The Dale Jr. Download - The Tire Is The Most Important Part of All of It

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

After a refreshing race at Phoenix, Dale Jr. is here to discuss the impact of what we saw on track this past weekend. His background may look a little different, but vacation won't stop him from bringing us his NASCAR race takes!He's joined by TJ Majors and the rest of the download crew to talk all about:Dale's recent NCAA Championship victory over TJThe Option Tire's success, but there's more work to be doneDebating Joey Logano's restart violationWho's to blame for Katherine Legge's long day?Christopher Bell's race-winning move on Denny HamlinWhy the West Coast needs a short track & Fontana's futureAfter the guys get all their takes out from the race, the winner, Christopher Bell, calls in to talk about his back-to-back-to-back wins, how he felt about the Option Tire strategy and how he's looking ahead to Vegas. Can he accomplish the 4-peat?During the Ask Jr. part of the episode, we got questions for Dale Earnhardt Jr. from his fans about:Following up on last week's playboy story, has Dale seen his yearbook picture from that year?What did Dale think about his nephew Wyatt's race?Has Dale seen much of the new Earnhardt documentary coming out on Prime?Initial thoughts on having Carl Edwards as a guest tomorrow?Dirty Mo Media is launching a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Dale Jr. Download merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuff.And for more content check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMediaMust 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.

I disagree with y'all. If you pit outside the box, it's not like, okay, well, just make sure you're in it next time. You know what I mean? I disagree. I don't agree with y'all. It was nitpicky. Well, I would agree with you, but then we would both be wrong. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media.

Hey, everybody's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download, and we're doing a remote show today. Kids are on spring break, and so I'm not in the studio, but TJ is. and we've got Travis as well. Let's jump right into it. Hold on. I think we have a bigger topic than NASCAR, though. I'd like to get into.

You don't want to get into NASCAR right away. I'd like to congratulate you, Dale. We don't need to do this. National champion, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Yes. I promise you, I promise you the next time that I win, and I will win it again. Oh, you will.

Oh, you'll happen. And you think this celebration is big. I am tweeting and posting and tagging. I might even have a Michigan marching band in here for this next show. I guess I need to keep celebrating then and join this. If that's the way the next one's going to go. That's the way it's going to go. TJ, Dale took UNC Charlotte, I think what, a one star originally and built the mom.

Yeah, well, I mean, I've also entered the national championship game with Wyoming and I played myself, I just chose to play with Michigan instead of Wyoming. So Wyoming could have had a national championship as well. Yeah. He is, he's Michigan. And so, yeah, there is an argument for that that he got to start out as a five-star team and didn't have to really develop the team. But he's made the team a lot better.

I've had to develop him because I screwed him up the first second year. We had 18 or we got 18 or 19 users in the league. We've got a few. that have second teams. I just picked up Stanford, started messing with them. T.J. has been Wyoming for several seasons now, and a couple of players have picked up some second teams just to have something to do to kill the time between advances.

But it's been fun. We've been in a dynasty in Madden since probably 2008, and I've been in and out of playing Xbox or console football games for a while. I kind of dipped out of his little league. We took a break for a while there. Yeah. But we got the new NCAA started up,

so we all got excited about it and got back into it. And I picked Charlotte not only because it's local and their new team relatively new in terms of their existence. And I thought it would be fun to try to turn them into a powerhouse. And nothing wrong with it. with T.J. taking Michigan, but it just didn't seem like it'd be that fun to take a team that was already relatively good and had all kinds of great pipelines and recruiting. I wouldn't say the Michigan pipelines that good because it's really not that highly ranked. Oh my gosh. Jesus Christ.

Of course it isn't. Compared to Charlotte, it's relatively good. I talked to a couple sources. They said that the T.J. just got out coached and bad game plan. I didn't play good. I didn't play good at all. That was kind of the end of it. It came down to if you said, so this is why the league is fun for me, and this is why I enjoyed doing it, and I don't know if I can get Amy to understand this, but I'm almost embarrassed to show you the spreadsheets of plays.

Like I've basically in the game, it'll keep a log of the yardage, you get every time you use a play. So if I've ran this play 50 times, it'll say, all right, you've gotten five and a half yards every time you've ran this play on average. And so I go through my whole playbook and literally rank all my run plays

from the best average yardage to the worst and all of my past, all my RPO's, which a lot of people don't use RPO's because they just don't understand them yet. But, and the screens. Screens aren't very good in the game. There's only about a couple that I like. to use. I also watch about

shoot dude, I've got a playlist that I've curated. I watch dozens of YouTube videos a week. And so I'm always adding plays and adding ideas and trying new things. When you play TJ

or when you play the National Championship, I've got a custom playbook with all of my you know situations. Every play is going to be curated and suggested for the specific time that I need it. I don't ever really go.

I have it doing the things I wanted to do so well. I never have to go beyond the suggested play screen to pick a specific play for a certain situation. I'm never going, oh, it's not suggesting the right play. I need to go find it. It's always giving me what I'm looking for. I do a serious amount of silly work to try to make sure that I keep, I enjoy it, you know, and I'm competitive.

But that's the way it is for me. That's the way I am with everything. Like when I was cycling, I didn't love getting on a bike and going and riding 40 miles. That's not what was fun at all. I didn't enjoy that part whatsoever. What I loved was coming back home, downloading all the data, and the average power and the average, you know, average speed. and how I did on certain segments of the ride,

because Strava would track all that information. And I was competing against myself, so I would ride the same rides over and over and over and just see if I've gotten faster or better or did a better job in this particular segment. And that silly nonsense of just diving into the details is what motivated me to keep riding, because I needed to ride.

I needed to stay in good shape to race, so riding helps. me do that and I didn't love working out any other way. And so to make that game fun, I need to, I need the details. I need the, I need the homework. Hey, everybody, you want the latest Dale Jr. download apparel? Visit shop.dirtymode.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.dirtymomedia.com. Let's move on to the race. Well, there was a race. There was a race. All right, so the option tire, NASCAR had the primary and the option tire going on in this race. And I'll be honest.

As much as I'm hoping, you know, I'm kind of one of the ones that is like hoping that the option tire, they're basically going to the racetrack and putting this option tire up there because there is some concern that it was. will fail or not last or wear out too quickly. And so the race isn't lost as long as the primary tire can come in and save the day. If there is any kind of an issue with the option tire during the race, they can kind of, you know, pivot in the middle of the event and still, you know, have a, have a finish and have a race. That probably, Good Year and NASCAR will probably tell you that I'm crazy and that that's not anywhere.

and near the truth, but that's probably, that's kind of how I'm looking at it. And my hope is, is that the option tire does succeed in each of these sort of trials where they're, I call them trials when they're running the option and the primary together, because I think that's what it is. It's a test. And I'm hoping that what they're doing is saying, okay, the option tire did good. Maybe we go back with just the option tire. They've done that at other racetracks, hadn't they, T.J.

I think they did it at Martinsville or somewhere. Bristol, where they ran the primary and the option. It worked. Then they went back with only the option, correct? Well, Bristol, we just ran the soft tire or whatever. Yeah, but I thought we went to Martinsville with only the option. And we went to a couple road courses as well with this softer tire. Yeah, they tested Martinsville last year and then chose a tire.

And I thought it was in the right direction. Yeah. Better remember leaving there wanting more. Right, sure. Well, my point is, it's like, I'm hoping that, it's my hope that we don't, I hope that we don't get excited about, so excited about what we saw Sunday that we think, oh, primary and options should be what we do going forward. And I mean, look, I could be wrong about that. I know that some people, I like the race. I thought the race was compelling.

but basically, man, you put the option tire on and you drove through the field and I wasn't that surprised by that or even that really compelled by it. I mean, it was a softer tire and the guy passed everybody and went up front. Hopefully getting lucky with a caution or something. Yeah. In the end, you know, everybody kind of wondered back to where they belong and finished about where they should have finished. And as long as the, I mean, the teams are so smart.

that they and there just isn't enough variables for a team to really find a clear advantage in the strategy when using the primary versus the option tire in a race. Everything in my mind in most cases is going to all kind of settle back into where it probably would have ended

if they just ran the option tire or the primary tire of the entire race. So you're going to have people put the option on and fly through the field in the middle of the race, but they're going to end up being in a bad spot because there'll be one set of options short at the end when everybody else has that extra set. So it doesn't really, it doesn't really affect the race in a crazy way for me.

NASCAR loves it because they see people driving through the field. Some of the more casual fans love it because they see people driving through the field and think, wow, okay, this guy's doing something different. He's got a different strategy, but, you know, in the end, it's not going to be the preferred strategy. All the people that have saved their option tires for the last couple of runs, which is what everybody's probably going to do for most of the races.

All those guys are going to prevail. So, you know, as cool as this was, it was a great race. It was fun to watch. That tracks been notoriously bad for, racing over the past several times we've been there and everybody's like, hey, get the damn championship race out of there. It's boring. It finally had a really compelling weekend across all three series. I want to commend NASCAR. I want to commend Goodyear. I want to celebrate them. I like the primary option situation in this race. It's just not what I want them to land on.

Does that make sense? I want them to. to go, yeah, this is cool. Our goal is to get to where we can use the option all the time. Because that was kind of the, if you remember, back when all of this started, the conversation about softer tires started, the teams and the drivers were like, we need softer tires, we need tires that wear at all these little short tracks and road courses.

The racing at the short tracks and road courses was notoriously bad, and they begged for softer tires. They gave us the softer tire by using this sort of a trial run, dropping this option tire into the, into the race as an idea to see if it would work. If it doesn't work, if it fails, if it wears out too quickly, just put the primary back on, finish the race. Well, the option tire is giving us great racing. It's giving us fall off. It's giving us tire wear. It's giving us comers and goers.

and the original goal was to try to get us to where we could have a soft tire at all of those tracks all the time, not just a couple of runs in the race. And so with this success this weekend, I hope it doesn't divert our attention. I hope it doesn't derail the path forward to getting us to where we can just have a softer, tire to run at all of these places all the time and the primary eventually goes away tj what was from your vantage point what was your thoughts on well every time we run the opti everyone's worried about the fall off and how severe it's going to be and to me we haven't got to the point where like we watched the joie legano drive all the way to the lead and then at the end of the stage you got

passed by one car that fell off a little bit yeah and it barely fell off and he had such a big lead on everybody else. He wasn't going to, he wasn't going to bleed any maybe two, three more spots because everybody's all spread out so far. And to me, the option tire doesn't fall off enough still. And it went way too long, way, it was way too fast for too long. And there's supposed to be this cliff that it falls off. And the biggest, the biggest separation when I was watching lap times, and the biggest gap that I saw between him and Christopher Bell and clean air was two tents on one lap. The rest of It was like a 10th, 10th and a half. And it wasn't this big steep curve that I was hoping to see.

I wanted to see him struggle, and I didn't see him struggling. Yeah, Chris Rebell made easy work of him, but that was one car, and he was the best car all day, best car all weekend, really. And I don't think there, you can hurt up enough yet. Like, Joey Ligonon driving through the field, Ryan Prey striving through the field, gets out front. There should be, there should be a penalty for it. And there just wasn't a penalty.

The only penalty was when the caution fell. and I don't want it to come down to who made the right call and got lucky with a caution. I want to see a guy have to drive through and manage his stuff at the same time, then try to hang on. I don't want to see, oh, saved by the caution, because there was a point where Ryan Priest was leading the race, and he got three, four seconds out front at the end there, near the end, the later stage of the race, and may not, like, if the caution doesn't come out, he's going to probably net out to a top four or five somewhere still.

and I just don't, I don't know, I don't think, I don't like just being able to hang on like that. I think there should be a cliff or a penalty to pay or somewhere. The driver should be able to hurt the tire and pay the price for it. Kind of like what they did at Bristol. There was what two seconds of fall off? Yeah, but I mean, compared to what? Like overall? Because what did the primaries fall off?

It wasn't like 1.2, something like that, right? There's no way you're going to tell me that, like, they might fall off. Like, if you run a hunter laps, it might be a little bit better than at the end of the hunter last, but no one's going to put a hundred laps on them at that point. So what do you need to fall off to be then for this option tire for it to truly matter how the drivers handle these tires? I just think it needs to be, you know, accelerated even more than what it was. Like, it was still too good to, to, it lasted too long. And then I just want the drivers to be able to hurt the tires.

and I want to run that tire on all the cars all the time and the drivers be able to manage their tires. Yeah. One of the things that, TJ is absolutely correct. I think one of the things that I noticed is when the cars are all on the primary, they don't run side by side very much. And they run single file and it's very, very hard for them to pass. The tire is harder.

So as soon as they get within a couple car links of the car in front of them, they just start chattering and losing grip. so they can't really drive around the cars very well. The option tire allowed the cars to get closer together to actually race each other a little bit harder. There was cars sliding, slipping, chasing, battling against right-risk shear and drive-off. That was really, really good to see.

And I agree with T.J., I think you take that option tire and all the great things that it seems to be doing and keep going farther, more aggressively with either the softer compound or maybe there is a situation where they need to add more rubber to the tire to be able to kind of bring temperatures up a little bit. I don't know where they are on temps and stuff like that, but, you know, I know the old biispli tires had a lot more rubber on them,

and the way that our biisply short track Hoosiers react to heat, wear, fall off, all of those things is kind of what we're looking for. You know, that's kind of the fall off and the wear and the slip and the way that the driveability that the drivers are looking for in the Cup Series. That's what you have in the Hoosier 45s that we race on the short tracks and that are up but ran all up and down the East Coast into super late models and pro late models. And I don't think that it's realistic for Goodyear

to kind of go that direction or get that, whatever, you know, try to go after some of the same ideals that those tires are created by. But maybe there's some things to be learned from, you know, what the tires used to do, the older cup tires that were by supply tires, what they used to do, how they used to react. It may not be possible with this tire.

More than likely, it's going to be too temperature sensitive. It's going to be, you're going to have issues with blisters and chunking and things like that. But I would love to sit down with a good year engineer that was open-minded to have a conversation and say, you know, okay, why do, okay, I love this tire that, you know, that I race on my little short track car and that super late models and all these guys run. I know this is a lighter car. Can you bring this here? What are some of the ideas that make this tire successful

and how could those be implemented in what we have today? I don't know if it's even possible, but I'd love to, you know, I think it'd be a neat conversation. Again, man, celebrating, I want to celebrate a good year for even trying to get us a softer tire. God, it seemed like for a long time. Yeah. Then we got spoiled at Bristol. We got really.

spoiled in Bristol. But it just seemed like forever, T.J. that we were just, Goodyear was like, nope, we're going to build rock hard blocks. Run them forever. Run them forever. We got a tire at Martinsville that'll go 3,000 miles, you know.

And Goodyear can build an amazing, like they can build a tire that could, I mean, last forever. Well, that's the thing. I mentioned that on the show years ago. One of the, one of the, one of the tire manufacturers wouldn't get into F1 because, in F1 they wanted tire fall off and degradation and all those things and they're like we're not in the business of building tires that don't last right and so and so I'm thinking in my mind I'm like

yeah I guess that's a tough spot for good year to be in you want to sell tires to to to the general public but so you've got to find a way for your tire to look really good on Sunday in a NASCAR race. Yeah. But you can't think, as a fan, like, if you think that the tires that they're racing on Sundays is what you're going to be dealing with, like... It's optics. It is optics, exactly.

Good way to put it. My point is, like, Goodyear has to be aggressive, but they can't have, and I hate, I know this is tough for everybody to relive, but they can't have another indie where we go to a racetrack and the tires won't last beyond 20 or 25 lap. you know, and there's no backup plan. We can't have a situation, because Goodyear, that, we, nobody, if that were to happen, nobody's going to go, oh, man, you know, give them a break, give them some grace. Good Year's just trying their hardest, trying to give us what we're asking for.

They're going to get drug through the mud if that happened. Nobody's going to be, you know, giving them a break. And so they know that they can't make that mistake, and they have to be very calculative and clever on how they give us the pack the you know give us the the the product that we want on the short track and the road courses i'll tell you though the tire is the most important part of all of it when we talk about how a race is good or bad uh or a road course race is not good or the trend is that short track's not good or you know when we go through this sort of cycle in the sport where the product isn't good.

The tire plays the biggest role in that. Absolutely, no question. That's a tough spot for good year to be in. But got to celebrate them. They're trying their hardest. I'm with TJ. Get more aggressive. Let's keep pushing.

Get softer and softer and see how far we can go. One thing, just real quick during the race, after we were out, obviously, I drove Brad into a wreck again for like the fourth out of five weeks. But I thought I saw guys putting used option tires back on instead of new instead of new primes. And to me, if you put your options on,

you should get 20, 30 laps out of them and then they should be like, man, we can't run them again. There's not going to be anything left. You shouldn't be able to put 30 lap option tires on them. I think that the one car put them on and then luckily got another caution and promptly came back down pit road to take them off because they were terrible.

Yeah. But even to be in the conversation of like, hey, we should put these back on. Yeah, I'm with you. They should have been coached. Yeah, nope, we use them. Yep, we use the soft sub. They're gone. You know that feeling you get when you're watching drivers fight it out on the racetrack,

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or any authorized retailer, and start building your collection today. And don't forget, you can find a wide selection of die cast at the Lionel stores in Concord Meals near Charlotte Murder Speedway and Opry Meals in Nashville. Christopher Bell moves Denny Hamlin up the racetrack just a little bit. Run him a little wide. Denny didn't hit the wall or anything. You know, I don't know what Denny could have done differently there. I think that he came out of there with probably a better finish than he probably expected.

when the race began. Denny said he could have gone, maybe, gone behind him and gone low or something like that. He might have been able to do a, you know, back it up, cross him over. I don't think. Start, finish line comes up too quick off of four for a crossover move right there, I think.

I mean, I thought that was just great racing. I thought Denny was done, but then he got back on the outside of Bell on the exit of two, and I was like, oh, Denny's got a shot. And for him to even, for him to even put himself in position to have a shot at winning that race,

a pretty strong run. Well, he had Larson help him too. I mean, just to make the corners that he did, though, he didn't have Larson's help in the corner to stay outside of Bell and all that. I mean, to even be in that position, though, to race Bell for the win, solid effort, solid run.

I thought the more debatable finish was the Amarola Bowman finishing the Xfinity race. Arca was pretty bad. Arca was very similar. So I don't think, I watched the end of the, I don't think there's a good replay of the Arca one. was a really, really hard door slam in the Arca race. I don't think people saw, but it was pretty severe.

I thought they were probably very similar, don't you think, Arka and the Xfinity? Arka was the worst. Yeah, they were very similar. Arka was by far the worst, the most egregious out of all of them. I mean, in the Xfinity race, I mean, you could see it coming. And, you know, I was standing right there. Obviously, the spotters are above turns three and four at Phoenix,

so you literally look right now. I mean, everything is right there. I saw it coming. Yeah. The thing about it in the Xfinity race is so, you know, you could sit there, we would maybe expect this out of a young, hungry rookie. And then all of us in our mind would go, God, you know, he's got to learn to race with more respect.

You know, wins are going to come. He's talented. He doesn't need to do it that way. Yeah. But this is Eric Amarola, who has ran. ran his entire cup career. I'm sure hope he gets a shot. Well, he's a semi-retired.

Yeah, he's having fun. Yeah, he's out there like, I don't get it. Why would he? Yeah. And so I think a lot of us don't really know how to think about the Xfinity race. I know that it sucked for Bowman. Here's what Bowman. Bowman had to say, I would have hoped that he would have given me a lane on exit,

but he just exited like I wasn't there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Alex drove Martinsville, like Danny Ham wasn't there either. so. TJ's got a memory. He's not, TJ's not wrong though.

He's not. Drivers love to play well with me, but then give him two races and guess what? They're going to do it to the... Nobody likes to lose. I agree. I agree that it depends on who's doing it. If that had been one of my drivers,

I probably would not feel that bad about it. know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, it wouldn't be my favorite win of ours in our, in our, in our, in our, existence at junior road sports, but I, I, I would have figured out a way to justify it or at least live with it. As a driver, though, like, is there anybody that could have moved you that you'd have been happy about? Oh, no. I mean, I'm just saying, like, yeah, I know.

I'm not worried about Bowman and all that stuff. It's more about, like, you know, our perception. Yeah, how we perceive it, yeah. We're race fans, right? Let's be race fans and just think, all right, here, let's dissect this. And I think that, uh, is it, oh, is it, you know, yeah, I guess it's all right. I'd be mad if I'm, Dale, if I'm you and you're one of your drivers doesn't do that to try to get the win.

I'm like, get the win. I'm conflicted. I'm fine either way. If you finish second in a good race, how can you be mad at it? If he gets a little aggressive against the win, it is what it is. You know, I, dad, I keep thinking like, you know, man, you know, I don't know if I want. So we, you know, Eric does this in Xfinity race. The guys that are racing in the cars tour or racing at their local racetrack or racing in the Arcyseries, they see that and they go, hey, if I'm in that situation, that's a great move.

I'm going to do that. I'm going to, I'm going to be that aggressive to try to get myself the win. And that's all that matters is just trying to get the win. And then, and it promotes it. And I struggle with that because I don't want that to be the way we run. I don't want that to be every finish in the cars tour every week because we're going to have a lot of disappointed and frustrated people. But every once in a while it's okay. But I go back to like the way my dad raced in 1986, 87.

I mean, he was as aggressive as any. And so it's hard for me to have any kind of a hypocritical thought about it because I grew up loving how aggressive guys were in the 80s and how people were, you know, how the short tracks were beaten and banging, pushing each other around. There was always every other week there was a fight in the pits and a disagreement. And, you know, it's a different time these days and we don't really necessarily want physical altercations.

but it is good to see a little physical contact and a little pushing and shoving because I'd say for the past couple of decades it's been quite non-existent at the Cup Exfinity level now the trucks have been kind of wild but yeah it's definitely tapered off in the Cup series yeah the Cup guys damn they they just assume you know I mean Christopher Bell pushed it about as far as you're going to see you guys push it in the in the Cup series do you think you would have done it a little more had it not been a teammate do you think that went through his mind? I'm sure there might have been a little contact.

I don't know. Yeah, I think there's going to be contact either way. Yeah. I would have, too. I mean, you're the dominant car all day. You have the fastest car. You got a shot at winning guy Beech-Libund and restart. You're going to get a little rough at times. If that's not, if that's not Denny Hamlin, the car probably ends up in the fence a little bit. That's what I'm asking. Yeah, you gave Denny a little bit of a break. He tried to race Denny as clean as he's possibly. Literally, I mean, Christopher Bell did the perfect amount of aggression without He did.

He could have been, there's a lot of racetrack up there that we don't use in Phoenix and three and four. And if you really want to wash them up there, it takes, they run so high to try to not get hit that you really have to kind of chase them up there to hit them. So bail goes back to back to back, first driver to three Pete, or win three in a row in the next gen era.

One bad push away from almost four. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Daytona. Yeah, so we'll talk to him in a bit. Let's talk about Joe Legato's penalty on the restart. This was an interesting one for me because NASCAR, so at Phoenix, as they're coming off the turn four,

and you're coming up on a restart, coming to the start finish line. You're not allowed to go below the yellow line onto the apron before you get to the start finish line. and we will see NASCAR penalized drivers because this often happens back in the middle of the pack or a couple rows back. Drivers just peek out a little too early. They're trying to cut that dog leg going into turn one.

And they're trying to be the first one to get down there and get under the car in front of them. And so they get a little aggressive. Control the air. They get aggressive and they jump down there too soon. Sometimes NASCAR doesn't call it. sometimes they do call it. I've never,

I do not remember the last time that they've called it on the front, you know, the leader, particularly at Phoenix. So that was pretty interesting and I thought it was pretty nitpicky. Did Joey break that rule? Yeah.

Then how's it nitpicky if he breaks the rule? Well, because I've seen them not call it for very aggressive far, you know, guys, four tires way below the line before the start, finish line. I've seen it not get called. Listen, NASCAR can't see it all. They can't call every infraction all day long, right? They can't.

They can try, and we hope they do, and they work hard, but they're going to miss some things, and that's okay. And so, and TJ, do you agree that this infraction, sometimes gets missed in the back half of the field. Yeah, but I will also say I was a year and a half ago, two years ago, I would have said absolutely it happens almost every restart. But lately they've been cracking down even in the back half of the field with guys. And I've even warned drivers on restarts if we were restarting near the back for some reason,

like, hey man, don't mess with it still because they're still penalizing guys back there for it. So they've gotten a lot better at making sure that it's throughout the field, not just on the front row, but setting the tone for even guys back there because it's such a huge advantage. Even if you're 15th, you get a big run down there, you can really make something happen still. I agree. And I don't feel what you feel about their change in ramping up being more strict

and calling this penalty more often. I don't feel that yet, but I'll take your word for it. You're in a different perspective than I hear. We hear all the calls, so. I didn't think that Joey was trying to gain an advantage there. I don't think he was doing anything to block the car behind him. I just think that he misjudged it, and I felt like considering the circumstances that it was a bit nitpicky based off of how hit and miss it's been on calling those infractions at that particular racetrack and those. moments throughout the field over the last probably let's just go back five or six trips to this

racetrack it's been you know they they can't get them all i understand that i'm not complaining um i don't expect them to call all of them because they're going to miss a few it's just human nature to err a little bit so you give them a little bit of grace there um but i felt like that they um pounced on joey i mean literally what had just half a tire or maybe a three quarters of the left front tire down on the apron when he crossed to start finish line. I didn't think it was that aggressive. If you're not like that, though, then someone else is going to, you know, put your piece across the line. I feel like that that would have been a time to maybe give a warning to everyone.

Everyone. A warning? Yeah. That would have been a moment to say, look, man, we're not going to torpedo Joey's Day over about 12 inches of asphalt. He didn't gain anything from it. He wasn't blocking the car behind him. Listen, forget about who's in the car. Just, you know, Joey Lugano, fan or not, this is a guy just trying to run his race.

He got a little aggressive. It would have been a good time to say, all right, everybody, we're going to, you know, we're sending out a warning. The 22 car was aggressive there. Next time the next car that does it, where I don't care if it's a couple inches, stop, you know, stop doing it. I think that that would have been the play, but that's just me. You don't have to love it. I just feel like it was a little bit nitpicky. I just know that if you, I know our guys, everyone's, everyone's competing so hard that

we're going to keep pushing. Like next time, even as Joey is a competitor, he's going to, if he didn't get called for it there, he's going to do the exact same or. Even if he got a warning? I, man, you're not. I mean, if you get some, you give a guy a warning and he doesn't. I disagree with you for, on the. gaining advantage stuff because he's turning down there to gain an advantage by shortening the track up

and hoping the guy if he does it like a millisecond later i mean what's the difference in on if he clears the guy by a foot in a turn one he's got control of the race you know what i mean so he's doing it for an advantage and it is a big advantage if you shorten the track out and you want to get the turn one first and if joey gets turned one first we all know how hard joey is to pass yeah so and that's what he's trying to do but I feel like with our series seeing how it is you you set the tone by if somebody is across the line you penalize them because from that point on we're all like okay we're not doing that now because if you get a warning I can tell you right now warning is kind of like okay are they going to call it next time or not because we've seen that like a coda like we could go find pitchers all day of guys

getting warnings or whatever a couple of year or two ago and and until somebody actually gets the penalty for, we're going to keep pushing until we know there's a line to cross. And these drivers all set a right hook as a right hook and wanted a penalty for Cendrick. You can't then on Sunday say, well, he barely crossed the line here. So give a warning. Like, it's a punishment. I disagree with y'all. If you pit outside the box, it's not like, okay, well, just make sure you're in it

next time. You know what I mean like. I disagree. I don't agree with y'all. Well, it's okay. It was nip. It was nipicky. Well, I would agree with you, but then we would both be right. wrong. Let's talk about NASCAR's approval process to race.

Catherine Legg was in the field this weekend, some good excitement around her being in the field. She had a bit of a rough day. And, yeah, so this springs up the debate in the conversation around NASCAR's approval. process, you know, what is the approval process, right? What are the, what's the criteria for a driver to be allowed? I think Mike Wallace getting not allowed to race, so really springing this into them. We've got to stop with comparing the two, though. Expound. When's the last time that he raced?

Yeah. Like, we, look, they're not the same. They told Mike if he was to run Arca or do this. You know, he had a couple of boxes to check and he gets in the field. He gets to run Daytona. if he had tried to run the ARCA race prior to the Daytona 500. I think there were a couple of things that they were like, hey, man, just if you do this, this, or this, the approval is going to be different. I guess I'd like to see the boxes that got checked for her to get approved for that, you know, running a road course race and an Xfinity car.

Does that really count? She ran five Xfinity races? Were they all road courses? A couple of years, I think three of them were. I mean, she's got a huge resume. Yeah, she's been racing. Forever. I got to say this, man.

It does not help that she's in such a car that doesn't handle a car. It's a poor car. And so she's in a car that doesn't do a lot of things right. And we don't have any practice. I mean, the lack of practice and the problems that that creates is glaring and it's in our face every other week. But we kind of choose to ignore it because, you know, there's a lot of drivers, namely guys that are in the top third of the field that don't need practice.

They'd rather not have practice. they got great cars that are probably going to hit the racetrack and handle well and be fast. And practice doesn't do anything but tighten the field up or give the rest of the field an opportunity to improve. That's exactly what it does. So of course, the top three, the top third of the field are going to probably say, I don't want practice. Yeah. Their cars are naturally better off the truck. Practices would be a disadvantage for me.

So, but name a series that doesn't practice. And so, you know, when you got situations like this where, look, having some practice would be really good for the back half of the field. You've got new teams with new cars, with new crew chief and driver pairings, trying to jail, trying to learn, trying to improve. Justin Haley and Rodney Childers, for example. Gregson in his new role with Front Row. A lot of.

Yep, you got a ton of teams that are out there spending a ton of money to be in this sport every week that are in dire need of just a little bit more information and a little bit more time on the racetrack. and then you have, you know, the Catherine legs and the different type of people that are trying to come in and maybe run these one-offs. You've got this new provisional that may spawn some really, really cool opportunities for some drivers that have never raced a next-gen car to come compete with us. And I want to see them being the best scenario to succeed. and so they're going to need time on the racetrack and practice

and no better time to give it to them than in the race weekend on a Friday, on a Saturday, prior to the race on Sunday. And so, you know, I think if she had had a little bit more time in the car... Would you give that time before qualifying or after qualifying? I don't care. I mean, I don't know if that... Like if you were going to add an hour practice, would you do it? Would you do the 20 minutes?

and then qualifying or do it like on Saturday, do qualifying on Friday or something and then... Doesn't matter? You can make the argument, TJ, that you want to do it after qualifying so that everybody's working on race stuff. Yeah. You know, who, I don't want to have a practice where I got guys out there hot-lap and Q run.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's just be done with that. Go ahead and put everybody in race trim. I loved how back in the day in like 98-99, we'd run our Xfinity race and as soon as our Xfinity race was over, like we're pulling off the track, the cup guys, dad and all them

are already lined up on pit road, getting ready to pull off and run Happy Hour. And we go into the Victor Lane, we're celebrating our win, and it's loud as shit because they're out there practicing the cup cars for an hour. And so, I mean, it was,

that practice was important. Happy hour was a moment. No one, you know, happy hour was a, destination in our sport at one point. I liked it on Saturday, kind of before the Xfinity race. You know, that's kind of what I was always used to whenever we would run. You'd have an early practice on Saturday.

Xfinity cars might qualify, and then you'd have your happy hour. But definitely, I mean, I thought that was a good lead up to the Xfinity race and things like that as well. Look, I think that she absolutely gets the opportunity to come compete. based off of her experience. But she's in a bad car that doesn't do anything right. She doesn't know what it needs to do. What I mean by that is like when you get in a race car

and a new car that you really have it drove before, you really don't know what it's supposed to do. And you're like, well, I don't know if it's supposed to turn better than this or not. I don't know if it can, right? And finally, you'll drive a car that does the right things and you're like, oh, I didn't know that was possible. Now I'm going to ask for that. Now I'm going to go to the crew chief and go, yeah, this isn't turning good enough.

We turned better last week, and we figured out how to get that rotation. I'm looking for it because I know the car's capable of doing it. She has none of that, right, coming into this. And so she's out there driving it going, I don't know whether it can do things better or not. And I know what I feel and what I need to ask the crew chief for, but they are just at such a disadvantage. advantage because of her experience in the car, the lack of the car's ability, and the lack of track time. That was just a, it's just not a good recipe for success.

And so I think that, you know, I don't know what NASCAR's approval process is. I don't know that we need like this really fixed rigid structure of, well, you need to win this, this, this, and this, or drive this, this, this to get there. I don't know if we need to go that route we used to have that I think back when for some reason when Brett Bidine was involved in NASCAR and that has nothing to do

he has nothing to do with this I just remember him being part of the conversation at one point but there was a you had to run this amount of races to be able to get you know be able to get the chance to race in the Cup series there was a specific amount of ARCA or Xfinity or truck that you had to do. You had to go, like, they wouldn't let you race unless you had an intermediate start.

Remember that, TJ? There was this kind of a fixed plan that you had to have. Yeah, you want to run. You need to start at the short tracks. You ran one or two there. Then once you proved your worth there, you moved to the intermediates. I don't know why that went away, but it did. Yeah, they wouldn't let you run Daytona unless you had an intermediate start.

You couldn't run an intermediate unless you had a short track start. and it had to be in like the series below so yeah and you could run a you could run like a like a super speedway um like if he would have ran uh mike would have ran the arc race that'd be like that would have approved him for the you know next series up or whatever you know what i mean the problem with that and and that's maybe some for people that are proposing that we go back to something like that the problem with that is it's very expensive and so So if you're a person, say you're someone who's trying to get this one opportunity to race in the Xfinity series, right?

And you've secured just the right amount of sponsorship money. You've probably came in low on sponsorship money, right? But you've got this ride secured. You've got this team to approve it. And now you're going to go run this race. You don't have the funds to get that ARCASTARD or that, truck started at that specific track to do this that's another 25 to 50 to 75,000 before you can finally get the approval to run the race that you actually have the funds to run

and so that was the problem with that in the past we would have drivers in our own system in our own pipeline that we wanted to go race at races but we were going to have to spend 75,000 dollars to run them in these other events and they were more than qualified to be able to run the race If that race goes bad, also there's an opportunity that you don't get approved as well. Yeah. So I know it's probably not a popular opinion, but practice would have helped old Catherine. There was one other thing I wanted to talk about, and that was Fontana. A little bit of news in the sport about NASCAR's West Regional president, Dave Allen,

was in the media center and was asked a few questions about the market, the West Coast market. And these are his comments. The market is extremely important to NASCAR, so we're not abandoning the market. What we don't have is a firm timeline yet. There's some things within the sport

that need to get started before we can make some strategic decisions as it relates to what we are going to build we're going to do something. We just don't know what and when yet. And they're talking about Fontana or other options out there. There's been rumors about a street course in San Diego. So here's a situation with Fontana, and I was thinking about this.

As we know, Fontana has been sold off probably about four-fifths of the property has been sold and is being developed. What's left is the front straightaway and the pit road and some of the suites on the side of pit road. There is arguably enough property there still for NASCAR to build this short track. That was kind of an original plan of theirs. I don't think that NASCAR can get it done. And I think that even if NASCAR wants to do it, they can't get it done.

Think about this is something I don't think a lot of people may consider. think about the permits and the challenges to build anything in the state of California, particularly around a sporting event or Speedway or anything like that. Not only the timeline and the hoops to jump through to get those permits and get that building code all sorted, but not only the timeline for that, but the expense and the cost, it's going to cost more money to build the facility than it will be worth to have, right? I just don't feel like that it's a financial success story. I think it will, you know, NASCAR can build it.

It's probably going to cost more money than it's worth to build. It's probably going to be more a bigger pain in the ass because of the permits and so forth that you'll have to jump through to get. And even if they badly wanted to build this short track, which I've always felt like what the West Coast has always needed was a really good Saturday night short track ass kicking. You know, we take, we go out there and we run road courses, we had the big Fontana track, we've done a lot of things out on the West Coast that are a lot of fun.

But one thing we haven't really taken to the West Coast market yet is Bristol. or Martinsville, you know, and I've walked out of those racetracks many times wishing we could bottle that up and take it all across the country because we'd be so successful if we could. So as bad as NASCAR may want to build, I think NASCAR does want to build that short track right there on that Fontana property. I just don't think that they can do it. I don't think that it's worth it. I don't think the trouble that it would, they would occur I don't think it's realistic.

And so, you know, I can't blame NASCAR for the lack of movement on that racetrack. I just think that it's not a feasible path forward. What they're going to probably look at is

if I had to put money on what I think will happen on the West Coast, you're probably going to find, you're probably going to have us racing on a street course or a current facility, which I don't know that there's many out there that exists, like road courses and so forth. There's no ovals I don't think that we could be racing on the West Coast.

And so, yeah, I feel like that they will not be building any new racetracks. they'll not be building any new ovals out there, not at Fontana or anywhere. And so the West Coast racing, anything new that happens on the West Coast will likely be street course. I do agree with the street course part. I wish it was a short track. But I do think the price is just too much probably to do it.

Do I think they could build a great short track there at Fontana? I think they could build an awesome track there at some point. I think it would be great with the current buildings they have. But they, I don't know, man, something. They've surprised me numerous times in the last handful of years as far as some of the track stuff they've done. I mean, we raced, if you had told me 10 years ago, we were going to run a race in the L.A. Coliseum, I'd have said, you're crazy. You know, and then we raced in there.

And same thing with Chicago, man. What they did was Chicago. And thinking about all the politics and stuff that, has to go on there behind the scenes that to get a race in a downtown of a city like Chicago or around a park area, like it's pretty, I mean, that's pretty, that's in depth, man, and it's hard to do. It's expensive too. For sure, for sure.

I just think, like, you, I think the part that would be bad, it's just going to cost too much to build the track. So it's going to have to go to something that's either a street course that can be temporary or the only tracks that I know of in that area are like Laguna. Nusaka or the temporary short track that run the IndyCar is run there as well. Long Beach or whatever it is. But. Yeah, I don't, I just don't see.

I think I do think that, you know, the, you know, I wouldn't say it's uncertainty, but with the lawsuit going on between the teams and NASCAR, I think NASCAR doesn't want to be built, spending millions of dollars on a project until that sort of all gets sorted out. so that's probably going to stall any kind of big spend on NASCAR's part. They'll spend some money, but to an extent, you know, that's a pretty big spend, I think, to build a short track out there at Fontana. And I just, yeah, I just feel like there's this, they, I think they lost money at Chicago,

or at least I don't think that NASCAR profited from that experience, financially, but the growth or the excitement and the, you know, there was some big gains that weren't monetary for NASCAR through doing the Chicago Street course. And they're going to look at that as a success and say to other cities, hey, here's the model. And so now they can probably go to a San Diego and say, this is what we did. This is how we did it. We've learned from that. we can do it better.

And they also have the irasing software to where they can build these tracks virtually and almost sort of test them out in a virtual world to really, that's what they did at Chicago. That's why Chicago succeeded was because of the iraicing platform was a way to be able to kind of test fire all of that stuff and make sure it was going to work.

Yeah, that sim race it did there, they all put on a great show. Yeah, so I mean they can now build these tracks in the virtual world and really throw all of the best sim racers in the world at that racetrack and have them pick it apart and before they ever, you know, spend a dime on the real thing. And so with that ability, yeah, I'm not a, I don't love road courses,

not a big street course guy, I want a short track, I want to, you know, I want an oval, I like, you know, I'm just old school with that, but, you know, I feel like that that's the momentum right now. And so the West Coast market, I think, is probably going to be the next thing, the next new thing, I think, will probably end up being a street course somewhere. And Fontana, I don't think will ever happen. I end up, I bet that they end up probably selling off the rest of that land. I really wish we ran Fontana still, because with the way this package is with this car, I think it would be an awesome race. Yeah, I do too, but the land got to be so valuable.

that they could not turn down the offer to sell it. Which is understandable. Yeah, can't blame them. But I think in the next five years they'll probably end up selling off the rest of that property. I'll be surprised if they don't. When the game tips off, the NBA action is just beginning on FanDuel, America's number one sports book, because FanDuel is your home for NBA live betting. So even if you miss the first few minutes of the game or you want to bet on a fourth quarter comeback,

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Make every moment more with Fandul, official sports betting partner of the NBA. All right, Christopher Bell on the Dale Jr. download with T.J. Majors and myself, Dillanard Jr., Jr. This is three weeks in a row, and we would love to keep this going. Win as many as you want, Christopher. I love it. I love it. Obviously, I enjoy talking to you guys more so whenever I win. So hopefully I get to do this again next week.

So you are coming off of a win at Phoenix and assuming you're staying out on the West Coast for the race this weekend in Vegas. What's your – how do you feel your time, I suppose, this week? Well, I'm kind of a last-minute planner, so we didn't really have much of a plan until the race ended at Phoenix. And we ended up making a trip to Sedona. So that's where I met right now. I'm in Sedona, Arizona. Oh, nice. I'm going to do some hiking, some sightseeing.

And, yeah, we got a couple days here before I go for the Sprint car race in Las Vegas on Thursday. If it don't rain. That's right. Yeah, if it doesn't rain. If it doesn't rain. Yeah. So, yeah, you're getting to run your sprint car on Thursday. What's the plan there?

Yeah, so obviously this year, my dirt racing schedule got opened up. And Vegas was actually the first race. that got put on the calendar with the NASCAR race being this weekend. Driving for Don Christ Jr. out of Pennsylvania, it's a long trip from him. He's normally a local guy. He's making the toe out to Vegas. But yeah, so we ended up doing Volusia earlier in the year, and that was just strictly a tune-up for this weekend. He's been really excited about this Las Vegas race,

so I'll be in the car Thursday night, and hopefully we can have a good result. Wait a minute. I got a question. You said your sprint car schedule opened up, But now you're winning all these races. Were you holding out? I mean, no. I mean, I'd love to just keep on going, keep on running more and more and more.

What's the surface like at Vegas with the Sprint car? I mean, when I think about the ground and the dirt in Vegas, I don't think that it would be conducive to good dirt track racing. Do they bring in certain types of dirt to really get that track to where it needs to be? Yeah, so it can go either way. there are times where it can be really, really nice. Like I've seen beautiful surfaces at the dirt track at Las Vegas. But the ambient conditions just make it very tough.

Normally we always run there in the spring, which they haven't run sprint cars in a very long time. But with a wind, it normally is really windy, which makes it tough to keep the track nice. It can be cool. And so Vegas is typically known to get pretty rough and have some character to it, which isn't a bad thing.

you know, it's not going to be smooth and glassy and perfect. But that's okay. That's what dirt racing is all about, is improvising and making the most of what you got. So the track itself is a beautiful facility. The pits are all paved, and the teams love racing out there just because it is a nice facility. But, yeah, the track, you just, you never know what you can get at Las Vegas,

but I know everybody is excited to run out there. Yeah. I know it's a long ways out, but you made this. mention on the tear down that you weren't sure about the option tire for the championship race at Phoenix. So I know there's a lot of race that needs to happen between now and then, but knowing what you, I guess experiencing what you did this past weekend, what do you believe the best scenario is for Phoenix going forward? Yeah, so, Junior, I'm okay with, if they want to run the option tire as the primary tire, I think that would be, you know,

perfectly fine. What I don't like is having two tire compound options, which are limited, limited use, and one compound is a significant advantage of the other one. And other forms of motorsports do it. I'm aware of that. But our racing is different. We have the planned stage brakes. Everybody knows when those yellow flags are coming out. And if you're a competitive car, your strategy is spelled out. You have to save the fastest set of tires for the end of the race. you are a car that is leading laps and contending for the win. And all that does is it allows guys that aren't competing for the win. And it gives them an advantage because they're going to gamble and put their fast set of tires on before the competitive cars. And they're going to drive right

to the front like we saw this weekend. And if the yellow comes out, they're probably not going to win if they're out of tires. And if the, you know, and that's exactly how it played out this week. but yeah, I mean, with the planned yellow flags that we have at the stage breaks, I don't think you can have an option tire or a two tire compounds in a race. And it be legitimate off of competition, you know, once again, are we competition or are we entertainment? And yeah, that's what it boils down to. Yeah, so I hope that the quest to like find this soft tire that we can use at the road courses

and at the short tracks is still the game plan. and that this is a trial, right, to find that awesome tire. I completely agree with that. And I think we are just going down the path of the right path. We're going down the right path. I mean, we saw probably the best road course race we've had in a long time with that new tire. And I think that red tire that we had at Phoenix is certainly where we need to be. I mean, it gave the race cars a ton more feel.

And you're able to slide the car around more and not feel like you're just on this brick and chattering across the racetrack. So, yes, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to keep going down this path of getting softer tires, making the car drive, where you can drive it hard and step over the limit and not crash each other. But having two compounds in one race makes it tough. Yeah, I agree with that. Looking ahead to Vegas, you know, where do you rank that track in terms of success?

Is it, you know, is it a place you go into where you're confident? what do you think your chances of being able to go and win four straight? Well, honestly, I would say it's P1 on my list what I haven't won it yet. It's been a great track for myself and my team. And throughout the years, man, I've had so many close calls at that racetrack between the truck series. I remember getting beat. I think it was by Ben Rhodes right at the line.

And then the Xfinity series, I literally had a deja vu moment between that fall race in last year, whenever Joey beat me on fuel mileage, Reddick beat me the exact same way on fuel mileage in the Xfinity cars. So I've had a lot of close calls at Vegas. Haven't won there, but been really close. So, I mean, the schedule just laid out really good for this run that I've been on for sure because Phoenix is a great track for me. Vegas is a great track for me.

And, yeah, we should be competitive, that's for sure. Well, it's been insane, you know, the tear you guys have been on. but not a surprise. You've been sort of, you know, teetering on this type of success over the last couple of years and just trying to get all the pieces of puzzle in the right place, and it seemed like you guys are hitting on all cylinders. Good luck this weekend.

Thanks for the time you give us today. I know you got other things you got going on, things you could be doing, so I appreciate you spending some time with us to give our viewers some insight on this upcoming weekend. Thank you, guys. I'm going to go climb on now. All right.

All right, buddy. Have fun. Be careful. Ask Junior is brought to you by Xfinity and NASCAR fans. Now you can get the speed you need. On and off the track with Xfinity Mobile. Xfinity Mobile customers now get exclusive access to Wi-Fi speeds of up to a gig in millions of locations nationwide. And it's nationwide coverage that you know will always come through in a clutch.

Take NASCAR on the go with Xfinity Mobile. They're the proud premier partner of NASCAR. and yeah, we're excited that they're supporting us here at DirtyMobedia. And Andrew, you got any good questions for us today? I hope you. We do. We have a lot of good ones. Rob in the YouTube chat, starting off with Go Blue, TJ.

That's for you. No, don't not read any of those. Oh, sorry. Well, too late. I did. Dale, this is actually a follow-up from last week, and I don't know if you saw it on Twitter, and I'm going to text it to the three of you guys just so you can all see it. but someone found a yearbook,

the yearbook that you were looking for from last shit. Yeah. Wow. So Ben Riddle said he found his South View yearbook. He got those from his uncle who was in Kelly's class and there's a bunch of pictures of people that were in your class. So for those watching, I'll retweet it on mine just so everyone can go see it. Or here, you can see it right here on the camera.

So there's Dale. You can see Dale's right. Hell yeah, bro. Isn't that cool? Yes. Do you recognize any of the faces? Yes. Yes.

I do. Oh, my gosh. So is this bringing back memories? Like, what do you remember about some of these people? Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean, I just now looking at it for the first time. That's very blurry. But let's see.

I wonder why it has me and Kelly together. I'll hold it up to the camera again. y'all can see it well because me and her were two grades apart it looks like they just did the whole school by um by uh last name oh yeah maybe speaking of fans that reached out uh we had a fan message us dale they got one of your uh pinini cards that was signed by you and your daughter did they yes uh michael i'm gonna mad just butcher the last name what's say michael matter s c or something something like that, he received one of your pinney cards that has you and your daughters writing on it.

Yep. I, y'all broke up there for a second, but I have let, yeah, I think I've let Ila and Nicole sign about two or three of those, so I'm glad that somebody found one. And I wonder if that makes it different, maybe more valuable? I think so. Imagine if your daughter becomes famous, too, on her own. Maybe, well, hey, maybe just a nickel-month-old. One, just a bump, a little bump.

They're selling it, yeah, they're selling it for $10.5. Because of it. So I'll have to look at these pictures, but unfortunately, it looks like they literally put the entire school in alphabetical order, regardless of grade. So there's like, you know. Oh, so you're going to have to sift through. Yes. Yeah. You don't look the same age as a couple of these.

No, me and Kelly are side by side and we're too big apart. Yeah, you don't look the same age. But I appreciate you, Ben. Dude, man, this is what I wanted. I think that's so cool. How many people were in that school? You said of a small, right? It was very small.

Yes, that's probably why they... It's so funny, these kids. My hair is some serious, man. Good Lord. I see a bass player. I see the guy that calls you about your extended warrant. T. Oh, man.

It's a pretty interesting character. I need that book. I need to bar it so I can photo. You look mad. So you can copy it. You look like you're mad in your picture. Like, hurry up, take this picture. Dude.

I was jamming to some Bon Jovi in my head. Yeah, you know what you were probably doing? Hiding that Playboy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is right after you. got in trouble for it. I think I were, for some reason I remember that Charles Davis looks familiar. Are you on the second tweet, the second?

I'm on my page. But you asked me if there were some people that, I remember. But anyways, yeah. This next question coming from Mads, they're asking about Wyatt racing at Hickory this past weekend. Did you get a chance to talk to him after the race? Yeah, I did. I called him. I was, I had taken my girls on a little trip, and so I was with them and didn't get to go to the racetrack to see why it compete. But he was driving a car that Corey Day raced for us about a year ago. Corey took the car to Hickory, and we ran double 40s, and he won one of

those. So it's a good little race car, but it's several years old, but it's still a good competitive car. Wyatt has been teasing, running some limited stuff, and his dad, LW has been a little hesitant for him to do that because he's so young. He's still, you know, 12, 13 years old. And so, but there's kids that age that are racing in pro late models and winning in pros and supers. And so, or late model stocks as well. So, you know, anytime a young kid that age wins in one of those cars, I'll quickly text LW and go, look, you know, this kid can do it. Get Wyatt in our car.

But finally we took him and he went and tested a couple times, felt pretty comfortable. LW was confident that he could go out there and do it. It was a very neat moment because Kelly raced there in the 90s, her dad, my dad, Dale Earnhardt raced there in the 70s, and Ralph raced there in the 50s. And Ralph won so much at Hickory that they put a bounty on him, and then they eventually banned him from competing at the track.

And he just wasn't even allowed to go. What do you mean a bounty? If you win, they try to get others to come in and beat him. Yeah, if you beat Ralph, you got an extra thousand bucks, something like that. And so that didn't work. and then they just outright told him not to come back. And so they eventually lifted that ban after about four or five years. I've got the information.

I haven't really looked into it. I got all of the information back in my house about the timeline of that. So I'm a little rough with it. But Ralph was, my dad will tell you, and I think you'll see this in the new Earnhardt series that we have coming with with our new project. But dad will tell you that Ralph was the best driver out of the family, in the whole family.

And so that whole, you know, the idea that that racetrack has survived to allow for that to happen is a cool thing and that it's still functioning and successful today. And so pretty special why it has no clue. He has no understanding of how monumental that is for our family or even his mother or LW. But he got out there, man, and he had a good, I told him, I said, I called him before the race, and I said, it's your first race, no pressure, I don't care where you finish.

All I care about is that you cross the finish line. Don't crash, don't end your day early, don't run in the side of somebody and tear your car. So he's out there running, and he's running like third and fourth, and it looked like he was just going to finish there. there was a good distance between all the cars. They had some late yellows that positioned him to be able to go for it at the end, and he almost won. So he got a little closer. He got a little sniff of that lead

or the opportunity to win the race and got pretty aggressive at the end, but he still came home with a car in one piece, finished all the laps, and I was real proud of that. That is awesome. So you say he doesn't really know the magnitude of it? No, he's a kid. He's, definitely.

And it's not a, I mean... Maybe that's almost good, because that's a lot of pressure put on a kid you know there's no way for him no there's no way for him to understand that yeah but uh it's cool man i mean i'll be honest with you man he he he's better than you think you know and i mean i've i've watched him race dirt forever and it's hard for me to watch a dirt race and understand what's good and what's what's okay like um i can watch an oval asphalt race and i'll see tiny little details that help me understand the

this driver is just slightly better than this other guy. And like, I could sit here right now and I could confidently, I feel like, confidently handicap the talent in the Cup series, Xenity series, truck series. I won't do that because I don't want to tell you who I don't think is a good driver. That was my next question. Yeah, I'm not going to ever do that. but like I can do that. I can sit there and watch an asphalt race

and pretty much can tell you this guy's a better driver. He's just a better driver. And I can't do it on dirt. So like Kyle Larson or Christopher Bell, I bet they can watch a dirt race and go, this guy's special. And he, and the guy in this car

is a little better than the guy in this car. I can see him doing X, Y, and Z. I can't see that on dirt. So that's all why it's race. So I didn't really do. know just really how good, good he was. He's done pretty good on dirt. Had a lot of success, won a driller and a couple of other things, you know.

So, but he got in that car and, and man, he, he rolled the bottom, turned a corner. I mean, missed a few corners and pushed up and ran wide a couple times. But honestly, he did a million times better than I did in my first race in a car of that type. and so I think that he may be starting off he may be a bit better than I was yeah that is really cool you mentioned that Earnhardt Doc which is going to be on prime coming out soon right have you been able to see any of it that question I think is from a few weeks ago from Joey who's actually asking about that so that kind of plays into what you're talking about yeah I've been we have been what we I have seen all four episodes

they're still working on all of that. It's something. I'll just say that. Listen, that was a documentary. There's really only one great Dale Earnhardt documentary that in my mind has ever been made, and that's the Dell documentary that McGee voiced over, or McGee wrote it.

I think Paul Newman voiced it. And I thought, you know, for anybody that wanted to know anything about Dillon Hart, the Dale Dock was the one that I would hand to them and say, don't watch anything else. Nothing else compares. This right here is what you need to know everything. This goes a little bit deeper, way deeper. This goes way deeper into, this might take you as far as you've ever been

into what it would be like to actually have, been in the same room with the guy, lived with him, been his son. I mean, it's real personal. It gets into who he was as a human being. And a lot of things have always really just celebrated the shell, the man in black, the stats, the championships, the wins, the success, the whole, you know, the persona and that's what the Dale Dock does to the fullest. It celebrates how badass of a race car driver this guy was,

but this documentary that we're doing with the folks on Prime is much more personal. And several parts of it, man, was really hard to watch. Really? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, but it's, it's, we'll see. Yeah. I don't want to say too much, but I'm really anxious to see the response to it, I guess. You're getting me excited about it.

I'm, I, just that teaser alone, I'm getting pumped. And there's a lot of people in the chat, by the way, are saying Dale is an amazing movie. It is. The one that, the one of the game. I think that this, this compliments the Dale. dock in the best way because the Dell dock again the Dale doc gives you the man in black the intimidator the seven time champion this one is more about um the you know who he was on the inside and how we how we sort of expound on that and man I mean it's just really emotional the whole

thing's very emotional it's four four part series they're all about an hour a piece and it was hard to get all the stuff into such a small window, but they're working really hard to put together the best product they can, and I'm pretty confident that people are going to enjoy what they see. Man, I'm pumped. There was so much stuff in there that I didn't, had never seen. So, yeah, so there's a lot of stuff in there that I hadn't seen. And dad being himself, you know, and, in,

and you know, most of the stuff that we see about dad, he knows the cameras there, and he's got it turned on. But in this, they've got him in a lot of areas where he forgets the cameras there or he doesn't know the cameras there, and you get to hear and see who he really was when the cameras weren't on.

And there's some other stuff with Ralph that I didn't know existed. I thought there was only this one little clip of Ralph Earnhardt, talking. And it's the interview where he won at Charlotte and Chris Oconomackie's interviewing him after the sportsman race that he won or modified race he won at Charlotte.

And so that was all that I thought existed in the whole world. If I wanted to hear Ralph's voice and hear his mannerisms, that was it, this little tiny clip. But they found some more stuff that I didn't know that was out there. And so...

How do they find that? That's crazy. They're good. They're damn, damn good. There's some stuff of my childhood. There's us as kids that I just forgotten about or didn't, don't remember being available. And they told me that. They were like, dude, we're finding stuff that I know you don't know exists.

And they're going to digitize all that and get it to me to me to have. But, yeah, this show is going to be a lot for people to, to take in. Carl Edwards is going to be on the show, the guest show. People are really excited about that. So what are you most looking to learn from that interview and talk to him about? I just hope Carl's ready to talk about everything. I don't, I haven't really watched a lot of interviews that he's done over the last couple of years. And I know he's pretty much a private guy to an extent. Now with the Hall of Fame induction, he's had to kind of come out of that shell a little bit to come and be here and accept that award, and now he's going to get into broadcasting.

So he's sort of turned some corner to where he's a little more open to, you know, sharing himself and his family, where he had been super private for so long. So I don't know what we're going to get when we start this conversation. I'm going to just dive right in. There's a lot of things that happened in his career that there's some great things, but there's some also not so great moments that might be tough for him to relive or, discuss or share or open up about, but we'll see. I've always appreciated Carl.

I'll say that. You know, we had some ups and downs during our career, but I always appreciated Carl, respected his ability, incredible driver, felt like that he was absolutely robbed of a championship in Homestead that year. and can't wait to dive into some of those moments that, you know, shaped his, shaped the end of his career and how he dealt with that. And so, yeah, looking forward to it. It's going to be a, I got a lot.

I got a lot of notes to get to. I want to know what was going on with him and Matt when he made Matt flinch at the pit wall at Martinsville. I'm like, what were y'all doing? What were y'all? What was the argument about? What was, I don't even know what they were mad at. and they were teammates right why were they not getting along right well how do you get that car or then the car at homestead that shakes the guy's hand and the cruci just wrecked us you know what i mean

i know yeah well he even said in his hall of fame speech how intense of a teammate he was so that would be yeah certainly would be interesting to talk about yeah i mean he described himself at points of his in his career is is not such a great guy you know right right and so let's uh let's uh let's uh Let's see what he meant by that. And I mean, I don't know that we need to, you know, make this uncomfortable for him. But there are certain some moments. I definitely want to talk to him about Michigan, where I wrecked him off turn two and relive that and him coming to Victoria Lane and all that mess. And we'll see if we can have some fun.

The story about how I met his dad, we've told that story before. But there's a front end to that that's never been told. and so that'll be kind of fun to share and see if he remembers it the way I do. What was it like racing against Carl? Carl, for the most part, was absolutely a clean racer. Now, if you pushed him a bit too far,

he could be physical, but for the most, you know, you would expect when you race Carl that he was going to run you hard and clean. And he was hard, He was fast, fast. He got more out of the Roush stuff than I think most people would have.

He overachieved in that stuff. Probably kept Roush more competitive because of his own ability than someone else in that car would have. Because I feel like when he left Roush, that's really when the team started to struggle. And Biffle and those guys couldn't keep. it elevated the way they could when Carl was part of it. And so I was actually really nervous when he went to Gibbs.

I thought, damn, man, he's going to be a – I felt like when he got to Gibbs, it was going to be kind of like Harvick and Rodney that first year, SHR. It was just like flew onto the scene and just won a ton. But, yeah, it should be a great conversation. I'm looking forward to it. Yes, it should be awesome. That is a good place to wrap Ash Jr. I saw a lot of great questions, and I've got, I mean, I have two pages full of questions that we haven't gotten to yet.

So if you haven't heard your question, stay tuned for the next couple of Ash Juniors. But good place to wrap it today. All right, Svenny Mobile customers get exclusive access to the most powerful Wi-Fi network on the go with speeds up to a gig for NASCAR fans. That means fast downloads for turn-by-turn action, smooth live streaming with fewer pit stops, and a strong connection from the parking lot to the grandstands. Thank you, Exfinity Mobile. Proud premier partner of NASCAR.

Thank you all for tuning in today. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets. All right, it's time for Dirty Modo with Tampa Tims. This segment of Dirty Modo is brought to you by Fanjul. Tims, what was your best bet that you had on Sunday? My best bet. I had Josh Barry as the top four plus $1,200.

He was, he was. was a rocket and a Penske a type car. You're welcome because that was my long shot. Yes. Don't forget. Yeah, I give TJ that credit. Wood Brothers. Losers. He was good in that car. Hey, best finish I think ever at Phoenix.

I saw that. That's very shocking. That's tough to do something for the first time with the Wood Brothers. Yeah, buddy. Hey, kid was fast all day long. They had a little problem on pit road. He drove. I was watching his restarts. He was going to pass. He'd jump to the top, was going to pass about 10 of them at one time after he had to issue on pit road till he crashed on the back straight

away and then he had a couple of more restarts he went from 10th to 5th on one went three wide middle on blaney and somebody else past uh uh larson a couple of guys on a few restart he was getting after man Josh barry we got to celebrate that man his qualifying run I was watching during qualifying his three and four in qualifying might have been the best three and four I've seen all weekend like He nailed his qualifying lap. When he went by, you could just tell it was a good lap, and then he finished it off with a solid race run. Well, I'm glad Josh Barry helped you win big on Sunday.

How'd the matchups work out? Pretty good. I had Denny over Chase Elliott at a plus 120. Surprise he was the underdog, honestly. He had him beat pretty much all weekend. And then I had Chris Bush over Brad. Sorry, T.J. heads up. Well, I mean, I factored into that.

Yeah. So, I mean, if we keep up this. what's this five-legged parlay you thought you went on a second though i want to ask tj what was with with the brad accident what like were you seeing there what you know i mean i saw the wreck but i mean there's nothing you can do that's what i'm saying like from your perspective like i think a lot of people as i want to know what spotter i saw the gap and i saw where where it was at and i'm go low go low go low and then we're going low and then we get clipped in the right rear by the 88 and then we hit the inside wall a little bit too.

So cosmetically the car was in good shape, but it hit the left front suspension on the inside wall, and it pushed the whole clip over, and it couldn't steer. But yeah, the wrecks at Phoenix are usually off of two. The track gets really narrow, and there's not really anywhere to go. I mean, somebody spins there. You saw, you know, Suarez, they spun in front of hand. They're just nowhere to go a lot.

As soon as two or three cars get involved, you're really just kind of hoping the wreck doesn't come and get you, and that's what happened. So keeping my streak alive. Well, you had a five-leg parlay Tim's on Saturday that you thought you won? Yeah, so I did our typical, since you're in South Carolina,

I had to quote up with my own five-leg college football, a college basketball favorite parlay. The first four legs hit, and then I looked at the score of the last game, and then I was like, oh, this is going to hit because they were up by like 15 at that point. and I started drinking and then did not pay attention and woke up and realized I was looking at the wrong team. So they were losing by 15. And so I celebrated it way too early and

woke up and it lost. So I thought I had that thing won, didn't even bother to check the app. That's pretty embarrassing. Did you start drinking because you thought you won your bet? Well, it was a plan anyway, but I was like, okay, we can really party now because I won 15. What an idiot? But yeah. I need Dale to get back into North Carolina. because I need a winning parlay. I haven't hit one in a few days, and it's because I've been making them myself. You shouldn't have been clowning my parleyes.

Now you don't have them, and you wish you did. I was wrong. Grass ain't always greener, Travis. It's not always greener. I've admitted it. I can still build you some parlayes. I just can't bet them where I'm at. Get to work.

I mean, we got games starting here in like an hour. Yeah, pretty soon, right? 12 o'clock ACC championship. I'm going to send you guys stats from this college season that we're about to have, I'm going to let you guys bet on the championship game next year, some over and unders. All right. Yeah, I like that.

How much Michigan wins by. I don't like that. Well, what's your picks for this upcoming weekend? Well, right now, what we have is the outright winners. But it's tough. It's crowd at the top with Larson, Bell, Redick, and Byron, all pretty much in that same range. Bell might win four in a row. I mean, this is kind of, he's good here.

Larson's good here. I'll give you some value guys that I really like Alex Bowman 28 to 1 he's won here before he seems to always find his way in the top 10 I think he'll have some speed and Chris Bisher I don't know I don't know what the books are thinking man 44 to 1 and this guy is all he does is top 5 you to death basically now so I could see him being surprised but you know to be honest it's gonna be tough to beat the Larson Bell Reddick trio really whoever qualifies best I think is probably gonna win between those three yeah

Man. I have some matchups for you. Yeah, some matchups. Ross usually runs pretty good there, don't he? Really? I mean, I feel like Ross. And I don't trust Ross. I don't trust him.

Why? They just kind of been wonky. The crack house deals kind of been tough to trust for me. I don't know. Ever since the first year in the next-gen car, they're either really good or not good at all. Yeah. Well, ever since Ross running to.

some cars you shouldn't run into there. I know, and I don't know why that even matters. I know Ross. It's weird, isn't it? It is weird. It's like I just can't, I can't imagine that a phone call from Rick Hendrick made that man adjust his career so aggressively that it changed his production. It just doesn't make any sense.

But I just feel like that their program has been, you know, having some, you know, stumbles. Yeah, it happens. growing pains yeah Tim so Joey Lugano plus 150 against Bell heads up

I don't know is I feel like Bell is just he's on something right now he is so good yeah but if there's a guy that can make that happen Joey

yeah I mean plus 150 for a head to head matchups pretty good odds you might just take that just in case something happens to Bell that's what I'm saying or a pit strategy comes into play at some point yeah because if Joey's not in the top five

they're going to do something crazy at some point to try to give him track position. That is true. I mean, Paul Wolf is big ball Paul for a reason. What about Denny's minus 110 versus Byron minus 120? Stay away. I'd stay away for right now. Two even. Byron.

Yeah, Byron for sure. Here we go. Ross Chastain versus Kyle Bush. Ooh, who's the underdog there? Ross is minus 105. I feel like Kyle. Kyle would be my long shot for Vegas. guess because that's home track.

Sometimes guys seem to run better. I would take a flyer on that because, you know, they've, they've, they've really yet to go to a proper track. I know that Phoenix was kind of that way, but they've really yet to go to a proper track to really see just what RCR has this year with Kyle. So I'd go, I'd take that gamble on Kyle beating, beating him out this weekend. Yeah, they're also a good start too, some good finishes. So it's not a terrible weekend. had a mile and a half with some character. That's his backyard. He's going to want to show out in front of his

hometown fans. I'll tell you what, our guy, Josh Barry, I don't know what to make of him at Vegas, really, but he's plus 10,000 to win. Well, he won there in Xfinity Series, so I do know, I mean, not that it matters, but he struggled there last year in the cup car, but that situation was not good, you know, it's hard to judge him off of that, so. Yeah. that's a low risk high reward kind of thing I look at it I think Blaney does really good at Vegas

he's been fast there and if he tends to migrate towards how Blaney is if he's his similar driving style similar setup he could very well go to Vegas and be very successful so I would not be afraid to take a gamble on Josh Berry yeah I like the Penske

Wood Brothers background there I think that's a difference to make it for him yeah momentum he's got momentum too and that's hard to beat sometimes Yeah. All right, that'll do it for the Dirty Mo Doe segment, brought to you by Fan Duel, the premier gaming destination in the United States. Thank you, Tampa Tams, for coming through.

All right, it's time for the white flag. The Teardown was live on YouTube following the race. Denny Hamlin, also taped on Sunday night. Action is detrimental. Thank you, Denny, for getting that done. He's out on the road between races at Phoenix and Vegas. DBC dropped on Monday. They had some good thoughts on what to do with the option tire.

I wonder if we agree. Tomorrow, my interview with Carl Edwards will drop. Fans have been calling for this interview for a while. Everyone's going to be checking that out. Man, the Wednesday DJD guest segment has gotten all to a great start this year between Carl and Cletus and a few other. Speed Street and Herman Strader also dropped on Wednesday. Thursday, another episode of Bless Your Heart with my wife Amy.

We're going to recap from Amy, her girls' trip in Miami. Seemed like it was fun. Yeah, we'll see what she remembers. Hopefully nothing, right? Yeah, I don't know. I had never really spent tons of time in Miami, so I have no idea. Like, I have no frame of reference, right? There was that one time, but.

Well, we went, yeah, but I mean, we've been there. It was years ago, but. How much. And how much do you remember from that trip? Not a whole lot. So we'll see how it goes. We'll see how she enjoyed it. It made tabloids.

Really? That was Panama City, I think. Oh, I love Panama City. Club La Vila. That's where we win. Spinnickers? There's like five different bars in that place. Yeah, Spinnikers was right there.

Love that place. All right. So enjoy the show. TJ, thanks for coming through. I know you were dreading the conversation around the championship loss. It's not the first time. Thanks for reading the sport.

Always. Yep. And yeah, we'll see all next week.