The Dale Jr. Download - Would Dale Jr. Race An O'Reilly Car At North Wilkesboro?

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Well, folks! It's time for another Dirty Thirty, where we take the best half hour from this week's Dirty Mo Media shows and make one heck of a highlight reel. After a solid weekend for NASCAR and North Wilkesboro, Dale Jr. asks Marcus Smith what's next for the track, and Marcus returns the question, asking Dale if he would consider racing there... Speaking of North Wilkesboro, the winner from this weekend was Joey Logano — who just so happens to have been the guest for Door Bumper Clear! You have to hear Reaction Theatre and what some of these fans had to say about the 3x champ. In the second installment of his episode on Business of Motorsports with Kelley Earnhardt Miller, Mike Davis describes the relationship between NASCAR & Dirty Mo Media over the years, as well as how he navigates the voices our hosts have on our platforms. Denny Hamlin pops in for a chat about the rule changes coming to Daytona, and who is going to be the first car out of line to try the new package. And finally, we end with a quick word from Dale Jr. & Amy Earnhardt about the rumors swirling around about Days of Thunder 2. Come back next week for another rip-roaring 30 minutes! Don't forget to shop 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 in Three Box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats.

What is the future for Wilkesboro? You know, you've got a dilemma with Dover, All-Star Race. all these different things. What's the plan? Everybody wants to know. What are we going to do? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I always kind of think about what's good about the way we schedule things this year.

And I always like to think about, you know, what if could we just repeat what we have? Of course, everybody likes to change a little bit. So there's a lot of debate internally and in our discussions with the now. NASCAR team about what the schedule is going to be. You know, the Easter weekend always kind of moves and changes the schedule in the spring. So we're working on the schedule for next year and thinking about the years out. But, I mean, I think that there's certainly a future for North Wilkesboro. And it's going to be, you know, around NASCAR and cars.

and who knows what else we can do there. You think am I going to be broadcasting another race there next year? You know, I work for TNT and Amazon. I'm working in June and July. All right. So every year. So am I going to be broadcasting a race next year at Wilkesboro? I sure hope so.

Oh, come on. I don't know the schedule yet, but, you know, got to have you there. questions are you going to be racing at North Wilkesboro next year? Man, I don't know. That's tough. Oh, boy. I don't know. Yeah, and a Riley car.

It'll be cool. No one's going to be, no one's going to commit to anything today. Marcus or me. Wait, I'll back. I'll back off. What if Marcus commits? If Marcus commits, Bill, you'll commit. I was just going to say, if one commits, if he commits, why don't you commit to drive

and a race there? I mean, there you go. Man, I don't know. They're both bagging up. I like the idea of racing in North Wilkesboro in the summer and you do broadcasting. And I think summertime in Wilkesburg is a beautiful time of year. You get to see the mountains. And it just seems like a great time to be there.

Yeah, I agree. What's next up for you? I know that one of the things that I think about is the Charlotte. oval race coming back in the second half of the year. It's been a really, really great race. The NextGen does pretty solid on the mile and a halfs, and the race at Charlotte's been one of the more entertaining ones. And so you have the oval race at Charlotte coming up.

What else? What else is on your schedule throughout the rest of this season? Yep, we've got New Hampshire coming up. We've got Bristol. We've got another Vegas race. I think I'm missing something. But we've got events at Sonoma and Charlotte with the 10-10s and all sorts of things kind of on the side of NASCAR. We had a busy weekend this weekend.

Our teams were busy doing IndyCar in Nashville and NHRA and Sonoma. Just trying to make people have fun. Yeah. Yeah, y'all got a lot more going on than just NASCAR. I always kind of just assumed that your whole world. revolves around the cup schedule and what's going on there, but I forget that you got other. It does for the most part. It keeps us busy. But we got an amazing team, thankfully, that can really juggle a lot and make sure people have a good time. When you sell out North Westboro,

how many people is that? It's north of 25,000. And, you know, so it's not a few years. Did you have more demand than that? Yeah, we did. And, you know, that's always a good thing. I think it's a great-sized crowd because it's very manageable. You know, and the facility is small enough that you can walk around and you're not going to wear yourself out. It's just really nice, easy to walk it and enjoy everything.

And the fan zone, the souvenirs, and at the track, getting to the campgrounds. And then the traffic in and out. I think we've, the first year we had massive traffic backups. We went to work on solving that with shuttle systems, and the state helped us with a bridge across 420. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, great bridge. That's nice. Yeah. So do you add more stands? You know, y'all took some stands down when you renovated a racetrack. Do you think there's a consideration would you ever add more back? It's possibility. We'd have to figure out.

parking. You know, that's always a balance. You know, adding more stands is, um, doesn't just stop with a grant. You got to figure out the parking and the bathrooms and food and beverage and everything. Is there a formula that you use for adding 10,000 seats? How many, do you know how much parking that? Like, how, what do you expect? If you add 10,000 seats, what do you expect for parking? Like, what do you add for that? So, you know, if you build a grandstand, you are, you are, When you build a grandstand year over, as far as cost goes, $1,500, $1,500 a seat in construction. And think about how you pay that back and then how you not only build a grandstand and the concessions and the bathrooms, but then the parking infrastructure. So we don't have a lot of extra room around the North Wilkesboro Speedway property, but the neighbors help with,

parking and lawn. I saw that. Yeah. Their own farm area and whatnot. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If we have consistent increased demand, then I'm sure we would want to figure that out.

But, you know, right now I think it's okay that it's that it's a smaller venue and a small crowd. And people have a chance to get there Friday, Saturday, Sunday. and really enjoy, you know, great kind of historical experience. What's the reaction from the neighbors? You know, are they happy that NASCAR is back in the area there? Like, what's, uh, I love it? I see all them people in their houses up there. And it, like, it looks like they're excited.

They are. It is an amazing, uh, feeling just to see the, the joy on faces of everybody in Wilkes County. They're, um, they're so happy to have us back. They told us they wanted. wanted us, you know, to come back and we wouldn't be there if it weren't for that community saying we really want you back. That's awesome.

Yeah. I'm actually really pumped for this one. I think I hope we've got some good calls for Joey on reaction theater today. This is where fans call in and voice their opinions from this weekend's race. It's just essentially voice mail. We've got voicemails. How many calls we get, Dalton? So people just call in and just tell them.

tell you how they feel? Yeah. And you guys pick the best one. Yeah, we don't pick all of them. So that just really encourages people to talk over a lot of crap. Yeah. How many calls did you get overall? I think it was over 150.

And we listened to all of them? I listened to a majority of them, yeah. I'm able to read the transcript so I can kind of weed out a little bit, but I did listen to a lot of them. I have nine today. And Joe, you mentioned that everybody at the table was cheering you on. I think that's because everybody that was booing you was calling into reaction theater.

Oh, boy. They weren't sitting next to Dale Jr. like I was. Apparently, apparently. The cheer was Dale Jr. Not you. Yeah, I know, but I was riding his coattails. I felt good. It was pretty cool.

I just received the best birthday gift ever. Joey Big Nuts said him on the dash to lead 300-some friggin-laps. I don't even know, but God bless America. God bless Jolie Lugano. God bless. God bless Joey Big Nuts. Yeah. Joey Big Nuts.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. This next person did not have us one of a birthday. Oh, hey, Sarah. Happy birthday. Who's your favorite driver? Oh, I don't know.

I love everybody except for Joey Logano. So who wins? That piece of shit. I love this. This is fun. This is a lot of fun. Happy birthday, Sarah.

I had a great birthday, thank you. You had a great birthday. Joey enjoyed your birthday, Sarah. Joey enjoyed your birthday, Sarah. Enjoy your gift. Yeah, find that way. That's what you get. Maybe it root for me next time.

You have a better birthday. Send her a card, Joey. Send her a some shell. Where's a flag? I can help you say $0.22 on your birthday, too. You're signed up. You don't even have to be a fan to get that reward. long time caller, first time listener here

before the race starts, just wanted to come on here and say, Joey Lagoon. Well, you ruined that guy's night too. Jesus, Joey. You know, it's always fun. This happened to me a lot last night. The cautioned come out,

and they'd be like eight or nine people on the fence just flipping me off. You know, like a point to make sure it was mean. You, boom. That's you. I was like, all right. We're doing it tonight. that's when you know you're running good

yeah they probably wouldn't care if you were mid-packers I just waved I just waved I'd do that sometimes I give a thumbs up I see you congratulations on the wind there

Joey but I'm just curious when you go to the zoo do the ostrichists try to figure out if they're kin to you or not that's pretty good you know me and Newman used to have this thing going back and forth because he don't have a neck.

And I have his neck, apparently. I had two necks and one. We had a lot of Hans DeVice jokes. I think his Hans DeVice would go right over to top of his head. Most people got a slide in this thing right to the top. We used to have a lot of good jokes about that. His neck was never sore after a wreck. Mine always is.

You got to be kidding me. The guy who looks like a Scooby-Doo character villain, won the freaking race. Scooby-Doo, Gary. I didn't know there was villains. I guess there are villains. I haven't watched a lot lately. Yeah.

This shouldn't make your day that bad. You know? He was like very, he was mad. He was like very upset. I get it. It's just a race. I get not being happy. But anger is probably a little bit much.

It's not that bad. It's not. Yeah, but you. not that bad. No, you're good, but it doesn't... I mean, I could be better, sure. Not that bad. Joey's gonna need therapy after this.

It doesn't feel a little bit good that you're really ruining someone's day? Or me and Tommy is evil. It is nice to, like, put haters in their place. Yeah. But I don't really want to ruin someone's day. You know, like, I want to be someone that's like they're happy to get to see you. You know, like, they're better off that they spent time in your presence. Like, that's the kind of person I don't.

want to be? Yeah, I don't want to hurt your feelings. I'm not. You ruined that years ago. I did. I heard this guy's life. What was the turning?

Like, we can pinpoint like, Denny wrecking Chase, that was Booth City for him. Is there a turning point for you? Or it's like, oh, he's a, man. Oh, really? Just right off the bat.

Oh, yeah. Just because the young kid, Kevin. And, yeah, and yeah, it was with Kevin. I think some of it, I think there's multiple things. I think, because I've had a lot of years to think about this.

And I've realized there's no coming back from it. But I think one of it's where I'm from, because I notice as I travel further south to races, I get booed more. So I think there's a little bit of that. I think the way I came into the sport with a lot of hype and I was supposed to be all this, I think that was a piece of it.

I'm guilty. I was very cocky and arrogant as a youngster. when I came into the sport and I picked fights with legends like Tony Stewart Kevin Harvick,

Kansas, like all these guys like I mean I picked some good ones to go after and they had a huge fan base like these guys so if someone fights your driver right and Tony Stewart had a lot of freaking fans and when he says

I forgot what he said about me but a lot of things that were really nice I think he said that you were a spoiled little brat Yeah, some silver spoon stuff, all the stuff. And when you have that many fans, they're on his side, you know, and then you're screwed and you're that forever. You know, and like no matter, and I say it all time, when you're 18 years old, and I was 18, 19 years old when I came into the sport, I don't know about you guys, but I was dumb. I assume a lot of 19 year olds that, you know, you can look back, or everybody can look back when you're 19 and say, I probably shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done that.

I regret this. I got that. And, but I kind of, and yeah, you got to live with those consequences your whole life, but boy, I'm really living with a lot of it. And it's just there's no, people have that in their mind that they can't come back. And like, yeah, I've changed as a person. We've all changed as people as you grow up. You realize this stuff.

And like, Kevin and I joke all the time about all stupid stuff I said, right? Like, I wear the shirt on his podcast. Because I think, I mean, I think it's funny, right? Because now, like what I did is so stupid. But I mean, I can make a joke of myself. But there's a lot of people that they're just forever going to dislike me. And maybe there's more reasons, but I think that's what I can come up with. Maybe there's more.

No, you hit it right on the head. You think it is? We just need somebody to come along that they hate more. After this show, you're going to gain some fans. Do you think so? I think the guy that just called in, we get that one back when that was angry. That last guy we're not getting him. Sarah's possible.

You might get Sarah. Sarah maybe. The last guy, he seemed real man. He's stuck in his ways. I think this last one's pretty fitting. This guy calls in twice. Oh, God. This one's for Joey Legano.

The gas pedal's on the right, man. You're turning into moldy. This must have been. Joey f***gato! Let's go. I'm sorry. I called you moldy bread, homie. You're the best slice threat I've ever had.

Let's go go Ford. See how quick. you changed that. That is a reaction theater call for the ages. Like, for the ages. He called back and said sorry. Oh, man.

I missed it. I thought he said moldy Brad the first time. I was like, oh, bread, now I get it. Yeah. You're the best slice of bread I've ever seen. That quickly, right? There's an interesting story from fans every weekend.

Oh, yeah. There's always something funny or something that happens. That's my favorite part of the show. Like, just to see what people are saying every week and how it leads to the guess. That's awesome. Hey, this is Dela Hart Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. download gear, including the Imo drink some beer t-shirt we've been talking about here around the office, head over to shop.

Dot dirtymo Media.com for all the latest merch. Let's talk briefly about NASCAR because we, I teed this up earlier and we got into a different conversation. But, you know, your relationship with NASCAR, are you competing against NASCAR? What does your world look like? That's different than theirs. And so on and so forth. I know you've had an opportunity. to work with NASCAR in a lot of different areas and things like that.

So yeah, listen, the relationship with NASCAR, if it was a Facebook profile, I would say it's complicated. And I think I say that. Do not worry with what you can't control. That's on my Facebook. And that seems to apply to. Yeah. That's a good one.

Yeah. So listen, you said it. We compete. But at the same time, when your competition, you need them to succeed. for your own success, well, then that's where the complicated part comes in. I need NASCAR to be as healthy and as prosperous as they can possibly be. And I also think that they need the same thing from us because, you know what, we have an audience. And we have Dale Jr. Go back to the Dale Jr. download. I mean, like, Dale Jr. every single week is going to say his opinion. And

he ain't taking cues from anybody but himself, right? We don't even know what he's going to say about a particular thing. And that always doesn't align with what NASCAR wishes, he would say. But listen, Dale Jr. is an integral part of the NASCAR community. I think he's the most valuable commodity, even to this day. He's a Hall of Famer. He's a broadcaster. He has a ton of influence, even to this day.

His relevancy still is very high. I think the Dale Jr. download, excuse me, the Dale Jr. download keeps that wick lit, right? in terms of the relevancy and the brand. But so we need each other to be successful, but I think our, well, our goals are different, right? I'm radically honest. I like my philosophy to content is come as you are. We own our flaws.

And also I am very, I not only am not afraid of different opinions. or diversity of thought, I embrace it. That's pretty intimidating and scary for a lot of other companies. I won't even just put that on NASCAR. Like, you know, anybody, probably even junior motorsports to a degree. Well, that's what I was going to say. How do you, how, I mean, how do you support that if it affects your own company negatively? Own company being junior motorsports?

No, Dirty Moe. I don't handle it quite well, to be honest with you. And I know that to be the case, listen. I think a lot of people struggle with that. That's a fair thing. I think that's a fair thing from a business perspective to understand when you can lay it out all on the table. It's hard these days. It used to be a lot easier to talk about your strengths and weaknesses.

It's hard these days because of, I feel, because of social, because of everybody else's rhetoric. That's what rhetoric, whatever the right word is. And I hate that. Yeah. So listen. I hate that. I, the way I treat NASCAR is I've been trying for 10 years to figure out a way to work with NASCAR in a very productive, you know, collaborative way. We almost got there this year.

We almost got there. I really thought this was it. I thought this was it. I'm like, we're about to make history. We're about to work with NASCAR on something. And it's going to be a way that benefits us both, which again, we spent a lot of time working on that. And yet right at the last minute. gone. And it's hard not to take that personal and it's hard to sit there and go, okay, well, maybe this

just is a further indication that we're just not aligned in what our end goals are. Dirty Mo is going to stay open for business. If there's new ideas that we can pursue and NASCAR, we'll try. But at the end of the day, we've not been very successful in figuring out ways. And I don't, listen, I think we're good partners. And I have receipts. We work with IndyCar. We work with a bunch of other entities. PBR and the PRCA have been awesome to work with. And so I think that we all, it just goes down to the fact that I'm never going to tell my host what to say or what their opinion's got to be. I want their authentic opinion. I don't want to tell Denny Hamlin what he's got to say. I don't want to tell door bumper clear. I'm not going to tell them what they're going

to say about a race just because it's good for business. And we have lost business. It wasn't just this year. We've lost business to stand on that principle, but it's one that I can sleep at night. I'm not going to sacrifice our authenticity and our opinion. A lot of people go, well, you're just trying to be clickbait on door bumper clear. I promise you, if I were being clickbait, then I would be telling them what to say to be better at getting clicks. I've never once done that. And I never will do that. Freddie, Tommy, Carson, they'll say what they want to say. And if there's things that are problematic, then we'll have conversations about that. But at the end of the day, we are free thinkers and we have diversity of thought.

And that's sometimes that doesn't align with other people. Speaking of Daytona, changes coming. There's some changes coming to the new Super Speedway Daytona Tadaldaiga racing. It's not really, you know, be careful. This is not a fix for fuel mileage. Fuel mileage will be a thing at Indy, by the way. This is more to, how can we address the fact that Atlanta seems to put on a great show. The fans love Atlanta, but they hate it when we're three and four wide at Daytona and Taldega,

and nobody can go anywhere. This is to hopefully change that. So it's taking downforce off of the car. It's taking drag away from the car. Hallelujah. The drag is what's been killing this next-gen car at Super Speedways. And what it hopes to do is allow someone to, if you remember a couple years ago, Cowboys shot to make a move to the lead.

He went three wide to the top at Talladega. I think he went straight to the back. Like it was like you pull out a line and it's just an instant, you're hitting the parachute at the start, at the finish line of a dragster. It slows your car down that much. and the idea behind this change is that once a car pulls out of line, the car doesn't slow at the same rate of speed that it did before. So hopefully what it'll allow you to do is get up there, get a run,

and perhaps because now we have less downforce, maybe there's a gap in front of that car. You can get back in line. So do I think it's going to be like an oh my gosh huge fix? I do not. I definitely believe that this is a, the right direction. NASCAR only has so many levers that they can pull in the interim.

And, you know, what you really got to applaud from NASCAR, Steve O'Donnell. His leadership is that he's not spending a lot of time making sure the science is all correct before we go try it. He's a, try it. Like, we're going to find out in the field. And I believe, honestly, that's the best way. to run a company is to, you know, don't wait around for perfection because that's not happening. Get it out in the field, then get that information, make adjustments the next time.

And so, you know, hopefully maybe this is a step that they're like, we need to go further in this direction to get some feedback from the drivers to hear what they have to say. But I like it. From all the numbers that I've seen, we're going to be running a little bit faster in qualifying by ourselves, a couple miles an hour, which is good. But to me, it's the fact that it should allow you to be more aggressive in getting your track position back. You shouldn't be locked into a row you can't get out of. And hopefully that puts on better racing for the fans.

It should be more exciting for a longer period of time. I'll be interested to see if drivers are more willing to pull out knowing that I can go and then also other drivers known oh there's a good chance we can go all pull out then too and go with it and that's right but you're also not going to know until they drop the green flag right right right yeah who's going to be the first car that tries it rickie stanhouse rickie sthenhouse um i yeah we won't know we we don't have any practice schedule for there which is it's okay i mean these are not levels that we haven't seen before it's not like the cars are going to just you know, start spinning out when we get term one.

They're still going to have lots of grip. They're still going to have lots of drag. It's just, again, a very small change to see, just see what happens. Even if you did have practice, you're not really going to get your results, right? Because no one's going to practice the way you're going to have race. Exactly right. Yeah, you're not going to get enough cars willing to go in a pack and put their car at risk before the actual race. So, yeah, you will not.

It sounds good that, oh, they really need to practice. But I can tell you, 2311, I would say do not get in a pack. And Joe Gibbs Racing would say, do not get in a pack. We feel confident that, you know, this is not going to be something that's going to be undriveable. Yeah, you could check travels and stuff like that. But, you know, practice would be definitely overrated and more for TV, which, you know, I'm okay with if they decide to do that. this next question since you're off next week Dale we're going to bring it over here people will know there's the news of days of thunder how excited are you just to potentially

have that coming out people are getting all pumped up just with the reports of it potentially happening how excited are you oh what's happening I'm excited um I think it's great it'll be awesome for our in for our sport it'll be awesome for um old and new fans um I'm sure they'll, I'm sure there'll be a lot of Easter eggs in there. It's going to, you know, I've seen these guys out and about digging into the sport, trying to talk to people, meeting with people, talking with drivers, talking with all types of people in the industry. They are doing some homework, digging and gathering.

They want it to do really, they want it to be a good representation and authentic, just like they did with the first one. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm bullish about it. or positive about it, that it's going to be a great experience. I thought that the Tom Gun, the Tom Cruise, the top gun movies for the first and second were good too. Like the second one, everyone was kind of thinking the same thing.

Like, how can this be good? And he always does a good job. But the way that they developed that story too, kind of similar, I feel like it's going to be similar to that. Like there's going to be somebody new and young come in and he's, I don't know, going to coach them maybe. I don't know. We'll see.

But it's going to be great. I don't know if there's, I think, my guess is that. It's cold trickle comeback story. Really? I think it might be. We'll see. All right, that was another episode

of the Dirty 30, presented by Arby's new Meat in Three Box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We had the meat.