The Dale Jr. Download - Reuniting With The 2001 Rolex 24 Team That Raced With Me & Dad

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Dale Earnhardt Jr. relives the 2001 24 Hours of Daytona as he sits down with Andy Pilgrim, Kelly Collins and Doug Fehan. As the Corvette racing program began to take shape in the early 2000s, Dale Jr. and his father Dale Earnhardt turned the racing world on its side by taking part in the crown jewel sports car event. Doug and Andy explain that the partnership actually formulated a year earlier when the team won the Petit Le Mans. Dale Sr. wrote Andy a letter congratulating him on the win and his impressive pass to do so, while expressing interest in teaming up. Corvette reached out through Gary Claudio, who had experience working with NASCAR through Pontiac’s program and the deal was set for the 2001 running at Daytona. The guys recount the testing sessions at Sebring and Daytona leading up to the race and help paint a picture of Dale Sr. that listeners may be unfamiliar with. Dale Jr. recalls crashing the car immediately in his first session, as he set out to run it like his stock car. He explains that the tires needed a gradual warm up instead of a quick onset like he was used to, and it caught him off guard. Dale Sr. was all in on the experience and insisted on being involved in every meeting and decision surrounding the partnership. Dale Jr. shares a story about practicing driver swaps with his father during a NASCAR Cup weekend to help prepare them for their upcoming sports car debut. The interview also breaks down the race weekend, the plans to continue on with Corvette in the future and what the teammates have been up to in the years that followed. 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.

When was the last time you talked to him, Andy? The very last time I talked to him, mate, was actually during the 500. When I got back to the bus, Teresa was there. And she said when I got in the door, she said he's been asking for you. So I got on the radio, you got any advice for me here? That's what he said. Can you imagine a road race? He got any advice for me.

And I laughed, just like you did. So I said, Dale, just keep doing what you've been doing, man. You're doing great. You're doing awesome. I'm like, what the heck else can I say to the guy? I didn't know that. And then I was like, okay, you know, see you later. Damn.

The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. All right, everybody's time for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download, the guest segment here on Wednesday. And we got a really unique one for you today. I'm going to have in the studio, Andy Pilgrim, Kelly Collins, and Doug Feehan. Doug Feehan was the GM on the Corvette program back in 2001 when dad and I raced the 24 hours of Daytona. Kelly and Andy were the co-drivers. This was an idea from them to all get together and talk about that experience and the Corvette program

and what that meant to Dad to be able to race in that event. He was very excited about it and very happy to do it, and we're going to learn some pretty new, interesting details around that program and Dad's plans for it. So, yeah, let's just get started. It's going to be a lot of fun for me. I'm going to learn a ton of new stuff, I'm sure, during this conversation, and we're going to bring back some great memories as well. So let's get them in the studio and get started.

All right here on the Dell Jr. Download, we've got quite the group of guys assembled for this show. We're going back to the 2001 Daytona 24 hours and the Corvette that Dad and I was a part of. Doug Feehan was a team general manager. You're here today, Doug. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having us.

And then Kelly Collins was one of our, co-drivers. How you doing? I'm doing awesome. You look awesome. Yeah. And then Andy Pilgrim, also one of the co-drivers, Andy. Good to see you.

Good to see you, my. It's been a minute. It's been a minute, yes, sir. Yeah. I got to tell you, man, this is a lot of fun. I feel really lucky that we all are here together, as busy as everybody is and as many directions as life has taken all of us. But what we're going to try to do as best as we can,

and it would be tough for me, so I imagine it would be tough for all of us to recall a lot of the details around all the experiences that went into that. We'll definitely talk about the race itself, but there was a build-up, some preparation, some testing at C-Bring, and a lot of different conversations that y'all had with Dad that I probably was privy to. Back in 2001, I was young

and not paying much attention to the details and just trying to have a lot of fun. And Dad was really, really focused on this effort and wanted it to go well. And certainly at a point in his life where he was a detailed kind of guy. And you guys got to experience that. But first off, I was really, I will say this, Doug, I was kind of surprised that Dad wanted to do this. I had been around him for years, never really heard him express interest in anything other than winning races at the cup level and being a cup champion. And I hadn't had him.

I mean, I knew he watched other forms of motorsport from time to time, but not, not. I mean, he was usually racing on a Sunday. And I never really heard him talk about, man, that'd be cool to try this or cool to try that. So when do you recall, I guess, the initial conversations? Well, you know, really, from my perspective, it all began with Andy. Andy, we had been down at Petit LaMalle running a race. It was late in the race, a couple laps left. Andy pulls off a miraculous pass on the Viper.

We bring home victory. I mean, it was a really cool deal. You know, it's late at night. Everybody's tired. It was just, well, your dad was watching the race, apparently, and got in contact with Andy. I think he either called or wrote a letter. Yeah, it was actually, Doug, he saw the pass on RPM tonight. RPM tonight.

It was late at the past of the week on RPM tonight. I think that's where he saw it. And then just to just to, just to, sort of continue on that the letter there was a letter that came about two days after petit le mont and i sent you a copy there actually yeah and it was what's the letter say so yeah i can just read it's real short it was it was pretty funny so but first of all i'm i'm sitting at home i have no i i know who dale unhaired is of course i know who dale is but this thing came and honestly it was an envelope and it had a it had a the dale logo on it the the earnhard logo and i thought oh it must it might

be a catalog or something racing catalog so i pull this letter out and then i'm looking at And it basically says, Andy, I just wanted to drop your line and congratulate you on your victory at the Petit Lamont Road, Atlanta. That sort of drive and determination is exactly why I want you for a teammate in the 24 hours of Daytona. That last lap passed looked like something we do at Bristol. If I can adapt to these high-down-force corvettes like you've adapted to Robin Fenders, we should be able to skin some snakes come February snakes, being in the Vipers, with the captcha Chrysler course. That's what it was.

And it says best wish, she'd look forward to seeing you here on October 17th. And that letter was October 2nd. Well, thank goodness, there was no internet. Thank goodness, I didn't tell the world because I called Gary Claudio, like you were saying. And Gary was the basically, Doug can tell you more about Gary, but he basically said, he was our team manager, if you like. And he just said, don't breathe a word to anybody. Well, you know, thank goodness he was the first call I made.

So that just brings it to where it came from. Go ahead. Well, Claudia, Gary Claudia, who was a marketing genius. He truly is. I mean, he was an amazing guy. And he was with Pontiac in NASCAR. And so he knew Crisp and, you know, how that family thing works across brands. And so he went to work after this, came to me and said, what do you think about having senior and junior drive force at Daytona?

I said, are you kidding me? I said, do you think you can make that happen? He goes, I don't know, but I'm certainly going to try. He knew that, obviously, that Andy had been in touch, and they had, that dad had had very, very high interest in doing it. And so we kind of put it together. Well, we put it together early, all right, but your dad, two things occurred.

He had to have neck surgery. I think it was neck surgery that he had scheduled. So he wasn't going to be able to do it that year. But the other thing was, I think that was going to be your first year in Cup. You were moving up to Cup. And I think he knew that you watched sports car racing on you. TV. At least that's what he read to me. And he says, I don't want get junior exposed to the sports car racing before he gets his feet wet in cup because I don't want him steering off into

sports cars. I want them focused on NASCAR. And so we delayed it for a year until we got to the 2001 time frame. And then the rest of it just kind of came together. It became really clear. We came down here, Claudia and I and met with your dad. What was that meeting like? It was really casual. It was in the shop. Got a tour I had never been here before. And I don't think Gary had been in the... A tour of DEI?

Yeah. I don't think Gary had been in the facility either. And it was... I mean, that's a long time ago. Seems like yesterday, but it was a long time ago. It was brand new. Oh, my God. It was beautiful.

I mean, it was... I'd been racing all my life and I had never seen anything like it. It was magnificent. We had lunch, cafeteria. You know, I mean, it was... Yeah. It was a really cool deal. So mutual experience.

excitement started to build at that point in time. And so I went back and then met with our team, with the Corvette team, explained them what we were going to do. And, I mean, it was just if you could have seen the looks on their faces, when I sat down and said, yeah, we're going to be having Dale Jr., Dale Senior, Rachel, that said, Daytona. I mean, they looked at each other like, are you kidding me? There's always this, their head, the second car, which out of the two cars,

I mean, Ron Fellows is driving the other car. Who else was in the other car? Chris Nyfall. Johnny O. Johnny O. Yeah. And I think Frank Friand. Frank Friand, yeah. And so who was in the second car besides you two?

So it was going to be, it was Frank Frion was a regular guy. And when it first came up, it was going to be when it was first introduced when I first met you down there, it was three names were on the car, which is actually for, you know, the collectable nerd types. If they see a yellow car that's cleaned with three names on it. That was because Kelly was at that point not part of the team. And it was only after we tested like at Sebring and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, he was supposed to be in the other car. Yeah. And it basically, Kelly got added later.

So the cars at the end of the race, the collectibles all have four names on. And that's why, because at the very beginning at the first announcement, it was just you and us. It was just you two and me. Yeah, exactly. And we went to Sebring and tested. Yep. And we, dad wrecked the car and I wrecked the car.

And so they thought they needed to us. bring it in. You know, your dad came up to me and he just nudged me right there in Pitt Lane and he goes, you want to drive with us in our car? And I go, it's not my decision. It's the doctors, meaning Doug. And I know there's more to that story, but that's where I found out about it. Yeah.

So anyways, I said, you got to go. And he goes, you don't want to drive with me and my son? And I go, no, I didn't say that deal. I can't make that decision. And three, four minutes later, he came back over and he says, we're teammates now. That was it. And he wouldn't talk to him.

But there's more to it. Yeah. The reality was, we had discussed interteam-wise, what we're going to do. And I thought it would be a great idea that we have four drivers in the car. Normally we only have three. Right. But in your car, there was going to be you, your dad, and Andy and Kelly. And we only had three drivers listed for the other car at that point in time.

And so your dad came down. We were at Sebring at that Sebring test. which was interesting. It's a great day. It was very interesting. I got to tell you, we're going to diverge here a little bit. Yeah.

Because Junior got in the car first, all right? And he goes right to the pedal. I mean, he's full throttle and just, I mean, right out of the shoot. I mean, there was no acclamation time. I had no idea. No. But, I mean, you knew that it was gung-ho, baby. It was video game time.

And ended up. Backing it into the bridge. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that was a morning. No big deal, all right, nothing we hadn't expected. Yeah, so we get there. And what I would eventually learn is that so when we, you know, in the cup car or any other race car ever drove at that point,

you get out on the racetrack in the first lap's the best lap, grip-wise. And it falls off from there. In your car, you know, the tires have kind of a case on them that you, you know, you got to take it really. careful for a while. Like in Daytona, you know, it was about a lap and a half before you really kind of could start to ladder to tire. I had no idea. I go off

pit road, first series of corners, and then stand on the gas headed to the bridge and it just turned backwards and slid forever. And I back it into the bridge and destroyed this car. The back of the car is destroyed. And I'm thinking,

I mean, we've been here 15 minutes. And I've... Test all. killed this thing. Yeah. And so we roll it back into the garage and I'm standing there and I'm embarrassed. Dad, I'm embarrassed for dad because I've wrecked the car. And your team had had no motion.

They go into the, they all were just like, they just like went to work. Like, all right, we've been here before. So they go into the truck and they bring out these gigantic black bags. Mm-hmm. Like huge body bags is what they kind of look like. And unzip and out comes a brand new car. Like the whole rear section of this car, all of the, they rebuilt the underbody and the top and the wing and all of the whole comes out of these giant bags.

And in 15 minutes, the car was back together. And then they're like, okay, get back in. I was like, really? I'm not like in the penalty box. You need a band? I'm not in time out. And they're like, go for it again. Just, you know, now you know.

So we follow up, and he does an admirable job. Yeah, he did a good job. We were launching lap times. You got there, you got there really quick, man. So then Dad gets in the car, all right? Now, he's taking the opposite approach. He's walking down the hill to get to the cows. There's a story goes with that.

It's old-timers joke. Anyway, and his lap times are coming down, coming down, coming down. You can tell he's getting acclimated. He's getting way more comfortable. The next thing you hear, coming down the straightway, going into 17. I mean, he's just locked up, boom, into the tire wall. He had all four tires on the car were flat.

He backed it, yeah. Because he had locked him up for such a long period of time going in that corner, and the car was a mess. So now we got to bring it back in. And of course, he's after the earlier episode with you, all right, he's, oh, Doug, I'm so sorry, you know. So we're sitting down, we're having lunch while the guys are fixing the car. And we just had, you know, making sandwiches and stuff, sitting at the table.

And he goes, Doug, he says, again, I says, I can't tell you how sorry I am causing you guys all this work and doing all those damage. And I said, I said, don't worry about it. I said, you only got one responsibility left. He says, what's that? I said, well, you see that pile of parts over there? He goes, yeah. I said, after lunch, you and junior are going to go over and sign all those. I said, I'm going to sell them.

I said, I'm going to get my money back for all the damage on the car. And lo and behold, true to the man, all right? You guys both went over with a Sharpie. and signed all the broken, the broken power of carbon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did sell some of them, but we always contacted you before we would do it. Really? I don't know if you're remembering that to make sure that you knew we were going to do it.

We didn't do it all at once every once in a while. But that incident, when he did crash, he could only get reverse. So we were going to go out and get him. Do you remember that? Yes, he backed it all the way down seabing, and all you can see is his eyes and his mustache in the side mirror, and he didn't want any help, and he drove it all, and the wheels were like this.

and he drove it and he got out and he was really bummed. Yeah. I was not bummed. Now, I was sad for the guys that had to fix the car, but I was like, hell, yes. I was the only guy to freaking wreck this day. Thank God. It was going to be an easier ride home.

You want some more ammunition for that? Okay, so at the beginning of the day, he said, you know, can someone take me around? I said, yeah, I had a Corvette C-5 that GM were providing for me. So I took him around the racetrack just to show him around. This is before all this happened, right? So I took him around kind of steady, just like here pointing apos, so I could talk, you know, and all right. Then I came back on Pitland.

He says, now it's my turn. And I said, oh, yeah, sure. So I stopped the car. He gets in. He just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang down to turn one and I, oh, my God. This is going to be crazy. So he got around the track and he was flying around the track, just figuring it out, getting the wrong line, figuring it, pulling it back, going sideways, everything else. And he made it.

He comes down the back straight away. fourth gear flying into 17 and basically gets into the corner realize he's got to slow it down slams it into third no first first and round and i saw bridge wall bridge wall okay we must have spun like three times and then it finally stopped and your dad would smile on his face and he looked at me he goes you're nervous nellie yet boy and i was like no i'm fine and he said that's not what are you right for selling me? And my foot blasted to the firewall. You were out foot on the brake, baby.

The car was never the same. I had to drive it back home. It was like, I think the drive shafted was at a U-band in it, man. So there you go, you got that. I remember, I feel like for some reason we had a dinner

like that was a two-day test or we had dinner before we left. And I remember, you know, we'd wrecked a car, both of us had wrecked a car, but we'd also run some really solid time. and we're, you know, y'all were, that was important because I think, you know, we wanted to go and run well, right, in Daytona. And so I think it was, I was like, I just remember being at that

dinner and listening to y'all, I was listening to y'all talk to dad and dad talked to y'all in judging the temperature of the conversation. Well, if you remember, he said, we're all going to dinner. Leave your cars at the track. We were back with you guys with crisp and tight. Yep. Yep. And I just remember that being a lot of, I felt really good after that dinner because it was a camaraderie. We all kind of got the bond a little bit. And there was some, I guess some confidence of, you know, that we could go there and be capable of doing well. So, yeah, Sebring, that's a fun story for me to tell because, you know, wrecking that car and, and feeling. feeling like, holy shit, what have I done?

I've done ruined this whole thing. The whole thing's ruined. And then the rest of the day going the way it did and us into it. We wanted to get that done out of the way. That's how you build the family. I mean, you know, when we looked at what we did for a team and you got to experience a lot of it. Because a bunch of stories, I think, that relate to that. But the idea was, and these guys were part of it, being a Corvette race car driver is not just driving the car.

Your role outside the car is as important as your role inside the car. And when we developed that family, I mean, we knew the crew guys, all right? We knew their family. We knew their girlfriends, their wives, their dog. I mean, we knew all about them. We were one group that had bonded together. And I think your dad recognized that right away. And I think he didn't know quite how to do that.

He oftentimes explained to me that he didn't fully understand how this thing worked like this, where everybody was together and friendly. Helping one another. The interteam stuff that went on. I mean, there was a genuine love of the sport. It was a different environment. And I think getting that Sebring test was so important, and you hit the nail right on the head,

is going through as difficult time as it could be. I mean, there's nothing worse than wrecking the car. All right? Well, we got that out of the way because that never happened again. Yeah. All right? We went through all the stuff. You know, we're talking about selecting the teams.

Your dad came up to me when we put that four driver thing together, and he was not happy. All right. He said, Doug, I have to tell you, I'm a little disappointed. I said, well, what? He says, well, I want to know why there's four drivers in our car, and there's only three drivers in all the other cars. Yeah. I said, well, Dale, I said, you know, this is your first stay at 24 hours.

Yep. I said, we've got weather to think about. I said, we've got heat to think about. I said, you know, it takes a lot out of you driving these cars. He said, Doug, I drive in the Charlotte World 600. I ride in that whole damn race all by myself. I said, Dale, I said, I don't want to take away from that. I said, I know that that's, I mean, that's a monumental physical achievement.

But I said, driving sports cars, you're shifting gears, you're turning left, you're turning right, you're mashing on the brake. You're racing with cars that are significantly faster. You're wasting with cars that are significantly slower. I said, it is, it's tough. He said, and I could tell that I was not getting through to him. I mean, he wasn't, it wasn't registering. Yeah. And so I said, look, I said, I appreciate and respect where you're coming from.

I said, we got our test scheduled at Daytona. I said, we'll go down and do that Daytona test. And I said, when that test is over with, if you think that the Ford driver idea is a bad idea, then we'll go to three drivers. I said, I'll honor your request and we'll do that. But let's get through that test. He said, all right, that sounds fair. So we go down to Daytona, you remember this, and it was hotter than hell. It had to be, I mean, it was early in the year.

It's January. But it was like 95 degrees outside. And so his time comes to get in the car. It's morning. It's probably 10.30 in the morning. So he suits up. You know, he wear that open face helmet. It gets in the car.

He's out. The car would run about 50 or 55 minutes on a tank of fuel. And so he was going to do a full stint. At about the 40-minute mark, we got something on the telemetry that suggested something was going south in the car. And there was no sense in having it blow up or have something break, whatever. ever's going wrong. I don't remember what it was. So we call him in, 40 minutes in the car. Well, he pulls in, he's in the car, and I can see he's been working inside the car.

So he gets out, and he's flushed, sweating, helmet off, cool rag around his neck, a bottle of water. He comes over, and I'm sitting on wall. He sits right down next to me, all right. I'm looking over. I don't say anything. He doesn't say anything. Two or three minutes go by, and I feel elbow. Doug? I said, yes. He said, you know that idea you had about four drivers in the car? I said, yeah.

He said, I think it's a damn fine idea. He says, and I got to get my ass back in the gym. Yeah. I said, you got it, Dale. I mean, I didn't elaborate enough, but it was that. He had the awakening about the physical expenditure required to drive those things. Even on a track that he was totally familiar with. It was kind of cool to see him acquiesce and understand what we were doing.

And I think it gave him a new respect for everything that we did and the knowledge that we were bringing with us and how much he had to learn. Yeah. He was always open to learning. What do you guys remember from the tests? Oh, boy, I remember a lot. I remember him driving backwards down the pit lane. I remember him. The test at Daytona.

Oh, no, I wasn't at the Test of Daytona. I was at Sebring because I was in Ron's car up until your dad nudged me. Yeah. And then he says, what? you don't want to drive with me? You know, I'm like, I didn't say that. But anyways, that's when I got put in the car that day. Really?

Really? Yeah. Yeah, I was supposed to be in Ron's car. And, but I remember, I remember him driving down there like that. I remember him being very fascinated that Andy and I would help you guys out. He'd never shared information with other drivers. I mean, that's secret, right? And he's like, you're just telling us what you're doing and where you're breaking.

And he's like, that was part of that whole bonding thing. that whole day before we went to dinner. It was a lot of fun. I remember he, I think you got a, I think you got a back shift, and you came into the pits, and you got out of the car, and he said to you, he goes,

what'd you do to the car? And you go, nothing, he goes, did something because she's bleeding, and there was some oil coming out of the bottom of the car. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. He was a little rough on you that. He was like, yeah, he's like, what are you doing here?

Yeah. And then he went and crashed the car. So then you were not like you said, and you're like, lucky. Oh, yeah. Do you all remember, I remember him being very adamant to be included in all aspects of this, of the experience that, you know, everything that you guys were required to be at or do or any meeting that might be taking place, no matter how minimal. He wanted to be in everything. Yeah. Yeah. He really liked, he was gung-ho about this thing.

Yeah. Like he was excited. for sure. Yeah. About the whole experience. And doing good. Yeah. I remember him.

I was, we were, I don't know if it was privately, but we were, I remember us being, well, I was being competitive with him about our times. And I remember needling him a little bit. And he's like, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not time to race yet. And this is a 24-hour race. It ain't about the fastest. And I would poking in him, poking and poking in him. He would not like show any, he would not like play along with me or get worked up in the, he didn't take a bait.

He wasn't taking the bait. No. So, I mean, I don't really, I wish I had the sheets in front of me. But I felt like at Sebring, I was quicker, even though I probably beat the car up worse than he did. And then in the testing at Daytona, I was a little bit quicker than he was. And I'm like, dude, what is going on? Yeah. And he's like, it's not race time yet.

He's not race time yet. And I'm like, okay. Your dad and I spoke a little bit about some of that stuff. And I think something that may have helped him a little bit. You can probably tell me if it did or didn't. But I said, the breaking. The breaking was the biggest thing that he kept saying, the breaking. And his breaking points were just too early.

And I said, he was breaking almost like at the four marker. And we were breaking like just past the two marker. And I said, give me half of it. I said, he said, I don't know about that. And I said, give me half. And he got down to the three and immediately his time started to come down. And he came out of the car and said, said, the brakes. He said, you know, the steering, the handling, the acceleration, you know.

But the braking, he said, is something that physically was different. You may feel the same way. I don't know. I remember that was the very first time I'd ever been able to use telemetry and look at you and you and see what you guys are doing. And this is something that I took with me for the rest of my career. driving that Corvette honestly you know help me obviously

you know and it should have but it helped me really understand why you break so we there's there's there's guys that come out of whether it be V8 super cars or or

any type of discipline where you run road courses just like you guys you know and you'll come drive our car and in and your braking is so unique. We take what an oval driver does when they spend all their life driving around in circles and then they go to a road course,

we try to break the same way. And so what I learned, what I learned, we break really gradually and almost feed more brake to the center of the corner, and you guys do it the opposite. And I'm like, and so that was one of the first things you guys told me

was like, you gotta match the brake pedal when the cars it maxed down for us. That's when the brakes are going to perform the best and the tires are going to do their job. So like you flip the, you almost flip the graph upside down. So when I would, so you,

the reason why you're able to go so deep into the braking zone is because you do all of your braking at once. And then you're off. Yes, with the arrow. And so that was something that y'all steered me toward really early in the testing. And that was the most helpful piece of information for me to try to find the most gain.

Yeah. Like I could feel lateral load felt the same, no matter what kind of car you're driving, you know, balance. We all understand what that. But like the technical challenges of getting into the braking zone and getting the car slowed down and still turned on a road course with that much of down force working with you was really interesting. I think your dad just picked up on that slower than you did. You picked it up quite quickly. Well, I will be honest with you, man. It was because y'all were so great at sitting down.

And right after we would drive the car, you would sit down and go, all right, you see, you see here? The debrief, yeah. That was something we never did, right? We didn't have that much data. We weren't sharing data. We weren't driving each other's cars. So this is the first time, like all four of us in the same vehicle. And, okay, I see it.

You're breaking way down here and way more break initially. fading. And, you know, it's just so easy to go out and try to replicate that. If you remember, you guys brought something to the table, too. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Because like you're talking about, the deep, that made me remember that. We go into the debrief room with the engineers, I call them Imagineers, but they would give us all our data and all that stuff. And Ron, they brought in everybody, not just us. Yeah, everybody, Ron and everybody. And we were going through this whole thing with breaking and everything. And they're like, so Dale, what are you doing here on the banking

between when you come out of the chicane all the way to the braking zone and turn one? And he goes, well, I just drive up here to this bump and I go that one, then I'd go to this one and then I'd go to this one and another than over here and all that stuff. Well, we treat it like a straightaway, you know, talk on the radio, just hold the wheel, go through the gears. And I think Dale was exiting the chicane, bus stop,

like seven miles an hour slower than us and he was getting on the brakes 150 feet earlier and his top speed was like two miles an hour faster. You as well, in the banking. because of your feel, your natural, it was like the two worlds were colliding, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

It was like two to three tenths every time from the exit that are burst up to the entry to two and one. You guys, and you gained it. Yeah, you were killing us. And he was like, he was all, his feathers were all, who-hoo. He loved that. There were four or five loops at Daytona at that point in time. And so we could, you know, we would look at those segmented times.

And I think it got down to the point where it was quite clear that it was two-tenths of a second, We couldn't figure out where it was. And Johnny went out. Your dad went out and Johnny said, I'm going to follow you. And so Johnny went out and learned the pathway. Yeah. And then came back and was able, again, to your point, share it with the rest of the guys. But it was, it cut both ways.

I mean, that was two-tenths of a second is a big deal. And I've used it ever since. Yes. Well, you don't forget it. I did a 14-hour race, like a couple of months ago in a most slower car, and I used exactly the same thing. and I could gain some time and you could feel it

on the guy that's where I was driving with in the same car. And I told him this is Dale Loonot. I learned this from the day Loonauts. I'd run from both of them. Yeah.

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Dad was much, much older And so probably understood a lot of the information You guys were giving him I would learn, I think after the fact That I didn't have to run 100% Every corner that it was And it's different today, right? They go out today and run that race

And qualifying speed all night all day, all night It was crazy But we had to really take care of the car and that was like an entire process that I learned as the race went on. But I guess, you know, how did y'all see Dad adapting to going from running 300 to 500-mile events all his life to trying to, you know, how his mind worked to be able to help you guys get through this event? After we did the test, I wrote quite a lot of stuff, and it was kind of interesting because I sent it to him and you, obviously, to both of you, because drive a change. were a thing. Yeah, huge.

Taking care of the tires were a thing, building up the tire, the beginning of a stint, things like that, positioning of the car in the pit stop, just all kinds of bits and pieces I thought might be useful to both of you. And I was going up to Pratt Miller

to just see, because our driver changes were really not well. So it was like, okay, so I was going to go up to Pratt Miller by myself. Explain, elaborate on the driver change of why that was important. Well, because the preparation, we had to do some modification,

inside the car because Kelly and I we were so used to driver changes but for people that weren't used to it and we were slightly different sizes but similar. The sequence coming into the sequence and everything yeah and it needed that going over so I needed to go to Pratt Miller to just verify

what can we do to move the belts can we fix the belt here can we help put that there that's going to make it easier because you're not doing it all the time and the funny part was after he got the stuff and he blah blah blah and he called me on the phone we were just chatting because he He called me sometimes just to chat.

And he said, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm just actually getting ready to go to the airport. I'm sort of getting my backpack for tomorrow. I was going to go to the airport to go to Pratt and Mill. He said, what are you going to do? And I said, well, you know the notes I send? You said, yeah, thanks for those, et cetera. And I said, I just want to go physically to the car and see what we can maybe do.

But, well, we've got some time before the weekend. And he said, can I go? He says, can I come? Literally, man. He said, can I come? And I'm going like, Dale, yes, of course. Whatever you want to do, yes, sure. And he says, okay, great.

And it was almost this interest level, this enthusiasm was just, you could feel it in him. And he said, I want to go to. And he said, why don't you fly to Charlotte and we'll go up in the jet and we'll go together and we'll go there? And I said, that's it. And that's how that started. But it was just really detailing some of the things and some of the changes. And so he came, you know, I went to Charlotte and we ended up going up there and spending the day at Pram. And it was, it was just the enthusiasm was genuine.

It was absolutely genuine. I remember being more nervous about driver changes than driving that car. That was why I did that. Yeah, a lot of people are. Yeah. Of course. One of the things that I still use today, there's this like a, just kind of like a, I would compare it to the type of material you'd use on a slingshot, but the bungee cord, you guys would bungee all of the belts. So when the belts are undone, they're just kind of out.

and hanging around. And so, like, literally the shoulder belts are hanging in the ceiling. And you just grab them and they come right, you know, put them where you got to go. And I still use that for my lap belt on my left side because if not, it falls under my ass and I have to dig it out of it. There you go. But, you know, I remember us practicing those and thinking, yeah, we're not going to get good at this. This is just going to be something that's just not going to be good, you know, not going to go well for us.

Exactly. And we got to, I remember we got to the racetrack for the race weekend, I believe. One of the first things we did, Dad texted me or called me, and he's like, get over the garage, we're going to practice drivers, changes some more, you know. Yeah. And so we were, he was still, you know, focused on, like, improving that particular aspect. He became the big cheerleader for that stuff. He did.

He absolutely did. Well, it became abundantly clear when you break down a pit stop, when you look at all the things that can go south, all right? I mean, you're only putting fuel in the car, you're only putting tires on the car, and you're only doing a driver's change. Well, the biggest opportunity to screw up is in the driver change. And when it goes south in a driver change, it's not one or two seconds. You know, it's 10 or 15 seconds. And you just can't get that time back on the racetrack.

Unless you get a yellow. I mean, there's no way to get that back. And that's why that driver change becomes so critically important. That's why we spent so much time. We still do. I mean, we're looking at that stuff every single day. And I think your dad recognized that right away. And obviously it made an impact on you because that was your greatest concern.

It wasn't driving the car. It was effectively implementing a driver change. Well, he also had that learning curve. You guys might remember at night. He didn't want to do the night practice. Yeah. And he was worried about that. And we were like, just go out.

You guys both go out. And he got really comfortable. And what I'm getting at is he had to learn how to manage traffic and work traffic and keep the lap time going. and when the session was over, we'd always told them these aren't cup cars. They're all carbon fiber. You can't. You just mess up a wing plate or anything like that, and you change your arrow and everything. And you might remember this.

It was Crisp and Ty and Andy and me and you and a bunch of media. And he came in after the night practice checkered flag. He comes in and he's excited as hell. That was great. I loved it and everything. And our crew chief at the time, Frank Fresenetti goes, hey Dale what did you hit and he goes nothing he goes and Dale goes back to talking and he goes you must have hit something he goes I didn't hit anything and then and then Frank says it one more time

he goes all right Andy and he looks over to an he goes you'd be proud of me I waited to turn him around to turn three he goes he was blocking me on the banking I waited to turn three and we just we just started laughing like biting our cheek because you can't do that that car but his his way of moving traffic was that turn him around and you'd be proud of me that he's fun of it out he's fun of He spun a Porsche. He waded to the slowest corner, though. Oh, my God. He was pretty proud of that.

I was supposed to be proud of him for the fact that he didn't do it at 140 miles at an hour somewhere. Yeah, okay, I hit something, but I do that in the slowest corner. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah, it was funny. And I think you actually said, Dale, we can't do that. He just can't do that.

They just can't be doing that. So, let's, uh, let's, uh, Do you guys recall anymore from the Daytona test or the test leading up to the race itself? We had hot weather, but nothing other. Yeah, I can tell you this. And it gets back to the family sort of thing. You know, because you guys had your coach right off the paddock lane there, and that's where you were staying. And so you have to move from the coach down to the garage area and then to the pit area and just moving around.

all right and there were fans there for this test they allowed fans to come and and we got done early in the day again it was at lunchtime and he said I can't believe what's going on here at the racetrack and I and so I'm concerned I said what do you mean he says well you know he says I'm just used to have and have security and getting mobbed by people he says junior and I can walk right around here and it's just I mean it's just it's it's really nice he says why is that happen And I said, well, sports car people are just a different mentality. They know who you are. They certainly respect who you are.

But they're not the type of people that are going to come up and mob you with put something in your face to sign it and do all the rest of that. He really, I think, enjoyed the comfort level of being able to move around unencumbered. That that didn't become an element. I didn't have to worry about where my security team was. I didn't have to worry about getting, well, how are we going to get back over there? Can I take the golf car? I mean, none of that prevailed. It was a total different environment that he had an experience.

in racing and at the end of the race when that whole thing was over we had a long conversation about what his experience was because he had never had in his entire career he had never had a total experience like it was for that 24 hour yeah event I think that's that was one of the biggest takeaways for me was that just he was he was he had really remarked about how nice of environment it was it quote unquote this the best time I've ever had racing it was just that simple. It's in this letter that he wrote, he wrote several of us letters after Kelly got one. Bobby. Yeah, yeah.

He's got it. Yeah. Kelly got one. I got one. I think Doug may have got one too, I think. Yeah, but it was like, he says it right in there. Yeah. He says basically yeah. He says, so, yeah. The funny thing is, is on the, on the, you're talking, takeaways from like Daytona.

Some of the little things are the Corvette team, the two big trailers, all the hospitality, the driver table, right, all that stuff. And we go to get in line, and it's Ron and me and Johnny and him and you. And because the driver's supposed to eat first. I don't know why.

I don't know why. But that's just the rule it was. And all of a sudden, he comes and grabs me and Ron by the Lepet on the race suit. He says, what are you guys doing? Get over here. We're like what? And he goes, you don't eat first.

The crew eats first. Your mechanics eat first. They're the ones that take care of your race car. They're eating first, and they're all looking at me like, like, you know, like that? I'm like, oh my God. Nanny Niz. This is going to have to go this way for the whole race.

And so next thing I know, you and your dad and Andy and I are sitting on the ice chest between the transporters, cutting our food like this while all the mechanics are sitting at our tables. He said, they take care of your car and they get the dog. I was like, all right, whatever you say, Dale. That's funny. Yeah. We get ready for the race weekend. I mean, you know, racking my brain about things that stand out.

don't remember much about practice. I guess that means it was rather uneventful. I think I felt reasonable about how I was doing in the car. I was maybe, I don't know, three quarters to a second off of you guys, and I was pretty happy with that. And I felt like, you know, I was, we were going to be okay. I didn't really know what to expect in terms of, you know, how well we might run, you know.

And I had never, you know, of course, dad or whatever. I had never really raced in the race before and didn't know what we were up for. And my approach to it was different than dads. I was there, I was having a good time. And I wasn't feeling a ton of pressure, but dad's approach was different. We, he wanted to be everywhere. Y'all guys were at, you know, if you guys were out on the pit road or if you guys were at a meeting, he wanted to be there.

And I wanted to be where I was supposed to be, but I wasn't as eagerly seeking out the itinerary of the day as dad was. And I've told this story before, but on race day, it's, you know, I know that the race is going to start and one of y'all is going to be in the car. We're going to take off running, and at some point, you know, they're going to say, all right, it's your turn, it's your turn, it's your turn. And so, and I really have no clue, like, what that feels like or how ready to be or what, what, what do I, what does the other guy supposed to be doing, right? And so I was really, I was kind of anxious, honestly, nervous about, like, when they were going to call my name and.

That's normal. What the experience was, yeah, like I was going to climb in this car. and go. It was really foreign, really foreign. But I'm standing, and Steve Chris, you mentioned Crisp. Steve Crisp is kind of like for the people listening. He's kind of like the, he works for Dillon Hart Incorporated. He's kind of a guy that would go around to the racetracks with me

and make sure that I was where I was supposed to be at all times. And a great friend of dads, worked with Chevrolet forever. and he was basically the one that was tasked to sort of make sure me and dad were where we were supposed to be and a good kind of an insulator connector to the race team. And he was pretty smart about road racing and Chevrolet in general in the Corvette program. So he was a good person to have. But he spent a lot of time with me, a ton of time with me that particular day, and we were in my bus. And, man, we had these cool helmets, right?

Oh, your dad had our helmets banded. Right. So, Dad had an open-faced helmet, and I have got a closed-face helmet, and I'm putting stickers all over my helmet, all this goofy shit I'd found. I don't know what it was. But so we were having fun with our helmets, and we had this drink hose that plugged into the front, which we'd never had before. Dad didn't use it.

I don't know what dad used because he had open-faced helmet. I think he did use a water bottle. He just used a water bottle. But I connected to a sister. that had a button on the steering wheel like you guys. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, the dad didn't really know, I'm embarrassed about this.

And you all probably heard the story before because I've told it a few times. But, um, I was a closet cigarette smoker back then. And dad, I didn't smoke around dad, didn't smoke in public. And I was, me, and Steve smoked as well. So me and Steve Chris was, so you got you. Yeah, I caught you one time. Yeah. Yeah, me and Steve Chris would sit there and bull's, smoke cigarettes.

And, um, um, I was nervous energy being a goofball. I was just, it was about time to go out to the pit road for the pre-race ceremony. And Dad was coming by to get us. And Steve told me, he's like, Dad's going to be here in a minute, tell us to come on. But I didn't think he's coming to the door or the bus, right, to get me. And that was out of character for Dad. He would probably pull up on the golf cart and lay on the horn and holler, come on.

and I saw that helmet sitting on the counter and we had like a backup helmet and so I grabbed that helmet I put it on and I put one of them cigarettes in that little plug for the drink for the drink bottle bottle and I was like take a picture Steve it was just funny

and I'm standing the bus I had had a door in the center and I'm standing right in front of that door and that thing opened up and it was dad and he slammed it shut and I looked at Steve Chris, I said, man, I am in deep. This is like 15 minutes before we come out and took pictures with you all on pit road.

And Pitt Road is slammed full of people. I mean, this is the race. It was packed. Fan walk. Yeah. Yeah. And I come, me and Steve Chris sheepishly walk out of the bus. Dad's on the cart.

Somebody else is driving. Me and Steve climb on the back seat and sit down and we start pulling away out of the bus lot. We're driving toward pit road. You're just waiting. I'm just sitting there. Steve Chris starts snickering. And dad turns around and goes,

don't fucking encourage him. Cussing at Steve. And I was like, God, he is pissed. Damn, man, I am messed up, you know, because this is like a big deal. Dad's like, get your head in the game of your ass. You know, this is serious shit. And I'm like, I'm fine.

I'm all right. I'm just having fun. And he was so mad. Wouldn't even talk to me the rest of the morning. We go all the way out to Pit Road. And in all the phone. There was one where they're like, get on up there, you know, take your picture. But like, we walk out there.

He goes over, says, hey to you guys, and I'm like five feet behind him. Yeah. And that was why. Didn't know. That's so funny. Mad. And so, yeah. I did not know that.

I've never heard that story, man. He was classic. Well, that's classic. Yeah, go ahead, because he harps somebody to leaning over the front of the car to do an autograph and he yelled at him, get off that car. Yeah. You know, I mean, he, he hard. I said, I said, I said him all.

I set him off in a bad mood. So I want to know where the picture is. I don't even know. I don't think we got it taken. I think as soon as I stuck it in there, I was like, hey, man, take a picture. He's like, oh, where it opens up? I'm like, oh, no. And he knew I smoke.

He walked in the house one time, saw ashtray full of cigarettes. But I just would always not do it around him. He didn't prove of that kind of thing. And he knew I wanted to be a race car driver and needed to be in good shape. But, I mean, it was a. it was a scene. But so we go out to, that was another thing I think that was pretty fun.

And I didn't know what to expect or where to really be. But the pre-race, going out there, there's a moment of recognition to the team, the driver lineup. Everybody, you know, gets, this again doesn't happen.

It's something we experience in NASCAR. a driver, and NASCAR driver walks out to the car. We go through the intros and all of the stuff. You get to the car and you're just like, you would climb in right then if you didn't have to stand there for the anthem or prayer, whatever may be going on.

You would just get in, because you're just ready to get in and get away from the world, right? But in y'all's, there's a ceremony is sort of, all right, everybody, get together. Let's enjoy what we're about to do and let's recognize what we're about. about to, because it is a journey. That race is such a.

And the crew's there at the back of the car. Everything's clean. Everybody's there. Everything's clean. Yeah. And the buildup to the prep to it is sort of recognized in that initial moment before the engines are fired. What do you guys remember about that morning?

You know, I'm going to go to them. I'm going to go to the people. The number of people around Al-a-Cola because of you guys. Yeah. But your dad knows every, he knows almost every fan. He knows him. He'll tell his stories all about them. Yeah.

No. The night before, again, this gets back to Claudio and his genius. I don't know if you remember this or not. But you guys will remember this. You know, we used to do that little ceremony where the crew guys would roast the driver. I know. We did that before each of us. I don't remember that.

All right. So we're at Daytona, and it's Friday night. Where are we? We're at the back of the transporters. Oh, all right, in a group. Shirts. And the drivers, the drivers, you get this. The drivers are lined up.

Yeah. And so Claudia and I are making our, you know, pre-race speech. I'm giving them the pep talk and he's screwing around as he usually did. Well, we had made up, in this event, we had made up T-shirts for everybody. Oh, yeah. And they had nicknames on them. Claudia would think up nicknames for people. I don't remember what your guys were.

His was grandma. I forget what yours was. Yeah, my was grandma. Johnny was a little red riding hood or something like that. So we get to you. And I'm really, I'm trying to be sensitive, this whole. this whole experience, because I knew it was going to be tough operating the shadow of your dad. Yeah.

All right. I mean, just, that was just, I knew that was going to be hard. And I knew it was going to be difficult to bring you forward, to get you into the family, to get you into the pack. I wanted to try to make you feel as comfortable as I could. And the team as well. And so we get down to you and your dad. So your dad gets his T-shirt, all right, and it's a giant capital letter E on the T-shirt. And, of course, everybody's laughing.

That's pretty cool. He's smiling. That's pretty cool. And then your T-shirt comes, and it's a little lower-case. All right. And I'm thinking, this isn't help. This is not helping. This is not helping Junior feel part of this thing.

Dang it at the biggie and you get the little lower-case. So I mean, everybody's laughing. I mean, you were a good sport about it. Outwardly, it didn't seem to be anything. But it stuck in my mind. It was one of those moments where I felt, bad. I really felt bad. You shouldn't. Until the following week.

Yeah. All right. Now, I don't know if you remember this. I'm watching the NASCAR. I'm watching the Daytona race, all right? And they're walking around pit lane. It was for qualifying our practice or something. And you're walking around with your fire suit on and you had it tied around your waist. And you were wearing the little E-tition underneath it. I'm watching that TV and I'm thinking, you know what? Suddenly I felt just a whole lot better about it. I thought it was just one of those moments in time. you know where things come together that only inside people would understand what that meant

and if that was clearly important to you that you were wearing that shirt during the Daytona race back before we ran this race in 01 I was working on my late model car in the deerhead shop on the farm this is probably about three years before this and he would walk around with this black hat with this capital E on it

and, you know, I, dad, that was, that was strange to me because dad never like, I always felt like, you know, dad had a persona. He was, you know, the intimidator man in black, all these different things. And he taught, you know, he leaned into all of that stuff, absolutely. But he wasn't kind of guy that would walk around with his name on his belt, you know. He wasn't the kind of guy that would walk around with his hat on. you know like Dale Earnhardt hat but he had somebody somewhere gave him one of these hats and he comes walking in and we roasted him me and a buddy of mine that was working there were like what in

you what are you doing with that hat that e big e hat on name what is this big ego what is this hat mean what does that he stand for it and we just gave him such a hard time so like fast forward to that t-shirt like when i when i bet when i saw that. I was like, oh, man, this is perfect. I love this. It couldn't get any better. Yeah, because it's like... Well, he was a character. I mean, he, he, remember one time he told us that he, like 11 o'clock at night, every once in while he'd put on some ratty clothes and go down to Walmart and push a shopping cart around with like 10, 10 rolls of paper towels in it and it just walked by people and I was like, like that. He just, just for Shock Valley.

No kidding. Yeah, I'd never heard that. Yeah, that is wild. Hey, T.J, you know that I got my own Chevy dealership down in Tallahassee, Florida. We're part of the Hendrick Automotive Group. Yes, I have heard of Darren Hart Jr. Chevrolet. I bet you'd be surprised on what type of Chevrolet vehicles we specialize in. If I had a guess, I'm going to say it would probably be Chevy Trucks. Well, we definitely sell plenty of those, but actually we're really big in commercial vehicles. We actually sell a lot of crane trucks, or the number one seller, actually, in crane trucks.

Okay, I definitely did not see that coming. Yeah, pretty neat, huh? So for any of our listeners shopping for commercial vehicles, here's something. you need to know about us at Dillenhart Jr. Chevrolet. We have hundreds of trucks in stock so you can find what you need fast. And we have people there that can help you with custom orders. So if you want to build the exact vehicle you need, we can do it. We offer complimentary delivery anywhere in the continental U.S.

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the car footage of him in there driving it. I will say that we, I thought that that was the best driving race car that I'd ever been behind the wheel of. And even today, the amount of, once you got to tires, work being pretty good. The way that car wanted to be driven and begged to be driven was so much fun. and I was a bit unsure about how comfortable I would be driving something with that much, you know, power and technology. But it was, it did everything better. Everything that my NASCAR stuff did, this thing just did everything better. And I remember Dad talking about that as well, just how fun it was to drive.

You know, we got some opportunity to race in the rain, which was a blast. Yeah. That was a little baptism by fire for you. Yeah, it was. Yeah. But I had some good information. You know, you guys were like, hey, man, you don't want to run an online. Yeah.

And I was like, okay, I understand. Yeah. I was not sure exactly. I was like, so in my mind, you guys are like, all right, don't run in the groove because it's got oil and all kinds of shit all over. Don't run off line. I'm like, but I got to cross the line somewhere, right? I got to get from one side the track to the other. Like, how do I do that?

And it's very carefully. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, got across the line twice on the way in and on the way out. That's right. So I remember, I was like, I couldn't believe y'all put me in that car at night and during the rain. But I think the nighttime was probably my best time because I was a, usually always a, always wanted to stay up late.

And it was hard to get the tires up too. Yeah, because it was colder. Even harder to get the tires up because of the cold weather. Yeah, for sure. Senior kind of late. I don't know if guys remember this. Oh, yeah. Because he was scheduled to do two stents.

Yeah. And it wasn't rain and raining, but it was missing, and the track was wet. Yeah. All right. But he came on the radio, you know, because we're checking all the time. How you doing? How you do? How you do? And are you comfortable?

You know? Yep, yep. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. As it progressed and he gets deeper into his second stint, he comes on the radio and says, guys, I'm really enjoying this. Yeah. He says, the car's handling kind of like a NASCAR now.

Yeah. Because it was moving around. He could feel that on the banking. Yeah. Okay. He got near the end of the second stint. And he says, guys, I want to ask you something. I said, what's that?

He said, can I stay in for a third stint? Do you remember this? I thought it was a second stint. It was a third. He did, he did. Not three in a row. He did one and then he wanted to stay in again. It would be a total three, yeah.

Yes. And everybody kind of looked at each other. And, you know, when a guy's comfortable in the car and he's turning great lap times into wet, I mean, you don't want to break that rhythm. No. And if he's physically feeling it, I mean, he said, yeah, well, go ahead. I mean, he, number one, he was liking it, but number two, he really liked it that we said, yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Because it made, I think it made him feel like, you know what, they know I'm doing a good job in this car. We're not giving up anything by having me in here. Yeah. I mean, it was just, it was one of those moments. And when it started raining, I mean, it started raining when he just literally just about got in for his first stint. And then I actually was on the radio and told him just a little bit about what we were saying, like watch the line. you go offline here, be careful coming out of the bus stop because it's really slippery coming back out of the bus stop.

And that was all he needed. And then he just got going quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker and getting more and more comfortable. Yeah. I felt like the rain tire felt had more grit. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was amazingly gripping. You couldn't run, obviously, anywhere near the lap time, but the lateral and it was just

easier to understand. Your comfort level in the car was good. You didn't feel like you were giving anything up. No, not really. No. I felt like I was more competitive when the track was wet than versus the dry track. Like when we ran, when the track would get dry, you guys were like elite, you know. And it was, you know, that would be, the delta would be a little larger.

Talking about the tires, getting them up to, you know, getting the heat in them and so forth. I don't remember Dad having really any moments. I wasn't always Uber paying attention to exactly what was going on with him. in the car, but I remember two things that happened to me during the race. I'm sure there was more, and it was fun because it was, so it was middle of the night, and I'd came in, changed tires, or I just got in the car, I don't know, but I went out on new tires, and we had a pit limiter, and gingerly kind of drive the car around to pit exit and go into the first

horseshoe there in the infield. And I got on the gas coming out of the horseshoe and spun into the grass and took down a couple of those billboards, a little white billboards. Breaking markers. Yes. And man, I'm spun around.

It's like two in the morning. Feels like it's pretty much. I'm not quite sure how much you guys are paying attention. I'm like, man, I wonder if we know. We were paying attention. I wonder if they know where I'm at. And I really don't know which way to go to get back onto the track. I'm like, I don't want to get course cutting or anything like that.

I'm like, I've done spun around like three or four, three-60s, and I just want to rejoin in the right place. But there's cars every, like I'm a good 50 yards from the racetrack at this point. Yeah. And there's a brake lights and headlights flying all around in the distance. And I'm like, I'm just not sure where to go. And I don't even remember rejoining the racetrack, but I got back going again and run some laps.

And then somewhere along the line, it felt like it might have been later that morning. There was, you know, with the weather, we had massive ruts in the bus stop. Yeah. And so right off line, there were like, you know, foot deep, 10, 12 inches deep, big ruts. And I dropped the tire on the bus stop and broke the shaft, the drive shaft. But we didn't know that. I came to pit road. Yeah.

And I was like, there's a problem with the drive line, come down pit road. And they're like, oh, whatever. What was that thing called back? The half shaft. The half shaft.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, oh, we got a broken half shaft. And I was like, oh. And,

I thought, I thought, they thought it was a transmission. No. And they replaced a transmission. And it ended up being the half shaft when you tried to leave. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It was. We would have won that race. They didn't look at the half shafts. You said something feels wrong. in the drive. They replaced the whole transmission. Oh, shit. They replaced a perfectly good transmission. I told you to go. And then Roscoe goes, it's the half shaft. They could have done,

we might have won that race through. I mean, nothing because of you. I know. Well, I felt like, I felt like, yeah. And sorry, Andy, but Andy dropped the tire and the stop like hours later and broke another half shaft. I don't remember that. I do. Well, then I did. Then I did. Then I did. He doesn't remember. I blocked those things. I blocked those things out of my mind. He's English. There's a reason we carried more than one. Yeah.

That were some massive holes in the bus stop. Huge, huge. Do you remember what happened to me? I got my fuel light coming out of the bus stop and the engineers, they go, you can go another lap. I go, you sure? And they're like, yeah. So I'm like, I'm a driver, not a thinker, right?

And I'm driving around. All of a sudden, I'm coming to the bus stop on the backside and it starts running out of gas, like running out of gas. And I'm like, I'm going out of gas. And I blew the bus stop. I went all the way around and it's raining. And I couldn't make it to pit lane. And I'm on the back with racing shoes pushing with my back against the wing trying to get it in. And I finally got it close enough to where the team could come out and get me and push me. I remember that. I remember that. And I remember that. And I remember that too. And I remember. He goes, man, you're out of breath. And I go, you know, it's a lot. Where did you have to push it?

Like probably 80, 100 yards? Oh, yeah. It's all on film. Yeah. And I get in there and he goes, how are you doing? I'm beat, man. And he goes, well, thank God you did that. And I go, thank God.

I'd go, all I could think about was if I was the guy that ran your race car out of gas, I'm not going to make it out of through the tunnel on this racetrack. And he goes, that's true. Oh, man. That's what he said. Yeah, that was crazy. Unreal. You know, we got down the end of that race, talking about tires.

And we were running at that point in time in the GT class. we were running one too. Yeah. We were approaching the ability to win that race overall, which is a very rare occurrence for a GT car to beat the prototype cars. Yes. But tires became, tire supply became an issue, all right?

And I don't remember that. We needed, we needed, we needed a set of tires that you guys had. They took them from us, Dale. Ah, yeah, yeah. And so I had to make a decision, okay. It was pretty clear. couple laps down at that point in time.

I mean, you weren't. We were second-y class, but a couple laps down. I mean, time-wise, I mean, it wasn't going to happen. Yeah, all right. But your dad was not willing to give up. And so I make the call and we get the tires. And nobody in the team was, I mean, they all got it except your dad. All right.

He come up to me. He says, what's going on with these tires? I said, well, I said, you're a couple laps down. I said, we're battling for the overall victory. thing. I said, you're going to be fine on the tire allotment that you have. Okay, you're just not going to have the super softs at the end. And I got a guard the position for the overall win. He looks like somebody goes, oh, well, that makes sense.

Okay. Yeah. He went right along with it. Yeah. But when he knew that tires were getting taken away, I mean, he wasn't giving up, even if he was a couple laps down and only had two hours to go. He was not willing to take second place. He was still, was there prototypes that year?

Yeah. Yeah, we had to wait for. I thought we finished first and fourth overall. I thought Ron won it overall. We did. Right. There was no prototypes. There were prototypes racing.

They all broke out? We had to wait for the Dyson. The Dyson was the last prototype running. We had to wait for him to break. Yeah. And he finally broke. Wow. Yeah.

I do remember hitting pit wall coming off of, y'all remember how tight. Oh, real tight. Yeah. I bounced the right front off of the guardrail once coming off pit road. God. That was the first time I got in the car. Yeah.

I mean, that was just leaving. Oh, my gosh. But that happens all the time. I know it, but it's just like. Jimmy Johnson rode off a car there in practice. You don't want to be the guy. No. No, no, no.

No, you don't want to be the guy. Especially when your dad's Dale Earnhardt and he's on the same team. Well, you got to remember, I didn't hit anything. Yeah. Yeah. Until I did. He loved, though, being teammates. Like I said, that's the only time he's ever been teammates with anybody.

It's probably the only time you've, other than Boris for a minute a second. Yeah. that have been teammates with anybody. So it's a part of history for sure. Yeah. Well, it's a different mental dynamic because you know there's other people depending on what you do.

And it's not just the crew guys you've got to come back and answer to. You're answering to your fellow drivers as well. You feel a sense of responsibility to them. Oh, 100%. And that's not something that in NASCAR, you don't feel. I mean, you're a guy.

Yeah. You're solo. I mean, it's me. I screw up. It's on me. Okay. You have to walk back there with your tail between your legs and you got two or three other guys

looking at you like, what you just do. Yeah. You know, nobody wants to be in that position. No, like you said, you don't want to be that guy. No, you don't want to be that guy. So we run the race. I will say, like, having no idea what to expect every second, you know, leading up to the race,

I was unsure about how the race would begin and what we were supposed to do, where was I I supposed to be, I'd never, you know, never been a co-driver. And, you know, we go through the process of the race. and I started understanding what my role is and what dad's role is and everybody's individual role, we get to the finish and we get to go to Victory Lane. You know, we finished second, I think second class, fourth overall. Yep.

And everybody seems happy. Our, you know, our teammate won overall. We felt like, you know, a couple things go this way or that. We win the race for sure. and but we get to stand in Victorline. I wouldn't realize, I wouldn't, I would not realize till all these years later, I ran the race again in 2004 and then did the race multiple times as a broadcaster, and obviously watched multiple versions of it at home,

I wouldn't understand until later in my life how lucky we were to have been able to sort of cap off the experience with the opportunity to take our photo in Victory Lane as only a few teams get to do at the end of that day. So that was pretty special. Yeah, especially for you. Yeah, very special. And, you know, when you were talking about at the beginning of the race,

the cars are perfect and everything, it's beautiful, and the suits are all clean and everything. I think it was your debt, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was your dad that wanted to make another run of cars, the dirty cars, the gold ones, the silver cars, the yellow cars, all dirty after the race. Yeah. Those became just as popular.

Yes. I don't know. Race versions. I don't know if you guys, I don't know who was privy to this. But remember at the end of the ceremony, we were just, there weren't many people left. But there was a trophy. But there was one trophy. One trophy.

You remember this? He calls over a guy who was one of the NASCAR people, one of the people that he knew. I don't know his name. Let's just say his name's Bill. He says, Bill, come over here. Said, yeah, hey, day, how are you doing? said, yeah, good. See this trophy?

He said, yeah, Dale. He said, one trophy. There's four drivers. He said, yeah, Dale, that's what we have. We have a trophy for one trophy for the team and all that. He says, Bill, there's four drivers and there's one trophy. And he said it again. And he says, well, he said, four drivers, one trophy.

And he wasn't being mean. He just, okay, Dale, we'll see what we can do again. We'll have some more trophies. Yeah, we all got trophies. Yeah, and we all got trophies. It was your dad doing that. I remember that. I was just watching it back and forth, like, the tennis match.

Yeah. And the guy did. Ah, yeah. There was never a request. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was priceless. It was priceless. I'll never forget it.

It was like, beautiful. Yeah, that showed up in the mail. Yeah, it did. It did. Yes, yes, it did. That's pretty cool. It was 100%. To your point about unique, it was so nice to get that, you know, which is not normal.

Yeah. I know that there was plans to do that again, to run that car, maybe to run it back the next year. I'm not sure. Had y'all had those conversations? Yeah. Yeah. Or he did too.

Absolutely. Well, you know, this was like a seed. I think your dad looked at it as a huge opportunity. Maybe even to race that year. Yes. Yes. Or in LaMont down the road. Down down the road

He would have a deep eye motorist. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I think he had in his mind an idea when he was going to get out of a race car. And I think it was relatively close in time frame as to what that was. And I think his total experience, all the testing,

all the racing, all the things we've talked about today, I think that kind of fortified his, was helping fortify his decision to get out of this, that there was a new chapter to be written in his racing book. and it was going to be with Corvette, and I know he spoke to me and he spoke to others about it, that his dream, he, quite frankly, said to me, I'm going to do one more year a cup.

He says, and Doug, and then we're going to go Lamont. Yeah. I'm getting me one of these. That was in my letter. It might be in his letter. Yeah. I'm getting one of these cars, and we're going to go do that 24 hours of Lamont. I said, Dale, I said, let's go do it.

I mean, it had that kind of impact on him, where he suddenly was going to be comfortable walking away from NASCAR because he had a whole new mountain to climb that I think he was totally invigorated with, totally inspired with. And I also knew he had the confidence that he could do it. Okay? There wasn't a question of, I mean, he knew he could do this. When we went back, yeah, when he went back on the Monday after Steve Chris told me this. He said, he called Steve. And he said, hey, trophy room. He said, let's start clearing out the trophy room. That's where we're going to do the Corvette program. Damn. That's what he said to Steve.

And State told me that a couple of times. And he referenced several times to, I guess him and AJ were buddies and how he used to talk, AJ used to talk to your dad about Lamar and in the Fords and all that stuff. And he really loved that. Yeah. He was like a little kid listening to AJ is what he said. Yeah, the enthusiasm for the whole thing was, it was almost like you were talking to a 20-year-old or something. Sometimes he was.

It was genuine. It was a closet dream. I mean, you could tell that suddenly the, the, the, the, the, clouds had parted and now this thing he had oftentimes thought about was right on the horizon. Didn't you do something one time without him being there? There was a little meeting or something like that happened down in pit lane. Remember and he wasn't included? Oh, oh, yeah.

Well, to your point, remember when you said he wanted to be part of everything? He made that implicitly clear to me on several occasions. I want to be treated like every other person on this team. He didn't want any special Biggie-E treatment. Yeah. And there was something going on that really totally innocuous. It didn't involve. There was no requirement for anybody to be there except the few people that were there.

Well, it was crew guys. I forget what we were talking about per die or something going on. Well, he found out about that we had had this meeting, and he wasn't there. And he was figuring chest. Fianne, I told you beginning of this thing. I wanted to be included. Sorry. I mean, you know, I wasn't going to make any excuse to tell them what was about.

Just that I'll be damn sure that, you know, doesn't happen again. But he was up in it. And when we first got to Sebring, too, when we first got to Sebring, we had, there was a big meeting. Everybody was around. And he said a few words and he said, you treat us, you and him, like everybody else. And that started it. And I think that also made people feel super comfortable. Do you remember us having dinner? It was Sebring Cafe. Do you remember that little diner that we walked into to have dinner? Now, it's packed because of Seabring. I mean, where are you going to go?

And this was a relatively new place. The guy had opened up, I had a restaurant in New York, and it was, you know, all homemade food and that kind of thing. And so Claudius says, where are we going to go? I said, I'm going to go see, bring diner. When we walk into that diner, and it's packed, and the place goes absolutely silent. It was one of those things where people are looking at each other like, are you just seeing what I saw? Yeah. Is that, is that Dale and Jr.?

And you could hear it. Then suddenly the murmuring was coming up. But no one came up at the table. No one bothers. No one. I mean, your dad was inspired by that. That we could go and have that and not have anybody bother them. But everybody in that restaurant knew who was sitting at that table.

It was a pretty cool experience. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else about the day that we're leaving out or the race itself or the experience before we move on? No, I mean, right after the race, we were up on the podium. And then everybody kind of – I had to go to C or down to – West Palm Beach to test some cars for Skip Barber.

And he comes running over and he goes, hey, when am I going to see you again? I go, I don't know, soon. You know, you've talked about plans and stuff. That was it. Yeah. When was the last time you talked to him, Andy? The very last time I talked to him, mate, was actually during the 500. Oh, yeah.

With the long yellow with Tony Stewart. And he said to me, because he'd invited me for the 500 to come. And so, yeah, I actually stayed on his boat the night before. the race. Yeah. And so it was like when you, when you, when you're towards the end of the race, said make sure you get back to the bus at the end because I'll be ready to go. He said that, you know, and there was an SUV there when I got back to the bus.

And there's an SUV there back at the bus. And there were, you know, two police officers there with motorcycles and that was it. But I walked back during that Tony Stewart yell, I walked back. And when I got back to the bus, Teresa was there. And she said when I got in the. door. She said he's been asking for you. And I said, oh. And so I didn't immediately think about it, but then it, that was there like three or four minutes. It was still under yellow. And he said, is Andy have his ears on yet? And I heard it on the radio. And she said, here, he wants to talk to you.

So I got on the radio and said, hey, Dale's Andy. He said, oh, yeah, I'm having fun. You having a good time? I said, yeah, yeah, I'm back at the bus. You know, everything's good. And he said, all right. He said, so anyway, you know, you got any advice for me here? That's what he said. Can you imagine a road race? He got any advice for me? And I laughed just like you did, just then. I kind of laughed at.

No, Dale. I mean, to me, watching the race, as I tried to, with my inexperienced eye, it looked to me like he had a 15th, 20th place car, and he just kept working his way back up to the front. So I said, Dale, just keep doing what you've been doing, man. You're doing great. You're doing awesome. I'm like, what the heck else can I say to the guy?

I didn't know that. That's wild. And that was it. And then it went. It might have been the last person. Well, and there was an overall. call on the radio that said green this time. And then I was like, okay, you know, see you later.

Damn. Crazy. Yeah. You never told me that. Yeah, we didn't speak too much after that. You know, those are things, honestly, I mean, there was a lot of stuff. These letters, I kept them for 20 years before I actually started bringing them up at enthusiast for people that would appreciate them.

Yeah. Yeah, I think they, you're the same way. Oh, yeah. It was the same way. It was, I think it was just out of respect for everything. When people come in my house, you may read that letter, they're like, oh my God. Yeah. Like, that's Dale and I'm like, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Four emails. Yeah. Before email. It looks like an email. Well, there was email. There was email, you know.

And I only bring that up because after the race, I got hundreds of emails. And some of them are looking at them were, were you the Andy? that Dale was talking to under the full course yellow before I'm back to green. But there were like four or five at that time. And I still got them. Actually, I printed them off because they just wanted to keep them. Damn.

But it was, it was, well, the emotional reaction, man, it was, it was, it was,

people really, really killed. And Andy called me from the coach. Yeah. And you guys all knew. Yeah. Way before anybody else. Yeah.

And I'm just sitting there. We're having some beers and we're all excited. And I just, my girlfriend at the time, I just turned white. It was so surreal at the time. I mean, obviously, you should die, mate. Sure. Yeah. I'd gone down to Atlanta to be with Panos.

I don't know if you ever met Don Panos. He's got Owens Road, Atlanta, and a bunch of other stuff, kind of a crazy guy. These guys know them. Yeah. And I was golfing. And I had radio with me. and I'm listening to the race. And the end of the race was pretty exciting.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm trying to pay attention to what I'm doing. Of course, the guys I'm playing where they're pissed off because they're not race fans. And so I put the radio down and finished up and I walked in into the pro shop. Okay. And of course, the guys there are all NASCAR fans and they're all looking at the TV. All right.

Race was over. And I look up and now the full screen is a picture of your dad. And it was one of those pictures that wasn't a race winner picture. Sure. It was one of those remembrance pictures. And I'm looking at that, and I'm looking around, and the place is just absolutely silent. And everybody just glued to the TV. And I said to the assistant pro guy at the corner, I said, what's going on?

He said, Dale was just killing a racquetado. I said, no way. The race was just coming down. The race was over. Yeah. Yeah. I can just remember, I'll never forget, just looking up at that TV and seeing that, I get emotional about it, but seeing that full fame, I mean, it was for everybody else.

It was just unbelievable. Yeah. It was just, I couldn't, I couldn't accept it. Yeah. That's interesting. Go ahead. Yeah, no, it's just some of the, some of the, the respect for the man. Yeah.

There was, you know, the racer, in some ways people either loved or hated him, right? When they were doing the introduction to Daytona, the biggest roar was for you that. I mean, it was. I was listening to all the introductions when I was sitting now. It was like, it was the biggest roar. You could hear some booze because people didn't like him. But, man, the respect was there. And the emails that I got.

And there's one example that when I went back to Daytona 2002, I was running a corvette, not the factory corvette. It was a different corvette. I was running there. And we were on practice. And I'd come back from lunch. And I came in, the car. And the guy said, hey, there's a gentleman there. waiting for you. And I said, okay. And it was an older gentleman. And he was in his probably 80 something

years old, older gentleman. And I went up to, sir, have you been waiting for me? And he said, yeah, he said, are you Andy Pilgrim? And he said, he said, I said, yes, I'm Andy Pilgrim. And he said, son, can I shake your hand? And I said, yes, you can shake my hand. Of course. And he said, son, he said, he said, Dale Earnhardt. He said, he thought a lot about you. And he said, Dale Earnhardt was like a son to me. And he said, I just wanted to come here and shake your hand because, you know, what happened. And I was like, I was just choked. And I said, sir, would you like a drink? Would you like?

He'd driven there from Alabama, Southern Alabama, to come there. And I said, would you stay in for the race or anything? And he said, no, son. He said, I'm going to go home. He just wanted to come and shake your hand. Because he said, I think a day I learned out thought a lot about you. And he wandered off. man. He wandered off. And it was like that, that stuck with me forever as it would. It was incredible.

It was incredible. I remember seeing him on TV. On TV, he was doing an interview. And the interviewer said, Dale, is it bothered when you're up there on driver introductions? That whole crowd is booing you and hissing and it. He said, son, he said, the only time it bothers me is when they're not making any noise at all. That makes sense. That makes sense. Totally. You know, when you're not evoking any emotion, you're not doing a job. Absolutely. I don't care what the emotion is. I just thought of a really funny story.

So I remember I had to go down to West Palm Beach after the race. And the only rental car I could get that whole week was a convertible green Mustang. Right. So I'm now coming from West Palm back to Sebring to test some open wheel cars. And it's like 7.15 in the morning. I've got to be the track pretty quick. And sure enough, in the middle of nowhere, just about five miles out of C-brain, motorcycle cop, pulls me over.

I look at my mirror. He comes just like a movie walking up in those tall boots like this. He goes, you know how fast you're going? I go, yeah, I know. I've got to get to the race track. He goes, oh, yeah, you've got to get to the racetrack. I'm sure you do. And then he goes, you've been drinking?

I go, no. And he goes, well, there's a bottle of champagne in the back seat. Oh. And I go, it's empty. and he goes, can I see your driver's license? He goes, California, huh? Like that, I'm getting a shakedown. He goes, Kelly Collins.

He goes, you know, there's a guy driving with Dale Earnhardt, senior, and junior at Daytona last weekend named Kelly Collins. I go, you got me? He goes, what? I go, you got me? Champagne bottle. And he goes, you're that, Kelly Collins? I go, yeah. He goes, you were driving with Dale Senior Jr.

And he starts stomping in the dirt like this and all this stuff. And I said, that's the podium box. model. And I gave it to him. Yeah. And then do you remember the next year at Sebring? Like all the cop cars came up? Oh yeah. And they all hop out and deal. Doug looks right at me. He goes, what have you done, Kelly? Of all the people he could have said that to. Wow. And in Watts, his name's Ivan. And he walks in and he, and he, and anyways, he's telling his buddies. He's telling all his buddies. He did this to come rile me up. Right there at Sebring with like six cop cars. So he invites me over to his house for beers. And we have

corvettes to drive and I go over there and I have a beer with him and his whole family at his house, a little teeny house, and on the mantle of the fireplace is the bottle. Oh, that's badass. Wow. That's cool. Yep. Those are just great stories. Yeah. Yeah. Priceless. I mean, it's just priceless. Lutter be so much respect. You know, you talk about being later in life. Obviously, I'm later in life than most of you guys. You do begin to have just a whole new appreciation for where you've been and what you've done. You know, we're talking briefly about when we flew out to the aircraft carrier. Yeah.

I mean, we've had experiences that outside of racing. All of us here. But as a family, all right, as a group, that no other teams have ever experienced anything like we have, I don't think. I mean, I'm not running anything like we did. And it was all part of what we were building at Corvette Racing, more than just racing cars, just a whole lot more than racing cars. and that we're still here today. This is what? I mean, almost 25 years ago,

and we're still with each other, I mean, not a lot, but we're still in communication with each other all the time. Yeah. All the time. I remember when me and dad drove the car, and then the following years, the perception of the Corvette team was kind of like a fraternity. and to get invited to be a part of that was a massive accomplishment for any,

especially for drivers. Yes. Like if you got called to be part of the Corvette team, that was quite the announcement. And so, yeah, I understand, I mean, at least from my perspective, I was part of the team, but it was fun to be on both sides of it. to under because I don't know you guys were like superstars in in your world and the Corvette program was the elite program in in that series and it continued to be so after you know years later the um there was a plan not only obviously to race the car more but also dad and I both had agreed to have production models of the car made

there would be a group in Michigan that would build production model corvettes, and they were, you know, the race car itself was 8 inches wider than a standard production Corvette, and they built this street version of this car, and it is identical. Same front splitter and everything. I mean, it looks, and I remember when we, when we, We were talking about what we were going to do when we got these cars. And dad was like, I was like, I'm going to decal my car just like the race car. And he's like, I'm not.

And I was like, why? Why not? It's why this car is being built. And y'all are going to give us the wings off of the cars that ran LaMalle that year. And they ended up running one, two in LaMont. And so he gets the, I think y'all, yeah, won LaMalle, right, hon. And so he gets the car that has the winning wing. and he gets the winning wing to put on his car

and and I was this is all agreed to before the Daytona race and so he passes away in in Daytona these cars still get built and you guys go and race Lamont the wings are put on the cars he did not want his wing

cleaned and so his wing still has the debris and dirt from Lamont It's a brand new, never been driven as far as I know, yellow Corvette that no one can ever buy on the production's floor. And it's got that nasty old Lamont wing on the back. I have mine, and it's decal. I've actually had to go back and re-decal it since 2001. So you still have it.

Oh, yeah. So my decals got old, and I had to re-decal the whole damn thing. and my wing is clean. I repainted my wing and my car looks just like the one we race. Sure. I actually drove it around town a little bit. Had to put another splitter on the front. But it's low.

It's on the ground. It's low. But I, you know, that was one of the cool things that came after the race. Considering how we lost dad being able to get that car and he has, you know, his car, and I have my version, was a very proud thing for me. Another thing that we got to do, Andy was race together in Canada. Oh, yeah, sure. Yes, of course.

Nationwide, 2007. Canada and Watkins Glen. Yeah. So there was a, I think maybe all of y'all, I know Ron. Well, he had told him that he was going to put him in those. And he wanted me to come drive truck. Right. He said your personality.

Do you remember that? Yeah. And I go, I don't know. That's a lot of weekends. I'm thinking that's a lot of weekends away from the river and surfing. And he goes, yeah, but you'll make a lot of money and I'll teach you all this stuff and they're going to love you. Yeah. And that was kind of because they were going to start up the truck team or whatever.

Do you remember that? I do. Yeah. And that all just ended too. Yeah. It did. We invited you back, though. Yes, I did get to come back.

Yes, you did. Yeah. Which turned out to be. It was a day. You did set a record. What was the record? The film of that was the most widely and frequently watched. film in Sports Center history.

The fire? Yeah. Well, let's talk about it. So, first off, I do remember dad saying that he wanted you, wanted to run the inter race. And we stayed in contact about that and finally got that opportunity. Yep. And, I mean, this close to winning Montreal. I know.

So close. This close. Oh, so close. So close. So close. So close. somebody up front and you're driving by and just just caught him and cut the tire. But if you clear that, you're going.

Yeah, absolutely. First ever national wide race, it would have been awesome. It would have been awesome. It still was awesome. It was awesome. It was awesome. It was great. I was so happy.

Thank you for that. That's a tough track. Yeah, yeah. That was great. It was great. I was so. You were on the phone when I finished got out of the race. Steve said he's on the phone.

You were so excited. Well, listen, so, you know, it was always really difficult to be in dad's shadow, and it was difficult to try to, like, live up to certain aspects of his existence. But there's these rare moments, right, where I knew I could do something that he would be happy about. It was no question that, like, man, we're going to run Andy, and dad would love this, you know, fulfilling this sort of prophecy, if you will. It's something he would have done. He would have done it.

No question. You would have ran a truck. He would have convinced you, and that would have absolutely happened. Oh, I was convinced. He was convinced. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And a lot of great things came out of that partnership,

not only the friendship that we all developed driving together, but I got to become closer to Ron. I'd raced against Ron before, and that experience, I think, allowed us to, and we would, I would lean on him. for that next trip when we went to C. When we went to Cey, or somewhere to test, I forget. We tested somewhere. I don't remember.

I don't, I do not. Yeah, I remember flying somewhere out west or somewhere far away, maybe up Midwest somewhere, and testing all day long with Ron. And man, he pushed me and pushed me. And I think I got within three-tenths of his lap time, and I was so happy. And it was- Maybe, Gingerman, maybe. Yes, it was.

That sounds exactly right. Are you there, maybe? No, it's possible. It's a place where it's on the west side of the state. It's a little private track. Yeah, that's what they test sometimes. Yeah, a little shorter road course, but it's so much fun. Yeah.

And we worked hard all day long to try to get competitive. And I was, they were like, you know, y'all were like, hey, you know, who do you want to run with you? And I was like, do you know Boris said is? And you're like, yeah, for sure. And Boris was over the moon. He couldn't believe it. Well, he had, Boris had been on. me for a long time to become a factory drive.

My boss was not a Boris fan. Boris and I, obviously, I mean, I've been around long time. I know Boris for a long time. And very accomplished road racer. I mean, totally qualified to be in the car. And so I had made a concerted effort over the years to try and get him in at least a third driver, which was a good place to start. Because I knew he had potential, and he definitely wanted to be part of what we did.

And we were friends. So, you know, that makes it a whole lot easier. So this was back to your point. Yeah, you had Boris in here. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I'm so, I so, I felt probably the only bad, there was a lot of bad parts about crashing the car.

So we had this little, kind of a little hot, hot lap, warm up session before the race, and I wrecked the car and under pace laps. And so my regret really is that Boris didn't get to. He never, he never got into the car. No, Boris did not get to show, like he, like, to your point, he wanted to drive that Corvette so bad. Sadly. Yeah. He doesn't fail to bring that up to me. I never did get to drive.

No, he didn't. But, man, what a couple of days that was. That race car was a brand new race car. And you guys had it for me and Oliver to drive at Miami. Brand new car. And in morning warm up, they told me to change your line over this bump. And it bounced me into the inside wall in fourth gear and into the outside wall, knocked a 10,000 pound

K-while my foot was dragging on the ground and the whole front end off that car never took the green flag well wait I ended up driving it huh I ended up driving with Ron that race I ended up driving that race yeah no I thought it's that Miami hold on hold on oh not that

another car the backup car this is at the end into my my run with Corvette yeah yeah yeah yeah and then it sat Pratt Miller yeah and they put a whole front clip on it and it the next person and it didn't take a green flag either

so if it makes you feel any better, I think that car's jinxed. Well, it's a melted puddle right now. Because it was hot. Yeah, yeah, I remember. It has an owner. Yeah.

I've seen pictures of it. Does it really? Oh, it's passed hands a couple of times. Just the way it is? No. A banker from Ohio bought it with approval. We checked to make sure it be okay.

And he put him back into the 2003 livery. Remember the cars were blue at LaMont in 2003? Oh, no, I've seen the car at the Corvette thing up in Laguna. He bought both the cars. Yeah. And he took him back to that. And then this was back in 2007, 2008.

And then banking, I mean, the whole world was up. The United States was upside down financially in those times. And he had tough times. And he ended up selling the car. And the car's now back to the race livery. Another owner has it. I see it. It shows everywhere.

I have the nose from the Sonoma wreck in my shop. Our race car from the 24 hours is currently at the National Corvette Museum for a year. Our race car is there, yeah. It's currently on display for a year. It's just got there about a month ago. Yeah, with my insert, with my insert, Lance Miller Owens. It's there with the insert that you chop the top off because your shoulders are wider than mine. You remember?

That's so funny, yeah. I remember for the next, at least the next year, maybe more, you ran the stripes on the left front fender. Yes. Yes, we did. Yes. Whose idea was that? Well, again, it comes down to Claudio. His creative mind is just, I don't know, half of what he had would get you in prison if you ever did it.

The other half was absolutely genius. and throughout the whole racing program, he came up with stuff at LaMont. He was aircraft carriers. That was Gary. That was Gary. Yeah, that was Gary. Yeah.

When we went to Lamal with a cowboy hats and the race. But we all took the picture on our car with the stripes on the fender. Yeah. So he would come up. He would come up with those things. And the impact, you can't put in towards the impact. had on the entire team. Because in the only way, even though you were the right front tire changer

or you were the guy who worked on the gearboxes, you were working with Dale and Dale Jr. You were at that race. You know, that race had a huge impact on NASCAR. You guys probably don't remember this. But on that live broadcast, they would run a crawler across the bottom of the TV screen where people could call in and leave comments.

And they would report the way. comments in that crawler. They never had that before. Only when you got, just because you guys were there racing. And it was stuff like, man, I'm a huge NASCAR fan, but this road racing stuff looks pretty cool. 90% of them were all about how 24 hours of Daytona was the coolest race they had ever seen. Well, there was no grand damn series at that point in time. NASCAR saw all that and wreck it because there was pushback of your dad wanting to run with that sanction. anybody. That was not, that didn't come free. Right. After that, the NASCAR

lines got together and said, we got to look at this road racing thing. And that was really the beginning and the birth of the grand, of the Instagram. Because of the impact that you guys had on the NASCAR fans. Dave, we'd never seen the number of people. We talk about the pre-race walk around. We'd never seen that many people in a stand across

from the start and finish. No. It was because you guys were there? No. I mean, seriously, it was a massive amount. We, massive amount of people. Huge, huge impact. Yeah. That doesn't, it kind of gets lost in the, yeah.

Yes. Within the whole story. But it was, it was, it was, it was game changing for IMSA. Yeah. And then you looked in the following years, now it's standard practice for NASCAR guys. Sure enough. To want to do it. Yes.

But somebody, somebody had to really be first to make the big mark. I'm not sure there wasn't. the NASCAR guy that maybe had been there. They weren't NASCAR before, but... But never made a mark. Not, not... This made a mark. They always...

Yeah. Different. With you guys, with you guys there, it changed the whole dynamic of, of MSA. Yeah. Because you bought a different demographic age-wise. You did, and your dad had his fan base, but you were a huge in a different demo. And I think it was like, ah, you know, lights went on with people that need to think about it. The things that attract you, because gaming was just...

becoming a big deal. You know, he said the time you spent playing video games, because it was all relatively new at that point in time. And the technology that was in these cars was not unlike gaming technology. Yeah. All right? I mean, one fed off the other. I mean, the amount of data that we supplied to the gaming people, we couldn't give them

everything. But if they had been so sophisticated that, I mean, you'd be giving away your competitive advantage. That's how good it was. Look at the eye racing stuff. Yeah. It's crazy. It all came from that.

I think so I've, I racing launched live in 2008. This was probably, I remember standing. I remember where I was on the phone. I don't know if I called you, but I called somebody at Pratt Miller and Chevrolet about the Corvette. To get the data. Get the data. Yeah. To get the Corvette.

Exactly. Yeah, so like to go. So I was, I was calling them. Well, it wasn't, because you knew the guy. Yeah. You knew the guy. I was like, hey, I racing, this is what I racing is. This is like 2009.

Nobody knew what none of that was. I was like, eye racing is good. You want to be here. They want to put the Corvette in. They just need to be able to scan the car and get a little bit of information to make it drive somewhat, you know, like it really does. And I can tell you, because that was an uphill push. Yes, it was.

For me. Everybody was like, what? I'm not. Yeah. Information. But your endorsement of that. Yeah. All right.

And then having to sell it a little bit, understanding how important this was to our business. Yeah. All right. I mean, if you can get kids racing Corvettes in the eye game, that becomes an aspirational vehicle to them. That's right. I mean, we're selling cars, guys. That's the only reason we're here. That's the final distillation of what we do.

Your endorsement of that is what made that happen. I was standing in my living room on the phone thinking they probably think I'm crazy. Like this is the, like, why are you wasting, why are you bothering us with this silly game? What is this? We're not doing video. Video games. No. Well, that was the, that was the pushback.

But we managed to, we broke through that. Yeah. Your endorsement made that happen. Well, you know, Dale, I just thought of something along those lines. When we first all got together, I think we were having dinner and you said to us, like, what do you like to do? And you asked me when I like, I like to surf and go to the river and all that kind of stuff. And you're like, that's kind of cool.

And I go, what do you like to do? And he goes, you go, I like to drive RC cars. And I go, what? Like, next thing I know, because of you, I started racing. Oh, Jesus. RC cars, yeah, one-tenth scale, buggies. Yeah. Associated in that I went to Losey.

Oh, wow. And it would race every Wednesday night for like three years. Wow. It got pretty good, not as good as the pros. Right. But, man, it's fun. It is. It was fun.

It was fun. It was fun. You did that. You started having to cause at the race track. It's like being it. So he brings us. I remember that. I bring him to the racetrack. Yeah. That's all because of you. That's funny. Yeah. I got really into it. And finally I'm like, you had spent it too much time. Rebuilding shocks, diffs, tires. Everywhere. You're like, God. And it's not cheap.

I was going to say you have a real vehicle for what it costs to do those. Well, it was like a little mini race team and I'm the driver, engineer, the mechanic, the mechanic, everything. The mechanic, everything. Transporter, driver. That's funny. Hey, it's Dale Jr. Did you know that we've got. brand new merch from our Star Stripes and Bears Collection available now. We've got tanks, teas, beach towels, and more just in time for summer. Check it all out at shop.dirtymo Media.com. I want to see where you guys have been since.

We'll start with you, Andy. I know a couple things. You got heavily into highway safety. Yes. You got very passionate about that. Yes. And you went on to win the 24 hours, maybe a year or two. 2004, remember you were there?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, what are you up to these days? These days still doing traffic safety. And I've been helping, I still do some stuff with the National Corvette Museum and the racetrack over there. Then link to the Corvette program. Recently a ported board member.

Yeah, that happened too. Yeah, that did happen to. Congratulations, by the way. I haven't had a chance to talk you about. No, thanks. That's true. Doug mentioned that part. That is just happened. Also, the traffic safety stuff is, you help me with that. Remember that video? The first traffic safety video I made, I asked you if you might help in 2005 and you did. Teachers are still using that video. Because the things we brought up were paying attention, the distracted driving thing, which at that time wasn't a big deal. So there's that. Even more important today, I imagine. Oh, my goodness. Yes, huge, huge. Absolutely. The other things, of course, racing. Racing continued up till with GM to 2018, believe it or not.

And then I went into some SRO stuff and ended up with a friend of mine, Anthony, Tony Bartone, the drag racer. His son is Anthony Bartone. And since 2021, the halfway through, the kid came to the motorsports park. And I did a little bit of stuff with him. I actually told his dad. I actually told his dad So his dad says I'm sending the kit

He's New Yorker right He says I'm sending a kit to see you Tell me Tell me if there's any good He said okay Two days of the racetrack I told Tony And I said yeah

So actually Tony He's got some natural talent And he's like I knew it I knew it That's my jeans That's my jeans like this And I'm like

So Tony What if I told you That he didn't have any talent It would have been His mother's fault True story So I've been Since that time

I've been with Anthony helping Anthony get started. I was racing with him in 22 and 23, Gt4 and then Gt3. So still doing the racing stuff, still doing the traffic safety stuff. You're still driving? And enjoying that stuff. Yeah. And I pulled myself out of the car to be, so we've got some really current pro Mercedes drivers with him. He's with a Mercedes team.

And I'm traveling all over the world with this kid. All over the world. You're leaving here. From today, I go to the next three weeks. It's going to be Italy, Germany, France. Damn. It's crazy. So I'm still extremely busy, mate.

Yeah. Thanks for asking. Since then, I finished off that year, went to drive for BMW for two years, and then GM rehired me back to drive the factory Pontiacs for five more years. Andy and I raced with Paul Edwards. Many times, we almost won that a couple times. Yeah, yeah, almost. Speed limiter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. with Jan Magnus and everything like that. Yep. And then I started, that ended, and I would race Porsches for guys. And then I started doing pro coaching for like nine years. I had a couple guys that I did and flew around with them and their jets for a long time. We had a really good time. And then I would do movie stunts.

I've been sagged for the longest. Most recent movie I did was Ford versus Ferrari. Yes. I won the Taurus Award for that, which is like the Oscar Award for Best Work with a Vehicle. And then I just do a little bit now and then. out in Lake Havasu. I'm retired, and I just have fun. Damn, that's it.

It was a great career. Yes, sir. Great career. No more driving. Nope. Last time you ran a competitive race? 2013. Damn, that's a long time.

Yeah, but I'm off-roading all the time. I know. You seem like the kind of guy who could break from it pretty easily when you were ready. I did. I did. And people asked me that. And I'm just like, don't think I don't miss a good race car like you were talking about. When it's on.

but knowing when to step away, not dragging around. I drove cars for Skip Barber for the race series for 11 years, all that get 30 cars every weekend ready to go, in and out. I wanted to be the guy that left and not straggling around the pits. Sure. Have a good resume, a good career, move on, be happy with what I did, and now I'm off to another venture. What have you been up to, Doug?

Well, I hung around. until 2020 pandemic as program manager for Covert Racing and, you know, enjoyed every minute of that. Pandemic kind of really changed the whole dynamic of Coivet Racing. We had to miss LaMalle because we couldn't get our stuff overseas. Yep. You know, we had been there for 20 consecutive years. That was heartbreaking.

We had a management change at the top, and that resulted in my, dismissal from the company. That lasted about two months. And then thanks to the fan base, they were not pleased that I wasn't going to be at races anymore. And so GM got back with me and said, would you consider taking on another role? And racing's a bad drug, as we all know. So I did. So since 2020, I worked as a brand ambassador.

So I do some things at the racetrack, Corvette Corral's. speaking at those events. I do stuff for our sponsors for both Michelin and for Mobile One, you know, do sales meetings and sort of things on that level. I'm kind of having all the fun stuff that I did anyway. I'm just not in a management role any longer. And that's okay. I mean, I miss it's hard for me to go to the races and watch what's going on and not be

able to have input, you know, but it's like having a kid. they leave home and they're on their own and you kind of got to let them be on their own and that's and that's where we are right now but but I have enough I'm still having enough interaction with them that I'm still enjoying it I'm still having a great time with it it gives me a lot more time to do golf is my is my hobby oh and that requires a lot of time it does and you got to be good at it my wife is I wouldn't I wouldn't go that far but you know you always work to get better My wife is very active in the golf industry. She's on the board of directors of American Junior Golf Association, past president.

So she knows everybody in the golf industry. And when you are shameless and have very little pride, I can coattel that to play the best places in the world with some of the greatest golf guys on TV. And she knows all the kids you see playing on TV right now, she has known since they've been 12 years old. So those relationships are fun to be around. And so the spare time I do have, I'm enjoying doing that. Let's talk briefly about the Corvette program.

So you talked about how the pandemic had changed it a little bit. Some rules as well within the series changed the direction of the program. And the Corvette program, as I knew it, doesn't exist today. So, you know, what is the state of Corvette? racing and how has that changed? Well, you know, depending on what lens you want to look through. Right. All right.

From a pure business perspective, as I said previously, our goal is to sell cars. You know, for the first time in history, we're building right-hand drive corvettes. So people in Japan and Australia are always, you know, aspirational vehicle, as I said, now they have vehicles that they can buy their legal to drive on their road. Corvette racing, I'm going to say this right up front hand, and I'm going to do it shamelessly. and it was responsible for making Corvette truly become a global brand. Agreed. By our participation and our success that we enjoyed at all.

We gained the respect of everybody on the planet. Every manufacturer, every race fan, learn to respect Corvette for what we had accomplished. And that's one of, that was our ultimate goal. I mean, that was why we race. It's way more than a checkered flag and a trophy. And I think we exemplified that. You know, we now have independent teams racing. Yep.

Okay. And that's a La Maugh. That's a La Maugh outcome. In order to race at La Maugh now, there are no pro teams allowed at La Maugh anymore. All right. So that's a huge change for us. They change. All right.

But only amateur teams. And you have to build, if you're going to compete at La Maugh, you can compete at IMSA. But if you want to compete at LaMau, you have to build like 25 race cars. and sell those race cars to competitors. Damn. That's the rule. That's the box that has to be checked. That's exactly right.

And so when you talk about change, that's a huge change. So now at Pratt Miller, I mean, I think we're just now on, well, we might be building actually more than 25. We were on chassis 25 and 26. We're just getting done. So that's been almost three years of constant car building. So that's kept them very, very busy. And those cars are out there winning races. as independent teams, which, again, takes the brand forward.

That's a huge change that we didn't have pre-pandemic. That was, again, post-pandemic. So, you know, Pratt and Miller got sold during that same time frame, exact same time frame to a company, Wisconsin, Ashkosh, not the kids' clothing line, right? But they make cement mixers and fire trucks. All the Jordan flatbed, that's an Ashkosh company. They're a global company, very diverse in what they build.

And they have a huge defense division. And how they came about was that they were using Pratt. Pratt Miller was doing their defense work. They were hiring Pratt Miller to do the defense work. And it just got to the point where they said, why don't we just buy the company? I mean, we're tired of writing them a check. We might as well just own them. And they did.

So that has changed. All right, because now Gary Pratt's not there. Jim Miller's not there. So that's a whole dynamic shift. But the fan base is still there. And with little things that appear, we still have, you know, the team stayed intact. All right. A lot of new young guys.

The team's intact. Yes. Where is the team? The team is in New Hudson, Michigan. Same place, same building, same ammo. You know, this is a physical sport when you get over the wall. In the old days, the guys who built the cars were actually the guys who race the cars. I mean, same guys that were screwing the cars together were changing the tires in the pit stops.

All right. Well, and as competition levels rise, that dynamic changes. And those guys get older. I mean, you get to be 45, 50 years old. Slinging a tire over the wall is not that you don't want to do it or that you can't do it. It's just that a guy who's 22 years old is going to be able to do a little bit faster. Yeah. And that becomes critical.

So there's been a huge influx of young guys. and the beauty getting back to what we created. You said it so well, Corvette being the premier. I mean, we're the best sports car team in the world, in the history of the world. When you look at same brand, same mark, same team, nobody has come close to doing that.

It became a preferred place to work. So, you know, we had way more applications than we had job positions. And so you get the cream of the crop that come aboard. So watching these new young guys come in because we have way more young guys now that we ever did before. is very gratifying.

You know, for me personally, winning always is important. All right. Winning is one of the primary objectives of what you do. But from a personal perspective, after you have that down, and I'm not saying these victories aren't important, and they're not emotional, they are. But as a person, as you develop, as I developed anyway, racing was always important, but watching the people progress

became more important to me. I became way more of a people person. I always thought I was up the people person, but I came way more involved. I mean, when you think about in my career personally, you know, Danny Binks, all right? Danny started for me in 1988 at Cars and Concepts on the program. He wasn't even married at that point in time. How we ended up, his son was working Ganassi doing the Ford GT, okay? They were in business together now, but watch that happen.

I had Wayne Taylor in 1996 as my driver when we won the MSAWC Championship. And then had Jordan and Ricky both driving for me, you know, on the Corvette program. You watch all that develop and how everybody has worked to change those people's lives. That is what has become really important to me. And the people that stay in contact, people, these guys, they stay in contact with me. Crew members stay in contact. Other drivers stay in contact. My phone rings all the time with people asking questions, looking for a virus.

I'm doing this. What do you think? Can you help? I mean, we've created a relationship there that has just has been so rewarding. Yeah. As rewarding as any trophy. Yeah. Well, it's pretty remarkable.

And the Corvette brand definitely has, you know, definitely become so appreciated across the world and especially in the United States because of its performance on the racetrack. And I know you take a ton of pride in that and you're involvement in that. And you should, and you're right about everything you said. You know, it was a, for me personally, especially after getting to know the team, as I did, driving the car in 01 and 2004, you were the home team. Every time you went overseas or anywhere else, the entire country almost banded together to cheer the corvettes on to victory. And you always gave the, you know, the corvette team was always always.

in contention, which was always fun. Yeah, and we had it, like I said, I brought up Gary Claudio a couple of times, but you got to meet him, and just a remarkable individual and was largely responsible for the, I mean, we could have another whole show about LaMont, and we probably should, okay,

because that's a whole other genre, a whole other story about what made Corvette great. Yeah. And he played such a key role in doing that, and we had so much fun doing it. Did we not? Yeah, it was fun. It was a lot of pressure.

You talk about like Daytona and stuff like that. Yeah. That kind of came second nature because I was already racing that kind of stuff. But when you go there, your start times different, getting to the track. Yeah. The food, the times, the hotel. The hotel. Yeah, the way you pull into the pits, you know, where they have a rope and they pull everybody out of the way.

Yeah. There's no pit wall. And the amount of pressure, you know, if you forget to go into pit lane, you're done. Because you're not going to make it. at eight and a half miles around. So there was a lot of pressure. Like I think what you felt, that I, I, I raced there four times,

and I still felt pressure at the end. Because at the time, you're racing for the largest company in the world, representing. And I'm just some little rug rat from Newport Beach, California, driving their race car. So it was a lot of pressure.

Yeah. That's as I say, it's worthy of a show. I never have been, I've never have been to LaMalle. I've always wanted to go and, no, intense. Yeah. Even like in the last several years, there were some opportunities to join Corvad and go along. I think Ron asked me that Ron was going to take care of me and get me over there a couple times,

but we just never could make it work. Yeah. It's a – and just a quick story. I mean, when Herb hired me, our dream was to get to LaMalle. And that was not something GM was ever going to support. I mean, they just – you have to understand the corporate world. It's not just General Motors. It's all big corporations.

but we knew that the regime was not in place that was going to support us. And when a Corvette came along with the new car, you know, the C5, we saw that as an opportunity to strike. Yeah. All right. And so as that's progressing, Herba is saying, you've got to get over there and check this race out. I said, Herb, I said, I've been racing since I've been three. I've been to every race track in America. I said, I'm not good.

It's just going to be another race track. I had never been overseas. I wasn't excited about going overseas. He's just by myself, you know, speaking a different language. I mean, pretty intimately. So I was figuring every excuse on the planet. Well, we had that argument for about six months. And finally, he won.

It looks like we're going to go. You got to get your ass over there. Okay, fine. So I get over there and I find my way through the airport and on the train. And everything's a challenge. I completely, I'd never been in a country where they didn't speak English. All right. Not by myself.

I mean, it was a struggle. But I got there. I had a little help along the way. I can remember driving a car coming down the hill as you're coming from the hotel, and you make a right-hand turn down this hill, and on the left-hand side is the entrance to LaMalle. And it's three giant orange-red spires, which is like logo.

I mean, that's what LaMau is. And I thought to myself, holy shi, I'm at LaMau. I pulled in there and parked and saw what was in that paddock, And I went from Mr. Know-It-all to how the hell are we ever going to do this. When you see what has to be done, and you guys know, what has to be, what's constructed there on a temporary basis for one race, building after, building after building, six, seven, eight stories high. They're just for one race. And everything is different.

The learning curve was huge when we first got over there. I mean, it was overwhelming. And it made us better. Ron and Johnny and Andy and me and Frank, we were all in a minivan, pouring rain, crawling all over each other, stuck in there. We were doing laps on the Mulsan and, you know, the chicanes are blocked off. And we're looking at everything we can for, they made us sit over there for like five or six days, just driving around the track and taking everything in so that the experience wasn't going to be like what he experienced.

Because that's just too overrun. It's public. It's public roads. that but half of it isn't obviously but part of it was and you'd just drive around it late yeah it's crazy it's crazy we got we we we've raced there before with Porsche back in 96 97 so I was kind of there helping a little bit because I knew you and Frank were our helpers yeah yeah exactly yeah we got to have a show and and and it will inspire you it's a bucket list in 2011 National Geographic magazine the number one automotive magazine in the world

national geographic said the 24 hours of Lamar was the greatest sporting event in the world. Yeah. It is just, it is so different in its implementation and presentation than anything we have here, and that's Daytona and Indy included, which are great spectacles. There's no question. For sure. But Lamas, it's worthy of a show.

I need to get there. Well, man, I appreciate y'all coming through. Man, this has been a lot of fun. Yeah. It's good to see. Very much, man. This came about in March. I was down at the 12 hour, and I go up to sit and hang with, because I'm coaching a guy,

And we'd go, boy, it'd be really neat to get on Dale's show this many years later. Your fans might really like to hear some stuff that they'd never heard. And so he says, call Andy and have Andy call you. And that's how this. You were immediately co-bite. So that's a great idea. It is. And I was like, yeah.

Well, it's very unique. We've never done a show like this. Well, thank you for doing it, man. Thank you. I love that we could all be at the same place, same time, hard to get everybody on this. 25 years later. Yeah. Yes, 25 years.

Like I said, that's what corvett, once a Corvette race or always a Corvette race. Yeah, that's what I loved about it. I only ran like one race with you guys and I've been part of the family. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, baby. You're wearing the brand. It is cool. Thank you, Dale.

Thank you, guys. Thank you very much indeed. All right, that's Andy Pilgrim, Kelly Collins and Doug Feehan on the Dale Jr. Download telling stories from the 2001 Daytona, Rolex 24. And I hope you all enjoyed it. It was an idea to get us all together all these years later and maybe maybe I could hear some things that I didn't know happened or some conversations or experiences that they saw from their perspective. It was a great experience for me.

I look back on it very fondly. And, you know, certainly there's the, you know, the aspect of the race and the things that happened throughout the race and wondering what could have been or how we might have been able to win. had we known everything we didn't know. But just a great driving race car. We were put in a position that made us comfortable. I think the task for Corvette racing and Pratton Miller was a tall one to bring dad and me and not just one driver but two that were totally unfamiliar with not only the car, but also the style of event and the approach and strategy.

All of those things were going to be completely unique to what we used to do in the NASCAR realm. And NASCAR, and Dad was pretty quick on picking that part up. We know Dad drove wide open all the time in his cup car and all of his life in NASCAR and everything he'd ever done was driving and working and going as hard as he could. But he knew right away in the in the 24 hours of Daytona that he needed to get a comfortable pace and it didn't need to be a remarkable one. And so he picked up on that quicker than I did. I wanted to run fast. I ran every lap as hard as I could, testing, racing. I wanted to try to get closer and closer to Andy and Kelly's times.

And it was a competition all the time. And dad wasn't worried about that at all. He never looked at the stopwatch. He just tried to do what was comfortable. He did not want to damage the car or do anything that was going to hurt our chances. And I don't think once the race started that he did anything wrong. I hit the fence coming out of pit road once, spun the car in. of the grass,

dropped a wheel in the bus stop and broke a half shaft in the rear, which is basically like the axle out to the left rear or the right rear tire. So, I mean, I was all out there beating and banging and throwing the thing around, and he just was real smooth, and he knew that that was what needed to happen for us to have a flawless race, and it really didn't matter that, you know, it didn't matter if you were half a second off the best guy or, it didn't matter because everybody was going to have trials and tribulations throughout the event

and he just limited mistakes and that was that was going to be exactly what you needed to do to win that race we were in a GT car the prototypes outclass us by a second or more and they were the ones that should win the race if everything goes okay well they all broke and had trouble and so it was rare for our class to actually win the overall so we had a real shot just went in the whole thing if everything goes well. But we would end up in second or third overall and fourth in our class, or second in our class, fourth overall, something like that. I think that's what it is.

But pretty cool experience. And I'm thankful for them to come all this way. They came from different directions to be here today to give us this story. And they, I'm very thankful for that. That's not a, that's a big ass for anybody to travel in just to sit. down for a little time just to just shoot shit so fun story hope you enjoyed it great way to look back on an

event that was important to dad and yeah yeah so we'll see we'll see what y'all think it's time for the white flag the tear down with jordan bionki and jeff gluck dropped after the race jordan was at the race in charlotte gluck was at the indy 500

Both of them saw both races from two different perspectives. Pretty cool to hear them come together and share their stories and experiences and opinions, and they always have great ones. Good debate and good dialogue, great show to watch, the tear down. And action is detrimental with Denny Hamlin's out as well. Denny almost became a player late in the race for the win at the 600. It has some fuel issues that brought him back to Pit Road late. We get to hear his perspective from the race all night long,

and it was a fantastic race. Doorbubber Clear is out. Larry McReynolds was the guest this week. Great to hear from Larry. And also our Dale Jr. download, Dirty Air episode is also available. Jordan Bianchi joined me as TJ's still out a little bit. He's going to be back in a week or two.

But a lot of great content. And Connor Daly dropped another Speed Street. We get to hear from Connor and his experience at Indy. leading laps and having a shot there late in the race. Always good to hear from Connor, especially around the ND500 event in the month of May. And Herman Trader dropped another episode this week, and bless your heart, will be out tomorrow. Me and Amy will do another episode of that.

For anybody that's going to be in Nashville for the race this weekend on Sunday, at 1.30 local time, I think that's central in Nashville, in the fan zone. me, Steve LaTart, and Adam Alexander, or we're going to do a half-hour live show for Dirty Mo Media. In the fan zone, Sunday on race day, 1.30th Central time. Come out and check us out. It should be a lot of fun. We'll preview that action for the event later that evening.

As a couple of teams will be lining up to try to capture success and victory in Nashville. So that live show will be presented by Hellman's Bannase, a great partner here with Junior Motorsports and Dirty Mo Media. Should be a lot of fun. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Thanks for supporting us here at Dirty Mo Media and the Dale Jr. Download. We'll see you next week.

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