The Dale Jr. Download - Robin Pemberton Part 2: The Jet Dryer Incident, Indy Tire Disaster & Hidden Fist Fights

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Dale Earnhardt Jr. welcomes longtime Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton back to the studio to discuss Robin's time working at NASCAR. The two discuss hot topics in the world of NASCAR during Robin's time as an executive, such as the Playoff format, the 4-car cap on teams, the Car of Tomorrow, the 2008 Indianapolis tire debacle, and the 2012 Daytona 500 fire situation.Plus, Robin shares never-before-heard details on the rumored fight between Tony Stewart & Kurt Busch in the NASCAR hauler at Daytona, whether or not traction control has ever been used by competitors, and much more.In Part 1, Dale and Robin moved from his humble beginnings at Albany-Saratoga Speedway to journeying through the NASCAR Cup garage, working at some of the most prominent teams in the history of stock car racing. Check it out if you haven't listened yet!And for more content check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaReal fans wear Dirty Mo. Hit the link and join the crew.👇https://shop.dirtymomedia.com/FanDuel: Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Juan Pablo hit the jet dryer. Hit the jet dryer. So the police come and got me and run me around by the back because they turned the lights on and I'm back there. It smelled like a 747 crash back there. Well, all that fuel all over. And it rained, right? Daryl criticized us on national TV for not putting out the fire.

They're not shooting at the fire. I didn't give a shit if the truck burned to the ground. We're trying to save the racetracks. We're going to run the race. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download, and our guest today is Robin Pemberton. He's been on the show before.

And just a few weeks ago, in fact, I thought that his story was so unique. And he was really such a great storyteller that we would have him back while all this was kind of fresh on our minds. We spent a lot of time kind of bouncing around, but mainly talking about his role as a crew chief, his beginning role in motorsports and kind of all of that. We did dip into his time at NASCAR, working with NASCAR as a member of the organization. But that's kind of what we're going to touch more on today. There was some key moments in the sport that happened around when he was part of that. And just kind of curious as to what he might remember or some of the things that he might be able to share with us today.

Such a great show in episode one with Robin. So episode two should be great. Let's get started. So we... Where were we? Yeah, where were we? He just got off this conversation, it feels like, just not too long ago. Thanks for coming back.

Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Well, you know, I guess I wasn't that surprised, but we had such great conversation the last time. Your insight and memory and, you know, transparency was refreshing, and a lot of people really enjoyed it. And we did too. As soon as you walked out of the room, we're like, man, we've got to get him back.

Because rarely do we get somebody back or want to have somebody back immediately, you know? But sometimes, you know, you'll get like a guy like Dale Jared in here, and you just can't get to it all. Yeah. You know, and you get to the end of the show and you're like, damn it, you know, there's just so much more that we just don't get into. And you kind of really want to get them back in here because there's just some people in the industry that have such great, not only the memory and knowledge, but the ability to share it. Yeah. You're just pretty solid at trying to, you know, your storytelling, I guess. And you probably, I imagine when you were put in the position you were working for NASCAR

where you had to be the, you know, at times the spokesman, the one to debrief with the media, you know. And you had that experience, giving interviews as a crew chief. Yeah. You know, so you were prepped. Yeah, a lot of times when you're at a crew chief, you're in one frame of mind, but when you were speaking. into the media from representing a NASCAR, not something that you did, right? I mean, there's a crew chief. You're talking about yourself.

And, you know, now all of a sudden you're, you know, you've got some guidelines. You've got to stay in, right? Yeah. Had you ever ventured out of those guidelines accidentally? I don't know. You could probably look around and find plenty of times I messed up. But, you know, it was not bad. Not bad.

Yeah, yeah. Not so bad they had to go back and clean it up. Right. Well, when we were, I think, you know, when we left off, we kind of hadn't gotten too deep into your involvement in NASCAR. You were the vice president in a competition for NASCAR back in 2004, or 2004, I'm sorry. And maybe we, you know, we might be repeating some of the things that we discussed. But what was the motivation, I suppose, of joining the dark side? It's kind of funny how it all worked out.

It goes back actually a few years before that. So I was at Penske, right? We talked about the year that I left there and all what led everybody, you know. And so I was at Kyle's 10-year deal that lasted 11 months. So that's a little hard on the friendship, but, you know, and so I was out work. and made a few phone calls and this, that, the other. And Jack Rosh, who I'd worked for before, and he got with Bill France, and he got with the Ford guys,

and, you know, I don't know who did what, where, and when, but it led me to be the Ford guy for three years, but I only made a year and a half of it because Bill calls. Bill had Jim Hunter call. Remember Jim, right? Yes, of course. to the phone. And I said, what's going on?

And Hunter is like, ah, God, you know, Bill needs to talk to you. I said, did I screw something up? No, we just, he needs to talk to you. So it started that way. Yeah. And so they needed, you know, Gary to be more about the R&D stuff. Yeah. And that's, I got the phone call.

Yeah. And I did not, you know, I took a couple of meetings before I actually knew that it was going to be vice president of competition. Yeah, which is a pretty nice role out of the gate. Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty nice role. And, you know, when Mike said, he's like, man, you, you know, you've got to come do this. He's like, you're going to be the, like, the only third vice president competition. Ever. Ever.

Did you have, did you have anybody, like, who went to bat for you? Nobody. Who, how did they know they were hiring the right guy? Who did they talk to? I guess it was just, you know, Jack Rausch and others that I'd work for. And, you know, Bill, we had a relationship. Yeah, okay. For whatever reason, we, you know, even early on, when I was at the Petty's and worked for Kyle,

when Kyle just started, Bill, you'd walk through the garage and Bill give you the motion to come out over and how you boys doing and this, that, and the other. Well, through time, we talked about stuff. And in the early days of getting cup to grow, I'm talking in the 60s, whatever, Bill was in his car driving all these short tracks up in New England and upstate New York and here and there. And as a kid, we had conversations. He said, well, what was your home track? And I said, well, Albany Saratoga Speedway in Malta, New York. That's where I grew up, saw the very first race there.

He said, oh, yeah, I was there one night. and a guy got caught on fire. I said, yeah, it was Rini Charlan, you know. And we talked, he's like, he was there that night. And then he was there other nights in other places that I was as a kid, you know? So we developed that kind of relationship. And then him and Felix were friends

because of the boat stuff as much as anything, but who wouldn't be friends with Felix, you know? And so it kind of, I was just real fortunate to be in some different situations and, you know, Bill was just that guy that you could just go talk to. Yeah. Right around the time you got placed into that role, they decided to have the chase format. Yeah.

So that's a big talking point today. Oh, boy. Right. And so. Let me a sip of coffee for this one here. This is the first time that we would move away from the 36 race traditional points format. I don't know that, you know, thinking back when this was decided that we would go to this playoff format,

I don't really know that we really were all that up in arms over it. Do you recall the reception to this? I think it was people were curious and they were kind of positive about it. But, you know, when you look at, go back the years prior to that. Now, you've got to remember, if we made a, if we did this, this thing? We've been talking about it for 18 months. There was no knee-jerk reaction to anything. So it wasn't in response to Kansas? It was something, something that, you know, that Brian or George Pine or whatever, they may have heard in their social, whatever, right? And so that's kind of

where it came up. Yeah. Do you think that Brian was the leader of the idea? Was he the? I think he brought it to people's attention. And it was like, hey, baseball's got a seventh inning stretch. You know, basketball's got timeouts. They got half time. Football's this. And soccer's got three periods. And, you know, sometimes, and literally the conversation was,

sometimes fans need a chance to go get up and go get something out of the fridge, drink and, you know, stretch your legs, whether they're home on the couch or sitting in the grandstands, right? So it was that type of approach. I'm telling you, I have a notebook at home that's probably this thick with all the different proposals and ideas and what to do and points and then all the history like here's what would happen. You take years before and you run this point system on those years.

And then you look at the times that, you know, Somebody won a championship at Rocket Hand before the end of the race, two races at the end. And what did that do for TV ratings or this, that, and the other? You know, those kind of conversations, right? We're back in those conversations today. Yes. You know, there's a, there was just a meeting recently of they, so sometime before Daytona for the 500 this year in February, they developed or informally made a.

a committee to discuss potential ideas around changing the current system. And I was lucky to be asked to be a part of that. And it's been Zoom calls and emails and good conversation. And funny thing. I think we all, I think most everybody, myself included, went into this thinking that there was never an opportunity to, like the 36 race schedule was not on the table for a, or a full season standard or original system was not on the table. And not even really in NASCAR's opinion worth debating

because I don't think that NASCAR, I don't know, I felt like at the, at that point that NASCAR thought that that was a terrible idea to even discuss it. But we were going to sit there and talk about, all right, how many races should be in the final round, all right, how many drivers should be in that round? And the conversations have been really good, and I think we're going to end up landing somewhere that's sort of a blend that really makes everybody happy. And we do end up feeling like we've got a justified champion. And I think that, you know, not to take away from how we're doing it now, the way you win a championship now is ridiculously hard. Everything has to go right in one single day. But to me,

I feel better about deriving our champion from a group of events, multiple results of as many as possible. I love a full season schedule. That's my favorite, right? I also recognize that I can't argue with you, you know. I also recognize, though, that I'm old school and nostalgic. Yeah. Right? And I'm still a guy that likes to ride a motorcycle or drive a van to the races, you know. I tried to buy an 85 comfort coat van the other day that was in really, really good shape. My wife wouldn't let me.

What is wrong with her? I'm going to call her when I get out of here. I spent my childhood in that. I'm like, I want this. She goes, we don't need that. I'm not riding that. Now they have, you can cut saddle a lot of everything, you know? I know.

Anyways, back on the. Yeah. But I'm with you. And now, as you're talking about the 30. 36 races. Some of the stuff that was talked about early on, the fact of guys just stroking all race long, right? And so that's kind of where the rewards came, 25%, 50%, and then the end of the race. Trying to get them to run harder.

Yeah, for like the stages and so. Right. And for me, personally, and I have a few friends that used to be in the business. business along with me. One of the things that we would, we liked from a competition side, our side, was, you know, just award those points, but don't throw the cautions. And then, you know, when you, and you do that, so what if a caution comes out? Gather the field up, run two laps, pit. If you're going to get points and it's under caution, you get points and it's under caution, just figure it out. Yeah, I love that too. I think that, and I'm,

Honestly, I feel like that that's the more common sense approach, and that's likely where we'll end up at some point someday. We seem to find our way where we need to be. Yeah. You know, we seem to find our way down the funnel. Yeah. Well, things change. TV changes, coverage changes, all that stuff, you know.

Yeah. But one of the things that I brought up in the last meeting with the committee, so we get to this last meeting that happened, couple weeks ago. And you can tell that this, you can tell that a 36 race schedule for a championship, or not a full season, I'm sorry, a full season championship is, it's not going to happen. You can tell that that's not going to be considered. Mark Martin has spent all year championing the full season schedule on social media. Is he on a committee? He is. Good for him. Yeah. And he has been honest.

as he can be about it and not let off the gas a bit. But we're going to this final meeting and it feels like we're either going to learn what the playoff format is going to be or we're going to realize it's drilling down to a couple options, but it's not going to be the full season deal. So this meeting starts and as we're talking, everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people on the call start saying, you know what? As I've went through this entire year doing this call, thinking, you know, studying, reading, I'm warming up to the full season.

Like some of the people in the media, obviously a lot of the drivers like it, I was really surprised that there was multiple people on this call on this committee that said, you know what, I'm actually warming up to the full season. So that was really nice to hear. And I said something that I don't know if it's real or not, but because I know that I'm biased because of my relationship with dad, you know, being his son and going to the race and wanting him to do well. But when I, I'm still a race fan and I still want to be avid about this sport.

and what I'm missing right now is the heavy drama that would play out in the regular season, in the middle of the season. So, or in the very first part of the season. So you and I, we'd go to the racetrack and you'll remember some of these moments. I think dad was at Charlotte, and he's in a tight battle for the championship against with Rusty, and dad broke a crank or a cam at Charlotte in October. And typically, like, they weren't going to fix that. You break a motor, you couldn't change the motors.

And typically you blew the motor, you didn't change the parts. They did. In the 600-mile race. They did. In a 600-mile race, changed the cam, sent the car back out on track. I think it was October? Yeah. The 500-mile race.

I think it ended up failing again. But you go out there and run 200 more laps. I was sitting there in that moment, and when that cam broke, and their neck and neck sort of for the points, I knew immediately in that moment that we're going to leave this race at least 80 points out. And the emotional ride that you went on as a fan due to that is gone today. Because we were actually sitting here talking about a moment on. the show with my with my with my co-host tj majors 1984 bristol dad's in a battle for the championship with terry lobani there terry's not terry doesn't break terry doesn't he finishes third fourth fifth

wins the terry terry every week and i'm like man we're and dad's win or crash win blow up win or crash win or crash win blow up and i'm like man you know we we can't falter dad's leading the race 200 250 laps into a 500 laper at bristol and he's come it's a night race he comes slothed down the front straight away backwards on four flat tires. And can't get going, gets lapped, right, trying to get back to the pits. And I knew in that moment, I was like, this is a chunk of points we can't afford to lose. And it was super, super emotional. It was like a gut punch.

And TJ, where I was telling TJ that story. And he goes, well, y'all are okay, man, because you're in the playoffs. What's the big deal? Right. And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, that's right. I don't have to have those moments anymore. I don't have, the highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low.

Right. Because, man, you're in the playoffs. It's okay. Yeah. And so we were on that phone call, and one of the drivers spoke up and said, I just actually had that experience this past weekend. I went to the race and ran 35th, and I didn't care because I was already advanced into the next round. It mattered none to me. Right.

And I'm like, man, you know, so if you were, if you were, if you were, if you were, you were, to infuse all of that emotional sort of roller coaster back into the regular season somehow, we've sort of made it to where, you know, you don't go on that ride anymore. Yeah. And the regular season is just kind of a thing that happens. Yeah. And we don't, you know, we don't go to a race in the summer and leave the racetrack in purillation because our driver just extended his points lead from 25 to 80 or he crawled out

of a hole to get himself within within you know side of the points lead or he blew a motor and he's lost a ton of points that he might not crawl back and now you know when those things would happen I had to see the next race yeah you know when dad lost those points to tarry in 84 I wasn't going to miss the next fucking race because yeah I needed to see if we could gain them back, could Terry break, could something happen that would give us a chance to get back in this thing? I was going to make sure to see the next race. Yeah. But now I'm sort of given an opportunity to skip a race if I really need to.

If I got a family thing or my wife wants to, you know, go see the folks in Texas. It's just, you know, I feel like that there's pros and cons and good arguments to every side, and there is no perfect playoff format. But that part of those emotional highs and lows are gone out of the season. Even qualifying. They're plucked out of, yes. Even qualifying. And I'm not throwing off.

We're just talking about history and what is now. But when you remember this when I think it was Jeff Burton was at Roush, Buddy Parrott was a crew chief, I believe. And we would start the season out with the points for the first five races for the for the provisional. From last year. Last year. Yeah.

They're leading the points or second or third or something like that at Atlanta. And it rains out. Yeah. And whatever you had, he didn't make it. Yeah. Went home? I... That's crazy.

It is crazy. But I'll be honest, I wish it were so. Yeah. I feel like I was going to say, like, we had a... You know, the clash. I've always loved the clash when it was an invitational race, and it was at Daytona, it was 20 laps, a great little appetizer for speed weeks,

and just really neat, quick race, 20 minutes. Yeah. You'd have sometimes, you know, 8 or 20 drivers in it. You didn't know. And when you won a poll, one of the things the guy was going to say when he got out, I don't care if it was July and Dover or whatever. I'm in the clash.

And it mattered, right? And it paid whatever. Did it pay 50 grand or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing. But it was, you race for nothing. But you would race for zero. Yeah, for sure.

Race like you'd race your ass off for nothing. It's all about, it's all about you sat on a pole. You made it. And it was an invitational, it was a special gig. We started hearing from sponsors about their driver wasn't in it. My driver's not, my team. Why? Your driver can't qualify.

So he doesn't. get to play. So we started building a system that would put more cars on the track, right, and add more people to it, and it lost all of the. Rewarding, re-rewarding mediocrity. And that's kind of what I feel like all of the, that's like the way to describe a lot of things in our sport, because we've taken away the sting of that blown motor, that broken cam we've taken away the the sting of leaning on those points from the year before for five races

and we've kind of made it we've kind of given everybody all these little safety nets right even the you know the the the waivers right yeah you know you can you miss a lot of races and still go win a championship because you know they do that in the NFL well Kyle did when he broke his feet right he did I mean he's a legitimate champion because he played by the rules and he won won the championship. Yeah. But like they're wanting to say, you know, the quarterback gets hurt in the six weeks, six weeks, a season, missed two weeks comes back, he can still win a championship.

Right. And they're trying to make that. That's the example. That's the example. But it ain't, that ain't the way it should be. It's as motorsports. It's different. I mean, you learn from that other stuff.

Yeah. But you got to, I feel like it's, you know, I get disappointed in some stuff. Yeah. You know, I can get too vocal. You know, whatever. I just always felt like that a lot of those things that, you know, it sucks if a guy misses races and it cost him his championship, right? Because of, you know, it sucks. But it is sports or it is.

You're going to play hurt. Yeah. Right? Yeah. When Richard hurt himself and we broke a wheel at Pocono. Yeah. I got a black and white picture at home. The right front spring is out of the.

there and it started a fire outside the racetrack you know and a whatever i mean but it destroyed that car back when you only run two you only had two cars in a stable broke his neck yeah broke his neck didn't miss race yeah you know he had gee lord help him you know there was cables and pullies and stuff holding his helmet so you know totally could heal yeah i mean that's a freaking hero there bud yeah you know stupid but it yeah you know what i mean it's not that you know it's not that you you shouldn't do that anymore but it was I don't know I I just feel like that some some of the things like you know maybe there's a middle ground on on injury and so forth but like the you know the guy that can win a race that's 30th in points and go try to you know take a spot from somebody who've had a

great season and finished in the top 15 in points right in the playoffs that is too much right that's to giving, too, anyways. Honestly, I'm old school, right? If you want to, you know, we touched on it. You know, reward some points during the race or whatever. There's other things to do. And, you know, it's hard to get a perfect recipe. You'll never will for that last race to be the best race as far as the points go.

Yeah. And you just, you've been lucky. that been fortunate, not lucky, been fortunate that it has been, you've had good cars that rightfully could be champions with the 12 and the 22 and the 5 and the 9, you know, right in the... You've been lucky.

Yeah. Yeah. The cars that have won are, you can make the argument that they belong in that role, right? Yeah. I don't, yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I still, I think that they're moving in the right. direction to expand that final round to multiple races.

There was a rule in 2005. Rouse Fenway had five cars. They had half of the chase field in the playoffs in the postseason. I'm not sure if this was what it was, but NASCAR would end up limiting teams to four full-time cars during the 2006 season. Why would you want to limit teams or seven? a limit? Why? I think the concern was that you could have this big huge organization eventually have 10 teams, whatever, make up some number. And, you know, there's strength in numbers if you

do it correctly, right? If you're a good organization, you attract good drivers, and you can be successful with multiple teams if you do it correctly. And, the concern I think was that you would you could wind up with three or four owners yeah five owners and no independence yeah literally and that was that was not healthy and as it was you know I didn't think Jack was going to run five cars forever anyways I think you know that was that was a big undertaking but they just put her you know and like I've said before there's there's a there's a lot of thought that goes into any kind of rule or restriction or anything i mean it is like a lot of a lot of people weighing in a lot of you know a lot of numbers to talk about

different things like that to make that decision but i think it was basically worried that one one team would even be bigger than roush it wasn't necessarily what jack was doing it's like look at that model and what could happen right what could happen yeah Somebody comes in with more money, they could burn it all and still have more money and wind up with half the field. Yeah. You were right around the same time. The COT was announced it was going to be in development. In 2006, the car would run limited races in 07 and full-time in 08.

What was your role in developing that particular car? Gary was on the way with it. some unknown stuff was there was people that were crew chiefs out in the field working and you know running teams and I actually went to you know one of the crash tests out west with Gary flew out watch it you know listen to them talk about it and and look at the results and things like that so you understood what that was about yeah um so that was the structure part of it and the safety part of it and all of that and then and then we wind up doing when I was there we're now down into the arrow part of it which is the wing you know the roof the different

why did the wing not stay what was a big deal could you ask me that later with the under with a beer or something no I was teet no I tell you we like the the wing was good yeah for a number of reasons, and it was bad for a number of reasons, right? It was good for traffic, right? Less wake, all that stuff. But the problem, and I got blamed for cars getting upside down. One of the reasons is with the wing, it's not a lot of drag. So when it turned sideways, it didn't, the drag didn't go up as fast as it did with a spoiler. So the liftoff speeds were wrong. Oh. You know, and so that's kind of, there was that part of it and then and then you know we had some some people weighed in and said you know stock you know stock cars don't have wings they don't have wings yeah but they do out there now you know in the

street you know a lot of them have wings but and that was that was part of it yeah i hate that because we put a lot of development in i'll never forget might comes up for lunch one day takes john derby and I have to lunch and and we're talking and bulls about stuff and this that the other and he goes well the uh I got to tell you we need to get rid of the wing we just spent a year on it yeah okay well we'll go to work on it yeah I mean like now like what do you mean like ASAP I don't know what the time John would remember I was it took my breath like like what you got a month or six weeks or whatever and and and then on top of that you had to make the spoilers and issue the spoilers and all the CAD data and everything it took to do all

that get Richardson to do the machine in or maybe it was Danny timmons at nitro I don't know and God it's like it came in a hurry yeah you know yeah it was okay got it the um the part about the COT that bothered that I didn't love was the splitter. There's a fun, kind of fun now, but decades-old hashtag on social media hashtag team valence. And you're better at this, you're smarter at this than I am. So help me understand. When we had a valence, on a car, right? You could have five teams bring five cars to the racetrack

and we go to the racetrack and all of us are going to live in a different area with our travels. For sure. Right? And I'm going to grind that valence to a certain mark and you're going to do it a little differently

and you're going to have it a little differently and everybody's going to go down the corner and things will be a little different. And what would end up happening, in my opinion, was one of us is going to go better than the other. And over the course of a 500-mile race, you're going to see some people with a little more strength than others due to hitting that just right. And the right side had five inches of clearance and a left side had three and a half.

Right. With a splitter, you couldn't grind that thing off like a balance. Everyone eventually, quickly, learned that you had to live in the very same spot. Right. And we're all going to travel it to that mark. And that's what you're aiming and goal was to do is to get that car on the racetrack and right to that splitter. And so now, you know, we'd all, in six months' time, we're all very similar in speed and grip and everything, because all of our noses go down in the corner and at max travel,

we're all in the very same spot. And so it took out some parity or some disparity, I guess, in how each team was progressing. And man, if you tried with availance, I could drive down in there a car length deeper, and it might not turn, but it's okay. You know, I was going to figure it out. And the valence allowed me that sort of delta. With the splitter, if I tried to drive the car one car length further or just a little deeper, it's a very big penalty because it was only going to travel to that mark and it was only going to have that much front turn.

And so, man, that was so frustrating. And we still have the splitter today. to an extent. Like there's a, there's still, you know, there's still like a limiter on the front of the car.

Yeah. That's where you travel to and that's as far as you're going to go. Yeah. And the CEO, even the Exfinity cars out here in this garage here still have a splitter on them.

I'm, I wish y'all would have sent the splitter off with the wing when you took it away. I wasn't a fan. No, I mean, I get you. I was not a, I,

I play in the rules too, but I wasn't a fan of the splitter. Yeah. You know, there's not enough, you know, you've got to be able to work on this stuff. But you also have to remember, these rules just don't come from that office across from the airport down there.

There's input. There's owner input. There's whatever. And the conversations that you hear when an owner comes in or some disgruntled, somebody that's not running good because they can't figure something out, right? You've got to do something to limit all this travel. You've got to do something to limit.

I've got eight million springs, and I can only use them one time because they take a set. Those are the things that comes from outside in. Yeah. You know, love or hate NASCAR, right? We all wouldn't be here for one and four of them, you know, I don't think. But none of the loss. None of these rules are made without input from the garage area. And whether it's splitters, no splitters.

They argue about the springs. They argue about, oh, my God, I've got to have too much camber. I got 18 different rear-end housings. I got blah, blah, blah. You got to limit it. Somebody's in, somebody's here. And they're like, you guys got to fix this. I remember right before we went to, yeah,

I mean, I remember right before we went to that splitter, we went to, we were traveling the front. So you had these big giant left front fenders, and you had these, you had like this one and a half inch by quarter inch straps on top of the fenders that the hood laid on. And you would go down in a corner, say it, Fontana in qualifying, first lap on the racetrack. 200-0 miles an hour. Super green trip, green track, high grip. Hall ass down in the corner, thinking that you should have an idea where it's going to travel to. Yeah. Go out there, run your lap.

You see a little tire smoke. Left front tires rubbing a little bit. Come in the garage, lift the hood, and they'd be a groove in the tire where that strap on top of the fender laid on it. Wow. I mean, you're just another 16th of an inch from blowing that tire out. Ooh. That's tough. And that being a big deal.

Yeah. Like a nasty, nasty deal. So there's two sides of it. I mean, you know, we didn't love that splitter, but we definitely had to figure out a way to get the cars off the front fenders. Because everybody would go to the track and have like a fender melt the paint. You know, left front tire rubbing the inside of the fender and having a little melted paint on that.

It used to be the oil pan dragon. Yeah, yeah. We, uh, Tony Jr. got busted one time messing with that rear spoiler or that wing at Darlington. Yeah, yeah And we got Tony Jr. got a little vacation. Yeah, I remember that day. We had a Tony Jr. and I, Tony Jr. figure out a way to make that rear brake, the rear mount.

He tricked it to where he could figure out the way that passed, for it to pass tech, but then gained some degree. And man, they found it. We talked about that. Oh man, Tony Gibson. Yeah. was on the show and was talking about, he was a car chief, I think, on the car at that time.

I remember that day. Those are tough days when you. And then we went to New Hampshire. Tony Jr. is not allowed to be inside the racetrack. And so he set up on the bus. Set up on top of a bus off turn two. Then we had to have rules on that. It was on that.

Yeah. That's right. Do you remember the Indianapolis tire debacle? Oh, my God. I did the tire test. for that one yes for that race that's me and vickers

yeah it's my fault me and vickers and somebody else we showed up for the tire test and it was common to like go run 20 laps and getting the cords you know we didn't see them doing it in 10 laps right but you'd run a tire

and get in the cord get a little bit of cording on the right front or something in 20 laps or something like that that was I'm up in the tower and this shit's hitting the fan And it starts out at like 35 laps or something like that. So Mike says, you got to go down there.

We got to, you know, go down there and see what's going on. It's like, okay. So I went down there. And I'm walking around, I'm looking and I, you know, radio back. I said, it's bad. And, you know, I said, they're going to have to, you know, may run out of tires. So then there was a, then Goodyear had the inventory, list and they had the list of who had tires and who didn't dad right you can't make this

my my brother i think blaney was driving so ryan they didn't practice and save tires so they had extra for the race because he saw it already so i had to take tires for my poor brother that played it good on friday and saturday and you know and give them to somebody else right so i'm walking up down shoe there and it is looking like they're thinking about there's there's good year always had a backup tire out in somewhere trucks trail you know trail those and so Jeff Gordon gets on in Jeff's pits Jeff Gordon gets on you know gets on the radio to Steve and says you better tell NASCAR we got a show whatever he said you know you got to fix us and Steve said robin's standing in the He goes, oh, oh, God, you know what I mean?

But it was that, it was horrible. Yeah, I think we got to where we were throwing the caution every 10 laps. Yeah, it was right there. Near the end of the race, just to get them home. You know, you got to save everybody from themselves, right? You weren't going to pit. No, yeah. Right.

That was crazy. You would run as hard as you thought you could. If you knew somebody was going to shred a tire and turn the right-year-quarter panel off, you know, you knew it was going to happen. You just didn't know who. You just didn't want to be you. I blew a right-re rear tire. I guess leading the race on lap 26 Oh Lord

Yeah Hey everybody you want the latest Dale Jr. download apparel Visit shop.orgia.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.dirtymobedia.com The 2012 Daytona 500

you said in a documentary that fire teams that were trying to not extinguish the truck that was on fire, but rather the racing surface to keep it cool and keep it from burning. This is when Juan Pablo hit the jet dryer. So Juan had been in some sort of an accident or something had a little bit of crash damage. They were repairing. Trail on arm was broke. That was when they didn't weld the trail on arm. so they would flux more.

Yes. He's going out of that, I'm sure. He's been in an accident and it has now damaged a piece that was already intentionally compromised. Yes. And he's going down the back straightaway and the rear end basically come out of the race car and send him into the crash. And I have that car in my race car graveyard. Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah. You know that? Yeah, I do. And basically just... I need to get over there. They've just been given to me. I've never bought a crash. But in this race, I remember this.

We all parked on the back straightaway while you guys figured this out. So the track, hadn't the track just been repaved? Yes. We were on a fresh paved track. Right. And so you're trying to not only put out a fire of the truck itself, but also save the surface of the racetrack that's trying to melt and slide down the hill. Darryl criticize us on national TV for not putting out the fire.

They're not shooting at the fire. I didn't give a shit if the truck burned into the ground. We were trying to save the race. track so you're going to run a race. Yeah. It did make a, uh, yeah, did do an impression on the surface. Yeah. And it was, it was, remember listening to Boyer, because we used to listen to a lot of drivers. And he said you could hear the growl, you hit, go across, you can hear the gravel, right? Yeah. But it was funny. So all that stuff's happening. Mike, Mike sends me down, he's like, you got to go back there. I said, oh, okay. So they called.

You always had to go back there. Yeah, it was good. Sometimes I needed a field trip. It wasn't fun in the tower. But so the police come and got me and run me around to the back because they turned the lights on and I'm back there. And I am telling you, there is, it was like, it smelled like a 747 crash back there, well, a fuel all over. And it rained, right? And it, and it all laying on top. The thing that saved it is it was all laying on top of the water back there. So I kept the pair of dress shoes that I, I had on that night. I kept, I had to get them resold because I couldn't get the smell out of the closet anyway. So I'm back there walking around and just checking and radio and back to

Mike and my cell phone rings and it's Ryan. Your brother. Yeah. Well, Blaney, him and Blaney, they're leading a race. Yeah. They're leading a race. And he says, he's like, how are you guys doing back there? I said, it's okay. He's like, you know it's raining. I said, I'm standing. I'm standing. 200 yards from your fucking car, I know it's raining. Oh, oh, oh, I just thought you needed to know. I said, I know. I got it. I got it. But we would do that funning around, you know what I mean?

So I called Mike in the tower. I said, Mike, it's raining back here. Yeah, how bad is it? I said, you know, it's not too bad, but it's, you know, it's rain. And he goes, okay, I know who's leading a race and hanging up on. So I was like, I, um, we were all out of our cars. and we were all standing on the back straight away, and I think it was me and Biffle and a couple other people,

and we were laughing. Like, hey, man, fuck it. We're good. Let Blaney win. Yeah. And we're all good. You're ready to go. You're checked out, right?

And Carl Edwards walks up, and he's like, no, huh? I'm not, I want to finish this race. And I'm like, of course you do. You said, you know, you can hear, you know, listen to drivers. Like, how, I wonder if you have any interesting moments where I know that Mike would listen to the scanner and y'all listen to certain drivers during the races. Some were more entertaining than others. Who were the more entertaining ones? The Bush brothers were entertaining.

Yeah. You know, I mean, they were good. And, you know, I got along great with them, but, you know, when the switch flipped, they were. Yeah. They were different. Oh, yeah. Was there a. I know that, you know, I'd listen.

When it was serious stuff, I wanted, you know, I'd listen to you. I'd listen to Jeff Gordon, Mark, you know, I had those channels in a radio. I was, you know, where I would listen only. Yeah. And you'd listen to those people of reason, right? I know that dad, there wasn't like a direct line of communication where dad could talk to Bill Jr. Are you sure about that? Well, dad knew.

that he knew Bill was listening. Yeah, yeah. And he would say, Bill, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I know, I remember being a kid and hearing dad talk directly to him. Yeah. Was there other drivers that? I think that, I think Jeff knew when I was listening.

There was others that knew, you know. And if something went on, like during the week, the next week, I would say, I said, hey, you know, I was listening to you, you know, and I appreciate your input or whatever, whatever happened to be, right? And some of it was BS. They just needed a caution, but not really. And there was other times that it was legitimate information that you wanted to hear. We told a story on here the other day about, I think of around 2004 or five, we were at Bristol. I had, I was trying, I needed green flag laps because I had a really fast car and lost some spots on pit road and was trying to get myself back into the top 10.

and we had a long caution. And cream flag comes out with like 15 to go and I've beaten a shit out of Robbie Gordon and me and him go down and pit road at the end of the race and wreck each other. But before the end of the race, they said you need to get to the, they want you and Tony Sr. to the hauler.

Because I was on the radio under caution, what the fuck are we doing? This is stupid, all these f***ing caution. What year was this? I want to say, oh four, maybe 05. It's definitely not 05. It was probably 04.

I don't know if you were there yet. I didn't start until like August. It was spring race or something. Maybe. I'll tell you what I did do. I started right after the Bristol race. Might have been. Something like that.

So I wasn't privy to that. No. But we were just on the radio bitching and bitching and bitching about this yellow flag and how long it was taken. And we said, they said come over to the holler, which I had been called the holler before. But we sat down in there and waited and

Mike comes in 20 minutes later, right? They got a lot of other things going on, putting out fires here and there. And as soon as he walked into the door, me and Tony Sr. started talking. Like, hey, well, hey, man, you know, getting ready to just plead our case. And he goes, y'all are here to listen. Shut up. And so, and he was really mad. He was like, there was brake rotors and parts all over the track.

You don't have any idea what we're dealing with. You just need to keep your mouth shut. I'll clean up the racetrack. I'll worry about the racetrack. Yeah. And that was it. That was the end of that. We had one night.

What was the night that, I forget the race, Tony Stewart and Kyle Bush got into it on something. And then we called him to the hauler. Yeah. So. Might have been maybe Daytona. He was. Is it a night race at Daytona?

Maybe. Or was it Kurt? Tony and Kurt. Because apparently the river was Tony popped Kurt in the holler. Yeah. So we're in, Mike says, okay, you, you guard Tony and I'll take Kyle. This is my. Kurt. Yeah, or Kurt. Yeah. You know. And I said, okay, well, you know, so they come in and they're sitting and this, they're talking,

and they're not getting very far with the conversation. And it's not, nobody's bending, right? And they're starting to lean up, they're leaning and lean and leaning, and they stand up. So I stand, you know, I get up and I got Tony behind me, right, and I'm kind of keeping them away. And Mike's got Kurt up here, you know, just a little bit. And Tony comes across with a left hand and just drills them. So now, I mean, the Shiner's, it's going to, it's happening already, right? And we said, you know, well, we're not getting anywhere. You got, you know, we're going to talk about this, whatever, whatever.

So they walk out. And I turned a mic, I said, you didn't tell me Tony was left-handed. I'm balking him like he's right hand. You didn't tell me he was left hand. He said, hell, I didn't know. That's hilarious. I said, oh, my God. Watch Tony's left.

Jesus. Oh, man, it's... Was that as bad as it ever got? Yeah. In the hauler? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Were you there when...

When Kurt and Spencer were going at it at Michigan? No. No, I think I was on the bottom. I think it was in Ford, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was... Trying to think of some other... The Michigan and...

Indie, they wrecked at Indie. He got wrecked. Yeah. That was the beginning of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was the, you know, that was a, you would, you know, if you're a driver, you get really cocky, you get really egotistical.

You think that you know everything. And then when they say you're going, they need to see you in the hauler at the end of the race. Yeah. You were like, oh, shit. Right. I didn't want that. Yeah. you know, when you were, how many, you know, I guess, what kind of, I'm assuming that in most cases,

if you were ever privy to any of those moments, Mike Hilton was running the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he was my senior, he was a senior guy above me, right? What was Mike's usual approach to those type of moments? He was pretty common, cool, and collected, and, you know, he's, he knew in his much, mind what he need to say or was to each personality right everybody's going to accept something differently and uh you know he he would have his say and hopefully the driver would listen and understand our side of it NASCAR side of it and rarely did he have to raise his voice to the next level

to get his point across you know and he was pretty good i got to tell you i i i got to tell you i how he handled all these different guys. And it wasn't a lot, but it was, you know, different things. And, you know, he's very pragmatic. And, you know, he just, he did that. He did that very well. Was he one of your favorite people in that when you were rolling in the NASCAR, you know, industry as an employee of the organization?

We didn't know each other that well. Oh, really? We always got along good, you know. And then when I went to work there, it was way better. I mean, we did things together. What about Darby? Oh, yeah. He was something else.

I still talk to Darby. I still stopped by and see him at his shop and stuff, got stuff going on. He was, he was, it was, the line was right here with him, right? And he had one approach. Yeah, I was that, you know. Yeah. And he was good. We enjoyed, you know, and David Hoots.

I mean, we had a good, you know, my opinion, we had a really good. group together, work good, worked hard. You know, our offices were all next to each other up in the building, you know, so it was good. Yeah. What? I don't remember this one, but Michigan 2012, same year, unfortunately, as Daytona, but NASCAR and Good Year called for the change that left teams scrambling late Friday at Michigan.

Oh, I do remember this. Michigan in 2012, tires began blistering in practice. Oh, yeah. Excessive heat build up from high speeds. We had a new repave. Camber. NASCAR made the move to avoid blowouts. Another catastrophe, such as the one we had in India in 2008.

There was a quote for me about the tire driving like it's six years old. I would go on to win the race. Robin, you just saw tires come into play in a big way a few weeks ago at Bristol in this year's race. The indie deal, we just had Tony Stewart on the show, great friend of ours, and I'll take some of the responsibility as well. Tony, myself, maybe others, if we didn't like the tire, we'd get out of the car and we'd complain about it. Good Year would come over and say, we're the only manufacturer in the series. Why don't you guys cut us a break? You can tell me about our tires all day long.

You don't need to go to the media and shit on them. on our tire. They obviously didn't like it when we were critical. I believe that, you know, here we are in 2025. We're finally, we finally have a good year that's ready and comfortable to be aggressive, right, and get soft. But I believe that we begged for this approach for a really long time. over the last 10 years, but I believe that they were so scarred by Indy

and some other moments, I'm sure, and our ability to jump out. There's somebody upstairs that doesn't even care about racing at Goodyear that, like, you know, no press is better than bad press, right? Yeah. And then they've got to answer to somebody.

If we got out of the car and talked about the tire, it was as bad as what happened at Indy. Yeah. Right? Because our fans would go, well, I ain't going to buy a good year for my truck. Yeah, for sure.

You know, the drivers don't even like them. So it's taken us a long, long time to sort of get back into good graces where Goodyear trusts our ability to go out there. Right. Them to be aggressive without us sort of hanging them out to dry. You know, what's – you've been in this so long to have seen this, you know, Good Year and so many different – Hoosier. Hoosier, yeah, you saw all that process. what do you make of the current approach do you feel like that this is ever going to you know do you feel like

this is the right direction do you feel like that it's good for good year to to try to to soften the tire up a little bit and put the car back in the driver's hands as long as the drivers understand the approach and don't go shit on them in the media when it don't work out for them yeah i mean i support that i mean they're trying they are right and once again they're being pushed by the competitors, right? They're saying, you know, okay, we'll keep going, we'll keep going. You know, and, you know, you can't tire test with 36 cars in the track. You tire test with two or three cars.

Yeah. Track is always green. The track is always a different temperature. It's all of that stuff. Yeah. You know, and then if you're only running 20, 25 lap runs, and you're looking and you look at the tire wear and you predict what it's going to be, then you make a 50 lap run at the end and all that stuff. Well, you know, it's different than you get the,

when your tire test and you don't wipe the rubber out of the quarter panels or the exhaust where it's catching fire and all that stuff. You know, you do on a test, but, you know, there's things that happen by running 100 laps. Yeah. You know, they're different. And I got to, those guys work hard. They're a good company.

And, you know, to build the amount of tires to almost every racetrack has her own compound. Right? I mean, my God. Yeah, they're kind of nearing it down. Yeah, they are. But still, it's a lot of stuff. And, you know, with the days that we used to use 16, 18 sets of tires for a 500-mile race or Coke 600, you know, times 43. Yeah.

Let alone practice and qualifying. and you know what I mean in the all-star race that's a lot of tires yeah speaking of an all-star race what's your favorite format do you have one the one that we run second at the old format yeah no it's it's okay I mean you got to have cars it's the all-star race right you got fan votes you got this that and the other and it's entertaining and you know people want to see passing right people want to see you know door to door and stuff like that so So, you know, it would be interesting to see what the next go-round brings. Yeah, going to Dover is going to be a challenge.

It's going to be different. Yeah, that's a very tough track to have such a unique event on. Yeah, and it takes a lot to rubber that place in, too, sometimes, you know. Sure, yeah. You get the wrong weather, and the track doesn't take rubber, and it's just going to be different. Yeah, that's a great point. You participated in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of test sessions. Yeah.

You know, what are you, what's some of the notable test sessions that you remember being a part of? I remember one, this was a fun one, this was back when you were a crew chief. We went to Daytona. I was there with dad. I was young. They had, Bill Elliott had his cores, Ford. Dad was out there maybe in the Wrangler car. And they had put a metal blade hanging down off of the rear clip that had flaps in it.

And I guess going around the racetrack, these flaps would open. I'm not sure what it was all about. But I remember Dad following Bill around the track. And then they'd come down pit road, park on pit road, get out and talk to Bill Jr. And whoever else about, you know, well, This is what it was doing. This was what I was looking at. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess maybe back then trying to figure out a route around trying to slow the cars down. Yeah. Which they ultimately decided to do with the restrictive plate. Yeah. That's a tough one there, you know. I mean, these motors could make 800 horsepower now easy, right? Yeah.

You remember being a part of any of tests that they were trying to develop anything unique? Usually it was just for ourselves. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, we did a lot of wind tunnel stuff. That one, that car that we sat on the pole with with Kyle, the Meli Eladay's, we showed up and it had huge wheel openings. Huge. Because we were Terry Lace, remember?

Terry Lace. So Terry, a lot of guys didn't particularly care for Terry or whatever, and I liked them. And so he's like, hey, I want to do a ride height map in the wind tunnel. Nobody else wants to do a ride height map. You just put the thing in the tunnel and you run it and you get your numbers. So I was at Pontiac. I said, okay, we did this thing. And I'm watching the numbers.

And it's like, the light goes on. This thing needs to run in the ditch. It needs to be low, tail down, all this stuff. You're looking at 25 horsepower difference in some ways, right? So I decide we're going to, we, we hung a body on a race car at the racetrack at Teladaga. We went down there for a week, started with a generic body like we ran, and I made spring changes. And when the tires hit, the fenders, I changed the fenders. And we run, and it was, you know, spring change sheet metal, spring change sheet metal.

And that thing got to haul an ass. And then we got to, then I had to raise the frame rails up. We got it so the whole, the rear would travel to max what a shock was, eight inches or seven inches or something. And so that was going to be our car. And that thing hauled out, and you couldn't do anything wrong with it. I mean, we were down there speed weeks. And every time we run, Steve Peterson was standing in front of the car to check the restrictor plate.

We were running a 10 or 15,000 small restrictor plate. right and when we got the when we got the you know the NASCAR plate so we set on the pole you know and part of the problem that we had during the race is when we left Talladega in January for a January test in Daytona guys drove down some drove some flu what happens we got we had a few guys and they went out and we're out late and had one too many

years had a car accident we had people in the hospital had to so when i went down for the race i had a guy i never guessed a car before i was a tire changer short you know we were we were short like three or four people and so we had a we had a problem on pit road didn't get the car full lost lost spots lost i mean we went a lap down we made her lap up under green i mean and we were coming and then that's when you No. In my heart, I knew we were going to have a good finish, and I really thought we could still win the race. And then that's when there was a little thing up the front stretch would. Bobby Hillen. Bobby Hillen and this, that's when Kyle yanked him by the helmet. Oh, yeah.

For not holding his brakes. Yeah. Because he'd come down on a racetrack. Yeah, came back up on a racetrack and he clobbered him. It's like, yeah, that was a bad one. Yeah, that was a fast car. That was a fast car. It really was. Yeah, I mean, that was right. around the time, I guess guys were starting to figure out how to tie down the back of the car and the crazy shocks came in.

Oh, it was nuts. Those damn shocks. I was, in 98, I started driving the affinity car for Tony Jr. And this is, they have really learned how aggressive they could be with these shocks in the rear bleed. And so basically, you know, for folks listening, they build a rear shock that would hold the car. down on the ground and would not extend.

Right. And you're talking so... Then they did post-qualifying heights rules, right? So there's so many pounds of force holding this shock in. And Tony Jr., I went into the hauler. We were at the shop. And I go out into the parking lot and go into the hauler and he's got the shock dino in there and they're working on some shocks.

And he put one of them shocks on that shock dinot and started running it. and it looked like the top of that Penske. Yeah. It looked like it was pulling the eye out of it right.

It looked like it was turned to fluid. Yeah. I could see the body of the shock moving, you know, and I was like,

I got out of there. I thought they were going to kill themselves. Yeah. I'm like, this thing's going to come apart. Something here is going to fail. Yeah.

Because I don't know that you know this machine can actually do the forces that are being asked of it in this moment. and that shock looks like liquid. Like the body of that shock is deforming around. I'm like, I'm getting out of here.

I'm not knocking my damn teeth out. So it was pretty scary. Yeah, we did. We did. I put a groove in the tube. What is that? So we machined it. First, I had to do it by hand.

Well, they went through inspection, and all of a sudden they started kneeling on the back of the car. And they said, well, it's got to come up in a couple of seconds. Well, they're all tied down. They weren't moving. So to make qualifying, so we rolled out, and I had this set of shocks in the trailer that had a lot of bleed, but it had a lot of rebound in it. And I put them on.

We qualified in top five. It was good. But what we wound up doing after that is you'd make a run, and you would put a groove in the tube so when it started to extend back out trying to get to its right height it wouldn't when it finally got to that groove then it had bleed in it and then it would pop up like you'd sit on pit road and a car would come in like this like on the tailpipes right and you'd be sitting there smile and watch watch watch watch watch watch all of a sudden a car would sit there and all of a sudden it goes whoop and it pop up just like that oh it's perfect you know the stuff that we all did right

I mean, you did something different. Tony did something different. I did something different, you know. But it was, it was fun. Yeah, I loved it. So you got caught, it was fun. Yeah. I've got the deck lid from Harry Gantzcar that Petrie.

Yeah, it has electric driven hydraulics. Well, I guess it's not hydraulic. It was an electric motor that would move the blade. But I've got the deck lid. And he says, I mean, he's, I think he's telling the truth. But he's like, man, we put that thing on and we ran it and qualifying. But then we were too scared to race it.

Yeah. Like they unwired it or whatever. But I don't know, man. I imagine the fucking trouble they would have got themselves into. Oh, my God. If they had gotten caught for that. It's a life sentence. Do you remember we might have talked, a, remind me if we talked about this.

Do you remember when we were at Martinsville and everybody thought somebody was running trash control? Did we talk about that? Because this has kind of come up in the short. short track world. There's a every, you know, when a car is good,

there's this really heavy belief that in super late models and in pro late models and now filtering into a late model stock world, traction control is super prevalent. Right. And that you can't find it. Right.

You know, you're never going to find it. Yeah. And so there's this problem that we have of, you know, we kind of feel like that it's probably, there's definitely cars on the track that have it. Yeah. I believe that.

Yeah, but we don't know how to govern it or we don't know how they're doing it. And there's some people, I've not seen it. I'm not seen what a device looks like. I wouldn't even know if it was laying on the table right here. Right. But I know that there are people that have seen one and I know it's common knowledge of the companies that make them. Yeah. Right. But we were, this is going back to, I don't know, man.

And it feels, it was right around either, it was right around the time you were probably either on, still on the box or getting ready to go to work with NASCAR. But we were at Martinsville and Helton said, we were in the middle of the driver's meeting. And I'd heard a little bit of rumblings around trash control, but it was always this sort of very faint sort of, oh, you know, somebody might have it. But you're like, no way nobody's doing that here. Right. But Mike Hilton stood up in front of everybody at Martinsville in the driver's meeting right before we went, right before they turned us loose. He got up on the mic and he said, I just want to make this clear. If there's anybody running traction control in your cars and y'all get found about, that's going to be an indefinite suspension.

He made some blanket statement of like, you're gone. Yeah, forever. Forever. Do you remember that? I vaguely remember it. I mean, not much, but I know it was going on. I mean, we were somewhere tested. rumor was that I heard, and I don't know how truthful it is, that it was in the Gannasi

camp. And I wasn't really, I mean, I've just, I don't know that I have any real information to back that up. I don't, I don't know. There's some, so I knew I could hear it somewhere, right? The car would be skipping, right? Yeah. So we were at a test. So we went to the, so we went to another test, so in between tests, whatever, back when you could run a lot. and I was I talked to Gary I said look I said it matters to me I don't want to write anybody out I don't know but I said there's some there's some traction control out there are you still a pit box you're still a crew chief yeah I was either Ford or a crew chief and I said look you can go out and you can you can see the pattern of the wheel spin

spin no spin spin spin up off the corner it places okay so we go to Richmond, and I don't even know what team I was. It might have been with Jack, and with the second go-round when I was with Ted. We go to Richmond, and Steve Peterson comes up, and he's, you know, wanting to look, wanting to plug into our unit and this, the other, and like he's accusing us.

Really? But Steve and I were friends, he was at Roush way, you know, after I left. And anyway, so I held him aside. I said, Steve. Did Gary tell you to do this? Well, no, not really. I said, Steve.

I told Gary somebody's running trash control. Go work on the other end of the garage because I wasn't doing. I wouldn't do it. And it was being run. I don't know if it got into the race, but there was plenty of tests that we were at. And I'm not going to heave anybody in the ditch because these are high-end guys and whatever. But look, you're going to try it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's nothing wrong with testing it. Yeah. But what happens is once you get a bite at the apple and you decide, God, we got to find a way to get this in the car. Right. Yeah. Right. You're going to, somebody's going to get off the reservation and you hurt by that. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like that. So what I hear today is that, you know, Bluetooth is part of it. Yeah. And that the wires that you, that are utilizing it are like hair thin. Yeah. And you can hide it in a fake weld. Like you can hide those wires and they'll never see it, right?

And the actual device leaves the car with the driver. It's in a cigarette pouch, right? I don't know, right? And so it's gotten to be, it's gotten to where with technology phones, you can control it from your phone, they say, from pit road. Oh, look. So with all of that rumor, right, whether it's all true or not. It feels like it's inevitable that this technology, at least in the short track world, is going to be problematic.

Yeah. And nearly impossible to discover and govern. Right. You know. A manufacturer that is responsible for this is the only one that can help you to find it out, right? And that's bad for business. Yeah. Yeah.

You know. It almost feels like, and I hate to say this, and put this out into the universe, but it almost feels like you ought to figure out a way to give it to everybody. Yeah. Let's work on the point system first. I'm not, it's not a, this is a short track.

This is a short track conversation. Yeah, it's a short track. Yeah, I don't know. Because it can't be that expensive. I don't know, yeah. I mean, if you give it to everybody, you certainly bring the price down. If it was something that, you know, everybody knew they could go out and get, right?

Yeah. But, yeah. You still got to get the front springs right. You know what I feel like the same way. Like, you know, I don't know what that traction control feels like, but it certainly can't fix everything. Like, if the car don't turn, it still don't turn. That's right.

Right. And so if you're not good in the middle of the corner, I don't know how that traction control would, like, oh, well, we're going to kick their ass no matter what tonight because we got traction control. Yeah. I went up to Tri-County a couple weeks ago with Larry Pollard. Remember Larry? I do.

His son's racing. Oh, really? It was good. I spent the whole day with those guys. We wound up winning a race, which is good, yeah. But I don't see any traction control there. Yeah, probably not. They won the race, and I know damn well Larry doesn't have it because it's, you know,

he's not going to spend the money on it either, but it was. I was up there Friday. Oh, yeah? Oh, it's practice? Yeah, practice on Friday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a cars tour race there, not the, but. weekend but next.

Oh, okay. I'm going to run it. It's last one a year for me. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty fun little racetrack. They do a good job up there. Yeah, yeah.

I like the racetrack. Very nice. You know, we didn't get to any of this in our first conversation, but I wanted to ask you first, I guess, how comfortable are you talking about the tragedies that you've had to face with your family. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, the Pembertons are a big family. Yeah. You know. This is what we did, right? This whole sport thing was all of us, you know. But you've dealt with, you know, with the, not only the, your brother's passing, but you're, you know, losing your son. Yeah. It was tough.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, we knew Ryan very well. Mm-hmm. And I got a chance to race with him, which was nice. Yeah. we ran some we'd go one of my favorite one of my favorite times with him was

I would run a one-off and he was kind of our GM Jack of All Trades kind of guy and when I would race he would just critchie if he's like I'll just do it and I had three or four cars running every week and we were we went to Chicago Chicago land to run a race. And our cars,

our guys will drive their ass off every week and then I show up. I'm running one or two races a year. And I showed up with Ryan and we ran fifth and beat all of our cars. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

And me and him... He loved it when you were driving. He loved that. It really did. Yeah. I felt like, you know, I had, you know, we had a pretty good relationship

and it was always fun to, because I knew he knew what he was doing. Yeah, yeah. I, um, you know, I don't know. I, I don't, I can't imagine, I think we both dealt with some loss in our lives. Um, and I've got a lot more in front of me, you know, unfortunately than maybe you. You've probably had more experiences with that than I have. Yeah.

Um. Yeah, two brothers, son, you know, in the normal stuff. off, right? Everybody deals with those things differently. Yeah. You know? And I don't want to make any assumptions, but it feels like that you've got a pretty good handle.

Yeah, I mean, I keep a lot of it inside, right? You know, there's, you know, Lisa tells me I need to go talk to somebody, you know what I mean? So, you know, I just keep it inside. You know what I mean? I don't talk about it. I think about the times we had and stuff. Well, I mean, there's nothing. there's maybe nothing wrong with that approach.

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully not. Yeah. You know, but it's the difference is, not the difference, but with our situation, yours included, those are the phone calls I made and received every week, every day about something. You know, Randy was never short on opinions and Ryan and, you know, Bray from the contract side of things was, you know, doing the something the other. and, you know, we always talked all the time. Yeah.

And I don't, right now, you know, Roman and I talk, but Roman's on a different deal. And, you know, I don't have anybody to, I don't talk to anybody. You know what I mean? I don't, you know, it's, I like coming here. I talk more racing now than I do in a year without my family that talks about it, you know. Yeah. And this is, I like this. And, you know, I miss that different viewpoint from brothers and some.

and stuff like that. You know, they have a different way of talking, seeing it. If I was in the trenches, they looked at it differently from TV or being at the track and stuff. And, you know, that was always good for me.

Yeah. You know, frigging Randy was funnier than hell. He was the funniest. He moved down here at a young age, and we were roommates for a while before I got married and all that stuff. But he was a card, man, I'm telling you. Yeah.

We had fun together. He got into the broadcasting side of things. And what was... It was special events television network was the first one. Did he show, I mean, in high school or growing up? He was a basketball player. He went scholarship and all kinds of stuff. And he just liked that part of it.

He was good. He was good at it. Yeah, he was really good at it. He moved down here with no job and found a job. and you know he did to modeling for wrangler jeans he did poster you know he has his ass and a pair of jeans that's all yeah that's all yeah that's all you saw right yeah and uh you know he did it all on his on his own you know and he was a good talker and you know he you know him and benny got him and ned got you know they all that crew all got along good over the years and he did inside

Winston Cup and you know he spent a lot of time with your dad yeah you know and he would come back from somewhere he covered some of the short track races you and Kelly ran oh yeah he come back he said I'm gonna tell you what Dale's pretty good he said but I think Kelly's better yeah and I said I said are you looking at it correctly or you're just looking at it from a chick that hauls ass right no I wash I think she's pretty good you know it's like oh whatever Yeah. You know? No, she was good.

Yeah. Yeah. She definitely. I used to say that, you know, in a racing, I always love telling this. Somebody said this, this old fella come up to me one day and he goes, it's easier to pull a rope than it is to push one. Yeah, for sure. And I thought, you know, that was the way I kind of described Kelly is like you, she was going to be fine because all you needed to do is slower down a little bit. Yeah.

Some people, they get in a car. car and they can't do it because they can't go. Yeah. Right? You can't push your road. Back it up a little bit. She was, she never could get her car to turn.

And I'm like, man, as soon as you figure out how to back the corner up, you're going to be hard to deal with. Yeah. It turns on your warm-up lap and it doesn't turn on your fast lap. Somewhere in between is the turn, right? Yeah. Well, I, um, you know, I've always appreciated you.

You will, we might have talked about this, but, um, There was one particular night that I will never forget, and it imprinted on me. We were in Chicago for the playoffs. We had some kind of a dinner that we had to go to. Everybody's sitting over there listening to the music getting played. I think it was John Legend might have been the guy that was actually playing. Me and you were standing over by the bar. Yeah.

And you just were going and going and going about things going on in sport and all these things that you thought were good or bad or whatever. And I'm like, man, I'm bench racing a little bit. Yeah. And I'm like, I came to this thing. I didn't even want to come here. Right. It wasn't going to be anything I wanted to do.

I don't want to sit around and have dinner in the middle of town and drive all the way back out to the racetrack. But damn, it, sitting there with you bullshit. Yeah. Over a couple of drinks was something I'll never forget. We did best. Yeah. Well, I got, I think in that moment, I knew who you were.

and you knew me, and we had conversated in the past, but that night you kind of brought me in, you know, to the fold. I had the really good relationship with Mike Hilton, and I don't know, ever since then, you and I kind of clicked. You had a place down in the Keys, so did I. We shared interest there and talked a lot about it, and we'd see each other from time to time down there. It was fun.

Yeah. I had fun down there. I've just always appreciated you. Yeah. I didn't know, you know, I talked to Shalmardine a little bit about this. And so when I was growing up in the 80s and going to the track, you, all of those guys, Shelmerdine, you name them, all the parrots, all of those guys, like, you couldn't, like, y'all were, like, larger than life.

Like, y'all, I knew Dad was a badass, and I know the drivers were great, but the guys that, like, made the cars go and made the cars good. And, like, y'all are so, I was so impressed and humbled. And, man, I wouldn't talk to anybody. And I was scared to be in the way. And I never thought in my wildest, I never thought ever back, like, when I was watching you be a crew chief. I never thought I'd have a personal relationship with you.

Oh, wow. No. And I talked the same way with Kurt. I was in his holler. I was around him all the time. But, and he, you know, and me and him had a lot of conversations about that. He's like, man, I wish I would have been more, you know, personable. Yeah.

You know, but y'all were just in a, you know, when you're a crew chief and you're about that life. Yeah. There's only a few things that are important. And I'm so thankful that we became friends. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a lot.

We all are, you know. Well, I appreciate you and the person you are, and I've always enjoyed being around you and spending time with you and talking to you. We've had, we've had some good times. We have. Well, let's have some more. Yes. Bank on it. All right.

Thanks for coming in today. All right. I appreciate your time. You bet you, buddy. I appreciate yours. Thanks. That's a great conversation with Robin. I'm glad he came back.

And I don't know if everybody had ever really heard what happened in the hauler with Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch. I think we all know that what he shared, what his story that he shared happened. But we hadn't ever heard it really described? I don't think so I looked it up and it said just sources close to the incident that was the only thing that I think it's out there

so it's pretty cool yeah he's got some stories I think every time we sat down to this table and we could do it multiple more multiple times and we'd get a little a couple nuggets here and there of some cool history

and I hope everybody enjoyed that we will definitely have Robin back his he's just seen it all you know just he's a good source of information and i even thought cross the the moment crossed my mind to even actually have maybe him helton and derby in together to go over like their their memories of certain let's like pick ten events right where they were big moments in the sport and see if they all have different jar you know because them three could jar some unique memories loose that I know that he's got in there.

I love that idea. Yeah, that would be cool. I think we could pull it off. So a lot of fun talking to Robin. Glad he came back and I hope you all enjoyed Part 2 or the second edition this year. Not many times you'd go that route, right? But he's been that great of a guest. It's time for the white flag.

The Teardown was live on YouTube and Twitter following the race. If you haven't already headed over to Dirty Mo Media's YouTube page, please go over there. subscribe and turn on your notification so you don't miss anything. Actions. Determinal dropped on Monday. Denny explained everything that happened during the race at Loudon, including his little confrontation with his teammate, Ty Gibbs. Door bumper clear dropped on Monday. They were joined by Tyler Reddick.

And also on Tuesday, me and TJ had our episode of Dirty Air. And today, Herman Schrader drops. And I'm excited for that. Kenny Wallace went to the racetrack all by himself and whoop their ass. He just sent me a text message this morning. Good for him. He sent me a picture of him and Victor Lane with his trophy. He said, went to the track and won all by myself.

What a ball. Dude, he's 60, 61. He's a badass. To the track by himself. Unload his shit. Kick their ass. Load it up. Go home.

What in the hell. Kenny Wallace. And on Thursday, another episode of Bless Your Heart with my wife, Amy. Can't Wait. We've got some information to share. for you listeners that are fans of that show. Friday, an episode of Dirty30, the highlight reel of all of our great moments throughout the week

are on the Dirty 30 show every Friday. We'll see you tomorrow. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.