The Dale Jr. Download - What Did Dale Jr. Say Was Under Ralph Earnhardt's House?

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Welcome back to the Dirty Thirty — where all you need is 30 mins to turn your week around. We had guest hosts, Mike's return to the mic, and a ton to unpack from our slate of shows. Noah Gragson & Chase Briscoe took over the Download and left a lasting impression, to say the least. They talked about how they became friends and the celebrity they couldn't believe they met in the infield at Atlanta. After that, Mike Davis and Kelley Earnhardt Miller discuss the origin of the Dale Jr. Download, Dale joining the show, and why Mike felt it was time to leave. During Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin, DH talks about the field's sentiment towards Hocevar and why he might not have gotten a push coming to the finish. And lastly, Dale reveals what his grandfather, Ralph Earnhardt, had underneath his house in Kannapolis. Catch us next time on Dirty Thirty! Don't forget to check out our merch at shop.dirtymomedia.com Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, I'm Dillon Hart Jr. And this is The Dirty 30. The best highlights from all of our podcast this week, 30 minutes every single Friday. The Dirty 30 coming in short. Let's get right to it. This episode of The Dirty 30 is presented by Arby's new Meat and Three Box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats.

Big shout out, Christopher Bell. We got off. You know, my relationship with Christopher and Chase and Chase. you know, they start out Rocky, but we squashed the beef. I actually didn't know why we had beef. You didn't realize you had beef with Christopher. I knew why I had beef with you because you in the first couple races that we ever ran.

But, you know what? All bad things come to an end and... Look at us now. Look at us now. We're as thick as thieves. Ricky and Cal. Yeah, I'm... Definitely probably Ricky with the Kevin Magnus and stuff. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you really were. Yeah. I still can't believe you didn't throw a punch. Dude, I... We went to dinner the night before. I know. And you were talking about fighting people and you're like, I'll take on anybody. I was, but I'm trying to get a job next year.

Yeah, that checks out. I thought there's a lot more consequences than just the monetary fine if I were to do that. Yeah, that was probably a good decision. I'm proud of you. But, um, can we talk about, did you drop them, you think? I don't know, but I guess we'll never know unless. We can do a round two. Set it up.

All right. And the best. The best is the DMs from. Yeah, what's F1, like, bad Twitter like? Oh, dude, they come out of the woodworks. And it's always guys with like, like, zero post and they're just Europeans. and they're like, you fat, wanker, you suck at driving.

I'm like... That sounds like my crew chief. Well, if we both... If I ran with him for 30th, then we both kind of suck, right? If he was running around me, don't we both kind of suck? Yeah, that would check out.

But that was a... When he hit me going into the corner, that was a 14G hit. So what, I don't... What even happened? I saw, like, some clips online, but I don't really understand why it escalated to that.

Well, I was just... I just, I just, get frustrated when they barreled off the inside. There's nothing worse at the road courses. On lap two. It's like we can all do that. But you know what? I'm over it now.

Yeah. It was frustrating. Probably more frustrated at our overall situation this year and how tough it's been on the racetrack just every week. But at the same time, you know what? I let my frustrations get the best of me. And we'll move. move on. It is what it is. It's a new day. Sun will rise. New day. New day. Well, Atlanta,

so you didn't have a good day. I didn't have a good day. But the Randall... Yeah, but I beat you. You did beat me. You got straight away by the 66. You did beat me. The rain delay, though, was fun. We got to, you know, after the rain delay, we were all talking, but yeah, during the rain delay, tell listeners what happened. Can you... Oh my gosh. I thought that Twitter was completely f***. But, so Chase and I were hanging. out during the rain delay. Yeah. And how long was it?

Two hours? It was probably two hours. We were playing college football on the Xbox. Yeah. And then... Chase beat me. Two games. I beat them once.

Yep. And then we checked to see if it was raining. We go outside and Carrie Earnhardt and Figgie walked by. Yeah, we're walking by. And I could not believe how tall. It was crazy. Figgy was. So I had met Figgie one time when I was, it would have been 2016, doing the Arka's stuff.

I want to say Bobby Dale was running an Arker race, and I just like literally met him, didn't really truthfully even know who it was. But yeah, then the other day, saw Carrie. And yeah, it was crazy how much taller Figgie is. I know. Dale short. Carrey's kind of, I guess, in the middle. But Figgi's pretty tall. But you always used to, I never met Dale Senior, but you always used to hear about how big of a stature that guy had. Dale Sr. Well, he was bigger than life. You know, and you talk to everybody, man, back when I was in the sport, we were in Daytona for two weeks. And Dale came up and he had that big old paw. That's what everybody says, you know, that big paw. He would make this can look like it was six ounces. Yeah. I mean, you just hear he was bigger than life. And what would you say? It's probably, I think he was probably six, two? How tall are you? I'm six foot. He was a touch taller than me. Yeah, because I'm only five three, so. It looks like you're five three right now. Yeah, this chair's broken.

They gave me a faulty chair. We did not give you a faulty chair. On the show. Jamie, pull that up. Anyways, it was... Biggie's hands, though. That'd be a great time to raise your chair up. When he shook my hand, he had those contractor hands.

Yeah, he's building those songs. Yeah, he's Bill and knows with Kerry, he said. That's pretty cool. I don't know why he never really came around, but nice guy. Yeah, he was super nice. Yeah. Didn't look anything like Dale, though. No.

Nothing like Dale. Nothing. Nothing. The curly hair. I cannot believe it. He doesn't need a haircut, Loki. So that was pretty cool to be able to meet Figgy. Obviously, we know Kerry really well.

I was surprised you never met Figgy when you raced here. He just never came around here. People talk about it here at Junior Motorsports all the time. I guess it just wasn't really a huge topic. It was just Dale's half-brother. Yeah. You know. How y'all is Jerome and Tiff Davis?

Our new weekly podcast is out now on Dirty Mo Rodeo's YouTube channel and podcast platforms. With new episodes every Thursday, leave us a comment and a review and come see what this cowboy life is all about. Hope y'all come and check us out. Until next time, adios. When did you just really realize that it wasn't just kind of a side project and to venture bigger into Dirty Moe and the download specifically? When we started having spinoff shows, you know, you did one. Do you remember yours? Fast Lane family.

Fast Lane family, yeah. Fast Lane family with Kelly Earnhardt. And that was, door bumper clear was actually our first spinoff show. In year two, we actually had five shows. What year are we talking? Let's see. I think this is 2013 is when I believe we started the Dale Jr. download. 2014, we started a couple other podcasts.

I think actually 2015, we started Door Bumper Clear. And it was, again, just taking no money, not even a business plan, but it was just a content plan. It was just, hey, how do we generate content? We would later make it a business plan. And so the answer to your question is, we didn't know that it was more than a side project until much later. But we could produce shows in-house and tell stories authentically and, you know, and, you know, and standing on opinions and getting perspectives from different people that are in the sport. And it felt good.

It felt good to hear what the spotters had to say. And it felt good to hear. And Dale Jr. now is, by the way, he's now leaving his thoughts in his phone and sending me a voice memo. And so now we got Dale Jr. sitting at home after a long race weekend sitting there in the bar. You can hear a buffalo in the background or a dog barking or whatever. And it was like, you know, hey, it's Dale Jr. here. and now he's giving us this little bit of information, which is... That's huge, yeah.

That's so good. I don't think we can actually overstate how important that was. Because I never once, and you know this, I never once asked Dale to be a part of it. That was never the plan. It was for us to be able to give the Dale Jr. fans an exclusive, the most transparent look into his races in his life. And I'll lean more into the races because we weren't really unpacked. in his life at all. It was the races. And that was the plan. And then as we started building shows, we started taking some ambitious swings at some different ideas. But none of those were asking Dale.

My plan, and by the way, Taylor and I used to kind of argue about this. He's like, we need to get Dale Jr. on the show. And I'm like, look, I'm on the brand team and I'm this PR guy. I can't go, I can't go start something that just needs Dale to do it for it to work. So we need to go do this on our own. So how did that happen? How did it happen to bring Dale? I'd be curious on how you remember this. My memory of this was when he was going through the concussions. Okay. I hope this is accurate because this is how I'll tell the story when people ask me.

But I remember when the concussion situation was going on. And that was over the span of, I mean, a year, right? Like I remember him missing some races and then they'd come back and, you know, he had different accidents. When he started missing races for the first time and we were going to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh. I feel like that was 16. There was a lot of uncertainty on what exactly was going on, even between us. And Dale Jr. wrote the book about it. And none of us really knew what was going on. But I do remember that we had a moment where it's like, okay, we've got to explain to the fans what's going on. And so we said, oh, wait, we've got this mechanism. It's the Dale Jr. Download. We're going to come down here in the studio.

We're still in the little closet over there. We're not in the big room here. And it's like, Let's, Dale, he's not the host of the show, but this is the first time that he could get on a microphone and go directly to fans. They can hear it from him. They don't need Fox to tell them the story. They don't need Claire B. Lang or anybody else. They just can hear it from Dale himself. That was the idea. That ended up being way more significant, not just for the fans to hear directly from Dale about what's going on.

But for Dale to actually understand, I felt the significance of the. the medium. Yeah. Yeah, how his voice carries so much more weight. Like they don't really want to hear from anybody else.

They'll do it if that's the only option. That's all they got. Right. But to hear from Dale about what's going on with his brain and his injury and his recovery and Mickey Collins and that kind of stuff, that episode of the Dale Jr.

Download, which was like a bonus episode, had significant influence into what came next. Because then as he starts planning his retirement and we had that year, year where he was going to go right out in 2017 and then his interest in broadcasting was like, oh, wait, let's get some reps because you know talking in a microphone with cameras and lights on is different than when you're talking in your phone or anything like that. And so that's how I remember it. I don't know. Do you remember it any differently? Not really. That was a, you know,

all of the things that, and I wish that I had get, somebody gave me the memory part of DNA, but I, Dale got it. I didn't get it. And I think I move too fast through life and I'm always looking my, my, I feel like my expertise and my strengths are looking forward to like what's going to happen and consequences and always looking forward and what's next and how to, you know, how to see the risk and liabilities of what's coming next. And so I'm not always in the present. And so I think that's kind of why I don't have that good memory. But yeah, my memory from especially was a, those were some tough years that the concussion stuff was really tough from. a business person and trying to be his sister at the same time. You know,

so it was a lot for us all to wrap our minds around what's happening and what the future looked like and all that. So then you dive into the Dell Jr. download and you co-hosting with Dale. And we do this for a number of years. And you are, you guys both are so successful. And you become like this household name in the sport with your relationship with Dale and what you're doing.

And, you know, kind of the crux of some of this explanation that I want to get into as we talk about building dirty mo is, you know, what led you, you're, you're, I know this story because you and I had a lot of conversation about it. But I want the fans to know. I want our listeners to know. You're the person behind the microphone, but you've got this growth happening. You know, you talk about these shows that you have with door bumper clear and and so on and so forth. You've got this growth happening. So what is perpetuating in your mind that, you know, you're talking about. You know, you talk about the shows that you have. You know, you're going to bepper clear and so forth. You've got this growth happening. So what is perpetuating in your mind that. You know, you're you're thinking, oh, and I know you try to do this so many a time. You try to have this conversation with Dale a many of time myself coming off the download. But what finally was, you know, that point where you made that decision and why you stepped back. It was a process. Yeah, yeah. Okay. As the co-host, because that was, that was pivotal.

I mean, you, you know, those, Dale, Dale enjoyed that very much so with you. Okay. It was a big decision. It was a big decision for me. Okay. There's a lot to it. I know. There's a lot to it.

Well, the short answer is it was time. Now, the question is, is why was it time? What's going on in the background? Right, right. And that requires us to start peeling back some layers. So, so, and I honestly, I don't, I don't know if I've actually talked about this a whole lot in terms of the layers that you have to peel back. So I'll see if I can make a go at it. You can tell me if you think I'm full of it or not.

So it was time. Now, the reason it was time is probably because you have to take this part into account. I never really started doing this to be on the show. Okay? If you go back to 2013 when it was just Taylor and I, I was producing it, hosting it, editing reaction theater clip, I was doing it all. why I didn't have anybody else to do it right I had Taylor who was the only professional thing we had in that operation I had uh Dustin Lee at Hammerhead was going to edit it but like in terms of the prep and the editing reaction theater calls I'm just you were it it was not going to get off the ground and I was not really good and this is this is a fault of mine that it's had to develop I was not very good at taking a vision in in executing it or articulating it to people around me to be successfully executed.

I didn't know how to do that, which is weird for a communications guy, right? Like a communications guy ought to be able to communicate. But I did not know how to say, hey, here's how we're going to go execute this vision. I just knew all I knew is just to do it all. And I killed myself that entire first year. I mean, like, to be honest with you, we taped on Mondays. And we, the race would in on Sunday. So I would be up all night, Sunday night, editing and prepping, and then go in at 9 o'clock in the morning to Hammerhead and then go tape the show.

I was exhausted. I'm no sleep. Now, you talk about me leaving the download, but I actually left it. That was the second time I left the download. When Dale came on, and I even forget this part, I didn't actually host the download for the first year. It was when Dale took over, it was him and Tyler Overstreet. And Tyler was a producer. Again, we're a lean operation, right?

We're a small lean operation. Right, right. But Dale did ask me to come back on because, again, as he's sort of finding his voice and where he is, his strengths are, having, you know, the relationship that he and I had for all those years, I think that there was something there that he wanted to rely on. Maybe it was a comfort zone, maybe, whatever it is. You know him better than I do. So like whatever, he likes to be surrounded. by, you know, his people. And Tyler was one, but Tyler's also producing the show. Yeah. So, so I did come back. I don't even remember what year that was, frankly. But then, so now I'm in

for the long haul and then yes. So going back to this, my point on this was, I never really was, I didn't start these things so that I could be on camera. That's number one. You can't miss that part because that plays into the next of it. I don't know how many years, Del and I hosted the download together, but it felt like it ran its course for me. Things that weren't that, weren't that, things that were small felt big. Things that were inconsequential felt like significant consequences, like things that maybe just, that they weren't a big deal, but now they're big deals because you're just not, you're not happy. And so I think that the, the company growing and also all the other shows.

shows and the pressure and all that stuff, all of a sudden started mounting for me. And next thing you know, I don't look like, I'm looking at Dale across the table. And I'm like, I don't feel like we're having a whole lot of fun, right? What's more, my strong suit is not to unpack a race. And the Dale Jr. download had really evolved into being a real good Dell Jr. unpacking races. It still is to this day. So, so again, I just don't, I just felt like I wasn't at my strength there. I would rather go back and build the company and run the company and there was a lot of things

happening for us. And it just was too much to try to do it all, especially for something that I wasn't really keen on doing in the first place. All right. Don't forget about stopping by the online merch store. We have some new stuff dropping called the Zero to Freedom Line. Check it out at shop.dirtymomedia.com. A couple of those new shirts will be on there for you guys to enjoy.

also coming to the checker flag here in that three wide Carson Hosebar in the middle didn't receive any help is that because no Chevy support or no Carson Hosebar support? I'm not really sure. Not really sure on that. I think it's probably a combination of both really but I mean as a competitor I mean and I just, I agree a lot with what, how like Burton and Jamie kind of broke it down is that, um,

you, you don't race the fans, you race your competitors and there's more of them than there are you. And, uh, the competitors definitely play a big role and you're, how you finish on a week, week to week basis.

And so I certainly think that, um, you know, while it, it may sound good at an interview when you come down, down to the end of the race, those words sometimes can hurt your finishing position. I was going to say, you can't tell the drivers if you want a war, bring it, and then expect them to help you out on the racetrack. And then also, I don't know if Bell was thinking this, but pushing Blaney is the better decision for him in the standings versus pushing Hosevar, too.

When you look at where Bell sits. Yeah. Yeah. At the time, I think that Bell, Bell's always going to make whatever decision thinks it's going to give him the best finishing position. I don't know that I would find it really, really hard to do to where split second off a turn 4 where you have a choice.

To me, and I think maybe some drivers can do this, but I'm just figuring out which car has the momentum that is going to allow me to get by whoever he's racing. But I also I mean, there are drivers, and there was drivers in our meeting today that says,

no matter what, they will not push Carson Hotsvar to a victory. Absolutely not. They'll push anyone else. So, I mean, that, you know, when you say those things, you just, it's, it's certainly, it's, what were you saying? We can't, you can't disrespect them on and off the track. you know that's what dale uh that's what jeff burton was saying so well was that yeah dale earnhart first of all was winning a lot of races um but he would at least come to you with

some man i'm sorry about that you know he made you believe that you guys were friends and he'd help you get over it you know what i mean um and then you know and if you look at kind of at the, I look at the Kenseth and Lugano thing. And Lugano had a great interview this past week where he talked about, you know, what would you do different? He's like, man, just how I would have handled it, you know, off the racetrack. And I believe, I, I believe that a thousand percent that had he just went to Kinseth and said, hey man, here's my side. This is, this is why I did that. But instead, he had the attitude of, oh, well, oh, well, And Kenseth said, okay, okay then.

And he ended his championship hope. So it's, this sport is, it's just one of those things where you don't have to have a lot of friends, but you definitely can't have a lot of enemies. And I just, I think about the greats of our sport, all the great, there's never been, a great of our sport that has not been respected by his peers. There's never been. And I think that, you know, I think that that is a, that is certainly a category that is lacking.

And, you know, what's, what's good for clicks is not always what's good for competition. And, you know, there will be a time when that, that eventually starts. starts to get realized. Well, when I went to Granny and Poppa's house, I always like playing in her jewelry or asking her to, like, let us play in her jewelry. She's got the funnest bracelets and things. So we used to go to church with them as well, and so she always used to sit next to us and she'd bring little snacks.

Like, she had a little bag of vitamin C drops, which we know are not medicinal. They're basically just candy. And then she always had bracelets on. And so we'd, like, play with her bracelets in church and her little vitamin C drops. So she always had, she was always festive and fun. and then Nana and Granddaddy's house I used to like to bake so she would let us get in the kitchen

and make pies and all kinds of things and she taught us how to do it and let us make a mess and we were just free to be over there so it was always fun free to be free to be she loved like she knew we were kids and we were going to make a mess

and she was okay with that yeah what about you so at Teresa's parents' house her brother, Mark, I believe, was his name, had a bad ass collection of Archie and Jughead cartoon comics. Cartoon comics was a car-based comic book. And he was so nice to let me, this little punk kid come in there and look and read all of them. He had a library

collection just insane. And I think about that all the time. But, How he just let you play? He never complained. I mean, if I was him, I would have been like, no, don't catch my stuff. Yeah, can imagine. Yeah, but I wonder where that collection is all the time because it was so cool. But I'm trying to resist yours not to create my own.

Oh. But, yeah. So let me do the cards, Amy. I've been thinking about it. Or it's, or it's, hard to you jugged. Oh, my. guys so um the uh the thing that i like to do at mamma urnhart's house was she had a bunch of trophies and models and magazines racing racing racing and so old photos so just and i would i would wonder she

had this crawl space under her house and it was dug out into the earth ralph earnhardt would go under there and there would be little cams and cranks and heads and engine parts under there. He hid the stuff under the house? Yes. And it was so freaking cool. Why would he do that? Well, that's just where he stored some of the... Oh, okay.

He dug under the house into the cross space, dug down into the ground like feet. Cremised it out. For these alleyways. And the actual level ground was the shelf. So like you walked through these little hallways that he dug and on on the, the ground level was all these little parts and stuff. That's crazy. Yeah. I never been told that story before.

We can go down there. I'll show it to you. Oh, it's still going out like that? Oh, yeah. I ain't getting under there. That's where Dale keeps us trading cards. Yeah. That's where they are.

Oh, my gosh. And yeah, it's right under their house. So, I didn't know that. I used to, yeah, I mean, the shop at the backyard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just nosed around and everything, you know, at Mamal's house. It was always something, something hiding somewhere. She had an upstairs. She still does. Mammal,

had an upstairs area that she rented out. They rented it to families, tons of people. My cousins lived up there. And so there's this entire living quarters upstairs in their house. It's like a time capsule. When you go up there, oh yeah. It's like going back to the 50s. The bathroom tile is the bathroom.

All the pictures up there are old. So there's everywhere up there. And just no, you know, even today I can go up there and just piddle around looking looking at stuff for... Yeah. After she passed away, we went up and... Yeah. Or even when she was alive, we moved upstairs just to see what it looked like. Every time you went up there, you found something new.

Yeah. Yeah. Last time I was there, I found an old record player dresser. You know, those big box furniture pieces. They're like, you know, four by four foot. You know, they were kind of like... Yeah, they're long. And it's just for a record player, you know.

And I wanted to kind of restore it, but haven't gotten around to it. That'd be kind of fun one day. That is fun. So at Granny and Puffles, too, they have a player piano that's really old. And that was the other favorite thing to do over there is that put the scrolls in, like the old paper scrolls, you have to put those in. And we've had so many good fun memories nights just like singing and dancing and loudly. Right by our house where me and Amy live in North Carolina, there used to be an old house that was abandoned.

And literally, we would sneak in there at night. I mean, I'm talking just even 10 years ago. we'd get drunk down to Sloon and go, hey, y'all want to go see the abandoned house? Oh, yeah, okay, let's walk up there. We'd walk up there. And you could go in there. And I mean, just clothes still in the closet,

furniture still in the living room. Oh, Lord. You remember that? I didn't go. You never went. No. Bullsh-sh-shit. No, y'all used to take off to chips too,

and I would be in bed already. Oh, my gosh. You always did that stuff after I went to sleep. Yeah. Well, you could go up in this house, and they had the same thing up there, like one of them big furniture-style pieces that was a record player. and they ended up tearing that house down.

But you are just mischievous your entire life. I'm nosy. I'm a wonder. I mean, if there's a graveyard down the road or any, I'm going to want to get scared out of me. So we'd go somewhere to try to get spooked. We need to do that in Charleston because there's some really cool cemeteries here. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

But I mean, I remember in my 20s when I'd go down to Myrtle Beach and stuff and hanging out with friends down there, we'd drink Boone's Farm and, be like, hey man, let's go to the cemetery. Let's go sit in the cemetery. Did you play Dana Carter on the way? Let's go to the cemetery and walk around. Oh, my God. I don't know why that.

I like it, too. I think that's fun. I don't know why it's fun, but you just go in there and just sit around, hang out and drink and get a little spook. Spook yourself. Yeah. All right, that was another episode of the Dirty30,

presented by Arby's new Meat and Three Box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meat.