Dale Jr. Doesn't Think Cleetus McFarland Is Ready for Talladega
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Arby's
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Term
spin out
A spin-out is when the car starts sliding and turns around instead of going straight. It usually means the tires lost grip.
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NASCAR
NASCAR is a big American racing league focused on stock cars, mostly on oval tracks. People in the sport talk about who’s ready to compete and how drivers should adapt.
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Lionel Racing
Lionel Racing makes official NASCAR model cars for collectors. They’re known for making the models look like what the real race cars looked like after the race.
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diecast
Diecast are small model cars you can collect, usually made with metal. Here they’re talking about NASCAR versions that look like the real cars from races.
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Junior Motorsports is a NASCAR racing team. It’s connected to Dale Earnhardt Jr. and runs cars in NASCAR events.
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victory lane
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pole
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brake rotor
The brake rotor is the metal disc your brake pads squeeze to make the car slow down. If it breaks, the car may not stop as well, so the team has to adjust and fix it.
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A penalty in motorsports is a punishment for a rules violation, such as limiting practice time, affecting qualifying eligibility, or other restrictions. Here, the penalty is adjusted to change Doug’s availability for practice and his ability to qualify and race.
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one race suspension
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rocker panels
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tight corner entry
“Tight corner entry” means the track squeezes you as you set up for the turn. That makes it harder to pass cleanly, so cars end up running closer together.
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Goodyear
Goodyear makes the tires. In racing, tires are a huge deal because they control how much grip the car has and how long the tires last during a race.
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Cup
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Cupra Born
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pit stops
A pit stop is when the race car pulls into the pit area during the race to get service like tires or fuel. “Live pit stops” means you can see them happening in real time for the broadcast.
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little things add up in a race
In racing, tiny errors can matter a lot. One small mistake can cost time, and if it happens repeatedly you end up losing the race.
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Joe Gibbs Racing
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crew chief
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Chevrolet Corvette
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Larson
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Denny Hamlin
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top 10
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parlay
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LIVE
The following is a production of Dirty Moe Media.
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.
Do I piss you off over the weekend or?
I'm still sour that I want the best man at your wedding.
Who was your best man, Dale?
DJ.
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 with my co-host, TJ Majors, wearing the Arby's Studio.
This episode is presented to you by Arby's and they have the new Meet in Three Box.
You get more meal for your money at Arby's.
We had the meets and we've got a great show for you today.
We've got a lot to talk about.
Coming up, we're going to talk to Rodney Childers a little bit about his experience
so far in the O'Reilly series.
And also talk to race winner William Swalich from Rockingham getting his first win.
First win.
Big win.
Awesome.
William's a great young kid that struggled last year.
You know, there's a lot of hype coming in around him with his success in the late models
and super late models.
And so, you know, he had a tough year last year trying to learn the ropes in a rally series,
but uncovered that first win in Rockingham.
And I think it's one of many more that will come down in the future.
That's got to be tough because in racing, you're going to lose a whole lot more than you're
going to win, even if you're one of the greatest drivers ever.
So doing it at a young age and failing a lot has got to be a lot to learn.
Well, I think that, you know, when he comes in and struggles, there's a couple things that I think
you go, all right, you know, that's to be expected.
Will he get the time to develop, you know, is the next thing.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we just, he's 19.
He doesn't, I mean, he's raced a long time and got a lot of laps, but he doesn't have a lot
of laps, right?
He's still very young and Cal A, man.
I was nowhere, I mean, this is the easiest thing for me to do is to look back at myself
when I was 19.
Was I ready for that?
No.
Would I have failed?
Yes.
Not at that age.
I was not prepared for anything like that and we're putting these guys in these situations
and really forcing them to like mature at a rapid rate.
Even way younger than you were, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I really didn't get to going in the Xfinity series till I was 24, 25 years old.
Yeah.
Which is way past what they are.
Yeah.
Feels like that anyways.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, 98, 99, I was 24, 25 years old.
That's a big difference.
Right.
That is way bigger.
So look at Brent Crews out there.
These kids are young.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was just starting to race cars.
I had a year of driving anything under my belt, you know, pretty much around 17, 18 years old.
So it's pretty remarkable.
I think we expect these guys to just go out there and do things and they're not even,
they're still living at home.
You know what I mean?
They're still, they're not even taking out their own trash yet.
You know what I'm saying?
They don't even have the responsibility of traditional, normal, everyday things that,
you know, people handle responsibilities.
I don't know.
So do you think that's a bad thing though?
I don't.
I'm just saying.
We expect them to go win races.
I know.
But do you think, do you think there is a more successful path with waiting before you push
them into that position?
I'll just say, I'll just, what?
I mean, it's like you went in there and you pretty much won real early.
In your career.
No.
In the, I was 24.
In the XFANY series, you won, or Riley series, you won pretty early.
Yeah, but I was 24 years old.
I know.
That's what I'm saying though.
Like what?
It's kind of like, you know what?
It's a lot like these athletes in college, you know, that are going through,
you know, getting that sixth, seventh year of eligibility.
They're like 23, 24 years old playing quarterback and.
Super smart.
Yeah, they're just, they're just better mentally for the tough moments and the,
and the, you know, man, I need to, if I can't get, if I can't get this, you know,
it's, it's a couple of seconds left in the game and I need to, you know,
I need to get the ball out of bounds.
I need to throw it in complete.
If I can't find something quickly.
So I have another, you know, the game management type of stuff.
And so, you know, you don't have that.
I didn't have that at 19.
I was going to get in the car and wreck the hell out of the thing at 19 years old,
destroy it.
And I would have done that a lot.
And I would have probably have been canned before I was 23 years old.
But luckily, you know, my path happened the way it happened because I don't think I would have,
I would have, I don't think I would have netted out and be hard had I started at 19.
The tough part is, is that these guys, you know, their, their opportunity,
the funding and all the things that they need.
And that it has to be there for them to get chances is there now, right?
It might not be there if they wanted to wait for themselves to get better at the lower ranks
or the grassroots ranks.
Well, this money that can afford them this opportunity in their rally series,
it might not be there at, you know, in three or four years when they're more mentally prepared
for the, for the moment.
And so I just think about some, you know, the, there's a lot of drivers that are in a cup series
now, but, you know, that didn't actually come into the series and, and, and when races out of
the gate, it took a while for them to start to click.
And luckily there were people that were patient and waiting and, you know,
I feel like that that's kind of the case with, with a guy like we,
I mean, still 19, 19 years old, 20 years old and getting ready to try to go win a second
Xfinity or a rally race after this weekend.
And yeah, but I don't know.
I, I, if they can come in at 19 and win races, awesome.
If they can't, I think we have to be patient.
And I'm, I have to remind myself like, man, don't like, don't write this dude off.
You never know.
He's 19.
God, don't write him off.
Right.
Still might have it because you can give up.
We give up on him as an industry.
Right.
But if maybe if we waited another year or two, he's a future cup champion.
Who knows?
Do you think Conrad Zillich could have used another year of a rally?
Conrad's every, every, the answer to that, to everyone is yes, everyone can stand to
benefit from more time.
If the opportunity is still there.
If you can afford to do it.
Yeah, that's, I've always been, I've always thought you got to run two full years of a
rally before you go to cup to be fully prepared.
But you got guys, there's guys that, you know, when extended that opportunity to race cup,
have to take it.
Oh, for sure.
Even when they're not ready.
That's the sucky part.
You might never get another one.
Yeah, you can't go.
Now I'm not ready.
I'll run a rally one more year and then that year ends and there's no cup opportunity in
front of you.
Yeah.
I've always, I've always been a two year old, full, two full years, but you're right though.
Sometimes you have such a great first year.
The opportunities come up.
Yeah.
You got to take them.
Does that two year, does it matter as much now with the next gen car where the, a rally car
is not necessarily as the similar?
So it's not that.
It's not just the car similarities to me.
It's just getting learning the mental thing.
Like we talked about, like you got a racecraft decision making judgment.
Yes.
Like it's learning how to race around these learning just the things you see every week
that he's not even going to be able to tell you everything that he learned at Rockingham.
He learned way more than what we'll ever know.
You know what I mean?
Like speaking of Rockingham, we'll quickly touch on Cletus McFarland.
So that's a great example.
So Cletus McFarland gets loose, getting down in the corner early in the race, gets a runoff
of turn four and goes three wide, right?
That is something that you'll, you know, he experiences and he learned in that moment.
Like, yep, don't need to do that again.
You know, he, he, he's down at the bottom of the racetrack entering as shallow as possible
in a turn one.
And it's a bad spot.
It is.
And that's like, that's the thing.
Travis, the racecraft, you said, you know, well, does it matter?
Should he just, the cars are so different?
Should he just go on the cup?
Well, he needs to learn not to do that.
He needs to learn that in the Xfinity series, in the truck series.
And there's a, there's a thousand things like that.
You know, like driving down underneath two guys into the turn one at Rockingham.
There's a thousand other things like spending out, you know, spending out off of four in
this weird arrow situation in Daytona that only happens in Daytona.
And it only happens in that moment, right?
You got to go through those things and that's where you do it.
You do it in the truck and the rally series and you go, okay, yeah, that's a,
that's something I got to pay attention to next time.
And I won't do that again.
And, and that's, so yeah, every, every year, every race you can run in those series,
teaches you those, you know, those things of what not to do and what to be careful with
and what arrow situations are bad.
And I know the cars are different.
Yes, but you're still learning precautions, being conservative, being smart, waiting,
being patient, living the race, the next corner and those kinds of things.
And you want to see guys go back through and look at the tools now that, you know,
now there was SMT at Rockingham this time.
So we can go back and look at moves people made.
Like Cleetus can now go back and look at his race on there and learn from that.
And Sunday night, you know, me and Carson already went through the entire race.
He had an in-car camera too.
So we went through the entire SMT clip and then we turned that off and went through the entire
in-car camera.
Just what he was looking at.
Why'd you do this?
Why'd you do that?
Yep.
In this position next time, this is, you know, like, what do you, what's your mindset here?
So he can learn from that and there's, like you said, there's a thousand other things that
you learned throughout that race or you try to improve on that carry over to the next race.
And that's how you get better and better.
Well, um, the, I think the Cleetus McFarlane experience was a good one.
He had a really good Arca race.
It's like, yeah.
I mean, solid Arca race.
Top five.
Yeah.
And he, you know, he did spin out.
He did have a couple of goof ups in the O'Reilly race, but, you know, everybody survived it.
Nobody, you know, didn't crash anybody.
I think that, you know, the things that he did won't be front, you know,
the mistakes that he made won't be front page news.
And that was the goal is not to be the story.
From all, from everything else we know, he was, you know, not in the way,
running his laps, learning, getting better.
Does, what does he do next?
You know, that's like, that's the big question is where does he go from here?
And what does NASCAR do with this?
Right.
There's been some speculation, I think, on, you know, what do you think?
What do we think NASCAR's next move is?
Because they have some of the puppet strings here and in their hands.
They, they, he's, he's going to, he was, if I know, if I think I know what I know about
Cletus is he's like, hmm, they taught in Talladega are kind of the easiest.
You hold it wide open.
Handling's not really as big of a deal.
And, you know, there's not, you know, I don't have to worry about shaping the corner or
worried about an apex, apex and apex or anything like that.
You know, he just hold it on the mat and, and, and work the draft and Dodger X.
And so he, in his mind, he's like, man, I just want to do Daytona.
I just want to do Talladega, um, Arca trucks, whatever.
But now at some point NASCAR has got to kind of step in the way and go,
man, you know, you can only go to this.
You can only go this far before we, we need you to do some other things.
And I think that's kind of the point we're at now,
which is right because a mistake in Talladega can take out 30 cars.
Yeah.
So I guess the question is, is now that he's done rocking him,
will, will he then request the next race to be his next race, his next opportunity?
Where is that going to be?
Um, is it going to, you know, is it going to, are they going to take a stab at trying to go
to Talladega or Daytona in the O'Reilly series?
Will NASCAR approve that?
Will they say no?
Did you see enough?
Um, I saw enough to not approve him for Daytona or Talladega in the O'Reilly series.
I, to be quite honest with you, I only saw what I, I didn't, I was not present and in person
for any of this, but I watched the YouTube video from the truck test with niece.
I watched the YouTube video of his O'Reilly test with RCR and then I watched the race.
And in all three of those, he busted his ass.
Now I didn't hit anything except for the truck.
He did wall the truck off, off of two, but in all three of those instances,
he was, he was, uh, you know, lost control of the car or the truck.
I would say, and I told him this after the race, like the rocking him surface entire
is going to be one of the more trickier ones. It's a hard tire.
It's a relatively repaved surface.
So it's got very, it's got a very small window, uh, before you bust your ass and it's easy to
bust your ass.
So I mean, I'm, I actually expected him to wreck in the O'Reilly series.
I expected him to knock the damn tailgate, you know, the deck lid off the car.
He didn't.
So that, that was, uh, that was a surprise.
I guess not a surprise, but I just expected him to, uh, but he got to the end.
He finished the race.
The race was fairly clean overall, but yes, but I think he definitely, I would say now
I need one, two, maybe three more events somewhere else before you're going to get this
opportunity from in the O'Reilly series to go to Daytona or Talladega.
Now, by all means, arca, arca, arca, run all you can.
Like if I were him and if I were NASCAR, you know, I'd be trying to get him in more
arca races, every single opportunity to run all these little bull rings and short tracks.
If he keeps going to running four, top five in arca, he's going to look like he belongs.
Well, he needs to not only look like it, but he needs to actually belong.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
And you're, you're, you're kind of button up against, I think the threshold of all right, man,
you don't, you know, you can, you can play in this pool, but you got to do a little bit more
of this before you can get over into the deep end.
Yeah.
Um, and so I think, you know, we'll see what happens to be interesting.
I'm, I'm, I'd be curious, I guess, to what the conversation is like in the NASCAR building
around, around, um, Cletus and where they kind of think they, and I think you lose some of that
when you're not racing weekend and week out and you just coming in, you're kind of, you're,
you have to reset and you're just not having that muscle memory.
Look, I'm going to tell you to do what he did this weekend.
And I, I, I know he busted his ass a couple of times, but to do what he did was really,
really phenomenal for a guy that has no racing background, didn't grow up in a racing family,
didn't grow up around race tracks, um, all his life.
He understand, he, you know, I figured that this would be the, the, the, I figured that
this would be the situation.
So Jimmy Johnson, um, raced motorbike motorcycles and stadium trucks.
Before Jimmy Johnson, the same time champion that we all know that we, when we think about
Jimmy Johnson, we think about stock cars, we think about NASCAR, we think about cut.
Jimmy Johnson came from outdoor stadium truck west coast, California,
drive the out of it, um, jump and jumps and, and you know, being a maniac
and then decided, you know, to get into a stock car in the Raleigh series.
And Jimmy was able to be successful because I think that, you know, all the things that
he was doing in those stadium trucks and motorcycles, like you're, you're doing a lot
of things in that, in that type of vehicle off of, off of feel and precision, even though
it looks chaotic and wild and crazy, you're, you know, you're out of control.
You're in control.
Um, you're driving, you know, you're, you're in a slide at 90% of the lap.
Um, there's a lot of variables.
There is a, there's just a lot of car control.
There's a ton of car control that you develop that can absolutely be automatically applied
to anything with four wheels.
And I would, I think, you know, Cletus has done a lot of funny stunts and a lot of wild things,
but at the same time he has learned the limits of something with anything with four tires on it.
Like he can, he can get into, um, pretty much any vehicle and take it out on the racetrack
and put it to the limits of, of its capabilities.
And really, you know, and he's done those things so many times in his videos and so forth.
And I think he can apply the same sort of, it's a, it's, it's understood physics, right?
That his mind and his body, he can look at a car, look at it, drive it a little bit and go,
hmm, I think I kind of understand where the window is here, where the, where I can play
without and still be in control.
Right.
And so he can get in the rally car and go out and test for four hours and pretty much get it
up against the limit of the tire and the slip angle of the tire and get within a decent lap time
quicker than most because of how much
that he's driven to the limit of control and gone out of control multiple times.
Right.
Yeah, you learn.
Yeah.
So I think he, it's just like he's taken all of that information and everything he's ever done
and sort of it's, he's just applies for lack of a better way to describe it.
He just takes the physics and everything that he's understood about inertia and momentum and
grip and tire and rubber and pavement and contact patches and all the things that he didn't even
know he was really cataloging and computing and processing into this little hard drive in his
brain.
He's got all that information and he's just applying that to this, right?
Because he doesn't know any better.
He doesn't have anything else.
And so he goes to that on the racetrack and he goes, I know how to drive something with
four tires on it fast and out of control and to the limit.
And he finds, he can kind of understand over the course of a couple hours where the limit is to
this vehicle, right?
And then he takes all that and then the information that he gets from RCR and all the help that he
gets from them and all the advice he gets from anybody that he calls.
I know he calls me or texts me after he practices tests, race, whatever.
I don't know who else he's reaching out to, but I'm sure several people and he's probably
taking, and he's taking, he's listening.
If you tell him, dude, go out there and look, he's used to going anywhere and being the
story.
He's used to going everywhere and making noise and making it great, gaining attention,
like getting clicks, getting views.
Like that's his job.
But we told him in this moment, don't be the story.
Do everything you can to be out of the story.
And right, that's a complete working against everything he knows and he did it.
He listened, he took that to heart.
The amount of cleta shirts that I saw last weekend was incredible.
So the fans are grasping on to them.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I mean, we knew that would happen.
That's why NASCAR loves this.
So that's why NASCAR is trying to, that's the difficult spot in NASCAR.
It is.
It's a difficult spot.
It is, right.
Right.
So how do they kind of, will they, can they properly like nurture this?
They want them to succeed.
Oh, they do.
Who does it?
So they, but they've got to do it the right way.
If they throw his ass into the rally series at, at, at Talladega, I don't know.
You know, maybe that is definitely not the next step for him.
His next step is another, another race somewhere else, right?
He should, he should be racing Bristol.
He should, he should be racing Arca, Arca, Arca and more truck races and everything
from a mile and under, you know, go race.
But I know, you know, it costs money.
Bristol and Kansas coming up.
Arca, Kansas race.
Sure.
I'd definitely be running out if I were, if I were him.
You know, all those things take money though.
Every time he jumps in that Arca car, I imagine somebody spending $20,000, $25,000 at a minimum.
Oh, at a minimum.
Right.
I'm sure.
Every time he goes and jumps in a truck, I'm sure that's costing somebody $75,000 more
than that.
Anytime he goes and races in a rally car, at minimum that's costing somebody $125,000, $50,000.
Somebody, now I don't think that, you know, I don't think that Cletus is on the hook for
all of that and I don't think that his partners are funding that entirely.
But somebody is, right?
And at some point, it might be a little bit of NASCAR's money going into this stuff,
you know, so they just, it just needs to be a plan.
There needs to be a plan.
And the other thing that's interesting is, and we talked about it on the show with him,
is he's got to come to a decision at some point of how much of this he wants to do
and how much of his other life, because it's an entirely other thing going on over here.
And he's pausing that to do this.
Yeah, his social media, which makes him millions of dollars.
He's his YouTube page and all that and his merchandise and everything that he does with
that. That's a thing that has to kind of keep going.
That machine's got to keep going, right?
Can they, can they merge together?
Yeah, that machine made this possible.
Yeah, I'm just, you know, he said, like, if I do this more, I have to do less of that.
Like he sees it as one or the other.
And I don't, he ain't going to come over, he's not going to come over to NASCAR
and make the kind of money he's making on the YouTube side.
Like his YouTube brand is already a functioning, well-oiled,
Yeah, it's great.
profitable f***ing business.
And he is not going to come over here and make that kind of money.
And probably doesn't have the stress you're getting in these cars.
And I just, you know, I just know he's just not going to come over here and make that kind of money.
So even if things went well, I think that's a more lucrative thing.
And he's got to decide like, all right, and he's got a family, he's got kids and
he's got all those things too to juggle.
Tough situation, but a good, good situation.
Yeah.
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All right, so we got Rodney Childers at the desk and thought, you know, we didn't have a couple
races past weekend, but a good opportunity to highlight a little bit of the Raleigh series and
one of the great additions to junior motorsports this year has been Rodney.
And I know I've been, you know, seeing some of the, you know, media out in the past, probably,
I don't know, a couple of months have been quizzing you a little bit about your experience so far.
So yeah, just hard to do at this table with me and TJ sitting here.
But can you give us an honest assessment of, you know, what did you think this was going to
be like?
You know, what's been some surprises?
What's been some good things?
What are some things about our operation, I suppose, that are different from what you're used to?
Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, I was probably one of the odd ones that never
bush raced or extended the race, you know, before I went cup racing.
So, you know, my whole experience has just been cup racing the whole time.
And so really, I didn't know what it would be like to go run the Raleigh series and
what the schedules are like and, you know, what's your week flow look like and all those things.
And honestly, it's been great.
And my experience here has been great too.
Yeah, I really love the atmosphere here and a lot of the things for the last 25 years that you
wish would happen, you know, at a race team and have some luncheons and have an ice cream truck
come by and have a beer toast when you win races.
I mean, we went through a spell there where we won like 12 cup races in one year and we
had one lunch in the whole year, you know?
And it's like, you know, you always think about those things and the employees and stuff like that.
And, you know, that's the biggest thing that has stood out to me is just the family atmosphere and
the way that the week flows and all those things.
And really, it's just been perfect timing for me, you know, to be able to come home and be
home on Sundays. And my mom's went through a few things and she's in a little nursing home type
thing now, so I get to spend Sundays with her and my dad. So just everything's worked out really good.
What about the racing or the, you know, the garage, the culture in the Raleigh series?
Completely different. And, you know, the cup garage is very, very competitive and cutthroat,
just from one individual to the next. In the Raleigh garage, it's very casual, more laid back.
At least that's what it was like when I was there as a driver and competing. But, you know,
what's the difference in the two series? A lot of what you just said, honestly.
You know, a lot more smiles on faces walking around the garage, that's for sure.
And, you know, the cup garage has changed a lot over the last 10 years, you know,
the way that you go through tech and you don't have, you know, a big practice. You're not in
the garages beside each other, you know, kiddin' with each other and doing different things
throughout the weekend. So that's changed that side of it. But, you know, that part's been
a lot of fun for me, just getting to know everybody. And a lot of them are old cup
officials, anyway. So I've had good relationships with all of them for a long time. And,
you know, in this series, it's still way competitive. You know, it's hard as crap to win races. And,
you know, we've definitely figured that out. We've had past cars, but we need to get in
victory lane. And I think once we knock one off the checklist, we'll knock a lot more off.
One of the things that's new for you is working with, you know, young drivers and
trying to help, you know, younger drivers, less experienced drivers, establish, you know,
kind of some racecraft and all that, and turn them into, you know, champions and winners.
You know, of course, you did work with Josh Berry when he was new to the cup series,
but most of your career, you've been with veterans. You've been with guys who you really
didn't have to kind of check up on and hold their hand a little bit, so to speak. But
so this has been a bit of a different experience for you. Or is it, you know, how is that, how's
that worked out? You got, you kind of have maybe a different driver in the car every nine men. You
don't have a, you know, the same guy every single week. What are the challenges with that? Or
what are some of the things you enjoy about that? It's actually been a lot of fun. And,
you know, me and TJ kind of have the same task of, you know, letting Carson learn
certain things every week, but also standing by his side and pointing things out that he could do
better. And, you know, he spends a lot of time here at the shop. And I mean, yesterday he was here
from the beginning to the end of the day, like he spent all day here. And, you know, some of those
things remind me a lot of that year of working with Josh. You know, you have, you know, just
certain things that, you know, ways to communicate, ways to talk about the car. That's probably the
things that we talk about the most is just trying to, you know, narrow down what you're saying,
you know, try to pick out the one thing that's going to make you go faster instead of just,
you know, 11 different things that are going on around the racetrack that confused the crap
out of everybody. You know, do we need to tighten it up or do we need to free it up?
There's, there's only a lot of, you know, there's only certain things you can do during the race.
And sometimes unhooking the back is the only way to make it turn. That's not the fun part for a
driver. But just learning those things and other things just having confidence, right? Like, I
feel like Carson's had just a ton of confidence this year and he goes out there and he qualifies
well. We've had fast cars in practice, fast cars in qualifying. We've been able to race really well
and lead, lead laps at Phoenix and had a dominant car there and just all those things have been a
lot of fun. And then the other side of it with Connor, you know, my first race with him is taking
him to Kota and he's just incredible on those road courses and sit on the pole and, you know,
leading the race. And then we broke a brake rotor and had to kind of ride around the whole second
stage until we could replace that. But to watch him drive from 30th back to fourth, you know,
before the end of it was crazy. So I haven't got to do a lot with Connor yet. You know,
so hopefully we'll have some fun this weekend at Bristol and learn a little bit more about each other.
And we have a lot of races coming up together over the next little bit. So hopefully we can
kick that off this weekend on the right start. Yeah, it's quite a challenge, I think for you,
just as an individual crew chief to, you know, if things go as planned, you're going to try to
race for a championship with Carson in the playoffs and trying to figure out how to be
successful with Connor, have Carson prepped and ready when the playoffs began. So it's as if y'all
had been together the entire season. That's going to be a challenge that I think is going to be
interesting to see how that plays out. You, as an individual, last question. You as a,
you as a crew chief, you as a mechanical mind coming into this series, working on these cars,
none of this stuff is foreign to you, but you're learning the series, you're learning, you know,
what makes these cars tick. You know, if you're, if you were filling up a bucket, right,
trying to figure out, you know, trying to find your groove, how full is that bucket? How much
more do you get, how much more you think you get to pour into there before you feel like you've got,
you got your master of, you know, trying to make the car work, trying to bring in all the years
of experience that you have to, to, to prepping your car and going to the racetrack and having
all the bells and whistles ready to go. So the car is really fast out of the gate. Yeah, you know,
so far I've been really fortunate, like a lot of the sim tools and the things that I used to look
at to, you know, you know, whether it's geometry or shocks or brakes or this or that, like, I love
it has worked very similar to everything that I was used to. And the things that I thought were
good in the past have been good steel. And so that's been good for me is, you know, just to,
to do what you think is right, you know, and like, there's been a few times I've went to bum in and
said, you know, what do you think about this or that? And he's like, you just need to do what you
think is right. And for me, that's, that's perfect, right? Because if you ever go to the racetrack,
and I've been in situations where you go to the racetrack and right off the get go, you're unloading
the car with something that you don't even believe in, you know, your whole weekend's messed up,
your mind doesn't work right, you don't make good decisions. And so so far, I've been super fortunate
that the things that I thought would work have worked. And it keeps my mind going. And,
you know, I keep, you know, thinking about things the right way and all that kind of stuff. And,
you know, we, we're going to have good weekends and bad weekends. Sometimes we're going to do
something, it's not going to work, right? But yeah, so far it has. And, you know, we're going to
continue that. But the rest of it just comes down to just little details, you know, over time,
you know, making the cars a little bit better, a little bit lighter, trying to, to do all those
little things, you know, that, that push you to be better. So, you know, it's, it's different
racing in the, you know, in the rally series. I went for years with SHR with no budget, right?
And like we had every gadget and more wind tunnel time than everybody. And that's, you know, one
of the things on this side, we have hardly no wind tunnel time. So you're just kind of going
off your gut on some things, but I'm still learning every week. I'm super fortunate. I've
got a great race team. And, you know, I think this group can, can go a long way together.
Awesome, man. Well, thanks for giving us some time this morning. I know you're off to the SIM
to get better and looking forward to the race this weekend. Thank you.
I bet it. So I got it. We're going to talk cars tour later. The cars tour suspended Doug Barnes
for a race for rough driving intentional crashing. We had an appeal. I guess we go and go to that
now. We're going to jump around a little bit. We set up an appeals panel because Doug was able
to appeal this penalty and decided to do so. Now, I want to explain to everybody how this
works. So they know we've only had one previous appeal and that was a year or two ago at
Northwest Barrel. It was a technical penalty that came post race for the winter. It's a really
tough spot for all of us to be in. So we, we don't often deal with appeals, you know, at
grassroots racing or at the cars tour level. We don't really want to be doing appeals that often
and we try to, you know, officiate our races in such a way that they're, you know, we're not
going to have to have an appeal every week because what happens when they when a driver says, Hey,
I can't appeal this and I want to appeal this. They have to write a check
to file the appeal. That's a payment they make to the series to make the appeal.
They have to be willing to do that for one. You make them pay for that.
Yeah, I'm right. I think it's every level. I mean, no, I'm just kidding. So
what the series, if you, if you write me that check, TJ, you want me to want me to,
I got to go outside of the series and put together the panel. And so nobody better
than David Hoots, who ran the NASCAR booth race control for many, many years. Nobody better than
him to orchestrate the appeal. He's not, he's not going to have voting power. He's just going
to officiate the actual appeal, right? So we get him. And then what you do is you kind of look
out over the landscape metaphorically of the, of the motorsports industry and you try to find
people that you think have strong character and that really have no favorite in the game, right?
But understand it. Yeah, but they understand it. So we, we got Bonsus who works in the late
model ranks on, with pros and supers and has been around the garage and industry for a long time.
Freddie query, who was running tech and had a role with ASA and has been a driver for years,
race, race for ever and has been around short track racing and cars for a long, long time.
And Jefferson Hodges has actually worked here at junior motorsports before,
but he's now with Pinsky racing as a GM over there, but he comes from short track racing. He
drove, you know, he worked on cars for, for us and for Rick Townsend and just a well-respected
individual throughout the industry. So those are the three people that we asked if they would,
and all we, we had a list and we asked them, they were the first three who asked, they said,
yes. And so I'm like, man, I called Doug and I said, Doug, I'm glad you're getting defiled this
appeal. I think we put together a panel that you're going to really, really like. And, you know,
by all means, like put your case together and come, come forward with all the evidence that you
think you got and we'll see what they decide. And this is an interesting situation to begin.
So when I watched the race going back to the actual penalty, in my mind, I thought, and I
still think that Doug intentionally crashed another driver. Okay. And so the precedent
from the past has always been a one-race suspension. Minnie Tyrell was equally aggressive,
but he didn't intentionally crash Doug. So I couldn't suspend Minnie a full race.
Maybe we could have, but what should have happened in the moment, Doug should have,
Doug and Minnie, obviously, I think, should have been parked in the middle of the race. Like,
after the incident, guys go to the garage, don't come back. That's what should have happened.
It didn't. We didn't do a good job there. That's where the series itself made a misstep.
Post-race, we decided, okay, this guy intentionally crashed somebody. What have we done in the past?
Every time in the past, we have suspended the guy for a race. We're losing a little bit of control
of our races. They're getting wilder. They're getting rougher. We're trying to
clamp down on that, clamp down on that. We're trying to get the attention of the drivers.
That's not going to be something that fixes itself overnight. So we felt like we had to react here.
What had happened in the past? Guys have been suspended a race. So that's what we did.
We made the announcement that we're doing it. Got a lot of pushback. People don't understand it,
but they're not running a series. They don't understand the integrity that we're trying
to maintain and all those things. So Doug's upset, really mad, because he feels like he got
the end of the deal. His car's destroyed and he's the one getting suspended for a race
while he thinks many was just as guilty. Understood. So Doug wants to appeal.
By all means, Doug, file your appeal. We're going to put together a panel. I trust this panel.
Whatever they decide is good with me. And so Doug goes to the appeal. They heard his
point for about an hour and then Kip goes in first for the series to explain the series's
point of view. Then the driver or the team comes in and then they may ask somebody to come back in.
But eventually they deliberated for a couple of hours and decided to change the penalty. Doug
will not be allowed to go to the open practice on Thursday. He will not be allowed to practice on
Friday, but he can show up Saturday. There's two 20 minute practices that morning. He can show up
Saturday practice and qualify and race at Nashville. So that was the change to the penalty
that the appeals panel decided. And that's what they do, man.
What do you think, you know, how to Doug? What do you think? Doug seemed to Doug, you know,
I talked to Doug after the appeal. I said, Hey, I said, I'm glad you got heard. I feel good about
the panel's decision. I already did, but I didn't even know what their decision would be. But I knew
we put the right people in there. This is what they came back with and asked Doug. I said, Hey,
is there anything we can do better? Did you like the process? We've only done a couple of appeals
in our series. Is there something that was good, not good? And he's like, man, it was really
professional. I enjoyed it. It was good deal. Did they say why they they did not want to?
That's, it's what I was wondering. So this is their, this is what I've been told through multiple
people. I've not spoke directly to the appeals panel or any of the individuals. I did text them
all and thank them for their time because they volunteered their time to do it. And they got
to do, but I was like, Hey, thank you all for doing this. I really appreciate it.
And what I was told from Kip after he was done and heard everything that he heard,
they wanted the penalty to still have some teeth because they don't want the drivers driving that
rough, but they didn't want to take away Doug's opportunity to run a marquee event like Nashville
and Doug is in the middle of a season long points battle. Doug wants to be a part of the
cars tour. Doug wants to be a good representative of the car of the tour and he has been. Yeah. And
so they, they did challenge Doug at the end of the day to be the veteran in the room, to be the
guy that's setting a better example for the younger drivers, not, you know, not a guy that's
diving into the same shenanigans that we're seeing out of some of the other drivers in the field.
And so I thought that was great. Good for Doug. I'm sure you learned a lot from this. We certainly
do. Every opportunity we get as a series, we learn a lot. And Wake was a big, you know, Wake was
as, as frustrating as Wake was as a series, you know, we, we got to come out of there better.
We got to look back and reflect and come out of there better. And I feel like we have
Nashville. Big good weekend. We're going in there Thursday and Friday to practice and then we'll
have a little bit of practice on Saturday. And honestly, I told Doug this too, he's got enough
connections in the series that I think that even though he's not going to get to practice on Thursday
and Friday, there'll be some information that he can benefit from that guys are going to learn
to be able to hit the ground on, on Saturday and be, be in the ballpark and still have a
productive weekend, even though he's not going to get to practice Friday and Thursday. So yeah,
that's kind of how all that went down. We, we, we, we live and learn and we move on.
Do you as an owner want to know though why they changed the appeal so that you can
adjudicate things better going forward? Well, I'll say this. If the, if the same,
if I think a guy intentionally wrecks another car, I'm going to give him a one race suspension
tomorrow. I'm not, I mean, the, my, my precedent for that type of deal is the one race suspension.
And I feel like that with the way our guys are racing and how we're knocking the rocker panels
and the noses and the tails off of these cars at all through the field at wake, we, if we had 30
cars on the racetrack, all 30 of them suffered some damage of some kind and that's unacceptable.
So I think, yeah, we need to be tougher. We need to be tighter. We need to start
drawing some attention to some of the rough driving and try to steer our series back in
a better direction. And so if I think a guy intentionally crashes somebody, I'm going to
give them a one race suspension. Do you park them that race? If you see it, if it happens in the
middle of the race, yes. The ones that have, uh, sometimes it happens after the race, right? Sometimes
like Carson quaple was doored for third spot or second spot at tri county and turned three
and four on the last lap and crossed the finish line and wrecked the kid in term one. And he got
a one race suspension. We didn't even think about appealing it. Jack called me who owned the series
at the time and said, Hey man, I got to put you guy out for a week. I hate doing it, but I got to,
I'm like, you got it, man. No problem. And so we got, we, we set out Josh Perry,
wrecked Bobby McCarty at ACE in the middle of the race. Bobby wrecked Josh in turn three and Josh
waited and turn us, turned him around on the first straight away and Josh pulled in and parked and
said, All right, I'm done. And they called us that week and said, Hey, you got to sit out of race.
So we, Josh stopped his car after he wrecked Bobby and pulled him, you know, parked his car and then
still got suspended a race. And we didn't appeal that. We're like, yep, understood. We know what
we did and we're going to, we're going to pay the fine. So that's the, that's the precedent for me
is if that happens tomorrow, I'm penalizing the guy a race. If they want to appeal it by all means,
they can appeal it. We've got to figure out how to get our series to the race a little cleaner.
And I don't, I'm not going to, um, yeah, I think that's the way to do it is to keep to
keep the penalties harsh and trying to keep drawing attention to
this is what happens if you get in the middle of this stuff. I agree. So going back to, uh,
going back to Rockingham, there's a, uh, you know, after a great successful weekend,
a lot of questions around should the cup series go to that racetrack. Um,
you know, I don't know. I think it would be a good race. I'd love to see the cup series back at
Rockingham. I don't think any of us knew in 2004 that we were running our last cup race there.
I think you're packing the place of cup goes there by, I mean, it's, I think you're going to pack it.
Yeah. Like no doubt. And I do think one thing I like about Rockingham that
is the entry of the corners is really tight. Like when you're side by side with somebody, it makes
racing, you're going into a funnel kind of, and I mean, there's going to be contact at times,
especially when you got like, that's what it's close racing. You got guys that are going to
be really good on the bottom and you're going to have, you're going to have guys that are good
up top. And I don't see how a cup car doesn't move around there with the right, you know,
Goodyear has been doing a great job bringing tires. So I don't see, I think the race would be
pretty good. Yeah. I think it'd be pretty fun. Yeah. You know, you can go some places and the
atmosphere just feels right. It tracks like you just get the atmosphere. It just feels like that
there. Okay. Like it just, you feel like you're supposed to be there. Well, I know that's weird.
No, it isn't. It isn't. You know, I just feel like there's still part of me that's kind of
annoyed that we left in the first place, you know, but I'm trying to, you know, get over that
saying, you know, just like it's kind of like this falls into the bucket with like full season
points and all that. And I'm just so exhausted with, yeah, why would we ever leave there to begin
with? I know. I don't want to kind of beat this dead horse or rehash all of the hurt feelings
over all that, you know, but yeah, I mean, I would, I would love for us to go back there.
And that, but there seems to be a battle, I think NASCAR is kind of having within itself
as a, you know, at the top of the executive level of man, you know, we got this core
fan base that loves Rockingham, loves full season points, loves all these things that are very
traditional and connected to the history of the sport. But we also have doors opening to us that
weren't open before, like racing in San Diego is a great example. The Chicago street course,
like those were not doors that were open 15 years ago. Oh my gosh. But now there's all types of,
there's all types of opportunities and cities that are like, hey, come on over here, come do this.
What, what, what can we, how can we have a NASCAR race? Where should we, you know, and so
nobody's building any new race tracks, you know, and so they're like, well,
let's figure this out. It's racing a stadium. Let's race on the streets. Let's race here.
Let's race there. And so NASCAR has all these shiny new things and all these people that want to,
want to have conversations. And they look over here and go, yeah, Rockingham, that's cool.
But, you know, we did that. So they're in a tough spot, you know, of deciding,
because there's not enough dates. There's not enough days in the year. There's not enough,
there ain't enough calendar for all of it. And so something has to, something has to go. Yeah,
you know, I mean, it's kind of a, I mean, that's kind of a good problem to have at some point.
You got a lot of places to go, right? Well, it's good problem unless you're one of the places that
gets left out. Yeah. And you got these contracts where these tracks already have probably have
agreements for, so it's like, how do you remove? Yeah. Well, I think that the agreements have
shortened up to where they're, they're, they're one to three years. I don't know that they're,
they're that adhered to like they were in the past. The schedule is much more malleable and
changeable than it has ever been. And so, and NASCAR wants that, they want the opportunity to
act fast, you know, if something, if an opportunity pops up, they want to be able to make that change
and fit it in and shoehorn that in. You know, I think it's a simple solution
that actually might take some time though is to dial back some of the double dates.
You know, that's what, that's what's kind of happened in, in the sport already is a lot of
tracks that had two races has been dialed back to one. We've seen that be a success for a lot of
race tracks. And so, you know, maybe, maybe there is another venue or two on the schedule that goes
from two to one races a year to be able to add on, you know, tack on this, this new opportunity or
this old rocking ham. NASCAR looks at the geographical footprint a lot, I'm sure, and says,
where are we racing? Do we need to race another event in the state of North Carolina instead
of going over here where we are nowhere, you know, where we have no race, right? Not no races
within a state or two. They're going to go for that new opportunity every time. But, you know,
there's some race tracks that, you know, the rally series goes to that I'm like, why, you know,
I don't want to single anybody out, but there's a couple of race tracks that we go to. I'm like,
what are we doing here? Why are we at this? Cups never going to come here. Why are we here?
But that it's way out of the couple of them. Yes. And, you know, I think it's, I think having the
Xfinity series or I'm sorry, the rally series and the truck series at Rockingham is a really great
compromise. If we can't be there with Cup, maybe we can get there one day, you know, and maybe it's
an all-star event, just like North Wiltsboro. Maybe it's the, maybe our way back is through that kind
of an avenue of having an exhibition there of some sort. Where would you, if you could pull a
second race from somewhere and put it in Rockingham? I'd have to look at the schedule. I mean, you got
Phoenix, Vegas, Talladega, Bristol, Charlotte. Yeah, I'd pull a Phoenix. Do we need to go to
Phoenix twice? No. I mean, yeah. But NASCAR is going to go, whoa, we can't take one out of the
market of the West Coast. What? We already lost Auto Club. Yeah. And then we do that swing. You
kind of do the West Coast swing together when you go to Vegas. But I don't know. I mean, I'm not,
I think Phoenix is evolving, but I'm not a big, Phoenix was really great. Then they,
then they changed this configuration. I'm not a big fan of, you know, how they drive across
the apron. It was a really, really awesome badass racetrack that didn't need to be changed. But
we've seen that not only at Phoenix, but we've seen it at other places as well.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to do the what ifs or where, you know, I don't want to
**** on any old racetracks. I know. I got, I like a lot of them, all of them. Yeah. But
well, I don't know how they're going to get it into the schedule, but maybe it's
the same route that Wilkes-Barrell took. And I think fans would be perfectly fine with that.
Corey Heim is leading the truck series points,
but he is not eligible for the playoffs. So he's, he's got three starts in this series. The rest
of the field, all the other regulars have five. He's got two wins, three top fives and three top
10s. Caden Hunnicut has second points with three top fives, three top 10s. Corey Heim is, he's
actually tied with Caden in total points at 190 apiece, but he has a tiebreaker due to the wins.
What's the problem? He's ineligible for the truck to chase. So the question I think is,
should there be an eligibility restriction now that we have the point system that we have,
should we open it back up and be like, Hey man, you know, you don't have to, you don't have,
right now, drivers have to declare for a series. And maybe we don't do that anymore.
Maybe we just say, yeah, you don't have to declare. Just let them run if they want to run. Yeah,
if you have enough starts, you get enough points and you make the playoffs, you make the playoffs.
If you're good enough to race, let's say half the races, but have more points.
I don't care. Yeah, fine. What do you think though, should it be limited where like
non cup guys, like if a cup driver drops down and dominates though, do you have an issue with that?
I do. So I think it should be non cup drivers are eligible for O'Reilly and trucks.
I agree with you. I think that the, you know, doesn't have much.
Sorry, that doesn't have much when you say that to Travis.
Yeah, me agreeing with him. Did you hear that Twitter?
Well, I think that you're, you know, this is definitely something that NASCAR could
probably just do away with and nobody really care. And I don't know why it's really,
I don't know why it's in place right now, but
I don't mind the intermingling between the truck and O'Reilly series at all,
but I do love how we have divided the cup series driver from these two series like
they're, they can take part, they can come play, but that's the extent of it.
That is healthy. That restriction is healthy for our team. That restriction is healthy for
all full time O'Reilly teams. We do love when the cup racers come run in the O'Reilly series
because more people watch, but we do not love when a cup guy can, can win the championship
in the O'Reilly series because then he comes down and wins 12 races, 12 races that I need to win,
that other teams that run in the series full time need to win.
That eats into our budget and changes our business model. So I'll be flat out honest
when NASCAR restricted the cup drivers and the Brad keselowski's and Carl Edwards
and all those drivers that were trying to win championships in the O'Reilly series when they
couldn't do that anymore, our business model improved significantly. Now our teams are winning
more races. We're finishing higher on an average weekend because we're not finishing behind cup
drivers. Um, and so at the end of the day, our bottom line is better and we're a more profitable
operation. And so I would love for that to not change. Um, but I think that the O'Reilly and the
trucks is a different beast altogether. Like I don't, I don't mind a truck guy running with us
every week. He can run double duty. He can try to win the championship in both. Fine. Hell, we'll
employ a guy driving one of our damn cars if it works out, right? Um, you know, because I think
that both, I think that drivers are in the O'Reilly and the truck series for the same reasons.
They're trying to get experience. They're trying to get racecraft and do the same thing. So I don't,
I don't see them very vastly different. Whereas at the cup level,
yeah, I don't want to, I don't want a major leaguer dropping down to the minors every night to pitch
and try to help this minor league team win a title, right? When he's overqualified and needs to
stay in the major leagues, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like if Connor went and raced a full like it's.
Yeah. LeBron ain't playing in the G league, you know, in his off nights. Yeah.
But yeah, I think they need to let Corey Heim. What did he declare for? Is he
for truck? I thought he declared. Yeah. But he's still not eligible.
The, um, the other argument, there's another, uh, there's another different of,
difference of opinion. There are some people out there that feel like that the Raleigh series
and the truck series are not feeder series. They're not minor league. Yes, they are. So
that's a whole another debate. So the truck, what do you think, Travis? Here's the story.
Here's the truth. Here's what I believe the truth is on that.
The truck series was developed for two, uh, the truck series was developed for one single reason
to sell trucks, right? For the, for the truck, uh, manufacturers in the world would have an outlet
to race their product and sell it. That was perfect when it started to, that was the reason.
And there's not another reason. It wasn't set up. It wasn't a series established for veterans,
like, you know, guys that had kind of on the tail end of their cup careers or whatever.
Now that's who came in to race these trucks, but there was also a guy named Mike Skinner,
right? Or J. Thorter or a couple of the guys that were trying to get up to the top ranking.
Um, the truck series was developed to market and sell trucks. And so that, uh,
Chevy or Ford could go, yeah, our truck's the best truck. Look at that truck race.
It also presented opportunities for guys, uh, like Skinner, uh, like Hornaday, uh, to, to,
to race, right? To finally get opportunity in the NASCAR ranks to race. We also saw a lot of
veterans like Musgrave come down and have success in the series. A lot of drivers, uh, Todd, Todd
Bedine. Yeah, we saw a lot of veterans come down and race in the truck series, but that was not.
Um, the reason the truck series was created. It wasn't created as a playground for veterans.
Do you think it was? It happened to be a great place where veterans did find an opportunity
to make a living outside of the cup series because there was not any more cup opportunities,
but they found opportunity to make a living racing full time. If that, if the truck series
didn't exist, if the O'Reilly series didn't exist and you were a cup racer that had lost his
opportunity, you were f***ed because you're, you're, you've, you've got this house, you've got land,
you've got this family, you've got all these things. And now you've got a downsides because
your quality, your life and your lifestyle has tremendously been altered, but you were allowed
to go down into the rally or the truck series and continue to make a living, continue, you know,
the lifestyle that you had. Um, and so that was great. Now the O'Reilly series, let's talk about
that. The O'Reilly series is born out of the sportsman car series that raced in the late 70s.
They, they finally formed into a true series in 1982 with a championship schedule and a championship
fund. And since then it has been called multiple names, the bus series, the nationwide series,
the Xfinity series, but that series was basically, I guess, what the car's tour is today. So in the
70s and early 80s, it's, it's basically like taking the car's tour as it is today and developing it
further into a national series that would race on larger tracks, be at more companion events
with the NASCAR big brother. And so they took it from the South Boston's, the Kingsports, the,
um, the Carriways, they took that series that those, you know, sportsman series that it was,
they took it, it only ran it Daytona and Charlotte on big tracks, maybe Rockingham,
but mostly they raced at all the local short tracks in the Southeast. Well, it developed
into a series that would race more companion events and become what it is today as, as we recognize
it. Now it was full of local, now in the 70s, you know, in the 70s when the series was developed,
it was full of Sam Ards, Jack Ingrams, and these were seasoned, weathered, short track, dominant
aces. Uh, these were guys that could race at any of your local short tracks and be,
and come in and kick your ass and they'd been doing it for years.
But as it started to become more of a companion race for the cup guys on the weekends,
you started seeing some of the younger guys come in that were trying to get recognized
and noticed for that cup opportunity. And so the original identity of both the trucks and
the O'Reilly series are far different, uh, from what we know today. But, uh, what, what,
what they've transformed into is absolutely your, your minor league, your triple A, your double A,
single A. It is that, that is what those series, that is what they serve at this point in time.
You can go down there as a Justin Algar, you can race in the O'Reilly series as a guy like that
and make a living. And that's awesome. And I love that. And we need veterans at every level. We got
veterans in the cars tour that are career cars tour guys. There's guys that race South Boston on a
weekly, uh, schedule that are veterans and been there forever. And you're going to have them and
need them at every point, every level. But the, the truck series and the O'Reilly series are
absolutely where our young guys are going to put the final polishes on that race craft before they
finally get up to the cup level. And, um, it needs to serve that purpose. It needs to, it needs to
be serving that purpose. It's healthy for the series to be looked at as a place where you've
got to drop in, you've got to drop in and serve a couple of years. I support all that. Matthew
Dillon, our great friend, isn't, is not a believer. Uh, yeah, he feels like, well, he feels like that
the truck, the truck series and the, I'm not singling out Matt, he is a person like many
that feel like that the rally series is its own thing. It's not less than it is, it is over here,
cups over here and trucks over here. It's not, it's not below. It's not this ladder.
Um, yeah, weird. I get his point and I, it's a point that many people share,
but I don't know. I feel like that over the course of mold, I mean, we're talking about all this,
you know, the trucks that you started in the mid nineties, O'Reilly series kind of started
officially in 82. That's a lot of years of a lot of evolution and changing and molding and
shifting, pivoting, you know, the, the identity has absolutely changed of those series from what
they originally were. And so, but I love that man, they've got Rockingham and cup doesn't.
So, you know, we, they've got a couple of race tracks that they go to where they're the headliner.
Yeah, I would like to see them put IRP back on there or ORP freaking a right.
I would love to see O'Reilly go to South Boston.
Oh, yeah, dude. And South Boston is primed and ready for an O'Reilly race.
Are you kidding me? It'd be great.
It is a badass, racy little race track and they're doing some great things over there with their,
with their, you know, regional racing. Um, and that track has always had a solid, solid foundation.
They've got a lot of great people over there right now that are getting the best out of it
as we all hope. And it's kind of the standard setter for what regional racing should be, can be
around the Southeast, at least for, you know, for a lot of our tracks that are, that are,
that are still operating in this sort of mid-Atlantic region.
And so, you know, I think you'd see a pretty awesome race there if you took the O'Reilly
series there, maybe the trucks. I don't know. I'd rather see the O'Reilly series there myself.
I think you take them together.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, sure.
Do you have live pit stops?
You don't have to. I mean, I would, I would be fine
sacrificing something as trivial as pit stops for them to be there.
I'm actually racing there.
Let these guys show who's truly the best driver.
But they have a long pit road, DJ.
They do. Oh yeah.
They have really, they have two sides.
Honestly, there's a front and a back.
Yeah, they have enough stalls.
Yeah.
But it would, it would probably be best to do no live stop.
I mean, you could do 150 and 150, couldn't you?
Just, that's what the trucks used to do all the time.
Yeah, line them up, go.
And then you'll find out who the true best drivers are not losing spots on pit road and
they're the best driver out there that day.
150 laps is a decent long run there.
So I think that'd be great.
That's a lot of laps.
That'd be fun.
It would be.
Wait a minute now, you're talking about getting rid of the Sages.
It just did.
Yeah.
Did you just get rid of some stages and actually, you know, make sense?
You could get rid of the stage.
I mean, you don't have to get rid of the stage.
I like it, DJ.
Say it with the chest.
Yeah.
You could pay the stage points, just keep on racing.
Yeah.
Have a halfway break at 150.
Yeah.
You give you stage points.
I don't give stage ones at 100 and 200 and 300 out here.
But don't throw the yellow.
Got luck.
Yeah, I'm fine with that.
Look at that idea.
What an idea.
Let's go.
Can we start this weekend?
So me and TJ are, we're car collectors.
Nah, I would put myself in the novice casual category, right?
I was collecting cars years ago.
Didn't know shit about what I was doing.
But I ended up keeping all my stuff and I got it all back out.
And now I'm deep into this again.
And I don't know shit about it.
And it is quite, it has changed.
Oh, it's big.
Way different.
They got a language.
They got like, they got a whole glossary that you need to learn in the next couple of weeks.
I want to get a car guy here to interview and see if we can, you know,
learn some of the things that we need to know about doing this well.
But what I wanted to talk about, I had this whole list of questions.
We're going to try to get somebody in here today.
We're going to do it next week, I suppose, about, you know,
just some unwritten rules about card collecting.
And when do you get your cards graded and all that bull.
But one of the things I wanted to ask the guy is this,
and you got some explaining to do me.
Yeah.
So I, and look, I don't know the real answer here.
And so maybe there's something I learned about this.
But I said, I'm going to bring a box of cards in here and open them up.
And I sat down on the table and I opened up this box of cards and I gave you eight packs.
And I kept eight.
We opened them and you took your eight packs home and I took my eight packs home.
All right.
I went over to your house.
You're like, come on over.
Let's open some cards.
I go over to your house and we opened up a box of football cards.
And I had the cards in front of me and I said, Hey man,
you want me to see what these are worth?
And you go, I'm going to check the values on them later.
Oh, you could have taken them and looked at it.
Why didn't you say?
Oh, I wouldn't have taken them and looked at them.
Like when I haven't looked at them again yet.
The, but what is the code?
Like if you're going to rip packs with your buddies and you toss your buddy a pack
and he rips it, do you take the cards back?
Well, I mean, was it because there was a good Drake May in there?
It's like, it's like if you buy a scratch off or something at Christmas and that hits,
they get, they, if they want to share the well, that's kind of what it felt like,
but they, it's doors to keep.
So if you, if you give one to TJ, it's his vice, you know,
I gave a scratch off to a very good friend of mine this weekend and he won 350 bucks.
So he keeps it.
Yeah.
I mean, I would say, I would probably give you right a refusal if you want.
Or first of all, when you got your cars, that box also, didn't they give you that box?
Does it matter where the box came from?
It doesn't matter how he.
Well, yeah, it kind of does.
No.
If a company sends me 10 boxes for free and I give him five of his, in my opinion, they're his.
That's not his problem.
I got one box.
Well, I would give, I would give it, if I had 10 boxes of cards, I would share and probably give
you half and whatever you get, you get.
Where's the 10 number come from?
I'm just saying it could be five.
If I give you two boxes.
It was one box.
When I were making it 10 boxes, I had one box.
Well, I'm just saying whatever, if someone gives you something and you're like, here you go, man,
you can have half or whatever.
I would give you half and whatever you get, you get.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I wanted to ask this guy.
I was like, what's the code?
Cause people sit down and they rip boxes together.
Yeah.
And I go over, you know, I went over and get my hair cut at the barbershop the other day
and a guy was in there with a case of cards and he was showing me what he had.
And he just was like, here, here, you can have this cow rippin.
Dang.
I'm like, really?
Just have it.
He's like, yeah.
I'm like, I feel like I don't have any.
I didn't bring it.
I know.
Yeah.
What do you get back?
Yeah.
What do you do?
I'm learning.
Like, I don't really know.
I don't really know what the etiquette is.
I mean, there's a lot of like, like, hey, you said, I, so I said, what are you looking for?
You're like, I bills players and you know, I'm a commander's guy, right?
And so I pull, I open all these base football cards and I pull like eight or so bills players
and set them off to the side.
Amy's like, what are you doing with them?
I'm like, I'm going to give them to TJ when I see and I come over here.
Here's your bills for you.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, well, that started, I gave, I mean, I gave you that Jane.
I didn't even think about it.
I'm like, I'm going to give you that Jane Daniels rookie because I'm not
Jaden Daniels a guy.
You are.
And I wanted you to have it.
So yeah, which I thought was a pretty nice.
That was very nice.
Like gifts already great and everything too.
Already great.
I forgot about that.
Yeah.
Wow.
You're welcome.
All right.
So what we need to learn from our card guy that we're going to get on here next week is
like when you rip and packs with friends is, is it?
What's the pack say rip is theirs to keep?
Are they ripping packs for you?
I mean, I really don't know.
I got a lot of questions we'll find out.
Hey, this is Dale Hart Jr.
And for all the latest Dale Jr.
download gear, including the I'm old drinks and beer t-shirt we've been talking
about here around the office, head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch.
All right, we got this race weekend's winner in the rally series at Rockingham William
Swalich William, how's it going, man?
Hey, man, I'm doing good.
How are you?
Yeah.
Well, we're excited to talk to you because, you know, you've won this past weekend a big
deal winning your first race in the rally series.
You've been working at this a long time racing and super late models and pros and all types
of stuff over the years.
And I've, you know, had the opportunity to watch you kind of progress through the ranks.
Had a tough year last year, you know, I guess first question out of the gate.
You know, as you're going through this past season,
you know, how you've always been used to running well, getting in everything and going
to the front and running up front.
How did last year teach you to be prepared, I guess, for the future and how to move forward?
Yeah, there's definitely a bit of a change.
Obviously, moving up to the O'Reilly series last year, the field is a lot denser.
You know, there's a lot more opportunities for things to go wrong.
And we just, I honestly couldn't get the little things right last year.
So I think I learned that for this year and everything, every little thing adds up in a race.
And I would usually, you know, take a bad race with me to the next weekend.
So I learned to, you know, forget that and just focus on this week and the positives.
And it was really just a mindset thing, I think.
And not that Rockingham was really any different heading in.
We just had a good car in practice and that just boosted the confidence.
And I knew we had a race winning car.
So we had to capitalize.
Well, you certainly did.
You know, is that race, is the weekend's playing out.
You talked about how you felt about the car.
You know, is that race is playing out?
You know, where's your head space?
I know when I was younger and even later in my career, you know,
we get in those situations where you feel like you've got the race winning car
and you're kind of wondering what's going to happen to take that out of your hands
or what's going to change in the race out of your control that's going to,
you know, you're going to lose control of the race.
Where was your mindset, you know, as you're running out those laps toward the finish?
Yeah, so we led those last 60 laps to the finish and
almost every time I've led an archer race, there's always been a late race caution.
So I was just praying for that to not happen.
But once you take the white, it's just a sigh of relief and you know, you got it.
But honestly, it was pretty calm out front for me.
I'm comfortable leading races and I'm able to get in a better rhythm.
And we were so good on the short run that I could build such a big gap that all I had to do
was match lap times with Brandon or Brent behind me, my teammates.
So my guys definitely brought me a car good enough to, you know, make it easy on me.
So all I had to do is really not mess up too bad and we had it.
Yeah. The, you know, the process of becoming a race car driver is not something that happens
overnight and you're very young still, you know, 19 years old and
I think we, I think we get so, we've kind of normalized having somebody your age
in the O'Reilly series and we expect results right out of the gate.
I think that, you know, there's been multiple examples of
really great race car drivers that needed their time.
Joey Logano, William Byron are two examples that stand out to me.
And I feel like that, you know, we put a ton of pressure on guys like you and you get these
opportunities to start delivering results.
You know, kind of, I'm sure you've had a lot of people in your ears helpful,
you know, helpful support, supportive conversations around being patient
and allowing your race craft to come to you and allowing yourself to develop.
Who have been the people, I guess, who's been in your corner
teaching you patience, waiting on, you know, waiting on your, you know, your style and your
race craft in the O'Reilly series to develop?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously all my sponsors and everybody here at JGR coach,
my team obviously, my crew chief, Jeff Mentoring.
Everyone was just super supportive last year on just being patient and letting me learn.
And it's just, it's tough as a young driver being compared to, you know, other drivers that
find success really early. You know, I just kept reminding myself that I need time and I need
to learn the hard way. And when you don't find success early, it's definitely easy to get down
yourself. And then, you know, winning last weekend in Rockingham, it's like, okay, I can do this.
And I knew I could do this the whole time. So it's just a good little reminder of I guess why I'm here.
Yeah, for sure. I think there's a lot of excitement around you. There was, you know, coming into the
O'Reilly series, a lot of attention on you. And with this win, it sort of reignited everybody's,
you know, expectations and hope for your future. What are you doing on the side in terms of physical
fitness and things like that to try to develop, you know, you as a driver driving longer races,
as you want to progress into the Cup Series, I'm sure, one day trying to find, you know,
how was that, I guess, out of the gate, getting into these races, running longer races? I know
you've ran some different, you know, super late model races and so forth that are 300, 400 laps
throughout the year. But how has the, how have you physically had to change or improve to get
to where you can race today? Yeah. So the longest race I've ran, I think, before an O'Reilly series
race is the Winchester 400, the All-American 400, Redbud. So those are super late model races.
And when I was that young, I had no muscle, no fat. So I would just ride through everything
and sweat it out. But now I've put on a lot more muscle. I've been weight training.
You know, I run sometimes, but honestly, I just do like high rep weight training. And that,
that honestly suits me really well. And I've got to put a weight of vest on. I put sweats on to
simulate some of the heat. But once it starts to get like really hot out in the summer, you know,
do workouts outside. So what is, is that something that you're, is that direction you're getting
and help you're getting through Joe Gibbs racing? Who's sort of, you know, who's responsible, I
suppose, for making sure you're in the gym every day besides yourself? Yeah, well, definitely
myself. I feel like physical preparation for me is something I focus on like heavily. I feel like
it's super important. And Kevin Harvick, he's always told me, you know, if you're physically
prepared, then you don't have to really worry about anything else. Like if your neck goes out
in the car and that starts getting tired, then that's all you're thinking about.
But I've got a trainer, his name's Chris. And, you know, we just go to the gym, you know, I tell
him how I felt the past weekend in the car. And then if, if anything, if I'm, if I was a little
tired in some areas, then, you know, we'll go to work on it. Being a younger guy, how much,
how much sim work do you rely on? How connected to the sim you are? Every driver is a little bit
different in terms of their opinion of the sim and how much they use it. What, how would you
describe that as a tool for you? Yeah, so we do about five hours a week, two sessions, two and a
half hours each. And I started off really liking the sim. I still really like the sim. But it's
a little finicky at sometimes, you know, if we don't tune the tire correctly and then you go
into the weekend and it's completely off, then it kind of screws everything up. But we've been
working really hard on tuning the tire correctly and getting that dialed in for the next race.
We did a good job of tuning the tires for last year. So every race this year has been really
close. I think that's why, you know, we've had some more speed out of the gate is because it's,
it's more similar when we roll off in practice. But it's as close as you can get. I really wish we
had testing, but obviously the sim is all we got and we just have to rely on it. Yeah. Talk about
your teammates at JGR, a lot of young guys, but you got Jones, the veteran in there.
How do you lean on them? Who do you get along with? How helpful are they throughout this process?
Yeah, I mean, I can get along with anybody. I don't really have a lot of friends in the sport,
like I don't, you know, go around and I'm not searching for friends that I compete against,
compete against because I don't, I don't really think there's a point because you're going to get
into it with them at some time. But Brandon, I definitely rely on, he's a good veteran.
Obviously a great guy. You know, if I'm struggling with some in practice, I'll go talk to him. He
usually is able to explain stuff to me better than the others. And my crew chief, Jeff Mendring,
has worked with Brandon for many years in the O'Reilly series. So we can always, you know,
have a good connection through that. Awesome, man. Well, hey, we appreciate your time this morning.
Congratulations on the win. I'm sure one of many, many more as you go through this process.
I look forward to racing against you and with you throughout the season.
I've enjoyed getting to know you over the years and I kind of pull for your success, man, even
though you were, you know, you're running under the Toyota banner with JGR and we're trying to win
the championship and battle against you. I love seeing you do well out there, man.
All right. Thank you so much. Best of luck to you guys too.
You bet, buddy.
Congrats.
Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. And we are here for
the Ask Jr. segment of the show. And with me as always is my co-host,
TJ Majors. How you doing, TJ? Hey, how's it going? Yeah, out of breath there.
I know. I just run outside to sign some autographs. Somebody brought a show car over here
that I told them that I'd take care of. And so you signed the wing? I signed a dash.
But we want everybody to know. Thank you for tuning in for one. And
we also want you to know about Xfinity. They're waving the red flag on internet price hikes
and the green flag for savings. And you can get speed and the Wi-Fi that you need all locked in
one price for five years. No surprises. No late yellows. Just a straight shot to Victor Lane,
just like we like it. We've got a winner in Xfinity. Imagine that. They are a great partner here.
I've actually got the chat pulled up for the first time in a long time,
so I'm kind of following along with everybody. So we'll, yeah, we'll get right to it. So we've
had a good show. We talked, we got Rodney Childers to come in and give us his rundown on how the
season's going as part of Junior Mergers sports. We talked to William Swallow to one his first
a rally race this weekend. We talked a little Cletus McFarland. We talked about Cup going to
Rockingham, Corey Hime being ineligible as the leader in the points in the truck series,
ineligible for the playoffs. Yeah, so we had a lot of great conversation. I hope you'll tune in
when the show is released later today, but let's get right to your questions. So we were talking
about trading cards a little bit ago and somebody wanted to know what is something you purchased
in a day later? You said that was dumb. Have you had any purchases? We were like, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Well, I'm sure that there's been a number of things that I've done for sure, but one of my
regrets was an automobile. I bought a Callaway Corvette and Callaway is a great brand that built
they take Corvettes and they would they would build a new Corvette every year and it would
have ground effects and just kind of they change the whole body and style of the car.
And I bought a used Callaway Corvette and, man, I didn't drive it a lot and a buddy of mine laid
his motorcycle on it. He had a like a Suzuki or something like a nice motorcycle and he parked
it in front of the car and laid it on accidentally laid it on the nose of the Callaway Corvette.
It is he was a he was also a body repair man. So he fixed it, but not that that really mattered,
but I just remember that being part of the story of the car. Eventually,
I just was like, I don't love this car. Don't like it. I don't want it. Don't need it. This was
dumb. I shouldn't have bought it and I got nowhere near the money out of it that I put into it. And so
lesson learned.
And I'll be quite honest. There's not a lot of things that I buy that they're going to always
appreciate, but I've gotten maybe a little more selective, I think. So, you know, there's always
going to be, we were talking about cards earlier and I think in the card game,
like you want to be smart if you're buying singles, you want to buy the card at a reasonable price,
for sure. But again, I think what an expert, if we ask the question, right, hey, what should
we pay for a card? Like what is the, like is it 20% over 20, you know, 10% below value value?
What do we pay comparable to the value of the card? And they're probably always going to say,
how bad do you want it? You know, is it a favorite player? Is it a favorite team? Is it a favorite
moment? And that's really, you know, that's kind of the answer. If you like, I like specific players,
right? So I'm going to learn about a specific card that that that player has that's really a great,
you know, salt after card and I'm going to want it, right? And now what am I willing
to pay to get it? And that's the value of the card. Because what I have learned
is, and this is, I think this is probably true to anything, the value of it is what the last
person paid for it. So if you look at the card apps, they're just basically pulling price,
pulling purchases off of eBay. So the car has been sold six times in the last year on eBay.
And here's all the things and they've averaged that. And that's it. It's what is,
that's pretty good though. Yeah, but the value is what you're what you're willing to pay for.
That's what happens with the land too. So like, you know, you, you got an acre of property down
the road from you that's available. And you think it, you know, you think price range,
you know, the price range average of an acre of land around your area is 12 and a half or,
you know, 30,000, whatever, right? Well, if somebody pays 45 now, that's what that's worth.
That's a $45,000 piece of land. And, and so it raises a, you know, a little bit of the value
of everything around you because somebody paid this much for that something very comparable
down the road. So TJ, you got any dumb purchases?
Yeah, all the time. Not like, not really bad though. I've probably overpaid for a couple
Josh Allen cars, but like you said, how bad do you want them? You got a couple for free though.
I did get a couple of commons probably, but yeah.
I gave him some Josh Allen's just common, common card. He's just unthankful.
You were talking about last week, the, the rocket launch, this person wants to know if you had the
opportunity, would you get in a rocket to go to the moon? So, oh man, I was, we were watching last
night, them going around the backside of the moon. And I was trying to tell somebody they were,
I was like, man, this is the ultimate daredevil stunt. You know, like you, you see people do stunts
and you're like, you know, man, I don't have the guts to do that. But like, this is the biggest,
this is the biggest jump, right? Yeah. So,
oh man, I'd probably have to really consider it. You're mine to be quite transparent about this,
right? The first thing you're going to think about, and you might not understand this Travis,
but the first thing you think you think about is like, am I, I'm leaving my family and leaving
behind everything I know. And if this doesn't go well, you know, just change everything. But
so you've got to weigh the risk. But I think it's, you have to do it. That's what I think. You have
to do it. Just to be in that up there like this. You know, one other thing that I thought about
this was you have to do it. But I wonder what, so all of us in this room, and I'm pretty, pretty
confident to say this, every single one of us in this room, at some point in that trip,
are going to have a nervous freaking breakdown. Probably early. Right? At some point, you're
going to go, yeah, okay, I'm ready for this ride to end. Get me out of here. And it's, it's,
it doesn't end until it ends, right? You ain't getting off. How long are they gone? 10 days.
But they're now, they're halfway through. So
that, that would be the thing that I would probably be most worried about. And I wonder how,
I mean, this is probably dumb question, but I wonder how they prayer, I wonder how they prepare
them and how they mentally train, right? To stay top of mind, to stay plugged in, to stay,
you know, almost robotic about the whole process. Because now listening to them describe what they're
seeing, you can hear, you can see they're like taking a back. They're like, man, I'm the guy last
night. He's like, we're on the backside of the moon. He's like, I wish I could really find the words
to tell y'all what this is like, but I don't have them. That's pretty cool though. He's, I do not
have the ability. He's like, we are not equipped with the ability to describe to you what we are
feeling and seeing, which was really compelling to hear. And so it makes me badly wish that I too
could see that, right? Or experience that. But do I have the, would I lose my at some point?
You know, right? Would we, wouldn't we, what might we all probably, what do you do? What do
they do all day? Like, what do they do? I mean, they got tasks. I think they're working. Yeah.
Yeah. But I mean, what do you, what can you possibly work on all day? I don't know, dude. They're
just doing stuff. Yeah. I don't think they're, if they're just like, there was one moment where
they were like, uh, they changed the pressure inside the cabin. Just, you know, there's a test
that they were like, they like, you know, did a few things just to be able to, you know, be able to
control the atmosphere inside the cabin and make sure all those things work the way they're supposed
to work. Cause that's something that's going to have to happen as they go down into the atmosphere
of the moon or whatever, right? And they go land, you know, they got to have ability to change the
pressure in the cabin and all that. I imagine, yeah. So think about that, right? I'm, that's,
that's probably what they're doing. They're doing all of these things that they know are going to
have to work perfectly on the next flight. And they're doing some things that aren't necessary
today or necessary for this particular flight, but they know they're going to be needed and used
when, when they take the next flight, right? So they're, they're testing all of this
capabilities of this capsule. And so I think that would, you know, that would keep you busy,
but the other thing too is the reentry, right? In the atmosphere, all of those things, right?
There's a lot of very challenging moments still ahead. How do they compartmentalize, right? And
not, not worry or think forward. Howard, you know, I don't know, man. I would, I'm a very emotional
kind of person with that kind of stuff. So like, you know, I'm in racing and so forth. It's heavy.
It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, the pre-race, the post-race, all those things are,
are really big moments, big emotional moments. And so I don't know, I wouldn't, I would, I would have,
I would need tons of training, right? To be in just this robotic state of just doing my work,
not getting called up in the, I wonder if it would be hard to quit watching out the window.
That would be like, yeah, they're, they're telling them to like, all right, y'all, don't forget to
change. Don't forget to like, let someone else get it, you know, don't forget to change windows.
And then, you know, some, some folks come away from the windows and they go to work and the
others, they swap out, right? It's the way they're describing it. So yeah, like you would,
if you're seeing something that you can't even describe, right? You can't even like,
put words to it, you wouldn't want to take your eyes off of it. They say they're seeing impacts
on the moon. Like they're watching, that's wild. Stuff hit it? Yeah. Really? Yeah, they're sitting
there like, hey, we're watching them flash impacts of things that are landing on the surface of the
moon. And I'm sure they've seen things like, what was that out there? I mean, who knows? They did,
they, the guy, they were like, you know, there's this burning red sort of orb and they're like,
well, that's probably Mars. And maybe you're seeing this and seeing that. And so I don't know, man,
it's a, I love it. It's fascinating. And it's exciting. I can't wait to, to continue to follow
their trip back. Yeah. And through their thoughts, too. And the reentry into the atmosphere and all
that stuff, how challenging that is for the spacecraft. This thing, one of the things that
I didn't get an answer for that I was, so there's this, there's a camera that's on the outside of the
capsule and it's showing the capsule, right? And there's all these things flying by. And it looks
like moths, right? It looks like what moths might look like when they're flying around the light,
but they're coming by this thing. And you're like, what the hell is that? You know, is that like
debris? Space stuff? What is it? Stuff? Just what is that? It's flying by. And how is that not,
you know, what, what is that stuff and what is it doing? I don't know. There's a bunch of stuff
flying by the capsule in this one clip of one particular shot. Yeah. It's weird. Do you believe
in aliens? Um, that's a big question. I feel like that if, look, if space is infinite and we are
here. Surely there's others. Surely. There is absolutely, there, I would say if, you know,
we're, if I was a betting man, I would bet 1000% that I put all the money on the fact that there's
definitely other life forms out there, what they look like, what shape they take, um,
all that. I don't know. You know, I mean, but there has, there, there has got to be multiple
instances of scenarios where life could exist, right? In terms of temperature, water, and all
the things that need to be in that sort of, um, equation. And there might be a hundred more
Earths that we don't even know about. Yeah. Thousands. If the alien delegation sent someone
here to earth, who would you nominate from the human race to meet and be that person to start?
Probably you. Oh my gosh. Probably Travis. Who would, who would I? Yeah. Yeah. Oh man.
That's it. Like Matthew McConaughey. Really? Matthew McConaughey. Yeah. Can you imagine? Yeah.
But I mean, there's a potential that could go wrong. Oh yeah. So you don't want to lose
somebody. That's why we're not sending you. You don't want to lose your first ring. You're a,
you're a guy. So you kind of got to send somebody that's capable, but at the same time,
if they were just to disappear instantly. Someone in the jets of Ward Burton.
Honestly, Ward would probably be on the council because he's the man of the, he knows, he knows
what's up with the, you know, snake catcher aliens like coming in. What'd you say? Yeah.
Ward would definitely be on my council ahead of agriculture.
All right. Next question comes from the chat. What's underrated when underrated or overlooked
paint scheme you'd like to see a die cast of mine would be Schrader's red bear and car.
A car that needs to be a die cast or one that you don't have that you want. Yeah, I've got a little
list. There's some, I will say this man, there's some cars that are die cast that could have been
better. There's the mold. Yeah. The Monte Carlo SS mold that, you know, there's a lot of customs
and there's a bunch of cars that they made for dad on the Monte Carlo SS. So like 86, 87,
that mold is kind of strange to me. The nose turns down past the, you know, over the top of
the front tires and nose bends over. I don't know. They've gotten so good these days at like
scanning cars and making the actual car. Like the ones that sit here on this desk, they look to me
like everything's in the right place. Right? They're pretty accurate. Yeah. There's not,
they're not out of proportion or disproportion or something's funky, but it's a lot of the older
stuff. Like a lot of the Buick, like the 81 Buick stuff, they got a Mart Martin, a Richard Petty.
Those things were really high. Like these cars here, they're kind of all sitting pretty close to
race heights. Right? Yeah, there is low. They're a little high, but like the, some of the stuff they
made in the past, just like I literally, I've got, I had the Mart Martin 1981 Buick Mark Martin car.
And then I had the people, I had a couple of the 1981 ish Buick's have a Richard Petty and a
Mark Martin and then the number two Stacy car. And I take the damn front. I take the front
springs out of the front. I take them apart. It's a couple of screws and I take the damn springs
out. So they'll sit lower. So they're a little closer to ride height. I can't stand to look at them
when they're like that. But there's stuff stuff like that that I'm just kind of particular about.
Will you get a host of ours throwback from the share if they make it?
Yeah, I would take that. You know, I'm biased. So I'm going to tell you a couple that are,
people are going to go, yeah, that doesn't move the needle for me. But Dad's Buick from the 1979
Daytona 500. Somebody had to make that in a custom because they don't actually have a mold for that
actual car. Yeah. I would love a set of Donnie Alice and Kelly Arbor all crashed versions
from the 79 Daytona 500, the two, the two Olesmobiles. Like, why don't they make that set and sell it
of the two cars post race? AJ Foyt's 19, I think 84 Olesmobile Cutlass. I don't know why that was
a beautiful car. All orange kind of orange poppy red number 14. I don't know, man. I like those.
I got a long list. There's a lot of dad cars that I don't have that I wish they made.
Mostly the Wrangler stuff like the Pontiac. So the car that host of our threw it back to
the 81 Pontiac Grand Prix, like the cars that are available or were produced in the past of that
specific model. It's not a good rendition of the car. Ride heights way too high.
And it's just a funky looking. Doesn't look like a cup car. It looks like a
actual street version. Like they scanned the actual street car and put that body on there.
All right. Well, we have to wrap. Do you damn it? Yeah, really? All right. What happened? Well,
we got Russ here waiting. Yeah, he waited another five minutes. Do you do you want to address the
chat? About what? There's one thing they keep asking about. What is it? Figgie. Figgie. Who's
Figgie? I don't get it. And I think it's dumb. Yeah. What? Damn. Elijah does not. Yeah. He loves it.
Yeah. So explain to everybody what's happened. I don't know how these things come out of nowhere.
I don't understand. It literally, from what I could tell, it literally came from a single tweet
or some reddit post on Reddit that there's this mythical
son of dad. Yeah. Figgie that existed. I mean, the internet just having fun, I guess.
Just being goofy. The internet's getting internet. Like I asked Tim, so I'm like,
am I old? Am I missing something? Look, I don't want to ruin this thing for them because I mean,
they're having a lot of good, they're having a good time with it. I don't think you can ruin it,
can you? Well, if I just said it didn't exist and it was, and if I said like Travis, this is dumb,
it's done it. Everybody like, man. It doesn't. Did I get it? Yeah. It doesn't exist. Are you sure? No.
I mean, I'm assuming. Are you saying it does? No. I've done the genealogy. I know the answer.
Is he a Hall of Famer? He never raced, right? I'd say no. It's interesting how those things
kind of pop up and yeah, the internet's undefeated. It's something. You want all,
you want like things, the things that you want to take off like this, don't, and then. Yeah,
this does. This does. Yeah. Yeah. We need more off weeks. No, no. Race on Easter. Yeah, that was
one take that you had. Take next week. Race on Easter. So you take next week off? Yeah.
I think Easter, it's right. It's ripe for sports, TV ratings. Yeah, sports you play on holidays.
People are hanging out. I'm not against drivers. I'll say, I was hanging out. I was at my fifth
wheel in Texas with my family, Amy's family, and we took our fifth wheel out there and
was sitting outside on Sunday and I'm like, I feel like I'm supposed to be watching a race.
What am I supposed to do? Even Saturday, you were sitting around there hanging out. Well, we got
to watch the race and there was some basketball in the corners. Hornets are doing good. I wanted
to make sure you fell over there. So that that was something that was on the notes that didn't
make the show. Next segment. What segment? All right. You talking about Khan? Yeah. Yeah.
Khan for rookie year. We have a betting segment. Khan for rookie of the year. What is going on?
Flag comes in and has a couple of good games. Scores 51, 40, whatever. Scores like 85 points
in two nights and now they're like, yep, rookie of the year. There it is. There's the guy. Flag,
he's back. And Khan was like Cooper, Khan, Cooper, Khan. I mean, Khan. Can you pull? Sorry. Khan.
Can you pull was the like 80% chance of winning the rookie of the year just to a week ago or two
weeks ago and was that that was kind of the opinion for the most the past couple of months
and Cooper flag comes in and has a couple of solid games. I know he's done more than that this year,
but he had these two monster games and everybody's like, yeah, there it is. Now he's like 75%
chance of winning the rookie of the year and they don't let Charlotte have nothing. They don't.
They don't. Charlotte's going to start going to make the playoffs this year.
You might surprise somebody in that first round. You don't want to have to play them.
Hopefully they do. Yeah. They don't let us have nothing.
I don't think that's, you don't know. You ain't even a Charlotte thing.
No, he don't even care. I know he don't. I bet.
Khan to one rookie of the year. Khan should be the rookie of the year.
Ain't, but like three games left. Nothing. I mean, nothing against Cooper flag, but,
you know, Khan should be rookie of the year. I don't know any other way to say it,
but we got a real shot at like upsetting somebody in the first round of the playoffs,
knocking off a high seed. When did they vote for the rookie of the year before the play officer?
My wife asked me that question and I didn't even know. I don't know. I mean, imagine, I don't know,
but it's frustrating because like flag is finally healthy. He's playing amazing. He's doing everything
that they all thought he would. Yes. He's an amazing player and he's the number one option on their
team where Khan's kind of like in the middle of the, you know, we, Charlotte's got, you know,
a different guy stepping up every night. And Khan's not had an incredible
string of games of late. His last five games, I think have just kind of been so, so, but he's,
you know, they're playing games in such a way to win to position themselves better in the playoffs
and not just lighten up the school board for him, you know? Yeah. So I don't know, man. Look,
I'm not a f***ing expert at NBA or basketball, but I've been following this this year and
damn, felt like Khan had rookie of the year wrapped up and now it's a conversation or a debate
and they're going to take it away from us. It was ours. We're trying to get Khan Kanupal on the
podcast. He said he's glad to come on after the season's over. So hopefully further down. Yeah.
That'd be cool. Yeah. Anyways, everybody appreciate y'all tuning in. Glad we could address the,
the figgy Earnhardt speculation and what a, what a time to be alive when something like that can
come out of nowhere and be a dominating discussion in our, in our Ask Junior segment. But hopefully
you'll check out the rest of the show. We got a lot of great stuff for you. And thank you Xfinity
for waving the red flag on internet price hikes. You'll get great savings now. You'll get the speed,
reliable Wi-Fi that you need all at one price for five years. No yellows, no surprises,
straight to victory lane. Xfinity, imagine that. We'll see you.
Get your bets down, ladies and gentlemen. Get your bets.
All right, everybody. It's time for the dirty mode dose segment.
Um, presented to you by FanDuel. FanDuel is, is a premier gaming destination in the United,
United States and also here in the studio with our group. We got Tim's on board today,
as well as Russ. And we had an off week in the cup series. Everybody got a time to
place bets elsewhere. Did anybody put any money on Michigan to beat Yukon last night?
I did, but I got the spread. So I got, it was six and a half and then one by six.
Yeah, I was a sweater there. And then, uh, was it a day, Mar or whatever, the big dude from Michigan?
I just needed two more points out of him and it was going to be a great night.
He almost had him at the end. Like he missed that little overinflated ball. I'm dead serious.
Ask any of the, uh, teams they talked about like the one time we dribbled and went above his head,
like the teams were talking about the basketballs in the tournament were overinflated.
It is sketchy that one. They were just trying to avoid deflate gate. Yeah.
That one way they only made one shoot threes, both teams. It was really weird. Yeah.
I think that's probably why, um, Con has been shooting support here lately. Overinflated.
Overinflated balls. As they're been giving flag, the deflated basketballs and Con is getting
the overinflated basketballs. I think I'm going to make a con plus 170 rookie of the year bet.
I did. He's plus 170 now. It's so, it's ridiculous. I agree with you. It's so ridiculous. It is stupid.
So he was in the voting for that is after the regular season, not playoffs. Okay.
Okay. So it's coming up. So it's coming up. Yes. Yes. End of the regular season.
So, so look, you guys bet Corey Heim. We did not. I don't bet on NASCAR.
Same. I'm not allowed. I was talking to Tim's. I'm not, no, I'm not allowed. Oh,
of course I bet on Corey Heim. It's the one bet I made all weekend. It's frustrating.
I mean, I know I shouldn't be allowed to bet, but you guys get to talk about it and actually make
the bets. It's fun. Thanks. It's a great time. Please tell me more. Yeah. I'll tell you what,
though. It wasn't fun when Honeycutt was running them down and you had a Corey Heim bet. I'm like,
man, there's something going on. Do you have a flat or something? Got his front tire going down?
I don't know. He had an issue. He definitely had some sort of issue. Yeah. It was crazy. I was
like, Oh God, this is how it ends. It's always when you have the surefire bet that's going to
happen, but he hung on. Well, not with me. Every time I make a surefire bet, it's ridiculous.
Well, we got the Cup Series back after a week off and they are going to Bristol.
Vegas has Kyle Larson is the favorite at plus 400. Denny at plus 550.
Man, that's interesting. I would take Denny over everybody at Bristol. I mean, Denny has won there
time and time again. Ryan Blaney at plus 650. Christopher Bell 700 and William Byron at a
thousand. What's the predictor saying, Russ? We're very close. Larson, Hamlin, Bell, and then I have
Blaney and Ty Gibbs. Ty Gibbs is really good there. Yeah. So he'd be your sleeper pick here.
What's he at for odds? He's plus 900 to win. Not the best. It sucks. I know. Yeah. Well,
it's better than Byron who's plus a thousand. Yeah. I would pick Gibbs over Byron. Yeah, me too.
Tim, do you think it's, do you take Denny over Larson here? I do. I'm not sure if it really
matters, but I'm kind of nervous about Hendrix performance so far this year. I don't chase
just one Martinsville, but I think that I think Denny and Gibbs are just running better. I saw
I'll take Denny plus he's not the overall favorite. So I like that a little bit better. Yeah, though
and he dominates here. So what do you think, TJ? Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to go against Denny
at Bristol. And I think Larson's really fast as well. When to me, if Denny can get his car
working around the bottom more, he seems to find more success. I think when he can do that,
Larson is a groove move up, sling it around the high side. He's really hard to beat when it turns
into that. But I definitely think, I don't know, Bell's been really good here recently as well,
I think. But I mean, all these guys to me are the top four. Larson, Denny, Blaney and Bell would be,
I think they're all about even to me. Yeah, I, you know, I think that Bristol adds some
challenges for drivers, just a very, very difficult racetrack tight. Anything can happen.
A lot of opportunities for things out of their control to take them out of the out of the out
of the race, much less out of the lead. So, yeah, I mean, I feel like that in those type of
situations, I trust Denny Hamlin, race manager, he's good at just kind of not making the little
mistakes. One of the best at just sort of letting the race sort of come into, you know, come into
his lap and it's very consistent. Yeah. I mean, he's just, it's just going to, I just feel like
Larson is going to be, I would give Larson the opportunity to be faster and to go out and actually
outperform Denny and parts of the races. But so they're going to, I don't know, I think they're
probably going to spray the track too. So that, well, they, is that unique? I mean, they do that
every year. Yeah. But I mean, I think it makes the track goes through an evolution. You know,
the grips on the bottom, grips up top, the bottom one and two, top three and four. Yeah. Yeah.
One, the sleeper to me would be, like, I know it's been rough this year, but Stenhouse usually
finds his way to be pretty decent here. Just awesome top 10 bet. Yeah. Every time you go to
this racetrack. 100%. He's racing the truck race. He's going to have a little idea of what
track's doing, how it's changing. I know they might continue to treat it throughout the weekend, but
what's Stenhouse top 10? I think it's like plus five 50. So that's, that's, that's a one that's
automatic. Just put a little bit on it because he's, it's, it's one of the best track probably.
Yeah. He just knows how to stay in it here. What about host of our top 10 bet?
I don't know, man. I feel like that is a very 50 50 proposition, man. He's, it's a chaotic sort of
racetrack. And sometimes that's perfect for him. And sometimes that he falls into the chaos.
He's the last five there. He's, you know, I don't, I don't know. Really well there last year.
He's a short track guy. I know, but I feel like it's, it's an easy opportunity for guys to rough
them up. And no, no, I'm not worried about. I'm not worried about. I think about if he's, if he's
10th and the guy wants to move him for a 10th, he's moving them in my bet loses.
I mean, I see a Russell saying, what'd you say? Three of the top three top tens in the last
five races, 11th or better in, in three of the last five there, 11th, they're better.
Why would you have the last 10 house? Like one top 10 there in the last
Let me see what it is. But in the other ones were, what did he, the other ones were probably really low
10 house in the next gen at Bristol isn't as good as 10 house in the gen six.
Correct. But if you, if you look at betting odds though, Jen said house being plus five
50 versus host of R being plus one 35 it's more, it's probably worth it more to do
10 house and play the risk than host of R get 11th. Yeah. I would roll it. I just feel like
10 house knows how to grind it out here and just stay in it all night. So yeah.
Who else is a, you know, that we haven't mentioned who's the sleeper? Oh, you guys
gonna love mine. I like Brad and I like Barry. Oh, Barry. I can see hanging around in the top 15
Top 10. He's plus 280, which I think is very, very like undervalued for him.
Brad like for sure. Brad's plus 120 for a top 10. That's good. I'd take that. Yeah.
I'd take Brad and host of R and leaves in house off. I talked them into it.
TJ don't screw us up if we bet Brad. No promises. If you don't get a top 10, don't come back.
Well, what about the masters this weekend's getting ready to start up on Thursday? Oh, man.
Lots of bets. Really? What are, like, I rarely bet golf. I don't even know where to start. Yeah.
Well, I had a little fun last year. I think in a tournament or two bet in top 20s, but
you know, what are you guys, what are your bets? What are some of the bets you like to make?
You got to do the top countries. You can do top regions. So you can do a lot of regions top Nordic
top Spaniard. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. There's like three, some of the countries
have like three people in it. It's super easy. Oh, I don't even know where to start with that.
He's definitely a loose term, but it's it's fun. Yeah. I love to make or miss the cut
to get like three or four golfers that you think are going to make it obviously.
But Fandle has like a bet reset. So like on the, if you do a first round bet and he doesn't,
the bet doesn't hit you, it'll reset for you. Kind of like a no sweat.
That's nice. Yeah. Not bad. And I love, I love the, just the matchups. Like in a,
once they put the pairings out, I got you. So once the parents come out, you can,
this guy versus that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like what we used would do.
We'd have some pairing. Sometimes you just pick the guy. Yeah.
But yeah, I'm with Tim's like, so Tim's Russ LaTarmi will put together what we call the United
Nations parlay. We'll, each of us will pick a top region player and put it together for
a big parlay and hope it hits Russ. What's your thoughts? I go Hideki top Asian every every
That's mine. You can't take it. He's good here too.
Yeah. It's great. But like, um, Ludwig Oberg is going to be one guy that I think is going to,
I could have a good week. Yeah. He's plus 17 or to win. I like, I like Ludwig as well.
I don't know if I'm going to do to win just cause the odds of me guessing the correct person.
He's just kind of like a machine. And I feel like that's kind of what you need to be at Augusta.
Like just stay focused, not too high, not too low. And he's kind of one of those guys,
but I'm worried that he hasn't played there enough. And so it's like, you need to really
learn that course and know when to go for it, when, where to, you know, avoid the mistakes.
Yeah. Well, um, the Dirty Modo segment was brought to you by FanDuel. Thank you, Russ.
Thank you, Tans for coming through FanDuel, the premier gaming destination of the United States.
All right. Thank you all for joining us in the Arby's studio, TJ. Great job today.
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About this episode
Dale Jr. and TJ dig into the latest racing talk, starting with Rodney Childers’ early experience in the Xfinity/Junior Motorsports world—how the garage culture feels more family-like, and how he’s adjusting to coaching younger drivers like Carson and Connor. They also break down William Swalich’s first Rockingham win and debate driver readiness, using Cletus McFarland as the example: Dale Jr. doubts he’s ready for Talladega/Daytona yet and argues for more development races. The show also covers a Cars Tour appeal ruling, plus Ask Jr. segments on trading-card etiquette, space/aliens, and betting picks for Bristol and the Masters.
Original notes
The O’Reilly Auto Parts Series was the star of the show this past weekend at Rockingham, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back in the studio to break down the action. He joins co-host TJ Majors to discuss William Sawalich’s first win, Cleetus’ debut, and more:
- Every driver could benefit from a couple of years in the O’Reilly Series
- We have not seen enough from Cleetus McFarland yet
- Breaking Doug Barnes CARS Tour penalty appeal process
- Should Cup race at Rockingham?
- Should NASCAR change its championship eligibility rules for lower series?
- Crew chief Rodney Childers joins the show
- Rockingham winner William Sawalich joins the show
During the Ask Jr. portion of the episode, listeners sent in questions regarding:
- Regretting purchases a day later
- Would Dale take a rocket to the moon?
- Does Dale believe in aliens?
- Which human would you send to greet aliens if they landed on Earth
- Die-cast cars Dale wishes he had
- The Figgy Earnhardt debacle
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The Dale Jr. Download
Dirty Mo Media, SiriusXM
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