The Dale Jr. Download - Race Manipulation, Lawsuits and Happy Birthday Dale

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

The Dirty 30 brings you the best 30 minutes from Dirty Mo Media every Friday — the funniest, wildest, and most jaw-dropping highlights from your favorite shows. This week, Dale Jr. and TJ Majors debate how NASCAR should police race manipulation.On Actions Detrimental, Denny explains that he had no idea that point standings on the final lap as he passed Ross Chastain to help Joey Logano advance in the Playoffs.In the guest show, Dale welcomes in NASCAR President Steve O'Donnell. The two discuss NASCAR's ongoing lawsuit with 23XI & Front Row Motorsports.And, on Bless Your ‘Hardt, Amy surprises Dale with a High Rock Bottle-shaped cake. Plus, Dale reveals why he shaved his beard.And for more content, check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaReal fans wear Dirty Mo. Hit the link and join the crew.👇https://shop.dirtymomedia.com/FanDuel: 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.

Hey everybody, I'm Dela Hart Jr. And this is the Dirty 30. The best highlights from all of our podcast this week, 30 minutes every single Friday, the Dirty 30 coming at you. Let's get right to it. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. downloaded. So Denny was unaware of the point situation. He passes Ross. This helps Ligano.

Gail, his crew chief, told Denny afterwards that the team was sensitive. Because at Martinsville last year, they had, you know, the race manipulation. So they were careful in what they were saying on the radio. And I've heard, I guess, on DBC, they said that Zillich during the Xfinity race, his team got warned for merely mentioning what the point situation was during the race. NASCAR was like, no, no, no. T.J, is that, are you guys, are you allowed to give? I don't, haven't never been said you can't exactly do that. But I don't, it's just somewhere you just don't.

Let the others. I think it's... I have zero problem. I have zero problem with any spotter saying, here's a point situation. Let's freaking... Especially for a playoff driver. And honestly, you know, there's this conversation,

there's all these videos, was Cole Custer not trying to pass the 22? Was Bowman not trying to race the one? Who cares? At this point, who cares? Whatever. I mean, is, I can, guess as long as it ain't like super egregious.

Well, you have cars holding up a car. I mean, or guys coming down pit road, like just blowing their whole race just to get off the track. Yeah. Or a guy spinning out on purpose, right? And some obvious, you know, spin gate from back in the day. That was an obvious thing. They did the detective work, the CSI, got the radio calls and all that.

And they added it up and said, yeah, that's a bit. And I think everybody would agree. This stuff here is just what happens. Like, Denny should be allowed to make the decision. It should. Give me the information. Let me choose. Yeah, I agree with that.

But I don't, you just don't mess with it because you don't want to get in trouble. So I don't anyway. Well, then you got, you're not going to, you can't police it because there's conversations that happened during the week. I don't know that this happened, but let's just imagine every, all the guys in the Chevrolet world probably had some conversation at some point about what. the situation was with each Chevrolet driver in the playoffs and you know you can't police this stuff so it doesn't bother me doesn't bother me I mean as long as it don't get to that egregious point where you know it's obvious and they're just like hey don't pass this guy get behind this guy hey come on down pit road why just come

down pit road you know so is last year the 12 pushing the 22 at Vegas is that that doesn't bother me yeah now my question and I agree with you but hey Harry Gant ran out of gas at Talladega one lap to go for like he was gonna run out for like the last five laps at about you know probably a second or two slower a lap Rick Mast pushed Harry Gant around the track pushed him you know it probably a you know a decreased speed of maybe 10 15 20 mile an hour And Harry wins a race. No, I cared.

Now, do you think, though, some people might say, that's... To prevent what happened at Martinsville, though, you have to police it the way they are now because how do you judge that line and if someone went too far? It is a judgment. There's no line.

There won't be a line in this situation. It's just got to... If it feels like it's... You know what I'm saying? If it feels awful, it's awful. It's awful. Never heard of it. Kind of like the definition of...

You know it when you see it. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like, all right, was that too much? No, it didn't bother me. And honestly, this is one of those deals where I think people are going to have to just lay back and let the, whatever, the person that's in charge of this or the, it's probably a group conversation at NASCAR when they get back on Monday and they read all the script and see what every spotter said, they all kind of probably get together with about a handful

of people in the room and go, do we hate this or don't we? and we just got to live with their interpretation of was it too much and I'm okay with that I'm all right with it there's no clear like way to make sure this is cut and dried and black and white and that's fine that's one of them's situation it's kind of like balls and strikes um every umpire sees it differently uh this would be the same way for me maybe sometimes they may they may rule too leniently or maybe sometimes they may rule too aggressively and it is what it is a watch the Monday night football game last night. There was a bunch of past interference calls.

Don't get made. Oh, I know. Well, that's the Chiefs, buddy. I know. Well, it happens. The game carries on and you accept the result at the end of the day. Hey, guys, welcome to actions detrimental post the Roval. The end of the round of 12 for the NASCAR Cup series.

I am Denny Hamlin. I am that guy again. Three weeks in a row. This moment in the final corner. where Ross needed one position and you were you were that position yeah I didn't know anything suddenly the one is like being you could see he's slow he's he's fighting his car um and whatnot and at that point again I have no idea never did I get any update on what position we're in never did I get an update on the points anything um so at that point I just think this is another spot I've got to to to gain

I didn't even, I don't know where the 22 was. I didn't know if the 22 was 10 spots in front of me or 10 spots behind. No, absolutely no clue whatsoever because I didn't get that information. And in the race car, you don't understand. It's tough. I can't even see the pylon, you know, unless it's a caution. So when we're running that last stage, Greenfly, green fly, green fly, green flag, and there's all these different varying strategies,

there's absolutely no way to know where this strategy netted me out after my last green flag pit stop. Again, I had no idea what position we were even in. So I didn't know whether Chastain was in front of the 22 or the behind or anything. The one was slipping. I caught him with about two to go. Might have been two to go or like a lap and a half to go. I actually caught up to him. and I try to make a move coming into the front chicane

he was trying to aggressive he didn't really aggressively block it but what I felt like is that if I would have jammed it in there on the front stretch chicane I risked wiping both of us out like I wanted to not wreck myself nor him again I want no parts of whatever goes on so I'm like he's so slow

I've got plenty of opportunities left in this for the next you know two miles or whatever it is, there's plenty of opportunity that I'm going to pass them. So I didn't pass them there. Then I make a move again after the front stretch chicane.

We take the white. I go into turn one and you got to realize fans what you can't see on TV is this track, when I say it's one lane, it is one lane. There's rubber that all these tires have shredded on the inside

and the outside of this one lane. You can't see it on TV. You can see it under caution when the cameras aren't going so fast. But I'm hesitant to dip out of line at any point because every time I did, I would get into the loose rubber and my car would take off. And so I go into turn one.

I show him, I'm going to go low, and then I see that there's loose chunks of rubber all in that bottom lane. And I said, well, if I'm going to go in there an attempt to pass them, I'm more than likely going to just end up doing the shit out of them, knocking them in the terror barrier, it's fine. There's a point on the track where there is no rubber that I'm absolutely going to pass him, and I thought that that was turn seven. You've got lots of room on the exit of turn seven to make the pass, and I thought that was the safest place for me to

make a move on him. So essentially, yeah, I waited all through the infield portion of that track, just waiting to then pass him off of turn seven. And unfortunately, he never made turn seven. I think he said that he stuck it in the wrong gear. What he's saying there is he went to first gear. Most cars were running second gear through turn seven on older tires. If you go to first, it will make the car turn really abruptly. Well, and in his case, since he had no rear grip, when he went to first,

it sheared the back you saw he cheered the back of his car around left the bottom wide open for me and I thought well that's the easiest pass I've made all day so you know my strategy of passing him in turn seven happened and then I don't know that he's desperate no one told me that be careful he needs your spot to get in why are you upset that you you didn't have that information there's obviously two reasons that I would want to know right one is you know, if these guys are battling, it would give me a much better understanding of why, you know, you know, understanding to prepare if I'm going to attack the one,

well, I need to know that he's going to be really aggressive blocking. That could have been a simple message. It then allows me to say to myself, well, what, who do I want to rate? and it's not race manipulation if I'm trying to get the best result for me. I got no allegiance to Ford or Chevy or Joey or Ross, but I have interest in myself winning a championship. And so I think at that point, and it is a double-edged sword,

I think that you can argue which one you would want to race. I think that I still go out there and I try to pass the one. because I think the one has a better shot of getting to Phoenix. I think the 22 has the better shot of winning Phoenix. So I can't win Phoenix unless I get there first. Does that make any sense? Yeah. So it's not a given that I want to race Ross over Joey.

Ross would have a better shot of keeping me from getting to Phoenix. than Joey would. In my opinion, on pace. Had I known, I probably would have thought about it. And I don't know what I would have done, but I certainly would have thought about it. And all those things would have crossed my mind. They crossed my mind Saturday night.

Given this situation, who do I really want to advance? And I thought the same thing. Well, the devil you know or the devil you don't. Like, which one could make my path to Phoenix harder. One would make the actual Phoenix race harder. That's, that's the, that's the balance that you just don't know. But I know for sure that if I, if I would have made a decision, had I known, and then had I made the decision, don't pass the one, do you know how bad I would kick myself in the ass if the one

kept me out of the final four. Like, I don't know that I would, my mental would be gone. I'd just be like, you overthought it, what the hell? Don't do that. Just let it play out naturally.

And in the end, that race played out as naturally as it did. Today we got a great guest coming in here, Steve O'Donnell, the president of NASCAR. Let's talk about the lawsuit. How can we make this go away? Oh, man. Why is this not going away?

I would say, here's what I can say. I can't get in too many details. But what I can say is we didn't bring a lawsuit. We don't want a lawsuit. I've spent 30% of every day working on a lawsuit versus talking of fans and getting the sport going, which is really tough. We filed something yesterday and we asked for the court to set up a mediation. The reason we did that is because we had a mediation in New York. I can't get into the details.

We don't want to be in court. Don't get me wrong. We'll defend ourselves in the sports in the way, but we want to see this go away. So our next step was to try and get in front of a judge in Charlotte and just say, hey, what can we do here, make this go away? That's our goal. Still not sure what the other side wants. We don't believe it's a case that's a monopoly.

We believe it's a contract dispute, which it is what it is. But our goal is to make this thing go away and get back to race. past month or so, a lot of, you know, everybody's been talking about discovery, discovery. Yeah. All these things that might come to light, NASCAR having to open up its books and so forth. And there's been a bunch of anticipation around that. But some text messages did come out. Yeah. Did you know, I guess, in the days ahead that that was going to happen? Yeah. So let's go back to that, man. I'm, you know, I'm a big boy and not afraid to shy away from stuff, right? So this was two years of a negotiation, right?

And you know me well enough. I'm a passionate guy. Where my emotions on my sleeve, probably too much, right? But in the text messages, I'll just refer to mine. What came out was the way it was presented in court was that I said, F the teams. I didn't say that. I said in April the context was, if we did this deal the way it was, I felt like it would be an F to the teams. I was defending the teams to my boss, which was Jim France.

And so I was a little disappointing that it came out initially without the context. Hate the language I use, right? You never want to see that out there if it is what it is. But where we are today, you know, Jim France comes in my office and, you know, I'm like, oh, man, this isn't good. You know, I'm trying to defend the teams on this. And he said, look, I don't hire yes, man. I hire people to tell me what they feel is right and how do we get to a good deal. So I feel like, you know, all that's out there.

I knew it's out there. There's no surprises. The other side's kind of emptied their bucket of here's all our text messages. It sucks. It sucks getting deposed. But it is what it is. And I stand by the fact that, you know, I was trying to put a deal together that that worked for everybody.

We made some changes since I said that before we got to the end deal. And, you know, I feel like we got to a place that other teams, you know, got their arms around. Yeah. the last week or two, there was a lot of teams that came out and wrote some notes of support of the charter system. And I feel like while they didn't basically come out and say, hey, we saw when NASCAR on this whole thing, they were in support of the charter system and very in support of something, some settlement, some way for this to be to be handled. Did that move the needle at all?

So what I think that did, Dale, is it helped, you know, it's being positioned that NASCAR wants the charter system to go away. You know, Jim France, the one thing about Jim is charter system is in place and said, I will live by whatever we signed. He had a choice, right? He could have said, you know, we don't want charters in the future. No, we've seen the value grow for teams, which is awesome. And what we wanted to come out there because you go to trial and we saw it written was the charter system. could be up in the air. Well, that's not good. That's a lot of, that's a lot going on there. So I think the team saying, hey, there's a concern here. If this goes to trial that anything

could happen to the sport, including charters going away, that's a concern. And I think it's a position that, oh, no, don't worry about that. We see it as a concern. And, you know, if it goes away, it's not a win for NASCAR that charters went away. We support charters. We've got 13 teams that signed up with them. Yeah. If you went 2311 to tomorrow, said, we're going to make them permanent. Does that end this battle? I have no idea. How could you all not know that? How could, y'all had, y'all have been in mediation, you've had conversations, how could you not understand what might trigger real progress? Yeah, I'm going to leave that deal. I mean, honestly, to look, there's been one mediation,

as I've said. That's it. Was that the August? That was court appointed in New York, yeah. So there was no, there's been no other conversation, there's not been a time at any point in all of this where everybody's kind of been in the room or at least on the call to say, hey, is there a route? Not to my knowledge. Damn. All right. And so the mediation in August was managed by this dude from the NBA.

I'm not sure where he was the mediator. Yeah. Some guy that's from the NBA. Okay. And you guys want a court-appointed mediator. We'd like to see that. We'd like to see we didn't get anywhere, right? So we thought, hey, someone in Charlotte can help us get somewhere. Let's do that. The mediation in August was very brief? Pretty brief. Yeah.

You walked in with some terms? I think so the way mediation works, and I can't get into a ton of detail. All I can say is that I think there's an understanding from both sides. hey what do you think right leave talk to the other side what do you think and then is there any proposal you'd like to put forth I think that happened and then you know meeting broke up so there was a conversation between both parties briefly but yeah no real progress so you know hopefully we can get something going because our goal is there's a the way to get you guys to settle is everybody's got to swallow pride everybody's got a this has gotten personal

It's already, you know, it's very personal on both sides and the dislike is apparent. How does, you got to fix that, I suppose, at some point. Because look, I mean, in the end, no matter what happens, if you go all the way through court, you're going to be here, NASCAR's going to be here, and they're more than likely going to be here. So, I mean, y'all have to get in the sandbox at some point. Yeah, I don't disagree.

But all I can say is when you get sued for something and you want a settlement with things that have nothing to do with what you sued for, it's hard to make sense of that. So that's the struggle right now. And I can tell you that, listen, willing, able, our folks have said, you know, and that's why we filed what we did. Nobody wants to go to court from the NASCAR side. We want to concentrate on racing, man. That's all I can say. Well, if it does go to court, then there's no matter, I think both sides would appeal. That's another year, year and a half.

Yep. Do I feel like that this has been detrimental? Thousand percent. I would compare it towards, it's not exactly the same, but in terms of how it makes the fan feel, I would compare it to, you know, strikes, work stoppage that we see in other sports. Those are absolutely detrimental when there aren't any games. but this is a turnoff. I don't disagree. I know.

But it's hurting you and them. It is, but we're going to defend what we believe is right. That's all I can say is we put something in place that 13 other team owners signed up for. 13 other team owners are actually working with us right now to help grow the sport. And we've got to defend what we think is right. When the charter system wasn't there and there wasn't a guarantee from NASCAR, that this, you know, if I own the charter, right, now that the agreement's in place, I'm guaranteed a certain amount of money. Before the charter system for the fans, what was, what was I guaranteed

before? Yeah, no, I think it's a very fair question. So you look at the original Y charter system, right? The original reason for a charter was guaranteed starting position. And so what happened, you and I go back, right? When we had 60 cars at Daytona 500, Tabasco would come in, right? Millions of dollars sponsorship going home, going home, going home. And at the time, we all thought, ah, it's okay, it's big business, NASCAR, and sponsors didn't, right? That was a big blow. And a lot of money left the sport from potential sponsorship.

So the owners asked for permanent starting positions. Now, the challenge with that, if you're NASCAR, right, if you just sort of looking purely at the fans, and I don't know if you see this, but fans missed the days when the Gatorade, when those races made, yeah, it mattered. That mattered, right? They love 60 cars, who's going home, right? All that went away. That's okay, because we said we want guaranteed starting positions.

So then the guaranteed starting positions were also, okay, what money can we also guarantee as part of this? So we looked at that as well. So the original deal was, you know, guaranteed in every race. and there'd be a set amount of money that you could be based on. And then the third piece was this value. So I 1,000% agree if Junior Motorsports was a cup charter owner, you know, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, right, put your life into the sport.

You said, hey, that's enough. What did you have? And that's not good, right? You put all kinds of things into the sport. So if he wants to get out at some point and that value is now going up, That's great. And I think that will help, you know, someone invest because they see their value going up. So those three things were the reason for charters. Those were the reasons when we went back in. We felt like we delivered on those. And that's, that's where we were at.

With somebody's birthday. I think we have a little bit of a surprise. Double birds coming. You all have a really good surprise. What is this? Cue the surprise. Oh, man. Is it Cole Swindale in another trip to Key West? Nope. 51 is a little bit more basics. Look at that. So High Rock usually sends a cake for Rouseworthay in this year. We've got a High Rock bottle cake.

That's pretty cool. That is. Thank y'all. You're welcome. Thank you, High Rock. And all my friends. All of you, I suppose, y'all. Holy moly.

Was that her confetti? I think it shot right. What the hell there? I think it shot right over your friends. It's a big cake. Yeah. Nothing like a good jump scare for your birthday. I know, right?

This is fun. Are you going to take a bite out of it? No. We'll eat it, no. We can give you a fork if you want to try it right now. What kind of cake is it? Do we know? Redville.

I don't know. I sure hope it's a carrot cake. We'll get a piece here when the show. At the end of the show, we shall all have a piece. Okay. Sounds good. Just, yeah, I've shaved my beard. I know everybody's probably seeing that I've done that.

Let's just get that out of the way. I was going to the dermatologist. I haven't been in a while, and I was going for a full body checkup, and I just said, you know what? I don't want to take any chances. I've had some work that I had to do on some areas on my temples from sun and my ears. And so I wanted to make sure all that was good to go. and some of that was, you know,

some of that stuff's kind of down on top of my beard line. But, yeah. What do the girls think of you when you're clean shaved? Ily cried. I warned I was like, hey, Daddy's going to shave his beard tomorrow. And I enjoy it because I get to see the man's face. Like when he gets that beard, when it gets so long, you can't even see his facial expressions. I don't, I like having the beard because it's like a natural Photoshop.

It's makeup for men. Yeah. It's making. How fun is that for you, like to have this extra? face you can put on. Yeah. And then cut on. Like you can,

you can like make your, so like, you can make your jawline sharper. And like you make, you make things disappear, you know. So I, it's like male Photoshop,

natural Photoshop. I don't know. It's getting, it gets out of hand though. And then it's not so cute anymore. It's like, it's just rugged. You know what I mean?

That's, but we told the girls you were going to do it. And Ila literally was like, she knew, she's seen it before. And she was mad. Mad that it was going to happen. Mad, it was mad that he was going to shave that beard off.

She just, I think she doesn't care. She just wants to have a reaction just so we have a reaction, her reaction. Well, maybe that's true. But she, like, full on started to cry, and then she kissed at him. She wanted to react, so we'd go, oh, it's okay. Oh, it's going to be fine. It would grow back. She wants all that attention.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's really indifferent. Do you think? Yep. Okay. That's what I would.

I would bet my, I would bet on that. Check out Dirtymoe Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.