The Dale Jr. Download - Robin Pemberton: Investigating MWR’s Spingate, Boys Have At It & Bulls*** Penalties

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets a true look into the inner workings of NASCAR when he sits down with longtime crew chief and official Robin Pemberton. The two discuss Robin's early days working with legends like Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Mark Martin & Rusty Wallace. They also go into detail on his time as NASCAR's VP of Competition, which involved MWR's controversial "Spingate," creating the modern-day NASCAR Playoff format, and much more.And for more content check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaDirty 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 stuffFanDuel: 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.Consumer Cellular: New customers get a $5 credit on first five monthly invoices. Visit ConsumerCellular.com/DJD for details. 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.

So about 10 o'clock in the morning, the phone rings, and it's, and it's Mike. I said, what's going on? What's going on? You guys have got fricking trouble. Well, when the 15th bond and this happened, we got to do an investigation. I said, okay. I was in a room bigger than this room that they rented for me. I didn't go to anything. I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that room.

Listen to all the radio transmissions. It's the worst thing you could do at the worst time. Sure. So it was going to be freaking monstrous huge. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey, everybody's time for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download the guest segment here. And Robin Pemberton is the guest.

Robin was a crew member, crew chief, worked with the Petty's, Rusty Wallace, Dygard, Ray Mock. He's done it all. And then he goes into competition to work with NASCAR. He experienced a lot of things working with NASCAR in terms of competition. We had Spendgate and a bunch of different things happening while he was overseeing sort of the rules. And he's heavily involved in all of those decisions and things that happened back then. This is going to be a lot of fun.

I know Robin really well. We're very close. And he's got a gray heart, good guy. And he's had a heck of a career, you know, just a lot of different things going on. Also, you know, just looking forward to seeing what we can get into. There's going to be a lot here. Probably won't be able to talk about everything in his career, but I think we can probably have a ton still left on the table

to bring him back into the studio at another time. We'll see how that goes. But I'm excited to get this one started. So let's bring Robin in. All right, so we got Robin Pemberton here on the Dale Jr. Download, an old friend of mine. Yeah. And it's good to see you.

Good to see you. Yeah. Dude, you've about done it all in this sport. You worked as a mechanic and a crew chief working on. on the, you know, on race teams in the garage. You worked on the NASCAR side of things as well. So you've seen this sport from a lot of different angles. I have been fortunate.

Very lucky, yes. So, and you have a, the Pemberton family name, right? A lot, you know, your brother and y'all have, you know, been in it. Yeah. In all kinds of ways. So we're going to talk about that. grew up in New York. Yeah.

New York now, I mean, there's no doubt a lot of racing going out there. Yeah. Right. But how do you, how does your family get connected to the NASCAR world? It's a strange set of circumstances. So Albany Saratoga Speedway, right, in Malta, New York. So we had the corner restaurant a mile from it right off. You get off the interstate 12, yeah, 12.

It was 87. exit 12 and you'd have to go by the restaurant, you know, if you're coming from the south, to go by and then take a left and go the speedway. So we were there when they were building the track in early 60s. They would come and visit mom and dad at the restaurant, and this, that, and the other. So I went to their very first race and was a big fan. It was modified, it was asphalt, modifies, and charger divisions and everything they used to do back then. And so we were really interested. So then, fast forward a little bit. So when Bill France was trying to grow the sport of Grand Nationals at the time, you know, so he made these Northern Tour runs, right, with everybody,

back when they run, what, 60-some races or whatever, right? So during the modified years, I had modified friends as, you know, Jerry Cook and, you know, guys like that, guys from these. and Pete Hamilton. And he used to stay at the little motel across the street, eat at my mom and dad's restaurant. And during the seasons, if you stayed in that area and got on the phone to check the weather, you could go to, you know, if the weather was somewhere,

you could go west to New York and race or east to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and north to Vermont. And it was kind of a hub for some of them. Yeah. So Pete was a friend. and, you know, ever since I was 10 years old, right? And he used to help work on my bike and fix stuff and whatever,

and we were just friends. How much older was he? Oh, my God. Than you? Yeah, 10, 15 years maybe. He just, you know, just a friend. Eleanor Speed Shop was there that they had their own modified cars with Don McTavish and stuff. Ah, Don McTavish.

Yeah, yeah. Watch that car be built that he, you know, He lost his life in Daytona. Yeah. Yeah. But didn't he pass? He lost his life in that, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right there at the crossover gate. Really? Yeah. So anyway, so Pete finally went south and then he drove at the Petty's. Mm-hmm.

So then when the NASCAR was coming north, he wasn't, he didn't run all the races, but he was at the Petty's. He had won in Daytona 500. Yep. So they stayed, the Petty stayed across the street. So I met Richard and family and whatever, and they ate at a restaurant and blah, blah, blah, blah. and I was like, that's my man forever. Right?

And so I, you know, I was working in the family business, the restaurant, but doing what? Cooking, clean, and, you know, you name it. It was from the time I was 12, you know, and even in high school, you get off the bus and you come in and you'd mow the yard or you'd take the trash out from, you know, you worked all the time. So, you know, weekends, if I could get some time, like even at the Speedway, Randy and I would ride our bikes. We were 10, 11, 12 years old, ride our bikes a mile, park them in the ditch, go to the race, and before the larger division would start, we'd get on our bikes, come back, and help in the kitchen if we had to because they were going to get busy.

I got burnout on it, right? Sure. You know, and so I went to Weldon's school. I got certified and, you know, heliarking and this, that, and the other. And friends had race cars. And so Steve Meal and I were friends through all that time. Where did Steve live? Steve was in Colony, New York.

Near? Yeah, near. 30 miles, 20 miles. So he would come to the racetrack. Yeah. And his dad kind of helped Brian Ross was a modified driver up there in the four car for a while. And so we got to be friends. So he was a couple years older.

me. He moved to what he went to Morristown college or something and after college he went south like cold turkey get a job whatever and uh he worked at de wits right uh for a while 72 yep yep and then he uh and then he went got to the petties and then when kyle was getting ready to start they were looking for the quote was we just need somebody to hold a dumb end of the tape measure and i was the guy I applied, you know. Yeah. And so I've gone south a couple different times to try to get work, and it didn't quite work out. Where did you try?

Let's see. It was a place in Greenville, Loughlin. I went to Michael Loflons. That was a little rough for me being from New York. There was some racial issues and stuff that they were dealing with down there. You know, it was still, it was just rough. Yeah. And so I didn't, I didn't, you know, I only left the house.

with 60 bucks in my pocket. Like I didn't, sometimes it didn't eat for two days. Yeah. What years were these? Those, those years were probably 76 or seven, seven, something like that. And, you know, and then I tried I rock, right? Really? I didn't get there.

Yeah. But they called or sent a note that, hey, we got a spot for you. Come on down. It's the same time I got a spot to go to the Petty. Oh, and you're going to the Pets. And so I went to the Pettys. For sure. You know, and it was $2.65 cents an hour.

No shit. Yeah. Yeah. But we worked, we worked for a lot of hours. We worked 45 hours a week, so, you know, you got a time and a half. Yeah. You know, you want to put four bucks an hour for five hours, you know what I mean? So, and you learned everything.

Richie Bars was there. He was kind of the lead guy, and he was Chicago guy. He was, he was, that guy could do it all. And he was fabricator and he was, did the gears and, you know, he was something else. And, oh, man, that's the only grown man that's made me cry at work once, you know, try. What do you do? Just treat you like. Just hollery.

Yeah. You know, but I love the guy. I mean, we get together at the petty reunions every, you know, every, every chance we get. Oh, I get it. I get it. And it was. Tony Singer had that same effect. Yeah.

I could almost get your ass. Yeah, yeah. pretty small. Yeah. So it was good experience. I mean, at the time, you would build cars in a winter. So it would be Richie and Steve and I, we would be building cars. And then when you start racing, you roll your toolbox across the street.

Richie didn't, but I would or Steve would. And you'd be the mechanic. You'd be assigned to the back half of the car, another mechanic to the front half of the car. The maintenance we would do, it was incredible. You strip everything down to the bare chassis, wiring, plowman, all suspension. I just had this little three-eighth torque, or, you know, air ratchet, and bolts hit the floor.

You never used the bolt more than once. And it was, and we put them in a bucket, and then once a month Sam Ard would come by and pick through the nuts and bolts and put them on a sportsman car, you know. Our buddy Arrington? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we did.

And during that time when we still, I did some stuff in the shop. You punched a card to do some Dodge work, like Magniflux and stuff and whatever. And so they would come out and said, you know, Buddy would bring a big box of stuff. And there was others. And you'd sandblast, Magniflux, paint the stuff and give it back. Yeah, give it back. Yeah.

Somebody would get money. Chrysler was still paying, I think. One of the things that I always, there's a lot of people that have sat in that chair that have been in through the petties back in those days. Yeah. And I can imagine the sh** you saw in that building, the historical things. Oh, yeah. Just because.

And I was a rat. When I was not doing something, when I was at lunch, I would go climb through the attics and stuff. Yes, looking. And old things. This freaking hemi engine in the crate. Yeah. This huge copper radiator you couldn't even lift, a brand new, in a wooden box. Yeah.

You know, up in the attic. Lord knows how they got there, but nonetheless. Yeah. It was, you know. I bet it was fun as hell. The back building, when you drive in, there's a back building to the left, and that was called the Chrysler Barn. There was tubing in there, thousands and thousands of feet of anything and everything you would want.

Inche and three quarter, it was 30,000, 60,000, 120, you know, inch and a quarter, same thing. and it just racks of it, you know, and there was, and there was racks of bodywork, like Superbird wings and, you know, end plates, all that stuff, you know, and eventually they, I think they buried him out back and. Or shit. I'll be willing to bet. What is the fucking deal with burying stuff? So.

I don't know. Was it tax purposes? I don't know. I mean, I was drooling. They did it after I left. I went, I'd never heard of this. I never heard of this, and I don't know if this is just, you bring it up, but I went over, I went to Gary Hargitz to race out of his shop. This is an old mechanic that had worked in the sportsman division with Harry Gant and dad back in the 70s, and I'm messing, I'm running one of his late model cars in the early 90s.

And the first thing, one of the first things I noticed when I got to his property was a tire, just, I could barely make it out, but his tire sticking out of the ground. and I'm like, I'm looking at it. I'm like, tire buried in the ground, but it's at an angle, it's weird. I'm like, what's the deal with the fucking tire? He's like, oh, that's a whole car buried under there. He's like, you know, we got, when we,

it's like an old race car that he ran in the 60s. Yeah. That he just, you dug a hole and pushed it in there. And I'm like, and then I talked to Richard Childers or somebody else here on this show about burying cars. Like when they got rid of, done with shit, they just buried it.

Yeah. And I know a lot of other people would push it out in the woods and let the woods take over. Yeah. But, yeah. I don't know why. Yeah, I don't either. I mean, was it there's some trick stuff out they didn't want to sell?

No, they probably just were like, you know, here's a hole. Yeah. And people were always trying to like flatten out, level out. Yeah. Utilize space, better, land, you know, and like, yeah. Dude, I mean, in the 70s and 80s, if you had a gully, you pushed everything off in that thing, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. That wasn't really known.

Well, you know, now that you mention it, yeah. have seen that. Yeah. And, you know, it wasn't always cars, but for sure. There was, I know at one point, so the car that Lee flipped at Daytona, yes. That car is over here in Mooresville in a museum. Yeah, they saved it. Yeah, I remember that car being out behind the Petty's Barn. Yeah, and I'd crawl all over. It had that big old pipe in it and stuff like that. So those cars, right after they, I think they saved some of that stuff, that's when they took the, super bird stuff and damn,

buried it. It'd be amazing if they had just hung on to everything. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't understand it. So how long did you work there? Almost right at five years.

Yeah, that's a while. Yeah. What was it like? I mean, is this, you know, you're helping,

you, when was the first year there? 79. 79. Like March. Right after the, they won the 500. Did you travel?

Oh, yeah. So, everybody travel. Were you helping Richard, Kyle, Two, Kyle was starting to race? Yeah, Kyle was starting.

It was mainly Kyle. Did you go to Kyle? Kyle was running some short track shit too. Yeah, yeah, we did. We bought a car from Haas Ellington or something, Camaro or whatever. We ran some dirt races and stuff. Yep. You know, we did different stuff.

Trying to get him going. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Lee would go. Lee would go because it was these, they'd pay you to show up, right? Yeah. So we were somewhere and down near the beach.

It was whatever. And we unloaded the car and he wouldn't let us run until he got his money. So we'd start the car up. We'd back it out. He'd walk away. He'd come back. He'd like, no practice. Okay.

He didn't have his money. When he got the sandwich bag full that it was supposed to have, then we could practice and run. And to be honest, I think we rained out anyways. I'm not sure. Yeah. But Lee went with us a couple times like that. That's hilarious.

Yeah, yeah. The traveling part is what, you look at how we did it back then, right? And I tell these stories more often than I should. We traveled everywhere. We got in a van. I mean, I was five or six years before I flew to California. You went in a van. Yeah.

You drove everywhere. You drove, you know, you knew where your restaurants were to eat lunch and this, that, and the other. probably the first or second time I went to probably the first time I went to California they come out of the you know Dale was still there and said hey you want to go to Rivers you know Riverside

or whatever I said yeah yeah Dale Inman yeah and he said all right he come out and he threw me a set of keys and he said go down to DMV and get your CDL I said really I got in that little ice cream truck we had one with the thing I pulled a small trailer.

Yeah. I drove it down to DMV and I told it in Ashboro told the guy, I said, hey, Dale Lemon told me come down here, see you get my driver's license. He walked outside. He said, you drive here? Yeah. Anybody come with you? No.

All right, come on in here. Give me the freaking license. Drove home. So my first trip was in a truck, driving truck and trailer with another guy. Damn. You were there to wish, to, to, be. a part of Richard's final championship in 79. Did you know what you were being, you were a part of?

Did you realize, I guess? You know, you kind of took it for granted, right? It was, to me, it was big because of, I've been the fan for so long, right? But the awards thing took place at Daytona in the hotel the week before the Daytona 500 of the following year. Oh, Winston stuff. Tables lined up. You know, it looked like a, it looked like a, just a, you know,

football team, high school football team lined up getting awards and stuff like that. It was great. And then Richard had, he did belt buckles for everybody, silver and gold, seven-time champion on them, you know, Richard Petty. Did 30 of them. Damn. And I still have mine. Some people sold them, but I still have mine.

Damn, that's pretty cool. Yeah. beautiful too. Working with Kyle, I guess, had to have been a lot of fun. Knowing Kyle, the way I know him now, I can't imagine how he must have been when he was so young. This guy played football in high school, just all-American sort of childhood, and he didn't grow up behind the wheel.

He kind of grew up with a tire gauge in his hand or, you know, just being in the shop. But being a kid also, living in a high school life. And then it was, you know, decided that, I'm going to try this, right? And so I know that he ran some short track stuff and he, that's kind of downplayed a little bit. The story everybody loves is that Richard said, you know, we're going to go right to Frikan, and you're going to drive this Chrysler and you don't need to mess around with all this other stuff. either good or you're not. Right.

But he did have some short track race in 70-9-80. And to be honest with you, that subject never come up when I was there. Never, not one time. About what? Anything before the arc race. Anything before the, he won the Daytona race, right? Nobody ever talked about if he had doing anything before that. Right.

It was always just in that car, go. Yeah. So, but he did, like, run some short-track stuff. He ran asphalt sportsmen, just like Caraway here and there, just piddling, not like a lot. But, you know, when I, I don't know, I, you know, he did, he decided I want to do it. And yeah, they went and ran that Arca race. Yeah.

And he won. Yeah. Right? Just like that. Yeah. But then where, when Kyle is deciding, all right, I'm going to run some cup races in 80. Right. Were you more working on that car or were you, okay.

So when you take this old Chrysler to, like, Charlotte and wreck it. Yes, yeah, knocked a fuel cell out of it down the backstretch, testing. Right. It was a short day. Yeah. It was, you know. How did Kyle react to that? You know, what was sort of the temperament when things like that would happen?

He didn't, he kept to himself, right? He didn't, you know, he's obviously disappointed. He'd be disappointed, let alone it's your dad's car. and you know but he kept his head up he always kept his head up yeah always positive you know and uh yeah so i remember it was uh richard and kyle over there endman with dale was over there myself and there was one other that's all that was at the track yeah oh was during the test it's wrong yeah you go to taladegh he qualifies top 10 i believe or top 20 and finish seventh or some shit yeah yeah yeah

Yeah. So, I mean... He was okay on all of that other stuff. You know, he is, I think, his vision and his, of, you know, his, what he saw and how he drove. He was good at Michigan. He was good at those places. Yeah. You know, it took time to get into other, you know, racing to get some of them tracks under his belt. Sure.

You could go that, you know. Yeah. So when did you leave? after 83. Why? Well, that's when the king was getting ready to turn the keys over to Kyle.

Yeah. Right? But I mean, there was a lot going on there. Yeah. Richard drove another 10 years. Yes. Everybody, I don't know that anybody knew that Richard was done winning races.

Right. Maybe y'all did being so tied in and so close to it. But Richard, and I don't know that a lot of people, myself included, understand the dynamic of, you know, Richard would leave, drive for curb in 84. There was a lot to happen in between that, though. Right? Right. So it was the Rick Hendrick thing, right? Rick came to, yeah, Rick tried to hire.

Rick tried to hire him. And for a while, he, you know, he had, drove a Hendrick personal car for a little bit, right? Just a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Remember seeing it. Yeah. I don't know if I think it was a Corvette actually. Nonetheless.

And so that was kind of going on. So we are at Charlotte in the fall of that year. What year? That would be 83. It's the last year and he's, you know, we all know it's, he's moving around, right? There's things that could or should happen. So I don't, so he comes to me. So we got to be pretty close.

Like we could talk about stuff, you know. And he always told me, he's like, look, go to work for somebody. It has to race for a living. Because all these guys have come in with money. And during that time, all those money guys, they'd come in. We're going to reorganize a sport. And in two years, you'd never heard from him again, right? So Rick's the only one that ever made it, right?

But he was a racer at heart. So anyways He's So he said I said well I'm going to go to work for Butch and Bob Rahili And he said

Okay So that was a couple weeks Before the race Before Charlotte And then at Charlotte he comes to me And says hey You think they would You think they'd let me drive

At their car He says that to me Sitting on a bench Yeah I said well Hell I'll I'll go find out So

Which car is this? The 75 car. This is the blue. The blue one. The blue one. Yes, it was. It wasn't a very good car. Yeah.

I mean, you know, blue was driving it and a couple different people. But they had, Neil was getting, Neil was in it? Neil? He wasn't in it yet, was he? Was he? I think so. I think he was just getting ready to go to juniors and he was leaving that. I got you.

Yeah. Hodgson did. It's done all right. Yeah. Yeah. So I go down after work and I, you know, talk to Bob, Talk to, you know, Butch and like, hell yeah, we're out of a driver. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk.

I go back to tell Richard, yeah, get up with him. It's good. So, you go, you know, season's over with. We take, he's driving their car. We go to Daytona and test with him. I'm at Butch and Bob's. And we have the car that he won the 500 in, and I'm a mechanic, and Buddy Parrott's going to be the crew chief.

I mean, the shit's happening. Yeah. Right? Life is good. Something happened on the business side of things, and it all blew up. I mean, we, this, after January sometime, in January, we already got hundreds of miles under our Bell of Daytona. I mean, it's right. It all blows up and goes to curb.

Damn. Yeah. So, you know, but I'm back to base, I'm back to base one with Butch and Bob just being a mechanic and doing this that and the other, you know. Yeah. which it made it hard because I think they lost all that time trying to find a driver and a sponsor when they had a driver and a sponsor. Yeah. Kind of put them in a bind, real bind.

I know that Marcus got in the car in 85. Was he there in 84 or who was your driver? Dude, one million people. I mean, I can't even count them all. Yeah. You were Petty's crew chief, though, in 83. Yeah, Larry Pollard and I shared the duties. How does Larry Pollard get into this role?

He came in, he worked at Childers-A-while, I think, and he was a Northwest guy. Yeah. Right, driver, whatever. I think he moved here to try to race eventually. Yeah, yeah. Which he would. Yes, he would. And so he winds up coming over that year.

And we were working together. We were like oil and water. Didn't be in long very well. Oh, man, it was rough. It was rough. And nowadays we're a good friend. You look back on it like, yeah, I was. stupid and he said yeah i did some stuff and you know whatever you still love me yeah let's go on right

but it was it was rough yeah at times but he was really good you know i i was good at my stuff he was good at his stuff where did dale go to the to the 44 he was at the 44 yeah i know he was there and they won that fourth of july race or something like that and he went over there yeah and then uh what did he do the two car first? Who? Dale. Dale did. He did in 81, damn it, yeah. Yeah, he went to two car in 81.

Yeah, we were, yeah, because at the Kings, it was, when Dale left, it was Steve and Wade Thornburg, I think, and, you know, and then Steve went up going to go to 44. So I guess when Dale Enman leaves, you guys are starting to understand like, oh, you know, what this thing has been. Yeah. right is not no more and now richard's talking yes you know when richard leaves i don't want to be here yes yeah right and so you're making moves to try to figure that out yeah so you go to work with raymock for a short period of time um in 85 you take over crew chiefing duties for bobby alison

at digard yeah um so gary they win the championship with bobby in 83 at digard and things look like they're going awesome from a from a from outside and then there's some turmoil. He goes and takes Greg Sacks in 85 and wins their backup car, right? Or their second car. That car, that car was one of those that, it was the old 28 car. Yeah.

I mean, it was fast. Yeah, yeah. And it was awesome car. Yes. And then brought it into the fold, right? Yeah. So you go over to work with Bob. is Bobby in a good place or is Bobby getting he's a little edgy he's edgy yeah so I won't I won't let I won't

ask you to elaborate on this but I my dad and Bobby were very close yeah and so and I say that because anybody that my dad thought of or had respect for I just assume must be a f***ing badass and a good you know so I always had a lot of I always held Bobby up in a high place. And you should. He's that guy. Right. But as I've gotten, as I've done more and more like digging and learning and watching

and observing and trying to understand our sport and history of our sport, looking at his career, I mean, like I think back toward when he was driving for junior in the early 70s. Like how he did not make that work. He went through a lot of those. did. I loam the duck. Dude, but damn it. I did. You know, he would be in these really good spots that would turn out if he had saw it through. They would have turned. He could have been a, you know, three, four,

five-time champion. Yeah. But he would get, you know, he would get, he would, he get wound up about something and go, well, I'll just go do my own, I got my own stuff. I'll go run my own car. Right. And I mean, dude, he even did this in 80, in the 80s with dieguard. he gets he would I'll never forget this one time you know we're trying to build cars and we're doing stuff go to the wind tunnel

you know and we're loaded up ready to go to Pocono and he's going to fly in and carry me and two or three others and then there's something that left in the van right the car's sitting there getting ready to push it on and he comes walking in with a spindle

he's like we need to put this on this left front this Donnie won with it last week at Birmingham and it's got you know so me being me I already had like I was already doing

radio break mounts you know and get rid of that flexy stuff that you know and all hard point mounted and I said I can't I can't make it happen

and it had this and I had the long steering Robinson steering arm on it the one that was and he's like well if you don't want to try you know Bobby, I do want to try, but I can't, you know.

Right, dismiss it. I can't, I can't do it. And I don't remember if I did or I didn't. Yeah, sure. You know, I mean, it was three o'clock in the afternoon, and Poconos the next morning. Yeah, yeah. You know, and so there was a few of those things.

Like, we, I think we sat on the outside pole at Bristol once with a Buick. We built just kind of for short tracks. and we had this Ferrari-type panored rod system in it was a ball, a bearing that run in a track. So it wasn't the normal track bar thing, right? And it was working great. He said, well, you know, that way a roll center doesn't change and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, okay. Well, we ding somebody and it bent the track and the thing was wobbling around. And, you know, we had to. to come in and pit and take it off and put the track bar on. Right? And we went out and ran just as fast, just as fast, if not, you know, could have probably run faster because he was angry.

But nonetheless, it was like, we took ourselves out of some of these things. Sure. And that Fourth of July deal was the bitter end, running two cars. He wasn't a two-car guy. Nobody was. Nobody was back then. Nobody did. Daryl hated it.

There's lots of fucking quotes in all kinds of. kinds of articles around Daryl's distaste for the idea of junior bringing in Neil and dad didn't never want Skinner, all that stuff, right? Yeah, nobody wanted, they wanted their own kingdom, right? Yeah. And I get it, I get it from my side or others that were like me. You look at it, it's like, you know, not everybody has a, you know, a driver like that that wants to be the only driver, but sometimes they have off days and off weeks and off whatever.

and you have another source. Yeah, we would learn that that would be the way to go over time. And teams need it, you know, it become cheaper to run the second car and all those things we'd learn. I had trouble with it at Penske. Yeah, I'm sure. You know. Yeah.

And not those, I'm sure you'll get to that in a little bit. But the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the guard management. So we have, uh, doing some documenting around 1979. 80 with Dad's Championship in his rookie year. We go on and on around Darrell's, Darrell's this taste for working with that organization. And we had Darrell on and he's talked about it.

And, you know, I don't know that Bobby had big problems on, on, with the, with the gardeners. But what, what was it, what was their management style like? You know, they seemed, it seemed like, I will say this, like they can't, they can't, They had, you know, they buy Daigard, or they buy the 88 car, and they start this whole program, right, in the 70s with Donnie. In Daytona. In Daytona.

They moved it up eventually. But it's like they're getting there, right? And they eventually do become the team they want to become win a championship with Bobby. And the, I don't know that Darrell was maybe the best driver for them because of his personality in 78s. 79, 80. He was a little, he was a little hard. Yeah.

Junior would, Junior was perfect for Daryl because Junior wouldn't put up no shit. There's this really cool, there's this really cool moment when, uh, junior and Kale were racing each other. And it's a, it's a quote in one of the blue books, um, where Kale's racing, I think at Talladega and he runs third and he gets out and it says, this is a sorriest, sorry's car. And he's trying to say NASCAR, you know, needs to give us a better. Yeah. Better plate or something for the engine.

Junior's like, the reporter goes to Junior and Junior says, well, if he wants to talk shit about our car, he can find somewhere else to drive. Yeah. I'm not going to put up with that shit. Like that's Junior Johnson. Yeah. And they're in the middle of winning their second of three in a row championships when this shit happens.

And so Darrell goes to Junior and that's perfect for Darrell because Junior wasn't going to put up in a shit and Darrell knew it. But so I think the gardeners were a little wild, a little bit of, you know, fly to see their pants, going to do this, going to do that. Big ideas, ambitious, and that wasn't good for Darrell. But they get Bobby,

they go win a championship. They get some great people in the building. Gary, you, other people in the building, things look like they're going well. And I mean, in just a couple of years, a fucking deal is gone. It went bad. Fast.

Like we were, they got chasing the minority money from Miller and Willie T. Ribs. Poor Willie. I mean, I think the world of him. He was good. We were good friends and everything. But he had to drive. Right. That one car he drove at Riverside. How did the car? We dug it out. It was a show car. It was all broke up and bent. And we made a race car out of it. Where is the good shit?

We didn't have it. You didn't have any more? No. Where did it go? Did it destroy all of it? Some of it. You know? But there wasn't many cars. Back then you had two or three cars for a team. Okay. You know? And then they bring on Willie and you like can't buy a car.

Yeah. Right? And so you go get a show car and it's like the frame rails aren't even parallel. Yeah. Yeah. You put them in it and, you know, he would haul ass and something would break on it. Yeah. Yeah.

That was interesting to see that team just sort of fizzle into nothing and so quickly. When that race, when Sacks was winning, I had my pit crew. They had theirs kind of because, you know, they were behind the curtain type R&D thing, right? That was going on. Well, when they looked like they were going to win a race, I think we dropped a cylinder, broke a valve or something, but we're still running. We come down pit road, all my crew's gone. They're down there.

They run down there to change tires for Greg's car. and I'm sitting there like, I need a front tire changer. I changed it, right? We had, you know, we had Jackman, but we lost tire changers. And Bobby saw what happened. And he got on the radio. He saw me across the wall. I got on the radio.

He said, just take your time. It doesn't matter. Just, right? Race goes. We're done. I'm walking to the trailer. I'm about half pissed off anyway. but I'm happy that the team, the other team won.

Bobby's coming on the trailer. He's like, I'll see you around. I said, really? He said, yeah, I'll see you. And I knew what it meant. Yeah. Right then, right there. So Bobby wasn't a, Bobby wouldn't,

Bobby didn't throw a tantrum. No. He just was like, Matt. Yeah. This ain't working. Just like punched the card. Yeah. You know.

Interesting. I wasn't sure. Like, you know Bobby would. go, you know, Bobby would get in and out of these deals. Yeah. When, I will say, like, to his credit, he drove for Bud Moore and respectfully, you know, decided I need to go somewhere else, and that didn't end abruptly. Right.

But he had all the best jobs. He did, had some good jobs. But I'm just saying, like, he could, he could make a change or transition without it being abrupt and clunky. But like, I always wondered when he did get frustrated how did he verbalize that and how did he and was he fiery? Because on the racetrack and with rivals like petty and different people, he could be fiery. He was not with no, you know, the fight with kale.

Not to us. Not the, no. But not the ownership either. No. Right? No. Hey, TJ, 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. We're the number one seller, actually, in crane trucks. Okay, I definitely did not see that coming. Yeah, pretty neat, huh? Yeah. So for any of our listeners, shopping for commercial vehicles. Here's some things you need to know about us at Delenhart Jr. Chevrolet. We have hundreds of trucks in stock so you can find what you need fast. And we have people there

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Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, they were talking to me. Lake Speed was going to be over there, and Lake Speed got me. Lake run pretty good out of the gate. Yeah, he did. And that's that nationwide car. That's right. And so it's early in a year.

It's like right after the rocket ham race, I'm still at Tigard. And I had a 10-year contract. Damn. Yeah. I've had a few of those. That's the longest one that ever lasted 13 months. But my other 10s are shorter. We'll get to all that.

And so I went to, I guess the guy's name was Mezzanati. He was kind of the lawyer type. whatever in the office and I said look I can't I got to go and he understood he said all right we'll let you go so I've been talking to lake to come over there I'm in some bitch I get there and by the time I get there they fired Lake is yeah yeah I walk in and there's butch we're over on Oar Road next to Pistone's shop over on the other side of railroad track they had Jody Ridley driving a yeah Jody drove yeah and it was there was a There was others that drove.

Yeah. That was a turmoil year. Right. And Marcus was before that, I think. Yeah, he was. There's a second go-round with them. And so, where you are, that's going good. It's going okay.

You know, you're working like a pack of heathens, but it's not bad. It's okay. And it's still frustrating, right? Because I thought I was going to have a guy, right? So anyways, the, I'm out mowing the yard. We live in Matthews. I'm out mowing the yard.

Like I got to put one of big Jacobs and push mowers that runs by itself. I wasn't even using it. I was just plowing, right? Three-quarters acre of grass. And I was just, I told Lisa, I said, answer the phone. I'm not talking to anybody. I'm out. I'm doing something, whatever.

Because that's before cell phones and all. So I'm mowing. She says, hey, phone call. I said, I'm not, I'm not fucking talking to anybody. Go hang up. Take a message. she goes in she comes back out she goes no this guy really needs to talk to you now i said what's so important he's like well he's he's a he's a a friend of paul gilton in

which was a engineer back in the day that he was at digart he was at other places it's freaking smart he's friend of paul's and paul told him the call you um he's and i said well who the is it. She said, Jack Roush or something like that. I just turned, I don't know if I turned them over off, but I left it, you know, and I went in and took the call. You knew Jack. You know who Jack was. I knew the name, you know, drag racing and road racing and all that stuff. And so, we talked for a minute, and, you know, he's like, he's going to start. He's like, meet you, I'll get back with you. Did you tell you about Mark? No, that wasn't, we aren't even that far. We didn't even got nothing. We hadn't even got nothing.

Yeah. So we're going to meet right outside the Greensboro Airport at a meeting room there. And so it was an afternoon or the next weekend we were off or something. So it was two Sundays before Bristol, and there's a reason for that. And so we talk and I walk in and Steve walks in and we're like, what's going on? He was like, yeah, Jack call me, and Jack called me. So Jack didn't know Steve and I were boyhood buddies, you know what I mean? Yeah.

And so we talked through a bunch of stuff and asked about drivers, and, you know, he built some motors for Kenny Schrader. And Schrader hated him at the time, you know, he said they wouldn't cool, had to have a big radiator or whatever. And so we talked about some drivers, and Steve was real high on Mark. And so eventually we got, they got that all done. Do you know what other drivers were discussed, mentioned, even barely? I can't even remember. There was a few. Yeah.

But really it just. Regular names, guys that were already kind of in and out of sport. Yeah. Yeah. And you knew they weren't coming. They were just not a startup deal. Mark didn't have much. Yeah.

So he would be coming. Yeah. The other guys that had something, they'd hang it over your head. Yeah. So then, so we had the meeting. So next weekend's Bristol. Thursday night thunder's on, remember that? And so whatever that chatter was, we're at Bristol,

whatever that chatter was, or we're going to Bristol on that Friday morning, it was Jack Rauch is going to go cup racing and he's talking to former crew chief or something, you know, Steve Meal and Robin Pemberton about starting a team. That came on the TV. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we didn't say, yeah.

Yeah. So by Saturday, Bob is so mad at me. Oh, shit. He didn't talk. Then finally he says, you know, if we're not good enough for you, you're out. Today's your last day. We finish your race. Like, I, I, you know. I think at the time, I think Lisa was pregnant and I'm out of work. Yeah. You know? And so I said, we've got to make this thing happen. So I'm living. Matthews and Steve is in Liberty, you know, said Greensboro. So they get looking at shops and he was here more often.

So he finds a building. It's like 10,000 square feet, a few acres of land and Liberty. Yeah. They get that thing. Jack buys it. And it's an old, it's like a, Steve would know better than me. It's like a furniture warehouse type thing. Was it just a building to put stuff in, right?

It didn't have, like it had one little bathroom in a corner. That's it. Yeah. It's like, all right, this is August, dude. And we're going racing in 80, whatever it was, eight. 80 days. So we started a building. I drive 96 miles to work every day back and forth.

I did it from August of 87 to December of 88. We never took a day off. We took Christmas off the first year. We work Thanksgiving. We work New Year's Day. You know, we were doing all kinds. crazy stuff. And like I'd leave it, I'd leave it 5, 15 in the morning and I'd get back at 7.30 at night. Yeah. You know, I mean, it was 18 months of that stuff, just about 16 months.

Worked our houses off. When we were, they did the media tour. And so we're in there working and they're doing the media thing. And we're only going to run part time. We're not running, you know, all the races. We already knew that. So Banjo Grimm was there, you know, and there was some others and Danny Ryan and whatever. And I'm in the trunk of this car. We're like, it's going to be a Rock and Ham car, right? Not, you know, and it'll be our spare Daytona. We've got one speedway car.

Anyways, I'm in the trunk work and we're just building it. And I'm putting supports in the back glass and whatnot. And they're doing a press conference. And I hear them announce that we're going to run all the races. We're sitting there with 1.5 cars ready to go in December. And it's like, what the fuck is? We didn't know. Yeah.

I get out of the trunk. I go see Steve, I said, did I hear that? Yeah. I said, did you know? I didn't know. Nobody knew. You know, and man, you know, Jack and others thought that somebody else did the meeting with us or whatever. It's like, oh, man.

Oh. It was on that. Yeah. You know, we go to Daytona. We had ordered another car. It was probably a hopkin. No, back then it was, we were running a Ford snouts. They were banjo cars.

We had a third car ordered that was going to be a short track car. When we left for Daytona, we had a partial, best to my recollection, we had a partial car in a garage. Our Rockingham car was a spare in our Daytona car. Yeah. And it was like, I think we wrecked our primary. I'm not sure. or practice or something, something. But it's like, God, almighty.

It was rough going, rough going the first year. Yeah. Y'all, I remember that team getting fired up in the... How old were you then? I was 12 in 86. So 87, 13 years old. I remember Mark coming in in the Blue Strow's car. And I guess I remember one time, I don't know exactly when this happened, either before Mark had his first running cup in 81, or is this after he went back home.

But I think this was when he, so we're at Dad's Lakehouse. We're in the basement. And. One off a 150? Yes. Yeah. late at night, and Mark had brought some tapes of his ASA races and put them in the VCR, and dad and him watched Mark running that white and orange tube.

So this had to be probably before Mark came cup racing. Yeah, I think so. And Mark was basically kind of like, look at what I'm doing. Look at all this awesome shit I'm doing, you know, and how can maybe you help? help me understand what I need to do in the cup side and bring it in. And then Mark had his first go at Cup. It didn't go really as well as he'd hoped. It's tough racing far away, too.

Sure, yeah. It has its advantages, but it's tough. Yeah, the buck stove deal was bull's-h-h-and-they kind of ruined his plan. And he whiffed on an opportunity to drive the 28 when they went, when they were switching mid-season away from Benny Parsons. Oh, yeah. He got a call from Rainier to drive that car and turn it down. He's like, I got a good thing going, my own shit here.

Yeah. He tells that story here recently. So Mark's coming back to Cup. And I remember having this feeling that he had been running good in that Ford in the Xfinity series of the Bush series back then, that 31. I'm like, this fucking guy. And y'all, you. and I was like with the right people and Jack Roush. Like I was sensitive to anything that could compare or compete with dad.

Yeah. Like when Davey got good in the 28th, I was like, oh, that's not good. You know, Ernie Erwin. All these different, you know, Tim Richmond, when Tim Richmond was kind of encroaching on dad's, you know, 86 season. And I'm like, oh, I don't know about this, man. I don't like this. This could be tough. Well, Mark Martin was another guy that was going to come in there and make things hard.

Yeah. And that's kind of how y'all got. You got it, y'all did it. Yeah. The, um, it didn't look. It didn't appear from the outside the way you describe it in terms of the hard work and the, you know, the grind to get that team started. Yeah. When do you feel like, I mean, y'all, y'all ran really freaking good.

Yeah. And I remember there being this sort of story of when's it, when's it going to win? Yeah. Because he's right there. Yeah. Yeah. But you were right there. Second, third, fourth, fifth.

The Stroh's car was this brand new. program, Jack Rouse's name on it, Rouse is a badass and everything he does. It's going to happen, but there was this sort of anticipation, I remember being, and even a kid reading the grand national scene and going to the races,

feeling this sort of anticipation of when's this team going to finally click. I think we sat on one poll that year in Dover or something like that. When did you feel like y'all guys finally got it going? How long were you in the Liberty Shop? I was there for the whatever the four four years or something like that same building yeah same building we added to it added to it a couple times added to the back building and you know we got to we got to you know that year we were contending for a championship right whatever year that was that

would have been uh 8 990 91 something like that and you know we were we were wearing a wind tunnel out we were, you know, we were tested. That one year, we tested. Taking that big ass Ford. Yeah. To the wind tunnel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That was a big old car.

They, they got on us because they didn't like what we were doing, right? Like what? So the wind tunnel guys, the GM, or the Ford guys. Well, we were just reshaping stuff, right? Yeah. And so they said, getting away from their identity of the car. So they got on us, and they sent a guy down and said, said, you know, whatever.

I said, we'll go to the tunnel. So we went to the tunnel and we said, well, this is what, you know, we're not going to tell you, but this is one of our best cars, which was either, it was probably Bill. Bill's car, right? It was probably the, it was probably the nine car, whatever, milling and

whatever, and then it was, you know, we had to, you know, work against Robert Yates and the 28. We rolled that thing in there and it made better down force and less drag. And they're like, oh, Geez, what did you do? We just did what we did, you know what I mean?

You understood error when you build, you know, there's a formula for the APO shapes. And, you know, if it's a 30-inch window, you had to be, I always used a three-to-one rule, you know, draw a string on it, and it's got to be 10 inches outside of a 30 window. You know, we didn't have sideglasses and stuff. And we just had stuff that we'd done over the years with little things, and it was better. Yeah. So they got off our ass, right? And then once we knew we were like, okay, we're in the ballpark, there's no excuses here, you know.

And then we went to work real hard on the chassis setups and stuff like that. And back in those days with all the practice, you know, Steve was really good about spring changes and stuff, different things like that. And, you know, we'd go in the corners. He'd go practice and we'd go into corners and watch and we'd come back. Mark and Steve and I were talking what we saw. You saw a little too much wheel in it. You didn't, whatever, the shocks. And, you know, we started to make some gains.

Yeah. You know, and then that year we were contending, you know, and it felt better, but it was still, you know, we would still drive into all the races. Yeah. You know, we just flew a couple times maybe to Michigan, but. Yeah, still a lot of work. Oh, yeah.

1990 after winning Richmond, the team got busted with an illegal carburetor space server. That was bullshit. Yeah. Dad would win the championship. You guys were penalized 46 points. Yeah. And it cost Mark a chance at the title. You can be completely honest here.

This is a safe space. I will be. You'd lose the championship by 26 points. Yeah. Let's go back to the spacer thing. Let's just do it. You talk to the official that's in charge. of the carburetors, the spacers, the manifolds.

Right? I'm not going to leave his name out of it. And we said, look, you know, in those days, your body rake and this and that and lower hood and blah, blah, blah. I said, look, we can't, you could weld as much as you wanted to on a spacer. Randy did a show on it, was on inside NASCAR or something. And you could have a stock manifold, and you could well six inches to it, and it's legal. you can bolt two inches to it and it's legal or you bolt three inches to it and it's illegal but weldin as much as legal and i and i went to the official and i said look we've got like two

manifolds right we don't have all this we got all these different cars we're trying to compete and so he's like look i get it the rule's wrong we need to work on the rule for the welding and the set and yell, he said, you know, you can run the, the spacer's okay, you know, because I said, okay. So we had a drawer with two, two and a quarter, you know, two and a half, three inches, you know, whatever, whatever we could fit under the hood. Right. And so that Richmond race was that race that it was so cold. You probably remember.

We had to, we started the race with a cowl taped off because Jack was worried about all that cold you know getting in the engine and blowing up or whatever and like on the first or second pit stop we pulled the tape off i mean that car hauled ass i mean we kicked their ass pull in throw the hood open for the post-race inspection children are standing at the front of the car going that's the illegal he knew it uh and you know and it's okay everybody looks everybody's stuff but and it was over with It was over with. And so the, you know, Jack fired me for probably the second or third time then. He was always firing me and Ryan.

But anyway, so Dick Beatty was in charge. And then they had, you know, carburetor guy or whatever. And so I talked to them and they're like, look, we think we're going to be all right. You're going to be all right. Oh. So Jack didn't let any of us go to the appeal. He appealed. and the best of my recollection Jack went in there

and they had already told me look we're we're going to amend the rulebook looks like we'll mend the rule book you guys will be okay with the points and whatever Jack goes down there and says look new guy I'm sensitive to the whatever he said Ford

didn't want the embarrassment to set you know we'll take the penalty but don't don't take away the manufacturer points are more important to me. I mean, it was like we'd work behind the scenes. It was like going to be a fix, a done deal. Yeah. And then I got the feedback.

It's like we threw it away. You wouldn't know in that moment either that that would be the difference. No. In my mind, I always thought, I said, this will be the one that this will be the big, you know what I mean? Like I just had the feeling. you know and we you know we raced her guts out that year right and we led the points still led the points for a long long time jack suspended you with pay what happened you know he he would fly in

he's done he did this shoot he would fly in tuesday we'd do meetings this that you know and and he he would he would he would drag me in the office look it's it's time to move on on. And I would say, you know, I remember saying one time, I said, Jack, I walk around this building your names on it. But I said, I built this building just like Steve did, just like you did. I'm not fucking leaving. Yeah.

I said, go do your meetings. I got shit to do. We're getting ready for a race. He'd come out and say, hey, you know, yeah, I was a little, you know, upset over the week, you know, whatever. All right. I'll see you Friday at the track, you know, type thing. Yeah.

But, yeah, it was, he did it a few times, you know. And so kind of the handwriting was on the wall. And what happened, the bigger the team got, the more distance I got from Jack where everything was a, went through Steve. He was a team, got to be a team manager and stuff. And, you know, I'd, you know, I would, we had good bonus program. Like if at the end of the year, my pay was this, my bonus was. was equal to that. Well, I was trying to buy a house, right, in Greensboro. And you didn't make enough on paper, you know, they didn't count the salaries. Interest rates for 11 or 12% at the time.

And, you know, I said, look, I don't want more money. Put this into this, so I qualify for a better loan. Yeah. And it didn't happen, didn't happen. And, you know, and that summer, so Richard's going to announce is I'm running one year and I'm done, the tour, right? The Richard's gone tour. He's announcing it to do that. So they called the shop and say, hey, look, we want you to come over and be there, be present. You know, you're like part of the family, whatever. So I go over there and there's big media stuff and everybody's there and we're all done.

I'm getting ready to go back to the shop. Kyle grabs me and he's like, hey, Felix wants to talk to you. Felix Salvatus. Yeah, I said, what for? We just need to talk. Fields just want to talk to me, wants to hire you. I said, well, you got Gary. Yeah, yeah, Felix just wants to talk to us.

You know. So here's number two, Gary and me, right? Yeah. So anyways. And so I had already been, you know, firing on in four years, three solid times, you know, and I said, okay, this is a hostile environment. So I go and meet Felix at the, you know, He had the condo over there to Charlotte, and we talked.

You know, the money was a little bit better, but it wasn't that. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was a chance to be like the absolute guy, right? There was no middle management, right? It was Felix and you and me. And where was Gary going? Gary, so Gary. Well, we did the meeting. Well, hold on, I want to pray for the, for the fans listening.

So Gary had been with Kyle Crew Chief in the Peak car, blue and pink, beautiful race car. They won a couple races, Rockingham. Yeah. A couple of times dominated, Rockingham. New radial tire, they were figuring that out. And so what was this process? It was a just, Felix just didn't get along with Gary. Okay.

And so we did the meeting, and I said, look, Gary's a friend. Gary took me to dieguard, you know, I said, I will not be the guy to replace him. I said, so if you find him a place, and then you take care of that first. I said, that's my first, the rest of this stuff. This is one of my friends. And he's like, well, I was working on, you know, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, so he's, Felix and Bill France were friends. and Bill was still active.

So he made some calls, and he pretty much got Bill to call Gary to do competition stuff at NASCAR. Wow. And so then once that was announced, then I was okay. I was okay. But you knew Gary had a spot.

Yeah. Hey, everybody, you want the latest Dale Jr. download apparel? Visit shop.org.com. We're always adding new stuff all the time, especially like when we say something silly on this show. We'll put it on a t-shirt. Again, check it out at shop.durdymomedia.com. Y'all, I want to know about the great innovation

around winning at Watkins Glen. Oh, God. He had a fast race car. You know, and Kyle, I'll be honest. Up until this point, you know, I don't know that Kyle had drove for the Woodbrothers and, you know, he'd been in different teams and cars. but I don't know that we really gave Kyle's ability a ton of credit.

Right. Until the Sabco deal. Yeah. And he wins, you know, he goes out there and, you know, dominated it, Rockingham a couple times. And I think it won Dover maybe and a couple different races. And then, you know, the mellow yellow. Pocono was a good win. The mellow yellow car was striking, beautiful.

Like everybody, you can pick that thing out. It was good looking. Days of Thunder comes along. This car was iconic. Yeah. It was fun too. When we do the throwbacks at Darlington, that's a very popular car

that people like to playoff of. Yeah. But talk about the win at the glen and how you made that happen. So we go up there testing. And in those days, you just call and say, you know, it's $1,500 a day or something. Nothing was going on in those days.

Race tracks love to have you. So we show up, unload. first off, I said, where's the ambulance? Where's the records? Well, they're downtown. You know, you're just calling when something happens. I said, no, we lost a half a day getting records and ambulances up there. Yeah.

Right? I said, I'm not testing with medical. Yeah. You know, hell, I'm the one of might cut my thumb off. You know what I mean? I've done that already once. And so we lost half a day. So we get running.

And so they're putting up, we're running. I just, I can't get through this I can't do this. I need to run wide open. There's no reason to not run wide open. So I'm like, okay. So they're putting up garage doors in the building before it was just open.

Right. And I see all this freaking boxes down there. So it's all right. So I go cut these four inch wide strips and they're like a 3.16th thick, you know, almost a quarter, whatever. And I start, and I went and did the whole valence. If you look at a picture of that car,

had a valence, you know, those days they had the valence on. So I widened the whole, I did the whole thing wider. I just taped it on there, duct tape. He goes out and runs.

He's like, oh, man, he said, you didn't believe it's better. I said, okay, go get more cardboard. And I tape it on.

And we go, I mean, we were literally four inches more wide. I mean, it was out there. Yeah. And he's like, he just mad at it

from turn two, up to the s's it was so good you get up to the chican he a lot of times he just pushed the clutch in and never let the clutch out and goes through the chican and then third gear whatever and off and go he's like this perfect he's like it's good so we get all that done work harder on that than springs and shocks that made the springs and shocks good whatever they were so we got back home he's like okay smart ass now what are you going to do you got a cardboard all over this thing so I knew of a company in Florida did fiberglass work.

We cut the whole nose off. I put little brother Roman in a pickup truck with its nose in this. I think it was Harry's glass. And he drives at Jacksonville or whatever it was. And I said, make a mold, do this,

do this. They made a whole new nose for us. Right? In a week. Bring it back, put it on, put their ducks in it, and all this other stuff. And then really the ducks were so big. There was, it said, one time I had a quote, it said we only had GP on it,

but it was G-P-R-I-X, right? So it wasn't Grand Prix. Right. So somebody was bitching, like, we're hauling ass. And, you know, if Kyle's hauling ass or something wrong, right? There's one of them things in practice. And so they come over, they come over, and they're like,

they get tape measure out and measure the valence. Because of the G.P. on there, they thought that the nose was narrow. Because back then, everybody just narrowed stuff up and whatever. And they're like, yeah, this thing ain't narrow. Geez, they don't walk away. So it was freaking cheated up, right? Oh, yeah.

And it was good. Our Daytona car we sat on the pole with was an awesome car. We had so much fun building that thing. That year or the year after something. We did it at Teledade. A fast car. We put a body on it at the racetrack. Make a spring change.

Change offenders. Make a spring change. You know, and they got it where we would travel the full eight inches in the back. And we unloaded that car. Barry Dotson comes over and says, he's like, God, Felix makes you bring your Martinsville car here? Yeah. You know, and that thing, it hauled out.

You know, we had fun back in those Meliola days. You end up getting let go from the team. What was the disagreement over? He said, it was after Charlotte. So we blew up, and I gave everybody Monday off. And so Ryan and Roman, my brother said myself, we went in there and said, look, let's just pull the motor out and whatever. So somehow Felix knew we were working.

And he'd come in, and he fired all three of us. Damn it. Yeah. And said, you're, you're complacent and you're, you know, you're complacent and you're satisfied with mediocrity. We're 10th in points. We've come off a great season, and we've blown up a couple times. And so he unloaded us all three one time.

No shit. Like that. And so, we'd take, you can go home, you know? I mean, they went home. I think Ryan and Rome both went over the Yates. They went up going to Yates. That's a good deal. Yeah, yeah, they were good.

And then I just didn't do anything. And then around August, about September, July or something, Jack calls and says, hey, you need to come do Ted's deal. Yeah. Oh, Ted Muskray. Yeah, come to Ted's deal. Yeah. Family Channel. Yeah, yeah.

And we set on three polls. Yeah. Right. I mean, we worked our ass off, but, you know, we were good. We had a little trouble racing sometimes, but we sat on three poles. There's some speed there. But we took three, whatever May to July, I didn't do anything other than worry, you know. Yeah. So that's how that happened. Well, after 94 at Rausch again with Musgrave, you go to Penske.

you worked with Rusty through from 95 to 01. Yeah. That, you got 15 wins, nine polls in 2000. What was working with Rusty like and how come that clicked for you? How come? Rusty Wallace. Well, not only did that, not only did it seem to click between you and Rusty, but you also seemed to be kind of allowed

to do what you wanted to do within the Penske organization. I behaved to an extent okay. Like my first meeting with Roger. Tighted it up a little bit. Roger. He's been sitting there having a briefcase over. My first meeting, he said, he's glad you're here.

This will be good. He said, but just remember, he's like, racing is 100% of my fun. It's 5% of my business. Don't let this mess up to 95% of it. you know of the business you know

don't don't don't mess it up yeah and he's like I know you got stuff in that briefcase you can use and you've used

you've done stuff and whatever he said just remember everybody you know we gotta be got a total line on this stuff

yeah I said you got it I mean I had fuel gauges and you know I mean lights to put in a dash all kinds of stupid

yeah eventually we did but nonetheless you know he laid that groundwork and Rusty and I got along pretty good. The thing that I, the first thing I noticed when I got there, you know, they won

races. They won a lot of races. But he was really good. But every freaking car was different, different chassis. Different, different crossbars in it, and a Hopkins car, and a Loflin car, you know, and, you know, dual mass of, mass cylinders wouldn't fit in one car because of something. And, you know, So I started the chassis program. We started building our own chassis. And that was really good when we did all of that. And we got along. I spent endless hours in the wind tunnel.

Don Miller and Roger did a deal with the university, I think, in Virginia. And we helped them get that wind tunnel in Norfolk back up online. They used to do airplanes and fighters. And we spent, there's some. times I went up there for probably four days in a row and you'd run 12 hours right you know I mean we went tunneled that shit to death and it showed yeah rusty was um not that other drivers didn't do this I mean a lot of drivers back in the day did this but my understanding of the little bit of time that I got to race with rusty we'd go to racetrack and test it um Bristol and so forth he was incredible

Bristol. Yeah. We built new cars for them almost every race. Is it true that Rusty was, Rusty made your job easier because of his ability to assist you with what may need to be changed on the car. Like, hey, I think we need to, you know, I think the track bar needs to be lower.

Yeah, he was really good. Right rear spring. He was the kind of. Tire pressure, pound, whatever. Right. But he was on, you know, he'd go out and run. Bobby was the same way. Really?

Yeah. They were very close to that mentality, and Rusty was incredible. Right. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's one of the things that I heard about Rusty was his ability to go run a car and come in and give you suggestions on specific ideas on what he thought the car. Yeah, for sure. We would go off the play sheet to try to develop stuff. Right. And he, we were at Indy, and so we're using these springs that would coil mine. This was back in before it was fashionable, right?

And he could feel it down the front stretch. He could feel it click, whatever. And he'd come in, he opened a hood and look, he said, hey, there are coil binders. It's got the paint war off it. Put some tape on there. I'll go run. But it was supposed to, but he didn't, you know,

he didn't really like that, which is okay. I mean, we made it fast. But there was things he could feel, you know. We were really good. I had a good feel for this. Speedway cars and different things that we did. You know, I mean, we were, we went to Proving Grounds with Buddy Baker and Shauna Robinson and would run stuff for a week.

Right. Out in Arizona. Yeah. You know, during the wintertime, and we learned stuff from there. And Buddy would test Daytona sometimes when Rustu was doing other things. And you just, you'd learn stuff. The radial tires, like with Buddy. I said, look, I just want to set the caster.

I said on these things so you're not pulling on the wheel to the left you know when they run all that split right I said you tell me and I'll keep changing it to when you get down the industry away you're just putting your thumbs in it and you're and you're going yeah I said because these things don't want to be this way all the time and we worked we worked on castor for six hours and buddy's like oh my god you can drive this thing with two fingers you just go off in a corner and the castor's perfect and stuff you know And so he let us go do that with Buddy, and Buddy, you know, Buddy run pretty good. And so we carried that over into some of the other stuff we did, you know. Yeah. I want to talk about your final couple years in competition.

You went back to Petty. One year. In 2002, your general manager trying to revive the family team. Yeah. What was going on? Well, I'll be totally honest. I said in 2001, when your dad passed away, it changed everything, you know, for a lot of people. Your dad and I were friends more than what people know, you know.

Yeah. We would talk about stuff, whatever. And, you know, when I saw that, and I said, okay, you guys were young, but in my kids were younger. And I said, okay, I think I want to. I tried to do this at the end of the Penske stuff, and they wouldn't let me be a manager of get crew chiefs. So that's where Kyle was talking to me to go over there, just to do that and get it organized.

And, you know, your dad's situation, it weighed heavy on me, and I needed to make a change where I could take care of the kids more and, you know, be more of a family guy. So I went over there, and we, I made a lot of changes. We did a lot of stuff. We had 20% wind tunnel models

that, you know, they were starting a program, but it was big on. And, you know, we were doing a lot of stuff. We were making gains, but we had, you know, Christian Fitapoli,

he was driving some and Kyle and, you know, but I was probably spending money like it was, you know, coming out of a faucet, you know what I mean? Yeah. But we were making gains.

We didn't miss any races, and they'd missed, like between the two or three teams a year before, they missed like 30. And so that was better. And, you know, come December, you know, the business manager said, hey, you got to let you go.

I mean, I had 10-year contract, 10 fucking years. Yeah. And I was like, I was heartbroken. And I was driving from Bethel Church Road over there off the exit 28. to there every day, 70-some miles, you know, for a year making gains. I mean, it just, yeah, I get it. I was so devastated.

I wouldn't tell Lisa, I left the house every day at 5.30, not having a job, just so she wouldn't know that I was fired. How long? Two weeks. Yeah. You know? And so we, We were up at the Biltmore house on the weekends, spend a couple nights and right in the middle

doing paperwork of refinancing her house, you know, because the interest rates were lower and doing all that. And I told her, I remember sitting in the car. I said, need to get the paperwork in. I said, I don't have a job anymore. And she said, what in the... I said, we've just got to move on. You know?

I said, get the paperwork in because it's going to save us whatever money a month and blah, blah, blah. So we kind of got the paperwork in because it wasn't announced that I didn't have a job. And I had been, like I said, just going up and down the streets. So that was heartbreaking. And then around January, I'm trying to think, called Jack. and he said, look, he's like, the inn is full. I don't, he's like, I don't have room. I don't have any room.

And I said, okay. I said, well, if you hear something. So a week or two later, he's like, we, Ford needs more presence down south. They need a guy on foot down there. and I said, okay. So I guess Mike called, Mike was big on it.

Mike Hilton. And Bill France, and I've been friends with those guys long before I went to work for him, Bill especially. And so that Ford Motorsports thing happened, right? Field manager for the programs.

And it's like, all right, it's a three-year deal. So start doing that, going to all the Bush teams, all the cup teams, truck teams, what do you need? What's this? What's that? And we're doing good. We're spreading some information out and, you know, things like that. But I'm only going a part of the races.

So Greg Speck was the guy that was my immediate boss up there. I call him. Once a month or something, I'd fly up there. We'd do meetings. I got them aside. I said, hey, look. I said, this isn't working the way it is. He's like, I knew you weren't going to make.

I knew you couldn't, didn't want to be this. I said, no, no, no, no. I need to go to all the races. He goes, you need to go to all. I said, yeah, I need to go to all the races. Not being there when they're looking for somebody. It just got to be at all the races. He's like, I can't give you any more money.

There's no more budget. I can't pay you for that. I said, I don't want any more money. I just want to go to more races. pick up the tab on the expenses. He's like, you're the first person that's ever told me that. So I started going all the races. And that was working out good.

And, you know, when championships with, you know, with Bush and, well, two in a row, I guess Kenzith. Yeah. You know, and that was working well towards the end of that. Jack gets me and says, you think Robert would ever do business with me? I said, well, let me see what I can do. What do you mean? He's like, the engine business, you know, just feel him out. Yeah.

So I went to Robert and said, look, I said, this Roush, Yates, whatever, you know, talk to Jack. He's wanting to do something, and this could be good. Yeah. Because Robert's cylinder heads and shit like that, it was the best. You know, Jack had other resources to make part of it the best that he was doing. And so I went between those two a couple times and they put that together. So I'm at Ford and the phone rings in February. And it's Jim Hunter.

It's Hunter. I said, what are you doing? I said, nothing. He said, yeah, Bill wants to talk to you. I said about what? Yeah, we need something. We need some help. Bill needs to talk to you.

I said, well, Bill just got me this three-year deal, and now we're 16 months into it, and Bill wants to talk to me, he laughed. You know, we'll work it out. So, anyway, so I talked to Bill a little bit, and then Mike a little bit, you know, and Mike calls one day, he says, hey, you need to come Daytona Monday.

I said, well, I be there tomorrow night or Wednesday. He's like, no, be at the hangar. So I flew down at whatever to one, two o'clock in the afternoon. We spent the day with George Pine and Brian and Bill and Mike myself, went to dinner and he took me back. Mike took me back to the airplane and we just talked about a lot of stuff. And Mike said, anybody ever tell you what we want you to do? I said, no, I thought it would come up.

Yeah. Yeah, we need to have, we need you to be vice president competition. We're looking at that. And we're going to, I said, well, Gary's kind of that. He said, well, Gary's going to be head of R&D and all the new stuff. I said, okay. He said, but we want you to do that. I was like, okay, well, what about the Ford deal?

Whatever. So they had to work to get me out of the Ford deal to go do that. And so I was doing rulebook meeting in that August, and I was still at Ford. Yeah, you were. As vice president of competition, you're in charge of rule enforcement, among other things I'm sure. Why? I was always kind of curious about this.

I don't know that I asked Gary this question, but what is it like to be on one side of the fence and go to the other side? And when you got there and saw how NASCAR operated, I mean, I imagine you had like a couple of moments where you were like, damn it, I wish I'd have known this was the way things were. Yeah. When I was on the cruise side in the garage, had I known this was the processes and this was

what they were working with, I might have done some things differently and handled some things differently. I know that, you know, going out of the race car into broadcasting, man, I was, you know, they take the drivers up into the broadcast booth now, do the cup races, Xfinity races. I wish I'd have done that shit. Yeah. Because I would have had a whole different appreciation.

Right. And treated those people differently, knowing what they were trying to accomplish as a broadcast, as a network. And I really didn't have that respect and handle things the way I should have at times. I thought I was all right. But going over to that side, you know, what was, I imagine you're appreciative, you're looking forward to the opportunity. Yeah.

But also you got to peek behind the curtain. Yeah. What was that like? The thing that I learned early and quickly on that is the two sides don't know what each other is doing. Right? Just like you said, you need to peek behind the curtain. So there was things that NASCAR did that the teams didn't know. Like you don't know how much they meet and they're doing this.

You know, I would talk to Greg Zippet. Delhi and others, you know, and different things. And I said, you know, they do things, they're working on this way. Oh, it didn't know. Yeah. You know, and then the NASCAR side, you know, they're doing, they're doing rulebook meetings in August that the teams didn't know that they were playing in that far ahead. And but yet there was some people in the NASCAR stuff that didn't, they didn't think

rules needed to be out before December. something and I explained to them that you know we used to I used to do a meeting at Penske in in August always the week after the Bristol race engineers together the fabers to get fab guys together you know and say okay we need to talk about Daytona we're starting Daytona now we'd already ordered the right chassis to start hacking on or building on but we you know so NASCAR didn't understand that they well it takes a month to build a car and they got December no No, it's August. We're building.

We're testing. We're a wind tunnel. We're the track. So trying to merge those two, I think I did a decent job of letting people know that, hey, this is going on. Hey, we're working on this. What do you think to a crew chief or a team manager and stuff? And then eventually we did bigger meetings at the R&D Center. They would come and listen, vent, and things like that, which I thought worked out well.

And so it was about, like one of the things, we, in the day, we were paying a company to analyze the tires, right, to run them on the machine. Yep. So Penske was paying and to do 100 tires. Childress was paying and do 100 tires. Whatever it was, I'm using it, paraphrasing 100, you know, Hendricks, whatever, whatever. And Goodyear was doing it. So I got everybody together, you know, Dodge is paying for their teams to do it. Chevrolet's paying, Ford's paying, you know, Toyota's getting in the loop.

I said, what are we doing here? If everybody's doing this to get this information, what in the fuck are we doing? Let's, and the good you guys, well, we can't afford to do all that. I said, no, let's do this. You got a good year part and you got this manufacturer, this. split this thing four or five ways and hand everybody the information. Same thing when we'd send these companies out to measure the track surface and get all the angles and analyze the surface and everything.

Everybody's doing it. Yeah. Just stop. Just stop. Just stop. Give it to every. Find a way. Right?

And eventually we kind of found a way to do that. And the companies were, I'd call a company and say, hey, I need you to do, you know, homestead. Yeah, yeah, well, we can't fit it in. We're doing it now for somebody else, but we can't give you the information. So they're getting it multiple times. You know, and they probably weren't even measuring it

the second time. They were just getting their fee. Yeah. You know, well, they wouldn't if they were smart. But I was trying to put all that stuff together. It's like this is millions of dollars wasted. Yeah. You know, stuff like that.

Yeah. NASCAR, some of the harshest penalties and NASCAR history we were handed out in the 2007, sorry, Gatoradeway Dules, Rodney Childers, and Josh Brown were suspended for two races. The teams and drivers, Scott Riggs, Elliott Sadler, penalized 25 championship points, fine money due to illegal modifications and qualifying. Kenny Francis, Robbie Reiser were suspended for four races, fine, 50 grand, Casey Kane and Matt Kensas.

The drivers were penalized 50 championship points due to illegal modifications. Michael Walshup Racing and team member David Hider. and Bobby Kennedy were ejected from Daytona and suspended indefinitely due to an illegal rocket fuel being found in the intake manifold. Jet. Jet fuel, rocket. Hyder was fined $100,000 and 100 points to the team. Ultimately, Hyder would be fired. I raced against David.

He's a hell of an innovator. He's a good guy. He's a good guy. All this in 2007 during the speed weeks. Yeah. I asked the question, because you've been in the sport as a mechanic. now you're on the side of having to enforce rules that you're overseeing and having to wait having to hand down laid the law down on guys that you are they were your peers yeah still kind of are

yeah i got jason burdette oh yeah crew chief here um crew chief here forever awesome crew chief yeah um and we just had we just kind of had ran the course and we were making a change and eventually over the course of a of a little time he ends up at the at the at the Xfinity in the Xfinity series as one of the head technical inspectors he's over over the Xfinity series I would say and so he's now in that role yeah and I see him at the track and I love this guy yeah we're friends I've raced with him in in the in my cup days he was car chief on my car and I would do anything for him yeah but now he's on the competition side. So there's this strange

dynamic where we are friends, but damn it, I know he could, you know, he's going to pop my guys and he's going to have to treat us just like he treats everybody else. And you had been thrust into that role or put yourself in that position. Yeah. How was managing those how was managing

the integrity of the sport while also managing the respect relationship, the friendships that you still had in the garage? How tough was that? It was tough but you have to pull yourself back and and sometimes it's you got to make sure it's more black and white you got to like you know penalties got to increase we were getting pressure from

upper over management like you know clean some of this stuff up yeah you know and that's how you points is how you do it money doesn't mean anything to anybody no you know shame to say but it's about the points and some of the stuff is is when it's pretty blatant You know, there's cheating to just go fast, and then there's cheating to compromise the integrity of a car or something or something. And those are dangerous. Yeah.

You know what I mean? The jet fuel and stuff was... How, like, I guess, uh, when y'all find out and discover that something like that has happened under your watch, I imagine you go through a range of emotions. Yeah.

of angry, but also at the same time, like, almost dumbfounded, like how... Yeah. There's those what-the-f*** moments. Yeah. How could you be so... Yeah, you're sitting up in the office, you know, and it was always Mike and I in an office, sitting up in the office, and they come and they get you and go, oh, Jesus sakes. Yeah.

You know, please, no. Yeah. This can't be true. No. So, yeah, somebody has... I'm walking my friends out the gate. right you got to leave the property yeah you know yeah kicking them out yeah the um michael has a brand new team and david and then boys pull that stuff and yeah you're given no choice yeah

knowing knowing good and well how detrimental this is going to be towards that whole program yeah and then the big one was at richmond and it was and then they're going to complete for leniency yeah and they're michael and you Friends. Friends. Yes. Yeah. Right.

Detramental to friendship, for sure. Oh, man. You know, it was. I can't imagine. I mean, what people didn't understand is we had, you know, we had, we would send stuff chemical place to get analyzed and this place to get analyzed and whatever. So it's not like. It's out of your hands. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not like we said, oh, it's phaseling and, you know, do it, right. Yeah. What was Richmond? It's tough. What was it Richmond? Richmond was the race fixing thing. Oh, yeah. You know, you got to itch.

You got to scratch your elbow. You got to, yeah, yeah. I was right behind him when he spun itself out. Yeah, yeah. That was tough. I knew what happened, but everybody did. Yeah. I mean, they're parking, you know, they're bringing cars in and part.

They're working the system on that with Brian. Yeah, yeah, you know, and they're doing all that. And so it was, you kind of didn't see it from the tower. No. You wouldn't have known it was happening in real time. Right. But all the radio communication, all that stuff comes out. And what people don't understand is we record every radio transmission from every team. Damn. To have it. Yeah, that's, I'm talking 15 years ago. Yeah. Right? So the, so that's the race that's the cutoff.

So in those days, I rode my motorcycle to a lot of races. I need to be by myself. Sure. I rode up there. You know, I ride Phoenix, you know what I mean? So I wait to the traffic clears. I leave out of there, they take all the pictures. I leave out of there about 1, 2 o'clock in the morning.

We're going to ride home all night, dodge the deer or whatever it takes. So about 10 o'clock in the morning, the phone rings, and it's, and it's Mike. Helton. I said, you okay? He said, yeah. I said, what's going on? What's going on? He goes, we got fricking trouble. I said, what? Well, when the 15th born and this happened, and like, we got to do an investigation. I said, oh, okay. So Chicago was the big week, media week, and this, that, and the other. I said, all right, well, when do you want, what do you think? He's like, go up, you gotta get there, go Monday. So Monday at

9 or 10 o'clock, I'm in a fucking airplane going to Chicago. You know, I don't, I think it was by myself. They just put me up there. So I was in a room bigger than this room that they rented for me. And

the TV people came in and they replayed stuff and replayed stuff. I was in that room for eight or ten hours the first day and probably 16 the second day. I didn't go to anything. I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that room. Listen to all the radio transmissions, all that stuff. By yourself? Yeah, I was by myself and some of the guys would come in from the network and they give me a hand with whatever. Right. And Hoots came up.

You're the one doing the investigation. Yeah. And Hoots too. Yeah. Hoots came in, you know, helped and And, you know, it's like, oh, my God. And you put this thing together. Well, what they didn't, you know, so now you're like fixing a race. But what they didn't understand, and there's no reason for them to understand it, we're right in the middle of negotiations for Fandul and Beton Games and whatever. Oh, shit. Right?

That's a good problem. It's the worst thing you could do at the worst time. Sure. So it was going to be freaking monstrous huge. Yeah. So. Did that torpedo that? I don't, no, I don't think so.

It didn't help, but, you know. So you come to the conclusion of, you know, what happened? Yeah. Who makes the decision to add Jeff into the chaos? No decision was ever made by one person. Oh. For good reasons. One may have a bigger voice.

Sure. right and it's good for your sanity sure for a lot of reasons right and but all that decision like to pull yeah yeah so we pulled some out we wound up with one extra guy yeah with Jeff and then but you know you went to four races or whatever it was in those days and you did your elimination back down to whatever yeah you know it was kind of no harm no foul you know he wasn't having one of his better years you know I think his back was bothering him and stuff but that was a decision by a few people. Sure.

Right. Yeah. And so right, wrong or indifferent behind us, but it was one of them, what a freaking week that was. You coined the term boys have at it. Oh, my God. Or have at it boys. In 2010, during a preseason media tour.

So it's the end of the media tour. We're wrapping up. All the drivers are there and owners or whatever, most of them. So we were upstairs. is in the conference room and it's Brian Mike there's a few other couple others in there and Brian's like

you know he's like we're getting beat up it's too sterile you know it's too you know Jimmy Johnson was the cleanest guy ever right and it's like you know it's getting too sterile we gotta quit doing something how do we do this

I don't know he's like well I was the closing remarks Nothing on paper. I was like, you know, hey, if you guys had a great off-season, go get them, you know, you 18. So he says, look, we got to, we got to, you know, just say something. Yeah. It's like, I'm a mother-s-I-I-go down, I leave that and go down, and I'm the last guy, and there's, you know, others talking.

I get up there. I don't even remember anything that I said leading up to it. Sure. I was in a days. I believe it. reciting thinking and you know i said you know said hey you know whatever you know guys you know we've been holding you close and this that the other so turning you loose boys have at it have a good time yeah and that was it and i walked off stage and that just exploded yeah yeah and sometimes in a good

way and sometimes in a bad yeah oh my god it was crazy the playoff format is a big conversation right now in social media. We have a situation now where we have four rounds of elimination to one final round or one final race at Richmond for the championship or at Phoenix for the championship. Do you have a favorite playoff system that's not being used? Unless the one you like that we have now is. Well, yeah. So once again,

stack of proposals. I got them at home. Notebook full, big. Yes. And so the competition department, which would be at the time, David, Hoots, John Darby, myself, you know, we're old school, you know,

we get it. You know, Brian, we get, Brian was like, you know, there's timeouts, resist that, and the other sports, people need to go to the fridge, you know, that type of stuff. And we get it. But the, And the thing is, it was some people didn't like the racing strategy of 500 miles and you save your car to the end.

Yeah. Like when I started, you race the last 50 miles. And then your dad came in and you race the last 150 miles. Tim Richmond commanding you race the last 100 miles, you know, 500 miles. You know, I mean, that's how it went. And but others were pace, right? Sure. And so the one that stuck in my mind was give the awards the same weight points, but don't throw a caution. Yeah.

You know, I mean, today, I wish they would have throwback weekend at Darlington, pay the points by the lap, but don't throw a caution, and start that sunbitch at noon like it used to be in 100 degrees, and let's see how it goes. Yeah. Right? You're going to run 170 miles without a caution. Yeah. You know, it'll make the goodness come out of you. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I mean, that's kind of what I like, but I understood some of the caution stuff. Far stage racing. Yeah, it's part of it's tough. When you see a situation develop that a caution comes out, four laps from a regular yellow, and you've got to run long, you can't pit. You know what I mean? It's almost like if a caution comes out and everybody gets caught up, you open up pit road. and you can pit three laps before you go green and get your tires or you can stay out.

And once you get your points, if you're already green or not, you pit then go to the bag. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's tough. As far as the playoffs, though, do you have, do you like 36 race championship all, you know, just like we used to do it before 2003? Yeah. Do you like the first, a lot of people love the original chase, which was 10 races?

Yeah. Some people may like the way we do it now, where we have one final event for four drivers. Do you know what you would do? It's, you know, you almost been around too long, right? I mean, when you're six races from the end and you have no, you're 240 points out, and you're in fourth place, right? I mean, look at the championships your dad won and Richard won and others.

I mean, you know, sometimes they're celebrating in Rockingham, and there's two races left. That's right. And then, so what do you do with that? Well, then some people don't watch the next two races. They don't mean anything. Yeah. You know, so there has to be some sort of thing in there.

Yeah. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to really own up on anything because some smart person is going to come up with a good idea. But it's just, it needs to be a little bit different, but I just not sure what it is. I think there's a middle ground between the original and what we do today. Yeah. I don't know how we, it doesn't. really make a difference to me how we end up getting there. But at the end of the season, there should be a four to six race battle between four to six drivers for the title.

Yeah. You won't have a guy that runs away and locks it up. You'll have that final race means something. There'll be some, there'll be some numerical, you know, somebody will still be alive. Well, you can't win the first race and then collect all these stage points and win the championship and finish third at Phoenix, and it's kind of anticlimatic. Yeah, for sure. It's hard to manufacture the perfect championship, right? I don't know that that exists, you know, and I think that there, again, I think, you know, the way we do it now has been good.

There's been some exciting moments, but I just wish that there was more than one event to decide who wins the championship, because the way the drivers feel is they're almost more proud to have gotten to the final than to win it. Yeah. Because the ability. So tough. Ability is tough to get to the final. Yeah.

The final is more about happenstance, circumstance. Yeah. There's some strategy and some effort and performance, but it's also, hell, you just have to have no, you know, you break a rotor or something like that, it takes you out of it. Well, and then there's the, you know, the fight of road course and not road course, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know.

Richard Petty said that NASCAR's not really road course racing, and I kind of agree with that. When I grew up, you know, y'all went to Riverside, and then when Riverside went away, well, we went to the glint. Yeah. And that was okay. Yeah. And, you know, you had guys like Sterling that didn't give a shit about road course racing would just go, you know.

Daytona's. Go run the race and run the race and go home. Yeah. But now you've got to be great at road course racing. Yeah. Like it's six, seven, you know, six or seven races a year. SCG is incredible. He is.

He is. He is the smoothest ever, ever witness. Yeah. And I like, I think he's good for the sport. Yeah. But our, you know, where we are in terms of, like, how many road course races we need, I'm not, I'm not 100% sure. I think four is the minimum. Yeah.

I think four is a good number. Yeah. But I like the short track stuff. Yeah. I miss Wilkesboro and old school things. We had good races down there. I agree. That we, we've kicked your dad's house one day with Mark.

Yep. And we did it. And it was a total team effort at Wilkesboro. He's, you know, it's him and you, it's Mark and Dale. That's, they had the field covered. But we had, you know, we weren't perfect and this, that, and the other. And so I went, you know, typical deal, I went down in one and two during the race. I'm sitting on the hood of somebody's car watching a car go watch, and Steve's up in three and four, Steve Meal.

We come back together. I said, he's got too much wheel in it. If things tight. Okay. So he told Mark, it's like, all right, we're going to. Next pit stop, we're going to pull that half rubber out of the right front. No, yeah, don't take the time. I can't lose a spot, whatever.

And I was a front tire changer. So anyways, we pulled it, you know, I got it out. And we didn't, I don't think we lost a spot on the racetrack. Yeah. It might have been second to dad. And that thing just took off, you know. I mean, it was a good team effort. You know what I mean?

It was really good. Those two race good together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of respect, though. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, I think dad, um, dad would get physical with guys. He had some problems with some guys he didn't like and get along with him. But he always got along great with Mark. Yeah. Off the track even, you know. And when they had that respect and camaraderie, and Mark was a smart racer. Yeah. He never put himself in positions to be taking in, you know, dead work. He was the guy. You pass his ass. And he had his pace. And 20 laps later, he's passing you because he's got tires left. Yeah. Right? And drives off into the sunset. Oh, yeah. You know, he understood what 90% wasn't, you know. That's why he never put himself to be run over.

Right. You know, by dad. He'd wave a guy by? Yeah. And then, you know, dad, the give and take, I think, was developing. Your dad at Daytona, after we didn't win the championship, you know, and your dad comes and gets me, I'm going somewhere, walking across. garage area comes and gets to me.

I've been wanting to tell you this for a hundred years. He puts his arm around me. It gives me a pocket knife from the championship. He said, here. He said, don't tell the cat in the hat I gave you this. I said, I won't, thanks. He goes, you got f***ed on your championship, and let's go on, goes away. I said, oh, damn.

Yeah. He said that. Yeah. Yep. He was, he's that guy, you know, I mean. Yeah. I um I I there's a lot of other stuff in these notes that we didn't get to um it means I get to come back it does yeah you have I wanted to talk to you about the COT uh you're you know when you left NASCAR what you've been doing um I did want to talk to you about your family your brothers yeah you um you're one of four four that um had an individual all all of you had an impact of you um And all of you were a cog in the wheel in different ways.

Yeah. And so, and I want to celebrate them. So I do want you to come back. Yeah. I really enjoyed this. Yeah. Where are you spending your days? We are in Greensboro, and we were at a house that, believe it or not, it was Lisa grew up in kind of.

And it was a grandmother built it, her grandfather, like 59. It's a nice old house, you know, and it's big. and it's got a pool and all this, you know, cool stuff. But it's 1950s, right? A lot of work. Sure. You know, we're probably going to try to get closer to here, friends and family and all that down here.

Yeah. But we're in Greensboro, you know, and we were back and forth. I was an indie for six years. Yeah, doing what? Sports car stuff. Yeah. But Andretti's doing them.

So, basically, with John's son, Jared. Yeah. What are you doing these days? Not much, you know. There's a couple people talk to me about some stuff and the sent you. What do you want to do? I want to help somebody get, you know what I mean? I don't need to be the guy.

I need to be the guy helping, you know? Yeah. A race team? Yeah. Any of that stuff. I got you. Yeah. Hold are you.

Andrew. Let's see. What's today's date? Come on. I will be, today's the 12th, right? The 15th, I'll be 69. You got plenty of years left. I got a few.

Yeah. I don't, right now I'm a little wounded with my, neck surgery and some other stuff I've done. For 69, though, you're in pretty damn good shape. Yeah. Considering all the chemicals and all the you've been around. Yeah, there's a lot of beer preserve that sent me, right? A lot of beer, a lot of bondo dust went up to nose.

All that stuff. Yeah, you've been around some break clean. I think about all that break clean. We sprayed in the air. Oh, clean and bare. But in the old days before that, there was these vats of some chemical that you put your arms in up to here. washing parts.

Oh, hell yeah. And I remember I was at the Pettys and Wade Thornburg said, yeah, that's new stuff. I said, okay. Yeah. He's like, look, if it gets a bother in your skin, get a cord of transmission fluid and pour in there to soften it up. I was like, oh, that's great. I mean, I'm like the heater.

I don't know what cancer's going to get me, you know what I mean? It's like, you think of all that. I think about it too. Like Richard Petty, I saw him the other day. We were shooting that commercial for Luke Combs at Rockingham. Yeah. And I'm like, man, he's old as shit. Yeah.

And just moving around and he raced. Did the motorcycle ride with us. Racing them fucking cars with asbestos in the floorboard and all kinds of crazy shit. We got. Cooking asbestos in the floorboard of a small race car in the 50s and 60s and still grinding it out today. He was, you know, I mean, that Pocono when he broke his neck, right? He didn't miss a race. No.

No. You know? Yeah. I mean, it's like, and I was there at that time. If it's going to get you, it's going to get you. It just tells me to just live your life. Yeah. It's going to get you.

It's going to get you. Yeah. I have enjoyed, I'm going to say something, man. I do want you to come back because you got a lot of more, you got a lot more cool shit you could tell us. But I knew who, I obviously knew who you were. I grew up in the garage as a kid. I saw the relationship that you had with my dad when you were,

working with Rusty and the competitiveness and the friendship and the respect. And then when you became a part of the NASCAR ecosystem on the competition side, I got to work with you and talk with you and communicate with you and spend more time with you and get to – because, I mean, you were part of my dad's generation. Yeah. And so any – and when I got to rub elbows with guys like you and Helton and – and it meant a lot to me to – to – to use that as my compass. And so I want to say thanks for being one of the good guys that didn't, that had time for people of my generation.

You were one of those. So, you know, there's some guys in the garage, and Shelmerdine will kind of admit to this a little bit, that when y'all were grinding through it in the late 80s and 90s, Y'all would have a whole lot of time for younger, you know, the kids running around, the sons of the drivers, all that bullsh, you know, y'all were working. Yeah. And, but a lot of guys were cold and difficult to talk to or be around. But, man, you've always been good to me.

Always been a friend. And I just want to say thanks. Yeah. No, thank you. For doing that for me. I've got so much respect for you, your family, everything your brothers did. I got to know your family really well over the last probably a couple of decades

and I'm thankful that we got the chance to spend some time with you today I'm glad to see you We need to talk about Key West one time We do, we had some fun down there Oh my God Do we have some fun? That one night we were headed in to be early

And I saw you over at the tree house bar Before I know it, it's 4.30 And I'm like, oh man, I'm trying to ride a bike too Yeah Not hard to do Oh, God. Yeah, it's good to see you. Yeah, it is. I appreciate you. Yeah, I appreciate you, too.

You have, you know, you've laid, you've had an impact and left an impression on the sport that affects people even today. The people like you that were involved in the sport for so many years helped steer the sport, help guide the sport, help set examples and be the compass for people like myself. You have no idea the effect that you've had on different people's lives over the course of your career. And I just, I love you, man. I appreciate you. Thank you. Do anything for you. I know you do the same.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Good to see you, man. All right. Thanks for doing it. Thanks for everything. I'll see you soon.

We'll book this thing up and go again. Let's do it. Robin Pemberton on the Dale Jr. download. All right. So that's a great conversation with Robin Pemberton. And honestly, man, I'll tell you, that conversation right there is some of the best stuff that we do in this room. But I literally could have sat here for another hour and a half to get into all the other things that we wanted to talk about. Robin has had some tough things to deal with, with his family that have really been difficult.

And I wanted to discuss that with him, but also just other things that he experienced in his NASCAR career. And what he's been doing since, you know, he's talked about doing some years in Indy with Mons and so forth. So there's just a chunk of stuff still that I think would be fun to talk to him about. So we've got to get him back and get him back here soon. That'll be a repeat guest that we'll have back pretty quickly. But this guy right here is, if you are a fan. of the sport, you're a fan of the history. If you want to sort of be brought back behind the curtain, so to speak,

to see what it was like to work inside the NASCAR building back in some of the formidable years and the peak of the popularity of the sport, if you want to go back into the 90s and the 80s inside the garage and wonder what it was like between some of the more competitive teams in the sport, these are the perfect guests that really can tell the story. He's a great talker. He's had to be, you know, he had to be that, you know, the face of the NASCAR organization at times and speak publicly. And so he, he's great at sharing his stories.

And so I just, I don't even think we scratched the surface there in this conversation today. of all of the great little nuggets and things that Robin could share with us. So I'm excited to have the opportunity to talk to him again, but he is the epitome of the garage grunt mechanic that saw this sport from so many different perspectives. He is the perfect candidate for a guest for this show. So I hope y'all enjoyed it as much as I did. I will say too, and I kind of touched on it there at the end.

I didn't want to really get into detail until he left the room. But when I was in the last probably six years of my career, or maybe from like 2008 on, he was in the NASCAR building competition and all those things. And he would be at a lot of the dinners. We went to Chicago and we had this dinner that only the championship eligible drivers in the playoffs would be at. And it would be Brian France and Hilton and Robin and a couple of the people from NASCAR. And dude, I would stand with Robin over by the drink bar and just bull-sh-h-it. You know, everyone else is sitting down listening to some guy they hired to come in and play or, you know, music or whatever.

and everybody's just doing the, you know, just every, no one's communicating. Everybody's kind of sitting to themselves at their own tables or whatever and not a lot of bullshit going on. And man, I would sit there with him and bench race. And he was so nice. And then he had a place in Key West. I would get one down there as well around 2007. And we'd run into each other down there and hang out.

And, you know, we just got to be really close. but he's a great dude man he's seen so many different shops work with so many iconic people in this sport and then again he gets to go behind the curtain to work in the NASCAR world in competition to really understand how the sport makes the decisions they make and pretty fascinating so thankful for him that he came on board to do the show and I think it's one of my favorites this year. Let's get to the white flag. All right, it's time for the white flag.

The Teardown was live on YouTube and Twitter following the race and actions detrimental dropped on Monday as well as Doorbubber Clear, Connor Zillich, and Josh Williams were on Doorbubber Clear to chat about this past weekend. Dirty Air with TJ Majors and myself dropped yesterday, recapping all the action from Watkins Glenn. And another episode of Bless Your Heart will be out tomorrow. And don't forget racing this weekend in the Cars Tour. I'll be driving the bud car, the baseball car at Anderson, South Carolina.

You can come to the racetrack physically, go get tickets from the website, or just walk up. I'm sure there'll be tickets available. Or watch it on Flow exclusively Saturday night. The pros and the late Milestock's will be going after it. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll see you. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.