailgate out of the

back of a limousine at a dirt track? Yeah. On our birthdays. It was my, it was me and Herman's birthday. And yeah, we won't go into the whole thing, but we definitely took a limo to Carolina Speedway and tailgated out of the back of it with cools a beer and buckets of fried chicken. So that was one of my more epic short track adventures. Hey, you did a cartwheel down the stands.

Holding your cooler, your arm never bent. It was like watching an Olympian at its, in its pond. My wife still is impressed by it. I know. Could you do that right now? And he didn't spill his beer. Could you do it right now? No, not a chance.

I mean, I, I, I didn't spill it. I wasn't trying to do it at that point. That was me falling down the stairs and it just appeared to be a cartwheel. Skill. Mary Lou Reton Kraft. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and check it on another call.

Good short track races need to be unpredictable like Bristol was. If you know or have a good idea of what's going to happen, why sit and watch? Races that are unpredictable make you want to watch every lap. I completely agree with that. I've talked to so many people this week that said, They watched every lap of Sunday's race for that reason, you know, because you didn't know what was going to happen. I think Andrew was one. Andrew watches probably all the races to get ready for this stuff.

And he was talking about it on Dale's show about I watched there. I was invested in every lap of that race for that reason. You know, you didn't know what was going to happen next. But can NASCAR make that a commonality? Can we keep doing that? I mean, because teams have, you know, built their teams on figuring out these racetracks and using the data. Yeah. I don't think it'll happen again.

I honestly think that teams kind of got caught with their pants down, and now they could be better prepared for it. And we, as you saw in that race, we could go the first run, we could go 30 laps. And then everybody, everybody figured it out. You can go longer and longer until, you know, at the end we were going 70-ish laps or something like that. So drivers themselves, without really any just, you know, minimal adjustments,

figured out how to get double the life out of the tire themselves. So when teams can work on some stuff and go back, they're going to be better prepared for it. So, I mean, it was fun to watch. But, I mean, and hopefully they can bring something similar back, but it's going to not. It's going to not be that way again, I don't think. Yeah, that was an anomaly.

It was. It was fun to watch them. All right, two more calls. Let's go ahead and get to the next one. Well, there's not just one. There's two. You need drama and you need action. Now, you can't have one or the other, but if you have both, then you set Jeff Gluck's

pull on fire. You got good guys, got bad guys, and they got to know their role. If the tires wear out like Sunday at Bristol, you get action. If a set of tires last for 800 laps and the drivers are all crying about arrow blocking and all that kind of stuff, then somebody needs to channel their inner Dale Earnhardt and create some drama. And that's all there is to it. So is it all about drama, Matt?

Dude, I mean, when you're a kid and you go to the racetrack or, heck, when you're an adult, sometimes you go to a racetrack and you don't leave remembering much of the race. And then there's nights where you go there and there's something that happens, kind of like Bristol with Terry Labani and Dale Earnhard. We were talking about it, me and my buddy Rob Blount on the way to Wilkesboro yesterday, you'll never forget that race because of that one moment of drama, that was an explosion. The best thing that came out of this weekend was we didn't have to see 45 videos of every

different podcast saying the word horsepower, because nobody cared. Horspower, the package did not matter. The tires is what cars that great race. So this brings about another question that we'll get to. But before we do that, let's go ahead and listen to another caller. Honestly, I think the one thing that I love being in a short track race is strong. drivers being able to have options to showcase their skills. Personally, I love a worn-out surface that allows guys to move around.

I think you see that a lot at Florence Motor Speedway, New River, All-American. Even Tri-County may not be so abrasive, but allows drivers to move around and kind of to overcome a little bit of their equipment. It sounds like Blake McCallel. Might have been him. Yeah, I mean, I agree with them. That's kind of what we would touch on all the morning. and like the ability to pass, the ability to move around, tire wear. Like that's kind of just everything you're hitting on there.

All right. So I mentioned the question that this brings up. And we mentioned Bristol and the tire wear and a lot of the drivers having varying opinions when they got it at the car. Was it too much tire wear? So this is the question. When it comes to short track racing, the thing that makes it good, can you also have too much of that element that makes it bad? 100%. You know, just like everything in life, okay?

Alcohol isn't bad, right? but if you have it in excess... You're asking the wrong person. If you have it in excess too much, is it then turns bad? Well, it's the same thing with auto racing. It's the same thing in principles of basic life principles. So, yeah, if you have too many explosive moments, yeah, it's not too good. If you have tires that are coming apart like you're on the sands of Daytona in 1932, is that good?

No. You know, so yeah, anything in excess isn't good. I think the tire wear this week, like I said, caught everybody off guard. You know, once drivers figured out they had to manage their stuff, they could manage it. But it goes to different, you know, everything else. Like we talked about on here, you know, a couple years ago, we started having great road course races. So we flooded the schedule of road course races. Now it's overpopulate, you know.

It's just, we talk about how great, you know, beating and banging is at certain racetracks. Well, then when you talk about hard to pass, like that driver mentioned, now you have to have excessive beating and banging. and it turns into a bit of a circus. You know, so everything has to be in moderation, and that's why you look for more side-by-side racing and moving around because you try to avoid that, you know, the excess or like the tire, like Dillner said,

some of them racetracks, Myrtle Beach was a good example. Like they used to throw the green flag in the modified race in Myrtle Beach, and it looked like we never accelerated because you couldn't go hard for 50 lab. You just had to run basically caution car pace five seconds off the pole because tire wear was going to come into such big play. So that definitely you can have too much. of a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. And we mentioned that anonymous poll. We actually have some anonymous comments from drivers on these tracks. I guess this one isn't anonymous, but Dale

Jr. did weigh in and we're going to put his name out there because he said a short track must be shorter than a mile to link. We already talked about that. A current cup driver said the best short track is one where dirty air matters the least. I feel like we kind of heard that a little bit this weekend. Yeah, and that's the biggest thing you're looking for going to Martinsville. You know, again, Richmond's kind of another anomaly. It's a three-quarter mile track. It doesn't really race like a short track. We get to Martinsville.

I want to see this same race, essentially. Obviously, I don't want the tires to blow out in 30 laps. But like Dale said, you know, Dale said on his show, I want tires to blow or be worn or be destroyed before you're going to run out of fuel. Because a lot of times we're, you know, our team was planning on running that last stage. You know, like if there was no tire issue, you're going to run until you're running out of fuel. That's like 180, 190 laps on tires. Because we could do that in the past.

You know, the tires just didn't wear. So you couldn't risk pitting and gluing down three laps. So you just ran the whole run. It would be 180, 190 laps, which is unheard of. It never really happened. Usually got a caution. But you're committed to going, we're just going to run so you start to sputter. You flip your fuel switch and then you pit.

So what this brought in was actually having to try and manage the race. And that's what I hope to see when we go back to Martinsville. Because right now, Martin'sville is an arrow track. And with the shifting, you can't really do anything. Yeah, manage the race. you don't have to wreck guys to pass them. Yeah. I mean, I agree.

I also look at this. Okay. Three of us are sitting here in a podcast studio, right? What if you were sitting like five yards that way? I was sitting like 10 yards that way. Would it be a good shot on the cameras here? Would it be a good shot? No.

Okay, same thing with auto racing. Physicality matters. We need physicality. And it's like arrow races don't provide that. If you look at dirt late model racing right now, They're struggling with that, mightily. You know, at the dirt track at Charlotte last year, Mike Marler was walking the dog on him.

But it gets up to a lap car and, man, he gets that arrow push on the nose. He can't do anything. That's not good. Yeah. So I don't want arrow in my racing. So good explanations from you guys. I feel like we've been a little too nice on this show. At least you two have to each other.

So we're going to get a harder question coming up. We'll get to it right after this. All right. So now we're going to get to this very difficult question to answer. a lot of fans weighing in on this as well. We'll get to that in a little bit. We're also going to get to Ryan Preece, who's going to join the show still in a little bit later.

But what is the best short track in America? It's it. Like I said, it's difficult to answer that because of, we talked about this earlier. In my opinion, the nicest short track in America is Stafford Motor Speedway. Do I think that's the best short track in America? Probably not.

You know, I think a place, man, it's hard to, it's hard to beat. For me, Hickory Motor Speedway is probably one of the best short tracks in America. It's so regional base. I'm sure we'll see that with some of those fans. Yeah, racetrack itself, man, it's so hard to say, you know, Pensacola. There's so many ones. I'll stick with the nicest racetrack is Stafford Motorspeakeway. I look at a place like Winchester Speedway and Indiana being just absolutely iconic.

I look at for a show, Bowman Gray Stadium. But overall, overall, I agree with Freddie. Because if you base it on car count, competition, the show that the fans get, the amenities, the facility, and everything, Stafford. Because Stafford Motor Speedway is like what dirt track racing has in Eldora. It's a show place. And they put on shows, and then for the fans, it's a show place. So I think for dirt, it's Eldora. for Asfall, it's Stafford Motor Speed.

We have to apologize because I was sticking to Asphalt here. Obviously, our dirt friends, there's great I-55, Chico. There's some amazing short-track dirt races. I've crossed them all off my list because of what we're going with here. But, I mean, yeah, talk about the show. The owner knows plenty about a show. It's more like a circus, but he knows plenty about a show up there. We can do a whole podcast on that.

We've never really settled out that argument. I do about half a show here in a minute. So what matters most of fans, though? Is it the track or the show that's put on? Listen, as ridiculous as that place is up there in Winston, the, the, they sell out. You know, they have great, I don't know if they sell out every week like they used to,

but they still have great crowds. A bad crowd is 9,000 for you. So it's like every short track in America would die for that. But the WWF gets the same good crowd. You know what I mean? WWF, I don't think that exists anymore. Or WWE, whatever it is. I haven't watched it since the 80s when it was still WWF.

But the problem is we're talking about great racing on here. And I hope I think that you could never tell me that that's some of the best racing you've ever watched. As many racetracks as I know you've never said that. I know, but I'm just saying you just said it's the best racetrack. What did you say on the internet? What did I say on the internet? You said it's not real racing. It's not.

And that it's just a bunch of clowns. It is. Okay. So tell me how. Tell you how. Okay, they don't race. Oh, they don't? They smash into each other.

No. No. What are we talking about? What's the protocols for a great race? Side by side racing. None of that happens there. Multiple grooves. Nope. Tireware. Nuh. What else was on that list? Because I can go down the whole list and tell you there's not a single thing on that. Yeah. So do you agree that those don't, it doesn't meet that standard? No. I mean, I don't think, I've never said Bowman Gray is the greatest racetrack ever. You just said it on this show. It is one of it is a great. You just said four minutes ago. It is the greatest facility and show place.

The sport will ever know. But, okay, let me ask you something. So there are a bunch of clowns for running into each other, right? Yes. Okay, let me ask you one question. Yes or no. And it's not so much. Hold on.

Is Bobby Allison a clown? If he was acting that way, I would call him a clown. And I'm not talking about. He did the same thing. I'm not talking about. This isn't new. I mean, he did that to Curtis Turner and they had a demo derby in the infield. I was negative 40 years old when I had a problem.

And now this day and age with social media, all. God, people are wrecking each other in the infield, lose our minds. My problem is, my problem is, my main problem is with Bowman Gray. If that happened once a season, I would say, eh, it's Bowman Gray. You know, that happens. It happens every night, and it happens multiple times of the night. It seems like every time I watch any video, the problem is, here's the thing. Never, I can't go.

I got to work. But, you know, the problem is, and this is the main problem, and I don't know, I don't think it's you guys. It's obviously social media. if I see a clip from Bowman Gray, it's never about, holy shit, look at this last lap finish or last lap pass. It's look at this guy drive across the infield almost.

That's the tracks fall. Yeah, because they don't, they don't officiate is the problem. They don't make calls. They don't do anything up there to control the circus because they wanted to be a circus. And that's the track's fault. If the track cracked down on this stuff and threw guys out for doing ridiculous stuff like they do,

I mean, there's people throwing stuff through people's windshields last year. I mean, if the track. In the pit area. But I'm saying that the track cracks down and throws these people out and does this thing. It comes back to hopefully getting back to the racing on the racetrack. But right now they feed into the circus aspect of it. I get it. You want to sell tickets.

But at the same time, you can't say it's even remotely close to some of the best racing we see. God, I love the fact that we're talking about it. Oh, yeah. I mean, listen, I used to go there. If I could go, I'd go once a year. You know, because it's a show. You go drink beer and watch, you know, same reason you go to the circus. You want to see the clowns run around and entertain you.

And that's what happens up there. We're talking about the show and the drivers, the anonymous poll that we did. They did put out a couple of different tracks. We got South Boston. Very good race. Several votes there. Thunder Road. Thunder Road's amazing.

Tell them they put the walls out. Thunder Road, I feel bad for them. They kind of really got screwed over and that SRX deal. Yes. Like really bad. It was too long of a story to get into. But the Thunder Road, my buddy Scott Tapley up there, runs that place. And he's one of the best race directors in the country.

and they put on some of the I've never been there I've never been there a million times I've never been there The most efficient shows and one of the nicest little short tracks you'll ever go to Amazing place

Pensacola also getting a couple of votes Snowball Derby baby Yeah Pensacola And we talked about this earlier Like not so much the track I'm sorry I don't want to cut you off But the you know And I Dillner will agree with this

We both agreed that Stafford Motor Speedway is probably the nicest race track in the country Does Stafford Motor Speedway have the best short track race in the country? No, no. They don't. And that's for me, I think it's probably, I think it's probably not biased, but the snowball derby.

I mean, is that what? Snowball derby historically, in my opinion, because it's lost a little luster with the pit stops. That's another argument. But snowball derby is undoubtedly. The snowball has everything you want. It has the tire wear. It has the pitch strategy. The pitch strategy got screwed up a little bit.

now with these control pitch stops. Star power. Everybody shows up, side-by-side racing, beating and banging, coming down because it's a prestigious award. It checks all the boxes for me. 100%. If you want to know what Dell Jr. said earlier this week. He said the best short track in America is North Wilkesboro Speedway, but then he thought about it for a little bit, right? Because we know he was there. I was saying he was sitting in the stands. Yeah. The best, he said the best short track in America doesn't exist, to be honest. I could name a dozen that are battling for that status. I think and honestly, you know, if I, if you talk to me about just on track racing, Irwindale Speedway puts on the best race. If you took super late, that old, uh, was short track

showdown that used to go out there. And I know we like, I don't know enough tracks in the West coast to give them all of them love. But Irwindale Speedway, when we would go out there for that race, you could run five different lanes in that place. You could have side by side battles, tires wore out like another place to just check all the boxes. And it wasn't a huge tire wear to your point. like an overly aggressive tire wear place, but that place put on some phenomenal races. Well, that's why I'm hoping the resurgence of maybe some West Coast late model racing with the cars tour, West Coast deal that Kevin Harvick's trying to really amp up, can build that region like the mid-Atlantic here is so rich with, you know, late model stock racing that

hopefully the late models up there rise up and we get to really see these West Coast tracks and see a place like Stockton 99 or Irwindale, you know, become nationally known. Yeah, that would be really fun. tracks that drivers had was Bristol, some clarified Bristol with asphalt, Oxford, Winchester, Martinsville, Slinger, IRP, and New Smyrna. But we also asked not only the drivers, but we asked the fans out there to weigh on this on X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, hashtag, don't hold me to it. So let's go ahead and pull up what the fans had to say. Freddie, you kind of mentioned that if you're going to ask the fans, a lot of them are probably going to do what's

closest, right? What's closest to the heart. So, and I don't know about I get this question a lot. And it's, it's, you know, what's your favorite track? Or what's the nicest track? And I'll say Stafford most of the time. But if you gave me the opportunity to go to Stafford or to Riverhead Raceway where I'm from, I'm taking Riverhead Raceway every time because that's my home track. And a lot of people, this is going to follow that, I think.

Yeah. And I think a lot of, let's pull that back up and they said Nashville's fairgrounds was one. I know that's a popular one. Wake County Speedway. Stafford Speedway, you already mentioned that. Slinger. Slinger right there is amazing because if you go to Slinger and you look at that track, okay? If you've never been there, you would think it's going to be a bottom shot

BS race track where rooting and gouging and it's high banked and tiny and there's no room to race, right? But then they drop the green with super late models and it's like side by side pace laps at full speed and nobody's buggering each other out of the way and it's like so amazing the racing there and it's just a it's a it's an anomaly. It's a crown jewel type place in the in the in the in the sphere of short track racing. That's slayer national It was awful nice of Mike to chime in. I was going to say, Mike Davis did. Mike Davis knows it's a short time.

I think it's a different one unless he's got a different picture. Mike's a big fan of Meridian Speedway. Have you been? Meridian Speedway is pretty cool. I've never been there. I took laps in a limo there at like 3 o'clock in the morning. You do a lot of stuff with limos. It's crazy.

Southern National Motorsports Park. Bristol, again, Eagle Raceway. Bristol, like, listen, I hope to God Bristol is back. I don't know that it is. I think this was, I think this was, I think this is an anomaly and we have to say. I hope they didn't bring the same tire. Did it go away?

Well, yes, it did. No, it did. The cars changed. The car, yeah. No, no, the track treatment changed. Even this week, the track didn't change, you know, from last time that we were there. It's just the tire. So you got to bring the right package there. So it is what it is, but it's, you know, hopefully it's back.

We'll see. It's still there. Well, we've talked about the best short track. Now we've got to talk about the most overrated short track. I feel like maybe have you mentioned one already? I think I've already gave my answer. Come on, Freddie. Go first.

Bowman and Grey Stadium. How is it overrated to go into a historic venue that's like Wrigley Field of Racing, one of the most beautiful stadiums, historic stadiums in America, where they race around a football field. The atmosphere there, when you walk in, even if they don't take a green flag, is something to behold. If there's eight wonders in the world in auto racing, it is one of them. Then they drop the rag.

If it's a decent race or a decent night, you still leave there saying, I want to pay $12 when I leave. Listen, for a show purpose, I guess, go up there. I'm not, but if we're talking about the best racing in the country, you're not going to see it there. You never said that. I'm talking about my feelings about why it's overrated, and I base everything off of the racing. If you're not going to put on a good race, I don't need to be there. And that's what it is for me.

That's why I feel like it's overrated. I don't know if you haven't overrated. Overrated. I don't like to bash or spike on any short track or any racetrack because you're, you know, you lose racetracks doing that. But if I were to have to select one, I don't consider it a short track anymore. And that's the reason I would say it is Richmond Raceway. Love that racetrack so much, but I wish we could go back to more of the fairgrounds,

a half mile that it was, other than the high bank sweeping corners. You know, you're carrying so much speed into those corners. There's not as much off-throttle time. The old Richmond was way better. Right. So we promised you that we would have Ryan Priest join the show. Well, he's ready to join right now. and he's known for short track racing what he's been able to do in modified and then of course on short tracks in NASCAR as well.

So let's go ahead and bring Ryan in here. Ryan, we're talking about the most overrated track in short tracks. What would be your answer for that question? I didn't expect to have that one. Seacock. Seacock is a, that's a neck puller. I think everybody from the Providence area is going to hate me. and I'm going to lose some fans from that part of the Northeast now, but I'm going to be honest with you.

I mean, I'm very, I haven't run very well there. So that obviously plays into my decision with YSACC cong. We were talking about earlier in the show of elements that make a short track, a short track, and that put on a good race. What are the qualifiers there for you for that? I would say it has to go through a really big balance swing from day to night. you know that that's one that I like I mean sitting here talking I could say Stafford is one of my favorites as well as New Sumer to Speedway racing in a modified those are those are two of my

half mile favorite but when you when you also look at Riverhead I'm sure Freddie's been you know an advocate for Riverhead Raceway I spent many years going to that quarter mile so it's just every race track's different and certainly has their challenges. We had a heated debate earlier between these two on Bowman Gray. What are your thoughts about that short track? I'm really going to piss off some people here. Pile it on. Pile it on.

I mean, if you're into the show, then sure. Did you prep them, Freddie? I didn't talk to him about this. Ryan's got a win there. Ryan's family car. Ryan's got a win there. Yeah, no, I like quarter mile racing if you couldn't tell. But certainly, Riverhead, Riverhead was very unique.

It was a racetrack. It was a quarter mile. And most quarter miles, you think, hey, man, I got to run the bottom. But you could make the middle, the top. Well, when I say middle, the top, basically, because there's really only room for two cars to go around now. And that that was probably one of the raciest quarter miles that I've ever been on. I want to ask him something.

He tested, tire tested yesterday, a NASCAR wheel and modified. tour car Tommy Baldron Racing 7 NY at North Wilkesboro new pavement but still a lot of character but super edgy what's your take on the new surface and what it's going to provide for short track racing across the platform because we're talking about cars tour going there and modifies yeah no it's it's still very technical and you definitely notice the uh going downhill down the front stretch getting into turn one it was an issue where cars would get loose getting in and you'd beat on the tire and that was still a thing and it's actually i'm going to throw luke baldwin under the bus here because he actually went out there and and he was bastarded me uh with with the

laps that he did but then he just completely got loose into three and and and almost i thought tommy was going to kill him so i've never heard a collective sigh of relief bigger than that yeah yeah but but going back to talking about wolksboro um you know obviously tire wear isn't going to be nearly as big of a factor as it was with the old pavement, but obviously it was time for them to do it. And I think we all hope that, you know, it'll, it'll season and tire wear will become a thing again. But it's, it's really fast. I know we didn't put in the, uh, the amount of gear that I think we, we need or modified needs to need of run there. But it's, I mean, you are, you are rolling some serious speed there.

Ryan, we're going to get into the 16s, buddy? Oh, I think so. I said at the Tommy before we left that if we really wanted to change the gear, I could have got a 1680 out of it. We were talking, I think we'll get to your favorite track. But we were talking earlier about so much. The best tracks in the country don't necessarily have the best races in the country. You have got an opportunity to run in a lot of the best races in the country.

Two on the top of my list are Snowball Derby, Riverhead, the Ice Up 300. There's multiple races you've run in. What would be like your crown jewel of short track racing for you? Because you across anything, you run it all pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, no. Man, I mean, obviously I slip 300 was a race of its own. Just because you got tire management to make it, however many laps.

I mean, you remember, we all joke about it now. I'm pretty good at burning a right rear off the car. I think there was one year. I actually lapped all the way to second at Riverhead for the 300 lap race and still didn't win. So there's that, obviously, but one thing, one race I really enjoy racing was the spring sizzler, especially right now with what Stafford's done with the hype that they've created behind it, the lap money, the prestige of the event, like you feel it, whether you're a fan, whether you're a driver, a crew member, whatever it may be.

and, you know, that's kind of one of the ones that I feel is probably the biggest one, or one of the biggest, or not open show, but up in the Northeast, Martinsville still feels really special. I mean, we got a whole bunch of up and down the East Coast, but yeah, I'm going to have to say the sizzler is the highest on the list right now. Mike, we're going to have to charge Stafford for this episode. There's a lot of mention. Send hoodie. I'll keep my answer to. Real quickly before we let you go, Ryan, because I know you got to get going here shortly,

but we're talking about short track racing because of Bristol and what we saw this weekend with the tires. How much fun did you have this weekend at Bristol? I think this is the first time we've ever been in a tire-saving race where I have gone forward. And Freddie, I am going to tell you. I can back that up. So obviously, there's a lot of people from the North. up on the spotter stand. You know, Freddie being one of them,

Doug Campbell, who spots for Austin Sindrick, and when I, when I, in a tire-saving race, passed their cars, I laughed. During a modified race, I, you know, whenever there's a saving race, I tend to burn a right rear off pretty quickly, and I go backwards. And whenever I get to my phone after the race,

there's text messages from Freddie, from Doug, saying, oh, yeah, I'm just saving, you know, all those things. it felt good to be on the other side of it for once. All right, Ryan. Well, we appreciate you joining us today. We'll let you go get ready for Cota this weekend. Ryan, what's the best race track in the country?

New Smyrna Speedway. Good choice. Good choice. Freddie, what are you texting, Ryan, after these races? Usually it's way to go, right? Like, you've done it again. And I've spotted for Ryan and numerous, I spotted for him in a couple of ISO 300s.

We should have won one of them. We got beat by, you know, just getting. at the very end we got beat, which is unfortunate. He's been really nice. He's been nice. Yeah. I see a tear. Yeah.

But it was, you know, I always enjoy working with Ryan and giving him a hard time because he's so easy to pick on. So what makes these guys good short track racers? I mean, you think about, because there's only so many in the Cup Series garage that you go to, like Ryan Priest, and you know that they're the guy to talk about these things. Yeah. Well, you saw it on Sunday with the guy that won the race. These guys are conditioned, and Danny probably hasn't had to do it for a while. But these especially late model stock drivers where modified guys are not so much like Ryan was talking about it.

Just about all the modified races, the big modified races in Northeast, you get a pit stop. They give you three or four tires to put on during the race. Down here, a lot of the late model stock races, there's maybe a halfway break or something, but it's a one tire, two tire deal. So these guys have to be conditioned to manage your tires. You hear Dale talk about it on their show. You just can't go all out. There's a certain target lap time you want to run because you figure out if I might not be the fast. guy, but if I can just run this same lap time for the entirety of a run, it might be two seconds

slower than that guy to start the race, but eventually it's going to be three seconds faster than that guy because he's going to burn his stuff up so that the overall time is shorter to run this lap time. But that's what, in my mind, makes a great short track racer is, like Ryan said, knowing the conditions, knowing your race car is a big deal. A lot of these guys that work on their own stuff. But knowing, being conditioned enough to know what you have to do to get there, get to the end of that race the fastest, whether it's, you know, burn your stuff up, and put tires on every time you get or take care of your equipment and put tires on later and burn through the field then. So you're just conditioned into knowing, you know, and getting to the

end of the race is a big thing. I like to pick on, I'm picking on Bowman Gray because Dillness here, obviously. But, you know, but like that's a big thing there. You got to finish their race. And you know, the cone races are entertaining because guys are coming and going a little bit. But, you know, getting to the end is a big deal. I'll tell you what. There's two buckets. real quick, we'll do it. Two buckets. You've got what will make a good short track racer and maybe get him to the big leagues of NASCAR, which is, I think that's why late model stock car racing lends well to that, especially in this region, tire saving,

managing your runs, learning all that stuff. Then you got the other bucket. You know, that bucket also includes like big block dirt modified drivers that got to protect their right rear, like a guy like Matt Shepard or Stuart Fries. But then you got the other bucket, which is like the 410 sprint car guys that the throttle jockeys, as I like to call them. The guys that get in a car for 35 laps and they're riding it off the right rear and they're just going for broke. It doesn't mean they're, you know, it's just different styles. Modifieds are the same thing. You go in a modified race if it's a long distance race. You're bolting on tires all day long and you're hard charging. So there's just different

styles. So it's hard to really define what in particular makes a great short track racer. Yeah, interesting conversation. Freddie, do you feel like you've argued enough with Dillner today to let him go? We'll leave here and we'll go. I mean, it's gone on for 30 years. It's going to go on for 30 more, I hope. I don't know. We just got to get mics in front of you every time that it happens. That's fine.

We'll just pick up our phones and record it. You know, there's been a few times where we haven't had spirited short track debates, and that's a few times. I mean, we've known each other since we were like tadpoles at race track. Few and far between. Well, guys, we appreciate you joining us. We'll get to the white fly because obviously Dirty Mo Media constantly pumping out content here. We got the tear down from after the Bristol race.

You can hear Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. We got DBC with Dale Jr. joining that show. Freddie all had a lot of fun. What a great episode that was. It was good. My favorite part of that episode was towards the end, you know, obviously had a big argument with Dale and T.J. About whether or not, which I don't even want to say the words Carson Hosevar and caution flag ever again in my life.

Do you feel better after that? But yeah, I felt the fun. My favorite part was at the end, TJ's like, well, you already took an L there. I'm like, why? Because Dale agreed with you. That's an L for me. You're both idiots. I don't know what to tell you.

Hey, by the way, by the way, is this a forget. forgiveness season for dirty-moe media. Bubba finally got on the DBC show. And I was sitting there to myself at the beginning of the year thinking, when I saw that, I was like, man, I'd love to be on DBC one of these days. And voila, Mike Davis calls and I'm on DJD reloading. You thawed it into, yeah. I felt it right back into existence.

That's right. Tyler Reddick was also on the show this week. Of course, actions detrimental with Denny Hamlin. The Dell Jr. download. They had Chase Elliott on this week as well. And then, of course, Speed Street. Dirty Moe, Doe. That's getting really important.

now that North Carolina has made legal betting legal. And yeah, of course, we will be back here next Thursday with another episode of DJD Relo. We hope you enjoy the short track debate today. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.