The Dale Jr. Download - What Does Spire Really Think About Hocevar's Antics?

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

With the office in the rearview, it's time to set sail into the weekend and crank up the radio; Dirty Thirty is coming at you! Dale was back in the seat, Jamie McMurray can't stop laughing, and Jeff Dickerson responds to the critics — you don't want to miss it!First up, Dale Jr. made us feel like we were going back in time when he said Tony Eury Jr. built a car for him to race at Florence. Dale also revealed a little-known fact about why he races Late Model Stock Cars and how his dad influenced him to do so.Following that, there was big news for all the Josh Berry fans out there, as he joined his new team owner for 2027, Jimmie Johnson, to announce his move to Legacy Motor Club.Over on Door Bumper Clear, the fans once again made our guest laugh out loud — but we really thought Jamie wasn't going to stop laughing at this call about Freddie Kraft.The host of Actions Detrimental had a detrimental day to his points lead at Darlington, and it was all after some contact with Michael McDowell — how did Denny see it? He tells us all about it.And lastly, with Carson Hocevar back at the top of the NASCAR buzz topics this week, Jeff Gluck hosted Spire's Jeff Dickerson to discuss and rebut all the chatter about the driver of the 77, including what Denny Hamlin said about him on his show this week.Another round of Dirty Thirty has come and gone! See you next time, right here, every Friday. 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 in Three Box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats.

Graham Florence this past weekend on Friday night. It was 94 degrees. It was hot. It was hot. I ran a pro late model for the first time, had a blast. There was, you know, Florence is a track that I ran many, many times back in the 90s, know it well. I only had Newport scheduled on my calendar to go race later this year, and I was talking to Amy. I said, man, kind of want to run another race.

Want to race more than that. Can't figure out where I want to go, what I want to do. So I called Tony Jr. I texted him. I said, man, you won't go racing? He said, yeah, where? I said, Florence is coming in two weeks. You think you got something you put together fast enough?

He goes, no problem. I'll call you back Monday. Call me in a couple days. I got it all organized. He's got cars going everywhere. He's got cars on the West Coast. He's got cars racing down in Alabama and so forth. He's got this new GMS chassis that he's been working.

on and Spencer Davis is a driver that they spend a lot of time with trying to improve the chassis and so forth to make it good for customers. But it's a new program and Tony Jr. has been working on it for a couple, maybe almost two years. When he started building the very first chassis, he started sending me text messages saying, man, I need to get you in one of these one day. And I like the way Tony Jr. builds these chassis because all these new, all these chassis builders in the short track racing on the pavement side

or dropping the doorbars, getting the weight down. And a lot of it's a little bit egregious. And he's got the doorbars up in the right place. It's a safe chassis. So I was excited about the idea of maybe running it one day. So he got a car together. We went up to test on Monday. It was super damn hot.

And car drove pretty similar to the late model stock, to be honest with you. so hot, really didn't do, everybody's like, oh man, the pro's going to be so different. It wasn't a ton different. Of course, Florence is worn out, slick, small, flat. So. For the people, the pros are a, a little bit faster car. Pro is a left-handed chassis.

It's all set, straight rail. The right side frame rail is the straight as hell from the back bumper all the way to the nose. And a late model stock car is a chassis that's, uh, kind of similar to the truck or a rally series, it is not offset. It's got the frame rails way out to the body and all that stuff. And it shouldn't be offset.

You shouldn't be building it offset anyways. I'll say that. But anyways, the pro is, you know, left-handed offset, a little more left-side weight. It does everything better. Better brakes. More weight on the left side. Turns different, turns better.

Runs about three-tenths faster. probably at some racetracks, maybe a little bit more than the late model stock. I like the late model stock because it's similarities to what I was going to try to race as I grew up, right? My dad's like, you know, we're not going to

when I started racing back when I was 16, dad's like, you're not going to drive a left handed offset car in the NASCAR series, so don't drive it now. Drive this late model stock. It's like it's got the trailing arms and all the same suspension, steering and all that, that you're going to race in the O'Reilly and Cup Series if you ever get there.

So run this car. And so that's why I went in that direction. Dad kind of steered us there. But so I never ran offset cars at all when I was younger. We, you know, we got together and got it organized. Tony Jr. and his guys were amazing. We go to the racetrack and we were fast. We ran first, second, or third in every practice.

There were about six sessions on Thursday and then a couple more on Friday. Yeah. You like your practice. Well, we only actually ran, I'd say 40 laps total and all of that. But, you know, we'd go out and run a couple laps yet. Feels good. All right. Come back in, sit a while and wait.

It was nice. Tony Jr. knows how to practice. I don't think I practiced on tires older than 10 laps all weekend. So we had good speed and the car was driving good. then we qualified we ran a 59 I think the pole was a 53 and we were fifth so it's a little disappointed that I didn't do a better job of qualifying because I think the car had to that's close field it was race starts and we just kind of kept the rear tires on it and as some other guys started to struggle with balance we were able to move by a few and get up to second Caden Honeycutt was leading the race Caden has won six pro late model races now this year. Yeah, the car store.

Super good. Super good. Hard to beat. I could match him. I'd run a little better than him one lap. He'd do a little better than me the next. And then with about 10 laps to go, I was about three seconds back,

maybe a little less, but I wasn't going to catch him. So I started trying to save my tires just in case we got like a green white checker by chance that my tires would be happy. I had them pretty pissed off with about 10 lapsed. to go because I was pushing it as hard as I could to try to catch him. And I thought, man, I'm not going to do that. He's running.

He's pretty much matching my times. And so I kind of calm down a little bit to get some temperature out of the tire and hope for a late yellow boot. We didn't get one. I think if I could have gotten the outside on a restart, I don't know whether he would have given me that. I'm not sure. It might have been a pretty solid.

I don't think he would have. I don't know. But we might have had a chance. I was a little tight, so I wouldn't have wanted to start on the bottom. He would easily beat me. But anyhow, I ran second, and I had a lot of fun. There's always pressure in the sport, right, to perform. And even like, or even just the last six weeks, obviously, like, I went from, you know, having, you know, we had such a run of terrible results that it's completely changed the perception of who I am as a race car driver, right?

Like, it completely went from, you know, this guy that's, you know, being. been, you know, that come from the short track ranks, built up through the ranks, had success, won races, and now basically I'm getting treated like I'm a bum, right? Like, just like that, it's just changed, right? And so there was the, so that was the biggest frustration, I think, for me is I'm just like, I don't, like, I felt the pressure of obviously wanting to find an opportunity and wanting to keep, keep racing. And I want to do that. But I wanted to, I just, what I wanted more than anything was not to be thought of like that, you know, however it ends up, it ends up. But I wanted, I felt like that we had the potential to turn things around and we just needed to, I mean,

we just needed to have some things go our way. We had to be, obviously we had to be faster, which is the biggest thing, right? Like, when you get, you take that next step and you're running in the top 10, you're racing with a totally different group, right? Like, and that helps you stay out of trouble and helps things go easier. You know, you get better pit stalls and better pit stops and all those things. But I mean, even as I went through, it's like, once we had a couple good results. Then everybody's like, yeah, well, that's just because it's a short track. He can't, he only runs good at a short track or whatever. And then, you know, we go to, which most you know, we started at Indy and then we went, you know, through a couple short tracks. And then

you're carrying the pressure of just trying to keep it going. And then there's the whole top 10 streak that like keeps getting blown way out of proportion, right? It is not blown out of proportion. Well, we're going back to the 60s and there's all this, we got all this debate about who was driving the car and how consecutive were and then you're like trying to keep that up and then even like I told my wife before this weekend I was like man this is the most nervous I've been for a race in a while yeah and she's like why and I'm like well now you got the pressure of you know well first we didn't practice or anything so you're like got the little bit of the uneasiness and like how's the car going to feel how's it going to drive when you start this race you have what happened to me last year in that race which was when

we missed the heights to start the race and I wrecked in the first corner and still never lived that one down even though it bottomed out all the way to the corner right but But so you had that. And then plus, yeah, like this deal coming together at Jimmy, I'm like, man, this is, you know, everybody's kind of knows what's happening now. Like, I don't want to go out here and, you know, I want to make a good impression because now you know that, you know, everybody that's at Lexi Motor Club is watching my performance and how I do and how I handle it. Now, okay, now he's going to be in that car. Like, how is he going to do now that he knows that? So, I mean, there's, it's always, there's always pressure in this sport and it's just how managing it, you know, that is the most important.

no matter what, you're not going to get away from it, whether you're winning every week or you're trying to prove yourself, there's always the pressure of trying to handle that. And just, so I feel like that that's something for me that I'm used to because we've just always had it. It's always felt like I've had to race for my job and race for my career. And I think just learning to navigate through that helps you when, you know, times are really that you're tough like this season are that you're not, I'm not changing anything, right? I'm confident enough of myself that I haven't changed anything about my approach or

what I'm doing and not overthinking it, just trying to stick it out and just turn things around. That's what we're trying to do. So wearing my team owner hat for a minute. This is something I haven't shared with them. I was in their shoes trying to make it to cup. And yes, ended up in the perfect storm. But we were great friends back then. And you know all the struggles that I was dealing with and trying to keep a job and trying to find that opportunity to go cup racing.

And so where I feel I can help them is I've been there. In addition, the team is in a very similar space as well. And so people that are fighting for their job, always under pressure, and also starting with a new company and having that opportunity to build a team, that was something that was so special and I think such a big part of the 48 success, we were all putting our fingerprints on that car number. And yes, there was an established system. but within legacy and what we're trying to build, everybody's there together. And, you know, Eric, a veteran and a builder, another builder, the young guy to bring along. So the pieces of the puzzle are there and we're all so aligned. You know, from a team owner's standpoint, I feel like I have the same pressure they do trying to perform and be out there.

They certainly feel that inside the car. And, you know, through the end of this year and into next year and as we go racing, that's an area where we're all going to bond. be aligned and make sure that we meet our objectives and go out on the track and drive, you know, with the right objectives in play and not looking for the walk off home runs. I mean, if we get lucky and really connect with one, we got it, cool. But that's not our objective. We're building and we're going to build together. What was the reaction within the organization to the idea of bringing Josh in?

Very, very strong reaction. The way we operate and how close we all are as a team, you know, not an easy decision. John Hunter, but we are where we are now and where Josh can bring in a lot of experience in building maturity, know how, you know, these things that a 35-year-old can bring, it's just different. And having two veterans in a sense. And then Riley is, you know, the younger development driver coming along is the environment we wanted to create. All right. It's time for Reaction Theater where fans can call in and voice their opinions from this weekend's race.

I'm interested to see what they've had to say this weekend. And I feel like it was either really exciting for some or pretty lacklustre for others. Here's one about Freddie. Oh, good. Freddie, you fat. It's funny you talk about Dale and Denny butchering the English language when you can't even say ask. It's ask. Not act.

Dumb s' ****. Ax me if I give a you thing. next Tommy I'm over here at Carteret County why are you hiding in the trailer while I was praying and everybody else is working you lazy

everybody else is working I know what your pick crew looks like that guy needs to hang out I've watched Tommy Tommy works his ass off every weekend he was probably having a heat stroke and he was a break his whole pick crew's 85 and older

so he has to go out there and work that we're allowed enough spot in practice and he's like can you hear me? Can you hear me? And I'm like, who's he yelling? He said, can you hear me? On the radio? And he's like, can you hear me? And I'm like, and he said, Forrest. Can you? Forrest is 137 years old. I said, he can't hear you ever. So like, he's even wearing a radio is impressive at this point.

Yeah, I had Woody and Forrest this weekend. Truck driver away. So the average age actually came down with Woody. He comes down 10 years. He's 70. 65 and 84. So average was whatever that is, 72. God. And half the time at Carterette, they were in the trailer because they had heat stroke, both of them. I'm saying it was about my shit. I had a couple of moments at Carter.

You did when you stood up that one time. I was like, oh boy, I'm going to pass out. And now begins the host of our hour of people calling it about him. So buckle up, get the popcorn, and yeah, we'll see how this goes. I can't watch the ball game without seeing a f***as of our hat. I can't watch the race without him wrecking my fucking. Robert, Carson, I like my steaks, medium well, and I love red wine. Because if you're going to f*** me, you might as well feed me.

Medium well steak is a choice. I got a feeling that guy was a host of our fan at one point. Now he's trending the other. I think his girlfriend was at the baseball game. Is that what the guy's referencing there? No, there really was a guy I saw this weekend on social. There was one of the sports network zoomed in on somebody at the Tennessee game. he had a 77 hat on.

It's sad that the state of NASCAR at the moment is we have a raggedy, stank-ass-buck-ass like Carson Hosevar that has no problem finding a ride, but you got Josh Barry struggling to find one. I'm at a loss for words. I'd rather sh-hap my hand and clap. A round of applause to that. He'll be happy after listening to this show. I love that's your hands and clap.

That's a good one. Barry families. What do you call him? raggedy ass put that on T-shirt. These are real. These are real. These are real fans, yeah.

There's hundreds of them. Really? Yeah, we, yeah. There was a 179. He has to listen to them all. I probably listened to 120 of them this week because I can read the transcripts, so I weed a bunch out. Time for Brad Tessalowski to take that

fucking out of storage and shove it up so far up cars and hose of ours ass that it comes out of his big call of the year call of the year oh my god the cane oh yeah that was a collapsible

cane at that it was the dumbest freaking thing I've ever seen in my life Jesus James whole guy had a broken leg ski accident parking lot hey somebody was going skiing

for Michael McDowell he's out there doing his best driving with a bad case of Hosevitis because he's just running in everything like a dart without feathers. You think it's contagious? Maybe that's the problem. Hey, this is Dellenhart Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. download gear, including the I'm old drink some beer t-shirt

that we've been talking about here around the office, head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch. This incident with Michael McDowell, what are you feeling from your perspective in the race when this happens? what I was feeling in the race I was definitely I didn't know exactly I knew how it happened

but I didn't know to what extent obviously needed to see like from his in car like what did he see to understand a little bit more about what you know because I only saw it from my perspective right and that is, okay, clear, look in my mirror.

All right, I'm clear by a ways. It's, you know, it's not like, you know, it was at the time almost one car length. And so it didn't, I didn't feel like I was, like, shutting his nose off. And there's lots of slide jobs that can happen to where someone comes in there and they, you know, you see it in sprint cars,

they really take your nose off. They force you to lift. I didn't think that I did that with McDowell, which is why I said that we were nearly car length clear, you know, almost a car length, um, at our biggest point. And then, yeah, I had a bobble off of turn four and I knew I had the bobble. Um, I just, I thought at the time that, um, man, that, I thought there was enough time for him to react to that bobble. It wasn't like I was on his hoodpins right away. I thought he had time to react, but, I mean, I certainly felt like,

you know, I had some responsibility in it being that I did lift off the corner because I had a moment. I just thought that McDowell could have been a little quicker with the trigger of not throttling up as he's seeing I'm getting closer and closer and closer. That's just, you know, given the benefit of the doubt, I don't, you know, I believe I'd earn that from him. We've raced in the past, no issues, anything like that, and I try to make sure I, be respectful of my competitors. And, you know, I don't think that he wanted to be part of the story. And, you know, his side of it was that, man,

I didn't think you needed to slide me to clear me. I thought you were going to clear me anyway. Obviously, wasn't what he's telling me. He's not intentional on his part. So, you know, I think my job is to give him the benefit of the doubt as well and say that that's just one of those racing incidents that I put myself probably in a tough spot. Absolutely in retrospect, being a Monday morning quarterback, I would say, yeah, just hold your car low there.

He's going to come back on the outside. That's fine. We'll just have to, you know, give up a little time here to get around this car. But in the moment, there was no doubt in your mind where it's like, oh, I don't know. No, no, because again, I knew I was clear by a chunk, not by like a nose. You know, you slide someone right across their nose and you ask them to lift. That's a tough ask. I just felt like there was enough space between us to where even if I did have a bobble moment, he had enough time to react. But again, for all I know, maybe his goal was to push me down the front straight

away. And when I had to check up, you know, it got me out of shape. We, we, we, we, we, We'll never know, but I'm done analyzing it for sure, and we've got to just move on. Someone who saw how Carson was, I guess, after the race on, had to say this on actions detrimental. There's no adults in the room, clearly in that building. No adults. That's my opinion. Because how can you honestly think that that's what's best for your company if you're running a serious organization? I think they're unsirious.

Anything else? This might not be what you're expecting or the industry is expecting, but this would certainly reflect the conversations that we've had. If anybody thinks I'm going to come on this show and say, Denny doesn't know what he's talking about, that's not going to occur. That's not how I took those when Bill Anthony sent me those or whoever the first guy to send me that on Sunday night or Monday night or whatever it was.

That's not what. my first reaction wasn't oh denny doesn't know what he's talking about denny knows absolutely what he's talking about because i can tell you how i took it i took it as a warning right and um because um denny knows what it looks like when you don't confront things like this right i mean we ended up with chris gaybark because of things like this right like denny lived it again i just want to you know put put it backwards to last year right we're talking about like what happened at you know at loudest when their own situations internally came to a head.

And he publicly challenged Coach Gibbs. Are you going to talk to him? Are you guys afraid to talk to him? That's essentially what he's saying to me. Are you guys going to talk to him or not? You know what I mean? And so I'm not going to say Denny doesn't know what he's talking about. I think Denny's got a PhD in this.

And I'm not going to have what happened at JGR happened to Spire. Right? And it hasn't. We talk about these things every week. You know, and again, we don't put out a press release every time we have a talk with Carson or we discipline Carson on something, right? But I can tell you that I walked in

first thing on Tuesday morning, right? When we, you know, I mean, first of all, I want to congratulate my whole team. We, you know, we had, you know, it felt like half of our organization working after a night race on the holiday. But when we assembled everybody, you know, on Tuesday, my first thing wasn't, oh, Denny, you know,

ha ha, Denny said this or that. My thing was, this is what we're guarding against. This is what we're guarding against. We're not going to be what happened to them. This thing is not going to, you know what I mean? Because everybody saw what happened at Loudoun last year and what was occurring for the summer. So that's not going to be what happens at Spire. So I'm not going to come on here and say, Denny doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

He does. And so I took it as a warning. Now, he could have texted me that. You know what I mean? Like he could have called and said that. But however he sends me the message, Denny, message delivered, buddy. Message delivered. We're not, that's not what's going to happen here.

So if he's talking again about unsurious people or things like that, it's like, I don't, what do you want me to say? I don't, I don't care. I mean, that's not really, he knows who we are. He knows we're not afraid to talk, you know, I'm not, it's just, you know, sometimes outside things have an effect on, on relationships. And I just think that that the court case is one of them. Well, again, though, where's, where's the message getting lost? Because you're saying, hey, I'm not going to let that happen in our team. I'm going to talk to Carson.

You even use the word discipline. You are saying that you back him wholeheartedly, but I guess why isn't it, where's the message getting lost that you do care about how he's being perceived, that you don't want him to run into people, that, you know, I guess all those things,

because, again, it just seems like from the outsider standpoint, we're not really, we haven't really heard that from you guys, I guess. Yeah, well, here,

a couple of, couple things, Jeff. I don't, I'm not looking at this over a four-week. You know what I mean? Like I look, with Carson, remember, I'm looking at this over three years, right? And the improvements that he's made, both externally and internally, I'm super proud of him. Again, I don't, again, we're not, I don't know how we're supposed to get that message out. I don't even know that I want to get that message out. You know, that's not even something that probably occurred to me till, you know, yesterday. But it's, when you look at how far he has come in three years, I'm absolutely proud of him. You know what I mean? And absolutely proud of how far we've come. And remember, I don't,

you know, obviously you and I know, I should probably be more on top of, you know, what's being said and not said. But I don't know, man, like a month ago when we were fifth and eighth in points. I don't know. Was I being nominated for, like, team owner of the year? I don't, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, so it's just, I just take it with a grain of salt. Like, but, you know, the other part here is, is, is, um, we're just spire.

I mean, to us, this is just another thing. Like, remember, from the beginning with us, it's just like, we keep being told what we are. Right. And it's just like, that's just not, it's just, I'm telling you, we just develop such thick skin. And, and we've assembled a group that really, just focuses on, probably because we're not big enough still, but it's just like, we just go race.

We're just racing. Like, what are we doing? Right? So, but for us, it's just another, it's just another thing. But I, I, it just starts with, oh, it's a cash grab, or hey, it's this, or hey, it's this, you know what I mean? Or you guys are that. And now we're, now somehow in the middle of our best year ever, you know what I mean?

we're not serious. There's no adults, you know? But I just, again, I want to point out like this kind of weird spot that Spire is in, right? So when we run well, right, it's, well, they're a Hendrick deal. Right? And hold on. And we are. And we are proud of that.

Yeah. Right? I mean, our guy has contribute. It's, you know, it's a two-way street now. But it's like, yes, we are. So we're either, we either run well and we're just the satellite. Hendrick team, or worse, we're a satellite JGR team. Okay? So just think about it from our organization. So we're that when we're running good,

but when we're bad, we're unsurious adults that don't care and apparently don't have tough conversations with anybody in our building. And we are just like, you know, like people don't know who Bill Anthony is. Does Bill Anthony look unsurious? Has anybody seen the quarter zip that he wears? You know what I mean? Like, has anybody seen Matt McCall? I'm just saying it's just like, you know, or Chris K-Bart or any of these guys, or any of these guys unsurious? But we're unsurious because, you know, we have a driver that is going through it every week

in a very public fashion. So again, I don't know what, does progress to everybody mean that he, that Carson starts wearing a cardigan? Like, what are we, is it just, you know, some of these things aren't, the progress that we see are, is not going to be the things that other people see. But, you know, again, if I have to come, come on here and be like, yeah, I don't want Carson running into anybody.

Carson's good enough to not run into anybody. Okay. Does that need to be said? Okay. 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.