The Dale Jr. Download Mar 24, 2026

Darlington's Old School Feeling & A Hall-Of-Fame Debate

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Brand

Arby's

Arby’s is a restaurant chain that sells fast food, especially roast beef sandwiches. Here it’s just the sponsor for the podcast episode.

Term

PSA is a third-party authentication service (Professional Sports Authenticator) that verifies the authenticity of sports memorabilia. “PSA authenticated” means the autograph was submitted, verified, and given a certification for collectors.

Brand

Winston

Winston was a major NASCAR sponsor during the 1980s, and its name shows up in event titles and series branding. Mentioning “Winston” signals the specific sponsorship era and helps listeners place the race historically.

Concept

Talladega super speedway

Talladega Superspeedway is a famous NASCAR race track. It’s huge, so “running all over the footprint” means they were roaming around the track area.

Brand

Bill Elliott

Bill Elliott is a famous NASCAR driver. The speaker is saying the shirt’s design suggests it was made by someone who was a Bill Elliott fan.

Concept

NASCAR

NASCAR is a big American stock-car racing league. They have different levels of racing—Cup is the top tier, and Xfinity is a step below. When someone says “Cup” or “Xfinity,” they’re talking about which level of NASCAR race it is.

Concept

Xfinity race

In NASCAR, “Xfinity” is a major racing series. It’s like the tier just under the top NASCAR series, and it has its own cars and rules.

Concept

qualify

Qualifying determines which cars earn starting spots in the race. With “33 cars going for 26 spots,” the field is cut down, so teams that miss qualifying lose the chance to race—making setup and single-lap performance critical.

Concept

caution

A “caution” means the race slows down because something happened on the track. Everyone has to tighten up, and strategy can change fast.

Term

mufflers

Mufflers are parts on the exhaust that make the car quieter. Tracks often set a loudness limit, so teams use mufflers to keep the car within the rules.

Term

Jersey barriers

Jersey barriers are heavy concrete blocks placed along the track. They help protect people and keep cars away from dangerous areas.

Concept

Bristol Motor Speedway

Bristol Motor Speedway is a famous NASCAR track. It’s known for exciting racing, and it also deals with noise issues from nearby residents.

Concept

repave it

Repaving is when they put down a new layer of pavement on the track. It can make the surface smoother and safer for racing.

Concept

Cup Series

The Cup Series is NASCAR’s top national stock-car racing series. When the host references “the 1984” and “one of the last races they had there in the Cup Series,” they’re talking about major NASCAR-level competition at that venue.

Brand

Jerky Boys

The Jerky Boys are a comedy act famous for prank calls. The host is saying they’ll be at the fairgrounds too, so it’s not just cars—it’s also entertainment.

Company

Can-Cut

Can-Cut is a brand of drill bits. The host is saying these bits hold up well when you’re drilling metal for practical projects, like making a hole to fit a hitch pin.

Term

hitch pin

A hitch pin is what locks a trailer to the hitch so it can’t come loose. In this story, the hole size didn’t match the pin, so he had to drill a new hole.

Company

Lionel Racing

Lionel Racing makes model cars for NASCAR fans. They’re known for making die-cast versions that look like the real race cars from specific events.

Term

Victory Lane

Victory Lane is where the winner gets celebrated right after the race. It’s the “winning moment” people associate with trophies, confetti, and celebration.

Concept

green flag

The green flag means the race is starting for real. Drivers can go full speed and the competition begins.

Concept

stage racing

Stage racing means a NASCAR race is split into sections, and drivers can earn points at the end of each section. Some fans like it because it makes the race more exciting, while others miss the older style.

Concept

throwback weekends

A “throwback weekend” is when NASCAR teams make their cars and crew gear look like older, classic race days. It’s basically a retro theme for the event.

Brand

Wood Brothers

Wood Brothers is a famous NASCAR racing team with a long history. When they show up in a throwback story, it’s usually about their classic look and legacy.

Brand

Budweiser

Budweiser has been a big sponsor in NASCAR. In this story, they wanted the car to stay a certain color and look, which affected what teams could do.

Brand

Bud Light

Bud Light is a beer brand that sponsors NASCAR. The speaker is saying he suggested a Bud Light-themed car for an All-Star event, but the sponsor group didn’t like the idea.

Term

pit stop

A pit stop is when the car pulls into the pits to get serviced, usually for tires and adjustments. Doing it well—and at the right time—can help you gain positions.

Company

Goodyear

Goodyear makes the tires used in the race. The tire’s grip and how fast it wears can change how easy it is for drivers to pass and how they plan their run.

Concept

shoey

A “shoey” is when someone drinks from a shoe as a victory celebration. It’s a goofy tradition that’s common in some racing scenes.

Concept

pit road

Pit road is the special lane NASCAR cars use to stop during the race. Teams use it to change tires and do quick service, and when you pit can make a big difference in where you end up.

LIVE

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This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half.

I don't know if we've ever argued.

Did I piss you off over the weekend or?

I'm still sour that I want the best man at your wedding.

Who was your best man Dale?

T.J.

You don't need a cool vest for that race.

What are you thinking?

Get him T.J.

Hell 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.

This is post Darlington.

What episode is this?

700.

Really?

Why'd you quit putting it on here?

Because I don't care about the number.

We do.

We care about it.

Too much work.

700 episodes.

Geez.

Feels like 7,000.

Working with you it does.

That's right.

Well this episode number 700 is presented by Arby's.

Don't forget about Arby's new meat in three bucks.

You get more meal for your money at Arby's.

We had the meats.

So let's get right into it bud.

We got a lot to talk about.

On the table I've got some props.

I have a box of NFL paninis.

I thought we might, we could open those.

We should.

I got a Dale Earnhardt.

Nice.

Card this is, I don't know, 2000.

Dad signed this.

More than likely he signed this at DEI in his autograph room.

The person sent it off and got it PSA authenticated to autograph.

It is certified.

And a friend of mine that brings me the, he brings me stuff from Canada.

He's a high five guy?

Five alive.

He brings five alive and ketchup flavored chips.

Potato chips.

This is hard to say for some reason.

He gave me this, this slabbed.

I love that word.

He gave me this slabbed autographed Dale Earnhardt card for the studio.

And also we talk about this shirt.

Now I don't like promoting and making other people money, but you know,

we like to promote things that make 30 million money, but this shirt is the shirt.

Guess who ran into me today at the track.

So this shirt, after the 1987 All-Star Race, the Winston, where Dad and Bill Elliott tangled,

Jeff and I got in that little mix up as well.

It was maybe, in my opinion, I'm biased, the most dramatic and exciting 10 laps in NASCAR history.

Okay.

The last 10 laps of the Winston in 1987.

The next couple of weeks, you start going to the racetrack and you start seeing these bootlegged

t-shirts being sold all around the racetracks.

And I bought one at Talladega.

All right.

Now in 1987, I was 13 years old and I bought one of these t-shirts.

Dad would give me a hundred bucks and I'd run all over the property.

No chaperone, no snow supervision, 13 years old, me and my buddies,

they were 13, 14, 12, whatever, were running all over the footprint of Talladega

super speedway property.

We're over at the Hall of Fame by ourselves.

We go over to the dirt track at night and watch the dirt trackers run.

No parents, nothing, man.

I don't know what the hell, such a different world, right?

It really is.

You never do that now.

Well, I bought one of these with some of the money Dad gave me to spend.

And I got a guy, so I see it, right?

And I'm like, yeah, it's got a lot of yellow and blue paint on it,

meaning that this person that made the shirt must have been a Bill Elliott fan.

And they're saying, look who ran into me.

All the yellow and blue marks on it, Earnhardt ran into me.

Well, I thought I would fix the shirt and I got a guy to spray on a number three,

like this is the door of Dad's car and put a little bit of red and gold on there too.

And I was like, Hey, Dad will see it and not think this is an anti Earnhardt shirt.

He'll think it's a, I'm wearing, I'm like, Hey, look who ran into me, Bill Elliott.

You know what I'm saying?

I changed a narrative.

Well, not, Dad did not think so.

And he saw it and he told me to take it off immediately.

And he used a lot of curse words.

And so the shirt disappeared.

But now I have another about it on the internet.

I think, I think our old friend NASCAR man has sort of a pop up t-shirt kind of

sell by print, you know, print by, you know, you order it, it gets made.

I'm glad to have one of these and I'm going to wear it.

And Dad ain't here to tell me to take it off, off, off, right?

So it's creative.

I love it.

It's very creative.

You go to football game, whatever.

And there's the people selling bootleg illegal t-shirts outside the stadium.

You know, you know, this ain't got nobody's name on it.

There's no trademark violations.

This one to me kind of clears the books.

Yeah.

All right.

Anywho, so I brought some props today.

I guess we could put this in here.

I don't know.

I kind of want to put it.

I want to kind of want to take it home.

Could leave it here.

I'd probably take it home.

TJ made the call.

Well, me and you will open some cards here after a while.

All right.

Went to, we got a big race this weekend in the cars tour.

I'm leading into something.

So don't get nervous about me talking about the cars tour.

But our producer Travis likes us to stay on the NASCAR content.

That's not true.

He does.

He is not excited about anything non cup.

Little Xfinity.

Mostly cup.

He likes a lot of cup.

He likes a lot of cup in our show.

A little bit of Xfinity.

But I, um...

Or Riley.

Sorry.

Yeah.

This is the way it's going to be for a while.

It's going to be, that's the way it's going to be for a while.

So, um, there's a 175 lap race this weekend at Wake County.

Wake County is a really tiny track.

And usually all of our late model stock races are 125 laps.

We talked to the teams and we said,

Hey, let's add some laps to this one.

So it's 100 and 75 laps at Wake County after the Xfinity race.

The Xfinity race at Martinsville will run.

And you can lead right into the broadcast on Flow for the car store.

Please tune in.

There's also $10,000 up for grabs in the Floodium program

between six drivers in this race.

So not only can teams, you know, win the money,

win the race and win that money,

but there's also another $10,000 up for grabs in the Floodium program.

Thank you, Flow Racing.

Flow's awesome.

So anyhow, we're going to run that race this weekend.

We have like 33 cars going for 26 spots.

There's going to be some good teams

that are more than likely going to not qualify

for this race in the cars tour.

This is a very tiny racetrack.

And when the caution comes out with 26 cars on the track,

we are nose to tail all the way.

You know, the freaking pace car is right up somebody's ass.

So it's a tight little spot.

But anyways, yeah, I'm excited about it this weekend.

I say that because this past week,

I went to Nashville to test, went to the fairgrounds

and ran some laps and in preparation

for the cars tour race on the April the 11th in Nashville.

And so that was a ton of fun.

We went out there.

Nashville is interesting because of the

the mufflers.

You got to run mufflers.

You got to have your car can't be over like 100 decibels.

So you have to run mufflers.

And we were testing some mufflers

and we got a little work to do there.

You can't be on the track before three o'clock in the afternoon.

You can only practice from three to seven on Thursday and Tuesday.

Same thing on Friday.

Saturday, I think it's a it's a bit different.

But I'm excited to go out there.

They want it's very bumpy.

There's some patches, some issues, character,

whatever you want to call it with the racetrack, which is fine.

Sounds fun.

Big bump off a turn two, which is fine.

That's where the tunnel is, right?

Yep. Yep.

One of the funny things is,

is we got done testing around seven o'clock

and they started putting these Jersey barriers out on the racetrack.

And it is because the joy riders tend to show up if you don't do that.

Some two and three in the morning.

Some folks try to break, you know, cut the lock

and drive into the racetrack and cut a couple laps.

Dang.

Yeah.

How about the hot item there?

They at a set at around 6 36 o'clock, they turn the lights on.

Now, I haven't been there since 1999 to drive a race car.

I haven't run a lap on that racetrack since 1999.

And it was not changed a bit, which is, in my opinion, a good thing.

I mean, it needs a little fluff and buff.

And Marcus Smith and Bristol Motor Speedway

are trying to work with the local government.

They have been for the past, I don't know, five years trying to work a deal.

There is a deal in place.

Everybody just needs to agree.

And should that deal get done,

they will fix the racetrack up, clean it up,

repave it more than likely, put a new wall and safer barrier around it.

But also, most importantly, put a sound barrier around the racetrack.

For all the folks that live in that area that are upset about sound and racing and noise,

this man wants to spend, you know, thousands, a couple hundred thousand dollars to improve

the situation with a sound barrier around the racetrack.

But that doesn't get done if the deal doesn't get done.

And I think racing is protected there as far as, you know,

short track racing, the 12 or 15 events they have annually will continue with no sound barrier.

So anyhow, they turn the lights on around six o'clock, man, and I will tell you what,

that is probably as close as I've ever felt to going to time traveling back in time.

When they turn the lights on, the lights are good enough, but they're imperfect

and they're vintage.

And I'll tell you, I've seen some, I've watched a lot of races like I've watched the 1984,

one of the last races they had there in the Cup Series.

The races there at night, it was not well-lit.

It was just, you know, very vintage, has a very vintage feel when you watch it on YouTube.

And it looked exactly like that.

It was so freaking cool.

So I cannot wait to go back there with the cars tour.

April 11th for Nashville Fairgrounds.

We will have a lot going on to make sure that event's a lot of fun.

If you were out there for XRS, you've got an idea of what you might get

when you come back for the cars tour because I heard the XRS deal was really cool.

So I'm excited to go to Nashville.

One small note, Jerky Boys, which is Nashville made,

they'll be out at the fairgrounds.

I'll probably over-sign in autographs at the Jerky Boys booth trying to, you know, move some Jerky.

And so you sent Cory Hyme some Jerky.

We did.

I didn't know anything about that.

I guess our boys sent Cory some Jerky and he posted about it on social media.

Thank you, Cory Hyme.

Maybe that's what got him the W.

I like Cory Hyme and I like him a lot more now, that little thing right there.

Yeah, he was like, hey, this is actually pretty good.

I believe I'll let everybody know.

Thank you, Cory Hyme.

That's how social media works.

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All right.

So let's talk about, let's talk about Darlington.

So NASCAR had the alumni program come out to Darlington,

and, you know, some teams did throw back paint schemes,

but the, you know, which was great,

and there were some really good ones,

and I want to talk about them in a minute,

but NASCAR has this new alumni program that they've developed

where they're encouraging a lot of the drivers from NASCAR's past

and a lot of historic names to come back out to the racetrack,

and it's working really well.

You saw a lot of those guys on social media this weekend,

they incorporated them into the race weekend experience

with, you know, waving the green flag,

like Speed saying the prayer,

and, you know, Dave Marcus handing the trophy over in Victor Lane,

and you had a lot of guys in the media center

and a lot of great quotes and comments from, you know,

Mark Martin and Daryl Waltrip and Bobby the Bonnie

and all these different people, right?

And I love it.

The, you know, the alumni program is really cool.

NASCAR sends you a box, it's got a hat and all this stuff in it.

We've been taking that stuff and putting it,

signing it and putting it on our foundation website

for people to buy, but which I'm very thankful

to be in the alumni program.

I just feel like, you know,

I'm not going to walk around with an alumni hat on,

not that I'm not glad to be part of it, but it's just a little weird.

It's just, for some people, it works and some people don't.

It's like, you know, it's kind of like the Jersey conversation,

you know, how old do you, how old do you start wearing them or whatever.

But anyways, they, the program is working really well.

With it, with having those guys at the racetrack, though,

you know, they come with their opinions, you know,

and they come to the racetrack.

Bobby the Bonnie, Daryl Waltrip were asked about stage cautions

and there's some clips on social media about their opinions about it

and they don't like it.

It's funny because DW, as he's in the booth,

and I know this very well, you know,

as a broadcaster in the booth,

you keep your damn opinions to yourself in terms of state of the sport.

And I've, you know, the only time I really ever weighed into any of that

is when we're on this podcast and I'm careful about,

you know, kind of how far I want to go down some of these roads

when we're talking about things in the sport.

But now that DW is not working the booth,

he's quite a bit more, you know, free, I suppose,

or apt to give his opinion on things.

And he said that he, he's not a big fan of the stage racing.

Bobby the Bonnie chimed in on social media to agree with that as well.

The teardown went on to debate number placement at Darlington, specifically.

Jeff Gluck said that he would be for them

allowing the numbers to be moved back for some of the vintage scheme

or, you know, some of the throwback schemes or whatever.

And why would you say no?

Why would you, why would anyone say no,

they shouldn't move the numbers back for Darlington?

I mean, it's just, why can't, what, what is the, why, why the restrictions?

Why the, why are we shackling ourselves to tethering ourselves to some,

you know, for brand consistency or what are we talking about?

But I thought I was like, man, if they moved the freaking number back

for one race and everybody sees how good it looks,

it's just going to open up big can worms.

Same.

But anyhow, throwback weekend lends itself to some throwback opinions.

And I guess what I was wanting to say about that is

NASCAR has made some really, really good changes to the sport.

Namely the point system.

We had a lot of, you know, we had a lot of great conversations,

a lot of kumbaya, everybody in the same room, happy and a lot of,

you know, announcements and meetings and every and just a lot of positive comments.

And this season has been great.

We got off on a, we got off to a great start and everything is, everything is good.

But I guess that doesn't mean that,

you know, everything, I guess that doesn't mean that you're not going to have

somebody every now and then come up and go, you know, I miss this or I think this is,

this should be different.

I mean, I had some moments that were great.

What?

Just anything that like has its moments like.

Well, I'm just saying like here's, I guess the conversation I'm trying to have TJ is like,

listen, NASCAR made some good changes this all season.

We're all very happy about it.

There are still some people that feel like, you know, number placement, stage racing,

things that there's still some format championship.

There's still some people that still aren't in love with a couple of those things.

It's always going to be that way.

And I feel like it's okay to still have those conversations.

100%.

Yeah, I know, but I'll say this, like, you know, NASCAR and all the progress, you know,

we'll call it progress, all the progress they made this all season to make good changes.

And it's really, really great change for the points format.

They would hope that everybody would just shut the hell up and be happy, right?

Just, hey, be happy for what you got.

And I agree with that a little bit.

But at the same time, when Daryl Walter or Bobby the Bonnie says, you know what,

I love all the changes, but I also think they should not have stage racing.

And I'm like, hmm, me too, kind of, you know, but not that I'm going to go on social media

and start a, you know, kind of a crusade to try to bend that back in the other direction.

But every sport has where people are critiquing it.

Well, at Darlington Week, I'm going to, I think what we're going to find

is that Darlington Weekend is going to be the moment in every season when those nostalgic

sort of comments and conversations flare the number placement, right?

We don't really, I mean, there's a ton of us out there that absolutely despise

the current number placement.

We keep our mouth shut.

It ain't changing.

Nobody's talking about it changing that, you know, nobody that matters.

And so we're not, we're not thinking it's going to change.

So there's no argument to have, right?

Why complain if it's not going to do anything.

But when Darlington comes around and the throwback schemes come around,

oh, what are we talking about?

We're talking about number placement, you know?

And so I just find that interesting.

It's like, you know, we did a lot of great things this all season and everything is good

and we are happy and we're moving down the right direction.

And Darlington, Darlington is going to always be this weekend that stirs up some of these

discussions and conversations about what used to be and how it used to be and how that was better.

And not to, there's not, I'm not saying there's a right or wrong.

I'm kind of always does that.

Darlington's going to do it.

So, and I think that NASCAR, I guess, is just going to have to,

you know, know that's just how it's going to go, you know?

Every time we bring these old hats around, like for example, Kirk Schermanine, I love him,

awesome guy, right?

One of the things that I wish he hadn't done and he didn't have to do it,

he gets up in his, he gets up during his speech for the Hall of Fame.

He's getting inducted into the Hall of Fame.

He is on the stage in front of the entire industry.

And he got so freaking mad about the next-gen car that he cussed it on stage during his speech.

You know, he said something along the lines of, you know, whatever the f*** this thing is y'all

have now, you know, when talking about race cars.

And I was like, Kirk, you didn't have to do that, you know?

Just, you know, just be happy about your career, you know?

And this is the Hall of Fame and not the time or the place.

But when you bring those guys around, you know, they're going to tell you what they think

and they don't have, they're not, they don't have filters on them.

Nope.

And so I love the alumni program, you know, because you get the, you get there,

Walter telling you what he's really been thinking, you know what I'm saying?

Just to have them personalities, they crack.

Like I saw Hanford, I saw Bobby a little bit.

You know, Bobby is the nicest guy ever.

I was so surprised to see him chime in on the stage racing conversation on social media.

I even looked at the handle to make sure it was really him.

I was like, this is bulls***.

I was like, no, Bobby, Bobby don't never, you know, wade into the, you know.

Yeah, he just kind of lies in the shadows a little bit.

Darrell, I think Darrell said something and it floated around.

And because there was some, there was some media at the alumni tent,

like kind of problem these guys about, Hey man, what do you think about stage racing?

You know, yeah, they know they haven't been talking for some months.

Yes.

Wind them up and let them go.

Yeah, but I don't know.

I always, I only wanted to mention that because I found it interesting to me.

And yeah, Darlington's going to be the weekend where it kind of like picks it,

some of those old wounds.

Sure.

But the alumni program is great.

Great job on NASCAR.

I love seeing all of the historic names out there.

And, you know, having Lake Speed, a guy,

there was some opportunity for me to be there to do a couple of things.

And I was like, man, there's guys that have won races at this racetrack

that need to be doing these things.

You know, having Lake Speed say in the prayer,

guy one is only Speedway race at Darlington, always ran good at Darlington.

Kurt Busch, all these great guys that are, you know, part of the story,

you know, Kurt part of that crazy finish with Craven.

Yeah, the picture he took.

I love the picture he took where he's standing on the front straightaway

at the start finish line and Kurt Busch is like,

I missed it by that much.

I mean, just, it was a, that was a lot of fun.

And that added to a regular normal good solid race weekend.

It added some seasoning and some flavor to it.

And so I was, I was very happy about that talking about throwbacks.

Not much of an argument here.

I think a lot of people would say that host of ours group knocked it out of the park.

Again, I'm biased that we talked about it on the show last week,

that that particular scheme from 1981.

It's a lost year for dad because it was so, so, you know,

so bad for the most part, not a good year for him, but that's my favorite design

of Wrangler car that he ever raced for sure.

And host of our and his team did a lot of great stuff on social media with content.

They wrapped a grand prix where, you know, where in the hell is that car been?

And where is it going?

I mean, I think the Wrangler, you know, wrapped grand prix ought to, you know,

be who's, who's is that?

Where is it?

I want to see it going down the street.

I might want to drive it.

What's it like on the inside?

I never saw the inside.

Host of our probably has it now.

Who has it?

We'll find out.

I need to know.

I mean, that's a pretty bad ass looking car now.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know what it looked like before they wrapped it, but

I kind of like it.

Um, so they bring and they bring the Pontiac grand prix to the racetrack and take a picture of it

as he's making a couple of practices.

I mean, they really went all out.

They went all out.

They put some good effort into this.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I just don't see a lot of folks, uh, putting that kind of effort into certain campaigns,

even non throwback campaigns.

Yeah.

Hell of a job.

It reminds me of the first, one of the first throwback weekends we did

when the pit crews started wearing one of the teams had them white uniform.

Might have been the wood brothers.

The glory days of the throwback week.

Back in my day.

Well, a lot of throwback stuff.

Well, it helps that he goes out there and has a great performance on the racetrack.

You know, but it's a good looking race car, good looking job.

Any other throwbacks stand out to you guys?

Um, I thought the, uh,

the, uh, the O'Reilly race, I thought, um, Austin greens car stood out a little bit.

Yeah.

Slim Jim car.

I think the trucks and the O'Reilly guys always have done solid work.

They have a lot more flexibility with partners to be able to do things that they want to do

with the cars.

Whereas the cup guys, you know,

nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but corporate America is not always that excited to change

their logo or the colors of their car.

Yeah.

Um, you know, when I ran the nationwide car, the hood had to be blue.

Uh, you know, you had to design the car around a blue hood all the time, you know, uh, no

matter what.

So you couldn't, you couldn't talk them into, into anything, you know, the Budweiser guys,

they did not want to run anything but a red car.

The exact same car every single week when, when they would do a baseball car or something

like that, it had to really be something that it was their idea, you know, yeah.

Um, I brought the idea one day of running a Bud Light car in the All-Star race to them

and you thought that I had pissed on their grave.

I mean, it was, they were like, what the hell, you know, help them guys.

They're already out selling us.

You know, it was, um, very competitive inside the building.

Yeah.

It unhires a bush.

But, um, yeah, I would say that, uh, the throwback weekend was a success.

The alumni weekend was a success.

The, uh, Xfinity race was a lot of fun.

O'Reilly, yeah.

Did you guys watch, did you guys watch the O'Reilly race?

I did not.

I did.

Boy, you didn't watch it.

I was drinking.

Now that one was fun to do while you're drinking.

Yeah.

Yeah, I did.

Okay.

Um, do you watch, what would you watch?

A college basketball?

Mm-hmm.

I had a lot going on with that too.

We'll talk about that later in the show, but, um, the O'Reilly race was surprising to me.

So Larson looked like he was, you know, definitely gonna be tough to beat.

And, um, they had, you know, maybe not the best pit stop late in the race.

Yeah.

But, uh, one of the things that I, uh, you know, was impressed with, but not surprised

by at all is Justin Algarone restarts.

You know, just twice he schooled, uh, Brandon Jones.

So, you know, earlier in the race, every time Larson was launching, dude, he was clear before

term one, getting some really, really great launches on that inside line, not even challenged

off into the corner.

Um, but both times that Brandon and Justin were aligned in the outs, you know, in the

front row on those final couple of restarts, Jones just could not get launched and clear

of the seven before term one.

And man, you give Justin any sort of a chance on a restart.

That's why they call him the Gator.

I mean, he is tenacious.

Um, I will never forget a race at, uh, Chicago many, many years ago, uh, late restart.

I think we're restarting fourth or somewhere along those lines and he just took it from

those guys.

I thought, man, we've been running good all day, top five here.

It'll be great.

Fired off on a restart and he went and won the race in the final couple of laps and I was just

blown away, but that is him to AT.

That is what makes him great.

That's twice this year that I feel like he is a, he's done that Phoenix as well.

Like Justin Algar is in the twilight of his career and there is still not many people

as aggressive and successful.

He's not, he's not aggressive reckless, but he's aggressive.

He's a dog on the late race restarts.

Yeah, he's so good.

He just knows where to be and he almost knows what's going to happen before it happens.

Yeah.

And the confidence that he has that he, that the race ain't over.

I, you know, that is rare in certain individuals where you're sitting, you've ran.

So if you're sitting there racing all day long, right, and you're driving this car and

you're running fifth, fourth, third, fifth, you know, it, you, you're right.

You're, you're running as hard as you can, working as hard as you can.

And it's, and it's, it's, it's sort of drilled into your mind.

Yeah, this is where I'm at.

This is me.

This is what we got today.

This is, all right, I just need to protect this.

I need to take care of this and deliver this result, right?

Not screw this up.

Not him.

Kosh comes out late in the race.

He's like, the we're going for a win, you know, and he does, he, you know,

oftentimes will go steal the win away and take it from those guys who have had it all day long.

Now, again, this weekend, he had some help with Larson having a little bit of a struggle

late in the race and losing track position on those restarts.

But on pit road, but yeah, the end of the race, you know, the end of the race, I think, I mean,

Larson, what quite is good in traffic?

No, and, but Justin, he had two really good pit stops near the end and his restart is

he like, he was probably a fourth to sixth place car.

I know.

I speed wise, but pit stops and restarts for Justin.

I mean, same thing you did at Phoenix, man, just hung around.

Then he goes and takes it at the end.

So that's, yeah, that's a, that's a couple of wins for Justin and Cree chief,

Andrew Overstreet.

Andrew was on Carson Quappos car last year.

And so they had a tough year together.

After really coming out of the box with a five race schedule the year before it looked like,

you know, Carson was going to win it over and man, Andrew, you know, those guys had some momentum,

but last year was a struggle.

So it's good to see Andrew having success with Justin Allgaier this year.

Right now, top of the points, 52 ahead of Jesse Love.

Carson Quappos hanging around right there in third.

Carson had a great run this weekend with Rodney Childers and their team.

Sheldon Creed, Austin Hill, Sammy Smith, Corey Day, Brandon Jones, Parker,

Rhett Slath doing an awesome job right there in ninth.

And then Rajah Karuth in tenth in points also doing an awesome job.

Rajah back in the 88 this weekend, which he's excited about.

He's splitting time between different cars and doing a great job there.

Sam Mayer all the way back in 11th.

Sam's had a tough couple of races and Taylor Gray in 12th.

The rally series to me, man, I'm biased because I got cars in it, but I really enjoy,

you know, kind of the turnover in this series and the comers and goers and who can be smart,

who can be without mistakes because these drivers are prone to make mistakes and get

over their heads a little bit.

And it sort of always keeps this point situation interesting.

But Justin, the veteran that he is, is putting together a really great start to the year.

And that bodes well for him moving forward as we get closer and closer throughout the season

into the summer, going towards the playoffs.

But anyhow, Austin Hill, man, come out of the gate strong.

A couple of wins, well, one win, but a couple of great finishes.

And now sits fifth in points, 96 out.

He looked really, really strong out of the gate.

Corey Day doing a really great job on very limited experience.

He's starting to, I think early in the year, people were bashing him and it's racing.

I think he's now studying the water.

A couple of weeks of just getting in there and getting the job done.

Darlington's one of those racetracks where, you know, you got to mind your business and be smart.

And yes, he's had some, you know, he's had a couple of good races to sort of start to build on some,

you know.

That might be the best race that I've seen Corey have yet.

I agree. Corey's listened to everything everybody's tried to tell him about.

Where did he end up in that race?

He ended up like up near the top five, didn't he?

Like decent.

Sixth.

Yeah, like that's a great day for Corey.

Top 10 at Darlington is hard to do.

Quiet. A quiet six place finish is awesome.

Yeah. Parker Redslath's doing an awesome job.

I want to, I know I mentioned him a moment ago, but I had a hell of a race going all weekend.

And I think that team's going to get better and better.

And he's going to be a problem for some folks if that team doesn't prove throughout the season.

Moving on to the cup race.

Just, uh, there's a handful of things that I would love to talk about.

Brad had an awesome run.

I know a couple of folks in the Dirty Mo Media team, um, didn't, uh, were betting against Brad.

And I'll talk about that.

Yeah.

So that was a, I think it was, uh, what was the matchup matchup?

What was it?

Uh, I had, uh, Briscoe.

There was two anti-gibs, two matchups.

You had Briscoe over Brad and Ty Gibbs over Brad.

Were you sweating it there while Brad was driving?

Uh, no, I wasn't sweating.

Pretty early on, I knew I was like, these bets probably aren't going to cash unless something

bad. Like, man, I mean, his, he had the second best car.

Yeah.

Good job.

Our spotter.

Yeah, it was all me.

No, it was, what'd you think of the package?

You know, I, I was, uh, I, I was good with it.

I don't, um, I, I'm fine with it.

I think they can move forward with this.

It didn't do anything bad.

It didn't produce anything extraordinary, but I think it's Darlington.

And in my opinion, uh, taking away downforce from underneath the car,

stripping away from the diffuser and all of that is a great direction.

Our race cars are not sports cars.

They should not have sports car parts and pieces.

This is, we are NASCAR.

We are not road racing.

And so, um, they should, yeah, they should continue to go in that direction.

I'm, I'm, I'm a believer in that.

Uh, the, you know, Goodyear's done some great work on the tire.

Uh, we had guys, I watched a lot of guys in the middle of the pack,

you know, take off a little conservatively to be able to preserve the tire and come

on later in the run and make up a lot of positions late in the race.

Um, we had guys that were, you know, able to pass, uh, able to make moves.

And, uh, I, I feel like I watched a traditional Darlington race that,

you know, I would tune in again next year to see and hope to see something similar.

Yeah. It looked from the roof.

It looked a little bit easier to make moves happen.

Not a lot, but you could definitely.

Yeah. I would say TJ that this, this pack, the changes that they made

would probably produce something minimal on, on the product.

You know, that place is slick already.

It's already kind of treacherous.

And if they take a little, you know, if they take a lot away,

it's probably just going to look like a little, we're to the,

to the trained eye or to the fans.

I even you're going to see whatever you're going to see is going to be subtle.

Um, and we've heard, no, and that's okay.

And I don't think I expected it.

I know that we talked about, oh, four seconds to fall off.

And I saw social media posts and comments about, Hey, where was this?

You know, where was this wild crazy race that we were predicted to have?

I don't know that anybody ever really said that the race was going to be

something that you'd never seen before.

Yeah. I mean, there was, I mean, anytime you have four seconds fall off right now,

that's not, I mean, where did we get to two and a half, three?

Yeah. Maybe, maybe just over two at most. I think like,

I think I would ask Texas, like I saw it in practice a little bit.

You'd fall off about two seconds and you kind of stayed in that area.

He didn't really keep going.

So on the, on the, on the greener surface, the fall off is absolutely going to be more.

But as they rubber that track in and we had three series there,

that rubber on the track helps the tire.

So yeah, I'm not surprised that the fall off was less than we predicted.

If you have a tire that does wear a lot, it's putting that rubber down into the trace track

into all the crevices and things, sort of making that surface a little better on the tire.

And so I don't, I liked it. I thought was fine. I don't, I mean,

listen, I would keep going in that direction. I would go.

A hundred percent.

Yeah. I'd go even further next time they go to Darlington.

I would. Why not?

I would too.

There was plenty of passing.

It doesn't have to be Darlington, does it? It could be, I mean, a mile and a half.

Like, yeah, like it could be any of them now.

I agree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I feel like it's a good decision.

You know, Redick had an incredible car, obviously, had a little trouble early in the race.

Harvick smartly told us not to sleep on him, kept telling us throughout the broadcast,

say that 45 still fast, 45 still the best car, 45 still got a shot. He was right.

They had a little bit, you know, a little bit of a different, not a really, not uncommon,

but a little bit different of a strategy. With the speed, they were able to stay on

the racetrack a little longer, you know, and pit, you know, five or so laps later than most people.

And man, that would pay off late in the run. But it was because his car was so good.

If your car's not fast, that's not a strategy to be able to employ. But, you know, he just was,

he was better. His car was faster.

They learned from the first stage how far they could really go further than the others.

How aggressive they could be with it.

Because they lost the first stage going a little bit too far.

Well, they had a bad pit stop that slowed them down, cost them a lot of time on pit road.

That was another thing too. I mean, we're, you know, we're seeing teams, even in their rally series,

we're seeing teams, you know, not be perfect on pit road. It's creating storylines. It's creating

things, comers and goers and people having to overcome, you know, challenges on pit road,

speeding penalties and so forth. That race had it all.

Well, I mean, they had to replace a battery.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, and the other thing too is I was surprised that

they put a better, they put another battery in there. I was told it was a better,

larger battery, knowing that they had an issue that they may not be able to fix.

They added a battery that would be able to maybe take them a little bit further.

How smart of them to be ready to do that, ready to attack that problem.

And they were smart enough to also to know exactly what Tyler could run inside the car.

They were like, well, you can, you can have the fan, this fan, you can turn, you got to have,

if you do this, you have to have this, if you do this, you have to turn this off.

They had him, you know, and he's like, all right, I got it. I got, I got the back fan

on the head and family fan barely on. I mean, they showed him draining the liquid,

the fluid out of his cool suit while driving under caution. And then they asked you,

we can change the battery again, but we're going to lose your position. He's like, no,

I'll just tough it out. Like, and he did a great job. That's just smart on their part.

A lot of teams may not fully prepare for that challenge and know exactly what

their options are, right? So smart on them to kind of know, okay, man, well, we can,

this is, this is how much battery life we're going to have. This is what we can use and do

to keep the car competitive. This is what the driver's going to have to do without.

Yeah. And he was honest about it and cool, gutsy performance. What do you make of him and Busher?

I mean, I can see both sides of it. I can see a late pit. Tyler's patent to move all day was

the dive into three, because he could drive so far into three and come up late and make the

extra of the 17 didn't wave is the, is the 45 says 17 didn't wave. Is are we not waving anymore?

I'm asking a serious question.

Uh, not as it's becoming less and less, even from the roof. Guys don't tell you when they're

pitting even more and more. Like, like they just don't, because they don't want you to know when

they're pitting. Is it worth that though? I mean, that's what I don't understand. It's like, all

right, man, if we're coming. So the lap before Tyler runs the wall as well. And I think you just

got to know, like I have in my notes before, like, well, I know when what we can possibly do and you

as the race goes on, you have a feel for pit stops. See, you know, like I know just from,

if when you run this guy down, if this guy's like, I don't care what car it is, if you run that guy

down leading, you're going, his only play to win the race is to pit then, because if he waits,

he's, he's losing seconds a lap from this point on. So, and Chris, they're always an aggressive

pit strategy people, right? He's won a lot of races doing that type of stuff. So

you kind of have to be prepared for it. I'm, I'm not saying.

Was the 17 coming to Pit Road? Yeah. This is, Steve LaTart will probably agree with me here.

This is where me, me and him and, and, and some other folks are, are annoyed by the,

the code words and, you know, somebody comes down Pit Road and, and they, they have a mistake on

Pit Road. And it's because somebody said a code word and they misunderstood what the code word

was supposed to do and whether that meant two or four and they pull out of the pit stall and

have a loose wheel or whatever. And it's like, what the fuck are we doing with these codes?

You know, yeah, they're cool. And then, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, it's very clever

and, and, and you're trying to be sneaky and all that, but, you know, in the end, you know,

you have a little mistake here and there. And it's similar to this. Like we're not waving anymore

to guys that are behind us because we don't want to give away, and maybe Chris would sit here and

say, Hey, look, I don't got, but I got to keep my hands on the wheel. I'm, you know, some handful.

I don't, I don't know. I don't know, you know, what Chris would, would say, but

if, if, if a wave, so like he lets Brad go and if I'm coming to Pit Road,

I don't know whether it's possible in this car, but I always sometimes would, if I'm

going to come to Pit Road under green, we come off of two. I sometimes would change lanes.

Yeah. I don't think he knew until end of the backstretch. Like it was,

he didn't even know he was coming up here. He didn't know he was pitting until at least halfway

down the backstretch. But the only thing like to against you, Travis, like, is it worth this?

You break for pit road at the same spot you break to make the corner. Like if you're,

if he's running the bottom, he's breaking at the same spot. So if Chris decides to run the

bottom right there, just like Denny, and you said Denny admitted that he was at fault for that,

what's the difference right here? Yeah. I don't think that there's a fault. I think it's just

racing too. And we have a, you know, a tire with a ton of fall off. You got guys on tires that

have more speed. We have seen this at Darlington so many times. I go back to, I think it was Andy

Hillenberg got destroyed by Jeff Gordon there one year. And I mean, there's been, you could go back

through all of the Darlington races through the 80s, 90s and 2000s and fine finances. This is

where we went. I think it was Newman and Clint Boyer in turn three and four, not five, six,

eight years ago. Yeah, I was at a big freaking crash. So it, you know, it's a product of this worn

out track, very narrow race track. And if he doesn't know, you know, that that he's, he doesn't

even know he's pitting until turn three. I mean, it looked like he, you know, his, his, his lane

change when riding on board with his car from the top of the back straightaway to the bottom of three

was unique to me. Looked, looked, it looked, it did not look like it almost looked like he was

being called late. Like he'd just found out. He definitely got called late. Yeah. And so that

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We have the winner, Tyler Reddick on the line again. We've had Tyler on this show over and over

just keeps winning.

So, man, thanks for calling in. I appreciate you giving us some time today, as always.

I know you got a lot going on. And so, how does it feel, man, to...

We've talked about you. We've talked to you multiple times this year about your success,

but you continue to win. You continue to find ways to win. Y'all continue to bring incredible

race cars to the racetrack. You've got to be freaking fired up about how good that car was

this past Sunday. Yeah. I mean, you nailed it. That's the key. It's really, really fast Toyota

Camrys. And I think for us, we were... And I think everyone was uncertain of what the race

and the speed and long run was going to look like going into the weekend. But yeah, in practice,

running behind Brad, I could tell he was really strong. I felt like we were strong.

I just remember Saturday after qualifying and everything kind of looking through it and being

like, all right, the RFK cars are strong. All right, Blaney's strong. For the most part, a lot of

spring races were pretty strong again. I know there was some hit and miss amongst some of the

bigger teams, like HMS and JGR. But when I saw that, I was like, okay, I mean, I have to figure

out how to manage this race well. And before I can even really get the first lap complete,

it was like the Southern 500 last fall, but different. And it's something that's happened

on the first lap and how do we manage it? How do we figure this out? And I just,

I kind of took the approach of just chill and, you know, all right, let's settle in here and

let's see how long we can get this battery to last. And I was just proud of the guys for

coming up with that game plan that they did. And being honest with me about, hey, you know,

if you want to make this thing live, you know, we're going to have to cut some stuff off. And

then obviously that last stage, Billy left it up to me. Do you think you can make it without

anything on that last stage? And I was like, sure, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to win

a Darlington so bad for pretty much my entire cup career. And so, yeah, I was going to have to be

on fire to come down pit road and swap batteries or whatever. You know what I mean? What was the

comfort level those last 50 laps? You know, I don't really remember it. Like I remember the

racing part, but I just felt like I was so locked in on what I had to do and what I needed to do

that. Yeah, I was hot. And, you know, I never liked running with my visor up, especially,

you know, wearing contacts and trying to keep stuff out of my eyes. But like I had to run my

visor up to get some, some amount of circulation, whether that's the air coming in through the

window net or the the knack of duck off the off the front windshield. But it was still really,

really hot. But, you know, we got all the all the fluid out of the shirt, which was huge.

Really? I remember at Kota, the shirt just never connected. Like we're on pit road in 2023.

Cars rolling off grid. And we couldn't get the connection to go through. And at the time we

really didn't have a way or didn't want to give up the time to like cut the shirt or hand me a

pair of scissors. So I had to like bake with that hot fluid in the shirt all day. And yeah, getting

all of the getting the fluid out of the shirt so it just doesn't sit there and get hot was huge.

It wasn't that part of it wasn't too bad. I expected to be a lot warmer core temp wise. But

yeah, I was just just a lot of sweating. But I run a fluid logic system in the car. It allows me

to drink, you know, without having to grab the bottle or whatever it runs through the through

the helmet hose and right right on my microphone. So I was able to hydrate, which I think was a huge

part in why I was okay without being able to hydrate. I definitely think the heat would have

really started to get to me. Is that button on the wheel? Yeah. Yeah. On the opposite side of where

the mic button is, you know, I'd always thought that, you know, what, you know, the the the

the electric fed or or, you know, whatever you want to call the system. I always was like,

oh, you know, that's a sports car thing and not necessary. And I'll just use the old tube and

tape it to my tape it to my belt. But man, it really came in came in handy this weekend being able

to keep you here. Well, I mean, so the idea behind it, you know, I saw the I saw it more in the off

road, you know, Baja 1000, like the the trophy truck off road racing, those guys use it a lot there.

And yeah, those those vehicles get hot, but not as hot as ours is our vehicles do. So yeah, there's

a lot of trial and error trying to like over the years, whether I was at RCR now here, just like

making sure that we're not running the hose like along alongside like metal and things like that,

because it will get really hot. But yeah, I think it was 2023. Maybe yeah, I think it was 2023,

when they did away with the stage breaks. There's just a big emphasis, you know, to make sure we

had something like that in there. Because if we truly got a caution, there's not time to like grab

and swap a bottle, there's not time to caution to hydrate. So that's when I was really dead set on

making it work. And I've just kind of stuck with it ever since. Yeah. When you, you know, you come

off a season like you had last year, where, you know, you're trying to find the success you're

looking for and weren't able to really get it going. Y'all fire off this year. You look like

a completely different organization. I'm looking at the shop behind you. What's what's the what's

the attitude on the floor of the shop today, comparable to the end of the last season?

Yeah, it felt like, you know, we got to the end of last year. Obviously, everyone was

I mean, something, you know, Bubba, Bubba won the Annapolis, the Brickyard 400. So I mean,

you know, we still were able to, to at least win a big race. Obviously, for like our side of things,

you know, we didn't find victory lane, we fell out of the playoffs earlier than

we really wanted to or should have. And so yeah, for like us, you know, we were faced with a lot

of disappointment. And, you know, certainly I feel like our guys were, you know, mentally where

they needed to be to go in the off season to like figure this out. But but yeah, at the same time,

you know, I don't think anyone was shy about how disappointed they were. So we had those honest

conversations, you know, in the off season and just, okay, how do we address this? Where do we

start? You know, what do we look at? And I feel like a lot of good things were gone through, gone

over. But you know, for me, I just remember, we had all these talks right. And it's like, look,

I get it, we've talked about it. And I like how this off season has went, but we got to go out

there and do it. And so, you know, these out of these first six weeks, when we've gone out there

and done it, we've done a good job with it, you know, I'd say the things that that added to our

struggles in 2025 that kept us from winning races. Some of those things have still occurred this year.

But I feel like just our mindset and not given up through those moments last year, even without

getting the win, really set ourselves up to on the days like, like on Sunday with the alternator

issues or Atlanta getting in the wreck or Daytona, the strategy not working out, it just, we understood

that we're not going to let like these bumps in the road, these low points in the race,

just set us off onto a different path. We're just going to get the best finish possible on those

days. And on four of them, they've turned out to be the wins, which is, which is pretty remarkable.

But it all goes back to the start, having really fast Toyota Camrys. And we've done a really good

job of that here to start here. How does the current points format factor into the mindset of,

you know, we got a cat, we got to, you know, even if we are throwing some adversity, we have to

maximize today. We have, we can't, we can't just wait, you know, we can't just punt and then try

to go win next week. We have to make sure that we're getting every single opportunity to score

the points every single week. How does, I know you're sitting in a really, really good spot and,

and, you know, you're able to put a little bit of a pad on your points lead. But this new system,

I think, has teams looking at these each weekend a little differently than in the past?

I don't know. Truly, I feel like for me,

and TJ can probably relate to our time together when I was in trucks, is crazy as it may sound

coming from me. I felt like, you know, when I ran trucks my second year, and it was the full

season points format, I feel like, aside from what I made, just couldn't get through the gears,

like, I felt like that approach, that style of racing, like fits how I want to go and approach

week in and week out. Yes, I like to push my car hard and like, when I was younger, take more risks

than I probably should. And I feel like I've gotten better about managing that as I've gotten older.

But yeah, for me, I feel like whether it was 2024, and it worked in our favor or 2025, when we just

struggled, you know what I mean? I feel like my mindset hasn't shifted much over the last couple

of years. You know, we're talking about points, and how do we run our races, and how do we fight

through things. So I feel like just for me, the points formats where it's at is just rewards how

I like to race the most. And I don't know, I say all that, but funny enough, like whether it was,

I guess Atlanta more than anything, or even I guess the decision late, you know, starting

stage three at Darlington, you know, I say all these things. And then, you know, I went out there,

you know, lap one with a rec card Atlanta, and I'm pushing it too hard, but it I got away with it.

And, you know, we take the gamble of not changing the battery in stage three. And I mean, I guess

it wasn't a gamble at that point, we kind of knew what the drain was on the battery. But I guess

it's risky in some sense, right? Like, I'm making all myself that I'm be able to stay in the race

car and make make good decisions for the rest of the race. And for the most part, I did. Yeah.

Coming up on Martinsville, that's a track that you admittedly have have had some tough tough moments

out, right? Yeah, I'm well, I believe that you just haven't had the car that you need.

When you get the car that does the things it's supposed to do, you you fall in love with

any racetrack, right? You could go there this weekend and go, holy crap. Now, this is what

I'm looking at. You know, this is awesome. But say you go there and, you know, how do you how

do you manage the weekend if it tends to, you know, to be a bit of a difficult one?

Just just find, just find the high moments, find your strengths and look forward to those

moments. And I think, you know, for me, I remember, again, I'm going to go back to my truck days.

I remember when the the tires were a little softer. The runs would go longer before we,

you know, before I mean, there was a couple years there where we run no stage breaks, no

caution clock, no offence. And we get, you know, 100 laps on tires. And it's like, Oh,

this all makes sense. Like everyone's burned stuff up. I'm going to march forward now. And so

I feel like even with the old car, the gen six car, I started to figure that out in the cup

side of things and started to have like really good long run speed. And sometimes it would get us

into the top 10. Sometimes, you know, we would have a caution late and kind of be kind of back

to where we were before the long run. So I feel like for me, the more that you have to manage

the car, instead of just go, go, go the entire race, especially a place like Martinsville,

is more like how I'm again, I'm the guy that likes, that looks like it likes to drive aggressively,

right? But more times than not, we get a long run at Martinsville, any car or anything I've

raced there. I tend to go forward more so than backwards. So I feel like the more power and

the downforce stain where it's at should just set me up for more success.

Well, we hope so, man. Hopefully get to those. Hopefully you get those long runs you're looking

for on Sunday. Tyler, congratulations on all the success, man. It's fun to watch.

I have one question for Tyler. Tyler, what's the shoey taste like?

Oh, it tastes amazing. You know, I feel like at some point I did one before. I don't know when

it was, but, but yeah, I mean, I was soaked in champagne, sweat, beer, and I mean, my shoes

were already destroyed. So I'm like, might as well. I've, my dad found a, found someone that had some

cigars. And so I had a cigar and victory lane with smoking a cigar.

The cigar is probably worse than the shoe. Yeah, dude, I never got smoked cigar and victory lane

before. And I mean, I love smoking them, you know, when I'm having to drink a bourbon or whatever

at the house or just, you know, watching a race, watching sports. So to have that moment with

my dad was cool. And then I don't know, I was just, maybe I was delirious from the heat. I was like,

might as well, if we have one beer left, I might as well do a shoey because I'm already soaked,

like I said, so that was one of the best tasting beers I've ever had. That's for sure.

Cured dad cigar. I know my dad looking, well, I swear how it went is I think, I think I started

smoking cigars and my dad found out, you know, I had like, I don't know, like 20 or 30 in the

humidor. And then he just went like all in. He got the big fancy humidor. He's got all the gadgets.

And it's for a while there was like an arms race where I was trying to keep up with what

dad had and vice versa. So I think the next time you do an interview, you should bring your dad

with you and we'll do have both of you at the same time. Yeah, we are a lot alike. If I shaved

my beard and left my mustache, there wouldn't be a lot of differences. Y'all really are the same

they are. Yeah. I saw your dad in the garage, uh, or Sunday. He's always a good conversation.

Yeah. Well, thank you guys. Appreciate you. Yeah, man. Congrats again. Have fun this weekend.

Oh yeah. It's Tyler Reddick on the Dale Jr. download. That was a lot of fun talking to him

and give him, uh, give him a hard time for, for winning all the time and coming on the show.

But we love it when the winners stop by. Um, and I was, I forgot about the shoey.

Yeah. Good, good catch on you. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. Well, um, yeah, what should we do now?

Do you want to get into any other notable performances or anything or? Uh, let's see.

Austin Cendrick had a great race. I think we got a shout out Austin Cendrick.

Host Var. Um, Austin Cendrick is a good sport. We give him a lot of, I give him a hard time. Told

him, uh, he looked like, uh, bluey, blimpy, blimpy. Yeah. And he actually, so he actually

takes a picture with him at the, uh, at the intros in Vegas. Even had the orange glasses on.

So what a good sport. Yeah. Uh, goes out there, has him a great run this past weekend at Darlington,

one of the toughest tracks, probably one of the most underappreciated, uh,

he's actually drivers out there. Funny. Like he's very funny, but I mean, you know,

he does have his good runs from time to time. What a quiet top five he had. He just every run,

every good run he has is very quiet. He wasn't that way in the, uh, rally series.

I mean, he won gateway. He won gateway and was strong that weekend. That was a

Blaney ran out of gas, but Austin won that race. No one remembers. Um, I mean, his, you know,

he's very unassuming, uh, goes about his work. Eric Jones was able to climb back into, uh,

a good result. It didn't look like things were going that good for Eric in the first stage or

so of the race, but he was able to, hey, I fear boy, Danny, right? Danny kind of screwed his

way. I mean, he wasn't even, he's kind of struggling back there, but he got the track

position and continued to prove, you know, perform and move forward throughout the final stage.

Way to go, Danny. Ty Gibbs and other. Yep. Ty Gibbs was going for consecutive top tens.

Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's talking about Ty Gibbs. It's the right people.

Yeah. I'm not, at least not on the race track. They're not talking about him,

but I think, um, you know, obviously be talking about RFK and how great they were.

Did you see the font? I thought the, uh, the Biff font on all the cars.

Yes. Looking especially when it was like one, three and four. They're up there at the front now.

I thought the, of all the cars, my favorite of the Biffle font was Chris busher 17. I don't know.

It's just kind of tilted. It's kind of cool. I don't like the number forward,

but it looked okay on that car. Um, yeah, it was good to honor him. Yeah. The, uh, Larson's

late issues. Did he, he gets in the wall. What happened? They were right front. He had a right

front tire go down. Too aggressive at the end. No, he'd have a right front go down. The back,

the back hit first. Okay. In the one. So he busted his ass. He must have, because I went

back and watched his in car and he goes into one and I maybe just gets a little bit too high

in the back hits and it swings the front. So, so he hit, but he had the right front tire flat.

Did he come to pit road late because of a flat tire? No, I don't, I don't think he came to pit

road. I think he rode around the road around slow. No, he did go to pit road. Then he come back off.

Oh, it did. Then he came back out and rode around and came back right around and he had a bit toe

link. What else? Um, it's going to be a Daniel Suarez. Yes, Suarez and, um, Suarez been running

pretty good SVG solid. I thought was pretty good. Um, and a quiet solid day. I know he turned

Riley earlier, but for a Zillich, yeah, I think he was like 17th, which is pretty solid day

right behind Josh Berry. Yeah. Josh much better than spring race last year. Yeah. So, um,

yeah, it's a lot of fun to, to watch great race for NASCAR and, uh, for the series. Did you guys

CJ, go ahead. You, this is your story. No, I just say I, I saw on social that,

that Ben Kennedy came as a race fan. Yeah, legit. So I talked to Ben this morning.

I said, I heard you did a little bit of an undercover boss kind of deal

where you go to the racetrack and just enjoy the experience and he got his team together,

his group of folks that work in, in the, in the organization with him and, uh, they all,

this is what they did. So they all went a different route on how to buy tickets.

Some went online, some called up the call center. They all did it differently.

And then they, uh, you know, where they locate their pit, their, uh, parking lots and all that

stuff. And they go to the pre race. They go into the fan zone. They did it. They did everything.

They experienced everything all while taking a lot of mental notes. And then after the race,

they had a two hour meeting to debrief about all of this stuff and all of the things they

experienced and what they didn't like, what that, what was difficult, what was hard to do,

what was fun, what was good. And, uh, you know, he said to me, he's like, you know,

there's, there's a lot we can do to make it easier to buy a ticket. There's a lot we

can do to make it easier to find where you're supposed to park. All of those things he thinks

need to be improved. And I think it's amazing. It's really, really cool that he himself

tasked him, you know, him and his team to go, go through this experience in his process.

Um, they sent in the grandstands and watched the race. Um,

and listen to radios. Yeah. They, they rented radios. They did all those things just like you

would do. They basically, you know, got a base, you know, got kind of a, uh, a, uh,

you know, a spreadsheet of, of what fans traditionally do and tasked each and every

one of them to sort of go about it a little differently, but all of them experienced the

same thing. And, uh, he said, there's a lot of little things from after you buy the ticket and

get parked, which he said they could absolutely focus on improving that quite a bit. Um, he said,

from that moment on, it was a lot of little things along the way that he was just thinking

needed or could be different or better. And, and, and even some good things that they liked

that they could take the other race tracks. Um, but I told him, I said, man, this is the

kind of stuff that makes me proud as a race fan. This is the kind of stuff that I think his family

was very, very good at. Um, Bill Jr. Bill senior. Um, you know, think, you know,

going through, you know, doing something like this, this is not rocket science. This is not

hero. The dude, you know, but it's just cool that he cares. You cared enough. Fans see this.

He cared enough to do this. This wasn't a, this ain't a, uh, this ain't a front.

St. Bulls. How about that seat and turn four? Yeah. That's pretty good.

But I mean, he genuinely wanted to go through this process. And I believe Ben Kennedy truly

has a heart for, for what's going on here. And, uh, he's a good dude. I've talked to him a lot

over the years. And, um, yeah. So this is the kind of stuff that you love to see. You know,

if you're, if you're a fan and a proud fan of the sport. Um, so that was pretty cool. Um,

yeah. So one of the things that happened over the past week was, um, so the hall of fame is

starting to float. They're coming, they're putting together the ballot for the 2027 nominees. The

modern era ballot is, uh, it's a great list of folks. One person that used to be on there that

isn't on it currently, that, that I think we, we, we should consider voting to get back to the

ballot, right? To have the opportunity to be nominated is Ray Elder. Um, Ray also Butch Linnley,

two names there, Ray and Butch. Um, Butch is very, uh, synonymous with, uh, short track racing,

uh, racing one, a ton, one like 500 races, uh, in the late seventies, uh, racing around, um,

the sportsman series and so forth. That's a lot of races, tons of race, dude. He was so good.

Um, and so Butch Linnley was one name that I, that I brought up in conversation with the,

uh, with the committee. Another one was Ray Elder. Ray Elder raced on the West coast in the

Winston West in the seventies. He's a six time champion. So, I mean, we, uh, you know, if you

have a six time champion of anything, I mean, that's hall of fame. Is he, does he like, I don't

know a lot about Ray Elder. Does he similar to like a Mike Stafanic of the East coast?

So I don't think so. I would say that so in the, in the late seventies and even on into the early

eighties, they, the West coast cup series was very much like a sister series somewhere in between

the O'Reilly and the cup. It ranked, it ranked high today. Today they have, um, they have placed

it under the umbrella of the K and N or the ARCA, right? And it's now relegated almost to something

less significant. Definitely less years ago. It was very much a copy, a Western copy of the

cup series. They ran the same cars. And when the cup cars went to Riverside to race or Ontario

to race, the West coast guys would run in that race. They would qualify and race in Ray Elder

beat the cup regulars at Riverside twice. I'm not so it wasn't a fluke. Nope. I believe in 71 and 72.

He won the, he won the literal cup race at Riverside. Dang. He beat, beat all the, they all, you

know, they go out there to run. It was the first race of the year and, um, he was gotta beat. Well,

he just, he wasn't just, um, you know, the West coast guys, when they would race against the cup

guys weren't going to beat them. They would run maybe in the backside of the top 10 if their cars

didn't break. But for the most part, you're Richard Petty's David Pearson's kill your girls.

We're going to be faster. The Wood Brothers, they were just not the West coast guys just didn't

have the speed Ray Elder beat them a couple of times. Ray Elder came out to Daytona and ran

in the top five. Um, and so he had it. He was, and he's a, it's, it's a NASCAR West coast series

that he is a multi-time champion of. And so like that's an automatic in my mind for a haul of

fame, right? I think he's five or six. It's still a lot, but it's a lot. And so I always get

it confused between the two. But in my mind, like I know that people are going to say, well,

you know, the West coast NASCAR didn't have the competition. They didn't. They didn't have all

the cars. They didn't, they weren't as fast. They weren't as technology savvy. They weren't, you know,

they just, you know, when, when, when the cup guys would ever compete against them, they didn't,

they didn't hold up. Ray, Ray did, but the rest of them didn't. And so the series doesn't get as

much, I think, appreciation for what it really was in the seventies. We don't, I believe that,

you know, it made, it made being successful nationwide for NASCAR cup series. It made

being successful nationwide easier because of what the work that Ray and those guys were doing on

the West coast, you know, going out to the West coast and racing Riverside once or twice a year,

Ontario till it failed. Yeah. Anything west of the Mississippi was a bit of a,

bit of a stretch, a bit of a struggle, bit of a tough lift for NASCAR. But it was not as tough

because of what Ray and those guys were doing out there. They were a stock car cup NASCAR series

running up and down the West coast and all these little short tracks and sort of, you know,

teasing folks for what would come down the road into the 2000s and so forth as the sport, you know,

started becoming more of a nationwide sport. Dude, in the, in the seventies NASCAR was,

was considered a very southeastern minute, minute Atlantic race. We didn't have many races west of

the Mississippi. And I think not only was Ray a champion and a consistent winner, but he was also

doing a lot of work laying the foundation for our sport to become nationwide. And, and so I made

a big push for him. I want to discuss though more, more so the pioneer ballot. So there's a lot of

names that are up for grabs. I believe if you're going to make the pioneer ballot, you have, you

you're, there's a, there's a year like 1966 or something like that where the bulk of your career

happened before that year. Right. And so the modern day guys are all on the ballot from 1960.

Oh, it's a 60 year. All right. Significant impacts over 60, over 60 years ago. Right. So

I think last year was Ray Hendrick, a modified standout who definitely had been on the ballot

for many, many years. So it says right here, there's a long, there's legends like Banjo Matthews,

Jake Elder, other nominees and nominees include Larry Phillips, Bob Wellborn and Ralph Moody.

Um, so Ray Hendrick got the, got the vote last year. Um, the pioneer ballot again is celebrating

individuals who were part of the sport beyond 60 years ago. And so, um, my grandfather Ralph

Earnhardt's on this list. I voted, I voted him onto the ballot. I felt like he's sitting there. I'm

like, I can't not cast a vote for Ralph Earnhardt. I don't know that many folks will, will cast a,

you know, there's other names that are mentioned before Ralph, but I had to do it. Um, I voted

Wellburn, uh, Harry Hyde. Love Harry Hyde. Harry was successful as a crew chief. Are there other

crew chiefs on this list that are maybe possibly more successful? Yes. But I loved what he did.

He was so, he was so interesting as a character, successful, a winning crew chief, but he's also

uh, you know, someone that they actually wrote a character for in the movie Days of Thunder,

Harry Hogg. Um, and so, you know, in my mind, I don't know, I like, I like putting Harry Hyde

on that list. Uh, Herb Nab, who was another successful crew chief, and then Larry Phillips

was the five guys that, that I, um, that I put on my ballot. Man, there's some, it's hard to pick.

It is hard to pick. You know, every, every time that I've been part of this conversation and part

of the committee, one of the first things anybody says is, well, let's, let's just put them all in

there because every, if you make the ballot, you're, you are a Hall of Famer in my mind. I mean, there

are a couple, there's a couple rare instances where who, someone has made the actual ballot

and you're like, man, they're not a Hall of Famer. There is this really big conversation around the

name AJ Foyt. And I would, I think it'd be a good conversation to have in this room

is AJ Foyt, a NASCAR Hall of Famer. I mean, you would need to, you would first off,

bring up the stats. First off, you would need to know what he's done in the sport. Yeah, I need to

know, I need to know all his stats here. NASCAR stats. The conversation, this conversation has come

up a couple of times in the past several years. I mean, and there's some people that believe

that AJ Foyt belongs in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. And then there's some because of his name. There's

some folks that believe that he doesn't. Is AJ Foyt one of the greatest race car drivers ever?

Yes, absolutely. Every, I think most people would absolutely agree. I don't know how you

cannot agree with that. I'm not sure that he's a NASCAR Hall of Famer. That's the thing,

and that's a common comment. AJ ran 100, it says here 128 starts seven wins, nine polls,

8 to 500 winner with the Wood Brothers. He won the Firecracker 400 in 1964.

All right. So let me ask you this. Is William Byron a Hall of Famer right now?

No, because he's more accomplished than this. The thing is, is like AJ, AJ Foyt, I think that a lot

of people, you know, just say, hey, he's, he's one of the greatest drivers ever. And yeah,

and he raced with us. He's automatic. He's automatic. And I'm not, I'm not sure I agree with that.

I don't think he's in. In my opinion, man, there's some people that believe he belongs in there.

To TJ's point, then there's a lot of drivers that I mean, William Byron's got two day tone.

I know. And I don't do, I don't, I don't go with the comparison. AJ, Tyler Rex got four wins this year.

I'll say this, like AJ came and had success in one, but there are also times when he came

and he was cantakarous and difficult, you know, and problematic, you know, and I don't know.

I don't think that should impact how you, how you are as a, if you're difficult, you shouldn't.

Well, I mean, if he, I think that it would matter if he, say he has 128 start seven wins,

but he was a champion, not literally, but he championed our sport. He, he, he lifted it up. He,

he raised, you know, he, he never cared about that. He was just there to try to win. He ran,

he ran four or five races a year and he came and showed up and he raced and tried to win races.

He had some badass freaking race cars like that. His little Oldsmobile 1981 82 beautiful car.

Um, the cutlassy brawl. Yes. No, but you have to put a line somewhere. So I do weigh that. I do weigh

whether, look, it's not, I don't weigh, it don't weigh a, it doesn't weigh a ton into my decision,

but I do weigh, were they problematic? Were they, did they create issues? Were they in trouble?

Were they, you know, did they bring us? Did they tear us down? Did they lift us up? Did they,

did they, did they go around talking about how, how, how much freaking, how badass it is to race

NASCAR? Did they go, you know, were they, were they a person that, that promoted, uh, talked to,

you know, talked positively about it? Were they a person that got them, you know, again, got themselves

in trouble and did that? That, that, that's going to be a little bit of a factor of my vote.

I'm more of a stats guy because it's not the hall of good. It's the hall of fame. Like you need to

go out there and win and stay legendary. The stats were, um, the stats were a big part,

but not all of my vote. Here's a question for you is, um, Justin Algar Hall of Famer.

Oh, so I've, no, not yet. What if we wins another championship?

I mean, I have a controversial take though with this one. Well, you got, you know,

there's guys in the conversation like Sam Ard, uh, Jack Ingram, Larry Phillips, for example.

I mean, there's some guy Larry Phillips, albeit didn't run in the Bush or Xfinity or Riley series,

but there are guys that are very successful outside of the cup series that get considered.

There's truck series champions that are considered for the hall of fame. Make the ballot for the

hall of fame. I think you should make the ballot. I have a controversial take that I don't think.

Oh, you don't want to tell it here. Xfinity or Riley Bush nationwide should count. That should be.

Are you serious? Yeah. Why would it? It's the NASCAR hall of fame. It's under the NASCAR banner.

It's not the NASCAR cup hall of fame. I mean, if you look at some of the

conferences, it's not all. That is a pretty. That is really. That's actually

a lot of nodding in here too. A lot of the people agree.

To me, Xfinity is like AAA and do we go look at AAA stats for a baseball player?

Yeah, but not everything works out perfectly for everybody to get to the cup series and there's

still some great race cars that didn't get great cup rise to show what they could really do.

And I don't disagree with that. So you're thinking like this, this pioneer.

Yeah, I'm like looking at half these guys on here. Do you think Ray Hendrick,

those guys that got voted in as modified champions shouldn't get in there? Yeah.

Well, I don't know the history of why, but you know, if you want to be honest about it,

that's quite, that's another race. That's another rung or two down the ladder. If it was before like

the NASCAR was created, then we can have a discussion. But if NASCAR cup series was there,

then I think that's when it should start. But it doesn't say NASCAR cup series hall of fame.

This is NASCAR hall of fame. Yeah, it is literally not the cup series hall of fame.

But Major League Baseball. This isn't baseball. Includes everything. I know. Well, that's Major

League Baseball. They are literally saying this is Major League Baseball MLB, the top.

So the NASCAR hall of fame is cup and more.

I don't know. There's a lot of guys that have really great accomplishments that just didn't

tie them out right. But it's the hall of, in my opinion, it's the hall of fame,

not the hall of really good. Yeah, but it's not cup only. They're not,

no one ever came in and said, Hey, y'all, this is just cup only and you're saying that.

Yeah. Well, it's not, it's not the hall of fame. That's my opinion.

But you're changing it. I know you're changing literally what the hall of fame is. It's not.

You're asking me if I would vote someone in. I'm saying no, I wouldn't.

Bam. I hope you're never on the committee. I don't think I will be. Yeah, I don't think we have

to worry about that. It's scary what people think, isn't it, TJ? I think there's more people that

would agree with me than you realize. I disagree with you. I think you're going to be on an island

here, man. I'm not on it. I'm not saying I'm a majority, but I don't think I'm alone. Tim's.

We gotta ask you a question. Alex, Tim's just showed up. We got on a conversation around the

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All right. And we are live. Hey, everybody, you're live for another episode of Ask Jr. here,

me and TJ recording the Dale Jr. download here in the Arby's studio. Thank you, Xfinity,

for waving the red flag on internet price hikes and raising the green flag on savings.

You get more speed and reliable Wi-Fi and you're locked in

for one price for five years. That's pretty darn good. No surprises, no light yellows,

just a straight shot to victory lane. And just like that, we've got a winner, folks. Xfinity,

imagine that. We're sitting here having a debate, everybody, as you're all rolling into this show.

We've talked about the cup race and all that fun stuff. We had our buddy Tyler Redick on here

again again and again in the Xfinity car this weekend. We talked about

the cars tour upcoming race this weekend at Wake County and testing at Nashville fairgrounds.

We had a lot of conversation, but right now we're in the middle of a debate around the hall of fame.

The committee has gotten together to get the ballot ready for the modern and the pioneers.

I told everybody who I voted for for the pioneer ballot and I was told by the committee that I

could share my vote and I have. And we got into a debate around A.J. Foyt. Should A.J. Foyt

be nominated or voted in to the Hall of Fame? That's a...

To the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Yeah, the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Should A.J. Foyt be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame? I'd be curious to

see a poll on this because there is a pretty split opinion on it. And that furthered the

conversation to a hot take that our guy Travis has.

Hot take.

And so Travis says that he doesn't believe anyone that competed in anything outside of

should be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Like no Xfinity... Because I asked the next question,

okay, if A.J. Foyt is a good conversation, what about Justin Algar? Justin's got a little career

left. I don't know. Several more wins possibly, and possibly maybe adding another championship.

Is he a Hall of Famer? And that's spurned the comment from you, Travis, that you don't believe

your hot take is that you don't think that pure truckers, pure Xfinity guys or guys from

Modified, Larry, the Larry Phillips, all those... You don't think any of those guys should be

elected into the NASCAR Hall of Fame? You think it should be specifically off of cup performance?

Since NASCAR was officially... Yeah, since NASCAR was created, anybody that didn't race cup, I don't

think it... And our argument, I think, is that it's not the NASCAR Cup Hall of Fame. It's the NASCAR

Hall of Fame, and we are recognizing anyone who's had real success in not only on the race track,

but obviously, anybody who's been an asset to the industry, you have crew chiefs and all types

of people nominated from time to time. Yeah, so that's interesting. I'm surprised by that take,

because we have said over and over at this table that it's not the NASCAR Cup Hall of Fame. It's

the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It embodies all NASCAR, but you refuse to budge off of your take. You

think I'm in the minority, but I don't think I'm like... Tim, you've sat down in this conversation

just now. Tim's walked into this. What do you think about that opinion? I agree with Travis.

Are you serious? I do. You're a liar. It doesn't get the same come out of coverage. Hey, don't get

offended when I call you a liar. TJ doesn't like that. He texts me after every show when I call him

that, and he's like, stop calling me a liar. That was after just one problem there. It was an isolated

table or something. I totally agree. I agree with both sides. I'll say that, because the Hall of

Fame is a museum. We celebrate the sport, but we celebrate the Cup guys way more than the other

guys. We do. So that should take higher precedent when you're elected to the Hall of Fame class.

He's saying no one outside of the Cup should ever be elected. We do Cup success absolutely

weighs more into your opportunity to make the ballot. You look at the ballot every year and the

names that are discussed by the committee and see predominantly Cup guys dominating the list.

Which is right. Which is fair. That's fine. He's saying that a guy like Justin Algar

shouldn't even be considered. It's a conversation, so not Justin Algar, but if someone has failed at

the Cup level and went back and they were more successful in the lower series. Which has happened.

I know, but I don't feel like that should count. I mean, if they've never gotten to a certain level

like a short track. Why shouldn't it count though? Maybe they didn't work out right and get into a

great Cup part. That's another great conversation. What if Pinsky had hung in there a little bit

with Justin? Sorry about it. In every sport, like what if the dude's offensive lineman would have

blocked better form? I know, but Justin didn't fail. Doesn't mean he's a worse driver. Justin

didn't, like, that's why if he didn't get the opportunity, he never did. He raised

affinity for Pinsky. He's a good argument, but if there's other drivers that fail at the

top level. He did actually get the Cup, but he never really got that kind of solid opportunity.

He'd never gotten to a top 10 Cup car. I'm just saying, Justin, I believe, I'm hoping that Justin

tax on a few more things to create the conversation around him being a nominee one day, but

I wonder how folks in the, I wonder how folks in the comments feel that if you didn't race Cup,

you don't get a chance to even make the conversation. I think most are disagreeing with me though.

Now, one person says A.J. Foite should not be in. He's Indy Carr.

Matt Crafton is a name coming up that didn't get a lot of cup starts that three-time truck

champion. Matt will probably be on the ballot because of what he's done in the trucks, but

in Travis's eyes, again, I'm just reminding folks online, he wouldn't even be, he wouldn't even get

a chance to be in the discussion. But like Mike Stefanik, like that guy. See, that's where I

disagree with Travis. He never got to that level. Maybe he didn't want to go to that level.

That's true, but he should be in the hall of fame. He's saying he would vote Stefanik in,

but not a truck racer. Yes, basically. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

You're weird. How? What is your basis? Because like he, the grassroots guy that does also such

a bad ass get your vote, but the guy that wins three truck cheers championships does not.

Show me the stats, Stefanik. What is he? One of nine championships? Oh, dude. That's,

you can't top that. That's incredible. That deserves to be like, he's saying, he's saying

it deserves to be in there. How can you say that? It's flawed. I know, but that's how the brain works.

Oh my gosh. Nine, just nine championships. 74 modified wins deserving, but at what level

do you think those were easy to win? Easier than a cup. Are you, I mean, I don't know that you can

say that. I mean, I know, I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, some of those were harder to win than a

cup race. Nine champions. I would, I would absolutely guess that some of the races that he won

ran in a modified were tougher to win than a cup race. If he was in a Hendrick car

during these years, well, could he have won a championship in the cup series? Oh, I mean,

how, now what are we doing? Yeah, I'm just saying like, wait, so then are we going to

create some drivers on a scale? Well, they had this many wins, but it was in a lesser car,

so we're going to boost it. I don't care what car you win. What did you do when you were in the cup

series? I don't still think that's a fair, like we don't look at like a quarterback like, oh,

he was good, but if he only had a better team, you know, his stats would have been better.

Like, so let's put him in the Hall of Fame. I mean, look at Sam Darnold, everyone rode him off

after going to the Jets. Now he's a Super Bowl champion, but he's not a Hall of Famer. I'm not

saying he is, but it matters. Like what you get, it matters, but what I'm saying though is

when it comes time of your careers over, you don't get bonus points for you were in a bad car.

Sorry, I'm just saying timing works out. Y'all are now having an entirely different conversation.

No, I'm not. I want to let y'all talk, but y'all always do this. We end up going way over here.

Nobody even wants to have this conversation. We started off way over here with this conversation.

I'm just saying like, you don't get bonus points because you were in a lesser car.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, no one's arguing that. No one really arguing that. So all right, never mind.

It's known to the world that you're, you're, you're, you're out there. You're out there on an island.

I know I am with you on that island. Okay. I was hesitant to even say it to begin with.

I'm glad he said it. Brave of you to share such a crazy idea.

One person says Travis and Alex just need to stop talking. They sound stupid.

I love comments like that. Oh man.

We, this made, this reminded me that we, did we do this on the bless your heart? Remember

we were talking about Shauns. The Shauns need to get together and decide how they're going to spell

their name. Oh man. And we never, oh, I got so, so many freaking hilarious comments on my timeline

from that. And they were from Shauns all arguing there for their name. They're spelling right

of the actual name. So it's pretty good. God dang. Social media can be really good some days.

It can be entertaining. So good. So, um, all right, we're at, we're doing ask junior. Let's get some

questions going. Um, let's go to first question. Oh, let's, let's go with the layup here. If you

can make one change to NCAA 27, what would it be one change? It needs a companion app. Oh my

gosh. You have no idea. I mean, seriously, if EA and anybody's listening, the game needs a companion

app so we can do some, you know, some recruiting and all that fun stuff. I don't even know what's

on our iPads. I'm just saying, so we can do some on our iPads, change our debt chart, whatever

we want to do. All right. That'd be really nice. And he's an app. I'll pay money. I'll give you a

dollar 99. I would. I don't want no in-app purchases and no subscription though.

That is a crew. Yeah. I'm just kidding. TJ. That would be very beneficial as a person that's

sales. What's yours? Oh, sorry. Make an impact one. So, I mean, that probably would have been

mine to start with from the commissioner side of things, because you can just control so many

more things not having to be at the Xbox a lot. You can just do a lot more like that. But I think

there's a lot of little things that Madden has that they'll eventually put in there like play

call limits for certain, for offense and defense separate, not just overall in the game. Why do

you care about that? Because I think defenses are a lot more common than, you know, regular cheap

plays. But they're just a lot of little things, but the companion app would probably be mine as well.

Man. Next question was how hard was it to run two different cars when the COT came in

to the scene? You're just trying to get me to talk about COT, I think.

That's not hard to do. Someone literally sent this question in.

Well,

at the time that the,

you know, around the time the COT came, we were still running the gen four version, you know,

the kind of gen four version of the of the Xfinity car, which was a great race car,

the gen four cup car. And that, you know, that style of Xfinity car was great. So,

you know, it was, you'd go, you drive the Xfinity car and go, damn, it's bad ass. A lot of, you

know, left front down, nose pinned, rotate, rotate, turn, ass in the air, hauling, you know, getting

after. And the, the COT, honestly, you know, was just so bad from the start.

I'll harp a little. We went to COTs getting built. NASCAR's got one built and Brett

is driving it at tracks and we heard, we heard about it. And now in my life at this point,

I had never heard of NASCAR building a car and taking it to the track themselves.

And I was pretty naive and I thought, damn, NASCAR is going to the racetrack with a COT and

they've been, they've built this car. They designed it. They're going to the racetrack and

they're driving it and running it. Man, I bet they're, I bet they've got that thing going.

Right? We got, we built our first COT and we take it to Rockingham, me and Tony Jr., Tony

Sr. And we unload it and I'm thinking, man, I hope I can run as fast as NASCAR with their COT.

They've ran, you know, they've been testing this thing for months and they, they've got to have

it dialed in. We're going to run a car with a splitter for the first time in our lives and

some big old stupid shoebox, you know, with a wing on the back and ugly car. And it looked,

it drove as bad as it looked. And I'm thinking, I'm climbing anything and I'm hoping it's okay,

you know, and we're going to be way off and it's going to take us all day to figure this thing

out and learn. We're going to learn a ton, but it's going to be a handful. I'm going to promise

you, we were over one and a half seconds faster than NASCAR COT right out of the gate. And I was,

they were on the other end of the racetrack, really. We go out there and run and I come in and,

and I was like, all right, how do we compare? And I'll tell you, I asked Tony Jr. how we compared

to NASCAR COT and he's like, they're struggling. He's like, we're not too bad, I guess. I don't know.

You know, we didn't know how fast we were. I don't think anybody else was there.

Brett wouldn't have got approved. We ran and ran and ran trying to make that thing better. And

they were way off over there with their car just running laps. I'm sure, I mean, maybe they had,

they had a reason or whatever they were trying and testing, but I was like, man,

how could they be so slow? This is NASCAR. This is their car. They made this car. And,

you know, then we go out there and ran it in a race and I'll be honest, you know, it was,

I had some times when I was, I had some fun races in the COT.

Really? I had a couple of fun races driving Tony Jr. COT,

you know, and me and Tony Jr. would figure out some things that we kind of liked and I had some

moments. The clash and the duel. I'm just saying. We ran in the bud car for a couple of races and

also with HMS, but, you know, it was just

the problem with the COT and every other car after that was the splitter. And I mean,

I've talked about it at length on this show. When you put a splitter on a car and there's a rule

where it has to be, like it has to absolutely be exactly in the same spot on every single race car

and everybody knows that getting that car to go fast means putting the splitter right against the

ground. You literally have every car going around the racetrack exactly the same way, set up the

same way, air platform and everything identical. When we did have a splitter, we had these valences

on the car and you could travel the car differently than the guy beside you

and you might find a way to get it to stay lower down the straightaway and travel more in the corner

and you traveled it until the right front tire or the left front tire rubbed the fender, right?

And then you beat the fender up. Then you traveled it more and then you beat the fender up and traveled

it more. You know, you can't do that a lot. Yeah. And then you, you know, now you're bottoming out.

Now you're trying to cut the bottom of the car to get it to travel more and everybody

didn't live in the same place. Everybody didn't go down into corner and land and end up in the

exact same travel. So you had guys that were better entering the corner, guys that couldn't

enter as hard, guys that got through the middle better, guys that got off the corner better,

guys that were lower off the corner, guys that cars were carrying the nose off the corner.

Everybody's car traveled and ran differently and so, you know, you had guys that were faster,

early, slower, late, guys that were just junk, guys that were super good. You had all kinds of

things happening in the field in terms of speed. When everybody got the splitter and had to race

with a splitter, we all ran the splitter on the ground and we all ran the same and that really

sucked. And if you tried to drive a car deeper into the corner, say you're out there running and

you're like, all right, we got a good lap time. We got a good handling car. I'm going to go in

there car link deeper. What happened when you drove in deeper with the splitter is it tapped

the ground with the splitter and pushed up the racetrack. All right, I can't go in further.

I'm going to go back to where I was on throttle and that's all I can do. And you're in exactly that.

I mean, that's how you raced. With the car that had the valence, like if you wanted to drive it

in a little further, you were going to drag a little valence off, but you could do it. You'd

drive in a little further and maybe it pushed, maybe it turned, whatever, right? But you could

change a lot of how you drove the car a lot with the car with the valence on it. And so that was

the heart. And I could not get over that. I hated that COT because I knew when I got to this,

when I got, when I figured out how fast I could go with the car, that was that. I couldn't do

anything as a driver to change the car much and how, how, how I drove the lap. Because if I did

anything more, it was just going to get on the ground and push. And so every time you, every

racetrack you went to, you knew that that was something you were going to have to, you know,

struggle with, I suppose, every single weekend. And yeah. Awesome. The old splitter. We got one

more question before we have to run. Rank these three. Pool Ocean Lake.

Pool Ocean Lake. Pool Ocean Lake. I would say ocean pool lake. Really? Put the ocean first,

yeah. Because ocean means beach. Yeah. And beach, there's usually some pretty fun spots to eat.

It's all kinds of great things. Wow. Yeah. If I'm near the ocean, then I think I'm probably on a

vacation. Yeah. You're happier. Yeah. A little happier. If I'm by the pool, I could be at home.

Yeah. Sometimes the beach is just a lot of work. I don't mind. You don't like toting out there and

setting it up and putting it, taking it back down. No, I mean, most time, most time we do that,

we just go out there and set up about three other peoples, the wavy, wavy things. Oh,

we help all kinds of things. Yeah. We help people next to us. That's usually what we do.

Yeah. Well, you're trying to be a good Samaritan. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the beach. I'm with

you. Yeah. All right, everybody. Thank you all for tuning in on this segment of Ask Junior.

It was one for the record books. All right. Thank you, Xfinity, also, for waving the red flag

on internet price hikes and raising the green flag on savings. You get Wi-Fi that you need,

reliable service, reliable speed, locked in, one price, five years. Yeah. It's hard to believe.

No surprises. No late yellows. Just straight shot to victory lane, just like that. Folks,

we got a winner. And I've got some baseball cards. I want to open these, but I won't do it right now.

Hey, this is Dale Hart Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. download gear, including

the I'm All Drink Some Beer t-shirt that we've been talking about here around the office,

head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch.

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You know, diecast sheet metal trophy shirts, a mix of everything. That's what we want to see

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dirtymo media social posts for a chance to be selected. We have a post later this week.

And then you respond to it. Videos obviously are really good. That's going to give you the best

shot to win. And then next week, we'll select the winner. Looking forward to seeing what everybody

brings at a table this year. Yeah, there's used some really good stuff. And some of the videos are

amazing. All right. Well, thank you Lionel and can't wait to see who is going to be the next

ultimate racing collector. Lace your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Lace your bets.

Get your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Get your bets.

Russ, is AJ Floyd a Hall of Famer?

Russ, is he a Hall of Famer? Is yes or no?

NASCAR Hall of Famer, is AJ Floyd a NASCAR Hall of Fame? No, it's Justin Algaier, NASCAR Hall of Fame.

No. Do you think Justin ever makes a ballot?

No. Man. What if Justin wins one more championship? Does he ever make a ballot?

No. Welcome to the team. Do you believe that the NASCAR Hall of Fame ballot should be cup only?

I don't think it should be cup only, but I think it should have a major focus. So along those lines,

you're saying if you're an Algaier, yes, Hall of Fame with two championships. What about Ricky

Centhouse Jr. Two championships, Daytona 500 wins, solid point. I think there's a legitimate

conversation depending on where I would say, okay, we get down the road 15 years. I mean,

there's a lot of guys that are competing in the cup series right now that I think are Hall of

Famers. And I don't think that Ricky will ever get the opportunity to be in the conversation

because there's just too many people that are better. We've had a lot of fun with that conversation.

Time for dirty mode dough. Let's bring up the bet sheet here. This segment brought to you by

FanDuel. Gotta get on FanDuel. Start making some bets. Now that the, I'm out of the game

with the college basketball tournament. Well, the bets are harder to make for me at this point

because it's tighter. And so I'm not as, I've done what I needed to do. Round one was my round.

I had good success. Heavy favorites are gone. I don't know. I might make a few more bets, but

also when Dale gives out his bets, if he says money line people, he's saying he's just taking

the team to win. He's not betting the spread. We had a couple of people that were tailing your

bets, but took the spread. So just want to remind people. The bet that I brought to you guys this

past week paid out. So I made some good, good headway there. Speaking of headway, we're going

to Martinsville. The favorites according to the Vegas are Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin at plus 500,

Larson at plus 550, Byron 700, Christopherville 800. Russ, what does the model say? I think you

missed Chase Elliott. Yeah, there we go. Chase needs to be in that conversation probably for the

last four at Martinsville. Yeah, I agree. You worried about the Chevrolet's after this past

weekend or no? I think this is the place. If they don't do well here, then I think we can start

really having that conversation. Yeah. This is a Hendrick track as well. So I think this is

Chase Elliott's weekend for me. All right. Chase Elliott would be at what? Plus 900.

Yeah. He's just off the list here. He bet that 10s. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'll take the risk, which is

slightly chevy. It's a concern, but short track. I think it could be different. Where's Redick on

the board? He's right. I think he's plus 1400. Yeah. What's the predictor say for Redick? He's

an avoid for me this week. He's actually out of the top 10 in the predictor. Never finished top

five at Martinsville. Only two top 10s there. We only finished on the lead lap. I think only

seven of his last 12 Martinsville starts. Fascinating. Let only once there. Yeah. So I pass on him.

Yep. I like Ty Gibbs here again. I like Briscoe here. I like Ryan Priest. Priest is a sleeper for

me here too. Yeah. Yeah. And I give TJ credit that RFK stuff's been very consistent this year.

There's five guys. That's what we've been looking for. Yeah. You don't have to give me much credit

for that. Well, that's what we've been looking for from RFK and Chris Buscher showing up every

week. I love it. I mean, maybe what about Zane Smith? I know Austin Cendrick. Could he shine

a little bit this weekend? Maybe Josh Berry. Cendrick surprised me last week. So I'll give you

it. You know, he said he was fast. He was fast in practice and I totally didn't believe it. But

Zane wasn't bad at Vegas either. He just got caught on Pit Road. And Berry led a lot of laps

here last year but had some sort of issue. I can't go in on Zane until I see practice for.

Yeah. Zane's been quietly strong this year, I think, though. Don't you think? Yeah. He has.

He has for sure. I like Berry. He's led a bunch of laps in this race last year and then finished

10th in the fall. Berry, I know a lot of people are not paying much attention to him because he's

had a really, really difficult start to the season. Obviously, me being connected to him

in his career, I watched him this past weekend at Darlington and liked what I saw. I know he

didn't finish. He just finished just inside the top 20. But it was a bit of a grinder day.

And kind of a finish that team needs to be able to go into a Martinsville race and genuinely have

an attitude that they can go up there and try to compete in the top 10.

I would say Josh Berry would be a fun bet for top 10.

Partly a couple of these guys together and see what kind of fun you can have.

What's Ty Gibbs odds? Ty Gibbs is 2,200 to win plus 110 for top 10.

I feel like he can be a factor. I like the top 10.

Yeah, top 10. I like that too. I feel like he's gaining confidence again now.

Yeah, I do. But as Ty Gibbs, a person that until he wins, you're not going to bet him to win.

I wouldn't say that. I don't think his previous stats at Martinsville make me want to bet him

this week. But I definitely think when he's upcoming races, I will definitely have my win card.

What about Ross or even a host of our here? What kind of track record does he have here?

Ross is good here, but I just, I don't know if I trust them this year, like lately.

Suarez has been hot lately.

Sure has. This is the kind of track where I think Suarez can continue that run.

I, Suarez to me is an interesting guy and I've always kind of watched where he runs good at

and those tracks seem to have a pattern. And I feel like this fits right into his,

his sort of, his little house. Plus 450 for top 10.

For last top 10 here with 2019 plus 450. I wish that was higher. You would think it would be higher.

This guy not thinking about for top 10 too. He's got three top 10s here. Todd Gilliland.

I would just saw his name on here. Yeah. Yeah. He's actually really good here. Plus 450 as well.

Wasn't a college car really strong here last year? Wasn't AJ fast or something?

That's, those lines are terrible. They should be like 1100 or something

for top teams. You could, closer to race day you can. Yeah, they'll be that. I'd wait then.

Plus 450 is not a lot. See, I like to see how he, those guys see how they practice.

Yeah. Kyle Busch factor at all.

They haven't had a top 10 all year. Austin Dillon.

He's been, if you were doing a head to head, Austin Dillon, Kyle Busch, who you're picking.

Austin Dillon. Tim said that. Yep. Yeah.

Austin Dillon. No way. He's ran better than him this year. Yeah. He's more, he seems to,

oh, he has his moments. If Kyle can get through the first like half of the race and still be like

in the top, run the top 10, he always, he makes up a lot of ground on the second half of the race,

but something always happens in the beginning or first half of the race where he has to overcome

like a first pit stop. His car just wasn't that, I watched his, I watched his car as we

is. They were struggling on the long run race. Yeah. All night, all day. Yeah. Were you surprised

that some of the guys like the eight, you know, struggle in the 22 was pretty far off. I was

surprised at the 22. The 22 is the one that surprised me the most. Wait, did you, do you think that

they tried something out, out there in left field just took a gamble? They had to because Blaney

and Cinderick were both really good. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's been that way quite a bit this

year so far. Seems like the 12 has been the, the consistent car, the two kind of, the two has

not been bad. Honestly, he's been problem. Is he the second best car there now this year?

He is. Well, kind of close, right? Right there. Yeah. But like the gap's not what it used to be.

Yeah. But, but we can say Blaney's like could be, if Reddick wasn't on this tear,

it would be Blaney we'd be talking about. Lagana is only 30 points better than Cinderick right now.

Yeah. Which is surprising to me. Yeah. It's best finished since the 500s, 15th.

What about Toyota? Plus 155. They've won five of six. I mean, Danny, you know,

Danny was, Danny's got a good shot. He's on. Yeah. Bell, Bell's been. Yeah, Bell's been.

Yeah. Man, it's just so hard to watch visually watching these guys for 500 laps or

Brian Blaney drives this track. Like he's just the best guy at this track right now, in my opinion.

He doesn't miss like the curb. You watch him and he's so consistent and so precise with

how he runs his track and he's gotten so good at it. So, I mean, he's by far stands out more

than anyone else to me at Martin's right now. To your point, TJ, for top forward Blaney's even

money. Lagana is plus three 40 at the next best. Yeah. The thing you have to worry about with

with Blaney is that pit crew, his pit crew is I have them ranked like outside the top 25 as a

pit crew, three wheels in the last three weeks. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to overcome that.

They've lost 75 positions on Pit Road. Damn. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Is that including like getting caught on Pit Road under green? Does that include that stuff?

No, that's okay. That wasn't sure. And all that. Yeah, I got you.

Well, they'll have to clean that up to have a shot on Sunday. All right, bud. I appreciate you

tuning in. Thanks for coming through Russell. Thanks for having me. You bet your man. Y'all be

smart when you're making your bets on FanDuel. FanDuel, the premier gaming destination in

the United States, bringing you another segment of Dirty Mode Doe. Thank you, Tim. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us in the Arby's studio. Don't forget about Arby's new meat and three box. Get

more meal for your money at Arby's. We had the meats. That's the Dale Jr. download with TJ

majors. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week. See you.

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About this episode

Darlington weekend sets the tone: Dale Jr. and TJ dig into the alumni program’s impact, throwback paint schemes, and the recurring debate over stage racing and even number placement during throwback events. They also preview the Cars Tour race at Wake County and Dale’s Nashville testing, including muffler rules and the track’s vintage night feel. Justin Allgaier and Tyler Reddick weigh in on restarts, strategy, and winning under pressure. The show ends with a Hall of Fame argument—whether non-Cup champions (like Xfinity/Trucks/Modified) should be eligible—plus Ask Jr. and betting picks for Martinsville.

Arby's Bill Elliott Bristol Motor Speedway Bud Light Budweiser Can-Cut caution Cup series Good Year green flag

Original notes

Dale Jr. and the crew celebrate 700 episodes with plenty of laughs and nostalgia, including some fun stories and a look at a signed Dale Sr. trading card. They preview a big CARS Tour weekend with limited spots and high stakes, share what made Dale’s Nashville test feel like stepping back in time, and dive into everything that made Darlington weekend stand out, from throwback energy to the opinions it always brings out across the garage.

They break down the on-track action in Darlington, including Justin Allgaier’s strength on restarts in the O’Reilly series and a Cup race that had a little bit of everything with strategy, tire falloff, and late-race intensity. Tyler Reddick joins after a hard-fought performance to talk through the challenges he faced, and the crew weighs in on the Reddick vs. Buescher moment while also highlighting a few underrated runs across the field.

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The Dale Jr. Download

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