The Dale Jr. Download - Live from Nashville with Steve Letarte & Adam Alexander

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Dale Jr welcomes his NASCAR on Prime booth teammates Adam Alexander & Steve Letarte to preview the race at Nashville. They talk about their TV debut with Prime last weekend, what to expect on track at Nashville, and answer questions from the fans! It's an exclusive live show from Music City that you won't want to miss! Dirty Mo Media is launching a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Dale Jr. Download merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuff.And for more content, check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How are you guys doing? Take a seat if you want. How's it going? How's it going? I just had to ask Ross when he was driving that at number nine again. So, because that's a lot of fun, man. It's pretty fun having Ross drive your Xfinity car. You've got to have thick skin, though, because he's going to rough up the competition a little bit, but that's okay. But good to be here. Thank y'all for being here. Great turnout. Dale, you had some fun in the Xfinity race. The Helmins car won the race. I was talking to a fan who said he cried like a baby in the stands, watching the helmet's car, come across the start, finish line.

That's how much it meant to him. So how was the win? How did you celebrate? Well, we went to Victory Lane and took some pictures, drank a cold beer, and did a little interview or two, and that was that. You know, just when you come to Nashville, our cars are good here, and Justin Algar is good here. So that's a, I don't know that there's another driver.

you'd want behind the wheel. I mean, I know Zillich gave me run for his money there, but I think Justin was just kind of riding in front of him there, just trying to take care of his tires. And when it was time to go, he mashed the button and drove away. But that's seven car. It's fast every week, but right here at Nashville, Justin's really got something figured out about this track. He really does well with the car. I will say on the TV side, we appreciated him just riding. That's right. Created some drama. Our buddy Adam here was on the call. He's a busy man these days.

Yes, you are. We got two analysts and a play-by-play guy. We have a night race coming up, and the party's already starting here in Nashville. I can see. Tailgating scene is starting in the day. It's ending at night. So I want to know from you guys, of course, with our friends Helmonds. What's the best tailgate food that you can have at a racetrack? Oh, that's a good one. Oh, that's easy. Really? Yeah. Well. I'm a volleyball guy, man. I like ice cold chicken salad to go with my beer. Chicken salad, man. I would have lost that bet. I would have lost that bad. I guess it is more difficult for the tart. That's a hell of a combination. Chicken salad and beer. I was going to go along with maybe a cheese burger.

That's right up. Put some Hellman's mayonnaise in the burger meat. It holds it together. It really works well. You got to get some buffalo chicken wings. Anything buffalo. You can put buffalo on anything, and it's automatically better. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, corn dogs, my girls are into corn dogs these days. Hard to be a good corn dogs. Corn dogs left my life entirely. And then I have a four and a seven-year-old, and now they're back. Corn dogs are back. A corn dog is a hard thing to eat because you got to keep sliding it up on the stick. You know what I mean? It's a little bit of a choke hazard as a dad, you know?

It's the physics of life. They learn that as they go through life, eating corn dogs. That's such. Well, those are some good answers. Dale and Steve, you guys are reunited in the booth. And, you know, Helmins is all about bringing out the best. That's kind of the theme of this show. How do you guys bring out the best when you are driver, crew chief, and now in the booth working together?

Well, I've got to say, I've always enjoyed working with Steve, but it never worked with Adam before. And just kind of keeping this guy in line's been a real challenge right out of the gate. We're one weekend, and he's just a wild man, making jokes all the time. And it is. me and Steve were goofballs. But Adam kind of fits right into that narrative as well. And so we, you know, people keep telling us that it sounds like we've been doing it for a while. And I think we all felt that immediately when we were doing some of our practice broadcast.

We would go to a studio and practice over the Fox broadcast. And, man, it was easy and simple and fun. And the 600 is a badass race. So who wouldn't want to broadcast that one? That's been a good one to last. several years. So just an awesome, awesome weekend. It was a great weekend. It's as simple as enjoy what you're doing and enjoy who you're working with. I don't really like working with a bunch of jerks. So when you hang out with people and then you get to work with the people you want to

hang out with anyway, I think it comes across in our broadcast. I think we're having a lot of fun. We're covering the race. We would have watched anyway. Really, the only difference between the first half of the year and the second half of the year is we can't drink during the second half of the year. We're still watching the races. If we're not talking about it, we're texting. There's always like a thread of analysis of what we think is going on in the race. Analysis. See, he fits right in. He does.

Well, I will let you guys take the reins. We've got a big race coming up here at Nashville. I heard Austin Cinderick say it's got an identity crisis, this racetrack. So I will leave it to you guys to take over the show, but what do we expect tonight at Nashville? So what I think the identity to Nashville is is it's the oddball. It's not like anywhere else. You could say it's concrete like Dover. They run the same tire at Vegas.

You could give me a bunch of similarities, but it's not the same as anything, which is what makes it great. The entertainment of the town, kind of the market, obviously accelerates it, this type of crowd, gets everybody fired up to be here. But what the drivers are getting ready to do is just very difficult. This is a racetrack of inches. It looks like it's one of those tracks where when they go around Las Vegas,

I can't believe they're going that fast. And when I watch a car here, I don't know why they're going so slow. It looks like you should be able to go so fast, but there's so little grip that they're slipped, and sliding around so it is really a game of inches and limiting mistakes in a year of what I've considered a year of mistakes. People just continue to mess up week in a week out. I love the unpredictability. In general in NASCAR, but I feel like it's exaggerated here because of all the things that Steve just said about this racetrack. And when you look at the lineup tonight, 11 of the guys starting in the

top 15 have not won this year. The playoff field is half full. We're getting into the summer. The pressure's on for these guys to get into the playoffs. And, And I think back to last year, you know, Joey snuck up and surprised everybody and ends up getting in and winning the title. And I think tonight could be a coming out party for someone as well because there's so many guys up there that haven't won. And if you can get it done here, it makes a major statement on who you are as a driver, I think. I think that this racetrack has really exceeded my expectations when they brought it back onto the schedule and we've ran four races here. I really, watching the Xfinity races from over a decade ago, I anticipated this racetrack to really be bottom dominant

and passing to be a premium and very limited. And, you know, they're three wide, multiple grooves in the corner. They go all the way to the top of the racetrack to find speed. As a driver, you love that. As a broadcaster or a fan, I think you love that because it presents opportunities to pass. You're not stuck in one. one lane behind a slow car. You can move around and find your way around somebody. I love watching

the battles that we've had developed late in these races here in the last four years where there's the faster car trying to pass a slower car for the lead late in the race, and there's some defense that has to happen. There's some creativity that has to happen by both drivers, and it's really fun because they're the best in the world, and we get to watch them try to compete and battle each other out. So we've been presented with some really solid events. I don't think the day will be any different. To your point, Adam, some great storylines building up in the series. Great battle right around the bubble for the playoffs.

You got Ricky Stenhouse driving at 47, overachieving like crazy. This guy, he's one of the, we got sort of a demographic or a way to sort of rate the teams, and he's not one of the fastest teams, but he's actually outperforming a lot of teams that are quicker than him, better than him on pit road, better than him. better than him at passing, better than him at defending, but he's just tenacious and will not quit. And he's sitting there right now above the cut line with a chance to go to the playoffs,

and there's some teams below him that should be freaking embarrassed. And so it's a really cool storyline that builds around that bubble. I like that. And obviously, who can bring the battle to the big threes? You got Penske, Gibbs, and Hendrick. Trackhouse did it last week, and they do it again. this week. What are some other teams, man, that can take the fight to those three? They're the best teams. They got the most money, the most funding, support, resources, engineering. They're far above

the rest of the competition, but every now and then the underdogs prevail. That's really, I think that's a thing. I think a 23-11, right? So it's been almost 100 races since above is one. Tyler Reddick continues to be fast. I think he's great here. They got a little called out by their owner, Hamlin, a couple weeks ago, so they basically need to get their stuff in order. And I think, you In any sport, when the owner calls out the players, they always seem to find a better way if the coach calls them out. Denny called out the 45 car. I thought they were good last week. I think they're great this week.

So I'm excited to see if they could put it all together. The pressures are on everybody, like the pit crews, just everyone, the magnifying glass is turned up for sure. And I would say, too, things can change like that. And Dale talks about the bubble. And it's so tight right now. And when you look at the collection of tracks that we've got coming, this week in Nashville, talked about how unique this place is. We go to Michigan next week. It's all about speed. We got the road course in Mexico City. Pocono, there's nothing like it. When you talk about

the balance of competition versus the unique layout of all of these tracks, this summer is going to be outstanding for the sport. And you don't want to get behind the eight ball beginning this run to the playoffs. And with the second half of the regular season beginning here tonight, you want to make sure you stay in front of it, or maybe more importantly, just get a win. so you're locked in. And I think that aggression is going to start to come out because the sense of urgency is really being dialed up right now. I tell you, one big name, and we talked about him probably at nauseam last week,

because he ran the double. But Kyle Larson this weekend, he has started worse because of backup cars or other issues, but he has not qualified this bad ever in Hendrick Car. This is the worst qualifying effort we have seen outside the top 20. And is this real? Like, is this team just off this week? Because he's never off. So if he's not, that's his biggest story to me is somebody being great.

So I want to see if he can figure it out. I'm not sure what's wrong with the five so far this weekend, maybe nothing. What about Carson Hosebar? I want to bring him up. He is not afraid. And I can't wait to watch him race next weekend at Michigan because that's his home track. And I feel like that place was just built for him and his mentality. But what do you see there out of that young driver, Dale?

Well, he's fast. And he's fast again in practice this weekend. That was an incredible run that they, had at the 600. I think that's the best in my mind that Spire has ever ran in one of these at the cup level. And I think we, I think we all, myself included, are a bit guilty of short term memory. And really, if we think back to just three or four or five years ago, Spire wasn't a race team based on performance driven incentive. It was a business. They were racing to make the bottom line work. And they weren't racing to go to the racetrack and finish.

as best as they possibly could. And they have sort of shifted that mindset. A lot of things have changed in that organization to where now they go to the racetrack to win a race. And it's fascinating, and it's happened in a very short period of time. And a driver like Josevar is the key to that, to their success in the future. So finding that young Jim, yes, he's rough, he's got some things he's got to clean up, he's got some mistakes he's got to stop making.

but when he finally puts all that together, they're going to have quite a lot of success with him behind the wheel. And I honestly feel a lot of cover. I know him better personality-wise off the track. He's going to add a lot of color and personality that this sport badly needs. So you've got young drivers coming in here. They might run into your favorite guy every now and then, but they're brash.

They're not afraid to be themselves. We ought to embrace that. And because the sports really, that's what the sport really survives on. So I'm excited about him. A couple of the drivers coming into the sport that are young and entertaining. Well, think about some of the biggest stars. Like when Gordon came in, the veterans didn't really like how he raced. Legano, Tony Stewart would yell about Ligano every single week.

It seems like Chastain, who just left the stage, right? People didn't like how he was racing and now he's winning. That's what I like with Hosevar is you cannot like him. And as a competitor, you surely don't need to like him and don't like how he's doing it, but you can't. dispute just the raw talent, the speed. It's way better to have to coach one to finish than it is to coach one to go fast. I don't think you could coach him to speed and he has that. When you guys watched practice yesterday, these days in the sport, they do practice in two groups. So it's a little

bit tougher for us as we're looking at the monitor to tell, all right, this guy's clearly better than everyone else. His long run speed is better than everyone else because the two groups don't really compare in speed. One group will be quicker overall than the other because of the dynamics of the racetrack surface and everything else. So when you look at the cars that were fast yesterday, I know it's difficult, but what are some of the ones that stand out to you? In my mind, I felt like there were seven or eight cars that if they get control of the race at the front the field, they can win. A little bit larger group than what I would see on any given Sunday. So it feels like it's a race for about, you know, eight to 12 cars to win. That's all I.

look at it. I think there's a group at the top. I think Hamlin was great. Reddick, I thought, was great. I'm trying to think of who in the first group. Briscoe was pretty good. And Blaney, probably the one that jumped off the page in the first group. Blaney jumps off the page, but then he goes out there and qualifies relatively poor. Didn't qualify like we expected him to. You know someone that qualified up front that I'm curious about today is Brad Kislauski. Because, you know, here's a guy. We talk about the bubble and trying to get into the playoffs. This a team that's admitted halfway through the regular season, we got to win a race if we're going to qualify to run for a championship. But we saw something last week. We saw it again today.

Organizationally, they seem to have some momentum. And his first ever win, top three series in NASCAR driving for you right here at Nashville in 2008. But what's your evaluation of that six group right now? Man, it's, it's, it's, Brad's a great friend of mine. And, and sometimes it's, he's working his guts out to try to be an owner and a driver. at the same time. And it's tough to see the performance on the racetrack, maybe not be what I believe it is in terms of how good of a race car driver, Brad, is. This was a great race for him last year, finished into top five in both stages. I feel like that they got an opportunity to do that again this weekend. He needs it. He needs to, he's got a win. There's no way he points his way into the playoffs,

obviously way back there outside the top 25 in points. And there's no reason why they can't consider themselves a shot at winning one of these races. So it's, but it's fun to watch the ebb and flow of organizations, drivers, and teams. I think the swings are wilder with the next-gen car than they've ever been before with the other versions of the race cars we ran in the past. One driver that I'm a bit perplexed on or confused on this particular weekend, I dare not say that I think you'll struggle because I don't want to be proved wrong, but Kyle Larson was a driver that we saw,

not really pop off great speed in practice. He was around seventh or eighth in 15 lap average, which is kind of rare for him to be that low. And then he qualified really bad. 28th, I think. And so it's hard to really know exactly what to expect a day out of the five. I don't believe it. I think there's got to be more there than we see.

Something's going to happen. Plus, they're just going to manufacture. It's kind of like Ligano. Ligano never jumps off the page, but Paul Wolf and Joey do a great job of manufacturing game finishes, finding a different way to do it, trying to figure out. mentioned Larson confused you. I think the driver that's confused me more than this one week is Ty Gibbs. I think he's got a ton of talent. He drives fast race cars, but it just hasn't been working here in the last

six or eight weeks. So I'm waiting for something to click. Either it's confidence or comfort or something to maybe go his way to put him in a happier mood, maybe, to just run a little better. But I would say the other end of that within the Joe Gibbs Racing organization is Chase Briscoe. because while Ty has struggled, and you referenced Briscoe yesterday from practice, and obviously he starts on the pole in tonight's race, but they seem to have found something here, and that 19 group is not just doing it on Saturday, but they've been able to do it on Sunday the last couple of weeks as well.

Yeah, I talked to Briscoe at Charlotte, and he told me that his only problem, and the reason why they've struggled was he wasn't able to go out there and really commit to the race car and qualify, you know, no knock on SHR, but he said that the Joe Gibbs cars just had so much more ability that he's just not used to, and so that when he would go out for qualifying, he's often under-driving the car and not getting the lap time, obviously, and it's very tight. If you don't run the perfect lap and qualifying, you're going to be in the back half of the field,

and that's been tough to overcome during the races, qualifying poorly, having poor finishes, having a draw in qualifying for the next week and the next week. You just dig a hole for yourself that's hard to get out of, So these last few weeks, great qualifying efforts. He's starting to realize how to get this car around the racetrack to be able to get that better starting position, better pit selection, better finishes in result. He starts qualifying in a better position every weekend and continues to progress.

So I think it took longer for us than we anticipated for that team to get going. But I'm not surprised and won't be surprised. I see him running as well as Denny and C. Bell over the first. the next several weeks. Hey, Denny, you mentioned it. Babywatch. Yeah. That kind of has my interest. His kid is due like this weekend, I think.

Yeah. So first boy, I want to see if he's fortunate enough to not have any distractions. If it does come, does he get in the car? Does he stay out of the car? Does he go home? What's he do? I'm interested to see. We're going to try to ask Denny on the broadcast what his plan is.

It'd be interesting to see if he'll answer us, honestly. I think you should do the asking. Adam. Yeah. The new guy, is that the deal? I think you should ask him that question. If you script the questions, I'll ask him, okay? How about that?

How about you? Are you ready for another one of these? We've worked together before. Adam, he walked in the booth last week, and he looked all excited like a kid for the first day of school in about halfway through 400 laps. I wasn't sure if he was excited, exhausted, or just couldn't believe what we have got him into. Well, let me tell you the biggest difference between school and what you experienced last week is I actually did some homework prior to coming to the TV booth. I never did homework in school, so I'll be real clear about that.

But you know what? We were blessed with an awesome race last week, and I think that's the one thing that people don't understand in our industry. Our goal is always have a great show, right? But it is so much easier when you are presented what we were presented with last week. In fact, I'll take you behind the scenes a little. You know, in the booth, I would sit where Dale is, and Dale's in the middle and Steve's over on the right.

And there were a couple of times where Dale and I, or Steve and I rather, had some bruising because there would be some good action on track. And Dale would be up out of his seat, you know, hitting us and grabbing us a little bit. So it can be a dangerous work environment in the booth. And then I would say, Steve, you know, Steve's over there kind of like me relaxed.

And then the producer says, get me to some of that fuel mileage and why they did two tires there. And Steve's out of that chair. So you know what, there is some hazard pay that probably should come with my role just based on the body language that comes out of these two when something's happening on track. Yeah, I can't help it. I'm excited. I love what I encourage it, actually. I love what I'm watching.

I know. I sometimes worry that, you know, that I'm a bit too much in the booth. but because yeah I'm slapping them on the arm and pointing and you know looking out there and sometimes catch myself watching the race out the window more than on our program

and but I want to see the car break loose and I want to be the one that calls the wreck and and uh but it's a lot of fun it's uh it's uh so I'm gonna watch the races anyways right so I might as well be here and

so I will say behind The scariest thing in TV, and it happened to me twice last week. So when we're up there, we can hear everything you hear at home. But in my other year, we have stats guys in there talking to us, and I have a producer in this year, and I might be talking to the producer, so I can be having a whole second conversation. And it's kind of like back to school, like sleeping in school and hearing your name called by the teacher.

So you'll be there, and I'll be talking to the producer Marv, and I be in the middle of a whole conversation, and it'll be down on the road and somebody was saying something, and then you hear like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Steve, and you look at these two. like I have no idea what was just asked of me on live television. So then you start tap dancing and you're really looking to like... That happened.

That happened last week. I did for me for sure. It happened to me. Oh, yeah. I got called out by our bosses. But we were, they went down to the pits to Marty Snyder and he's talking about, you know, something going on in the piss. And he goes, Dale, what do you, has that, you know, that's happened to you.

What did you do? And I didn't hear it. Because I was listening to something else or watching or looking to something else. And I was like, I think I just heard my name. And I don't have a damn clue what he asked me. And then you look at your friends. Are you going to help me? And you're looking back like, I'm going to let this sit for me.

I want to see how long this takes. Steve did. Steve waited for a couple seconds. Then he finally started talking. And I was like, man, I wonder if anybody noticed. Please be forgiving. You know, it's not an easy job sometimes. But I will say this.

I mean, we talk about Dale and his approach. And I would say that, you know, Steve and I have different personalities than Dale. But the one common thread that we all share is the passion for racing and for what we do. And so when you get up there, it really does become three guys having a conversation watching TV. And that's the atmosphere you want to create. And there's so much prep that goes into it. sometimes it's hard to convey that, but that's the goal, is just to let our passion come out like yours will in the stance tonight or when you're watching at home next week.

Absolutely. We're going to move on to some questions from the audience. Andrew is out there with a microphone and hopefully some great questions, Andrew. Yes, we've got some good ones. And Steve, I know you have to bounce here. I know I get to go meet with NASCAR. Yes. So everyone, thanks Steve Lutthart for being here. Thank you, Steve. Tell us what they told you. whatever you learn you're going to tell us right but we have our first question here you guys were talking all about the broadcast which was fantastic last week so what's your question for these

guys um so what did what could you take away from last week's coke 600 broadcasts i thought you did absolutely phenomenal but what what what's what's something you learned from that broadcast that you could take away to the next four races on prime and t-n-t well uh i think that we we had a lot of We had a lot of things working for us. For me, that was my first 600, so I was superamped about it. But the military presence and the meaning of that afternoon and weekend for all of those families, the fact that the World 600 has such a historic run in NASCAR favor, it's everybody's backyard. You just had a lot of real positive things working in your favor to have a great show.

a lot of the people on this team are actually people that I've worked with in the past. So even though it is Amazon or will be T&T, there's a lot of people that are in the industry that work for all those different entities. So that was nice to see a lot of familiar faces. And, yeah, you're always trying to be perfect. You're never going to be perfect. But I think working to be perfect is the goal, trying to achieve the best outcome possible.

Make sure you covered all of the things that are going on. Make sure you talked about as many drivers as you could. Make sure you took the camera to all of the battles that are happening and talking about the most important stuff. You don't want to miss anything. At the end of the race, when you look at the rundown, you don't want to look at the run down and go, damn it, how do he run six?

Where did he come from? You don't want to do that. You don't want to end up where the fans at home are going, man, they didn't never mention this guy and he had a great night. So that's the one thing I think is you're getting, I don't know about you, Adam, but as we're starting, as we're getting toward the finish, I'm always kind of looking to see what crumbs we might have left or something that we might, a story we left untold, make sure we try to pack that end of the back end of the race

and it doesn't go unsaid. All right, we got a question over here with Garrett. Man, so the last two out of four races here have started in the day, but push tonight due to weather. How do you think teams have adjusted to account for that with this being 20 degrees cooler and also being a night race? Well, I would say the engineering and the technology

for all these teams is at such a high level, so that allows them to anticipate what to expect. But I would say, and Dale can speak to this a lot better than me. Racing on concrete is so unique, and we do such little racing on concrete, and then you magnify that by the fact that when we raise, at Dover or Bristol, there aren't a lot of common characteristics between the three tracks. Nashville a little longer, a little flatter in the corner.

I mean, there's just so many differences here compared to those racetracks. So it's an enormous challenge, and I think that's why you have seen so much movement in the leaderboard and why we talked to earlier about we love this place because of the unpredictability. All right, guys, we are running tight on time, so we only have time for those two questions. So let's hear some closing thoughts from you guys. Yeah, sorry we didn't get to the questions earlier. I wasn't sure exactly where we were on time, but I want to thank all y'all for coming out,

supporting the racetrack. NASCAR, in my opinion, is in a really good place. There's a lot of great excitement and momentum. I can see it in all of y'all's faces. I saw it last week at the 600. There's a lot of great things happening in our sport, and I'm glad to be here for it, and I know you are too. We're going to have a great day.

Let's all buckle up. enjoy yourselves and take care of each other and hope you have a good travel. Hope you have a good travel on the way home and yeah. Yeah, thank you all. Enjoy the race. We look forward to bringing it to you in the coming weeks on TV. Thanks for being here. Thank you all.

Thank you guys. And thanks to Helmonds for being here. Thank you guys for bringing out the best. And we don't want you guys to go home empty hands. We have some sign Helmonds bottles.