The Dale Jr. Download - It Felt Like An Old Daytona Race

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

The Daytona 500 is in the books, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back in the studio for a new edition of Dirty Air. He joins co-host TJ Majors to discuss all the major happenings from the Great American Race:Justin Allgaier and JR Motorsports’ Daytona 500 effortHaving nothing to lose by trying to leadNASCAR is on the right track as an industry this yearWe need to do something about fuel-savingRiley Herbst’s last lap moveAustin Hill is really tough to beatDaytona 500 winner Tyler Reddick joins the showDuring the Ask Jr. portion of the episode, listeners sent in questions regarding:Dale’s dream NASCAR Truck driver line-upCleetus McFarland’s Truck debutSongs that put you in a good mood when you hear themIrrational fearsMemories of Robert DuvallAnd for more content, check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaReal fans wear Dirty Mo. Hit the link and join the crew.👇https://shop.dirtymomedia.com/  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.

Amy told me I should run the Daytona 500 next year. We were laying in bed Sunday night after the race. She's like, you should just drive it next year. I'm like, hello? The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half. I don't know if we've ever argued. Did I piss you off over the weekend?

I'm still sour that I went to the best man at your wedding. Who was your best man, Dale? T.J. You don't need a cool best for that race? What are you thinking? Get them, DJ. Hellway is starting to show. All right then.

Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. Welcome back to another episode of the Dale Jr. download. I'm with my co-host, TJ Majors, and it's post-Datona. Are you recharged and ready to go to Atlanta? Oh, man. Not quite yet. I don't know.

Dayton's a long week still. I know, man. I'm so at war out. I am too. This is my second Red Bull. So we have a lot to cover. But first, I've got to tell you, this episode is presented by Arby's and Arby's new meat in three box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's.

We have the meats. Everybody got to see the new Arby's commercial we did with Justin Algeyer. That was good. Oh, man, we nailed it. Great relationship we have now with Arby's. We have the meat in three box on the table right there, TJ. You get quite a deal. when you get one of those, 799.

So everybody loves a good deal. And I'm going to tell you, I got a, I got to tell what my, one of my favorite. So when we were at the shoot, doing the Arby shoot, I got hungry.

I was gonna ask you if you ate. I'm like, I'm like, I'm gonna order from, we're in Arby's. I'm like, why not? The Arby's was closed for the recording of this shoot.

But I was like, you know, there were people there, you know, working, but they weren't serving the public. And I was like, hey,

can y'all make a, they're like, yeah, we'll make anything wrong. And so they have a buffalo chicken slider. And man, is it good? I had no idea. I'm a sucker for anything, Buffalo. That's your reason. It's not what I was expected.

Oh, man. It is good. So I'm just saying, it's a little going to need some napkins, but that's the best part. That's the best thing about Buffalo when they just soak it. Yeah. Yes. So.

It's easy to do. do it. Yeah, if it don't go, if it ain't, if it's Buffalo, if it's called Buffalo, like Buffalo wings, and they're not just soaking wet. And if it's kind of dry, you're like, what the hell, man? Oh, for sure. This ain't getting it. Yeah. I don't like that. But anyways, all right, let's get into it. Just an hour guy gets the 40 car out on the racetrack and got to the lead during the race. I'm sure a lot of people were anxious to hear our, you know, our comments on. just how that ended and what all went down in the wreck and all that. But I just got to say out of the gate before we get to that.

We, you know, went down there last year. We struggled with speed. Didn't qualify well. You know, Justin did a good job to get us into the race. And then we got lucky and dodged all the damage and crazy stuff at the end of the race and got a top 10. But didn't have a car that was all that effective, you know. and we went, you know, all, as we were building this car, we were, you know, man, this car is better, it's going to do better,

we got more power and hearing all these things. And that's the optimism in the company, you know, at Hendrick, as far as building engines and so forth. We've been told the same thing about our extended to 50 stuff this year that we gained a lot of power of the offseason, so we're anxious to get to the racetrack and beyond Daytona really learn where we're at. But we get to the racetrack and, yes, car requires. Qualified better, had better speed. And, you know, Greg guys and the team, they were pretty optimistic. Greg's so hard on himself.

We qualify, you know, 14th, which I would have been thrilled with. And he was so mad that we didn't make the top 10. But he's like, I should have done X, I should have done X and Y. And we would have done this and we would have done that. I'm like, we're fine. We're good. We're happy. But race starts.

So before the race, actually, I'm saying. standing with Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick. And I said, y'all, I was like, you know, this fuel saving stuff, you know, I don't, I don't like it. I don't like watching it. I don't like, you know, I sat on the pit box during the duel. And I can sit on the pit box on the duel and we can go to the throttle trace for any driver. I can watch three drivers at a time and what they're doing with their throttle. anyone in the field.

I can change it and I can look at anybody. And I'm sitting there and I'm watching them all run 40, 50, 60 percent throttle. Just sitting there holding their throttles right around 40, 50, 60 percent during the duel. I swear, man, I fell asleep. I mean, I was literally, our car is in the race, racing on the track. And I am about to fall asleep. I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating this at all.

I was like, how in the hell am I this damn bored? But we got before the pre-race, or during the pre-race, I went to Rick and Jeff, and I said, y'all, I was like, I know that all of the big teams that are going to run every single week, all these teams that are here today, feel like they know exactly how they have to run this race to win. we're a team that's here for this race only. We don't have a sponsor for next week. We don't have a car.

We don't have a race. We're not going beyond this. I was like, why can't we go out there and run hard and say, the hell with saving the fuel? Let's just take our chances, take our risks that the cautions will fall in such a way that will benefit us and save us when we're running short on gas. and have to come down pit road early. I was like, you know, let's, us riding around in 25th all day long,

hoping that we're doing everything right to try to put ourselves in a good place to win, and then we don't win. I mean, we're, I don't want to be non-existent. I don't want to be like, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to disappear when the race starts and not anyone ever see us.

I was like, in our situation with our car and our partners and our one-off race, we need to mash the gas. and go to the front and lead laps. And that might be our only opportunity to really show everybody we were there. Right. And that's what we did.

Yeah, for sure. The car looked great. But really the only reason I think, I mean, the car was great. The car was a really good competitive fast car. No kidding. But it looked so good because we weren't saving as much. You know, a lot of guys running,

a lot of guys are still running 60% throttle throughout the entire first two stages. I said save fuel, save more and more than I wanted to. Yeah. And so we were trying to save. We weren't trying to get to, we weren't just like on the mat all the time. He was in certain situations unable to make passes, boxed in or whatever, and he would save in those moments.

And then, you know, eventually we would find our way into, you know, the lead or the front of a, the front of one of the, you know, the lines in the draft. And man, that was exciting. right before the wreck we had gotten the lead probably 10 or 20 minutes before that and I was watching his throttle trace and he hadn't had a chance to really understand what he would do when he was in that situation with the throttle and he gets into the lead and kind of got pushed out there pretty far and they came come running up running back up to him caution come out and we were talking I was like man it's awesome

finally be in the league and get that thing up there. It looked great. And I was like, now he played some of that on the television because I could see the words on the screen. What they didn't play was, we had a conversation around the throttle and how much throttle he needed to use while leading.

He thought that as he was in the lead with all the drag on the car, which it has a ton of drag, he would need to use more throttle, and he was hard in the gas while out front. And I said, man, when you get the lead, you can really come back off the gas. gas back to 40 or 50% 60% let those guys let that let that energy from the pack behind you

kind of push you forward like the beach ball effect I always talked about I was like you don't have to be as aggressive on the throttle you can you kind of got out too far and he's like yep yep got you and you know we get back racing again and we get back to the front and got back in the lead and we got pushed out too far and man they came running hard up on him like really really fast Denny's about 10 mile an hour faster as he runs up on the back of the 40 car. Denny's got two or three guys up his ass and he can't lift.

If he lifts, if he lifts for the 40, he's getting wrecked. He gets wrecked or certainly somebody behind him gets wrecked. If he goes to the, I saw some of his comments on his show yesterday last night. If he goes the inside, you know, he probably clears him easily. But I think Justin

showed some indecisiveness a little bit about, are I, if you're coming up on Justin, you're thinking, is he, is he going to leave the outside?

Is he not? Because it looked like he might. And there was enough room for a car, right? It was tight, but there was enough. I mean, Denny's coming so fast. He's got to go one,

one side or the other, right? And he just kind of, he picked, he picked the side that, that Justin was blocking. And I want to, I want to say that it,

it's a racing deal. There is, fault there is there is there is fault for what happened but i mean it's it's kind of how those wrecks go down every wreck that happened yesterday was somebody's fault oh for sure um you know and and it's an accident and you know i hate it happened justin's beat himself up over it uh and thinking about what he might have could have done differently um i'm sure he's going to run it back through a million times in his head uh but i still I know, look, there's, when the car is wrecked and the wreck has happened and that,

our race is over, there ain't nothing you could do to change it. And you kind of got to, all right, what are we going to do? We're going to take stock in what happened. There's some positives here. We led some laps. We showed we had a really capable car. We had a car that, I mean, who'd have won to race? I don't think any otherwise.

I don't think otherwise. I think we had a, there was a lot of guys there that had cars that could have won to race. But we were one of them. I felt like that we were a car that could do some things when it needed to do some thing. You know, we weren't, last year we were running around kind of with our arm tied behind our back, not really with a car that could make any moves and be on the offense, and this year it was completely different. So just a great job by Hendrick Engine Shop.

They are a hardworking group. I go over there, and I'm always impressed. And there, I mean, when you think about race teams and they're always trying to get better, they're always trying to find an edge, it's hard to measure all the other departments and how they improve. You know, you might, you don't, we don't really, we don't really take cars to the wind tunnels as often.

We don't get a ton of time. We don't really go in there. And we can't really work on the bodies. We can't really change the quarter panel defender and go, man, we gain some here. We gain some there. So it's really, really hard. to measure improvement outside of every department,

but the engine shop. I, you know, my suspension guys aren't going to build suspension that goes faster. All I want them to do is build suspension that don't break, transmissions, rear ends, all those things,

hubs, just make it where it doesn't fall apart. But the engine shop, they build motors and they also find horsepower, and they continue to find it. year after year every year now not just HMS but all engine departments are always in search of a half mile an hour here a half mile an hour there a little bit of horsepower here a little bit of horsepower there and they do every off season they find two or three you know and that and the whole the whole sport sort of keeps

shoving that you know shoving that power and that peak power higher and higher has forever And so that's pretty impressive to be able to go into the engine department and see how that work is done and see all the incredible, incredible machines and, oh, massive, massive machines that are creating these parts and doing things insane. I get you want to race and be up front and everything, but was it a little too aggressive in the fact that, like, you're not racing for stage points, you're racing for the finish? So why go out that hard there in that stage? Man, we were there to lead, run up front. We got one damn car, one car, one race. You want me to run 20th? Well, the only part that I don't understand is if you are not running 100%,

which no one up front probably really was, like, why throw blocks? You know what I mean? He didn't throw a block. What did he throw? Dude, he was close. When Denny's about five car lengths away from him, he was actually closer to the wall.

He said he sort of faded away from the wall as we go into the tri-oval. Okay, it wasn't a-bye. Why to make it that close? He's against the wall, half a car length between him and the wall, coming down past the gate. He starts to fade into the tri-oval, and that's when he opened it up for the outside. He should have stayed tighter against the wall,

and he faded down the racetrack, just at the right moment when Denny's there to make a decision on what Denny wants to do. And Denny's seeing him fade down, and in my mind and Denny's as well, I'm going to the outside. And when he did that, he squeezed Denny in the wall. It was a bad mistake on his part, but it wasn't a block. Well, I didn't mean really block, but like why, I guess to back his point of,

like why I create a circumstance that close at that point in time. I've seen guys dozens of times get the lead and pull up in the outside line. Oh my gosh, it was bad. There was some guys throwing really bad blocks later on. Well, I mean, not so much throwing blocks, but I mean, all day long. going, all right, I'm in the lead and I want to be in front of the outside line because that line was the line continuously with the most energy. And so I've seen plenty of guys pull up there. His mistake was allowing himself to get pushed out too far and not understanding how to not let that happen.

Yeah, it opens the door for that. How to let, how to not allow his car to get so far out and let it nose over and those guys come at him at 10 mile an hour, you know? and it was a series of unfortunate circumstances in terms of, he gets pushed out too far, Card nose is over, he's got guys coming at him at 10-mile-hour, and he's going into the tri-oval as he's kind of shading down and allowing,

if they're catching him on the back stretch, I doubt it happens. Then he probably goes to- Oh, yes, I happen on the back. I mean, if they're going down a straight piece of asphalt, then he just goes around him. And so they just happen to be catching him right in the tri-oval

as he shaded down. It was just, I mean, I'm not saying that, that Justin has, you know, no fault in it. Justin is 100%

responsible for this. I mean, he's, you know, Denny has, I thought Justin drove a great race. If Denny has any fault in it, and it's very,

very minimal. But, I mean, look, he's, he's almost, he's to the rear tire or so. A foot and a half,

yeah, a foot and a half to his outside. So there's playing a room there, um, at one point before the 40, squeeze him up in the wall. But I don't have a problem with us running hard and racing up front trying to win a Daytona 500. I thought Justin did a great job.

He was behind us and competitive for a long time. He was right there. I hate it. It took out a bunch of cars. It, you know, wrecked a lot of good race cars, wrecked some HMS cars. I'm sure, you know, they were disappointed in the situation and some of the decisions, you know, that we were making as a team. but, you know, it felt like, again, you know, I wanted us to go up front, run up front, try to put ourselves at the front of the field as much as possible.

We had a partner that had put all of their funding behind this program for this one race. You know, they, you know, Chris Stapleton's sitting right beside me on the pit box. That's what I love. He's all in. Like he was there. Does he want to sit there and watch his guy run 60% throttle in 20th? It's a fair thing to say. Overall, from the other side, it looked like a pretty successful weekend from qualifying on. Yeah, I was pretty happy with the weekend.

They towed the car back to the garage and got to look at the damage. One thing I learned that was interesting about that, we were, you know, we probably weren't going to fix the car, but we wanted to see if we could. I think that's just kind of human nature in racing. When you crash, you kind of think, all right, man, let's see if we can fix this thing. But we got back there and the NASCAR official,

there's a picture right there on the NASCAR Twitter post, the guy in the red shirt, it's down, squatted down. He's a NASCAR official. And he's looking at that right front. And he sees some deflection in the clip. So on the front clip, right at the top hoop bar, right behind the top shock mount. So they've changed these clips to allow them to crush. They cut a bunch of slots in them.

All right? They cut about a, you know, they cut a lot of slots in the clip that are about two inches long. And that allows when the clip has contact with something for it to crush and absorb. and we had like a little bubble of a of a dent, a little bubble or not that had formed on that upper bar that, you know, right behind the shock. It was, I mean, in my mind, it's nothing. I mean, it's not like the clips of,

the clips bent, yes, but could the car go out there and compete, no problem? Yes, it would have been entirely safe. But they told me they're like, any, any, frame damage and it's a no-go. And so they told us right there like you're not going back out. We also had some damage to the header, which was, I mean, that was like an HMS no-go. So when the header gets smashed, we're not going to change the headers.

We had a lot of damage to the right front upper. That would have had to been changed. We changed the toe links to be able to get the car back on the trailer. and load it up. But, I mean, there's a lot of damage. But that was interesting to me. I didn't know about that frame damage, no-go-go, fail or pass sort of thing NASCAR does. But that was just, I'm just noting that because I'll tell you,

I learned more about the next-gen car and the function of the parts and pieces this weekend than I have in the four or five years that it's been in the garage. when I go down into the infield or get around a race car as a broadcaster, I'm not going to go crawl underneath William Byron's car in the garage, right? I'm not going to go stick my head under the hood of Denny Hamlin's Toyota. I can go talk to the, you know, the crew chiefs and ask questions, but, you know, they're limited on how much information they want to share with you. So it's been tough to kind of learn the car.

Not impossible, but man. it was fun to, again, like kind of even more so than last year. I got to crawl over the top of this thing and really kind of, and going through the wreck taught me some parts and pieces and taught me some things that, you know, NASCAR's processes and so forth. But it is a lot of fun. I learned a ton. Don't know if we'll get to do it again, you know.

We'll see. Said that last year. I know, you don't. I know, you don't. It's trending in the right direction, though. I don't know, man. And, you know, you'll have to see, I suppose, these brands, you know, did, it's not a Chris Stapleton decision. He has, he has a blast.

He loves it. He's all in. He's all, he was right there at the garage and we were trying to fix the car and work on the car after a crash. But, you know, the brand has to decide whether they're, what's happening is working. I know I saw a lot of bottles of liquor, you know, at the racetrack. That stuff was everywhere. We went over to total wine to sign some high rock vodka bottles. and they had displays all over the place.

That's cool. For travel. For traveler. Yeah. I saw it all out for the infield. The hats, the shirts, the merch, tons of merch getting sold. So I think it's good for them. But it's, you know, if they don't, if they think, hey, man, this was great.

We went. We've kind of tapped in and got everybody in the tent, so to speak. Now let's take our dollars maybe and go do something else. you know, they always, brands shift around, right? From different sports to sort of tap into a new market. But we'll see if that was it.

Man, I had a blast and I enjoyed our opportunity to see what it's like to race on Sundays. Andy has had the lead for the minutes. That'd be cool to just... Sorry? You were able to have the lead? Like, that's a pretty cool moment. They played your audio during the race

and hearing your guys' excitement was pretty cool. I tell you, I love it, man. I love... the competition. I'll say this too. You know, as we kind of we shift away from

the 40 car a little bit. The whole weekend felt good. From a fan, from just an observer of, you know, and a fan of NASCAR, felt like there were more people there. I might be wrong.

It might have been the same damn amount of people as last year. But it just felt like, There were more people excited about what was happening. It felt like there was more... Same on TV. It felt like there was more on-track activity. Probably not, but it just felt like it.

Maybe we were more excited about ARCA and truck. You know, there were more names in these races. There were more interest stories, human interest stories in all the races. So we were all kind of tuned into what was happening throughout the weekend. Speed, it felt like a speed week. we won't say weeks because we're only there for a handful of days, but it did feel like the old atmosphere. I had a little bit to it.

I felt like it was a lot. I'm usually, you know, I'm usually the kind of person that's like, all right, what's going to go wrong? What's, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm a pessimist, but not an optimist. but I'm going to tell you, man, I feel like we're going in the right direction. We, as a sport, so we made the change with the chase, right? We brought the chase back.

Man, I'm still super excited about that. Somebody posted on Twitter yesterday, man, it's fun to check the points standings after the race. And, you know, somebody said, man, it's fun to go have to look at the points and see where everybody's at. And I freaking agree. I agree.

I agree. I'm glad to have to look at points. I want to be interested. And so we fixed that. And we had this meeting. Denny talked about, there are some conversations about some things that they might do with the clash. Well, that was from a meeting that a lot of us,

a lot of folks in the industry got together with some NASCAR folks. and we just had a casual bullshed session for a couple hours. That's good. And laid it all out there. You know, what do we think? And that is the kind of stuff that we used to do back in the day. Helton would get a bunch of drivers and we'd go down to Whiskey River on my property in the saloon and drink beer and bull. And that's where we came up with double file restarts.

Now, the double file restart idea was NASCAR, but they took it and brought it to that meeting. we sat and drank beer and bullshed about it and we talked about other things that, you know, other processes and competition things that would make sense. And a lot of really good ideas were vetted out and materialized through those conversations that we used to have. And so it's like a step back in that direction to do those type of things and have that kind of conversations.

And, you know, we talked about fuel savings, like how, if we could, if we can, how can we come to a place where, you know, we like what we see all the time, right? Fuel savings and fuel mileage, that's going to be part of races.

Fuel's going to be the conversation at times, all kinds of tracks, right? It's not just Daytona and Talladega. But I think we got an epidemic that we need to kind of look at and say, hey, how can we might not be able to get rid of it entirely, but how can we, get back to feeling like we see the guys are out there racing, right? And so there's got to be some way to figure out, you know, a solution.

And that's what those conversations about. So we made this choice to go back to the chase. We're having these conversations with NASCAR that are fun and everybody's kind of able to talk openly and honestly. And there's just some really, really good energy. and I'll be honest I I the Daytona 500 that I got to see

up until the crash was a lot of fun now I had a car out there that was driving hard and trying to go to the front so I was I was getting what I wanted from watching that car when we crashed went in the garage I guess there was some serious three wide fuel savings going on that I missed oh it was nail biter

I missed that part I didn't get to see that part so I can't comment but apparently that was not a lot of fun. I saw the social media where the fans are like, I put the radio on the charger for about 30 minutes. Yeah, I heard the comments from Blaney and the others. But so again, yeah, we got

a, we got an epidemic that's kind of creeped into restricted plate racing at Daytona and Talladega. We won't really see this. I don't think as much as Atlanta, do you think? No. Some, but not like, you mean, it's not like that. The guy's race like hell in Atlanta. Yeah, Atlanta's got another year on it with

age now. Yeah. You're not going to do that. Handling's too critical. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm not worried about it this coming weekend. But we do have an epidemic.

And all these crue chiefs, man. All of them are saying, man, you can't unlearn it. You know, it's here. Here to stay. And I'm like, come on. Y'all, y'all are the smart ones. I mean, they're kind of right. They are, but let's try.

Let's at least have a conversation. We should always evolve. Let's have a conversation. Mm-hmm. all right and so before I tell you my idea on what I think would be

things that could could change it I feel like and I feel like NASCAR is on the right track as an industry I am I have never I've been so disappointed

and so critical over the last several years frustrated you know at times Joe, just super frustrated. I am very, very happy today with the direction we're going. Yeah, the buzz was good. I'm learning that no matter how badly I want it to be a certain thing, it's never going to be perfect.

And I'm never going to get everything I want. But I'm getting a lot of what I want. and I see an industry that's trying to find the answers, right? And so I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty excited. And I'm really, I'm more interested in what happens this year in terms of how our season develops, how drivers gather points throughout the year. And I'm more interested in that week to week than I've been in over a decade.

I am so thankful for that. And I feel like my passion as a fan and my passion about how, you know, storyline is developing all that stuff and who's going to figure this out and who's going to come out on top. That's coming back to me, you know. So I'm excited about that

and hope everybody's sort of feeling the same way. All right, everybody. The 2006 NASCAR season is official. here. And you know what that means? It means new rides, new paint schemes, and another year of unforgettable moments out on the racetrack. And if you want to bring all of that action home, you've got to check out Lionel Racing. They're the official die cast of NASCAR. They've got the largest selection of officially licensed NASCAR diecast. From race wins to the newest cars hitting the track this season, they've got it all. They're incredibly detailed with the same paint and the same

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with USA-made Can-Cut drill bits and cutting tools. When we go to, you know, what we're seeing at Daytona and Talladega with the fuel savings. I don't know that I have a solution. But here's a couple things that have changed. We took away the point for leading a lap. We also took away the bonus points for leading the most lap. Those are two small, very, somewhat insignificant nuggets in the grand scheme of things.

But I promise you, if you put anything out in front of the, these drivers and teams, they will go for it. That is one small thing in a big pie, one small slice and a large pie that would push the teams back toward pushing harder throughout the event. Right. If you knew that if you could get to the front and lead a lap at some point, you were going to get a point, you would do it. That doesn't fix the problem entirely.

Teams are still going to, you know, once they've led that lap, They might revert right back to saving fuel the rest of the race. Fine. But we found a way to get them to charge for a little bit, right? That's progress. NASCAR took that away, and I'm going to assume that they took it away because it's a whole point. We changed the point system from, you know, to giving, instead of giving 180 points to the winner of the race, now you get 75 or whatever it is. So they thought, well, a whole point for leading a lap seems like a lot.

So let's just get rid of that. We'll get rid of those and we'll give somebody the point for the fastest lap. I personally think the point for the fastest lap is silly. I think they should go back to giving, instead of having a point for the fastest lap, I think they should take that point. They're giving to the guy for the fastest lap and give it back to the person that leads the most lap. you could still have the icon on the fun little rundown on the on the TV screen and it could move as someone retakes that crown right as the race plays out right

I also I still feel like I don't have a problem I still feel like it's perfectly fine to give a whole point to somebody who leads a lap I'd much rather do that than a fast lap yeah the fast lap it seems useless it's never talked about it's it isn't go back let's go back to, I propose the idea of going back to giving people points for leading laps, giving people points for leading the most laps. That would be one thing that I think would slightly affect things. Here's the other thing that I think would help. Or here's the problem right now is like you got guys that are running,

you got the whole field sitting there running 60, 40, 50% probably. Even the guy leading, even the guy leading the race is running. 60% right if there's a person that's running you know in the middle of the pack and they're like man I'm a run wide open they they they they're they if they go and pull out of line

and mash the gas to 100% they cannot drive away from the field the car has so much drag on it and such a large spoiler that even running wide open the pack running 60% throttle will hang right on to him. And so I discussed this with Denny,

and I believe he agrees, that if we were to take enough drag off the cars, so what are you gaining? All right, let's just go back and say, all right, what's the advantage you're gaining, right, by saving this fuel? It's, you know, for every, it's a second or two on pit road, right?

Yeah, it cycles you to the front of the group. Yeah. So when you come down pit road, you're on pit road less. You come down pit road 30th in a big pack and you pull off pit road first, fifth, tenth, whatever, right? So it's a couple of seconds. At most. If I took enough, I need to know exactly what NASCAR, I think, what I propose to NASCAR is find out how much drag to pull off the car so that if I'm in a pack of cars that are running. 60, 70% throttle

and I mash the gas 100%. I drive away from them. I break the draft and pull away. And if I'm running wide open and I'm driving away from that pack, then I'm negating their advantage. And they're going to have to chase me down because then if I get so far ahead,

now I have the advantage. If I drive out to four, five, six seconds away from the pack, then I'll just, you know, I'm going to be adding more fuel when I come to pit road, but that's how many seconds of fuel I'll be taking, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, theoretically, if you get that far in front, you're right. So it should come out. If you can, what would probably happen is you might get four, five, six cars pre-race that go, hey, man, when we get a chance, we're all going to link up,

mash up and wide open. We're going to drive away with these guys. Remember when the hoss cars? drove away from the field at Talladega by themselves. Yeah. I'm not saying that was what was going on. I'm just saying if you got four or five guys that teamed up and said, hey, let's jump off this strategy of Sabin and let's run wide open together, drive away from the field.

Yeah, they were fast. Well, the, the, the, the, the car currently can't do that because it has so much drag. So there's no point for anyone to go wide open because they can't gain an advantage by driving away from the field. because the car has too much drag. So therein lies the issue. And that I would love to hear from a crew chief to tell me why that wouldn't steer us back in the right direction.

I'm not saying it fixes the problem, but why wouldn't taking the drag off the car fix it? I know that, you know, if I'm running why, so okay, they might tell you this. They might say this. Okay, Dale, you know, you're taking the drag off the car. Now I can pull away from this pack. But the pack just runs 80% throttle instead of 60.

They're still saving gas. They'll run 80% to keep up with the 100%. Right. The guy that's full throttle. The pack's just going to sit behind him and still save. Still beat him off pit road. Yeah, you're still going to have. You're still going to have people.

I mean, I drove race cars with all types of packages at Daytona. different splitters, wings, spoilers, restricted plates. And yes, if you're second, third, fourth, fifth, you're not wide open. We weren't saving gas. We were just trying not to hit the guy in front of us. But you're not always wide open. But we weren't thinking, hey, we're saving gas.

We were just driving in a draft, you know? So what is that race like, though, in a pack? Yeah. That's going to be the tough part. NASCAR is terrified, I believe, that we're all going to end up on the top in a big string, like we were at, you know,

the end of 2016 or so. You know, we were, you know, Jimmy won the Daytona 500. I think I finished second. And we ran around the top of the racetrack for a majority of that race. It was relatively uneventful. They're worried, I think,

NASCAR is, that we mash a button figuratively, we change some things and they go from running three wide and the casual fan thinks that's amazing. The fan that doesn't really know about the fuel savings thinks this is amazing. And they go from that to running single file from first to last.

And then they're going to be... NASCAR will be so disappointed if that's what we end up with. And I agree, that's a risk you take. And I wouldn't be comfortable throwing something out. out there to see how it works without a real understanding of what we might get. My preference would be that they take the rear spoilers off and just have like a quarter

inch triplip or something there, whatever they thought they might need. But I don't know if they can actually set the car up to where it's actually drivable without a rear spoiler on it. The other thing you would need to do is probably detune the engine. So you don't want the cars to run over 200, 205 in the draft. Yeah, for sure. You don't need them at a sustained 205 miles an hour. And that's fine.

They will, they can, they can, they can run 195, 200 and handle terribly and still look like they're going fast. And that's, that's plenty quick in the draft. Oh, yeah. So how do we get to, how do we get to 200, 200 and, the draft on average, right? How do we, I think, you know, they don't want to go over the certain number for some reason. There's like a lift off where there's just a frequency of cars getting upside down. It's dangerous.

Increases at a certain number. So whatever that is, let's just say it's 200. 200 mile an hour driving terrible. Drivers got their hands full. Teams have their hands full trying to make the drivers comfortable. I think we can acquire all that and it would just be a massive shift from where we are on the rear spoiler,

the drag and all the numbers to go to something completely the opposite on the rear spoiler. But I'm with you. I want them to go into the corner and be loose. I want them to chase the cars up the track. I want them to get to the fence, you know, just using a lot of freaking race track. Yeah.

I want the lead to be an advantage where right now I almost feel like the lead's a disadvantage. Yeah. I want the lead to be able to get there and be like, okay, well. I don't know. I always loved, I don't agree with that. I always loved like in 1983. Look at 1980 in the 1979 Daytona 500.

From 79 all through up until we put the plate on the car in 89, there was a slingshot pass. You wanted to be second. You wanted to be second. I'm okay with that. Yeah. So the leader was vulnerable. You didn't want to lead.

And you knew the guy was going to sort of back off at the flag stand, get up the racetrack in one and two, and come down the back straightaway and drive by you. And that was the plan. That was how Kale was going to win in 79. That was how all the, you know, dad won all his races in the 80s at Talladega in Budmore's car and in Richard Childers's car with the slingshot pass on the backstrow.

I like, I do like the sling. I like being out of backup somebody getting a bigger on, but like I don't like the pushing somebody. There's two cars linked together. Then the guy just pulls out and slips by like that. I don't. Well, I would say that, you know, that the car currently just has too much drag on it.

And that's why it's such a disadvantage for the lead car. You put that car in a train at the back of the train. It's so much more efficient than it is when it's out front. I think the current, like the O'Reilly race is how I think we would want the Cup car to look. It's a good blueprint. It is. You know, where are they at on their, on their, you know, their drag to power? What, what's their, how is all that?

Because those guys can build runs. They can pass. They can. They have their hands full at times. Our guys were not handling good. And I was in the competition meeting yesterday. They were all complaining about being loose and uncomfortable and not able to really, which is, you know, kind of what you want.

I don't want my cars to drive that way. Yeah. And my race team. But as a, as a fan, that's, I definitely want, I don't, like the car is stuck glued to the track. It's usually a good race when drivers are complaining. Yeah. I mean,

when they're fighting things, in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's, there's work to be done. And,

but I want to tell you, man, there's NASCAR knows it. NASCAR recognizes it. They're not ignoring it. They're not denying it. I know that, uh,

I know that there's some, there's some effort behind the scenes to try to make this thing as good as it can be. At the end of the race, there was, this interesting sort of debate around Riley Herbst and Brad. Brad was upset thinking Riley wrecked the field for no reason. Says one of the dumbest things he's ever seen. There's no chance.

He had no chance of blocking my run. I had a huge run. I don't know if I could have gotten by the 45 or 47 to win the race, but I would have liked to have found out. That wreck looked like the rest of the wrecks to me. I know, TJ, you're probably, you know, this is personal to you because you're spotting for Brad. I do think it was a dumb move. I don't think it's a, I mean, I don't blame him for trying.

I don't think Riley was like, oh, I'm going to wreck these guys now. What's the move to make then? Riley didn't come up the track in front of him. He drove into him. Is it lack of awareness? I thought it was more like, you know, he's looking. what's happening out in front of him. He's looking over here on the left,

and he didn't have all the corners of the car cover. You know, and it was more, it wasn't so much like, hey, I'm going to wreck these. It was more like, hey, I'm pulling up into an area where there's a car, and I didn't know he was there. Well, I don't, there was definitely no talk, on his radio about Joey getting behind us and starting to shove us. There was zero info.

So he was lacking some context. I know right now, if two cars are coming, with run tandem like that, you don't get in front of them. You're going to get, you're wrecking. I think he drove into you. So he's pushing. See, watch when Joey gets to us here. I get it.

Y'all come with a big run. Like right here? So he drives up into you. I don't know. I just thought he was going to go with the 45 and try to secure the 45's winning. Dude, I get it. But I'm telling you, I don't think he knew y'all were coming or even out there. I can partially agree with that.

That and I also think like, yeah, you go with the 45 or if you make the move to the right and it works, there's a chance you win the Daytona 500. You got to make the move. I don't. I don't. I don't think he had a chance. No.

And if you're telling me he had a chance and we didn't, then you're, you're an idiot. I don't, we're blowing by him and he had a chance. I think he had a lot of momentum. Let's not, let's not try to debate whether he had a chance to win the race.

Did the guy, I think the guy made a move with no intent. Yeah, I don't think he was just unaware. Yeah, I agree. And in all of that busyness. Yeah. Not that it's right. It's just racing.

It's just racing. Yeah, I don't, I don't. Yeah. He's probably like, oh, I had no idea. There was a car there. Yeah, it's just the end of a plate race, man. It happens. It'll happen again in the future, too.

There was a lot of that going on. Mm-hmm. Us included. I don't play. I don't play. I don't play. I don't. Very similar.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, look, Rally gets a lot of. Catch a lot of shit. He got in his cup car last year, didn't get many good results at all. Catches a ton of shit for it.

But I'm not going to get on his ass on this one. I think it was just another. I mean, he should have, he should have secured the 45th's victory, in my opinion. I think he, 45 didn't need no secure any one. He did.

Chase, uh, I guess he did. I mean, Chase didn't get a chance to really race him because Riley got him too. So Chase made a move that's like, all right, I'm not going to wreck here. still going to try to win and finish because if he throws that block he gets wrecked smart move chase made chase so i tell my drivers i told my guys before the the exfinity race i said no big blocks so at the end of the race you're not allowed to drive from the top of the

racetrack yeah to the bottom i said you get to choose one lane you're going to move one lane that's all you get. And that's the way chase races. He's like, man, I'm going to move, but I'm not,

I'm not going to drive all way across the racetrack and wreck on your nose. You know, I'm not going to get spun out on the nose your car. Yep. Trying to block you all the way

to the damn apron. He's like, I'm going to move a little. And if you got me, you got me. That's what happened at Talladega when, when we got wrecked on the back

straight away with Jimmy. Yeah. I was like, you know, they're coming. He's, he's got a hell of a run off the back,

off the two on top and I'm going to move one lane and then I was going to let them go. That's all you can do. Yeah. Without wrecking yourself. Yeah, still got wrecked. But we, yeah, we, I like, I liked Chase's explanation. I mean, I thought that he did everything he could do.

And I do appreciate his like, hey, man, I'm, I'm willing to do X, Y and Z to win the race. But like, look, he moved a little bit, but he didn't wreck himself or the, or the guy that actually ends up winning a race. That's just a good race. He cannot make that block fully without wrecking himself or the 45 with him or something. Yeah. So smart move by Chase.

I agree. Any more on the Cup deal? No, I think overall, I think the ending helped. But I thought it was a solid day. Yeah. A good start to the season. I agree. I'm looking forward to this weekend. I might go to, I know there's some weather talking about some weather coming in,

but I might go Saturday. Also, come in NASCAR getting that race in because that rain. Yeah, they moved it up a whole hour. boy that was nice yeah starting early getting done by six I know it actually like was awesome damn right like could hey I'd take it every week

I know it was awesome yeah NASCAR messing around gave us the chase back gave us a real genuine point system gave us a one o'clock start what's next do that flyover

Lys and Thunderbirds I do that flyover was nuts the flyovers the fire was rough they kept practicing every day. Oh yeah. They do it every week, every year, though. They said this year it seemed, so this year everybody was like, man, it seems a little more intense. This was going on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

He's not lying. They would, and there's no warning and they just start doing it. And man, if you're outside, like it, you could get some potential hearing damage. TJ, what's it like from the spotters booth? It is loud. Like, if you don't have. I put my headset on whenever I saw them starting to practice whatever. And if I didn't have it on, I put it on because it's so loud.

Yeah. So they were practicing Thursday. And they flew over. And I mean, it blew my right ear drum out. And I had fluid in it in my ear the rest of the weekend. And I was like, damn, that seems more aggressive than in the past. And then I was reading about it. And somebody was asking, actually asking one of the pilots, interviewed one of the pilots and said, hey, this year's, this year's practices seem more intense.

And he's, they're like, are you lower? And they're like, we're not lower, but we're going faster this year than we've ever went. And so, um, I'm telling you, dude, it was, I wouldn't let my kids outside if it was going on. It was that bad down in the center of the race. Wow. It was, I had a, I'm serious. I blew my ear drum up. It did.

Like I've already got some hearing issues with my years of racing and so forth. And it popped my right ear drum and it was, they were much more. They probably got together and like, yeah, let's really. They were way louder this year. Let's go louder this year. Let's go faster. They were loud. It was loud.

But I ain't complaining. Freedom. It's pretty awesome. It was awesome. There's nothing better than a flyover. It costs the freedom. Austin Hill won the Xfinity or the O'Reilly. That's going to take a little while to get used to.

It is. No offense, O'Reilly. This is the way it goes, man. The nationwide, the Bush Series, it happens. That's right. It's still the Bush Series to me. Now I call it that once in a while. Yep. Yep.

I mean, everybody knows what you mean when you say Bush Series. But O'Reilly, the O'Reilly series. I'm just going to call it to O'Reilly series. I know it's got this long moniker or whatever. a rally. It's going to O'Reilly. I mean, every other iteration, it's Xfinity Series, Nationwide Series,

Bush Series, so it's a Raleigh Series. What it is, what we're calling it. Austin Hill, man. The dude is hard to beat. I get so frustrated. Austin Hill's got to love this, too. We, he loves kicking our ass at that racetrack in Atlanta.

Taledega. And, uh, I can't blame him. And yep, he's good at it and he knows he's good at it. Um, we try to scheme about how we're going to beat them and we just can't figure

it out. And then fans go on the internet and they're like, dude, you got four cars. It's one guy. Four cars. How? But y'all just don't know, man.

I mean, that damn car is fast. T.J. Like, when we try to get, get around him or go buy him. It's fast. He's fast. And the car is ridiculous. And he actually is the in the Xfinity series by far the best one at it. He has gotten really good and really comfortable with that car. He knows exactly what he can do with it. And it's, it's hard to

beat. So, you know, I've told my guys, you know, to adjust their strategy each time we go to Daytona and let's try this. Let's try this. All right, this time we're going to do this It's time we're going to do that. And it just, it ain't, it ain't as simple. People, I guess people think, man, just line your four cars up and you'll four go buy. No, we won't. And so, you know, we can't. And you know what happens if we lined up?

Four guys are going to line up behind him. You know, Jed Burton and all these other guys are going to drive right up in there behind him. And he's going to get all the help he needs. Well, yeah, because, I mean, a guy sees that car and all I'm getting with him. That's what it was like when I was racing out there. Boy, people, you know, anytime you pulled out of line, there was always somebody going, hell yeah. Somebody wants to dance with you.

That car because I don't know where he's going. I wouldn't mind having a little bit of that back in the Cup Series team. I agree. You know what you mean. I know what you mean. That's the thing is for some of these guys. A second place finish is a hell of a day. So if they can get up there and you know what,

I'll just stay behind Austin Hill. Dude, if I'm Jeff Burton or any of them guys and I see the bumper of the 21, I'm going there. Brandon Pool, all those guys. Yeah, yeah. I do believe you can strategize at the end. Like, there's a couple times we had him, we had him in the sites and he was in some trouble for a little bit,

but we didn't execute. Yeah, they came, they were smart. They came down pit road in the middle of the third stage, put tires on, gave himself, because tires matter a little bit, gave him some comfort and ability to be aggressive. And he had the car that he knew he could drive right through the pack and get back up into contention.

So smart moved by their team. him to give him that advantage. Austin done a great job behind the wheel as he always does at Daytona. How can he block so well? Just a ton of speed, ton of car. But he doesn't block some of the runs they're going to get there and he knows it.

And he does what chased it. He lives to fight another lap and he knows he knows and get there. He'll throw, he'll, he doesn't, I don't see him actually block. I don't either. He doesn't throw these big haymakers. He moves early enough so that it's, like more of a defense than a block. It's not aggressive.

It's not like, man, what a dick move or boy, that was aggressive and stupid. He moves early enough because he's got a great spotter too. They've been together a while. He's getting great information. He understands what line's starting to develop energy. And he gets in front of that line before it actually materializes. And so he's good at controlling lanes. And if you're able to get beside him, he's smart.

patient enough to know that he's got the car that can recover and get pushed back clear again. He knows that, man, taking the lead from that car that he's driving, is going to be difficult. And so, you know, we're, look, I mean, we, I'll, I will tell them going Talladega, I'll tell my guys. All right, all four y'all line up and just, if you can drive by him,

and let's see what happened. They're not going to be able to do it. I'll be surprised. We found some more speed in our cars. I think we're closer. Our guys seem happier about the speed in their cars, so we're getting there. But right now he's still top dog, man. We've got to figure out how to take him down.

And, I mean, also, yeah, Jesse Love that. His teammate, too, that's right. I mean, those two are the top. Jesse's great, too, man, but, you know, Austin's just, Austin's got to, Austin, the racing at Daytona and Talladega is, it's a mental skill and it's a bit of an arrogance but it's a mental skill and a confidence in your decisions to just make them not think about them you're doing I don't know how to explain it other than that like I would tell my guys don't think about what you should do do it

just do things just be doing in the car you have to just do you can't be going I'm I'm gonna wait and try this I'm a I think I might try Should I get down? Should I get up in that line? No, you can't fucking think you got to do. And so Austin's a doer. And he's got it. The car helps out of time.

Yeah, I mean, car, absolutely. I was in that situation. I had an incredible race car and it made my job of doing way easier. When you don't have the car and I've been in that situation, your car not capable of making passes, you're kind of stuck where you are. You can't take the risk. of getting out of line because the chances of you losing positions is high.

And so I've been on both sides of it. Right now, Austin is the guy that knows his car is capable of recovering from any maybe incorrect choice or decision he might make. And so he's able to make a lot of, like make a lot of moves, knowing that a lot of them, most of them are always going to pay off. We're going to have Tyler Reddick call in here in a bit, Asch Jr. coming up, Dirty Mo Doe as well. What do you make of Redick after a tough 24th season going out there and getting the win?

Yeah, I mean, the Daytona 500 changes your life. It, yeah, I think I'm thinking about, you know, he's going to, he's the kind of guy that, you know, once you win the Daytona 500, you go on a bit of a media tour. And we'll ask him what he's up to and what his plans are in terms of that media tour. But he's the kind of guy that enjoys those type of things, I believe. and loves experiences, likes representing his brand, MJ, all the things. So he seems to found some comfort in his situation, the team he represents and the people that he works with. You see like a, you know, a good rapport, I guess, between him and all of all the 2311. It's a good mix.

It is. So they needed it. You know, I think he kind of, he came out of RCR, right? He comes out of RCR with a couple of wins and we're like, holy shit, man, he took the RCR stuff to Victory Lane. You know, not many people were doing that. Many time. He won't quite a bit.

Yeah. You know, and, you know, he got into 2311 stuff and they had some success and some wins and stuff, but it's not, it's not, I don't think Ben, what Denny thought it would be. I agree. And so, you know, they had a bit of an odd year last year. They won the regular season two years ago. They didn't win anything last year. Yep.

And so I think, you know, they're just glad to, you know, probably just glad to start a year off with a win at the biggest race. And they can focus on just racing because last year they had the loss who just looming over them. You wonder how much that impacts what's going on. Yeah. So I don't know, you know, we'll see how it works out. Denny's team has been working really hard to try to kind of get into the next year.

There for a while it felt like that they had measured up to Gibbs. You know, they're getting a ton of resources from Gibbs, but it felt like that they had kind of were matching Gibbs, right? Yeah, I didn't see that a little bit. Yeah. Which are like, holy crap, you know. And then it fell off a little bit. Now they, you know, they had some good success with the indie race last year and all that.

They've won and they've done well, but they've lost a little bit of that speed it looked like they had last year. The consistency wasn't there. For whatever reason, yeah. I mean, I don't know really what you put your finger on it. But we'll see, man. It's only one race, but they got the start of the year off going good. It's a good start. T.J.

How does it feel, though? I know obviously we're hoping to get the winner better finish without the wreck, but like, totally start the season off on a better note than last year. Oh, man. It's way different, way better. it's so much easier to maintain than it is to make up ground. It's going to be even more this year with people, with the way the new point system is,

it's going to be even harder to do. So I think coming out of Daytona and hopefully just go have a solid Atlanta, and then you can start really focusing, but it's going to be much easier to be in that top 10, top 12, I hope. So what are we six now? If you go and have an average Atlanta, your top 12 probably in points, which is much better than 30th.

If you leave Atlanta 30th, 10th, 10 points or around 25th to 30th. It's going to be tough. Don't you think? Yeah, that's what I was telling our guys in the Xfinity series. You've got two races where there's high potential for tearing your shit up and getting a bad finish. And if they go into Daytona and wreck out and finish, you know, 30th, you've got to go to Atlanta and run, you know, run scared, be overly conservative.

and paranoid, you know, about having another crap finish. And in this system from 20 years ago, before you were given such a big advantage for winning and all of that, even, you know, I would say in this system 20 years ago and even more so now with the advantage given to winning and so forth and the advantage given to the top three in the in the chase. if you have a bad two or three or four races or if you're in a bad spot

if you're outside the top 20 tough after five events you've you've messed up I'd say after three it's gonna be really hard I agree I was we were when we would start the year I was kind of always like paranoid about like stubbing your toe early and coming out of the gate with three really kind of subpar

results some of you can't even control because it seems like it takes the whole year to climb back in All right, so we've got our Daytona 500 champion on the line. Tyler Reddick. Tyler, thanks for joining us today. I know you got a lot going on, my friend, but it's all good stuff. Tell me where you are and what you have going on this week. Yeah, we're in New York City today.

This morning we did ESPN. We did get up. Just got off of, you know, with Kelly and Mark. And yeah, it's nice. My wife's been wanting to go to New York City. So I picked the easiest path possible to get us there. And that's win the Daytona 500. Dang, right.

That's a beautiful ring, man. What's nice, or Disney Cruise or New York? Well, you know, I think Alexis is sitting right over here to my right. This is the first night. You've been away from a rookie since he was born. So it was definitely odd. I found myself waking up at like 3.30 in the morning expecting, you know, like, to hear some crying or something.

Boat crawling into our bed. So, yeah. The parents just, you know, more than anything, got through really good sleep last night, which was night. Oh, man. That's good. Yep. Any other big shows this week before you get back to work?

We got first things first. Yeah. Oh, I did Good Morning America. yesterday, yep. Nice. Yeah, CNN. Yeah, we got a few more today. I'm trying to just, you know, I'm going where they point me.

I'm trying to keep up, you know. Yeah. Well, this is the great thing about winning the Daytona 500. That media tour was, is a, is a very traditional experience. And I think one you'll, you'll enjoy and look back on finally. Absolutely. You've had a couple of hours, you know, now a good night. sleep to reflect back on what this means to you.

I mean, I've experienced it. Everybody says that when you win the Daytona 500, it changes your life. You'll be everywhere you go. They'll call you a Daytona 500 champion. How's that feel after you've had some time to think about it? Just almost too good to be true, really. I mean, you know, I loved watching NASCAR races growing up, and one I would never miss. is a Daytona 500.

You know, there was many years there where I'd be sitting with my parents watching it and pulling for you to win too. And just, I mean, it's unreal. You know, again, it's one of those moments that are going to be a centerpiece of, a centerpiece and highlight of your racing career. And it's just, yeah, you know, like,

I'm in the middle of that right now. It's just in the moments after the we took, we won the race and coming back around to the start, finish line and even celebrating with my team, right under the flag stand. It's just, it's just like, man, I was, I was told my wife many times. I'm just waiting for just waiting to wake up laying in my bed and sit up and, you know, it's Sunday morning. And yeah, it's just quite literally unreal. It does help, you know, it's a reality check, seeing the ring, the watch, the jacket, everything. thing that goes with it being able to celebrate with with the team staying in Daytona an extra night um gosh i mean it just it happened so much happened in that final

you know couple of laps there wasn't like a lot of the only opportunity i really had to like get hit with the emotions of the opportunity in front of me was with that was that caution was about eight laps ago other than that everything just happened you know so fast there was not to think about what what was happening in the moment how about the uh the traditional things you got to do Monday morning with your, you know, your footprint and all that stuff and the race car inducting everything into the Daytona USA. How was that experience? I know I was, I was always kind of like, you know, it's, I wanted to party with my team.

Yeah. And go, you know, go stay up till three or four o'clock in the morning. And then you got to get up at like seven to do all that stuff. But it was like, all right, this is what, this is what's happening. So this is what we're doing. So how did you go? How'd you get through it? Yeah, we were able to get the back room over there at Oyster Pub. We stayed there for quite a bit. Yes. Drink a lot of beer, celebrated hard, ate some food.

A couple of fun other. Yeah, we went. If you can use your imagination, I'm not going to name names, but we went across the street for a little bit. Yeah. And then my wife dragged me out of there. She's like, all right, this is enough. Yeah, I was able to drag me out there at what? 2.30?

Way to go! Oh, that's not even that bad. Good work. I know this. Yeah. It was a shock to you, but everyone, you know, thought I was feeling pretty bad when we woke up around 630 or 7 o'clock. You just know, I don't feel bad. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, I drank a lot, but, you know, I didn't feel bad, bad.

I was very surprised by that, you know, so. Very good. Weird how that works, isn't it? I know, I know. But, you know, I wasn't doing like shots and stuff. I knew I needed to be. No, yeah. You know, like someone will.

Dude, I'm going to tell you right now, that's legendary work. Going into Daytona down toward the beach or having some beers after winning the Daytona 500, like actually going into town and getting down a little bit and celebrating. That's how it should be. That's, that is perfect. You know, again, I, when we would raise. and Volusia, you know, if we would come into town, you know, on if it got rained out or whatever it was, you know, when I was rolling with my friends like Devin Moran and Bobby Pierce, it always seemed like when I was younger, the place that we would roll into if we went to Daytona was

Oyster Pub, you know, before I ever race at Daytona International Speedway. So I didn't really play a hand in where we were going and how it all came about. I was, you know, in Victory Lane, doing the media and everything. And when I found out we were going to oyster pub, I'm like, man, that's just like, it's a perfect fit because, you know, just full circle moment, you know. Yeah, for sure. Well, we won in 14 that it was rain delayed and it didn't end until like one in the morning. So we never really got a chance to do that. Yeah, we got like, uh, I do. We got a head start. I miss that race up, man. We were very fortunate. I know. That's awesome. We were all done with everything. And it was like 8.30 a clock, 8.30. And I'm like,

oh, my gosh, we've got. And we had the weather that had all the flights held, so you couldn't leave. Even if you wanted to leave, you couldn't leave. That was really awesome. Oh, dude, the rain. I mean, so this thing has had a rough life already. So I leave the media center and it's raining hard outside. And I go to open the rental car door and everything seems fine.

But when I shut the door, because it's so raining so hard outside, like the ring was wet. My fingers were wet from the rain. Marine just came flying. I mean, it went flying like 50 feet across the garage. I'm chasing it to the gutter, trying to keep it from falling into the gutter. When I was just on with Kelly and Mark, the dang rain came flying off again.

After I gave Kelly a hug, I gave Kelly hug, went to shake Mark's hand, and there the ring goes again. So, yeah, this four rings already lived a rough life. But that's okay. It's good stories. Yeah, that is good stories. We know you're busy, man.

and I'm thankful for the start of your season and how well it's going. I know you want to keep that momentum up. This all-new sort of vintage point system is going to reward a great start to the year, and you've got some good work done already. So good luck. We'll see you in Atlanta. Enjoy the media. Enjoy all of the attention because you'll be back to square one, back to zero

when you get to the garage at Atlanta. I know. I'm excited about it. I've really enjoyed this. And yeah, it's, we've worked so hard, man. I know we need to wrap. But it's been so cool to work so hard to be more consistent at the speedway stuff. And to be able to, you know, put ourselves in the mix at the end. I'm really excited about Atlanta, too. Just the last time we were there, I definitely screwed it up. But we were in the mix. So, yeah, Atlanta's really, really fun. And it's been really great to be able to turn the super speedway stuff around for me. the driver and kind of get back to where, you know, I like to be up at the front. Absolutely, buddy. You put in the work and starting to reach the rewards from that. So enjoy your week. And congratulations again. Thank you guys.

A lot of 500 champion. Yep. See you, man. Congratulations. We are bringing back one of our favorite segments from last year, the Ultimate Racing Collector, presented by Lionel Racing, the official diecast of NASCAR. Lionel Racing, they're your go-to source for all your racing. for all your racing diecast needs,

what your big collectors here at the Dale Jr. download, and you can check out their latest pre-orders at linelracing.com. We're on the search for the most legendary NASCAR collections, whether it's die cast, sheet metal, trophies, shirts, everything. It doesn't matter. We want to see it. Collectors are going to have the opportunity to submit photos and videos through Dirtymo Media social posts for a chance to be selected. videos do a little bit better

but send photos if that's all you got we'll have a post later this week respond to it and next week we're going to select the winner so it's always fun doing that it was fun last year to see the different stuff though I know sheet metal whatever I agree yeah it was great hey everybody it's Dale Jr with TJ Majors

and another episode of the Dale Jr. download in the Ask Junior segment let's see here let me get in my pages This segment today, the ASS junior segment is brought to you by Xfinity, and they are waving the red flag on internet price hikes, and they are raising the green flag for savings. You can get the speed and reliable Wi-Fi you need locked in.

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so let's get right to the smash junior question first question comes way of Reddit. I saw this conversation. They said if you could build a truck team with four drivers, you can't take anybody from Xfinity or Cup, obviously. Who would be your four drivers? I'll probably throw Caden in there. Yeah. I think Caden needs another year or two of cars tour and he'll be ready.

Jade. I was thinking about that. Jade, Evidisian. I forget how to say her last name. Yeah, that's it. Very tough. I think she's got what it takes. And I've talked to Corey Day this past weekend, who's raced with her a lot. He says she's the real deal. So I would get her in a truck.

I like, you know, I'm going to lean into the cars tour a little bit. And, you know, you could pick one. I would just pick one guy, but you could pick one of many between, I know butter beans already in the truck. Yeah. But Connor Hall. I mean, Tristan. If you don't count in.

Yeah, Tristan's good, really good. um mckee um kate brown i mean there's a there's a lot of cars tour guys that i think i would be fine and confident putting in a truck what about dirt series any any young kids you can think of other than you know like jade is or think any of them dirt guys would be good at putting in there like like a bobby pierce or some of them guys are you know what i mean like let them try who was the kid that uh was the dirt kid on the dodge deal uh carson ferguson there it is Carson Ferguson. Yeah.

I hear good things about him. Yeah, I heard he did really well in that deal. Yeah. And for Dirt Late Model stuff. Cade Brown, I mentioned him. Jared Fryer, Trevor Ward, all late model stock dudes that I think are talented. I would take Carson.

Jade. Jade. It'd be a toss-up between Mike Christopher and Austin beers. I do Austin. Yeah. Austin's in our fantasy. He is. Austin's in our dynasty college football.

Champion. Like a modified guy. How could you not pick him? I put Austin there. And he's talented. Yeah. He's champion now. Yeah.

Who else? We got a fourth truck. I still would just move Caden up. What's your take on Cletus's truck racing on Friday? So Cletus busted his ass off the corner, which I figured might happen. If you watched his test at Rockingham,

which I did, he busted his ass off to turn two, similar situation, and got in the wall with his truck. They cleared him, which is fine. Is he ready to race trucks right now? No. Will he be?

Could he be? Yes. If I was NASCAR, I would be doing everything I could to get him better. And what he needs is more ARCA races. He needs to race short track, asphalt. I know he has a track, but I mean, he needs to do more than Crown Vicks and things like that. He needs to go race unbiased, but I mean, he could race in the cars tour.

He could run the Triple Crown for the late model stocks for NASCAR. I don't care. He just needs to be racing more than he's doing it. And he needs to get more experience and get better. I mean, what happened to him at Daytona could happen to anyone. Happened to me. Could happen to anyone. It could. But I just think that he needs a bigger library of experience so that he can then be better at the truck and go back there and really compete.

I want him racing in the truck series. I want him in NASCAR. I want him bringing his followers to our sport. I want him to have success. I want him to have fun. I would say that he might not tell us, but that probably wasn't too much fun what happened at the truck race, right?

So why don't we, as a sport, get behind this guy and surround him with the tools, get him in the sim, get him in the, you know, get him all the experiences we can get him. So that when he does go out there, he knows what he's getting involved in.

He knows what's coming, right? And so my feeling is, is that I don't know that he understands what's about to happen in these situations. We need to have some inkling. And so we need to do everything we can to give him the support and help. And that's what I would do.

If I was NASCAR, I would be giving him, I wouldn't be worried about creating content and making clicks and how can we put him in front of the camera and how can we make a YouTube video that hits 2 million views. I wouldn't worry about that. that I would be making him a race car driver.

He's got the clits. They're coming. They're there. I would be trying to make him a race car driver. All the experience he has up to this point, nothing is close to what that was like at Daytona. I mean, it could happen to anyone. Look, he didn't do anything that didn't happen to any of us.

But I just don't feel like he's as good as he needs to be, to be able to come out there and actually. actually have fun and do well and have a respectable result. But look, at the same time, I don't mind they cleared him. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been out there. He wasn't ready, but he should, you know, they let, you know, Kyle Petty raced in the Arka series, one of his very first races, you know, and won the Arka race in 1979.

Didn't have much racing experience at all. his dad was like why why you're going to mess around with this short track stuff if you want to run cup just get in the damn cup car you know he was racing in the cup series in 1980 um and he wrecked out a lot of cars trying to qualify for races but he eventually got it figured out so i don't know that there's i don't have like a you know a strict standard in terms of approval and so forth but i do have opinions about i just would be working harder to give him get him shorten that curve, that learning curve, like speed up his opportunity to be able to learn what's going on. And I watched his in-car at Bristol in the arc car. And I'll be quite honest, man. I mean, in the first 30 laps, like, he didn't know what was going on or what he was doing. He's not driven around, he's not driven a race car, around a short track.

He's not. You know, he's ran some Crown Vic stuff and all these different things. And he has fun and it's awesome. But, like, to get in an arc car and go to Bristol, you could tell how he was using the throttle and so forth that he was very, very inexperienced. So he needs to be racing a lot. And if I was NASCAR,

I would be trying to help him get that opportunity to race. This next question is, what's a song that puts you in a good mood? And Dale, you can't use your typical, your walk-up song that you always play. Oh, I can't. No, that one's off the table. Well, I mean, I'm just going to have to look at my,

what song puts me in a good mood? Just like drinking my hand. I hear that and I'm instantly just like in a good mood. Probably sailing for him. Why are you picking myself? I'm just kidding. Okay. What about you, TJ? T.J.

Um, good mood, huh? Mr. Brightside. Okay. That's a good one. That comes on at bars and people instantly are singing and gets the vibes going. I mean, I like a lot of songs. He does. Like, I like a lot of songs.

Well, you don't have to pick one then. George Thurr good One shot one bourbon one beer is a good one That gets me in the mood TI's new song let them know How I have to check that out It's good I did not have that on my bingo card

I did not see that going Dude is good It's like old school TI That's see that's like the rap music I like is like the old school Like 90s 2000 Let them know is good Like it gets me height gets me ready to go um yeah i'm just looking through the stuff i've downloaded recently

just like now like we've had some nice weather put the windows down you just like me i just want to go have some drinks yeah i don't know if if i i have a playlist on uh on my phone for uh kind of like it's houseboat rock yeah it's all the same kind of stuff somebody had come on iileen someone blame it on my youth by Blink 182. Yeah. Oh, the Blink 182 song, my favorite blink song is stay together for the kids. I don't think I know that. Oh, man, it's hard.

That's the video where all the kids are in this concrete home and there's this wrecking ball kind of crashing through it and tearing it apart. And it's really heavy. the music. Stay together for a year. I like the, if I'm being honest, and if I can, if I'm,

if I can pick what I, if I'm able to pick the music and play what I want, I'm going to play hard, punk, Green Mo, kind of,

the Wonder Years, Danger Summer, some blink, Angels and Airways, maybe. A lot of Angels and Airways song. good for me.

The whole, yeah, the whole Dreamwalker album was pretty badass. I got a controversial statement. Oh, what's, oh boy,

it's live. I think that, I know, I think that Angels and Airways is better than Blink. I'm sorry. I know there's a ton, I mean,

Blink is like, blink is everything to a lot of people. Yeah. Massive fans out there. And I am a fan, but I was a much, I enjoyed Angels and Airways more.

tiny moving parts is a good band I like I don't think it's that crazy I thought I was buckling it yeah I don't I don't think it's that crazy you don't think so not really I was hesitant I was hesitant to really put that out there because yeah they're pretty good yeah somebody said must must say surprise at junior's music choices

I don't know why people are surprised I've talked about this yeah I know about my love for alternative music alternative rock so I have a big big alternative alternative rock guy from the 90s and the grunge and really punk and popular current punk and stuff like you know blink and angels and airways which isn't current i mean you know stuff like that is the closest thing to alternative music that we have today so it's like where i go it's just where i

got sent there right by my by my interest in alternative music trying to find something somewhat similar to what that used to be you run the gamut dail you can i think I feel like if someone puts a song on, odds are you're going to be okay with it. Yeah. Hey. Yeah, I don't. That's a good habit. Yeah.

I'm more like, I don't know. I like more classic rock stuff. I do too. I'm a big Boz Skaggs guy. Boscags. Yeah, he just, he just came across. Lido Shuffle. The lead, okay.

What song? I'm going to tell you right now. Top of my list. Put on, if you can't play the Who song I like. Eminence Front. Eminence Front. Lido Shuffle. Leto shuffle is going to put me in a good mood.

Good to know. Another question here. Do you have any irrational fears? Like I have one that like I have an 18 wheeler just not going to see me and just like... Sorry? Like an 18 wheeler is just going to like not see me and just change lanes and... Oh. I mean, if you have a fear, it's really irrational to you?

It'd be hard to figure out what's irrational if you feel like. like it's a rational thought. Well, do you have any fears that most would say is irrational? Oh, no. Do you, TJ? I don't think so. I don't think I have any, yeah, I don't have any like that.

Yeah. Not that I know of. I once I kind of bloody nose and then for a while there, I thought I was just going to, like, wake up in, like, a pool of blood. Like, it's not going to happen. Yeah. But that's, like, a thing that, like. I don't know.

I don't want to, I hesitate to say, because maybe they're not too irrational, but I worry, I think there's times when, I will say this, I do this. There are times now that I've reached 50, 51, and I see people at my age dealing with some health issues. I've lost some friends that are around my age. I start to worry about the end. I get worried about what is what is what is what is what is it going to be and you know what what's going to be the thing that that that finally you know takes me out and so you know I think back over all of the dumb shit you did um you know sitting in a I there used to be a tiny room in the back of dad's deerhead shop and it was really small that's where they kept some transmissions and rearing gears

and we would go in there and they had a parts washer. And I always, every race, I would clean the wheelbarons and get them ready and pack them. And you'd go in there and you'd parts wash with no gloves on. Splatter all over you. Getting it all over you. But you got your hands and this stuff. And then we'd get the brake clean and spray that shit all over your hands.

And then you know, you're smelling it. You'd get high in there sometimes. Then you clean your hands with as D20. Yeah. And I mean, you know, you're just thinking, I look back, I'm thinking, what, all these chemicals and crap that I've been around that I shouldn't have been around, shouldn't have messed with. Should have been better about wearing gloves and things like that when I was younger. And then I think, you know, well, damn, Richard Petty's, you know, damn 90 years old, race with fission asbestos floorboards in his race car. And he's still here, you know.

And, you know, you always, I think about all these years I smoked cigarettes. and I didn't have to do that. It shouldn't have done that. And even though my doctor tells me, you know, I don't have to worry about it now that I'm well clear of that. And then you got the lady that's, you know,

there's a 90-year-old grandmother that's smoke cigarettes all her life. Yeah, I don't get it. She's still alive and kicking. So I don't know. I get in my head sometimes and worry, I am closer to the end than I am the beginning. And Amy will say,

just enjoy the day. Yeah, she's the opposite. Just enjoy one. Just enjoy it. Just live. And when it ends, it ends. But, you know, why are you going to, she's right. Like, why are you going to sit here and worry about the end, eventual coming of the end of your life, right?

And spend the final, you know, several years doing that instead of just enjoying what's going on. I got my health. I feel great. I feel young. I need to go bebop. and around and have some fun. Lisa says her daughter's got a fear of elevator. Someone else said they have a fear of worms.

Yeah. So I don't see those like those are a little like. Well, I have the jewelry phobia. Oh, yes. It's not a fear. Like I'm not scared of jewelry. I just get it's, I just think it's disgusting. I'm not, I'm, I'm like, it's an ick for me.

So did Reddick with the Rolex and ring value? Necklace, Rolex, Rolex, ring. I don't care. I don't care if somebody wears it, but I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I I don't, the person that I, my wife, that I'm going to be affectionate with, I'd rather her not have a whole lot of it. It's an it for me. I can't fix that.

I can't. I wish I could turn it off. I wish I could pull that fuse. Yeah. That's a perfect. It's an ick. Yeah. I forgot about that one.

It's not a fear, but it's more of an ick. And I don't mind it on other people. I don't want people to think, oh, I can't, you know, I'm going to give deal, some complex or being around him. I'm not bothered by it with other people. Yeah. But my daughter's got their, I can't get in their way.

They've got their ears. Yeah, they got the ears, pears. They wear necklaces and all that stuff. And it's an ick for me. But, you know, I got to let it go. Last question. I saw, unfortunately, Robert DeVall passed away.

Did you ever get to meet him when he was doing anything? No. No. Bad ass actor, man. I know he did Days of Thunder. That was awesome. But he was in Lonesome Duff.

So I was, Lonesome Dove is an eight-hour miniseries that was on regular television. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you look at the cast, it's insane. If you've never watched it, I know it's a lot. But, I mean, we're down to, we're bingers now, right? We sit down and watch eight hours of damn shows all the time. If you haven't seen Lonesome Dove, you need to watch it. It is incredible. It is so, so good.

And just some serious heavy hitters in there. and he was one of the lead characters. I remember when I was, I think I was a 10th, 11th grade in school, in high school when that came out. And you're, you know, I'm a kid. I'm not, fucking miniseries ain't supposed to be impressionable on me. You know what I mean?

I'm not supposed to be diving into a miniseries. I'm hanging out with my buddies or playing video games or whatever, right? But I don't know how I got, I'm thankful that I tripped into watching that show and I remember going to school and talking about it with my friends like sitting down in school going, dude, you see last night's episode?

Holy shit. It's a good, good movie. Amy bought me a book about that movie recently. Like that's how much I enjoyed lonesome dove. So I was a big fan of his and then he, you know, before he was in Days of Thunder. awesome well man hey look that dude lived to 95 that's like that's a life i i mean if i got that's 15 more years than i'm expecting i'm i'm thinking like 80's a good number if i can get 80 i'll be

pretty happy anything past 80s like extra and it seemed like he had his fast but it's not like he was like yeah i can't even believe that i'm not even halfway there yet and i feel like that's ridiculous. Yeah. I hope, I know that things don't get easy, and I know there's, you know,

I was just talking to a fellow this morning that's a lot older to me. He's like, man, when you get old age is a, is a pain in the ass because everything starts to hurt and nothing works

and doing things that you took for granted is monumental to accomplish. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not looking forward to that part, but I don't, you know, I would love to live that long. Oh, golly. By now.

Man, not a lot, not many of us will be that fortunate. Agreed. Yeah. All right. Well, that's what we got this week for us, Jr. Yeah. That was heavy, man. We got into some deep conversations.

Yeah. Stop it. Stop it, Travis. I'm asking those deep questions, man. We got everybody in here pondering their life choices. Yeah, I mean. Now I'm like scared of looking for semis on the, road.

Someone was like final destinations ruined everything for me. Is my nose going to bleed here in a minute? I mean,

I feel like that I've said this before but I think our, our, our, all of our, like, stories is written.

That's kind of how I live like. Like, man, your destiny has already been decided. Like, I don't know. Sounds like back to the future line. It's probably BS,

but that, That way I don't have to worry about it. If I assume that whatever's going to happen to me has already been decided, then, yeah, I just get to live blissfully and ignorantly and just kind of go about what I want to do, keep on partying and have fun. Because somehow the end has already been decided.

Tomorrow can be the last day, so it might as well have fun and drink today. All right. Fans, Xfinity sponsors the S-June, segment. And they're waving the red flag on Internet price hikes and raising the green flag for savings. You get the speed you want for reliable Wi-Fi when you need it. One price locked in for five years.

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All right, I've got a really nice one up today. I'm already one leg down. Switzerland for the win over Italy. Oh, Olympics. Yeah, buddy. And what? What sport? hockey.

Hockey, nice. I got a little parlay. Of course. That's right. I hope. That's right, buddy. We're going to Atlanta, another track where it's almost impossible to pick a winner. Russell, what in the hell should we do?

Like, we, what went wrong first with our picks this past weekend? It's just a product of Daytona and trying to win the Daytona 500. We had Chase Elliott in the list, and boy, he came close. So we're not complete buffoons. No, anyone is cool. We're not totally incompetent. We're not totally incompetent. There's some competence.

There's a little, you got to look hard, but there's some competence here. If you didn't watch the race and look to results, you would think otherwise. You've got to look hard, but we are competent at this. I think we're going to start off the weekend, though. We're going to, in O'Reilly race, we're going to bet that. Austin Hill, no doubt. Wow. Whoa.

Just more motivation for me to somehow figure out how to beat this guy. I'm going to have to drive the fifth car. Oh, God. Or we just kind of put somebody in there to, hey, when 21 gets outside, just rob them a little bit and get him into the fence. Amy told me I should run the Daytona 500 next year. really yeah I was like what we were laying in bed Sunday night after the race she's like you should just drive it next year I'm like hello are you okay there's a lot of

momentum in this sport oh man I don't know um anyhow what what do we do no one it seems like we know no more about how to pick the winner for this race Atlanta after Daytona. I don't understand. I don't believe there's anything we could take away. I don't. Do you disagree? I disagree.

I think Chase Elliott's a great bet. He was up there. He's going to win. Yes. He's a defending winner there. Jesus. Won there last time he was there. I think, you know, he's been there.

Hosevar was good at Atlanta last year. He was there in his duel. He was up there at the end of the 500. I think there's some stuff we can, that we, can go off of. All right. Do you think this race with the new nose on the Chevy changes things a little bit, though?

Like, I think where it could change stuff is Ford's dominated there in qualifying. Will we see that continue? They've won every poll there since we've reconfigured this track. I got a theory. I got a theory. Okay. They have won polls, which is all about speed, all about straight out run run by self-speed at the track that's been reconfigured and repaid.

What we see, though, at the end of the races, isn't a bunch of forwards up there dominating. Right. And so as tires age, as the track loses grip, handling becomes more important, straight-line, streamed-out, trimmed-out speed is no longer your friend. I feel like that, from what I've heard, if everything's true about the Chevrolet, they not only got, they just made their car that was pretty good last year even better. And so if you like Chase and if you like Hosebar

going into Atlanta, you've improved their chances to go out there and get the job done because of the changes to the car. Apparently the car has more downforce but less drag. And those are two things that I don't know how you do that. That's a hard thing to do, is adding down for us while reducing drag. It doesn't sound like it makes sense.

Those two things don't happen at the same time. But what they've done, what they've told everybody they've done, so we'll see. I know that NASCAR made a little adjustment to the nose of the Chevroletes right at the ninth hour going into Daytona, but I don't think it's really changed the cars all that much and the advantage that they may have created by adding, you know, by changing the body somewhat as should bode well.

for a chase or a host of our. How do you feel about that, Russell? I'm still for them. Absolutely. The right side tire is going to change. This is pretty big. This just came out. The construction, that's what's underneath the tread,

is similar to changes made for the tires used at other one and a half mile tracks. It's designed to have more wear. The construction tread combination, the Atlanta tires are only used at Atlanta, but it's a tire that will lean toward, I suppose, what we've been seeing Goodyear do to increase wear at all the other racetracks.

I love this. I mean, you know, I know that Goodyear is taking a big risk here without an opportunity to really go there and do a ton of testing to truly understand how this tire is going to react. I know they've probably done a little bit of testing, but it's hard to really simulate what 40 cars out there is going to do a race. Yeah. So this is a bold move by Goodyear to try to give us more of what we want.

If the cars are now going, it's going to lose grip. It's losing grip every year we go back. Handling is a premium. We see that at the end of these races. Guys need to be aggressive and changing lanes and so forth and be able to hold that car wide open. And now you're going to give them a tire that supposedly should, in all theory. wear more and lose grip over the course of the run. So you're going to have to dial in the handling on the car.

It's going to be important. You may give up a little bit of speed and qualifying. You may see your favorite driver have a poor qualifying or a mid-pack qualifying effort. Don't despair. They could have built that car to race well and it may cost that speed in the qualifying run. But don't despair if your guy doesn't qualify all that great. It could actually mean that he could have an advantage. when he's tucked in that pack three wide with no air on the car and then tires are really pissed off.

Don't judge it by the first the first stage and stuff either because a lot of times the cars that qualify good tend to stay up there and work with each other. But once you pit and everyone's on a little different fuel deal there, I hate to say that word, but you know, people are going to take people up front are going to use more. People in the back to take less are going to come out in front and it's going to cycle a little bit. So it should build as the race goes on and especially have some tire wear. I agree. What do you think, Russell? We won't have as much fuel talk this week as we did last week. I agree.

Not as much. There will be some. I sure as hell hope not. Yeah. Well, because when you can't pit here, you almost lose laps when you pit here, right? So it's not going to be like short pitting or coming early. You know, you're going to run as long as you can and you're going to want to be more full than not. No, but even yellow, even after the stage, like there's still longer stops because it takes longer.

You know what I mean? You can do tires for you can. finish with fuel. So there is going to be some cycling like that. Yeah, there'll be some, but it won't be as much of that fuel-only deal. It'll be hard to dominate.

Yep. Yeah. Well, I like the chase and host of our idea in terms of picking a winner. We have some group bits. Let's see what we think of these. Explain to me what these are.

You can just pick one driver. They have to finish ahead of the other drivers in the group. Really? Yeah. Basically, head to head between four drivers. Between four drivers. Wow, that's interesting. So we got Stenhouse, Bowman, Priest, and

Busher. Who are you picking there? I like Chris Busher. Oh, plus 285. I like Bowman. Yeah, Bowman has been strong there last race. I mean, he's the reason he secured Chase to win last race. They need to be rebound. So he's going to be really smart. They had a terrible finish this past weekend. So he's got to go there and get the top 10. So while he may, you know, I think his risk assessment will be really good. He's pretty smart and savvy at these types of tracks talking about Bowman. Yeah. So I think he's probably going to go there and just try to lock down that top 10 finish.

I feel like Busher is still hard to beat at that stuff, though. Yeah. He's just so good at it. I'll take Bowman. What about Stenhouse? No, thanks. His luck was last week. Yeah, it's just.

I don't know. He was good there last year, too, though. A lot's changed since last year. I don't know how that teams do it. He finished second in the 500. okay Riley Herbs finished what Top 5, 6, 2?

Is he going to run top 5 at Atlanta now? Predictor? I ask you. Take your guy, take Stenhouse. I'll take Bowman. Okay. All right, the next group, Kyle Busch, Brackzalowski,

Ross Chastain, and Busher again. I like Kyle Bush. I liked the speed. I mean, Daytona, but I like the speed out of him. Yeah, I like Kyle Busch, too. I think in this group. I'm a Ross Chathane guy. Are you?

I got a group. TJ. I wonder who I'm going to pick. Who are you going to drive into a wreck? I mean, as long as Chase doesn't spit out in front of us, we're pretty good there. All right.

So, Brad, I mean, the six is usually pretty good there. So I don't think it's far-fetched. Brad's going to, yeah, Brad, you're going to take Brad. No one's taking Boozer. I'm this one. Yeah.

I have a question. there's a lot of people that are in leagues where you can only pick one driver to win. Yeah. Who's a driver that you might want to pick if you're in one of those leagues? Chase. Do you want to use them up yet, though? Oh, you can only pick the driver. Oh, then I'll take Hosevar in this race.

Man, this race is such a dice roll. I feel like this is definitely one you throw a... That's why I think kind of a... I do. Not the host of ours a throwaway, but... No. You don't want to pick a heavy hair. I might, I mean, this might be a McDowell for me.

I was going to say any spire. car. I feel like McDowell, maybe even Eswaris, Swares, Svarez, sends like Atlanta. Yeah, you're good to do as far as here. Yeah. Just call me the predictor. Jesus. Some good calls, man. All right.

Russell, thanks for tuning in today. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, buddy. Good seeing, you, Ross. Tim's good to see you. Thank you, thank you. The Dirty Moe Doe segment brought you by Fanjewel, the premier gaming destination in the United States.

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