The Dale Jr. Download - Jeff Gordon & Ryan Blaney LIVE from Daytona

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Dale Jr. is joined by Jeff Gluck and Freddie Kraft for a LIVE recording of the Dale Jr. Download from the FanZone in Daytona! Jeff Gordon joins the stage first to congratulate JR Motorsports on making their second Daytona 500, tell a few Dale Sr. stories, and give his thoughts on the Chase format. Then Ryan Blaney stops by and gives all the details about his magnificent mustache and what his bosses think about the new look. Plus, Dale interrogates Jeff on his Top 10 most anticipated races list. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirtymoe Media. This is like super professional. You're kind of surprised, aren't you? No, but this is for real. Oh, we're live. All right. Who's supposed to take me? Yeah, we just walked up.

Does that mean you get his started? I said, I popped on the headphones. I'm like, all right, somebody's going to tell us what's going on here. So much super professional. We thought we were going to do a better job. second year, but it ain't looking like it. Dirty Mo Media in Series X-M right now teaming up here for the stage

and the fans on at Daytona. Hey, crowd. Good to see everybody. Got Jeff Gluck here. Freddie. And Jeff Gordon has joined us today. Jeff Gordon. Hey there. What is your title? You're a part owner. What are the titles you have?

Vice chairman. Vice chairman. Yeah. I don't know what that means. Well, it means you guys are fast. this weekend and and and I'm a you know I'm experiencing some of that with the car that we have the 40 car with that hinder horsepower and the hood a lot of work's been done in all congratulations yeah by the way yeah but you know we we get to be a part of this and I can tell you the stress that all of us at HMS went through along with you last year yeah you know right up to the very last corner last lap of the duels and to get that thing locked in had to feel good

last night I know it felt good for us it really did you know last year was a struggle, and, you know, you've got to practice in the morning, and then you have all day to wait around to see what kind of lack you're going to run and qualify. And there's a lot of tech and everything that you've got to go through. It's super, super fun to be a part of it and very, very educational. I mean, I've been around this sport a long time, but I've learned so much being in that garage yesterday going through that whole process with the team. And so, you know, you get the car out of the trailer and you put it out on the racetrack,

the driver's going to get a couple of runs in the 50-minute practice session. very brief it's either good or it's not there's not a whole lot you can do at that point everything that's you know everything that the car's got has been done at the shop there's really not a lot of speed really find at the racetrack and but fortunately this year the car come off the trailer fast and and we go out there last night and the lap times that we started seeing our car was going to run about a 20 that's what it ran and uh i walked up down pit road asking other crewchees and drivers what they could run and once I sort of understood after about three or four cars I thought man we actually got a pretty good lap on the board I wasn't really sure where that was going to nest out and um funniest part

yeah we get going through qualifying pretty deep and I'm thinking damn we're all made the top 10 maybe and have to rerun and have to run again to try to beat Corey but you thought that was a good thing I wasn't really sure so there we were toward the end of qualifying hoping to get beat so we could get bumped out of the top 10. So he didn't have to run again. It was the weirdest thing. The same thing happened to us, by the way, Jeff Andrews came over and he's like, man, that's a good enough lap.

I think that'd be in the top 10, only 4,000 is faster than Corey LaJoy. And you have to understand, folks, like, first of all, right, Mr. H, buddies with Dale Jr. used to be a teammate at Hendrick, Mr. H and his partnership with him, a JRM, and a great friend of Chris Stapleton. And so this whole project came to HMS, and all that does is add additional pressure to all of us in the engine shop and all of us at HMS, not just for our four cars, but for that car to get in the Daytona 500 is important too. So, yeah, we find out, you know, you're 4,000's up on Corey, and then looking like you might be in the top 10. And then somebody comes over and says, hey, that means that they might have to rerun second round. I was like, not Corey LaJoyat.

Please like not coronation or both. Yeah, yeah, that was pretty interesting. I've never been in that scenario before, but it was a lot of fun. Was anybody surprised if see Noah be the only person to break the rule? Was anybody surprised about that at all? Yeah. What's funny is an email went out from NASCAR a couple hours before practice that reiterated. Here are the rules.

I'm sure that was not in his inbox or he didn't look at his emails, but I saw it. I don't believe the... He said that he forgot. I do not believe that he forgot. I believe that he said, I know, Noah. He's worked with us at Junior Motorsports before.

We had a ton of fun, but he is that kind of guy. I put a tweet out today. He's the guy that if you say the stove is hot, don't touch it. He is going to touch the stove. And he is going to get burnt, and he's going to turn around.

He's going to turn around and go, yep, yep, it's hot. I thought maybe he looked around the car. He's like, cameras in here. There's no way they're going to know if I put my hand up there in the window. I noticed he'd run and then I'm looking on the app because I was standing on pit road with the app open and I was like, where the hell's Noah's time at? It was pretty interesting. Gluck, I mean, what was the reaction in the media center

when y'all learned that he had made? Yeah, it was one of those, uh, of course, kind of things, but I'm kind of with you, like, I think that's one of those things where you kind of try to get away with something, and then you got caught, and you're like, oh, yeah, I just messed that up. Like, he knew, come on, like, he knew. You don't just be like, I'm going to put my hand up here. That's very conscious, you know,

he's, he's, the thing about Noah is he's actually a lot smarter than he lets on, too. Like, I think he kind of plays dumb. No, I really, I really do. Part of it's an act. Part of it's an act. Part of it might be true, I'm saying. But like, how much fun he has is not an act. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

But I'm with Dale. I think he knew. Do you think he did not Burmoo? Yeah. Yeah. It's possible. Well, there's a lot of changes this year coming into the season. One of those that I think a lot of us are really excited about is the change in the points format.

Call it what you want. The chase is back or. I'll be honest with you, the way that the numbers kind of line up and how this is all going to be added up throughout the season, it's as close to going back to full season points as you can get without actually doing that. And so I'm very excited about it. I know that, you know, Jeff talking to a lot of the drivers, Jeff Glick and Jeff Gordon, both of you all, have talked to your drivers, drivers in the media center. Freddie, you've heard from drivers as well that there's a lot of excitement, I think,

and how they feel they can approach this season and go out there. They kind of know this path a little bit more, you know, because this is kind of a system or similar system to what they've grown up doing over the years. So I'm seeing a lot of excitement to drivers. Yeah, for sure. And it seems for me, like, you know, obviously everybody wanted a 36 race. You know, that was the big outcry. This was the best compromise by far.

You know what I mean? I feel like because you still have that 26 race playoff season where you can, you can still have a couple of hiccups throughout the year, but you make that playoff and now you've tightened the window. I was talking about on DVC a couple weeks ago. Like, you'd go, the guy that was 10th and points of the cutoff, you know, 16th and points of the cutoff last year was 200 points out.

Well, now he's going to be 70 points out of lead or 100 points out of lead, whatever it was. And then, like, I said the guy that second in points is the one that almost gets a little bit burned because you have that tight gap. You know, usually we've come down. We've seen one or two point gaps at the end of the regular season. Now that gap grows to 25.

So I think it's just a good balance of you. You've got to perform during the regular season. It makes the regular season championship mean that much more. And you could also have a couple hiccups along the way and not ruin your whole season. Yeah, I mean, here's where I weigh. I always, even though I'm closer to the competition side of things, I always try to give NASCAR the benefit of the doubt of the decision making, right, that goes into it because you've got the fans that, you know, there's a lot of drama in what we've had.

Cut, cut off and, you know, who's going to advance to the next round. But then I know fans. feel the same way that all the competitors do. A one race, you know, win for, you know, you go into it even and one guy's going to come out as a championship. While it's exciting, there's drama, I don't know if that, you know, really set well with a lot of people. So now we give up a little bit of that drama in the rounds, but I think what we're going to do is crown a champion that, that, you know, people are going to look at and say, man, you know, like there's not just a bunch of luck involved with that. that there was, you know, it's just sometimes there were, like with Denny Hamlin. I mean,

that was a very unfortunate situation. If he built up a lead and had a points gap going into that final race, he had some margin there. That's what we're going to see now. And I do like that. I joked in our first team owner council meeting that we had with NASCAR, because, you know, while I think it's a good move to go to the chase, I also got my butt kicked every year by Jimmy Johnson with that format when they went to it. But I do think it fits well, if I go back to Comptusian, for Hendrick, we feel really good about it. You know, we pride ourselves on being consistent throughout the season. We think Homestead's a great track for us to end the season.

You know, we look at those 10 tracks and, you know, even the regular season, what can we do to get, you know, maybe that advantage of winning the regular season? Our four guys, I think, it plays out very well for them and for our race teams. and yeah, I'm excited to see how it all unfolds this year. Yeah, I'm excited too. So, Gluck, you might have some inside information on this, and I'm not sure what everybody might know, but when they started to talk about announcing this,

and we were actually in the middle of the announcement itself, and I was talking to some of the guys, I know personally the people that, and we all know personally the people, that created this system, right? And adjusted on the old chase to deliver what we had today in terms of points and how much you get when you win a race and all those things. And what they were trying to do was maintain some semblance of a playoff format, but they wanted it to really come down to somebody who had done very well throughout the entire season or the regular season. And so they didn't want me to

say this, but, you know, now that we're kind of far removed from that announcement, I think it's kind of okay. But, you know, in most, they ran tons of models. They ran thousands and thousands of models with this format to try to make, try to break it, to try to see if it would actually spit out some fluke winter. And it never would. And so, you know, while we do have in a lot, here people ask us, you know, 16, too many, should it be 10, 12? It doesn't matter. It really doesn't because the guy who's in 10th, 11th, 12th, ain't got a shot in hell. He don't. I mean, they'll have to have an incredibly miraculous playoff to be able to outpoint and make up the difference on those guys that are sitting in first, second, third. And so in all of the models that

they ran, it was really always coming down to that first, second, third, maybe the fourth, the fifth, every now and then. So being in that top five, being in that top six is critical. So that's why The good thing about that, I think, is that it really makes that regular season as important as the postseason. And let's be honest, going even back to the format we just came out of at the playoffs, if you were 10th to 60th, you really didn't have a chance either. I don't know when the last time Jeff could probably tell us when the last time that was done, if ever, but I don't think you ever came into it and won the championship from that far back. Yeah, and I think the thing is, like, if somebody wins it in the miraculous way from

seven in a 10 week thing. You go, holy crap, that's unbelievable. You deserved it. Tony Stewart. Yeah, you would have to have that kind of run. You'd have to win five out of ten races. You know, otherwise, I don't think anybody wants to see that anyway. Like, that's the whole reason that everybody was complaining about this whole format.

Like, the idea that somebody could come out of nowhere and it didn't reflect the rest of the season. People want to see something where they get to the end of the season and they go, all right, that was the driver of the year. Like, that was what we, that went with what we saw the rest of the season. So, you know, I think there's going to be a great race, like you said, for those top four or five seats. And, you know, that's going to be as important as getting that number one seed in a way. Because if you're too far down, there's a 25 point gap between the first seed and the second

seed, and then it kind of goes down five points or something like that. But there's 100 points between first and 16. So you've got to be, you know, up somewhere in the top five, six to have a shot at it. And I think everybody's going to be fine with that. Yeah. And not that I had a vote on it. But, you know, I just, I felt like the whole season, I know Mark Martin was adamant, right? He needs to be a 36 race.

And I got, I was fortunate to be a part of those. And I can remember, you know, the championship being crowned two, three races before the season was over, too. And I don't think that would work. I really don't. So this really prevents that from happening over those 10 races, I believe. Well, even in the old chase format, you know, nobody ever clenched it before Homestead anyway. That's right. And I don't think it will have with the next-gen car as close.

close as everything is, I don't think it'll happen. Nobody, nobody's going to, and if they do, if somebody clinches it at Martin's Bill, people are going to be like, wow, that's unbelievable. So one of the things I wanted to talk about with, you know, with 30 Mo Media is this year, Jeff, I don't know if you heard about this yet. Oh, man. But we, I'm the edge of my seat. I can't wait. Every year we do a replica hood in the studio. Oh, I'm aware of this one. All right. Yeah. And so every year we do this replica hood, and it's life size, and it's a mock-up hood that we kind of have a lot of fun with, and it's going to have the Dirty Mo Media logo on it.

We did different ones over the years, like Bobby Allison's Miller High Life, and different ones. Last year we did like a Budweiser hood. And I said, you know what? This year, I'm going to let TJ, my co-host, pick the hood. And I've known TJ since 2000. I've known him for a long, long time.

And I said, TJ, you get to pick the hood. Any hood you want. He goes, all right, I got it. My favorite driver. And I was like, the favorite driver, he goes, yeah, Jeff Gordon. I was like, I didn't know Jeff Gordon was your favorite driver. I didn't know that either, by the way. You yelled that up too much.

I don't think he told me because he thought maybe it would have. He moved down here for Buffalo. We helped him get a job over at MB2 and all that stuff. Maybe that might doesn't happen if he tells me he's a Jeff Gordon man. I don't know. So I think that was what he was worried about. So we got this beautiful hood. in the studio and it's a replica of your

du pont scheme when you had the flames on it. So I'm going to have to get you to come on to the show as a guest so that you get your autograph on that thing, man, but you're going to be in that studio represented the entire season. And it's, you know, fans had such fun reactions to it. A lot of people thought it was awesome. Some people were like, what the hell? Earnhardt.

Hard, hardcore. Yeah, exactly. But a lot of people, I was like, you know, we weren't teammates. That was one thing. But some other people brought up some great things that I thought would be fun for you to talk about. Even though you and dad were really, really competitive and fierce competitors on the racetrack, y'all did a lot of things behind the scenes that I think people either don't know about or they tend to forget about. A lot of business deals y'all had together, y'all owned properties together, business properties and literal property.

Talk about how all that happened. I mean, I remember when we were at Wilkesboro in 94, I was there for a late ball stock race, and he was taking you around the track and a pace car just talking about the track, and he walked you over and said, I want to introduce you to Jeff Thornt. This guy is going to be a big deal. And so, I mean, y'all kind of had a friendship right out of the gate, but how do you become business partners? Yeah, I mean, first of all, who didn't respect your dad, right? I mean, you know, just absolute legend.

And every time I was on the track, I felt like I was learning, you know, something, especially at this place from him, and he was so hard to beat at these places. But, you know, so I, of course, no matter what was happening on the racetrack, even when he was, you know, Dale had, your dad had a love-hate relationship with every competitor, by the way. You know, like, he would put his arm around him, hey, buddy, let's go hunting and fishing and let's do this. And then the next week's spending them out, wrecking him on the track.

So, you know, you just kind of, you became aware and familiar with that. That was the kind of relationship that you could potentially have if he got into that inner circle. And I just always looked up to him, had the most respect. And then, you know, as my career started taking it. off. The business side started taking off. And, you know, back then we used to fly on planes together to tracks. And you just, you spent more time. You go up in the hauler, you know, the NASCAR hauler, and you just spent more time together as drivers than I feel like they do today. And you get to

know one another, whether you like it or not. And so, you know, just created some conversations with, you know, him and myself about your, I remember he's the first one told me, you've got to own your rights. so you're like this. He's like, if you don't have that, you've got to go get that. You know, in your next driver contract, you need to, you know, control the licensing. And, you know, like he was the one that really led me down that path. And then, of course, when action performance came along and the die cast market just blew up, he was, you know, leading that charge and right. And he knew that, hey, it's not just a one-man show.

It was, this thing's going to be bigger and the sports going to be bigger and the fans are going to get more access to things if all of us come together. And so he came to me, it's like, now, of course, his way of coming together and throwing an idea, hey, here's what you're going to do. A contract's going to come to you. There's no email, right?

Contracts didn't come over. You're going to look it over. If you want to have a lawyer to look at it, that's fine, but you're still going to sign it one way or another. That'll happen on Tuesday. You know, like that. And you just go, okay. And listen, every one of the deals worked out really well.

So I'm glad it happened the way it did. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I always enjoy knowing that how you guys were able to, like, he and you and him and all these other guys like Schrader and Rick Mass, they all have stories about running is on the racetrack with that. But off the racetrack, y'all all figured out a way to put that aside until the next Sunday and do business. and do things that were successful together.

And then you get out on the racetrack and, you know, run into each other and flip each other off and be mad as you could be, you know. Yeah, there were two times that I don't think I've gotten over it yet. And I can remember the first time. And I look, this was such a huge life lesson for me as a driver. It was my rookie year in 93. And I think it was last or maybe second or third last. No, it wasn't the last race because it was in Phoenix.

The last race back then was in Atlanta. So second or third to the end of the season. And he was, as he always was, in the hunt, you know, for the championship. He didn't win at 93, did he? I don't think he won at 93. I know he won at 94. Anyway, so I'm racing, like, I'm in 7th, something like that. And he and I are battling for that position.

We had about equal cars. And somehow I got ahead of him maybe on a pit sequence or something. and he, you know, he's just right on me, and I gave him the inside. And we were a side by side for about two laps, and that was one and a half too many. Oh, yeah. And we went down to turn three, and I thought I gave him enough room, and boom, around I go, pow, in the wall. And I was like, man, I didn't know I came down on him, crowded him like that. I realized later I didn't.

Yeah. Yeah. It was just his way of saying, hey, kid, yeah, that's not going to get done, especially with me. So I never, you know, I made sure that I was always understanding the situation. It was situational awareness was what the lesson was. And he had more on the line than I did that day. And I didn't even erase him that hard. And then what was the other one?

Oh, shoot. Gosh, darn it. I'm going to think about it here in a second. It sounds like you're over it. Yeah. I'm definitely not. Oh, no. No, it was, we were Michigan practice on a Saturday.

Okay, and we were about to take off pit road, and Ray Abraham comes over, he's like, he's like, listen, just you got a good race car. We're just trying to get this thing, you know, for the later practice, right? Get a ride. Don't worry too much about right now. And he's like, just, you know, let Dale go. Because Dale, like, when in practice, but he would run a practice like it was a race. He wanted to race you as hard as he could in practice. So we always kind of knew just stay away from racing him.

anybody, really. And so I remember I come off pit road and let him, he yarded, you know, he's way out there, over straightaway head, and then I start running, and my car is really good. And so I'm closing in on him. And then all of a sudden he starts really slowing down. And so I'm like, okay, he's going to let me go and he'll get him behind me. And I remember I come off of turn two, yeah, come off of two. And I mean, he's checked up on the outside. I get a big run. And all of a sudden, he gets right to my quarter panel just enough where I can't clear him. And we go down to three, and I'm just like, surely he's going to let me go.

So I'm just going to drive in real deep. No, no, he drove in deeper right on my door and sucked me right around. I backed that thing in the wall, destroyed the car. And he was unscathed as usual. And so, man, I got, and Ray was pissed at me. He was mad at Dale. He's like, what did I tell you? stay i said he was letting me go i thought he was let me go so that was another life lesson

has there been moments that you remember being on the other side of that where you were teaching a young driver on the racetracks how it's done oh yeah oh yeah definitely i mean that's why later you know i realize especially the 93 thing like as a rookie every rookie that came in you had to teach him that lesson like it was it was your duty when they came if they thought they were too good or they were running up front and you'll using up a little too much track or whatever you're like yep here comes that dale senior moment man we can see i might not erect them but i definitely moved them oh i'm sure i learned a lot being around you on the racetrack and in the office as well it's been a lot of fun over the years

and i appreciate you giving us some time today it's also to sit up here and just listen to some of these stories. You're a great icon in a sport man. It's awesome to see you as involved as you are. And I hope you have a good weekend this weekend with your guys. Hopefully you run one, two, three, four, five with that 40 out front. Yeah. Listen, listen, you say you got a better car this year. You finished 10th last year. So, you know, you got some big shoes to fill now. But, no, it's going to be great. We're excited. We're just excited about this year. the Daytona 500 and we got a great car, great chance, you know, for all of our guys. And can't wait to work with you and Justin, the 40 team out there as well as like an extension

of Hendrick Motorsports. It's really cool to be a part of that. And thanks for not call me a pioneer. You call me an icon instead. I think I like that. You're not a pioneer yet. I think when you retire, you're when you retire, your goal. Carl Edwards called me a pioneer one time.

Yeah, I laughed at that. But I'm honored that my hood is at the studio. That's amazing, and I can't wait to get up there and see it in person. Awesome. Jeff Gordon. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff Gordon. So we got a little bit of an announcement to make.

Jeff, you want to do this? It's your deal. Well, I've been jealous. You know, I have this podcast to tear down that we do after the race. Yeah. But I have to tell everybody a secret, I guess, because, you know, when you do a podcast right after the race, you haven't heard what anybody else thinks. So, like, I haven't heard actions detrimental or DBC or Degger your download.

Yeah. So sometimes you're just kind of like, I'm like, man, this just happened. We got off the pit road. We come to do the podcast. And I'm like talking about stuff. I'm like, yeah, I think this is right. I think this is what people are going to think about this. I love it because I just got a buddy in here because you say what you say.

I listen to what the fans say and then I decide what I'm going to say. It worked out great for us, right, Freddie? Yeah, it worked perfect. I just disagree with anything Gluck says. I'm going to have a good show on Monday. Well, then, so then it gets to Monday and I start listening to all the podcasts. You know how the, you guys follow the sport. You know how the discourse works on social media and the podcast world and all that stuff?

You're like, man, I don't know if maybe I was wrong about that. Or you have a different opinion. Or you have something else you want to say. Anyway, but my show is just after the race. So I don't have anything else to say. So I'm going to be doing a Thursday show now. It's going to be on the tear down feed. and it's going to be on my YouTube channel.

And I'm not... Is this the name of it? This is the name. The name of it is the Gluckcast. Is it? The Gluckast. I love it. You picked that name yourself, didn't you?

They said that I had to have a name... Because it's on the Terrydown Feed, it has to have my name in it. And I was like, I don't know about the Gluckcast. I don't think anybody's going to forget it. Well, that's a good thing. They said you have 24 hours to come up with a better name than the Gluckcast. And I thought about it, and I could. It sounds like...

This sounds like... Asgard negotiations. Yeah. You better sign this right now. You got 24 hours. There's a lot of things that Gluck could be in with that shouldn't be in the, you know. Was that too soon? No, I thought that thing worked out great.

I thought that was amazing. Anyway, so, yeah. The things that I love about this. So what I love about this idea is obviously, so you and Jordan and many, many, many other people in that, in that room in that press room. There's, no one has a better understanding of what's being talked about,

what's being discussed, what's going on in the sport than the people in that room. And the fact that you all come, the reason why you can do the tear down is because of that very fact. So y'all come right off the race and you react.

And I think that's why it works so well. And what we do kind of lack in our little bubble is that preview of that race, right? The preview of that race from the same mindset. So I'm pretty excited about it. I love listening to y'all's content. I learned so much about things that are being discussed in the sport from y'all.

I think you keep all of us sort of up to speed on really truthfully what the big conversations are in the garage and in the industry. And so I'm pretty excited about this show and look forward to it. I mean, it'll be interesting to see kind of how what your perspective is going in, and then how you may change what you say and do on the tear down after the race, right? because you've got this preview and this post reaction now. Yeah, I mean, it's so weird how, like, the conversation just weaves and flows throughout the week. We all follow it, right? Like, it's, I think we're all in this community, this NASCAR community, and you can see, okay, this is the topic of the week, and it kind of flares up,

and everybody kind of hops on it, and every podcast is talking about it, and every writer's talking about it, and everybody's talking about social media. and then it kind of just goes another way. And then the next thing pops up. And it's not like one person or something. It's just like collectively we all just said, all right, I guess we're going to be talking about this this week. All right, everybody's talking about it.

So I'm happy to have a chance to weigh in again if people aren't tired of listening to me. So thank you. I'm looking forward to it. So tear down the glut cast. All right. That's a weekly spin-off of the care down. Yeah.

So it's debuting February 19th, new episodes dropping every Thursday. Thursday and there'll be an audio version as well as a YouTube version. We'll all be checking that out. Our next guest wasn't going to be, wasn't supposed to be here until 345, but I see. It's very punctual. We should just bring him on up here. Brian Blaney, driving number 12 for Piskie. Mike Davis won't let him up here. Mike Davis, leave Brian alone. Hey, Mike, let our guest alone. Mike, can you leave Brian alone? Thank you, Mike.

Did you spot the mustache? Mike had him hemmed up over trying to give him to do a podcast. What he was doing with Jeff Gordon when I walked up. Mike's trying to sign him all up. The Blaney cast? The Blaney cast? Yeah. There he is. The mustache himself has arrived.

This guy ruined the playoff announcement for me, by the way. Like, no, during a playoff announcement, all I can look at is this guy's mustache. He's in the back row and I'm like, this is the only thing I'm focused on the mustache. No, I can't. You can't get rid of it. Unless my boss tells me to shake. Well, yeah. Which one's the boss?

Which one is the boss again? You know who it is. The one boss likes it. The other boss, I don't know. My wife likes it. Yep. But my main boss who pays my bills, I don't know. But he hasn't said anything about it yet.

I was surprised that the real boss liked it. Because Amy's pretty opinionated about my facial hair. She prefer I don't have any. Yeah. But she likes me to keep it kind of short. I like to throw it really long in the wintertime. Right. Like a real man.

You know? Like I'm going on hot every day. But she's not a big fan of it. Yeah, I'm surprised. My wife likes it as much as she does. But so I got lucky on that. But she told you to do it, right? She did tell me to do it.

You know, so I do the big beard and the playoffs and then the winner. She just said leave that. Well, and then I always, like, for a week straight, I play with it. So I'll do like mutton chops and then like a goatee and then like, so I'm like a different person for like a week. And then I got to my mustache and had big handlebars. He was like, I don't like that one. So I shortened it up a little bit, and she was like, I actually like it.

How, who have you been told you look like? I get Ned Flanders a lot. I get Kurt Russell from Tombstone. What about the dude from the gangs of New York, the butcher? Yeah. Bill the butcher. Yeah. Yeah.

I haven't gotten that one yet. That's fine. But that's a pretty good one. That's for me. Yeah. Yep. That's better than Ned Flanders. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, Flanders is the, I got it for the first time down here. Someone just came up to me and showed me a picture of Ned Flanders. They're like, you look like this.

I was like, man, that sucks. Like, that sucks. There's a lot of cooler people with moustaches and, you know,

Flanders was always a weird guy, I thought. But, yeah, that person thought I looked like Ned Flanders. Well, I also heard you got a llama.

Yeah. Like a real life llama. Yeah. Yes, he did. Yeah, I got a llama. I got a lot of questions about him. The main reason we got him, we have three little

goats. They, they're great, like, livestock guardians for small animals. Really? Yeah, not a people know that, but they, like, will destroy a coyote or a fox. Wow. If they want to. I did not know that. So, dad had a couple llamas, and all I got told was, they'll spit on you. Don't go over by them. They'll spit on you. So they do spit. Mine doesn't. And their breath, their spits really rank? Their spit is actually, they regurgitate throw up, and then they spit it at you. So it's not just like saliva. It's like vomit that they spit at you. But the only ones that spit are like ones that are in petting zoos and they get hand-fit all the time.

But this one, he was raised on like a llama farm with like 100 other llamas. And they never like hand-fed him or nothing. So like he never spits. But it does get a little weird if he like he'll get right in your face. And I'm like, please don't do it. Not today. Is he nice? He's very nice.

Yeah, very nice. He hasn't done anything bad yet. not to get your personal stuff, but are you starting a farm? What are we going to get? Barn? We build a barn. I know you're next to. Yeah, my, that's my wife's project, and I just say, yeah. I mean, what are you going to say? So, you know. I got a fun story. Amy's going to be mad. But we got a tiny barn that was on my property when I bought it. And it's got three stables in it, and it's real small. And we get into rescuing, because Amy likes to do that kind of stuff. And so we've had some other, we've got all kinds of animals over the years. But right now we've

got four donkey, one mule, and a horse and a mini horse. And so we got too many for our barn, right? And Amy's, we got the Carolina carports people on the Xfinity program. And they're like, hey, we're really having fun with y'all sponsoring your race cars. We want to give you a free bill. I was like, damn, all right. So I told Amy, I said they want to give us a free building. you know, you want to, what do you think? And she goes, we'll do it. We'll make it a barn, you know, we'll get more stalls and be able to have all these, all these rescues

will have room to get out of the rain and all that stuff. And, you know, we got to thinking about how we wanted to build it. And we were going to build this barn. And she, so she starts designing it out of wood and starts building this thing. And it's going to have, you know, we're going to get some help for the carport folks before sort of cover it. But it looks like an art. Like I look out of it.

People are like, hey, I take pictures of it and I send it my friends. I'm like, we're building an arc. Yeah. Because that's what it looks like. It's crazy. Wow. And I just kind of got to step out of the way. I got two little girls and Amy.

And it's like, it's what they want to do. I know what you should get next. A llama. Oh. You should get two llamas next. I might. Well, if you want to, I think I'm a rescuer. So only if you're.

All right. If you're Lamanese rescuing, I'm your guy. Okay. We'll just open the gate one time. He's out. He needs a rescue. He's rescuing. If he becomes a problem, you know, if he's harassing the goats.

All right. If I tell you that me and him got in a fist fight, then you've got to come rescue. He probably has to rescue me. Spitz on you and you socky boy. Anyhow, yeah. I think that's that that's in your future, the barn. Yeah. Go ahead and start snaking the ground, bud.

That's next. Yeah. Yeah. Really, it's, and I'll tell you. I saw, so it's the, it's the, the Thunderbirds are flying overhead. And I saw a picture from Village. He took a ride with him boys today. Did he?

Have you ever done anything like that? I did it in my rookie year. Really? Did you fly with him? Well, it must be a rookie thing. I think it is a rookie thing. Mine was 20, I was 10 years ago. And that was one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life.

He's the only rookie. He just must be getting multiple rides today. No, so the thing about Thunderbirds, you only get one. You only get one ever Yeah one ever You can't like do it every year Like it's a very strict process Yeah but it was the coolest thing ever

The guy made me throw up I threw up everywhere yeah I did black out I didn't black out I puked though I don't know which one's worse You have a G suit on I did and I still puked

I didn't pass out I did the Blue Angels They don't do as many Gs But they don't do the suit either I passed out Yeah This is what happens when you get Ryan Bluble

on the stage of America, baby. That is the coolest thing. What other place does this? Let me tell you. When you're on that roof, free race, it feels like they are going to hit you in the head. Like they are, you feel like you reach up and touch them. It's insane in some of the videos we get. So we had Jeff Gordon up here and everybody, you know, we're going to talk to everybody about this.

And we're going to talk about it all year long. I think by the end of the year people will be sick of it. But the chase is back, the points, the way you guys will decide who the champion is. you were in you're part of the announcement you've had time to kind of think about this and soak it all in you've had time to sit in rooms with engineers and crew chiefs and your team organization to talk about how you'll approach the year based off of the new format so you know what how's that all going and what are you thoughts because i i think it's a massive shift for a driver. I believe it is. Right?

Yeah, I think it's a massive shift. I've always been like a huge believer in don't overthink things. I think it will be easier for people to overthink this stuff. Like if you're just trying to figure out like, oh, strategy here and there. Like the goal of every week is to run the best you can every week. But I think with this thing, I feel like you have some people thinking twice about, you know, hey, I might make this low percentage move, you know, that I would probably make, in the previous format that maybe I don't want to make in this one because bad days are going to

really suck and good days are going to be celebrated even more just because the way the points format is. So I don't know. I think just consistency is going to matter even more. And it's going to be a lot of pressure on these teams and drivers to have no mistakes because it's going to be someone really, Joe Ligano actually said this earlier today and it stuck with me is this new points format is an elevator down and a staircase back up. Like, so it's just, it'll be really tough to limit your mistakes. Yes.

And it'd be hard to claw your way out of it. Yes. But I like it. I think it's where the sport needed to go. I remember, I've said this before, but I remember starting the year, you know, 20, 25 years ago, starting the season and thinking, man, these first four or five races really have to go good. Because if I have four bad races, I'm going to be 30th, 28th, 22nd points, and it's going to be a hard staircase up to try to even get close to where these guys are going to be.

And in the past format, you know, you could eliminate that issue by going out and winning a few races, right? And you don't have that luxury, I suppose, or that opportunity this time. So, you know, I think as a driver to your point, you'll have to really, you know, start to season out, even in Daytona, the 500 going, I got to be smart. I got to be correct in every decision I make. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, we would come down here for the 500 and it's a speedway. You could get tore up, you know, easy. And, you know, you wouldn't really think about it. Like, you know, I have faith we're going to win a race.

We're getting the playoffs and all that stuff. But, yeah, like you said, I mean, starting your season off on the right foot, starting the first month of the year. year off on the right foot is going to be really important because if you do find yourself in that hole, let's say you have a terrible first month and your 30th and points. And then you're kind of getting stressed out. Like, I got to run good now. And then you're like spiraling out of control. So it'll be crazy.

It'll be wild. But I love how they, where they went. And I think it's going to make for an even better way to kind of crown our champion and better races in general, I think. Yeah, I mean, you said at the announcement that it's going to get back to the beautiful art form that you grew up loving. And I think there's a couple things of that, right? Because, like, number one, you had the guys that were so desperate to try to win their way in.

And, you know, of course, they're going to make crazy moves. But then you also had the guys that had already won, and it didn't matter if they were going to finish fifth or second or whatever. All it mattered if they won and got more playoff points. They're going to do stupid stuff, too. And it really, like, some of the end of these races was kind of shit show. And I hated that side of it. Like, you know, like you mentioned, the guys who needed to, like, win a race to get in, whether it was a Speedway or maybe they have an opportunity. opportunity, you know, to win a certain race, but they would make some moves that are just like,

it took a lot of the purity out of racing to me, you know, you saw a lot of stuff and they'd get out of the car and be like, well, I didn't want to do that, but I had to. And I hated that excuse so bad, but the points format made it. You have to run that way. And I think now it's going to be a pure art form, which is what racing is and should be. So I think we're going to get a lot of that back, which is good. One of the things I'd love to talk to you about, you've had the experience an opportunity to race at Bowman Gray the last couple of years for the clash. How much fun is it to go to that racetrack with these cars?

It's an odd couple sort of thing, but it's also as nostalgic and as vintage, as throwback as you can possibly get. What's the future of Bowman Gray? I hope we go there for at least another year. I mean, I think you can move that clash around, you know, just kind of like the All-Star race and stuff like that. I grew up the town over from Winston-Salem where Bowman-Gray is,

so that was kind of a special place for me. I went through a lot as a kid and ran there when I was nine or ten years old. I raced a little bandelero there. But I have a blast. I think it puts on a great race. You see comers and goers and tire fall off and stuff like that and take out of that second half of that race the other week. It was just what it turned into. It was really sloppy with the weather.

And it's not anything you can do about that. But I think it's good to fans. I think really enjoy it. So we'll see where it goes. But I hope it gets another year at least and then rotate it. And then maybe it'll work its way back. It hasn't really been, I don't think this rumor's been discussed by the people that truly make the decisions. But could you imagine seeing an All-Star race there racing for a million dollars?

I can imagine. I can see it. We've gone to all these different places. Yeah. We've gotten to all these different, they didn't have the afterburners on on that one. That was a little quieter because that was five of them. But yeah, I mean, I can definitely see the All-Star race being there. And that would be a big show.

Did you? Did you think Bubba was actually mad at you last week? I didn't think he was, but I know how he gets. So Ryan, tell him it wasn't me. So Ryan dumps him, right? I mean, typical Ryan movie just runs in the back of us like he always does. So in the moment I tell, as it's actually happening, I go, that 1 to 12, it was the one got shot into him. And Bubba comes, we go to the pits, picks the car we come out.

And Bubba starts like door slamming Ryan and flipping him off. And I'm like, you know it wasn't him, right? he's like, yeah, I know what to him, but don't tell him. I know. Sorry, dude. I don't know what you want me to do. Yeah, I secretly hate Bobo. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, me too, actually. I'd like to get your guys' reaction to something that Denny threw out yesterday on, uh, during media day. He said, what if you took the clash to Homestead and you gave everybody sort of like the preseason test in a way and then the second day of it. So you gave everybody a day to practice because everybody wants to be good at Homestead now. You were already kind of down.

in Florida anyway. Then the end of the practice, basically, was the clash. And then so everybody kind of got, like, data. And then you kind of waited like 10 months all year, come back there and be like, man, how's this, is this who's going to be the champion this year? You know, like that kind of thing. I think any idea that he has amazing, honestly. Yeah.

You're not going to get that bonus, Freddie. You're not getting that bonus. That's an interesting idea. You know what I've always thought would be cool for a clash or an all-star race is, like if we brought up. to clash down here and you just open the rules up. Like, do whatever you want. Run whatever spoiler you want to run.

Like, if you want to run a one inch blade, go at it and good luck to the guy holding on to it. If you want to run like a four inch blade, go ahead. Like, I thought that would always be kind of cool. Do you think you could set up an next-gen car that could run at Daytona without a spoiler? Probably. I mean, it could run.

Drivers would be pretty sketchy. Yeah. I mean, you'd be going. I'm so fast. You'd be hauling ass. Let's say we figured out how to make it run 95 to 200. How would you do that without? You'd have to put like a 200 horsepower motor in it.

I don't know. I mean, I would make it run that speed. Could you drive it? Could I fix it? Yeah. Could I set it up. Yeah. You can, I mean, you can fix up anything to drive.

With no rear spoiler. At some regard. No rear spoiler on. Yeah, you could drive it. It just, you wouldn't be a lot of off throttle time for sure. But that'd be kind of cool. Yeah. Because I know in the,

P and T.J. We're talking about this on the podcast this week. I know that, incoming. That's pretty serious. That was the aftverse. Yeah.

I know in the 70s, Dave Marcus and him guys were qualifying to Dodgers in Talladega with like a little one eighth inch wicker on the back. And, you know, they'd come down here in the 90s and had the spoilers lay down to 15, 20 degrees. And you're thinking, man,

what, how much do we really need, you know? Yeah, like. Because it was, I remember racing, And in 04 here in the dual lifting, lifting all the way out of the gas. Yeah. Bowing into the corner.

I would love that. Yeah. That'd be more fun to me as a driver than running around there wide open or next to wide open, you know. Like, have you ever seen the spoiler on Bill Elliott's, like, world record car, Taladega? Like, the thing has got like five degrees of spoiler angle on it. It's not even there. It's just there because the rulebook said you had to have a spoiler on the car. Like, that's, I just think opening that up would be pretty.

neat. But back then was super cool because there was no data or anything like no engineering. They just did it. That's why you needed eight hours of practice. Yeah. They was like, well, let's try this. You know, lay it back. Good luck. Like, you know, I think that's so cool, though, that ingenuity back then was just something you can't even match. Yeah, for sure. You know, Dayton has always been a special place to me. I know every driver has their own, you know, their tracks that they love. But how does it feel for you, I suppose? when you get ready to come to the Daytona 500, first race of the year. You'd love to be able to put your car at Victory Lane and over to Daytona USA there for an entire season.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that would be the dream. I came down here watching my dad run this race for a long time. And as a kid, that was super neat to just see the whole week. And then Sunday morning was unlike anything else. And now to be able to compete in it for as long as I have. And my family is now coming to watch me. I think that would be the coolest thing for me if we're able to do it.

is having the family that I grew up with and my dad, who I used to watch, now they're watching me to share that in Victory Lane together for my family. And, you know, if my son's three months old, he wouldn't remember it if we did it. But it'd be a cool picture to show him in like 10 years. Like, hey, bud, remember. I know you don't remember this, but look at you. So, yeah, it'd be cool. And, yeah, the staple of leaving your car in the museum for the whole year is really neat.

So hopefully we can do it. Yeah. Your dad almost won one of the most infamous 500. Yeah, 2012. Yeah. Were you here? with no so there's a quick story about that one so that was actually when you and my dad kind of started talking a little bit yeah over 2012 because you were all in the backstretch with that

yeah wampolo hit the jet dryer if y'all don't forget remember into three and dad was running for tommy baldwin and they stayed out like they have damage so they just stayed out while paulo hits the jet dryer so there's lead in the race and the tracks on fire and so i was down here all a week with my dad for speed weeks like this is when we were here for like 10 days so i got out of school for enough days. And that race was run on Monday, Monday night. So I had to go back home to school on Monday because my mom was like, you can't miss any school. So I remember sitting at the house watching the tracks on fire, Dad's leading. And I was so mad because I was like, they're going to call this race. And I'm not going to be there after I was there all week,

10 days. And I was like, so it was weird because I wanted him, wanted him to call the race and dad win, but I would have been so mad because I wouldn't have been here to do it. But somehow they got the track cleaned up. I didn't think it was ever ready. I thought the track was dangerous. I think they could have called it. But it's funny when my dad talks about that race and people ask him like, do you wish you would have called it and you would have won it?

And he's like, no. He's like, because that would have been the biggest asterisk in motorsports. He would never heard the end of it. And my dad, just to how he is, he would have hated. What a hated. Even though he won the 500,

he would have been like, blah. Did it matter? Yeah. Well, Ryan, I appreciate you. Give us some time today. Come up here, you know, giving the fans an opportunity to hear from you.

A lot of work left to do before you get ready for Sunday. But I'm wishing you well, man. It's awesome to see you going out there and doing well and doing good things. Yeah. Thank you guys for being here. All right, buddy. Yeah. How are you going?

Ryan Blaney. We're going to pivot a little bit to some things that, one of the things that Mr. Gluck put together. And I wanted to debate. Yeah. All right. Some of the things that you had a top 10 most anticipated. You had a top 10 most anticipated.

You had a top 10 most anticipated. participated races. Yes. Of 2026. Freddie, have you seen this list? I have not seen this. All right. Well, here's the list. Number one, San Diego. Yeah, listen, I heard, I heard you on the download last week. Oh, I had that go with TJ. You guys, you know, I get, you don't think, you said San Diego should be like number five or something, like way down. I mean, it's not, I'm not saying it's the most prestigious or something. I mean, it's the most anticipated.

Like it's a new race. It's on a military base. We've never seen this before. Like, you know, that's, how is it going to go, you know? I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm curious. Most curious. We're at the most anticipated race of the season every year.

That's what he's, yeah. I mean, how can you stop put the Daytona 500 at the top of that list? Yeah, I don't think Daytona was number two. So, like, I think home set above. You did. You got, yeah, it's San Diego, Homestead, Chicago land, and then Daytona. Is Daytona on the list? It hasn't made the list.

It's fourth, sadly. I get it. You know, it's just like, I think that Daytona's got to get back to some, some, a series of clean finishes, a series of, you know, look, nothing against William Byron, but, you know, was he run 10th on the last lap and they wrecked? What if that happened in San Diego? You're going to be disappointed? I don't think that will happen in San Diego, but, you know.

We have no clue. We've never in there. SVG is going to drive through the smoke at the end of, you know, it's just like when you guys, when we felt like, at least from speaking from my standpoint, we felt like I could see you, you were doing magical things at this racetrack. Denny, when he won a couple of the 500, you're like, wow, I can't believe the move he just made. The way he set that up, the way he slowed down the backstress, let those guys catch up. You know, it was like, oh my gosh, like there's, you know, there was less of the lottery ball aspect

that felt like. And recently it's felt like, oh, my gosh. you know they're all coming down these guys dominate the race they all wreck somebody that's running you know seventh 10th or whatever ends up winning it and you're like okay how do i how do i wrap my head around this you know what i'm saying compared to what we used to see i went to san diego a couple weeks ago uh for a completely unrelated function but i stayed in a hotel and was able to look out over this area where they're going to have the race track it is going to be incredible uh that is going to be a lot of fun i am looking forward to that right

race. Luckily, I'll be part of the broadcast team at that point of the year. I'm also excited about Wilkesboro's point race. That place, I think we all, we all have such short-term memory, and we've kind of forgotten, like, how unlikely that was at one time. Even myself, I thought there's no way this place is ever coming back. Well, that's why I thought you were going to get mad that I had it at number 11. I thought it was great. You had it in 11. It was like a, it was like a, uh, it was like a, uh, you know, kind of a, you know, one of the few you mentioned that didn't make the list, but it's, it's, I thought that was a high ranking at 11. It's, it's, it's first race back and it made the list and it's actually in the top 15.

That's, I think that's pretty good. I thought you were going to be like, this needs to be number like three. You have me wrong, Jeff. I know. You have me wrong. Well, you, you brought it back. You were the one that did the weed whackers and, you know, like, you saved it. I was so I thought you, you know, I'm back thankful and grateful that it's even on your list.

Okay. Right. And so, you know, I was, there's a couple other ones here, Talladega 2, Charlotte 2, Martinsville 2. I agree with all those. You had the 600, the coat 600 and 9. Yeah. That race arguably has been the best race of the year. Yeah.

For two years. I know, but I'm so anticipating like the fall oval race, for instance, now that now the roval's gone. It's going to be that time of year again. That freshness is going to be back for the Charlotte oval race. Are you worried that you're over? hyping or over anticipating? Do you often find yourself being a little bit let down by your old expectation? Yes. Every week I do that. Yes. It's how I live my life overhyping myself. Yeah. Was the brickyard on the list at all? It was like number 10. Number 10. That was that I think

that should have been a little lower actually, I think. I like that. I'm a big fan of you. You like that. I'm a big fan of that. I'm a big of fan of that. These days, I don't know why. It's just one of my highlights. I like the brickyard. I do. But I mean, when it came. back from the road course, I had it way higher because it was like, oh, finally it's bad. But, you know, it's just like, it's just like with Bowman Gray. I think I had, I mean, I think I had Bowman Gray number 38 or something. 38. How long was this list? 38. 38 races.

38 races. Because I was like, well, I was, I was also really cranky because I did that list when I was sitting snowed in my head of Winston-Salem. I couldn't tell you were in. And I'm like, I'm not anticipating this. Why am I still here on a Tuesday waiting for a Wednesday? You know, I was grumpy. That's not fair to Bowman-Gray.

you made the list after all the weather they went through. Yeah, it's true. Chicago land at number three. I'm really excited about that one. That's a very worn out racetrack. I mean, I imagine it's extremely abrasive now that's been sitting there with no racing. There's a massive bump in the middle of three and four

that's probably going to be bone rattling when these guys go over it. We're going to have cars all over that racetrack, trying to find grip. That is going to be must-see, can't miss racing in the NASCAR season. Yeah, I mean, it's a sister track to Kansas, and we've seen what Kansas has put out there with this car. So, I mean, I'm so glad we're going back there.

Actually, I started to enjoy the Chicago Street Course and like that area, but I'm glad we're going back to Oval Raysson over there. I thought the street course was fun for a couple years, and I'm fine with, like, going around and doing things like that, like the San Diego deal. I'm cool with, like, trying out some things like that. And to know that there'll be probably two, three-year deals that it's not going to be something that we're stuck with forever. is good. I'm good with that. And we heard Ben Kennedy say recently there are some ideas or conversations around some new venues. Is there any rumor to where we might be going next beyond San Diego? I was kind of surprised because, I mean, you know, you heard the Brazil thing for a while for the clash, and I don't know if that kind of petered out, but I haven't really heard recently.

That's why I was kind of putting up, you know, for a while we were doing, you know, really outside the box stuff. every, you know, we had the Mexico thing, we had the Calaisian, now we have the San Diego thing. That's why I put Chicago up high on the list because I was like, man, the next-gen car there. I mean, you thought the slide job thing was great with like, you don't even, you don't like that kind of racing, don't even watch. Like, that was pre-nex-gen car. Yeah. Right? So now we're going to see the next gen there.

Like, that's awesome. Like, so I think that's, you can, you can actually make some of these, these North Wilkesboro type decisions where you bring back these old tracks. And I'm pretty stoked about that. I don't even think you have to, like, create, like, if they can, I wish they could bring Fontana back, and now it's warehouses, but, you know, if they had magically brought Fontana back, like, you know, can they bring Kentucky back? I don't know. Why would you want to bring Kentucky back? No.

I don't know. The next gen. The guy that wants to go to San Diego. I don't know. We tried to put good races on there. It was hard. It's tough. Give the next gen a chance.

That's all I'm saying. All right. We got one minute left. We're going back to Homestead at the end of the year. Where do we take that race next? they talked about it moving around. What are the other options outside of Homestead? I mean,

Homestead seems to be a race favorite. I mean, okay, here's the thing. We talked about it moving around when it was the one race championship. Now that it's just the end of the chase, do we have to? Can we just keep it there? That was such a great championship venue

for all those years. We all got used to it. And then it moves to Phoenix and you're like, all right, you know, okay. And now they finally agreed to move it around because it was the one race, but now it's not. So just keep it there. It's fun.

Everybody liked that. Have you got our T. West show approved yet? No, not yet. We'll talk about that. We've had a lot of fun sitting here talking with you guys. It's been a lot of fun. We got a crossover show coming up next. Dirty Mo Media, SiriusXM.

All right, after that, we're going to have SiriusXM Speedway with a booty. Stick around. Thank you all. Thank you. Check out Dirtymo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.