COTA: It’s Entertaining Until It’s You…
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Concept
racetrack
A racetrack is the place where cars race. Each track is different and can make the race more or less challenging.
Concept
mathematically alive
If a driver is 'mathematically alive,' it means they can still win the whole season if they do well in the upcoming races. They haven't lost their chance yet.
Concept
top five finish
Finishing in the top five means the driver ended the race in one of the first five spots, which is really good.
Concept
NASCAR
NASCAR is a type of car racing where drivers race specially built cars on oval tracks. It's very popular in the US and has many famous races.
Concept
truck race
In NASCAR, there is a series where drivers race special pickup trucks on race tracks. This is called the truck race.
Company
iRacing
iRacing is a video game where people race cars on computers to practice driving skills.
Term
doored
If a car gets 'doored', it means another car hits it on the side, which can make it crash.
Concept
racecraft
Racecraft is how a driver knows when to pass, when to hold back, and how to race smart against others on the track.
Concept
super speedway racing
Super speedway racing means racing on really big, fast tracks where cars drive close together to go faster.
Concept
road course racing
Road course racing means racing on tracks that twist and turn in many directions, not just circles.
Term
Cup driver
A Cup driver is someone who races in the biggest and most important NASCAR races, where the best drivers compete.
Term
cup car
A cup car is a special race car used in the highest level of NASCAR racing. It has special parts that help it go faster and handle better on the track.
Car
Chrysler Daytona
The Chrysler Daytona is a small, sporty car made a long time ago that people liked because it was fun to drive and looked cool. It had a special engine that made it go faster than regular cars. People might talk about it when they discuss old racing cars or cool cars from the past.
Concept
drafting
Drafting is when a race car follows closely behind another car to go faster by using less wind resistance. It's like riding behind someone to save energy.
Concept
crew chief
The crew chief is like the coach of a race car team. They tell the driver and the team what to do to help the car go faster and win races.
Brand
Rick Hendrick
Rick Hendrick owns a big racing team that competes in NASCAR, which is a popular car racing sport.
Concept
Cup team
A Cup team is a group of drivers and crew that race in the highest level of NASCAR racing.
Term
respect
Respect means treating other drivers fairly and safely on the track so everyone can race without problems.
Term
etiquette
Etiquette in racing means how drivers are expected to behave and respect each other during a race to keep things fair and safe.
Term
getting loose
Getting loose means the back of the car slides out because the tires aren't gripping the road well, which can make the car tricky to drive.
Concept
Cup level
Cup level is the top league in NASCAR racing where the best drivers race against each other.
Concept
playoffs
Playoffs are like the final games in a sports season where the best drivers race to win the championship.
Car
Tata Motors Aria
The Tata Aria is a type of car that mixes a regular car and a bigger, tougher car so it’s good for families and carrying things. It was made by an Indian company and is known for being roomy and comfortable. People might talk about it when discussing cars from India or new types of cars.
Term
fire suit
A fire suit is a special outfit race car drivers wear to keep them safe if there's a fire during a crash. It helps stop them from getting burned.
Term
helmet
A helmet is a special hat that race car drivers wear to keep their head safe if they crash. Drivers usually use their own helmet because it fits them best and is clean.
Term
cool shirt
A cool shirt is a special shirt that helps keep drivers or people working in hot places cool by blowing cold air or water through it.
Term
cool vest
A cool vest is like a special shirt that keeps your body cool when it's really hot, especially when you're racing. It helps you feel less hot and tired.
Car
Cadillac Fleetwood
The Cadillac Fleetwood is a big, fancy car that was made to be very comfortable and smooth to ride in. People who wanted a nice, luxurious car often chose it. It’s sometimes talked about when people remember old, classy cars.
Term
red flag
A red flag in racing means the race has to stop because something unsafe happened, like a crash. Drivers have to slow down and wait until it's safe to go again.
Term
tire
Tires are the rubber parts that touch the road and help the car stick and go fast. Different tires work better on different tracks or in different weather, so drivers pick the best ones to help them win.
Brand
Chevrolet
Chevrolet is a big car company from America that makes many kinds of cars, including fast ones used in races.
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This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half.
I don't know if we've ever argued. Did I piss you off over the weekend or?
I'm still sour that I was the best man that you're with.
Who was your best man, Dale? DJ.
You don't need a cool vest for that race. What are you thinking?
Get him, DJ. That's the way it's starting to show.
All right then. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the
Dale Jr. Download. And there's a bunch to talk about. I'm excited to be here.
I am. DJ, it's good to see you. Yeah, glad to be here.
Before we get too much further, we have to tell you that this episode is presented by Arby's.
Arby's is a great new partner of ours. And Amy went to Arby's.
What ball of Arby's? Did she get a meat and three box?
She did not. She got a roast beef and Swiss or something.
Yeah. I think she got some curly fries.
Yep. But yeah, don't forget about their new meat and three box.
You get more meal for your money at Arby's, especially with that meat and three box.
We have the meats. We have our dynasty for college football Xbox PlayStation.
Getting down to it again.
Down to it. We're in the semifinals for the playoffs.
I have beaten, I've taken the UNC Tar Heels and beat the Florida Gators.
That was Butterbean Queen.
You're pretty happy about that one.
I am. I am. I hadn't played Butterbean in this dynasty, but he's a very good player,
beats some people, beats you. First week of this year.
First week. Let's be honest. I beat myself, but yes, he won.
First week of this season, he scored more points than you in that game.
I don't know. TJ won't say he lost, but the guy who played scored more points.
He did. He won the game.
He will admit that fact.
It's an interesting way to not lose.
That's right. I didn't lose, but the other guy scored more points.
I threw five interceptions. You're going to lose.
I didn't lose, but I threw five interceptions.
It's not on me. I call the right place by players.
He didn't win. I threw five interceptions.
I mean, it's not like he did something crazy good.
He did. He's won the game.
He picked you all five times.
You know why TJ didn't get along?
Because we both think about completely screwed up,
like our perspective on life.
I would agree with you, but then I would be wrong too.
Yeah. Okay. Well, hey, I'm happy.
Is Dale's roster now legal?
Legal. Let's just say.
As far as I know, yes.
There's no ingenuity this year.
If he changed something, I wouldn't know this anyway.
In this one, he can't. If I could, I would.
It can pass tech. If I could, I would.
I could. I would. Hey, I'm going to try.
I'm going to drew. I'm going to run my bet.
My I'm going to play video games the same way I try to race cars.
And that is cheating in every opportunity.
Every opportunity.
I don't condone cheating unless it's in a competition.
Yeah. Yeah. Then it's fair.
Fair game. Well, I don't know.
I mean, in some, in like high school and professional sports,
like college football, not entirely comfortable with it.
But in motor sports, I don't know why it's good with me.
Isn't it weird?
No, it's because that's the sport that I grew up on.
Like everybody is understanding that you're doing that.
So everyone's all like, we're good with it.
Yeah. I don't know why cheating in motor sports doesn't bother me.
And you're talking about like, I don't like, to me,
there's different levels of cheating.
There's like the blatant, the blatant drilled holes and stuff,
or there is the guys that are trying to like get more out of, you know,
like the truck arms, you know, like,
like bolting other pieces on them and doing, you know, innovative, I guess.
Yeah. Is that there's a, wow, this is a big, big,
it's a bigger conversation and just introduction to the show.
But I would say that, you know, in terms of a friendly conversation,
a friendly competition on our Xbox,
if there's a way for me to skirt a few rules or do some things a little nefarious,
you're looking at the guy that's going to try to do them.
I played Texas a little bit dirty.
I called Tom out with one second to go and kick the field goal to make it 60.
Why? You couldn't stand it being an uneven number.
First of all, he ran two kicks backs for touchdowns and I was pissed at that.
And then, I'm sorry. He's, he's, he's, he tried to win the game.
That pissed you off. I mean, it was 57 score. It was 57 to 14.
Yeah. Sit down. Stop trying. Exactly.
So what I was, I mean, I'm chewing clock, but then I also,
I'm also terrible at kicking. So I was like, you know what?
I'm going to get a little practice. This is what I mean about TJ.
He's kicking this guy's, the guy is, I mean, the, you know, the guy is having a,
you know, his worst day of playing video games of the year, right?
Video games is not supposed to be unfun. Yeah.
But he's sitting there having literally his worst day on the console and TJ is like,
Hey man, lay down. How dare you try to score?
It's sick. Kind of. Yeah.
It's 57 to 14. Stop trying.
So instead of editing my players, like you would, I just do that.
Like I'm more, yeah. That's, yeah. That's right. That's why I mean,
TJ get alone because we think we're, we have unrealistic expectations in life.
We really do. So that's going on. Another thing that's happened.
And I don't know how to tell y'all this, but I have, I've fallen into addiction.
Hi, my name is Dale Jr. Yep. I am, I'm addicted to trading cards again.
Oh no. Yep. It happened. I mean, and quick, a couple of days. I mean, it's been a week, maybe.
Yeah. I could tell when I hands you that deal, you're like a 10. I'm like, yeah, a 10.
He handed me a PSA 10 card and noticed by my reaction that I was,
you're like, this is a 10. I'm like, I started shaking a little bit.
I was a collector in the 80s and 90s of baseball cards. I have a lot of 87, 90,
tops, Don Russ, Fleer, score, upper deck.
And I've had them stored away. I opened them the day that I bought them back and back,
back around when they were brand new and then put them in boxes and that's where they've been.
Ate the gum, put them away. Yeah. And so, dude,
I will, I'm not quite sure how I got drug back into this, but I'll say this. I saw
Holswendell and Butterbean ripping packs and then they were taking, sending me picture.
They, they were doing something on social media and then five minutes later,
they send me a picture of these cards that they were, they had opened and they had a
couple of my cards that they had opened. And I'm like, man, everybody's doing this now.
Like, yeah, baseball card, baseball card collecting was probably more popular than
any other sport back in the 80s and has been for, for many, many years.
But now basketball and even the NFL to an extent are basketball is crazy right now.
I'm not an expert. So forgive me. All you card collecting experts out there.
But in my, in my understanding is the hobby faded and struggled and has struggled for a while.
And right around five, six years ago, it had a rebirth. It has had to come back and every,
and I don't know why. And I know you've been doing it for quite a couple of years now.
You've got, you've got quite a collection. Yeah. Well, it seems like everywhere I turn
everyone's doing it. All my friends are sort of getting involved or have been
involved in the last couple of years. And so, yeah, I got drug back in, man.
And it's fun. I went to a shop the other day for the first time in years, bought a couple cases and
or a couple of boxes and ripped some cards, had some fun, got some, pulled some good cards,
got into my collection, started thumbing through all my car. I've got sleaze of cards that
I'm going through. And I'm like, damn, this is a $30 to $40 card sitting right here,
freaking mint. And so, fun to do that, fun to kind of rediscover and get my cards in a little bit
better of a protected state, sleeving them up and putting them in top loaders and stuff like that.
And it has me think, I've got an idea. So we do cards with Panini. I get a sleeve every now
and then once a month or so that I have to sign and send back to Panini and authorize.
And I see these 10 of 10, 25, 50 card sets that are limited edition that I sign and take,
and it has me. And now that I'm back into the collecting part and I'm seeing what's working
and what's valuable, it has me thinking I've got a really cool idea. And I'll let you know more
about it. I'll let you know more about it if we are able to do it. But I've got an idea on a particular
card that I want to create that I think would be a really bad ass. I want to be part of, you
know, Panini's made cards and we've send them ratio stuff and they make a card out of it. But
I'm not really involved. They make the card and I get them, I sign them and I turn them
back in and then they go out into the wild, you know? But I want to be on, I want to make a card,
I want to make it from start to finish. I want to physically help them make the card. I want to
go to the plant. I want to be there when it's being made and pick out how the card looks.
I want to be involved in the whole process, film the whole thing and see what the draw or
demand is for said card. Right? That'd be fun. That would be really fun. Yeah.
It's hard for me to like even think about something else. Hard for me to move on. Tyler Reddick
three feet. Let's just go rip packs. Tyler Reddick three feet. All right. So Tyler Reddick,
obviously, you know, Tyler Reddick has started the season three wins in a row. No one's ever
done that. Crazy. It is. I don't know what. Yeah. It's insane. And he beat the guy that
hasn't lost a row course. Yeah, but he was pretty good at Kota. He's, you know, he's ran really
good there in the past. So it wasn't like a big shot. But to your point, TJ, he did beat the guy
that's won all the row course races here lately. Where's the ceiling for this whole deal?
I thought it was last week, but it apparently wasn't.
So Denny said he's a lock for top three now because of this performance. Do you think that?
See, that's what I don't under. That's what I don't know. I don't know yet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
listen, barring, I think Denny could be right barring any kind of like massive collapse.
He should, he's got like, what, a 70 point? What is his lead? Oh no. We got the point
somewhere. Yeah. It's right here. The damn points out. I told y'all to have the points.
Print it. And there are 70 over. I told you to print the points. He's 70 above. And you printed
the points. You did. I don't have them out. My bad. 70 above Baba. Who's in second? Say it again.
He's 70 ahead of Baba. So no, you said it. 70 above Baba. Say that. Say it again. Thank you.
It's funny how he said. I will say that my man Tyler Redick has a lock on being in the top three.
He's 86 of points above Ryan Blaney. Who's in fourth? Barring a collapse. That should do it.
Which is wild. And he's in top three. I mean, who's to say he won't win another race or two,
right? To sort of help himself sustain that gap. But I mean, there's also. We don't know. We don't
know with this new system. He could also. But I'm saying. I could go the other way, but he's not
going to fall far now. You start off hot. It's hard to lose it. Yeah. It ain't going the other way.
Look, this guy, he's got almost 100 points on Shane Van Gizbergen in fifth. He is not going
to get out pointed by Shane. So you go back to, you look at Daniel Suarez is in seventh.
I would, if I'm Tyler, I'm not nervous about that guy overtaking me. I'm probably not too
nervous about Joe Logano overtaking me from 96 points back in sixth. A.J. Almadinger,
McDowell, Hosevar. Look at this top 10. See, that's the thing is the heavy hitters aren't,
they ain't there. No. So he, so the people that he's actually probably going to be competing
with as we surge through the fricking season and get on 20 some races in, he's way ahead
of those guys. So 110 above buyer and 13 above Larson. How about that? You come into the season
when three straight and to Denny's point, you're literally locking yourself in as a fricking
championship contender. 126 above Denny. And where is the final race of the season?
I mean, if he's in, if he forgot about that, right? If he's even say he's going to go in
with a really good shot in the top and if he can put together all the races, right?
And roll into homestead, mathematically alive. That's the track that he has a lot of success
at. I do think there is this, it's a little early because we see guys start off the season
hot and by the time the summer comes around, then I know he's going to have some downtime.
You know, there's going to be some downtime, but that's what that 100 point buffers for,
right? The momentum you want. You want to, you want to be building momentum.
It's not possible for somebody to have a flawless, he can't win every race. Oh, for sure.
His track record at homestead six starts four top fives. Yeah, it's definitely his best track.
I just, you know, but we got to remember it ain't go to homestead in the winners
of champ. He's got to be mathematically alive after the nine races before homestead.
But this is a real possibility. Phyleretic has, uh,
I don't know that he's shocked the world because we all knew that this is why
didn't he hired him? Didn't he thought, Hey man, I'm bringing this guy in.
This guy is going to turn my organization into a winning organization.
He's, uh, he's helped, uh, he's helped the whole team get better.
So let's not discount the fact that they have two cars.
They're, they're two cars are first and second.
Bubba Wallace sitting there, second points over Chase Elliott and third.
So heck of a deal, man. So ironic too, you know, that they, they sue the sport, uh,
and, and they some, you know, they settle, but you'd call it a win.
And then they come out and win the first three races of the year.
I don't know what's next, but, uh, damn, Phoenix.
You know, I'm not attracted. I think
it has been a, has been a great one for 23 11. Maybe they kind of come back down to earth
because you think about it. The first two races or the first three races are at what might,
what one might call unusual racetrack. Yeah. Now there are a lot of road courses in the season.
So I don't think road courses are as an anomaly like the plate tracks are.
I still call them the plate tracks, but the drafting tracks Atlanta,
Halidega Daytona, but we kind of come, I'm not, we kind of come crashing down to earth
at Phoenix. And then we go to Vegas and all these other tracks, Darlington, Martinsville,
damn, bam, bam, bam. And we'll truly give it another four or five weeks.
I would love, you know what I'd love to do. Congratulations, Tyler. Great start to the
season. I would love for us to starting this weekend, take the next, say five weeks
and get a little screenshot or a snapshot of what, what the points looks like in those five
weeks alone. I want to take these first three out. Take the first three out. Let's see what,
you know, what the snapshot looks like after about four or five weeks.
It'd be interesting because I think I could then, you know, you can still say, Hey, man, Tyler Reddick's
a player in the final here and how this thing's going to shake out the playoffs
or the chase, but I would love to take that little snapshot too and see who's performing
in that little snippet and say, Hey, man, okay, here's some, because we're going to go race
those type of race tracks in the chase for a while and in the chase. Yeah. Right. And so
yeah. Right. And so that'll also help us understand who might make a run. But man,
it's a great start to the year. It's, it is in, it is in, it is really compelling because
someone that create, someone that helped create this point system or help polish
and finalize this point system told me that in most cases, you know, when they ran the models,
the champion came out of the top three. So Kyle Larson in 15th, 113 back. You got
Denny Hamlin in 23rd, 126 back. Christopher Bale 127 back in 24th. Chase Briscoe 140 back in 27th.
You know, I'm mentioning those names. Those are the guys that you might say
will be working toward the front, trying to find their way into the, into a good
spot for the chase. Yeah. Who's going to be able to do it? The schedule has
cameras and goers. It is so fun. I tried to, I didn't do it. I was going to send out a tweet
Sunday morning about how excited I was about the race and how I was looking forward to it.
But I didn't think people would believe it because they would think it was hyperboil or
me just kind of being a fanboy. But I am glued to what's going on. This is so fun. Is everybody
having fun? Yeah. I mean, how can you not? I mean, is this not better?
It is better. Oh, definitely. I mean, I'm not trying to sit here and, and, and talk about the
old point system. But God, this one's fun. Now, you know, we see after three races, Tyler
Reddix put himself in this position. We're all intrigued by that. Then we look down through the
list. We look at that top 10. Hosts of our McDowell, Almond Dinger, Suarez, Shane SVG.
And we look at all of these people and we go, where are the players? Man, they've got a,
they got, they got their work cut out for them. And this is what we, you know, now we get to
see who can surge forward, who can recover their year. I would say it's time. Yeah,
it's a recovery at this point. You know, you got all these guys that are
Larson bell. Where are they? They're all over a hundred. They're over a hundred points out.
Now it looks bad because Reddix, 70 clear second place by Wallace. So if you take Reddix out,
you know, then Jenny and those guys, they're only 50 points out. I mean, Alex Bowman's,
Alex Bowman's 36 on the points. Yeah. I mean, you think about it tough year.
Reddix has 45 bonus points. Basically that, that alone would put him in 28th place just on those.
Yeah. I don't see bonus points on here because each one is 15. I don't know.
Yeah, we don't have that. We don't do bonus points anymore. The, the, the 15 that are
included in the win. That's the points. Yeah, I know. Yeah. We don't call them bonus points.
Don't be bringing that back. I'll do what I want. Come on. You just get points competing.
Um, but anyways, pretty compelling. I'm definitely surprised by the people that are,
you know, it's so hard to win the top 15 and some of the guys that aren't
winning those first two races that are kind of like free-for-alls and, and like Daytona is kind
of a, I mean, you don't know. You don't have that dominant car. Like Tyler got the right push
at the right time at Atlanta. Bubba, Bubba said, here's the bottom. And you know what
I mean? So, you know, crazy how it can. It is crazy. Um, so pretty impressive.
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and make this NASCAR season one to remember. Moving on from Reddick, we talked about last
week on the show, Hosevar and Payback. It looks like somebody has accomplished or made an attempt.
Probably. And it was Cole Custer. So late in the race, I think it's the last lap almost.
Mike Joyce says, oh, Hosevar's around. They're on the front straightaway.
And it looks like, I don't know what happened earlier, but I watched up to it and I didn't
see anything. It could have been way earlier in the race. Well, coming off the final corner,
Cole Custer and him make contact and Cole sort of just veers right. Just doesn't give
him any room. Yep. And I don't know if there was contact that steered Cole's car to the right,
but they come together. Cole's car who's on the inside and about a car, half a car length ahead
veers to the right, sends Hosevar into the grass. Hosevar loses control, spins out
right, right, right before the flag stand or right at the flag stand.
So, and racing for 30th. So don't mess with Cole Custer. You remember when Cole Custer
chased after Nemechek at the truck race in most sport? Oh, he flipped the switch. Yeah. I mean,
he just looks like football tackle. Hey, he was standing on pit road, right? And he got mad.
He just took off and chased after him. Don't mess with Cole Custer. He is not one to be
played with. Surprising that it came from Cole though. Remember when I told you last week
it might be Hosevar or not Hosevar. It might be Noah. Yeah. I said that because I don't,
I'm not singling Noah out. I'm only saying that if you're Hosevar,
you got to watch those guys that got nothing to lose. And Noah or Custer,
hey gosh, hey gosh. And Custer's a big boy. He's going to hold his own. Well, not to
disparage what's going on in their, in this moment in their careers, but they're miserable.
Their shit ain't going good. They're not running up front. Yeah, it doesn't take much. Those are
the guys that you don't piss off, right? Those are the guys that'll absolutely hook your ass and
say, I don't give a s***. That day you're coming by running fifth or sixth and they're
not having a good day. Sorry. Yeah. You don't, I wouldn't, not in this, you know,
that's how it used to kind of self police itself. I've learned my lesson. I ran into,
I knocked Darrell Walter, by the way, at Martinsville. He's a lap down to run that
66 car car, K mark car, slow as hell. And he's in his final year and I'm, I'm a rookie
and I'm like, damn, you're slow. Boop. I'm gonna, I'm gonna knock this down. D.W. out of the way.
And, uh, he was like, in his mind, he was like, you little s*** head. I'm fricking miserable out
here driving this damn tank. I've had enough of you. I've had enough of this s***. I've
had enough of you. Next corner, around I go. And I was like, damn, everybody just watched
me get spun out by D.W. That was s*** up. Yeah. So I have a theory on Carson Hosevar with,
because whenever, so Jesse Love and him got into it and like Carson just immediately reacts to
everything. And I wonder if him playing, I racing and racing online, you see a lot of times when
someone gets doored, that person just immediately responds and reacts to it. Yeah. Does that
carrying over to real life for him? Yeah. I don't know if it's by racing. I think you just,
that's how you're brought up and respected. But you know, I race slander on my podcast.
Okay. On video game racing. You done messed up. I'm not slandering the game. Yeah,
sounds like you're saying even even some bad habits. So yeah, my argument to that is
I would absolutely encourage people to run online to get racecraft and decision making and judgment
calls specifically, especially for super speedway racing like Daytona and Talladega and road course.
It's extremely valuable as a tool to run road courses on I racing at home
when you can't be in the sim and also to race run to race drafting track races over and over and over.
And so a lot of the same, a lot of the same mentality that and they'll be there's gonna
just gonna trigger some real cup racers. But I hate to say it man, but it's true the mentality
that's the mentality that is successful. Racing at Daytona, racing at Atlanta, racing at Talladega
is a frame of mind. It is a skill, but it's a mental, it's a mental approach. It's a frame of mind
that a driver has to have. You're making decisions. You're, you're everything you're doing. You're
doing with your mind, not the seat of the pants, not the feel of the car, not at other race
tracks. You're driving by feel and raw driving ability and talent at Daytona, Talladega Atlanta.
It's a, it's a mind thing. It's a, it's a decision thing. It's a judgment thing and it's instant
and it's reactive. So what works and what's successful on I racing tends to also that
same approach be successful in the real world. Look at, so Anthony Alfredo,
he's a pure sim racer. Now he came up driving real race cars. He didn't, he's not born out of
sim racing like, like some guys, but he is still at his core, a very hardcore sim racer. And I
know how he races online, been in races with him and I watch him at Daytona and Talladega
and his approach, although annoying to me because he's not in my car, is productive. He will find
his way toward the front with moves and being aggressive at Daytona, Talladega and places like that.
And so, you know, when the car is somewhat capable of doing it,
I would say Rajah, very similar. Watching Rajah at Daytona, watching Rajah at Atlanta.
He's, he's, his, his mentality and his decision making and his approach very much matches
the same one he has on, on his, on his sim and I think it's productive. I like it. I would encourage
him. And so at those racetracks now, not at, not at Phoenix, not at Darlington,
not anywhere else. That's, that's when the real true racing craft has to prevail.
Your point though is, is valid. Travis, in, I think in, in, in the online racing world,
there's no real repercussion to being reactive. I racing
processes hundreds and hundreds of thousands of protests. But you know, it doesn't fix,
it can't fix, it can't truly govern people's genuine
ability in this day and time to be completely reactive. And I think, you know, there's a lot of
things that aid that, that encourage that social media, right? We can, we can read a tweet,
disagree with it and immediately respond, right? And so everything about our world right now is,
is that instant reaction. And so, you know, I would say it's some, some, some of online racing
that, that host of ours has done, but I think it's more about, you know, everything else around us
that allows us and encourages us to do that. And we just have to, I even today, like I'm
f***ing 51 years old and I have to sometimes tell myself, calm the f*** down. You need to
take a minute. You need to f***ing think about this. You don't need to say what you're thinking,
right? This is a valid point. And I used to be very good at that, but I've gotten worse at it,
right? Because, you know, we're all, you know, I've got, I do more, I do more, I regret more,
do more apologizing these days than I did 10 years ago because we've all become more reactive,
right? Man, I'm sorry. We're definitely a reactive. Dude, it's ridiculous. And I'm,
and we're all, we're all guilty of it. But, you know, I don't, again, you know,
still though, I don't, I don't, I don't want him to change. I don't want host of ours to change.
I don't. Well, it makes it entertaining. God.
Until it's you. Till it's me. If you were out there driving, he was entering your race,
you wouldn't like it. I know, but I, it's entertaining for sure. Do I want,
do, you know, I want our cars, I want to win every race we enter.
I do. I want JRM to just win every damn race to enter. And I want all our guys to finish
first, second, third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, when we run a sixth car.
But above all that, I want this sport to be
bigger than any other sport. I want it to be watched by tens of millions of people every week.
And that's where we need host of our, we need people like host of our, we need people like
honors zillage. We need people like Ross Chastain. We need people like Denny Hamlin. We need all
these very great, awesome, different personalities, right? And we need to be
celebrating that. But, you know, on this show, and I tell, I have to text
Carson all the time. I have to take host, I text host of our, and I say, Hey,
you know, we're critical. We're going to be critical. We're going to talk about you.
Your job is to buckle up and race and do your best. The noise is going to be noisy.
Where if we're, you know, it's when they're not talking about you is when you need to
be worried. If you're, if you're invisible out there, if nobody's worried about you,
concerned about you, pulling for you, caring about your performance, then you're in trouble.
And there's drivers out there that fit that bill. And that's, I would, you know,
I didn't ever want to be one of those guys. So, you know, you, there's even in the 80s
and 90s, you know, you start races that races would begin and end. And
there'd be guys out there. You didn't, you know, they made, they brought nothing to the table.
You know, and so
does the noise eventually not need to like, he's eventually going to have to start winning
or the noise is going to, you know what I mean? No, like,
he's going to start finishing off some races here and go in the other way with it.
You can't just be noisy the whole time. He will, he will.
You know, he's going to, he's still maturing, you know, for sure.
I would say that he's, you know, look at this guy. You know, when you, when you watch him on,
on Twitch or you watch him on, you know, when he comes here on this podcast or whatever,
guys, a kid at heart, he's still very much just having fun and enjoying life.
It's only 23. Yeah. He's still got a long way to go. Now, come, if he's, if he's doing,
if he's not any different, TJ, when he's 27, 28 years old,
yeah, for sure. I'd say, hey, you know, we got to make some gains here. I mean,
a cup driver at 23, he was even, what's his second, third year, whatever third. I mean,
that's pretty incredible already. I don't think I got to cup till I was 26.
That's what I'm saying. Like these guys are getting a cup. We forget that these dudes are
coming in so young. Yeah. Yeah. And you've learned a lot by the time you get there.
Yeah. But, you know, Lugano knows other guys. How long did Lugano struggle? He almost,
but he almost, he almost failed out. Yeah. Yeah. Big Gibbs. How long did we wait for Byron?
You know, to finally become the driver we knew he could be. Do you think Carson could have used
a couple of years in the O'Reilly cars before? Yes. But, you know, he's, he could have absolutely
but that wasn't the path that was presented to him. So people realized he had such a
unique ability. The raw talent was so, so unique that they, they decided to bring him on up. And
there was this argument too, TJ, that the next-gen car was so unique that him driving at
Sphinity wouldn't have benefited him any. I agree with that. He needed to get in that
cup car with the independent rear suspension and low profile tires and a diffuser.
And learn it. And f***ing learn it. And so. Because the other guys kind of had to forget
what they knew. And now he doesn't have to do that because he doesn't know it. Yeah.
But to your point, like, you still learn racecraft no matter what vehicle you're in.
Sphinity, you know, cars, tour, whatever. Racecraft can be learned and drivers can
improve. And I, I encourage, you know, years in a late model, years in a truck,
years in a bushcar. I don't, I mean, a lot of these guys, though, they're coming in having
to fund their career, whether it's through parents, whether it's through a friend or a
business that they've got a connection to. They're funding that career and that funding
is eager for them to get to the cup level so they can shut that off, right? If you're funding a guy,
say Travis, you're a rich guy, you've got millions of dollars, but you believe in this kid
and you're like, hey, man, I'm going to help you. Now, do you want to spend, you know,
five million, five, four, five, six million dollars a year for three years and try to
fast forward him to cup if they'll take him? Or do you want to do it for five or six years?
Right? You don't. Nope. You don't want to spend another 20 million dollars if you don't have to.
You want to get him to cup as fast as you can so you can therefore turn off the faucet and say,
hey, you're there, you know? And that's where these guys are, you know, some of them are
speeding through a little quickly. Speaking of that. Got a permit. Just finish your test.
TJ's, TJ's daughter has her permit. All the folks out there on the highway beware.
We're going cup race next year. That's going to prove her. She's got a permit.
We're going to try to get her in the truck race at Daytona next season. Yep.
Speaking of drivers causing trauma. Yeah. What do you know about that?
Corey Day. Yeah. Hey, let's talk about this out of the way here.
Corey Day. He's back at it again. That's a great slogan. Say, all right. So
listen here. Listen here. All right. This is a very, very,
this is a very tough situation to be in for me. I met with Corey and Daytona.
We talked about drafting. I spent about an hour talking to him and he is a good dude.
Very talented. Very, very talented, but he, Connor Zillich was a little disappointed, I guess,
in his demeanor post-race, right? And his, you know, Corey doesn't kind of know exactly
what to do in those moments or doesn't seem to be interested in, you know, owning his mistake.
You know, it's always, well, you know, the splitter was this, the flat tire was flat,
this and that and other. That's annoying. Well, yeah. And so, and, but, you know, I've,
I want to say that I talked to Corey for quite a while at Daytona. He is a good guy and he is in,
he's not in over his head, but dude is drinking from a fire. He's got, he's got a lot of
race car, that 17 car coming out of the Hendrick shop. We share all of our notes with them,
everything that we do well. They have, they know this information. They're a 15 of ours.
They're their crew chief, Adam. He used to work here as a crew chief. They're in our meetings.
Corey Day was in our comp meeting yesterday. Was your engineer at one point?
Yep. They're all, they're a 15. They just happened to race out of the Hendrick
building. And that's the way I, it has to work. That's the way Mr. Hendrick wants it to work.
Jeff Gordon, everybody that, you know, we all want that, that 17 car is a teammate to us.
And we all, everybody except for the drivers seem to get that idea. And I say drivers
because I've got a little story. But before I get to that, Corey has a ton of talent as you
mentioned. He's got a lot of race car and he's got no experience. And he's run a handful of races
last year and now his car is even better. He's starting to run closer to the front
and he's just in over his skis in a bunch of moments.
Um, did he wreck? Did he go through that? Do I think he didn't go through the S's and go,
man, I'm just clean this one car out. But he's in control of the car and he has to realize
that's my teammate. That is a teammate car. And Rick Hendrick owns the car I'm driving and
Rick Hendrick owns the car that I'm going to spin out. And he has to drive his car and
control it so that it doesn't cause that accident, right? And that's what we're asking him to do. And so
it doesn't help. It was two weeks in a row. That was the next thing I was going to say.
It's two weeks in a row of kind of this. It's two weeks in a row of the same thing.
And we all got together and we all sat down. Rick had a conversation with,
with Cory and we're all trying to help him understand, look, man, we want you here.
We believe in you. We believe you're a winner. We want to see you succeed.
But we have to do this without being detrimental to each other.
And so it's just a process. I know it looks ugly to fans who are watching it. It's hard
for our teams. It's hard for all our employees to see our car get run over like that with very little
regard. But it's part of the process of trying to school up these guys to become the drivers that
we think they're capable of becoming. And we just continue to press that if you're making
mistakes, there are consequences to those very severe consequences. Cory will have to fix this or
there will be severe consequences. And I thought this was a great opportunity
that the message be shared amongst all of our drivers. What Cory's doing is not new.
We've had teammate issues in the past. We will have them in the future.
When you bring all of these young kids into the same building,
they are all on different paths. They are all eager to get that next opportunity.
They're all eager to get that call from Rick or Trackhouse or somebody.
Many owner. And they aren't looking at their teammate in the car next to them as a long-term
relationship. They aren't in a cup team where Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott have to figure it out
and get along because they're going to be racing together for 10 years out of the same building.
They're not in that situation. They're here thinking in their mind, well, if everything
works out, I'm here for a year or two and I'm gone. And this guy that's my teammate,
I won't be teammates with him ever again. And so they don't try the drivers themselves.
Do not try to nurture or create relationships with their teammates. They don't. It's transactional.
They get in the race car. They have no relationship to the car. They don't know
where the spindles came from. They don't know the history of the chassis. They don't know
where it raced last. They don't know where the motor came from. How many races is on that?
When we used to, you know, 20 years ago, we knew all that. Hell, we named our damn race cars.
They had purse. They had freaking personality. We had our favorites.
They don't even think about it. And they go out there and they rip the sides off of them
and run into things, all of them. And then they come back to the shop and
all of our guys unload them out of the hauler and it's a freaking just depressing.
And this is all happening with one of our freaking cars in victory lane.
Yeah. Right. We got a car. We got a guy that's one. We're happy. Got a crew chief happier.
And then the three, four other cars, they're upside down, mad at each other all over in the
garage fussing. And so it's a wide variety. It is. And it's happened before. It happened
to Chicago last year. I had to walk past Connor Zillich and say, hey, SVG shouldn't
have raced you like that in turn one. Then I had to go to Victor Lane and say,
good job, SVG, hell will win. What are you going to do? Are you going to go up to Connor and say,
I don't give a s**t he ran you into the wall and then go up to SVG and say,
man, what the f**k did you do that for? You know, what are you supposed to do?
All right. Yeah. And then the same thing at Watkins Glen, Connor clips him, spins out SVG
and you got to go to SVG and say, damn, man, he cleaned you out.
You know? And then Connor jumps and falls out of the car, but we didn't really have a conversation.
So do you feel like after yesterday, things will progress in a better way?
Yes. Things are, with everything that we said and all the conversations that we had,
I 100% expect a clean slate. I mean, a clean slate. Our drivers should have no animosity towards Corey.
Corey should look at this as an opportunity to start anew and start to build a rapport and
a reputation that he wants to have. And, you know, he's just learning how to handle these things.
I too think that, you know, he comes from a completely different discipline
and that, you know, that culture in the garage, the mindset of a racer in the world that he's
lived in, it's completely different, not better or worse, just different. And so he's coming here
and having to learn like, wow, okay, I got four guys out there that I have to race
uniquely comparable to the competition, you know? And so he's got to have, he's
processing all this stuff for the first time in his life. But I think that, you know,
a lot of hard conversations were had this week. I expect things to improve. And that,
you know, Corey Day isn't the only one on the racetrack in our group making bad decisions.
So, you know, we had a lot of conversations this week about
expectations, etiquette, respect, you know, what we, what should happen going forward,
what can never happen going forward. And again, not a new conversation we've been here before.
Is it easier as a driver from the past? Is it easier for,
you get, you get crashed by a guy and make some mistake? You've been wrecked,
Kyle Busch Richmond makes a mistake. Is it easier to handle if you get out and hear his
interview and just be like, yeah, I just got in there, you know, I just got in there deep and
got loose. And I didn't mean to do it, you know, just, just racing hard. Is it easier to hear
that than it is the, well, a bad place for a tire to go. Well, I was bought a, you know,
the pan was dragging and I hit him. Like, is it easier just to hear a guy
say, man, I just messed up. So yes, 100%. If, if you get wrecked or, or you get used up, or if,
you know, if a guy squeezes you into the wall off the turn four, you want to, and you want the guy,
you, so I'll say this, like, you and the other guy on the racetrack,
you know, you both know exactly what happened. And so I will go back to Indianapolis with
Amarola and Austin Hill. They both know more. They both know more than anyone in the world
exactly what really went on on that racetrack. They know the truth. We all speculate. We all have
opinions, but them two guys know between themselves what happened. And so when you get to the pits
or you get to the garage, you want to look over at that guy and you want him to tell you the
truth because you know he knows and you know he, he knows, you know, you know, there's
no hiding. And so you want the guy to go, all right, man, or I might, I might did it on purpose.
Piss me off, man. I regret it. You know, so it's much easier to that. That is the way forward.
That's the way to keep things from festering. And, and it's hard to do it. I'll, I'll,
you know, this is the, this is some of the best advice I read somewhere. Somebody gave it to me.
When you're faced with a path, right? A choice. Do I walk up to this guy and apologize and tell
him I screwed up? Or do I just not do it? Do I, you know, do I just go get on the plane,
go home? Hope he, hope he forgets about it. I don't know. Maybe I'll text him. I don't know.
The harder path is usually the right choice. The more difficult, uncomfortable, challenging
decision is usually the one you should choose. And so, it sucks to begin with, but it's better
long term. Yeah. If you're picking the convenient route, it's usually not going to be the better
decision in that, in most cases. And so, you're kind of avoiding the real problem. Yeah.
That's sometimes how I convince myself to do the right thing. I go, all right,
which one's the harder thing to do here? All right, then that must mean that I need to do that one
because that, that's the uncomfortable one. That's the one I'd rather not do, but that's probably what
they deserve. You know. And like you were saying like these drivers think, oh, I'm not going to
be long term teammates with these guys. And that might be true. But if you want to get to
where you're going to be, ultimately, you're going to be racing against these guys or
the cup drivers already watching this anyways. Yeah. And they're going to operate off of
this is how you are. So like, yeah, they're not your teammates, but I think you need to
operate as if you have a future. Listen, one thing that I find so strange about teammates
and at this level, and it's probably similar at the cup level too.
So, and we see this a ton in F1. You know, I've been in a lot of situations where my
teammates were friends like me and Truex. We were freaking pals. Me and Mikey were pals.
Me and Jimmy Jeff, Casey Mears, Casey Kane, you know, I was always, I always got along
with my teammates and I never looked across the garage and was envious or jealous.
Um, they should, they pushed me and they, they, they, but they, you know, I just always got
along with my teammates. The thing that's perplexing to me and so surprising, honestly,
is that our teammates often in these scenarios look at each other as hurdles or obstacles or
competition, which I don't truly, I don't truly understand. And I, you're starting to see that
kind of more in NASCAR, whereas it, you know, I don't know. I mean, I find that really interesting
as to why our guys, particularly guys here at Junior Merch Sports, why they don't
gravitate toward each other. You know, we're all here trying to figure this out. They're
trying to win this guy. They're all trying to win. Why don't, why doesn't that magnetize them together?
Is it because there's only limited seats available each year and you're like, well, they are,
they're, they're not fighting each other for those seats. They're not, they're not competing.
They're not competing against each other to stay here or be here next year.
They're own independent, but they're competing for cup seats, potentially.
Not against each other. Not really. If there's only, let's say there's two seats available.
Yeah, nobody, they're not, it's, I mean, he's kind of, he is a little, I mean, you do want to,
you do want to be the higher prospect than your team. That's a very general way of looking
at it. If a cup team wants you, they're going to call you your ass. All right. And if
you're, if you're trying to get that call, you need to be winning races
and not dicking around with your teammates, not running into the, you know, each other on the
racetrack. And so, you know, when you, when you're bouncing off your own damn teammate,
no cup owner is going to look at that and go, yeah, I need that in my organization.
Yeah, but that's not how you look at it. Sometimes in the seat though.
Well, that's how fricking owners look at it. Or you were one minute,
you're worried about what the owners think and the next you're not.
Yeah.
Pick your, pick your side.
I agree.
You know, we got, uh,
It didn't sound like TJ was agreeing with you, Dale.
He does. We were trying to figure out, Tyler Reddick joining the Dale Jr.
download here. Congratulations, three in a row.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I want, we were sitting here having a conversation around why
it might, why do teammates at the, and you were in this, you worked here at
Junior Rudder Sports, you worked at RCR. Why is it that at that level,
the teammates don't create the rapport that you see at the cup level?
Like you and Bubba Wallace are each other's biggest fan, right?
If you can't do it, he wants to, you know, you want to see him doing vice versa,
and y'all strive, y'all push each other.
You see it in other organizations where the teammates somewhat,
you know, gravitate together and work together to get better.
And, uh, at the expinity level, we have a hard time getting our guys to
look at each other as teammates, as assets.
They look at each other as competitors and actually race each other harder
than they race the rest of the competition.
You lived that in this very building.
What is the, what is the deal?
I'm trying to figure out, are we talking about a situation that happened here at Kota?
No, no, no, we're just talking about teammates in general.
Well, yeah, well, okay.
Well, it could be, yes.
Corey Day, you know, Corey Day got into Conner Zillich and wrecked him at the end of the race,
and then Rajah and Quaple had a little, a little issue that cost both of them 10-15 spots.
And so, and it's, and it's been a constant sort of challenge at this level
and in our building at times to have our teammates not race each other hard, right?
And try to, you know, try to create some rapport on the racetrack.
And I know that you, you had a lot of experience in the Xfinity series,
and I thought you were a great teammate,
but you probably had some guys that maybe do it, you know,
didn't actually practice being a teammate very well or weren't it,
you know, weren't great examples of good teammates.
So, you know, what, what is, what is the mentality at this, at this,
at this level that makes you so sort of, you know, hardheaded?
Well, I think naturally to be a race car driver,
you got to be a little bit hardheaded.
But yeah, you know, I'm trying to think of the things that play into that, you know.
Are you worried about the couple level getting that call, getting that opportunity?
Are you so like the blinders are on and you're like,
I don't need, I don't worry about team,
I don't need a teammate right now.
I need just focus on me.
Man, again, it's, maybe it's a little unfair,
but maybe it's my opinion, I think a part of it.
Maybe it's just maturity, honestly.
Um, I don't know.
I feel like I was always a little, I don't know.
I do feel like I was a little bit different than most when it comes to this.
I've, if I've ever been on a side of the fence when it comes to racing teammates,
I've always been on the side of, you know, how do I put this?
I go, even in, even in situations where I probably shouldn't
or it's, or it's cost me, I've always been on the side of give too much,
give too much room, you know, if, if, um, you know,
if someone's running me down, that's teammate of mine.
I mean, I completely get out of the way sometimes to the point where it cost me a
couple of spots.
I feel like I've always been on that side of it.
Um, yes, there's been moments where I've had to race my teammates for something.
There was, um, you know, a situation I can't remember the exact year,
um, where I've been on the other side of this where we,
I mean, we didn't have contact, but it was, it was a,
it was a hard one for me because it was my last year at BKR, um,
Hamrick was in the, in the playoffs.
I missed the playoffs, my second full-time year.
TJ, you remember that?
I do.
And it was Vegas.
And I don't think we'd want to race all year, right?
And it was at the tail end of the year, we're up front, we're,
you know, we're racing for the win with my teammate, Daniel Hamrick,
and he's in the playoffs.
And I'm like, this is tough, but I really need this win.
You know what I mean?
So I've, I've occasionally been on that other side of it.
Um, but yeah, I don't know.
Sometimes I feel like, and it's crazy.
If you look at other sports, I feel like teammates, this teammate thing,
the rivalries amongst teammates is more common than it is in NASCAR.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, certainly I feel like you do see that, um,
more times than not out of teammates, if you will, in like the truck series
or, or as you mentioned the rally auto parts series, I don't know.
I feel like it's kind of case by case, but certainly you're, you're right.
I feel like it does the heads do tend to butt more.
You know, you think of the things that happen between Sheldon Creed and,
and Austin Hill or, um, even, you know, Jesse Love and,
and Austin button heads at times, Austin Hill button heads.
As you mentioned, your situation's over there.
Um, I wish I could put my finger on it.
Um, my best speculation is that they feel like it,
it may be as simple as when I think about this, it might just be as simple as
when the cars are that good or you're, and you're all competing for wins.
If it, it may just be a situation where as the driver, you feel like,
if I'm going to win today, I'm going to have to beat my teammate.
You know, heads up.
And yeah, these situations have happened, not in the lead, right?
But maybe that's the mentality that, that the drivers have is like,
I have to, I have to withhold or I have to race my teammates extra hard
because when we get down the end of the season, as we get ready for the chase,
that's who I'm going to be fighting for, you know, these one or two points
week in and week out could be 10 or 15, uh, when it resets for the chase.
That's, I don't, I don't necessarily agree with it, but I think that's what's going on.
I mean, me and, me and Baba, since we've been here, we've always been really good about
working together.
You know, Riley's done a great job with that as well since he's come on board.
Um, I don't know, I've always tried to really go out of my way to be a really good teammate,
even, you know, when I was at RCR with Austin Dillon, I would try and go above and beyond to
be the best teammate possible.
I don't know, I've always just tried to stay on that side of it.
And I know I'm known for racing hard on the racetrack, but I always try to be
super respectful to even to people that aren't my teammates.
And, um, I don't know, I haven't been in that situation much, but when it has happened,
I've just tried to put it to, you know, put it to bed, if you will, as fast as possible,
because I don't want, I don't want something lingering and growing into something.
It really shouldn't even be for sure.
Even in the trucks, you were like that, like going up through the trucks.
That's how you race.
And that's how we raced with teammates, even from the very beginning when you first came in.
One thing I wanted to ask you about is we had a segment earlier in the show is we talked
about just flipping a switch in the car.
Like what makes you so mad that you just want to run somebody,
you know, we were talking about a host of R and Custer getting into it.
And like some of the guys seemed like you can touch them a little bit.
And as soon as they get beside you, they just, they ran me off the road.
Like I know really early in your career, you had a, you had a couple instances
like that. Maybe we're like, what makes you out of it? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's a good way to put it.
But like what makes you flip that switch real quick?
Is it just the, the young, you know, do you think it's just maturity?
I feel like for me, I mean, it still happens, but yes, the frequency of that has, has gone down.
Like you never said anything on the radio and it just happened.
I'm like, Oh, what did you do here?
I did after the fact. That's why I got in trouble.
The caution comes out and then I said, man, I hope that wasn't too obvious.
I think I literally word for word said that.
And I think I don't even know what you said, but like it was in the tone of your
voice that you're like, Oh, we're, we're in big trouble.
Yeah. We're talking Pocono. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I think like, like for me, that, that Pocono situation years ago,
or like me when I've lost it like that, it's been a situation where I feel like I've,
you know, when the driver flips that switch in my experiences, it feels like you're,
you're out there, you've ran a clean race, you've done everything right.
You've raced respectfully and then you just get ran out of the way or put up in the wall
or just run over for absolutely no reason. I feel like that's when the flip just goes.
But, you know, yeah, as you get older, I think you just try to understand or put
things in perspective. Like the most recent, the most recent for me that this happened is
we're at Martinsville, we're out of the, we're out of the playoffs last year.
And I've been just dying to get a top 10 at Martinsville so bad.
We've, we've had speed at times. We just haven't put the whole race together.
And this Martinsville looked like it was finally going to happen.
We're going to run 10th and we get to the last three or four laps. We're, we're in 10th.
And I just, I mean, the last three laps, I had terrible corners. I mean, I missed my marks,
everything. And Josh Berry is just breathing down my neck. And, you know, I go into turn one
and two and he's probably like car off and I miss, I miss the bottom and one and two.
And I go into three and he's like, he's not like there. He's a car with,
he's a car length back. And he just, I mean, I get it. I get it now. But in the moment,
I was so mad. He, from one car length back, just drives in there,
used me up to be flying up the track. He got 10th. I didn't,
you know, I, we take the checkered flag and I, I damn near wrecked his car.
I, I thankfully stopped myself, but it was almost very similar to like,
I think the mayor seat deal on the O'Reilly Auto Parts side.
Sam wrecked him after the checkered. So I've got Josh to retire,
is off the ground after the, after the checkered flag is out. And I'm like,
I'm going to send him. And I'm like, wait, wait, no, no, no, like stop, like,
this was for 10th. Like, and it wasn't for a race win, but this is for 10th.
Like a 10th meant a lot to me at this time, this point in time in the year.
I know it means a lot for Josh. So it's like, all right, calm down, like move on.
And shouldn't miss that corner. Exactly. Correct. And that's,
that's like for me when it, when it came back to why,
how did I even let him get to my bumper? Right. And same thing like it,
it's along the same lines, but it was for a lot more at the Bristol dirt race
in 20, I don't know a year, but like, but for me as a dirt racer, it was the same thing.
Like, you know, it was my job to drive away from Brisco and not even give him the
opportunity to make that move. And, you know, he just ran better laps
than me in the closing laps. And he, he was there. Like, yes, he,
you know, he ran into me. We both spin out, but like that doesn't happen
if I just keep the gap and end the race. So I've always tried to be on that side of it.
Yes, I've had my moments where I've almost lost it, but again, it's like what you're racing for,
right? Do you want to be put out of the car for a week? Do you want, I mean,
just all those things, right? Like at some point, you got to defend yourself,
but there's like a way to go about it. I've just the once, the couple of times that I've retaliated
right throughout my career, it's like I've gotten out of the car afterwards and been like, well,
that wasn't very smart. So I've just gotten away from it. Looking at the points, man,
after three races, three wins, 70 over your teammate, Bubba Wallace. You could take
a couple off here if you want. You know what we were actually, I don't know if you've
allowed yourself to really study it much, but we were looking at the top 10 and you do have
Blaney, Elliot, Legano in there and nothing against the other competitors, but some of the
guys that we would have expected to be competing for the championship are much, much further down
the line and some over 100 points behind you. Talking about Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell,
and Kyle Larson. Kyle Larson's in 15th, 113 points out. So I, you know, I'm sure you
guys are having conversations about the position you're in, how fortunate you are, and what you're,
you know, what your path forward needs to look like. And I've said this to, I've said this so
many times that I believe people are tired of hearing it, but I feel like that if you're in
the top three going in to the chase, you got a damn nice shot at a championship and anybody
outside of the top five has a really, really, really slim chance at getting anything done. So
you're, you know, even though the field size in the chase is large, you're really, if you're a
top three guy, only racing everyone in that top five if everything goes smoothly. So you're,
you're one of those guys, Denny said it on his podcast that he thinks you're,
you're almost a lock for top three. I would agree. I would agree. So, you know,
is it foot on the grass? Continue to kick some ass, continue to win races.
You got to feel pretty nice, I suppose, about where you sit in this new point system.
What is the conversation like in the shop?
Yeah, you know, I think we're going to continue to have more of them. You know,
we've kind of just talked about what's, what's happened up until this point.
I think for us, you know, it won't necessarily happen or wait, what is today?
No, well, yeah, we will, I think we will talk about a little bit more today at the end of the day,
looking ahead to Phoenix. But yeah, I think just, I guess my opinion, because I haven't
necessarily talked about, I mean, we've been working on Phoenix for a while in Vegas,
but we haven't like gone over the plan for Phoenix yet. But I would imagine it's,
you know, kind of like, as you, as you mentioned, has how Denny put it, you know,
we're in the spot where, you know, if you get a caution with three or four laps to go,
literally his words were, you know, you get that caution with three or four to go on the stage.
A lot of those guys around you are probably thinking, we need these stage points. We're
going to be in that spot to where it's like, hey, you know, we can give up four or five spots
or four or five points here. It's okay. You know what I mean? We can give up four or five
points, hit pit road now and then cycle to the front. And oh man, look at that,
45 is up front again, you know? So, yeah, we're in that kind of a spot where we can,
we're afforded that, you know what I mean? And I always have driven in a way where I don't
leave anything on the table on the racetrack. That's a fact. Yes. And whether it's been TJ or
whoever it's been over the years, like just pull back a little bit, right? It's that much easier
for me to just pull back a little bit in those moments, whether, you know, if I get slide into
second and I'm running, it's like, man, you know, I'll let it, I'll let it come to me. Maybe
I'll get the lead. You were definitely one that you had to slow down a little bit. Yeah.
Yeah. Still probably to this day, but you know, we get slide in tenth, I'm just
running tenth. It's like, all right, I mean, I'd like to get seventh or eighth, but like,
I'll let the race come to me. And so we're kind of in that spot where, you know, we can kind of let
things play out naturally, maybe, you know, take advantage of people racing a little bit more
desperately trying to close that gap. I don't know if they will or if they'll take a smooth
approach, but we're kind of in this really good spot where, you know, we can kind of just
take a second, look at what's ahead of us and kind of have just calm, clear thinking
when we make these decisions that these races coming up, you know, it's not like we gotta,
man, we got to get one more spot right here on this run, you know, we want to get that spot,
but we're kind of in this spot where I think we can race smart. And, you know, last in 2024,
when we kind of got it rolling there, that was something that I really enjoyed.
You know, I, again, I love taking the risks and running really, really hard, but
we're in that spot where I can just pull it back a little bit and maybe save something for
later. You know, I like being able to race like that. In the car, it's just a lot more calm too,
so we're kind of in this good spot as it looks right now to kind of be able to take advantage of
that. And I think truly, I truly think it's just going to help us run even better, honestly,
as this gets going. Yeah, are we starting to understand where the value is? So that
as a broadcaster, the conversations that I have with the booth that I work with,
LaTart and Adam, as we're going through these races, we are trying to understand,
all right, how much, how valuable, how valuable are the stage points comparable to last year's
system? How, obviously, the wins are incredibly valuable looking at your,
you know, your point spread to Bubba after three races. How can you articulate
what the difference is this year with stage points versus last year and how important it is to get them?
Not to the T yet, but I mean, I believe I saw it in yesterday, sorry, in Sunday's race,
you know, stage one, there was a lot more takers for those stage points than
I thought there was going to be. I think as a group, we thought less people would take
the stage points there. So I think for now that kind of answers the question. We'll see
how it continues to go throughout the year. But like at the real course is certainly
there's a great opportunity if you're a 10th place car to be able to grab stage points.
Yes, you're going to bear yourself a little bit, but you know, Ty Gibbs,
there was a couple others, I mean, Ty Gibbs comes to top mind. I think there was others
that did the did a similar thing. They're able to, you know, stay out through the stages, get
stage points. I think Bubba even did it and then still claw back, claw their way back to like a good
finish. So it definitely seems like the field just three races in is prioritizing the stage
points a little bit more. But from my side of it, honestly, it is truly crazy, right? Like,
I mean, 45 of the points that I have at my total are the bonus points, if you will,
from winning the race. And you know, we talk, you know, there's, I'm sure every team's talked
about it. We've certainly talked about it, like, okay, how's, how's it going to look where you need
to be, right? Talking, it's going to be super important to be top three. As the chase starts
to have a decent shot at this, but it's like, man, if someone gets hot and pops off a bunch
of wins, I mean, it's just been three races, we all started from zero at Daytona. And
it's just been three races and look at the points lead that we have. That's a part that
it's like going into this season. I mean, you never know who's going to do what, but like,
we've won three races. The only three. I know, but like, but in the course of three races,
look how many points someone can accumulate over the field. And I know we get to like,
you know, our, our mile and a half or short tracks, like some of these, some of these,
you know, big spreads of points won't necessarily happen. You know, it is super
speedway racing that we have, but still people are going to have bad days. People are going to
have good days. And I definitely thought the field on the point side was going to stay a lot
closer throughout the, the, the season, if you will. But yeah, when someone gets hot,
they're going to get a lot of points. Yeah. I was, I was curious, starting at Phoenix,
taking, taking a snapshot of the next, you know, three to five weeks and kind of seeing
where everybody is and what that looks like comparable to these three races,
be interesting to see. Man, it's been a privilege having you on the show over the last couple of
weeks. Congratulations on the record three in a row to start a season. No one's ever done that.
I love little nuanced records like crazy. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's fun to accumulate those
kind of little, little records throughout your career and you're on your way to doing,
doing that and many more awesome start of the year. Thanks for your time today.
I know you got a lot of things to do. So hey, we're trying to enjoy this new point deal.
Can you not ruin it? We are enjoying it anymore. Can we go off?
I mean, it's crazy. I've already kind of seen it start. We were, we were celebrating on the
front stretch and there was a William Byron fan in the stands there. I mean,
absolutely losing his mind, flipping us off, crotch chopping us. He threw his hat. He threw
his hat. He thought he was going to throw his hat about a hundred feet. He threw it about
30 feet, hit the ground. He was so mad. And I, I don't know. I don't, I don't listen on the radio
that much, but I scroll through. There's a lot of people not happy. Hey, I'm not used to it.
Enjoy it. This is a reason, this is a great reason for them not to be happy for you.
They were already, they were already people. So in the, I will tell you this, you didn't know
that there were critics and they were always there, right? But when you start winning,
that's when they start to start to make noise. And I'll say this too.
If they're not talking about you, that's when you got a problem.
That's a real deal. Like if you're, if you're, if you're invisible out there and nobody cares
what you're doing, that's a real issue. So like Danny, who's Danny? I mean,
Hey, what do you call them? Hey, 23. Cause I see what, hey, 23. Maybe that's
you cause he's 23rd in points. Oh 20, the 11th is 23rd. There'll be zero shots. 2311. That's
perfect. Oh man. I have a feeling he's going to cause way out of that. He'll be, he will be
fine guys down there. Well, it's going to be fun to watch. It's going to be so fun to watch.
It is. All right, buddy. Thank you, man. All right. Before we get to our next topic,
I want to tell you guys about a new show here at dirty mode media. It's called Sons
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All right. We can't wait for that to come out. The first episode drops March the fourth.
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Hey, there's a couple of quick announcements. iRacing Arcade is out today.
Yeah. iRacing Arcade is out today, so check that out. You got a code on PC.
I think it's coming out for consoles later, but iRacing Arcade is available.
It's a very fun sort of, yeah, arcade version. Yeah, just an arcade. Yeah, a lot of fun.
And also, we're going to announce that I'm racing in Nashville Fairgrounds, April 11th,
and I'm driving the Bass Pro shops car. I'm going to do the tire test here in a couple
days. So I'll have a better idea of how fast, how fast it is. Speaking of fast, you know,
it's going to be fast. The Indy cars at Phoenix this week. Oh, they run Saturday before they were
out there. Yeah, I know. I think it's a very positive thing for Indy car and NASCAR to be
at the same racetrack on the same weekend. And I don't really think it should matter
who feels like who headline.
This Ask Junior segment is brought to you by Xfinity. Xfinity is waving the red flag on
internet price hikes. All right. Xfinity is not going to raise the price of their internet.
All right. And you can get the speed and reliability that you need in the Wi-Fi
at your home. You'll be locked in at Ace at the same price for five years. So like what, you know,
that's a hell of a deal because everything gets more expensive, but you're going to pay the same
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you more speed because that's just what happens. Infrastructure gets better.
They do. They run some new lines on your street. Whatever. I mean, this happened to me. They don't
know where. They don't know I got this damn house and my internet keeps getting faster. They keep
giving me notices and emails. You're getting more speed. Don't freak out. You're not paying more.
So they don't, that's not in the copy. That's what I add. No surprises. No late yellows.
Just a straight shot to victory lane. And just like that, folks, we've got a winner.
Xfinity. Imagine that. The copy is very, you know, cheeky and a lot of race puns,
but Xfinity Wi-Fi is straight badass. And I've had it at my house for years and I don't ever
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lines out there that are ran on this road have been there forever. And there's tons of, you know,
it's kind of in a beach area and there's a lot of storms and stuff. It's always up. I'm very
thankful. They don't, they have sped up my internet, but I'm just a normal ass customer on the street
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same price. I think that's a hell of a thing. So, all right. I think I sold it. You did a good job.
Surely somebody's going to get some Xfinity Wi-Fi after that. So, this first question comes from
Dallas Dunn in the chat. Would you rather live the rest of your life without beer or video games?
Oh, video games. Tough one though. That choice. I've got to drink beer.
Eventually though, I'm, you know, I imagine there's going to be a day
at some point where video games would be the one I would prefer. I don't know. You know,
it's tough because I'm probably going to drink beer till I'm 70 at the least. And I'm probably not
going to be a gamer at 70. I mean, I didn't even play video games for a while until NCAA
came back out. So, right. Yeah, video game. I could do without video games. Yeah. Keep the
beer. I need, yeah. But tough though. I mean, I love video games. It is tough.
TJ's going to say beer. I don't know, man. It's tough. I do think if it's different stages,
you could. TJ, you could just go back to drinking your, you know, your little wine
collisions. Oh, God. Yeah. You could do a little Seagram wine. Listen, I mean,
I'm not going to lie. The first, for like the first two weekends I moved to North Carolina,
I went to the, me and D Neal had a refrigerator and it didn't have anything in it that I would
drink. And we went to the, to the grocery store and I'm like, I'm going to eat a six pack of
them smear it off ice. Give me a Zima. Yeah. And that lasted about, that lasted about
maybe two weeks. And I'm like, I can't do this anymore. And it was, it's been,
it was beer from there on out. TJ, when's the last time you had four beers in one day?
Oh, I don't have a problem drinking. I mean, you,
he, I've got a picture of him and Mr. C's in Key West at three o'clock in the morning.
Oh yeah. And it is hilarious. Even, even like we were ordering drinks, like I was drinking too
to like, I was drinking them fast. Yeah, man. Like, he has his days. He'll get,
he'll get on the throttle. Yeah. What's TJ like drunk? I'm usually happy. He is a happy
drunk. Yeah, I'm a happy drunk. He's fun. I need to experience TJ drunk. Yeah, that's my
Yeah. All right. So our next question. We need to do a podcast drunk. Oh, I would love to. You
know, when they had drunk history? Yes. I was like, man, I kind of would like to do that show.
Drunk history was freaking awesome. That'd be awesome. Wasn't it? And I mean,
those people were legit drunk. All right, let's do one later. That wouldn't know,
you know, you kind of, you're watching it and you're like, I'm waiting for somebody to
sort of trip up here and give up the ghost, right? They ain't really as drunk as they're
playing to be, but they were. Drunk history was a good show. Let's tape an episode
a little later in the day just once and we'll see how it goes. All right. We'll tape an episode
later in the day once and we can have some drinks and see how it goes. A little pilot?
Yeah. A pilot for our drunk podcast? Yeah. Next one, next question comes from
our good friends at, I think Xfinity actually sent this one in. Dale, do you
bring your fire suit with you to races just in case some of these would get you in the car?
No, dude, I'm going to tell you how close this, how I came really close to my Snyder episode.
We were at Atlanta and I am in the booth. We're about, we're going to be live in 15 minutes
and Michael Annette says that he can't race. I think this was around when Michael had the
broken leg and he was just like, man, I can't do it. I don't feel good. And it was last minute
when he, he decided this and LW and Kelly called me and they're like, Hey, can you drive the car?
And I'm like, Oh, I don't have a helmet. I don't have a suit or anything. I'm up
in the booth with my tie on Mike headset going live in 10, 15 minutes. I'm like, what am I,
I gotta, what are my bosses going to say? Are they going to be okay with me just totally
prioritizing that and not being available for the job they're paying me to do in car reporter?
That ain't going to be enough. You know, that ain't that anyways.
I was like, Hey, get BJ McLeod. They couldn't find BJ and they found Austin Dillon and
he jumped in the car last minute. Like literally right as they're getting ready to start the race,
Austin Dillon jumped in the car and raced it. And I regret not doing doing it, but I don't know
I'd have had to wear someone else's helmet. I didn't have my helmet. I don't want to wear
another person's helmet. It's all nasty and smelly. It's not going to fit. Well,
I don't know how other people are, but I wore the same helmet all year.
Interesting. And I would not have, you know, and I don't want you wearing my helmet.
Yeah, there's no way. And the fire suit, like it's Connor Hall. We went testing my late
mile somewhere and Connor Hall threw one of my spare helmets on and I got there and
he was like, yeah, man, use your spare helmet. I'm like, it's yours now, pal.
You keep it. I don't want it back. But I, you know, that's just how I am.
That's like I was at a wedding and a buddy was like, I don't have socks. I forgot.
I'm like here. And he's like, do you want them back? I'm like, no, like those are yours. Burn
them. Whatever you want. That's why we go raise them go-karts. I always bring a helmet.
Yeah. Like you go down for fun. You got to bring them. No, I ain't wearing a spare helmet.
It's my other helmet. Well, yeah, not even a helmet. Those are community helmets.
So I don't know. I, I, I wished I would have done it. I should have done it. I should have raised it.
I can't imagine like, I mean, they saw Snyder like texting getting information on like the
track because it's a road course too. Like it's not just like, oh, getting, you know,
super speeder racing or something. Hey, listen, Bravo to my it for, you know,
what is he going to say? No, of course he's going to say yes. But Bravo for him,
for getting in there, doing the job, getting it back home.
Next question. TJ, has your cool shirt ever failed?
No, no, I've only had to use it. I've only used it like three times.
TJ has a cool shirt that he wears on the booth or on the roof.
Yeah, it's hot up there. Only 90 and above you bring it and use it.
So how effective are they? Because it feels like these fail.
Oh, they're amazing.
I don't. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
They're amazing.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, I saw Sage Carim or somebody on social media said,
man, they, I didn't notice a big difference when I used one.
Such a risk to use one because if it breaks, it's really bad.
It's like wearing a long johns, right?
You know, in a race car, sweat your ass off.
But his must have not worked very well because the chillouts are wildly effective.
I am, so I raced forever with like a little shell fan in my helmet.
We didn't have any cool vests.
Yeah, just blowers.
And it was, you were not comfortable, but it was what it was.
And then we got little cool boxes that blew cool air in the helmet.
And that was just a little better, not a lot.
But, you know, this, this box in the car and it's doing all it can
just to make the air instead of 120 degrees.
It's making the air maybe 95 or 90 degrees.
And then we got these cool vests.
I would say the cool vest is about a 40 degree difference in your core temperature body.
So the cool vest basically is all in your torso.
All right.
So it's not your sleeves.
Yeah, just a shirt.
It's a, it's basically from your chest down to your belly and in your back.
And as soon as you turn it on, you can feel it, it's cold.
It is cool.
And when it's working as designed, it's a massive difference.
And if I raced in the Xfinity or a couple of, I would not run without one,
unless it was maybe 60 degrees outside.
You know, really cool day.
Maybe I wouldn't run one, but I mean, in our, in our instance, you go,
if you go to the beach and sit, stand on the beach, it's hot.
Like we don't, you don't ever go there and stand there and just a sun,
you put on an umbrella or that shade, right?
You go in our spot and you stand up there for, you're up there an hour and a half before the
race.
So you're up there for four plus hours easily.
Pure sun, no shade.
No shade.
And Phoenix is the only spot, the only spotter stand that has shade.
It's the only one that has one of those temporary things up,
but you're up there just baking.
And when we wear them, there's, there's two or three of us to have them.
You don't get at night, you don't, you're not just drained completely.
Like you just feel like, I don't, it's hard to describe the same.
Like you just feel like you're not just running to the ground.
Like you, you retain your fluids throughout the day more and stuff.
And I looked over at Nashville a couple of years ago and Tim Fido,
I remember looking over at Timmy and he had his head hung over the railing and
like a, like a towel hanging on his neck and the caution would come out and
everyone would run back to the cooler, dip their towels.
Everyone was dipping in the same corner.
And I'm like, oh, like, and they're all like wringing them out,
putting them back on their heads and stuff.
And I'm over there just flipping the switch.
And I'm like, oh, this is nice.
I mean, you know what it feels like when you turn on the first time I did it,
I was like, holy cow, this is amazing.
Yeah. Very cool.
Next question comes from Go Gators.
Smashing pumpkins or Pearl Jam?
Pearl Jam.
Yeah.
That's a close one.
I learned, I played a lot of drums when I was young to smashing pumpkins.
Man, they're both really good though.
Yeah. So good.
I remember when smashing pumpkins first CD came out and how much I listened to that.
Got a late 1979 winner.
No shrub rush.
What was it?
Maybe.
What's it called?
What?
Cherub Rock.
Say that again, James.
Cherub.
Cherub.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
I wasn't sure how to pronounce it, but that was that was like
their sound, his sound, the sound of his voice, the sound of their guitar, their music was so
unique to anything else and grunge and all that stuff was was on, it was at the peak.
Yeah, it was big.
And then I remember going, I was thinking about this like literally a couple of days ago.
I remember going to the mall, I was working as a, I was working as a whole change mechanic
at dealership and I remember going to the mall in Hickory because dad's dealerships was in Newton
and buying versus when it came out and walking back to my truck and putting it in and immediately
starting to play it.
You don't know how fun that was when an album or a record or a CD tape, whatever it was.
I think I was listening to sets in my truck.
They were always hard to open the plastic on them.
Yeah, sure.
But you knew when this, you knew when the set was going to release, when it did, you
took your lunch break and went to the mall, went into the mall, went into the record store,
went and bought it.
You walked over there.
You'd pick that thing out of the rack and it had this little plastic thing on it.
So you couldn't walk out of the store with it.
You take it over and they'd have to like key it out of this plastic.
And you'd walk out of the store, rip that thing apart, rip it open and stick it in your
cassette player, turn on your truck and your entire life was different.
Like from that moment forward, that Pearl Jam record or whatever it might be
would change your whole disposition.
And now you're rocking, and you run up down the road playing that thing from forward
to back.
Over and over again.
To back.
Yeah.
Front to back.
What was your first CD?
I remember the first time I heard black from Pearl Jam.
I was, I thought I knew like all of the hits.
I was a big Nirvana fan, love Pearl Jam.
But I hadn't listened to the whole 10 album for whatever reason.
And I remember riding, I remember being in a pickup truck.
Hank Parker Jr. was driving when he played black for the first time.
He's like, Hey man, you heard this one?
And I was like, Damn, this is good.
I mean, I've got this record.
I've got this out.
I got this set.
And I remember the first time I heard release.
Release is the last song on the 10 album for Pearl Jam.
Release is one of my favorite songs of all time.
And just an incredible song.
Sorry.
And so I was, I was going to school at Mitchell Community College taking
automotives and we, I had a, my best friend, Tommy was in the
class and there was this other kid and he was in a band.
And we went to a strip mall in Statesville to hear his band play.
And they played release.
And it was, and I hadn't heard, I hadn't heard release and they played it.
And it was so good.
And I went up to him and I was like, what was that song y'all played?
It was amazing because that's release.
It's the last song on the 10 album.
I was like, really?
I went and listened to it.
You never got to it.
I went and listened to my truck.
I know, I'm like, what in the world?
I pride myself on like being on the front end like that.
But I remember, I remember the very minute I first heard smells like teen spirit.
I was standing in a buddy's living room and I went to his house to pick him up.
We're running an errand somewhere, probably going to the mall to do something goofy.
And we were getting ready to walk out the door and he goes, hey, stop.
Have you heard this song?
MTV was on the TV and they were getting ready to start the video.
I remember when that came out.
And I was like, no, I hadn't heard this.
He's like, you got to hear it.
And we stood at the door looking at his TV for three and a half minutes to listen to that video.
And it was awesome.
My life changed completely in that moment.
Do you remember your first three CDs that you bought or first CDs?
I had, well, I had records.
Yeah.
I know I'm saying like I went like I had some tapes.
I didn't have records, but I might have a record.
I had a Beach Boys record.
I remember my very first record.
It was Hold Me By Fleetwood Mac.
Mine was Beach Boys.
Great.
It was a 45 single.
My first Beach Boys, but my first three CDs.
I remember I got my first CD player and it was Rex and FX, Stone Tubble Pilots, and UB40.
Damn.
My first three CDs.
Yeah.
I love that, man.
I mean, music, I know this.
I know I'm not unique in this way.
Music obviously in my life plays a massive role.
Like I listen to music every moment I can fit it into the day.
If I'm in my pickup truck driving the kids to school, we got the radio on.
We're listening to music.
We're curating the soundtrack for the next NASCAR console game right now.
And I love being involved in stuff like that.
So it's, yeah, I have a lot of memories of like I heard.
I remember when I heard this song, this song, this song.
I remember where I was, what I was doing.
This next question comes from our friends at Lionel Racing.
And we're going to do a rank it in three.
How would you rank the mini forms of a potato?
So like French fries, mashed potatoes, agar, and French fries, French fries is one.
Do you have a favorite kind of French fry style?
I should say.
Um, I mean, the curly fries at RB are pretty good.
So I like, um, no, not really.
I mean, you know, I put a little bit of salt on there.
Yep.
Every place has their own mix and they kind of separate each other.
Fries, French fries.
Yep.
One.
Number two is baked potato with butter.
It's hard to beat that.
Yep.
A good old baked potato.
No other toppings?
No.
A lot of like some bacon, some cheese.
Nope.
I just like baked potato with butter.
All right.
And a steak with a one, those two things together.
I mean, that is a solid meal.
Sometimes a one, his potato is a little bit and it's so good.
Not complaining.
Number three is potato chip.
Ketchup flavored.
Only in Canada.
Yeah.
Dude with the ketchup flavor.
You have no idea what you're missing out.
So in Canada, they have, we don't have just like, oh, you know, we have,
they don't have, they have ketchup flavored potato chips.
They have us in America.
Do they?
Yeah.
Yeah, but I don't think it's like, I haven't seen this, the ones we had at Hickory.
Yeah.
We're good.
Yeah.
Like real good.
A buddy of mine that lives in Canada brings me down the five alive and all the other good things.
Those are so good.
Well, he brings the ketchup flavored chips.
And so in my mind, it's a Canada thing.
But that's fair.
Yeah.
So it's just like eating a French fry.
With ketchup.
It is exactly the same taste.
It's good.
You let me know when they send you a bag and I'll try one.
It's really good.
Yeah.
Listen, I put, I usually just put ketchup on my plate and then put stuff on it.
Like that.
I'm a ketchup guy.
So.
Are you put ketchup on your eggs?
Oh, yeah.
That's that's disgusting.
Easily.
You've gone to, but that's like a common thing.
I don't really love eggs.
I put some salt on them and I'll eat them.
But I, eggs, I'm our, me and eggs are just kind of eh.
I could have eggs every day.
Yeah, I don't mind.
Eggs are good.
Because you can, there's so many ways to cook them.
Yeah.
You can make it up.
I agree.
There's ways to cook them, but.
And ketchup goes on all of them.
I wish I loved eggs more than I do.
I don't love eggs as much as I wish.
Are you a breakfast person though?
I'm not.
Now, yeah, if I could eat what I wanted, but I can't, I can't eat what I want.
I can't eat French toast every day.
I love French toast.
It is the premiere.
That's like the first thing I learned how to cook.
I was so proud of myself.
Me and Amy started dating.
Dip it in there.
I'm like, you know, you, you wait till I cook you some French toast.
I thought I was gonna just.
That was your Michelin star chef over here.
Yeah.
French toast was the main way to a breakfast.
My, my life hack for French toast.
Once I cooked her the French toast she was in.
That's what I thought.
I got her.
Because I, I knew how to do it.
So I get the pepperage farm French toast flavored bread.
So then all you have to do is dip it in the egg wash.
Throw it on the skill.
You don't have to do anything else.
Do you know that you, have you ever tried instead of using egg wash?
Have you ever tried vanilla ice cream?
No, but.
You need to.
You got my attention.
If you want to make French toast that'll blow your socks off,
knock your socks off.
I mean, I can see that.
Use ice cream, vanilla ice cream.
I will report back.
I mean, it's all vanilla ice cream has got all the same ingredients.
That's right.
But it kind of caramelizes as well in the pan with all the sugar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Next question.
Well, that's it.
Oh, that's all.
Yeah.
Well, we'll talk, we'll talk to you again about Xfinity.
They're waving the red flag on price hikes.
Red flag.
Red flag is out.
Green flag is back out for savings.
Um, Xfinity Wi-Fi, they'll give you this.
You know, they'll lock you in at the same price for five years.
The hell of a deal.
It's great Wi-Fi service.
Yeah.
Straight to victory lane.
And just like that, folks, we have a winner.
Xfinity, imagine that.
Losing a tire, running out of gas, wrecking a teammate.
You never know what's going to happen.
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Lace your bets, ladies and gentlemen.
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Hey everybody, it's another segment of dirty mode dough here.
We got Russell here.
Russell, what's that?
How's it going?
It's going pretty good.
Tim's is here.
Hey, what's up?
Travis, he's still here.
All right.
I've got my FanDuel app open because this segment of dirty mode dough
is brought to you by FanDuel.
And I've got a little parley right here for you.
A little saucy parley.
It's March.
Yes, it's March.
It's time for some basketball.
It's time to win some money.
It's time to grind it out.
And we're going to come from behind.
We're going to get our balance back in the good year.
Had a good one last night.
Yep.
I got a parley for you.
St. John's, Virginia, Florida, Virginia Tech, Louisville, Illinois.
Hell yeah.
Minus 263.
Minus 26 for the love of Jesus.
We're going to win.
All right.
So I've got, I've got one that is three legs.
That is plus money.
It's going to lose.
I win.
You'll lose tomorrow.
I have more money tomorrow.
You'll have less.
Give me a team.
You guys bet on that.
I need to be, I need to bet on.
So I always win.
I have Tennessee, Texas Tech, Kansas.
Texas Tech sounds like the winner.
Plus 105.
Wow.
Huge massive difference.
My gosh.
What am I doing?
What am I thinking?
We'll see who's wins.
Listen, yours might win, but it might.
Oh, mine, mine might win.
I'm just, I'm letting the folks know that we don't.
I'm going to win a light, nice little bump.
I'm going to get a little bump here.
If you say so.
I'm going to win 30 cents on the dollar.
That's pretty good.
36 cents on the dollar.
38 cents on the dollars.
What I'm going to win.
We cannot.
We do not condone this folks.
What the hell?
I mean, that's all we just need to let people know that like return.
That's not good betting advice.
You don't get to determine that.
Tim's.
I wouldn't bet it, but.
All right.
Hey, it wins.
Thank you.
I like taking risks.
Yeah, wins are wins.
But you like taking risks.
I like taking risks.
I think every, every time you put money on the line, it's a risk.
That is true.
But I like more return when I take my risks.
But you lose a lot.
That's very true as well.
So I don't need to lose.
I want to win.
But I try to win.
If you lose a minus 230, it's a, it's things a lot more.
It rarely happens 105.
It doesn't happen that often because the odds will tell you that.
The odds would tell you that.
All right, we'll see.
Only one I'm really worried about is probably Virginia Tech.
They play Boston College.
Boston College could come in hot.
No, nothing about them.
No, nothing about them.
Same.
All right.
Who's Tennessee play?
Doesn't know.
Doesn't know.
Doesn't even know.
Just like the game.
Like the game.
No better.
I like orange.
South Carolina.
Oh my gosh.
Well, you better watch him game.
Cox man.
Make it up for Tennessee.
That's a SCC tournament game.
It's just a regular season game.
I mean, but it's a conference.
Yeah, but it's not a conference tournament game.
Everything's on the line.
Travis.
You know, I'm going to bet both of these because I need to get my toe back in.
I haven't bet a cost.
Don't bet mine.
You're not allowed.
Why?
Because you just talked about it.
I didn't talk about it.
If it wins, I won't talk about it.
Don't bet it.
Don't get on there.
I'm not telling you about it anymore.
I'm just going to look at the app.
All right.
We mentioned last week that there were two bets
that cashed and that was Reddick over Byron Gibbs over Brisco.
If you listened to us and bet Reddick before Sunday,
you had a cash out option even before the race started.
Oh, it was beautiful.
Wow.
On that note, Tim's, when do you bet the pre,
when do you bet pre-practice and qualifying?
Oh, it depends.
If I'm drinking, probably won't make it because I might not pay attention.
But honestly, if they're, if it's like a race winner, if these are the experts.
If they're, don't drink and gamble.
Gamble the drink.
Gamble then drink.
If it's like at the race winners, like plus like a thousand plus 1200,
like, and I think they're going to do really well and qualify well,
I'll bet them because once they qualify up in the top five,
you, you've lost that number.
It's kind of unbeddable.
All right.
Well, we head to Phoenix.
Russell, what's the model tell you?
Well, first off, we need to talk about the model last week,
top three or top three, not the exact same order,
but the top three or top three.
So I have to brag on that a little bit.
But this week, this week we're going to go Larson by a minor,
minor edge over Bell, Blaney, Logano and Hamlin.
But I would put my money on Bell and Blaney here.
Like this is a long track.
These are my two long run guys.
We're going to bring back our NASCAR insights too.
And the long run at Phoenix has been all over Blaney and Bell.
Very good. Very good. Tim's, what do you think about these?
I like Blaney too. He's my, he would be my pick.
Anybody else? You guys at your home?
I have a little bit of a long shot, Ross Chastain.
I kind of like the speed of those trackhouse cars.
He's good here. He's one here. I'd bet him.
He's plus 2,200 I think.
So what do you think about that there, Russell?
I don't mind that, but I would go like a little longer shot
than Barry.
He was really good.
I was going to ask you about Barry having won the race here.
He was good enough to actually win, take home the trophy.
Yeah.
About as good as you can be on a race weekend.
Yeah. And he shows up in all the metrics.
Passing, speed, long run, restarts, he was actually the best last year.
So I bet that what his odds are very juicy because he's been struggling.
What about a Briscoe?
That 19 car is usually pretty fast at Phoenix.
Yeah. I like him. He's not had great results here,
but he shows up again on all the metrics.
Last year, November, Briscoe wasn't even in the picture with the champ four.
Does that concern you though, TJ?
Not really, because that race, I mean, the championship races,
usually you're like top four guys are always the...
Russ, what's the tire situation for this race?
He was one that had major tire problems last year in the fall.
Yeah.
And it's the same tire as last year.
So no option to...
No option.
Wasn't it?
Okay.
This is the same tire they used here last fall.
That's an interesting question to have.
So they used a different tire in the fall than they did in the first race last year.
They had option tires.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
So they had the same tire, just an option tire as well.
Yeah.
No. In the spring, yeah.
In the fall, we went back with the option tire, right?
Correct.
That's the primary only.
Yes.
Got you.
All right.
Well...
What about Almaninger?
What do you think about them?
I feel...
Well, before we move on, I was just saying, like,
you got to think about the tire.
So you've had two...
You got two races last year.
You had two tires.
You had a different tire at one race versus the other, although, you know, you...
That would make me want to dive deeper, I guess, into the statistics around Barry.
He wins the spring race.
Where was he in the fall when, you know, when they narrowed down the tire, so to speak?
Was that the tire?
Was he still, you know...
Because tires...
Drivers will run well on specific tires.
Yeah.
They have tracks they like,
but if you look at the real trail, the real trail of information and data,
drivers lock on to particular tires and always perform well when that tire shows up.
Am I right, Russell?
Yeah, but he qualified 7th, finished 7th, ran out of a droning position in the top 10 all day,
so I wouldn't be afraid of him because of the tire.
Got you.
I wonder what his top 10 would be, because that's about all I'd probably put on Josh.
Yeah.
I mean, I hope he goes and wins.
I'm a massive Josh Berry fan, but when you talk about putting money down, I think he would...
I wonder what his top 10 odds would be.
They are...
Because that would be...
Plus 135.
Plus 135.
Right.
That's pretty good.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we've seen the fours do really well in the past year.
You convent Lugano at 145, heads up against Hamlin.
What do you guys think about that?
I don't...
I like Hamlin than that.
Yeah, I feel...
I mean, Denny was really the card to beat there last year, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Joey's a slow starter too, in my opinion.
Russ, you have a head-to-head tool, right?
Yeah, but this is a no-brainer for Hamlin.
No-brainer for Hamlin.
Yeah.
What about Reddick versus Larson?
You got Reddick coming in hot off three wins?
I would just...
I'd avoid this one.
Yeah, it's a toss-up.
And then Blaney versus Bell.
That's another dead heat.
Dead heat.
Yep.
Chastain over Busher.
Which one?
This is actually...
Busher has been better here.
This has been...
And he's plus money on this one.
Yeah, he's been like top 10 in like four to the last five or something like that.
Yeah, he finds his way up there.
Yeah.
So this would be Tim's bet if you like, do it now, because
Busher, if he performs well, those numbers will change.
It'll probably flop, yeah.
Well, as I predicted...
He was struggling over the course of the season, but I feel pretty confident Busher can come in and
just be the best at it.
Yeah, he pissed him off last week.
Good. I need to piss him.
Damn.
He needs to get out there and get it done.
Told you he was close, too.
I know.
We almost drove back over here.
Well...
Okay.
I feel like that he probably...
Would whoop your ass, yeah.
...needs to...
Probably needs to focus on his game.
He probably needs to focus on his competition meetings and stuff.
Try to figure out how to get this bet over Chastain one this week.
Yeah.
He can do it.
He can do it, yeah.
I like...
I like...
This is going to be an interesting race to see where...
This is the...
With the new bodies and stuff, too.
Or like for a Chevy, right?
This is kind of going to be a...
It's going to be in a little bit of cash.
See where they're at, kind of thing, yeah.
Sure.
Do you think we're going to see some cars,
some drivers maybe press until like this is the first race where you're not
super speedway road course and they feel like they're in a hole and they
got to go do something?
I don't feel like they're going to try any harder than they are going to normally.
Like they're going to go there and try to win.
That...
Like I'll say this.
There's nobody...
I'll say...
Drivers race as hard as they can all the time.
Yeah.
They don't press harder because it's a certain track.
Yeah.
Now, there's drivers that quit.
There's drivers that give up.
But there aren't drivers that are out there going,
man, you know, I've been running at, you know, 80% the last couple of weeks.
That's a...
I need to pick it up.
I'm going to go run 90, 95 this weekend.
You know, they're just always pushing as hard as they can until they're not.
Until they just...
Until they lose.
Until they've lost.
Then they quit before the race is over.
But most of them show up at 10-10.
All right.
Well, one bet that is real simple to make and that is...
That's the top manufacturer.
What is that?
One bet that is real simple to bet.
Yeah, I'm just letting the folks know.
One simple bet is top manufacturer.
Who do you think what manufacturer is going to win?
All right.
How is it simpler?
Because you're just picking one or three.
You're just picking a manufacturer, one of three.
Yeah, it's just not many options.
Well, I mean, we just went through some head to heads.
How is it simpler to pick one guy over the other?
Those are...
Wow, though, because you got to go dig in deep and see which one's better.
I mean, the...
Like Russ said, he's staying away from two of them.
So that'd be a pretty hard decision there.
Russ, I don't...
Is it a clear...
Is there a clear...
Yes, I do too.
There's no clear cut.
Yeah, it is.
It is the most lottery risky bet on the board.
Yep.
Wouldn't you agree?
Yeah.
Yep.
This is the hardest...
This is the biggest possible...
Hey, I'm sorry.
We should let the experts...
I'm not saying it's an easy bet to make, I think.
Yeah, it's an easy bet to make.
I'm not saying like the decision or anything.
The decision is too hard.
You can't make that decision.
How is choosing between three things easier
than choosing between two things?
Because we just went over the head to head.
I agree with that.
What in the...
I didn't say it's more simple.
I said it's one bet that is simple.
My advice...
You make it sound like I'm saying it's more simple
than the head to head.
I didn't say that.
I think I'm the only one that's having fun here.
Is there anything...
No, I'm going to stop.
I just like to give you a hard time.
Yeah, I don't...
I'm good.
Because I'm right.
All right.
Chevrolet plus 140, Toyota plus 160.
Ford it plus 240.
I think that's an easy one then.
That's crazy.
That is a simple one.
How is Ford so high?
Yeah.
Oh!
When we're talking about Blaney being the favorite.
Simple.
Plus 240.
I still don't feel like it's as easy as a heads up.
When the line's like this, pretty simple.
Man, those two of those heads up though are like...
I mean, those are great odds.
Great odds.
You don't get those odds very often.
If it's not Blaney, I don't know if another Ford wins.
That's why it's Blaney or Bust.
Josh Berry won this race last year.
No, he didn't.
Josh Berry won Vegas, buddy.
I'm sorry.
I was going to bring that up earlier,
but I was going to let you ride that wave.
I've been thinking about Vegas this whole time.
All this gambling talk.
I'm already down to Vegas.
Experts.
So who went to the experts?
He ran well.
I was with.
He did run well here.
He did.
He was fourth in the spring, seventh in the fall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now he did run good.
Yeah.
Okay.
But he didn't win.
Well, all right.
Good job, expert.
Yep.
Now I see why the Ford has those odds.
Makes sense now.
Checks out.
Yeah.
I actually thought I screwed up.
I think Blaney should be the favorite to win.
I had you thinking you screwed up.
I was like, Josh didn't win that race.
Yeah.
I'm like, I remember watching Josh win Vegas,
but he'd do something I forgot about.
I know.
I don't remember him running good at Phoenix.
He was just quietly good.
Oh, the first one I kind of think I do remember that.
But the second one.
Well, there's no focus on him at all at that point.
It's all the championship guys.
Not anymore.
Not anymore.
Not anymore.
No.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I mean,
look, I mean, we blew that race last year.
Russ, we screwed it up.
Yeah.
Everyone probably forgot about that.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah.
We should have won that race.
Oh, my gosh.
That was a spotter problem.
I mean, there was driving it deep.
How do y'all think their, you know,
how do y'all think the final race of the year?
How do y'all, how much do y'all take
away from how the playoffs affect the performance of the cars in that race?
Versus, you know, because when, when we go to the playoff races,
the playoff guys magically run one, two, three, four.
Weird how that happens.
But, you know, when we go back to these same racetracks a year later,
it's anybody's race.
It's a little more of a mixed bag.
So how does the predictor
I suppose vet that out?
The predictor doesn't care about that,
but the, I still think there's going to be pressure.
Like even if somebody has to finish 15th,
that's, we've seen that they're going to run,
they're going to run 10th through 20th all day.
Yeah.
So I still think it's going to be pressure packed
and the guys are going to run well,
are going to, going to have to run well, will run well.
Yeah.
Well, all right.
The Dirty Modo segment has brought you by FanDuel,
the premier gaming destination in the United States.
Those are, that's all your information for Phoenix.
And hope y'all are having some fun during the month of March
as we're going to start betting and talking about a lot of our
bets that we're making in college basketball.
Had a lot of fun last year with that.
Russell, you got any predictions on who wins the tournament?
Two.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, they're going to have Tar Heels to answer too.
When does the tournament kick off?
Yeah.
Tar Heels beat him this year.
A couple weeks.
A couple weeks.
Tar Heels is pretty good.
We can show up.
Especially, we get a little better when March.
Who's this weed?
UNCC Tar Heels.
You French?
Yeah.
All right.
Act like we didn't beat them.
I mean, name a player.
I had the dude who got hurt.
He got hurt and missed the game against Miami.
Vince Carter.
I mean, lost.
Michael Jordan.
Yeah.
Brad Norty.
Oh, conveniently, Russell's connection started to get bad.
Yeah.
Man, interesting.
Russell.
All right, Russell.
We'll see you.
Yeah.
Good seeing you, Russ.
All right.
That's going to do it for us, man.
It's a great show, TJ.
Great show.
Thanks to Arby's for supporting our podcast here,
here in the Arby's studio.
Don't forget about the Arby's new meat and three box.
Big box of meat.
Get more meal for your money at Arby's.
We have the meats.
That's the show.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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About this episode
Dale Jr. and TJ dive into their friendly rivalry playing college football on Xbox, discussing the fun and occasional cheating in gaming. Dale shares his renewed passion for trading cards, reflecting on the hobby's resurgence and his idea to create a unique collectible card. The conversation shifts to NASCAR highlights, focusing on Tyler Reddick's unprecedented three consecutive wins and the implications for the season standings. Their banter blends personal stories, gaming antics, and motorsport insights, offering a relaxed yet engaging look at their interests beyond racing.
Original notes
The first road course weekend of the NASCAR season is in the books, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back for a new episode of Dirty Air. He joins co-host TJ Majors to break down all of the action from COTA and St. Petersburg:
- Dale is back into trading cards
- Tyler Reddick is looking like a championship favorite
- Contenders are already in points holes
- Carson Hocevar finally gets checked
- Corey Day is learning the hard way
- Teammates should be assets, not competition
- COTA race winner Tyler Reddick joins the show
During the Ask Jr. portion of the episode, listeners sent in questions regarding:
- Living without beer or video games
- Does Dale bring his firesuit to races just in case?
- Has TJ’s cool shirt ever failed?
- Dale’s niece's recent victory lane dust-up in the CARS Tour
- Smashing Pumpkins or Pearl Jam?
- Ranking the forms of potatoes
And for more content, check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia
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