: Remembering Kyle Busch, Wet Weekend At Charlotte, Silly Season Rumors, Onto Nashville!!!
NASCAR Weekly Podcast
: Remembering Kyle Busch, Wet Weekend At Charlotte, Silly Season Rumors, Onto Nashville!!!
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138:50
Place
Homestead Miami Speedway
Homestead Miami Speedway is a NASCAR race track in Florida. It’s famous because it often hosts the final race that decides the champion. The hosts are saying it won’t feel the same when NASCAR goes back there.
Term
hot passes
“Hot passes” in NASCAR typically refers to special access credentials that let media or guests get closer to the action during/after the race—often near the track surface or in restricted areas. The host is recalling what access they had for that championship weekend.
Term
pit wall
The pit wall is the barrier near the pit area that separates the racing teams from the track. The host is describing fans crossing that boundary to celebrate.
Term
truck series
The Truck Series is a NASCAR race category where the cars are based on pickup trucks. In this episode, they’re talking about racing that kind of series in the video game.
Topic
NASCAR 25 on PS5 with a racing wheel
They talk about playing NASCAR 25 on a PS5 using a steering wheel controller. They explain what it was like racing in the game and how they did.
Place
Nashville Super Speedway
Nashville Super Speedway is a virtual NASCAR track used in the video game. The host is saying they raced there in a truck-series mode just for fun.
Place
Richmond
Richmond is a NASCAR track in Virginia. The hosts are talking about a Kyle Busch moment there that made a lot of fans react strongly.
Place
Chicago
They mention Chicago as the speaker’s home track area. They’re saying Kyle Busch has been especially successful there, but the exact track name isn’t given in this part.
Topic
Kyle Busch
They’re talking about Kyle Busch—his career highlights and what kind of competitor he was. A lot of the focus is on how other drivers viewed him and how he acted after races.
Term
cool down
After the race, there’s a short period where everything calms down and people head back to the pits/garage. It’s also when drivers often do sportsmanlike gestures and talk to each other.
Term
drivers meeting
Before a NASCAR race, drivers get together for a meeting with officials. They go over what to expect and any rule changes, and then drivers are released to get ready to race.
Topic
2020 Las Vegas
They’re describing a specific NASCAR weekend in Las Vegas in 2020. They’re using it to set the scene for what it was like to see Kyle Busch up close before a race.
Term
restart
A restart is when the race starts moving again after a caution. Everyone speeds up again together, and that’s when drivers often make passes and gain positions.
Term
free pass
The free pass is a rule that can help a car that’s a lap down get back on the lead lap during a caution. It’s a chance to improve your race without needing a perfect pit stop.
Term
stage three
NASCAR splits the race into sections called stages. Stage breaks affect strategy and points, so teams plan pit stops around them.
Term
pit road
Pit road is where teams pull in to change tires and make adjustments. When you leave pit road matters because it affects where you rejoin the race.
Person
William Byron
William Byron is a NASCAR driver. Here, he’s mentioned because his position on track influences who can gain spots during cautions and restarts.
Person
Ryan Sparks
Ryan Sparks is credited with making a smart risk late in the race. In NASCAR, that kind of “gamble” usually means a strategy decision like when to pit or what tires to use.
Person
Swars
Swars is the driver the hosts are talking about. They’re saying he drove well at the end, but also benefited from the timing of the rain and lightning cautions.
Term
two tires
Taking two tires means changing only a left or right side (not all four) during a pit stop. In NASCAR, two-tire stops are often a tradeoff: you gain some grip and speed, but you may sacrifice balance compared with a full four-tire change.
Term
caution
A caution is when the race slows down because something happened on the track. It’s a big moment for strategy because teams may pit and the restart can change who’s leading.
Person
Denny Hamlin
Denny Hamlin is a well-known NASCAR driver. The hosts are saying Swars got lucky with timing because Hamlin was in position to take the lead before the next caution.
Term
intermediate tracks
“Intermediate tracks” are medium-length NASCAR tracks. Different tracks favor different car setups and driving styles, so teams can be stronger at some than others.
Brand
Toyota
They’re talking about Toyota cars doing really well in this race. In NASCAR, that usually means Toyota teams had the right speed and strategy for the track.
Brand
JGR 2311
JGR 2311 is a NASCAR team name/identifier connected to Joe Gibbs Racing. They’re saying that team was especially strong and hard to beat.
Term
stage points
“Stage points” are points awarded during NASCAR races in segments (“stages”) rather than only at the finish. Drivers can earn points at each stage, which affects strategy and can influence playoff standings even if they don’t win the race.
Term
fresh tires
Fresh tires are new tires with maximum grip. In NASCAR, that usually helps a car go faster and pass better right after a pit stop.
Term
passing strategy
Passing strategy is the plan for when and how to overtake—often influenced by tire condition, track position, and timing relative to cautions or stage breaks. In NASCAR, it’s not just “who’s fastest,” but who can execute passes at the right moments.
Term
under a blanket
“Under a blanket” just means the cars were really close together, with little space between them. When that happens, it’s easier to make passes and the race can get wild at the end.
Term
long run
A “long run” means staying out for a longer stretch without stopping. How the car feels as the tires wear can make a big difference in speed.
Concept
passing happening throughout the entire field
They mean the race had lots of overtakes not only at the front, but all the way through the pack. That usually makes the race more exciting because more drivers are fighting for position.
Place
Charlotte
They’re talking about the NASCAR track in Charlotte, which is famous for close, competitive racing. They’re saying the track makes the cars feel more “urgent” and packed together, which changes how the race feels on TV and in person.
Concept
600 miler
A “600 miler” is a much longer NASCAR race—around 600 miles. Because it’s longer, teams often have to manage tires and fuel more carefully, and the race can play out differently than a shorter one.
Car
Fiat 600
The Fiat 600 is a small car that was made for easy driving in tight city spaces. When people mention different “600s,” they’re usually talking about similar versions of that same basic idea. The discussion may be about how closely one version matches another in appearance or details.
Concept
400 miler
“400 miler” just means the race is about 400 miles long. A shorter race usually makes drivers push harder earlier because there’s less time to recover from mistakes.
Term
arrow push
They’re describing a bad handling feel where the car doesn’t turn like you want and instead keeps going straight. It’s especially annoying when you’re trying to get close behind another car and pass.
Topic
NASCAR Cup series
This is NASCAR’s main, top-tier race series. It’s the highest level of stock-car racing that most people mean when they say “NASCAR.”
Term
top two seed
A “seed” is basically a ranking spot. If someone is a “top two seed,” they’re expected to be near the very front when the playoffs start.
Term
chase
The “chase” is NASCAR’s playoff stretch for the championship. It’s the part of the season where results matter most for who wins the title.
Place
Talladega
Talladega is a famous NASCAR track. Because of how the racing packs up there, races can be more chaotic and unpredictable than at some other tracks.
Person
Reddick
Reddick is a NASCAR driver the hosts think could win the championship. They’re pointing out that even when he doesn’t win, he still finishes well enough to stay near the top in points.
Term
regular season championship
That’s the title for winning the points battle during the part of the season before the playoffs begin. It’s basically “best over the regular schedule.”
Term
top 15
“Top 15” just means finishing 15th or better. Doing that often helps you earn more points and stay near the front of the championship battle.
Term
points race
NASCAR has a season points system. A “points race” is just the ongoing fight to earn the most points by finishing well each race.
Place
Texas
“Texas” means the NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway. The way restarts and late-race battles play out there can decide who leads and who scores big in points.
Person
Gibbs
The host is talking about a driver with the last name Gibbs and saying he’s been finishing near the front often. The transcript text looks garbled, so the exact driver name is unclear here.
Term
top 10s
A “top 10” is a finish of 10th place or better. It usually means the driver was running well enough to score a lot of points.
Person
Shane Van Gisburgen
Shane Van Gisbergen is a NASCAR driver. The hosts are saying he’s doing especially well this year—especially on road-course races—and that his points total is much better than last year.
Term
road courses
“Road courses” are tracks that feel more like normal roads—lots of turns and changing direction. In NASCAR, they’re different from oval tracks, so drivers who do well there can gain a lot in the standings.
Person
Christopher Bell
Christopher Bell is mentioned as an example of where drivers sit in the points race. The idea is that a big points lead could put someone in the same neighborhood as him.
Person
Chris Buescher
Chris Buescher is mentioned as a reference for where drivers are in the season standings. The hosts are saying that a big points lead could put someone near his position.
Term
win every stage
To “win every stage” means you’re the best in each part of the race. Since NASCAR gives extra points for stage performance, winning every stage can put you far ahead in the standings.
Person
Chris Rebell
Chris Rebell is mentioned because of his stage-point total. The hosts are basically saying some drivers are scoring fewer stage points than the leaders, which keeps them from climbing as fast.
Person
Bubba Wallace
Bubba Wallace is the driver the hosts are concerned about. They say his recent race results have been worse, and they think he’s getting stuck in messy situations that keep him from running up front.
Term
Hornets Nest
“Hornets Nest” is NASCAR slang for a spot in the race where things get messy—lots of cars close together and more chances for trouble. The hosts mean Wallace often gets caught in those situations.
Term
stage two
NASCAR breaks a race into parts called stages. “Stage two” means the second part of the race, and teams change their strategy to earn points during that segment.
Term
oil on the track
If there’s oil on the track, tires don’t grip as well and cars can slip. Race officials have to deal with it quickly so drivers don’t crash.
Term
NASCAR race control
NASCAR race control is the group that runs the race behind the scenes. They make calls like when to slow the race and they coordinate what happens on track.
Topic
Coke 600
The Coke 600 is a big NASCAR race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. It’s known for being long, so teams plan carefully for the whole distance.
Topic
NB 500
The “NB 500” is a NASCAR Truck Series race. The hosts are talking about how TV timing around that race mattered.
Topic
infield
The infield is the inside area of the race track, not where the cars normally drive. They’re saying a car nearly spun out and went into that inside area.
Car
Lucid Air
The Lucid Air is an all-electric car, meaning it runs on a battery instead of gasoline. People discuss it a lot in terms of how far it can go on a charge and how driving conditions can change that. That’s why you might hear talk about “getting air” or energy in a specific situation.
Term
missing man formation
It’s a tribute ceremony where everyone lines up in a formation, but one spot is left empty to honor a person who passed away. You’ll sometimes see it at events like races or memorials.
Term
sprint car a main
A sprint car is a small, fast dirt-track race car. The “A-main” is the main race where the best qualifiers compete for the win.
Term
front row
The front row is the first two spots on the starting lineup. Starting there usually helps because you’re closer to the front and less likely to get stuck in traffic.
Term
five overtime race
NASCAR uses overtime when a crash or caution happens close to the end. A “five overtime” race means they had to restart and try to finish several times before the race could end.
Term
set of tires
A “set of tires” means the full set of tires the team puts on during a pit stop. When you change them can make a big difference in how fast the car feels.
Company
Wood Brothers
Wood Brothers is a NASCAR racing team. The hosts are talking about whether a driver might go back to that team, which could change who drives where.
Company
RFK
RFK Racing is a NASCAR team. The discussion is about whether their charter situation could influence which drivers end up there.
Term
charter
A “charter” is basically a guaranteed spot for a NASCAR team to race. If teams gain or lose charters, it can change who can compete consistently and where drivers want to go.
Concept
silly season
“Silly season” is what NASCAR fans call the offseason when driver rumors and contract talk are everywhere. It’s when teams try to figure out who they’ll have for the next season.
Person
Chris busher
Chris Buscher is a NASCAR driver. The hosts are saying that if other teams show interest, it still might make sense for him to stay put depending on how RFK’s charter situation shakes out.
Car
Toyota Leans
Concept
top 20 team
A “top 20 team” means the team is usually competitive and finishes around the better half of the pack. It’s about being consistently strong, not just having a good race now and then.
Person
Eric Jones
Eric Jones is a NASCAR driver. The host is saying he’s been doing well recently, and that could mean the team is starting to figure things out.
Topic
next generation era
“Next generation era” means NASCAR introduced a new generation of race cars and regulations. Teams usually need time to figure out the best way to set them up and make them fast.
Place
Darlington
Darlington is a famous NASCAR track. Winning there usually means the team had a strong car and strategy for a tough race.
Concept
playing the long game
“Playing the long game” means the team is willing to wait and keep building improvements instead of needing instant results. It’s about steady progress over many races.
Concept
renting versus owning
This is a comparison: renting means you don’t build lasting value, while owning means you keep the benefits. The host is applying that idea to how a team invests so it can improve over time.
Brand
Furniture Row
Furniture Row is a NASCAR team being referenced. The point is that when costs went up, they chose to stop racing instead of consistently finishing near the back.
Person
Barney Visser
Barney Visser is the person being quoted. He’s basically saying they stopped racing because they didn’t want to keep ending up near the bottom every week.
Concept
run 25th every week
This means finishing around 25th place over and over. The host is using it to show how demoralizing and financially risky it can be to be stuck near the back.
Person
Josh Berry
Josh Berry is a NASCAR driver. The host is about to talk about him as part of the discussion.
Car
Renault Wind
The Renault Wind is a small convertible, meaning the top can open so you can drive with fresh air. It’s designed to be compact and easy to use, with seating for two. People might mention it because the name relates to “wind” and it’s a distinctive type of car.
Place
Martin'sville
“Martin’sville” is a NASCAR short track in Virginia. Because it’s tight and twisty, it tends to produce close racing and lots of heavy braking compared with bigger tracks.
Place
Kansas
“Kansas” is a NASCAR track where speeds are higher than at short tracks. At tracks like this, how well the car handles over a run and how you manage tires can make a big difference.
LIVE
Welcome in, folks, to the NASCAR weekly podcast. I am your host this week, Eric Eastep, joined as always by Daniel Baldwin, aka Danny B. Tox and Jared Lundberg, also known as the iceberg. Jared also let me know just before we started this show. This is our fittingly our 18th episode of the 2026 season. We appreciate you all being here.
We're going to talk Charlotte. There were races this weekend. There are races coming up at Nashville. The racing world continues to fight and move on. But I think this being our first show in the last week, we wanted to begin by talking a little bit about Kyle Busch, his legacy on and off the track, what he meant to each of us individually because all three of us were fairly young fans. We know a lot of you watching at home are younger as well.
But I think the three of us saw Kyle's entire Cup Series career at the very least first hand, watching live every Sunday. We all saw him win in person numerous times. It sounds like I got to Danny, you at Bristol. You probably saw a weekend sweep or two.
We have memories of Kyle. We know you all have memories of Kyle. It's obviously been a very hard, heavy week for the entire racing community. So we wanted to begin tonight's show by remembering, respecting and honoring Kyle Busch.
And if you look, I think if you're on desktop or mobile at least, we also attached a fundraiser that Danny set up last week. But we're raising money for Kyle and Samantha Busch's bundle of joy fund, which we know is a cause very near and dear to their hearts, their family.
So if you are willing and able to give a little bit of money tonight, we're trying to move that little meter up slowly, but surely all is going to a good cause that Kyle himself would have been very grateful for. So with that being said, gentlemen, I'll turn it over to you.
I guess first and foremost, Danny, because I know you said you've seen Kyle Busch win in person quite a bit out at Bristol. Do you have any memories off rip that when you think of Kyle Busch that immediately pop into your mind?
Well, some memories more personal comes my mind is getting the chance a couple of years ago when they were here for Nashville Super Speedway and they were premiering the Rowdy documentary that was produced back when he was still Joe Gibbs racing.
And I got an invite last minute through my wife's cousin, Crystal Clay, who at the time was working for another company that covers motorsports and got definitely to go there and be a part of that and got to watch a documentary.
You got to walk on the red carpet. It felt weird that, you know, taking pictures of Kyle, the man. It was like a picture of Danny B on the red carpet.
He got sat in the row right in front of Kyle and Samantha or two rows in front, whichever one it was, and they were really close behind us.
And just getting to be there and watch that, you know, with them and hearing Kyle, you know, thanks to the media people who was there to come out and see it.
And that was a really fun experience. And afterwards there was an after party at one of the bars downtown and Kyle hadn't actually drank too much.
He was actually, you know, still, you know, pretty, pretty good and pretty happy, seemed a good mood and got to kind of chaff him just briefly.
Me and Claudia did and tell him a little bit, you know, you know, man grew up, grew up fear and you're a veer and you every time I went to a race, but, you know, grew under respect to you a lot over the years and kind of a smile when I told him that and then got to take a picture with him there.
And that was a pretty cool photo. And a couple of years back when NASCAR brought the awards ceremony here in Nashville, getting a chance to, you know, get some of the drivers in a more calm, non-race track environment like here, Kyle was great.
And that I really think he was the best person that I got to talk to that entire time and we got to interview drivers. He gave us plenty of time, gave me a little bit of extra time.
And although I never got around to getting done the Kyle Bush Motorsports truck series team, what happened Ryzenfall, whichever one I was going to do.
I had a chance to interview him for that and I don't know if I'll ever end up doing that video now. It just doesn't seem right anymore. But that was still a good moment, good memory.
And, you know, thankful that he was so kind to me and Claudine. You know, there's all these big things of like Kyle Bush being rough on the media.
Honestly, I never experienced that. Anytime I had a chance to talk with Kyle, he was fairly respectful to me. I really can't say anything bad about that.
And this is coming from a guy who, you know, when I was a kid, being a junior nation, Jarrett probably relate to, especially in OA-09.
Oh, yeah.
I watched a lot of his wins in person, especially being up in East Tennessee, Bristol, my home track. And it wasn't just there. It went in my first race in Martinsville.
Denny Hamlin, Rex Chacilly, but Kyle Bush goes on to win the race. Go to my very first Coke 600 in 2018. Kyle Bush dominates that one.
The only championship race I ever went to 2019. Last one at Homestead Miami Speedway. And that's another thing. It's not going to feel right that we go back to Homestead Miami Speedway.
And the last guy to get their championship there won't be able to join us. And that's going to hurt a lot that weekend. I already know it is.
But I'm thankful that I was there getting a chance to. And I don't know if you guys really remember too much about this. I know we were all there in some capacity.
Not really to, like, where in the extent we are now, but we had, I think we just had the hot passes for that one.
But after that race, that was the closest thing I think I've ever experienced to a, like a football storm the field type moment when literally all the media rushed out onto the track.
All fans of all kinds just ended up going across the pit wall to get over and celebrate and be a part of this thing.
Then I think way more people went out there to know what they were supposed to. But I'm so glad that we were part of that. And one of the best clips that I ever filmed in anything.
And I included it in my little tribute that I posted up to YouTube and in Twitter as well.
Was that long clip where I got just a good long embracing shot of Kyle and Samantha just hugging for a long time.
I don't, I never know what they were saying, if they were saying anything, but it was just such a sweet moment to see those two celebrate Kyle's second championship.
I just, even last night, I'm not much of an eye racer. I'm very much a casual NASCAR gamer, but I got on NASCAR 25 on my PS5 upstairs, hooked up my racing wheel and raced a truck series at 50% in Nashville Super Speedway just to have a good time.
So it's about 77 laps. And wouldn't you know it, I got the win, but it was never going to be easy of ol' Rowdy out there and, you know, seeing battling, going back and forth for the lead of that seven truck, you know, even in the video game, ol' Rowdy never making an easy win on you.
And I think that kind of settled in on me a little bit there's like, you know, this is the, this is the only place I can come find you man. And that hurts. But yeah, so many memories of Kyle Busch and all I can do is, you know, just be thankful for the time that we had with him.
Yeah, we saw one of the greatest race car drivers of all time. We got to see them, him at the, you know, see him grow up in the national spotlight. I think that's the part that, like my takeaway when discussing Kyle Busch's legacy on track, it speaks for itself.
He's the winningest national series driver in NASCAR history. He hated losing more than probably anyone in the garage. He was unbelievably talented, but off the track or just as a man with his family, the way he grew up in the spotlight and evolved, went from that brash young gun to over time being a calmer, cooler, you know, loving family guy and how he was fostering Brexton's young racing career.
Like that transition, I think it's, you know, a lot of folks go through it, but Kyle went through that transition in front of millions of people, critics, you name it. And I think to see how gracefully he handled that transition, how he grew up.
That's what I remember. And that's like my takeaway in terms of what I want to aspire to be in life is I want to continue to grow personally the way Kyle did, I think continue to evolve. But Jared, I'll turn it over to you, Danny, that was a beautiful opener. I got to say, but Jared, do you have any memories of Kyle or takeaways that you want to share on the show tonight?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot. You know, like I, I started watching and that was Kyle's first race as a full time cup driver. And up until last week, he was the last driver left from that race still around. All the other 42 had either passed on or retired. And, you know, as a kid, you don't really.
You see him all this, like these Godlike figures, larger than life. They, they, you know, they're all these huge people, even though they're normal. And we see that as we, you know, get older. And, you know, looking back, it just, it kind of blew my mind in how young he really was through all of this. I mean, you know, we were talking about that, that clip of him at Richmond and Dale Jr and him and, and how, you know, junior fans, a lot of NASCAR fans really didn't like him and hated him after that. He was 23.
Like he was way younger than we all are. And I don't think any of us think we're all that old. And so, I mean, we did really see him grow up from a brash teenager to a rebellious young man to a married man who was still fighting up the ring of NASCAR to a family, you know, man of a father to the to the man we saw him up until
six days ago. And I think that's one of the things I'm going to look back and just think that you don't see that much in any sport. I mean, you don't, you don't follow someone for 2021, 22, however many years, no many people have seen him for.
And I've seen a lot of fans that are saying like this is, you know, especially for a lot of younger fans, like this is our kind of Dale Earnhardt moment of a guy who was very polarizing. But at the end of the day, he made you feel something.
And if that's anything that can define Kyle Bush and his relationship with the fans at some point, every fan in the last 20 some years has either loved this guy, hated him, loved to hate him, whatever. You can't say you didn't feel something about Kyle Bush.
And for me personally, I mean, I just so many moments as a fan, and as somebody starting to work in the sport and has worked in the sport now. It's like very intertwined, I would say with Kyle Bush from being a junior fan.
They wrecked each other a few times. And as a fan in person, I've seen him win more than almost any other driver. And at Chicago in my home track, he is the winningest driver ever at that track.
I saw him in one of his, if not his most defining moment win in 2018. We got we all got to be there for his final championship victory. And then my favorite shot that I've ever taken of that long burnout.
And I made sure to send it to you guys and to upload it because I don't want that top moment of his career in life to ever be just wished away by wrong press of a button at any point.
And I got to be at his last cup win. And I can say nobody in that moment thought it was going to be his last one. And it makes his words in his truck interview after the race when he won it over.
And in the media center, that much more just it makes it sink in that much more because nobody three years ago at Gateway, almost three years to the date, I would say nobody was thinking this was Kyle Bush's last one.
We were thinking, oh my God, rowdy is back. And, you know, it just it shows how quick life can change. And I think my if I had to round it all together that I'll bush made you feel something and a lot of drivers can't say that nowadays.
Few people, I think few, you know, public figures make you feel the way Kyle Bush made fans feel. And, and I'll kind of, you know, to add my my two cents into this what you said earlier about, you know, the rivalries he had on the race track.
You know, I was always, I was very impressed by his evolution off the track. But if we're just focusing on on Kyle Bush, the competitor, he was so competitive, he did hate to lose. He would lash out every now and then. But as he got older, especially what I started to notice.
And I think a lot of his peers noticed was the respect he had for the sport and for the competition. Like I first noticed it as a Matt Kenseth fan at Phoenix when Matt won his final race. And, you know, a lot of drivers are giving him a little bumps and stuff on the cool down.
And Matt Kenseth was someone who had obviously paved away and was kind of a veteran at that time. And Joe Gibbs's story he told in the media center this last week was another great recent example of Kyle's sportsmanship.
We know that he and Joe Gibbs kind of had a falling out professionally at the end of 2022. Ty Gibbs takes over his seat. Ty finally wins his first cup race and Joe Gibbs said that Kyle Bush reached out to Ty and called Joe to congratulate him.
Like that says a lot. I think that does say a lot about how much he grew. But again, how much he respected his competitors, how much he respected the sport. And I think you've seen it with all the tributes in the past few days.
Like I don't think any of that is inorganic. I think genuinely everyone in the garage has a mutual respect for everything Kyle Bush did, everything he's meant for the sport.
And so, you know, that's my other, if you want to talk about like a competitive takeaway, that's my takeaway there. I don't have a ton of memories of like firsthand Kyle Bush experiences. You know, I never sat down and had a one on one interview with Kyle, unfortunately, other than, you know, being part in like media scrums and things like that.
But I do remember the first race I ever got to go into the drivers meeting for the pre race drivers meeting was 2020 Las Vegas, and it was the truck race. And I remember I'm sitting in the back wall, I'm like blown away because I'm like there's Mike Elton over there.
There's all the drivers. There's like this is intense. Kyle Bush, the last guy in the room, he's the last guy to show up and he everyone you just like everyone kind of gets quiet. He walks sits in his chair head down. He is locked in game face on.
They go through the routine song and dance driver intros. A moment he has been released, they're free to go. He turns gets up, be lines it out through Macon head down like a racehorse with blinders on. And you know, maybe he was, I don't know, maybe he was having a bad day. I'm not saying that's how he was every drivers meeting.
I've certainly seen him be way more social in drivers meetings. But of course he went out and won that race. He was there. It's the truck series. This is prime Kyle Bush. He meant business.
Right before I did that bounty, I think. Yeah, same year. I mean, it was not just that stuff. Kyle Bush, he has that superstar mentality that they talk about in other sports that they sometimes talk about in this sport. Just a tremendous competitor.
And yeah, go ahead, Jared. I have two, I guess first hand stories I can say before. So I'm a warning now. I was 12 when I made this. It's not going to look all that polished or good. But I used to make these autograph books.
And I made one of Kyle. Every driver would be like the side of their car and he signed it. And he stopped twice, which is not something that most drivers did. I think Greg Biffle was the only one ironically enough to stop every year.
Carl Edwards, I think, stopped almost every year. Kyle was one of the few that stopped multiple years. And I remember him signing it saying, damn, or something like that, like just how many, how many kids decked out in Dale Jr.
Shit are all making some big extravagant thing for Kyle Bush to sign. But I did for every driver because I want to treat them all equally on it. And I remember I walked back to my dad and I'm like, dad, how am I supposed to hate these guys? They're so nice.
And that's I think what really started and then especially as I got older started me more respecting him as a driver and what a great talent he was. The first time I got let into any media center was during those remote ones in 2021.
And it was I think after a truck win, I want to say. And back then when you were in the zoom meetings, back whenever when you still use zoom, you'd put like your hand up and the emoji would pop up for you to ask your question.
And I'm thinking, you know, here's Bob Pocras and, you know, Gluck Bianchi, Jennifer Fryer, all the, all the big wigs. And then there's like a couple others I noticed. And then there's me. And, and I'm like, okay, what the hell? Why not? I'll put it up. They're probably not gonna, gonna answer me.
I don't know if it was in the middle or right at the end, I get, I get picked up that I could get a thing, I can message me and like, hey, you're going to be up after this person. I'm like, oh no. Uh oh. I mean, I have my question ready and I really thought it through, but I'm just thinking like, man, I don't want to become a meme.
And that was the first thing I'm like, I'm good if I if I flubbed this up, I'm going to be a meme.
You're like, I never thought I'd get this far.
Kinda. I'm not going to lie. Kinda. I mean, at that point, I'd only been on YouTube for like three years, I would say. And I go up through the rotation and I get to ask my question. And I think it was a question talking about the similarities of power and stuff of the trucks compared to the 550 package and stuff, you know, about the track.
I really thought it through and you like stop for things like I hadn't thought about it like that. And all I'm thinking is, well, thank God. And like, and it was funny too. Cause like maybe 20 minutes after we all get done, the zoom thing ends and I'm like, holy hell, like my first question, the media center was to Kyle F and Bush.
I get a text from Jeff Gluck saying not many people get to have their first question in the media center to Kyle F and Bush. And I'm just like, okay, so I'm not the only one. And you passed his test, which is that's impressive.
But that's thinking he really did. Whether it was racing on the track or people around him, you had to elevate your game with Kyle Bush. You couldn't just half asset or he'd call you on it. He's a straight shooter. And you know, that's, I think that's another valuable trait that he had that a lot of people didn't as he's not going to bullshit you.
A lot of people just go through the motions. If he's going through the motions, it's going to be funny. You know, I'm just here so I don't get fined. Everything's great. Like, I can't even make that facing me at the point.
I'm going to miss him. I really am. And I never thought almost 20 years ago as a junior fan that was like pretty high on the list of haters of Kyle Bush. I'd ever say that, but I'm going to miss Kyle Bush a lot.
Yeah, I think we all are. And to wrap up, I guess before we get into the racing conversation, I think we're all praying for and thinking of the Bush family. I will say seeing, you know, Kurt, their parents, Samantha, Brexton, Lennox to see them on pit road pre race to see the entire garage literally standing behind them showing their support.
I didn't expect to see that. You know, obviously the Bush family, you know, give them their space, their privacy to mourn, to pay tribute to Kyle in their own way, but to see them all out there publicly and to see, you know, 11 year old Brexton, you know, face thousands of people.
Because I definitely didn't have to be there. No, but that they were it was a very powerful image. And so yeah, we obviously just are thinking of them and wishing them nothing but the best because as hard as this is for all of us fans here to process to come to grips with it's even harder for them for sure.
So this was good. I appreciate, appreciate everyone taking a few minutes here to kind of, you know, talk this through, think about this because I know the three of us have all done our own separate videos. We've obviously been on socials. I mean, Jared's live streamed a couple of times, but those have been more racing focused conversations.
So to come in here and sort of let it all out. This is this is good. This was cathartic in some ways and hopefully it helped people watching and listening process as well.
The three of us haven't had a chance just to sit down and talk about it together. Ever since it's happening outside of maybe some text messages and DMs together. I had a chance to just let my thoughts out twice on videos on my channel and then that down a
broad and there from CVN news and talk about it with him as well. And even now this being the fourth time that I've had a chance to talk about it in some capacity with somebody it, it still it still doesn't feel real that we are doing that.
I mean, no, just littered littered last week we were talking about how he had just won a race and that doesn't feel real that we're having a discussion and it's.
Yeah, I trust in God and everything that there's a reason for everything. But I don't know what I just can't. It's in his timing for that answer to be clear to me.
Yeah, no, it's I think it hasn't sunk in yet fully for anyone I know every few hours at least now it's like when the first of the day of it was like every five minutes I was like, just kept hitting me like a ton of bricks over and over again.
Then it's just every hour now it's still every like every hour or so. It hits you all over again. It's just it's impossible to fathom that that could be real.
And I've really appreciated going to Twitter while yes I see a lot of content about Kyle and unfortunately I see a lot of AI slop content and content that probably shouldn't be being shared.
I've seen a ton of people sharing good memories. Good little like seeing a random video retweeted today and I retweeted a Denny Hamlin and Kyle racing them on foot back to a hotel in New York City and seeing some of those positive things.
Yeah, some of that stuff feels good. There has been a lot of good, been a lot of bad. I've seen. Unfortunately, the diecast scalpers are out big time and that's just atrocious to me, but sadly it's.
For me the changes in my life made that moment with the family coming out that much. Oh yeah harder just because you know obviously I don't know what it's like and I hope I never know what it's like to lose my little brother or my kid.
I know in different pieces now what it's like to be that role in a family and in life. You know I've always known what's like to be an older brother I might not be the best one but I try. So I feel I really feel for Kurt and I hope he's getting the support he needs.
I can't imagine losing my dad at 11 or four. I mean not no kid would have to grow up without a parent like that. I don't want to know what it's like to lose a spouse and to lose a child like his parents have.
I know that broke me seeing them come out and be strong in front of the world and.
I'm not even remotely close to being as close as they will ever be to him and I won't know at all what it's like to be in the situation that they're in right now and I just.
You know for as much as it hurts us like we were saying as much as it hurts us for what's going on and we're trying to come to grips with it their entire world is.
It's never going to be the same again on a personal note on an everyday every minute note and I just.
I hope the support that they got on Sunday from all of us and everyone there and everyone in the industry.
I hope they know every single minute that they're going through this that every single person fan industry driver everyone has their back.
So I'll say no more.
That's my piece on it.
I just think that's well said.
They need a lot of grace and empathy and and if they want space, they have every right to that space right now.
One last thing I'll say before we move on.
I think I saw someone said it best that.
Of bricks in Linux they they gained.
So many more people to have their back right now.
There's just 30 36 drivers in the field each week and they're all going to be looking out for him and 111 more thing lap 88 fingers up high.
I love that was keep doing that rest of year.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, gentlemen, thank you for for sharing those those memories sharing those thoughts.
I was keeping on the chat lot of emotion in the chat as well, but we appreciate everyone being here to sort of share in this moment help process it together.
We're going to talk about the race now because, you know, as they say in show business, the show does go on and.
Yeah, I think in some ways while while it didn't feel normal watching the Coca Cola 600 that there felt like there was something missing.
Seeing race cars on track.
Going through that motion those motions again was sort of.
It gave some energy to it kind of reminded me at least that OK, we'll be able to fight through this, you know, like we will when Kyle Bush would want us to keep on racing.
So.
So let's talk about the Coca Cola 600 now, or I should say the Coca Cola 559.5 did not quite get all the laps in in any of the three Charlotte races this weekend to sort of bridge this gap.
That's new record, by the way.
Yeah, first time history.
I guess that's true to bridge the gap between Kyle and the Coke 600 Daniel Suarez wins and does Kyle's signature bow in a wet victory lane.
Suarez, a former KBM driver was briefly Kyle's teammate at JGR.
So very fitting tribute there.
The same number as Kyle's last win.
Fax. Absolutely.
A car that came out of the shop that Kyle Bush Motorsports most recently operated out of.
So the tie ins, the links are endless.
But Jared, I'll start with you just now from the racing perspective.
Daniel Suarez is a Coca Cola 600 winner.
How did you feel about how the finish of that race played out?
I mean.
OK, so I'm going to take the Suarez side out.
It was a frustrating finish.
I understand it.
There was no way, especially if you saw the way the rest of the night went like everyone had shown and like the radar had shown.
There's no way it was going to get back going.
But it still was frustrating just like the rest of the weekend.
It was still the least frustrating race of the night in my opinion.
The weekend I should say, not the night the weekend in my opinion when it came to the NASCAR side of things.
But on that side it was frustrating.
But for Suarez, I mean this, you know, at least results wise is the dream scenario for the opening half of the regular season.
I'm sorry, nobody in the world can convince me that they said before the season, hey, halfway through the regular season, race 13 after the 600, Suarez is going to have a win.
He's going to win at Charlotte no less and he's going to be top 10 in the point standings.
We have a fire team right now with.
Yeah, yeah, I mean this punctuates a dream start to his season.
I'm happy for him.
I get that he wasn't one of the best.
He wasn't even probably one of the eight best out there.
But he was still I think around 11th before all of the cautions and stuff.
They made the right call at the right time.
Well, and he made his way back through the pack after they already had issues beforehand.
So, I mean, you know, he definitely got a good call to get him in that position and he got a lot of good luck.
But it wasn't like he was running 29th and all of a sudden he's always at the front of the pack and the reins hit then.
So, you know, I, I'm happy for him.
But yeah, I mean it's a dream start and it had a lot of things going his way.
I think you said it well.
I mean he went a crown jewel race, but like you said, it's sort of the exclamation point at the end of this surprisingly strong first half for Daniel Suarez.
So a little inside baseball here, I now do that weekly show NASCAR film room where I sit down with the race winner and break down key moments from their race.
When Daniel Suarez won, I immediately sat back, looked at my notes and thought, what the hell am I going to ask Daniel Suarez about besides those last two restarts?
I'm like, I don't know where he was all night.
I know he had a couple unscheduled pit stops.
I don't know anything more.
So I spent the next morning, I rewatched, I went to HBO Max and rewatched almost his entire race, just his POV.
I skimmed here and there. I probably spent two hours.
So I didn't go to full 44 and a half.
Probably spent two hours rewatching his race to be like, so what was Daniel doing all night?
And the fact of the matter is every restart, he was passing cars.
Even when he was down a lap and granted he was passing 20, 25th place cars, he was moving forward on every restart.
He was this close a couple different times to getting the free pass position.
There was a cycle at the end of stage three where he exited pit road.
I think with a couple lap pressure tires, but he was like a straightaway behind William Byron for the free pass.
He ran him down, got to his bumper and got loose with one to go and didn't complete the pass and had to wait until the next car.
So he was really close a number of times to getting back in this race much sooner than he did.
But I think he definitely had a 10th to 12th place car and you put a 10th to 12th place car in clean air.
You got a shot at the win, especially knowing the rain is coming.
You may only have to hold the guys off for a few laps.
It was a great gamble by Ryan Sparks.
It was great driving at the end by Swars.
He did get really lucky with that.
The lightning caution got him the opportunity to take two tires.
It was the rain caution after that when he was about to get passed by Denny Hamlin.
That one he got lucky on.
If they waited five more seconds at the button, Denny Hamlin would have been the leader and Swars probably doesn't win the race.
Other than those couple of lucky breaks, he drove the wheels off it.
Happy for him. You could see how much it meant to him.
A Coca-Cola driver wins the Coke 600.
I'm pretty sure I had that as one of my predictions.
It was not Daniel Swars who I was thinking of when I made that prediction last week.
I had a couple other names in mind, but congrats to Daniel Swars.
Clawdyd wedi gwneud hynny.
After she saw him drink a Coca-Cola, she was like, wait, isn't that what Eric's prediction was?
That's probably not who he was thinking about.
I saw a Help 21 on Spotify said the only Coca-Cola racing family driver Eric didn't mention was the one that won.
It was like immediately I saw that and I'm like, oh my God, it's true.
Damn, that's funny.
Yeah, congrats to Daniel Swars. Huge win, great start.
But the class of the field, if we're just looking big picture, who is the team?
Who are the teams, the guys to beat at intermediate tracks?
It's pretty obviously Toyota, JGR 2311 specifically.
Tyler Reddick led the most laps.
I think Denny Hamlin and Chase Brisco earned the most stage points.
Three of the top four finishers were all Toyotas.
Ty Gibbs finished sixth and Chase Brisco got caught up in that wreck.
Otherwise he would have probably been in the top six or seven as well.
I know I'm going to be great at Nashville this weekend too, most likely.
Probably.
Anyone stand out to you, Jared, among the top finishers, Toyota or otherwise?
I mean, yeah, everyone at Toyota, can I cop out on that one?
I mean, I'd say someone that definitely stood out to me was the 20 car on fresh tires who made up like nine seconds.
Was it the third stage to come up there and battle and then get past everybody?
Brilliant strategy call for sure by that 20 team.
Denny, I think Denny was probably the best of the night.
Reddick was the best earlier for sure.
Brisco was solid before his issues.
A lot of issues that were caused were more caused by shuffles of restarts.
But, I mean, the long way to go, obviously, but right now, I think JGR and Toyota is just head and shoulders above everyone else.
I mean, I think the only two that were able to race up there with them were Kyle Larson.
And of course, this is the one we should all mention.
Shane Van Gisburg and you have to fit on speed.
Where the hell did that come from?
It was a leading on strategy for a minute.
That's a great point because Kyle Larson had a really solid night top five, earned a bunch of stage points.
Amazing what happens when you're not focusing on any app with, right?
I suppose because you could be on to something.
Other than Kyle, it was basically Shane Van Gisburg and was the next best non-Toyota, which is pretty absurd.
He earned points in all three stages.
He finished 11th, but should have been top 10 as late race restarts, the rain, all that goofy stuff.
I'm glad you brought up Christopher Bell.
Stage three, I mean, if you're not a Toyota fan or if you just hate Toyota, you probably weren't having a good time.
But if you just objectively watched the way stage three played out with the long run, still passing strategy, and then you had like five cars under a blanket in the closing laps of that stage.
Like that was awesome.
That was great racing, Christopher Bell with a heck of a drive, but it ends up second place in the final race.
Yeah, you mentioned Zane Smith, Ricky Stenhouse Jr ran top 10 for much of the night before, you know, you got into Ross Chastain on that one restart.
I think Ricky ended up 12th, if I'm not mistaken, 12th place final result.
Him and SVG were like connected the entire night.
One was ahead of the other at every moment.
What do you guys think of the racing in general?
Oh, I mean, racing in general, I think it reminded me of exactly why we were arguing for so long
that we need a second oval race here because for whatever reason, this car races pretty good at these type of tracks for the most part, but it's peak at Charlotte for some reason.
It just handles so good.
It puts on a good race.
There's lots of passing happening throughout the entire field.
It's truly my favorite racetrack for this car.
Yeah, I mean, before Thursday, a lot of the talk was like, Hey, you know, there's this car struggle to Vegas when they're always good at Kansas.
Like, but if Charlotte, there's a struggle, there's something wrong.
I think it could stack up to any of the other 600s.
No granite, the not getting a proper finish will hurt it in the eyes of a lot of fans, I think.
But no, I thought it was a blast.
And I'm glad that we're going back for a 400 miler because they're definitely while I think Kansas at its best stacks up right there with Charlotte.
There definitely is something to be said about Charlotte.
At least I don't know if it is necessarily, but it looks and feels much more narrow.
And there's almost like a sense of urgency added with that kind of claustrophobic where they are always close together.
There seems to, they feel faster at least when when they're being shown on TV.
Now maybe that part of that's prime just being really badass with coverage.
The framerate on prime video.
I don't know if you'll notice.
I feel like you could see the wheels turning down the back straightaway.
It looks like how they look at the track.
And the difference between a 400 miler and a 600 miler is there's so much more urgency from the beginning.
And that's what I'm really excited for this fall is like everyone's like, oh, I don't know.
We're over saturating too much, blah, blah, blah.
And all I'm thinking is no, this is going to, it's going to be a completely different feel to the race and they're going to feel like two separate tracks and I can't wait.
Yeah, I thought the racing was good.
I did feel like arrow, the arrow push is still so frustrating.
You can just see you get like you get within a car length of someone else in their lane.
You push up the track. It's inevitable almost, but the track fortunately is so wide.
You can run the wall. You can run the white line anywhere in between that for the most part you could still pass and make those moves.
So I agree. I think Charlotte is once again in contention for best, best overall racing on the schedule right now for the NASCAR Cup series.
It was fun. I'm looking forward to the fall. No doubt.
I haven't had a chance to see this car race at Chicago land yet, so I'm hopeful to race good there.
I am looking forward to that one as well. It's going to be in the running. It's a contender.
Speaking of contenders, the points, Jarrett, do you have points, graphics ready to throw up?
Not throw up, don't throw up, but toss up onto the screen. Don't toss your lunch here.
You can throw up if you need to. Just grab a bucket.
Oh, thank you for censoring that.
Tyla Reddick still is a huge lead. Then it's Denny Hamlin minus 122, Blaney and third.
Blaney salvaged what, you know, Team Penske, the last few weeks, it's been like road course, intermediate, intermediate.
These are not their best tracks.
So Ryan Blaney is still hanging on to third in the points when it's all said and done.
I think you got to respect the resiliency there.
Ty Gibbs fourth Hendrick, though fifth, sixth, and that's it.
The only Hendrick, the same number of Hendrick cars in the top 10 matched the number of Spire cars.
There's just difference of a few positions there.
How do we do this? Do we always just say surprises?
I think we already kind of said Daniel Suarez.
We all agreed is the surprise in the top 10.
Definitely. I'll say one that I noticed is that that gap between Hamlin and Blaney is growing.
And if Denny Hamlin is a top two seed, as much as I like Tyler Reddick and think he can do well,
Denny Hamlin is a clear favorite then.
I know Blaney is somebody up there. A lot of people talk about, but he's still close to Gibbs Elliott.
And a couple of the others might be able to get up there.
But if Denny Hamlin is solidly in the top two with, I mean, I decided to look ahead at the tracks in the chase this year too.
And look at the numbers of the last like three years.
And geez, outside of Talladega, it lines up almost perfectly for Denny to go on like this great chase run.
Yeah, definitely between the two, I would trust Hamlin a lot more to get a lot of wins at those at those tracks that we go to in the chase.
I mean, granted before this season, I didn't really trust Reddick to win as many as he did at the start of the season.
And it's not like he's, yeah, he's kind of stopped winning, but he's still there contending for it.
So it's going to be really interesting between those two.
I think it's safe to say those are the two championship favorites right now.
I'm not even going to fully rule out yet.
If I'm betting the house, I'd bet it on Reddick to win the regular season championship, obviously.
But he's due at some point to have a couple of down weeks.
He's finished top 15 in every points race.
He's got nine top fives in 13 weeks.
Like that's absurd. That's not going to continue.
Denny Hamlin's led more than twice as many laps as Reddick.
Like if Hamlin keeps doing what he's doing, you know, if Charlotte had turned into a win,
Texas, he was side by side for the lead on the last restart.
Like a couple of these close calls turned into wins here in these final 13 weeks.
You can make up 120 points pretty quick.
I'm not saying it's likely, but I am saying like Denny Hamlin,
I think is closer than the 122 points would suggest.
And I mean, you still can't roll out.
Blenny Gibbs Elliott to get hot the right time.
Gibbs, for what it's worth, he still has the second most amount of top 10s behind Reddick.
And he's got the same amount of top fives as Hamlin.
You know, he is definitely somebody to keep watching.
You know, as the year goes on, if he can get a few more wins,
we're going to go back to Bristol in the chase when it's going to matter a lot.
Good point.
All right, Jared, what's next?
The bubble, the bubble, bubble Wallace plus 40 SVG plus 28 Brisco plus 16 Priess
plus 15 syndric minus 15 Lugano minus 29 Austin syndric.
I don't know if C bell got into him, got him a little loose.
What the deal was there, but syndric crashing early in the 600 was costly.
Two Penske cars outside of the top 16.
What do you all make of this, Jared?
What stands out to you?
I must say who stands out to somebody who's not on the screen.
And I'm, I'll eat crow if I'm somehow wrong in this.
Ross Chastain, he might not be mathematically eliminated.
He's out. He's 65 points back.
He's not going to be able to make that much up on pretty much any of these guys here.
Joey Lugano, I think 29 is still a good position,
not good, but decent position within tracking distance.
He had a much needed good race this past weekend.
Well, and he has good tracks coming up in the summer too.
If I had to pick right now, I would honestly say, I think Joey Lugano is going to make the chase just because when I look ahead, I look at his tracks.
I trust him more than I trust Brian Priest and Austin syndric.
If Joey Lugano brings out a super gas tank this weekend, he might win this weekend.
I mean, he's pretty good at a couple of these tracks coming up.
So it's like, you know, and maybe not even the ones in June, but once you get into like July, August, like he's primed to have that kind of good run in.
The one that surprises me of how far in already he's in is Shane Van Gisburgen.
I think he's almost doubled if not he been close to doubling maybe more.
The amount of points he scored this year so far compared to this time last year.
He's 14th in the points plus 28 last year.
I think at this time he was 31st in the point standings.
He has 316 total points now compared to I think it's like 131 this time last year.
And he still has two road courses to go.
If he sweeps those two road courses, I won't say necessarily punch him in and he's good to go, but you'll have like 10 races left.
He'll have probably a 70, 80 point lead.
I mean, that could get you roughly around where Christopher Bell and Chris Buescher are in points, 7th, 8th in point.
If he could really start, you know, when it comes to those all the remaining road courses, he's got to win every stage.
The guys who are doing best, if you notice their stage points, like the top three are all in the 100 stage point range.
Todd Gibbs is close, he's 95.
But guys who are kind of mid-tier or anchor pretty good, Chris Rebell, 92, Chris Buescher, 70.
If he can make up and get more into their range with the stage points plus some road course wins, that's going to really come into play.
I want to mention before we move on, and I'm not saying like, you know, no need to sound the alarm just yet, but keep an eye on Bubba Wallace.
I do not like the, his season has just slowly but surely been going downward.
He's just, you know, I looked at, just looked at his numbers.
Last four points races, 36th, 9th, 29th, 22nd.
He's often in the Hornets Nest.
He doesn't seem to have the raw speed.
I mean, let's be honest, he's just not quite as good as Tyler Reddick.
He's got one top five this entire season, and it was Kansas where we expect 23-11 to run top five.
So I just, the Toyotas are so good, 23-11 so good.
I think he's going to make it, but 13th plus 40.
Got a couple of road courses coming up.
I'm just saying, I'm keeping an eye on him.
He's a gravitational pull to 12th to 15th every year.
Is this why they call him Bubbles?
He's always in the bubble.
Might as well.
He had such a good start for his season, like he did last year, and then he always ends up here.
It doesn't matter the crew chief, doesn't matter what tracks they go to.
It always ends up he's in the same place.
He's probably going to be here the entire rest of the summer.
Yeah, I think he will probably stay on that graphic.
I think he'll stay above the cut line.
Like Charlotte, he probably had a top 10 cart.
Charlotte, and then there was that restart where like, you know, he just kind of got McDowell moved up and he ramped off by.
It was just bad luck, but again, you're in the Hornets nest.
He's not running second, third, fourth, like Denny, like Reddick.
He's in the mix, in the mess, as you might say.
So that just makes me a little worried sometimes.
Going back to what I was saying about them stage points, yes, 72.
That's really, that's really carrying him really good.
He's got that good.
If I recall, he got at one point in the season three or four weeks in, he was leading the series in stage points.
So that's front loaded.
He has not been getting any stage points the last couple of months.
If I dove into the numbers, I'm sure they would suggest that.
We don't have TV rating numbers yet.
Usually we talk about ratings.
Maybe there's a delay with Prime, Prime Video different platform.
I'm not sure.
Might be the, the holiday too.
That's it. Memorial day.
That's everything's a day behind.
So, yeah.
I can bring up something that actually just came across like 15 minutes ago or so.
It's an off track.
Kind of not good for 2311.
2311 senior account manager, Yvanna Howell has been indefinitely suspended from NASCAR for assault with a deadly weapon at the racetrack.
She ran a 77.
So they got the report.
She ran over a 77 year old man with a golf cart intentionally at like 130 in the afternoon.
Broad daylight.
Yeah.
Unless they got the time wrong.
Let me pull up.
There's got to be more to this.
What led up to this?
145 PM on May 23rd ran intentionally hit a 77 year old man with a golf cart.
At Charlotte.
Did she say she was going to do it on the radio?
Sorry.
I think you're steering wheel told the story.
Do they have S&T on the golf cart?
I need to see the S&T data.
She dragged him also on top of that.
Yeah.
I don't know.
That's something man.
125,000 bond.
That's that's.
Wow.
Okay.
Senior account manager for 2311.
She's handling money and.
Maybe this.
I'm not going to.
Happening.
We will find out in a couple of weeks, but wild.
That is.
Got it on camera.
Well, that's not TV ratings related.
But I'm glad we snuck that into this, this section of the show.
We had to figure it somewhere into the weekend.
Before we move into the final two races of the weekend.
Let's talk about the famous iceberg poll.
Can we get into the results?
13,000 fans voted on Jared's poll was the Coca Cola 600 a good race.
53% said heck yeah, it was a great race.
35% said yeah, it was pretty good, good race.
88% positivity rating.
9% called it average.
Only 3% thought this was a lousy race.
That seems pretty good.
That seems like pretty high ratings by a Charlotte standards.
Jared, where's that stack up?
So looking at some of the numbers, it's 11th of 63 pold mile and a half races since 2019.
Fourth of 10 pold Charlotte races.
The ones ahead of it were the 2025 600.
So last year is actually the highest rated Charlotte race.
The 2022 one is third and then the 2019 all star race is.
Smack in the middle at second.
This is also second of 15 pold 2026 races.
Atlanta is first.
It's basically between Atlanta and Daytona.
That kind of shows you like how slim pickings it was for fans of like wanting really good races.
Like the two super speedaways led the way up until Charlotte, but Charlotte fits up there.
Spencer had the first comment positive, negative or meme.
Man, with this weekend, I'm hoping just something positive about Kyle.
That's what I was going to say too.
He says, I'm just happy we saw some racing last weekend after all of what we went through.
Racing is the best medicine.
I don't know how you can name or name that thing after this one.
Good message Spencer.
Top one is from Taryn Tua says while the sun came out for the first and only time this weekend as they were recognizing the bush family.
He rowdy.
I saw that and made the comment to my wife who I was watching with and we were like that.
Wow, that's pretty cool.
Weather this weekend in general was just crazy even here in Tennessee.
When I got up Saturday morning, we took our boat to get new.
It's in the shop, get a new carpet and safe to put into it.
Gonna be cool when it's all done.
But that morning it was storm.
I just got poured on that morning.
But by the time evening came around, we were not so Tennessee for the event of bananas.
And it was like perfect weather.
It was just wild weekend for weather.
Now T wolf says, oh, we get a card of all turn two.
So happy Dale junior jumpscares her back.
Dale did get me a few times this weekend.
Amazing what happens when you allow the commentators to look out on the racetrack.
LAJ says that two time defense was great.
Shout out to Kyle Larson.
Stay rowdy bless bush.
OBG says honestly glad one of Kyle's former drivers won tonight in the seven car nonetheless.
And sick freak says need to move the Chris Wright talent memorial to Charlotte now because of the truck race.
It's always turned four or two for some reason.
Come on Chris.
And it's always a spotter's fault.
The gutter one went to Micah, which I was surprised by says negative vote because it was a different Micah.
By the way, the normal one.
Negative vote because the race wasn't on Fox.
NASCAR really made a mistake going to streaming only you're going to kill the sport.
See, I saw a few comments like this over the weekend.
I saw something they'll say and like, oh, the picture quality looks bad.
Oh, I've got a spinny wheel.
And it's like for one, people who don't want to pay for it.
That's the whole or something for the people that might have that.
It's your internet.
Your internet's got to be good for this stuff, man.
Someone just sent me the mug shot of the woman from earlier.
And it's just funny.
She's even wearing a 2311 hoodie.
Oh gosh.
That is not good PR.
Real quick.
So on the note of Fox versus Amazon.
Remember last week I told you guys I was going to conduct a experiment on my wife.
Yes.
So she had been so the premise was the last few races.
Like my wife will sit, she's not a big fan, but she makes an effort.
She'll watch some of the races with me, but I'd noticed the last few weeks.
She does off from time to time and take a little nap, a little mid Sunday afternoon nap.
And that's fine.
I'm working.
I'm locked in.
It is what it is.
But we talked on the show last week.
I'm like, guys, I'm going to watch her because she watched the race with me this week.
I'm like, I'm going to watch her and if she stays awake, that tells you all you need to know about the difference between Fox and Prime's coverage.
Because this is a long race and it's late.
We're at the end of stage three and I'd forgotten about this experiment.
All of a sudden I look over at her and I realized she hasn't fallen asleep this entire race.
We are 300 laps in.
She made it to the checkered flag.
Prime video, a much better broadcast than Fox science.
It has been scientifically proven now by my wife's sleeping habits.
Don't know off just this one because I will admit like just just after the way that one started at the pre-race thing.
I just, I found myself in just a weird mood.
It was 1130 central time when they called it.
They were like 1030.
It was like it was late.
It was late and she made it to the end.
So shout out Amelia.
Shout out Adam Alexander.
Prime video Dale Jr.
All you gave it a few more weeks and watched the experiment.
But I would be curious to see how it goes the rest of it.
But I will admit I was in bed by the time they finally called it for Suarez.
And my first thought was thank goodness this is over.
I'm going to bed.
That I get when I then mentioned after the experiment was over, I told her, I'm like, you know, hey, I was conducting an experiment on you.
I hope you're not mad.
And then she goes and she literally says like, yeah, you know what?
You're right.
Fox races are pretty easy to doze off to.
I'll give you that.
Now here's the comment from PNK 2018.
She doesn't fall asleep a poke and I wear money.
Now she's in on it.
Now she's probably going to like be sipping an extra coffee just to.
She might forget you.
You're watching a few melatonins just to mess with you.
I'll keep an eye on her for science.
Real quick gentlemen, the O'Reilly series race.
This was the most frustrating race of the weekend.
It's, you know, it got pushed all the way to Saturday.
What started kind of on time, right?
On Saturday and then there was a red flag.
Yeah.
And then it finished late.
You know, they didn't get it all the way finished.
They only ran like 90 out of 200 laps, but it was.
They got stage two completed.
So it's official frustrating race.
The weather didn't cooperate.
NASCAR could have been more aggressive.
There's oil on the track at one point that they completely missed.
The only person.
The only person at the racetrack who knew that there was oil on the damn racetrack
was Carson Osavar in the stands.
Crazy.
Yeah.
It was a frustrating race.
I understand them running the caution laps out to.
The halfway point, but from what I heard and I heard it from multiple people.
Door bumper queer talked about it too.
It sounded like the tracker didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Because at one point, I guess over the radio, it took three attempts for them to start covering up the oil dry and stuff.
And they kept having to come over and be like, no, you missed the front of it.
You go back and do it again.
And apparently like the people NASCAR race control was getting pissed about it.
So it was complete ineptitude all across the board.
It was weather being bad.
I mean, we ran 60% of this race under caution.
91 laps.
And the race that we only got 45% of the race finished.
So it's bad on all counts, unfortunately.
What was I going to say?
I was also going to say part of the frustration I think was, you know, the racing when it did happen was very good.
Great battle.
I love the Ross versus Jesse Love versus Corey Day battle towards the end.
But it was also, I think we wanted to see it go back green because Ross Chastain ran a good race was out front, but both RCR cars Jesse Love and Austin Hill were second and third.
It would have been what a story if they'd been able to wheel those things.
One of those cars to victory lane just two days after the Kyle Busch tragedy would have been an emotional moment for Richard Childress racing and for a lot of fans.
But we didn't get to see that instead JRM stays red hot with with yet another O'Reilly series wind.
I mean, did you all have an issue with them calling it when they did?
I didn't have as much an issue as a lot of people did on this one.
I had way more problems with the truck race.
Fair enough.
I mean, I looked at the O'Reilly race and said, yeah, this absolutely sucks.
I was, I've been to an O'Reilly race that was cut short before halfway.
I went to the first Chicago race, which again, horrible weather that weekend.
They called it for cold custard before even halfway.
That one just had me down at that point.
They really couldn't trust me anymore.
And that one was a very special like you can't come back Monday city stuff.
Charlotte obviously is everyone's backyard.
You maybe could have come back Monday to finish the O'Reilly race, but also like the weather wasn't looking great for Monday or Tuesday.
So I get it.
To be fair at that point, like they, so from what it sounded like they wanted to, they wanted if it wasn't going to get rained out to basically start the truck race 30 minutes after the O'Reilly race.
And then once it was clear, it was going to get rained out.
It's like you're pretty much also then going to have to choose.
All right.
Do we possibly have to try and finagle three races over a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever the hell it stops raining in Charlotte.
So like this one didn't bother me like it sucks.
It's frustrating.
Like the whole weekend's frustrating.
I get it.
Really just felt like the whole weekend in general, you know, with everything that went on this week, we were just going for it emotions.
Just wanted to get this one over.
And that's, I'm not going to hold it against them too much just because it was tough to even be racing at all this weekend.
And maybe it's, maybe it's just fitting that not every race finished all the way because I don't know.
Jared, you want to throw up the, I keep saying throw up.
That's very gross.
The O'Reilly series points.
I'm going to get the audio from South Park.
Hi Kyle.
All guys are a huge lead.
I'm not going to read through this.
Sorry if you're listening.
All guys got a big lead over Jesse Love.
That's all you really need to know.
Corey Day is up to third.
That's pretty legit.
As far as the bubble, it's tight.
It's pretty tight around the bubble.
Retzloff is plus 19.
So Wallach plus 15.
Then Sam Mayer, another crash for him.
He's plus seven.
Taylor Gray slipped in the oils plus two.
Raja now up to 13 only two points back, but he's in the Jordan Anderson car this weekend.
I believe Ryan Sieg minus 15.
Brent Cruz took a big hit in that Brandon Jones incident.
He's now minus 29.
So actually went backwards.
I'm pretty sure for the first time this season.
I'll be back.
I think he'll be back.
Do you want to talk about the truck race or is there anything more from O'Reilly?
There are plenty to talk about that truck race, man.
Trucks.
Let's go through this.
The race was scheduled for Friday night.
Got pushed to Saturday.
Then got pushed to Sunday.
They ended up running the race Sunday.
I think it started at like 10 a.m. eastern local time.
They had a hard cut off of noon and it's unclear exactly why.
We know there's extra prep work that goes into the Coke 600.
That starts at, you know, pre-race starts at four or five o'clock.
I get that.
There was some talk about TV that they wanted off the air by the time the NB 500 went live around 12.
I can't understand that because it's not even the same channel.
Dale Jr heavily learned about it on TV.
What viewership numbers does a truck series get on average?
What was that really going to take away from the NB 500?
Let's be real here, guys.
I would agree.
But either way, hard out at 12.
So they might have gotten all the laps in if they didn't fricking crash every three laps.
The truck series field is a little bit to blame for this brwaha.
But I mean, there's a lot.
Corey Day almost went flying into the infield.
That was scary.
That was sketchy for a moment.
Great point snappy.
Eric Brennan leading the broadcast.
I want to give Eric Brennan a shout out.
And I've not listened to doorbumper clear this week.
I know he had an appearance on there as well.
But Friday night, we're 24 hours roughly removed from everyone getting hit hard by the Kyle Busch news.
Like this is the next day.
It is super, super fresh.
And he is leading like the first major broadcast of the weekend.
And I thought he handled it.
I mean, granted that mostly is going through rain delay coverage, but I thought he handled everything really, really well.
He had poise.
He spoke confidently.
It was empathetic to listen.
I thought he handled himself really, really well.
Absolutely.
He is a future play-by-play guy for years to come.
And then what the heck does Chris Wright even do?
That was the last question I had for you all about trucks.
But Jared, take it away.
What stood out to you?
Shout out to Lane Riggs.
He won the race.
Anyway.
Oh, there we go.
There it is.
That is all.
Jared's torso is now the Chris Wright town tomorrow.
He probably would have hit me.
I even kind of defended him earlier in the year.
I've been like, he hasn't had as many issues this year.
And then he just does.
He's just Chris Wright.
And he's just, he's a danger to everyone out there at any given time.
I mean, he was a squirleus.
He looked like how Cletus looked at Daytona for the first time in a truck.
He looked like that on the research at Charlotte after he's driven a truck for months.
Get him off the track.
And he's in a good truck, too.
He's teammates of Anchorman, Hemric, and those two are top 12 right now, you know?
Christian Ekis is third in points.
When the incident happened, I even tweeted.
I didn't want to pile on.
I was a little more subtle, but I just tweeted.
He's second in points, actually.
I just tweeted.
His teammates are running second, fifth, and seventh.
That's all I tweeted after Chris.
I smacked the wall.
Anyway, yeah, I don't know how many times is he going to blame his spotter for his own actions?
I mean, it's just it's every time it's always the spotter's fault.
There's a common denominator here.
Chris Wright is seven points ahead.
Cori Llojoy, who has ran two last races in him.
Llojoy is on the ticker and Chris Wright isn't.
And there's like 20 full-time drivers this year.
I was going to say, I think Chris Wright is last in points among full-time drivers.
I'm sorry if one of you said that already.
I believe he is last in points if I'm doing the math correctly.
Franky missed the race.
Of all the drivers that ran all 10, he's last.
Yeah, because Franky would be last, but he did miss a race.
I forget why. It was like a couple of weeks ago.
He missed a race. It conflicted with like a sports car.
Yeah, he's doing better in points for the sports car stuff.
So they wanted to prioritize that.
Yeah, the Cori Day crash real quick.
I imagine there'll be some extra fencing maybe down there in the fall.
I don't know.
That area was as scary if you look at on a satellite map because that opening is right before like.
Hadn't he gone over that wall, guys?
That's right where the pedestrian tunnel where cars and people come walking free right there on the back stretch.
That's right where that is.
Yeah.
It was hard to tell.
Sorry, go ahead, Jared.
Wasn't it for the longest time?
Turns three and four at Charlotte.
The catch fence was just the billboards.
Like they didn't have catch fencing there for the longest time.
And they might still not have it in some areas there.
And so it's a very odd area of the racetrack that doesn't need to have that.
I mean, see this thing, I got, I rewatched.
So this was like the first truck race in years I haven't been able to watch live.
Of course it is.
The one that's wild and has the weird ass finish.
But like when I rewatched it, all I'm thinking is why isn't there something there?
Just what why?
That's all I could think.
And it was hard to tell.
I mean, for one, it was amazing.
His truck didn't flip over.
But two, it was hard to tell how much air he got.
What are the odds of you clearing that wall?
But either way, it's probably time to be like,
let's add some reinforcement down there.
I think.
Yeah.
We've had that area just built for the road for the last few years.
And I'm going back and looking at area.
If he would have cleared that wall, there's some bushes that look like they laid down an embankment.
And then there's the, there's a tunnel right underneath that.
That's, that's all this wreck there.
Some people was like, is there RVs there?
And there might be.
There's some grass or could have been some RVs there.
I really couldn't tell much from that clip, from the clip of the race.
But it definitely wouldn't have been.
Well, there is no ideal place for a car to go over a wall.
But it definitely wouldn't have been great there.
Well, to wrap up the weekend, it was very cool and touching that Lane Riggs,
Ross Chastain, and Daniel Suarez hit the, hit the signature Kyle Busch bow after winning their respective races.
Gentleman, that is the first half of our show before we get into the second half.
It's time for our first super chat stage break.
I'll be honest.
I didn't even know these returned on.
I thought all of the super chats were going directly to the bundle of joy fundraiser.
We do appreciate the super chat.
We've got 10 up to do both.
Yeah.
Well, then, I have also seen a ton of folks have contributed to the bundle of joy fundraiser.
I want to encourage people to continue contributing to that if you're able to.
That should be, I don't know which button.
I don't have it pulled up on my own.
It should be pretty easy to figure out.
But we did get a few super chats.
I'll go and read them now from the sloth nerd.
We start here.
Said I grew up hating these numbers winning.
I should say he sent 1854 and said I grew up hating these numbers winning.
Basically every week with Kyle Busch.
But now I've come to appreciate appreciate them.
Long live Kyle rowdy, wild thing.
K F B Bush.
Glad I rooted for you at the end.
Very nicely said sloth nerd.
A few more here from law pug says my uncle was at JGR for 25 years.
And I grew up going to the shop as a kid when KB came to JGR in 08.
He was my guy.
I was at the 600 and there's nowhere I'd rather be than with my fellow race fans.
Thank you for 18 years of happiness.
K F B Robby racer.
Thank you for the 10 says side note Eric saw the ex post the other day and had your back on the Denny packing air joke.
Travis from the Denny bros might be a little too sensitive lol.
I think he's seen his guy get penalized for goofy stuff in the back and didn't and maybe thought that I was advocating for Denny to be penalized, which I was not.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
No, I was just making a joke about Hamlin when he was racing chase brisco said.
All right, I'm going to pack air.
Hang on.
And then he went in and did pack air on brisco got brisco sideways.
And my joke was NASCAR has kind of set the precedent now that if he accidentally spun or if he'd spun brisco, they would have investigated that radio communication to see if it was intentional.
That was my joke that are the point I was making.
But no hard feelings there.
It's hard joke and words on Twitter.
It is.
And I've made that mistake many times.
I need to start adding the little like slash s like sarcasm thing anyway.
Then we got one from TVP Steve O'Donnell truly became the leader of the sport this past weekend with the pre race speech.
I thought he handled that very well, very gracefully.
And I even mentioned I was talking to me.
I'm like, man, this dude had this job, this specific job for like a month.
And this is he's got to stand in front of NASCAR nation, the world and deliver one of the hardest.
You know, it's basically a eulogy there on such a huge stage.
I thought he handled it as well as anyone could.
So kudos to Steve O'Donnell.
I don't.
I mean, I don't know.
Steve fell for the panel.
That's good.
I really don't.
He certainly didn't have the command, the commanding presence that I feel like O'Donnell has.
He was more soft spoken, which worked in a lot of ways.
But I don't know if it would have had the impact O'Donnell was able to capture.
I'll read a few more here.
Scrap Yard says one of the funnier moments memories I have of Rowdy happening during the 2020 2012 Daytona 500 red flag.
Someone got footage of him leaving an infield port of John before bowing to the fans in the stands.
I love that.
Napa racing fan says the KFB pre race ceremony is stuck with me more than the 600.
Honestly, in some ways, I think I'd agree.
It was so powerful seeing the drivers, every man, every crew and their families stand by the bush family, heartbreaking and beautiful.
Very much agree.
Also from Scrap Yard.
There were tons of tributes to KB over the weekend outside of NASCAR Friday night.
Our local dirt track mentioned him and his family during invocations and held a missing man formation for the sprint car a main.
That's very cool.
That's very nice tribute.
Let's see.
I'll do.
I'll do a few more here.
I didn't realize we got as many as we did.
From Eric.
All offense says, what do you guys think about the 38?
He had good runs at Nashville in Michigan last year.
Team seems to be heating up.
I mean, he's the one guy at front row that occasionally shows up when you don't expect him to.
He did finish second at Nashville or.
No, he said finished second at Nashville two years ago in the five overtime race.
And I think he was 10th last year.
So sneaky top 10 pick.
I like it.
I will do.
I think.
One more for now from.
Doom.
Doom Mewswick.
Says, I'm only three or four months older than KB.
Watch his battle versus Truex for the title and 04 issues before Darlington race ending his title bid.
When the set of tires do the issue.
RIP KFB.
We will miss you.
Thank you for the superdash.
Thank you for the comments.
If we didn't get to your super chat thus far, we will get to it at the end of the show.
And again, want to keep encouraging folks to also donate to the bundle of joy fund, which.
$2,400 raised so far.
You guys are awesome.
Now the goal I said is more just a good college appropriate number 18518.
That's all of this number right there together.
If we hit that, that's awesome.
But anything appreciated.
Yeah, because it all it all is going towards the cause, whether we hit the 100% of donations.
Bre YouTube go directly to the charity and YouTube covers all processing fees.
Just want to let you all know that because some notice when you send a super chat.
YouTube takes a little cut with donations.
It's different.
I don't take any of that.
Yeah, no good reminder there.
But appreciate the support tonight.
Appreciate everyone being here.
Let's get into the lightning round here on the NASCAR weekly podcast.
Jared, what do you got?
A couple of things.
So for the upcoming NWP 400 in August, if you want to, to co-sponsor or at least approach and see what you might want to be featured on broadcast help out in any way, contact us at weeklypodcastguestatgmail.com.
Also the NWP channel at NWP clips.
We're going to figure out a date.
We're going to figure out one at some point.
Do a little special to thank everyone for hitting over 1000 subscribers.
We connect it to each episode when we do the little sharing to each channel.
So that's there to Daytona.
Not for this year, but for the 24 hours and the Daytona 500 onwards is putting in a new LED lighting system.
And it's supposed to be like the most advanced lighting system a track has in the world.
So that'd be pretty cool.
Infield camping is already sold out for Talladega in October.
So the Boulevard will be a poppin.
That is for sure.
Eric, you'll like this one.
No net, well you won't like it, but I guess on the Fox side you might be vindicated.
No NASCAR production got a sports Emmy this year.
That includes NASCAR and Fox did not get their sound Emmy that they always get.
Did we get a prediction going on for that?
No, I think this is Eric's vendetta.
I'm tired of fluke winners.
They got to earn that prize next year.
You know we kid because we care.
And then Eric, there's something coming up in Nashville.
I believe this Friday weather permitting with Victory Junction Gang Camp.
Yeah, the Victory Junction is hosting gears and guitars Friday, May 29th downtown Nashville right there on Broadway.
There will be a NASCAR, a classic NASCAR car show set up I think out front of Tutsies from I want to say 11 to 3 with Ricky Stenhouse stopping by around one.
And then that night, if you head over to Hank Williams Junior's bar from six to nine, there will be live music performers.
I believe there will be a silent auction or out of it's silent, an auction of some sort with a lot of petty memorabilia.
So if you're a race fan, if you're in the area for Nashville, you want to go out Friday night, hit the town, be sure to stop by the raising awareness.
And I'm sure raising money as well for Victory Junction, which we all know is a great cause and very near and dear to the NASCAR community.
So if you're in Nashville this weekend, go hang out Friday.
No reason not to.
Well, weather permitting.
I don't know what the weather looks like.
That does sound.
You never know.
Ify, but we'll see.
It changes on like a blink in Tennessee at times.
But we'll find out then next week, June 3, we'll be live on this or my channel.
I should say, not this channel, my channel for NWP talking all about Nashville.
We'll find out what the weather is by then.
And heading on in to Michigan.
You know, it's funny.
I brought up Chris Myers a little bit with that joke.
I should have just started calling the Indie 500 the Daytona 500 and I would have got the point home a little bit.
He did it again.
But that's the light around.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, guys.
Lightning hold lifted.
The lightning has been moving away.
We have been cleared by our local meteorologist to wave the 30 minute delay.
What the hell was that?
I'm cool with it.
I like it.
It makes sense because the storm was very clearly moving away from the track.
I mean, I like it.
It's just I've never heard of that before and it sounded like.
That's a rule for all sports have to do that.
Well, it sounds like that was the that was like the lone thing that threw the prime booth off the entire night.
Gentlemen, let's get into the headlines.
We don't have many of them.
We really just have some reckless speculation.
We need a reckless speculation headline, you know, or like a graphic.
All I have is this, which is kind of reckless.
We should do that.
I still don't know what that's from.
That is not AI generated.
That is a real image from somewhere.
I don't know where Jared found that.
Let's talk a little silly season and charters and such in the last week.
A lot of this comes from Jordan Bianchi, of course, the athletic.
He had that great piece about two weeks ago on a kind of what's going on.
What's the state of silly season so far mentioned in the last week that a charter might be for sale and maybe suggested it could be the Haas factory team charter.
He also mentioned, I thought this was interesting that Chris Busher is drawn interest beyond just RFK racing.
We know RFK wants to retain their current driver lineup, but their charter situation is iffy.
They may be tied to whatever Haas decides to do.
I thought this was interesting.
He mentioned Josh Berry said he was 50 50 on if Barry could return to the Wood Brothers and was a little more optimistic about Noah Greggs and returning to front row.
But I'm kind of just just spitting stuff out here.
I'm throwing up all over the place, as I would say.
Anything stand out to you? Anyone you want to talk about, Jared?
I'll start with you.
Is there any?
What do we want to circle back to?
What are we going to hone in on?
For me, the interesting one is the I would just say the team are RFK.
So the big talk has been charter or not.
We're running three teams.
We're going to keep our driver lineup off that.
Well, now we've heard reckless speculation on teams being interested in busher, who I would argue is their franchise driver.
And we now have actual credible reporting of a possible charter sale, which we hadn't heard to this point.
We'd all assumed it would have been maybe Hayek or Rick Ware, maybe.
And now we actually have a name that we've talked about to it.
So I think that's going to be that might be the lynchpin for a lot of silly season moves.
Because if if busher moves, well, then maybe somebody like Jesse Love could could get lured over to RFK or an Alex Bowman.
Or, you know, you name whoever it might be that that's part of that.
But if he doesn't and then they end up getting a charter, then it kind of shallows the river a little bit of possibilities.
So that's the interesting part to me on this whole deal.
I find it interesting and I'd have to I saw the headline that busher's drawn interest maybe from from other teams, another Ford team, maybe.
I thought I saw somewhere that maybe another Toyota team that's not 2311 and I guess not JGR.
So it would probably have to be legacy might be interested in which I mean, if you're Chris busher, I'd probably stick with RFK at this point.
But you know, legacies got but also legacies all over the place right now because it sounded like OK, Riley Herbst is likely to land there.
And then you keep hearing rumors about Jesse Love.
What's he going to do?
And then, you know, they put out a press release that suggests John Hunter staying with the team.
And now there's rumblings.
What Chris busher.
And I mean, not to not to be morbid, but even Jimmy Johnson said he called Kyle Busch a couple weeks ago.
And it sounded like that was putting out feelers to see what's Kyle's situation.
Maybe they would have been like.
So there's I don't know what legacy is doing.
We don't know what RCR is going to end up doing long term later.
You know, that's another, you know, ride now.
That's, you know, like you said, not be morbid, but it's something we got to seriously talk about.
But yeah, but focusing on like the legacy and Roush tie in.
Because yeah, I feel like that's like Jared said, linchpin like that could be the real start of something of a domino effect that nobody foresaw coming.
The legacy just I know that there's different stuff behind the scenes when it comes to technology that's given or not given through the Toyota pipeline and different things like that.
But whether it's hiring the fifth head of random department that covers the same thing, the last department did, or, you know, the different performance issues or well, we'll get this sponsor.
But then the sponsor might not be here for very long or the drivers might not be here.
Well, now they are here and all these conflicting reports.
It might not be this way, but it feels like this team is just like a chicken with its head cut off.
And they're just like, they're hitting the wall every, every now and then.
And you hear something completely different every thud that you get.
And I just, I want to see some actual direction from this team.
Because I think we all had high hopes when this team really formed up when Jimmy Johnson got them all together.
I want to see like, who are you going to get?
Are you going to get Jesse Lover?
Are you going to try and build around him?
Are you going to keep Eric Jones and John her name a check in the folder?
Are you going to go after Riley Herps?
Who I honestly still lean towards the one they're probably going to go after because of the money.
Like what are you doing?
That's I genuinely just genuinely just want to know what as a team are you doing before I would have anyone like Chris Bush or even have any interest in going there.
You notice it was the teams have interest, not Chris Butcher has interest.
Well, money talks.
Like I feel like Michael McDowell probably would have felt comfortable at front row.
And then Spire said, we can offer you multiple deals probably at a higher rate.
And then he said bet on there sounds good to me as worked out.
I guess. Okay.
He seems to be running.
Okay.
Yeah.
I know it's it'll be interesting to see what happens over at legacy because I'm with you.
Like none of the drivers we've said, even Chris Bush or who I like a lot, I think is really talented.
I don't think any of them are quote unquote going to fix legacy's issues.
I think legacy right now it's it's more on the back end.
I think them going the long way trying to build their own Toyota racing data database.
I think it's just taken longer than they thought.
I mean, I remember what you know, we've heard that it's like at first.
Yes, Toyota has resources, but actually Joe Gibbs racing has a lot of the information that Toyota leans on.
And so legacy doesn't have access to that.
So they're able to use Toyota's resources, but they still kind of have to start from scratch from an information standpoint.
And that takes a lot of time and things are always changing.
So I feel like I'll bet if you ask Jimmy, he would say this has taken longer than expected.
And my question is how much longer is it going to take to be consistently a top 20 team?
Eric Jones is at a couple of good runs in a row now, a couple of good weeks in a row.
Maybe they're starting to figure something out, but got to see it for a longer stretch of time before I really believe legacy is like turned a corner.
Like I don't I don't know if they'll I don't want to say ever.
It might be 10 years and we might go through a new generation of car until legacy can really become like what Joe Gibbs racing is.
And I'm not going to say it's impossible. It's possible.
I'm just saying it's going to take them a long, long time and I don't know how patient people are going to be.
This team and I granted it's been a minute, but like before they did the whole switch up with Toyota and other things like this team had speed.
At the start of the next generation era, they were competing for wins.
They got a win at Darlington.
Like it just they had a good setup and they just had to mess with it and they've been lost ever since.
And we'll see because if it does, if they do get more competitive, I do think playing the long game is the way to go.
It's like renting versus owning 2311 has a really nice house right now, but they're renting it.
They're not. They don't have any equity in their house.
If Joe Gibbs racing one of these years just decided we don't want to align ourselves with you anymore, 2311 screwed.
I think what are they going to do? They're going to run 25.
I mean, Barney Visser at Furniture Row basically said, hey, when JGR jacked up the rates, we shut down really because I didn't want to run 25th every week.
And that's what was probably going to happen.
Like so if it does work out for legacy owning all their own stuff, building it up themselves will probably pay off in the long run.
It is just taking longer than expected.
Josh Berry, I'll touch on him.
Will you have talked about him? I don't want to beat a dead horse.
I haven't been super impressed with Josh Berry, but also name me the Wood Brothers driver in the last five years that's done anything of note.
I mean, Matt DeBenedetto had a good year back in the old gen six car.
I think Paul Menard was most consistent, honestly.
Honestly, maybe, but that was seven years ago now.
Like it's been a long time since anyone at the Wood Brothers has consistently had speed.
So I'm not sure if that's a Berry issue or if that's the team just not quite having it.
You know, it could just be Ford.
What about Noah Gregson?
Because I feel like Noah's a driver who he's popular, but he's done nothing in his cup series career.
And some of it's just been his equipment.
He has not been with a good upstart team in his cup career to this point.
I don't think about him.
I was looking at some of my diecast upstairs and I've seen the nine bass pro shops car.
And I was like, was that the peak for Gregson?
Like what happened to him after this, basically?
I mean, he just, he had, it seemed like a little bit of momentum.
Remember when we were talking, he had like a little bit of momentum at the end of SHR.
Yeah, he actually had no care that season.
Yeah.
And given the state of the team and the equipment, I mean, none of us were expecting him to be carrying it like Kevin Harvick.
But I just, I don't know how you bring him back when there's obviously going to be better options out there.
I was saying, if Spire still decides to go in the opposite direction of McDowell, I kind of think McDowell going back to front row to place a comfort still.
You're bracing with a lot of the same people.
Like that might be an option to oust the Gregson and the four team at this point.
I just, I get that it's 60-40, but it's with the caveat he needs to pick up performance.
He ain't going to probably pick up performance, I don't think.
I just don't think he's going to.
I don't, I'm still surprised that they've been this bad because he was pretty good that year with Stuart Haas while Stuart Haas was shutting down.
He was actually okay.
He and Drew Blickensterfer, like as a package deal almost came to front row.
I don't know how many other guys on that team are the same.
I don't know how many people came over with him from the 10, but at least his crew chief did.
And so you would expect some continuity to make a difference, but no, they've just been like, it's not even like they're just kind of running bad like front row cars run.
He's like the worst of the front row cars most weeks.
Like that's, that's the part that's really surprising to me.
And like we all think Zane Smith is great. He's a truck champion.
We've been singing his praises for years.
So losing to Zane's not the most shameful thing in the world, but he's not even most weeks as competitive as Todd Gillland.
Or he's not at least, he's not as consistent as Todd Gillland.
And that is surprising.
Yeah.
I mean Zane Smith's 21st in the points and he has four top 10s on the year.
Todd Gillland has a top 10 ran really well Bristol 25th in the points.
Noah, he has a top 10, but he's 29 30th in points.
I mean, it's just, and Todd Gillland has run higher in the points too.
I mean, a lot of the times these front row guys are in that 25th to 20th range.
Gregson's in the 30s and we were just talking how we're kind of out on Josh Berry granted better equipment probably,
but Gregson is one spot ahead of Josh Berry.
He's behind John Haranimaczek, Riley Herps, Ricky Stenhouse.
The numbers just don't pan out for him to performance wise,
stay there unless he brings sponsorship.
And the thing is, I don't know where he goes.
I don't even know if he stays in a cup if he's not with this team, you know.
Yeah.
And that goes back to you as well.
Then does he bring sponsorship anywhere if he goes down to a Riley?
If the charter possibly being sold, does Custer go back down to a Riley?
Custer has an easier route because of the team, but like does,
does Bass Pro Shops back him up at a JRM or a separate team?
Can he even go to JRM because we say that they don't,
they have problems keeping their drivers full time in their cars right now, you know.
Just money.
I don't know.
I did look up someone pointed out that yeah,
Blickensterfer is not even on Gregson's car this year.
I forgot he had a crew chief change this year.
Grant Hutchins is now in the box for Noel.
So he's now on his second crew chief at front row.
We'll see.
Usually when they make a change like that, that's because they know performance isn't where it's expected to be.
And that also could be like, all right, this is your last chance at this doesn't work.
You know, we might go a different direction.
So we'll be interesting to follow along real quick.
Also, I was listening to DBC last week and Tommy Baldwin mentioned something weird about qualifying coming.
Like something cool happening to qualifying next year.
Any idea what that could mean?
Well, I can't remember.
He's also taught me to ask her.
So it might not be cool for us.
Oh, yeah.
It could just be like.
I kid.
I kid.
We kid because we care.
Oh, it goes great.
I failed to see what will be cool about qualifying for a lot of fans unless it's like brought back on TV or something.
I just I don't I don't know like what are they going to?
Are they going to make the pit crew challenge for the all star race just qualifying sprint races like an F1 coming next year?
Yeah, because they've been such a hit in formula one.
Everyone's talking about it.
They're all the rage for a second.
I thought you were talking about sprint races.
Like they're just going to do a 40 yard dash and whoever's most physically pick is to start first.
Drivers to your cars.
They bring the heat races back that they used to run in the O'Reilly series in like 2016.
That was that was the first race ever took quality to the very first one ever did that.
That was so she's like, so how does this work?
I'm like, I really don't know.
Yeah, I don't think anyone really a lot of people knew at that time.
We're all kind of just like, OK, so that's it.
I don't know.
I mean, I would honestly think it'd be cool just to have one qualifying run at every track.
We don't need to split top 10 stuff or any of that.
Let's just keep it simple.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Keep it simple.
I think the way it is now is the way it should be.
I think if you're NASCAR, it's like, how do you make qualifying feel more important?
Because it's such a big deal in other motorsports in the NASCAR.
It is kind of just, I'll just check it in the app afterwards.
I'm not saying we don't want to need to gimmick it up,
but it's also how can you stress the importance of qualifying,
especially at some of these tracks where it is important.
OK, maybe it's not just qualifying.
Maybe it's poll winners qualify for the clash now,
since it's going back to Daytona, and we're going back to our roots.
We can make qualifying matter a bit more.
We don't have to gimmick up getting all 36 drivers into the clash or anything like that.
Maybe that's it.
I don't know.
I hope it's something good.
I'll say that.
I hope the clash is starting line up as a turn,
but I'm picking random beer bottles again.
Well, if it's cookout too, they could get like cookout boxes
and open it up and they have it with their chicken.
There we go.
One versus just like, I just have a bacon wrap.
There's no number in here.
You'll be sorry winner.
Last on the field, but you get the food.
Damn.
Yeah, there's a lot of just kind of rumors at this point.
I feel like again, there's like five different drivers linked up.
We didn't even mention legacy with legacy.
Parker Retzloff is racing a truck this weekend in association with legacy motor club.
So yeah, what's that tie in?
So there's a lot of that one come out of nowhere.
I've been saying for a while that Parker is deserving of a better opportunity.
I don't think I saw him going in the legacy pipeline.
That one wasn't on my radar.
No, I'm either.
So by my point is there's like a half a dozen drivers linked to legacy motor club right now
and throwing RFK.
It's we'll see.
We'll see.
It may have turned out to be a lot of not much, but could also be everything.
We'll find out soon.
I suppose that's it for the headlines.
Let's get to some fun segments, gentlemen.
Before we're going to talk Nashville Super Speedway in a few minutes,
we got to go through our prediction segment first every week.
Each host makes two NASCAR motorsports or show related predictions.
Predictions are kept track each week in our accountability session.
And we always try to keep our predictions concise contained within a few years.
All right.
Let's hold ours.
Let's hold ourselves accountable.
Starting with me.
I went one for two.
I did say Coca Cola racing driver would win the Coca Cola 600.
That was correct.
Connor Zillich will score a top 15 in all three Charlotte races.
Just the cup race, right?
Is that the only one he missed?
I don't remember.
All right.
Well, I knew that was going to be the toughest one.
Close call.
Who's next?
Jarrett one for one said the Coke 600 would score 86% or higher on the iceberg pole.
It was 88.
So well played there.
You know your audience and Danny B.
One for two as well said the Coke 600,
but he won by a first time winner of the event and said host of our would finish top five.
Host of our had.
He had his own demons Sunday night.
He's never really in the picture.
Unfortunately.
What points us out?
Watch the green text of the Coca Cola 600 will on everyone.
We all made similar predictions.
Coca Cola 600 will.
Well, and if you go back and forth between Eric's and Danny's,
it's will be, I think will be one by a creativity.
We're great at it.
We're so original.
For the season.
Jarrett's caught up.
I'm up 57%.
Jarrett's at 56.
Danny down at 28% for the season,
but had a good week this week.
That's good.
All time.
Jarrett is still out front.
39% correct.
I'm at 35.
Danny is at 31.86.
Time to add to these totals.
All right.
Who goes first?
I still go first.
All right.
I'm going to do.
I don't know if I'm going to do both Nashville predictions or not.
I'll start with a simple one.
I'll just say.
I'm a good here in the past.
It's kind of their home track.
So I'll say track house gets a top five at Nashville,
least one of their cars top five.
All right.
I'll say it.
Grant Enfinger misses the chase and trucks.
I know he made up points,
but he's not not good enough for me.
Yeah, I think you probably get that one right.
I'm going to start my second one here first.
And I'm not going to lock down who I think could end up winning this,
but I will just say.
I can see things happening where Chase Elliott does not win most popular drivers.
I'm going to say he will not win most popular driver this year.
Not going to lock down where I think it will go,
but Chase will not win it this year.
So that's a solid prediction.
I think based on his comments in the media center this last weekend,
my final prediction,
I'm just going to keep them both simple, both Nashville rated.
An unlikely teammate duo is on the entry list for the truck series race.
Rajah Karuth and Jesse Love are in the seven and 77 trucks respectively.
They've had some run ins in the O'Reilly cars in recent weeks,
but I think they'll represent Spire.
They'll represent Kyle Bush's old team extremely well.
I'm predicting they both score top five finishes Friday night
or whenever the truck race happens.
I will rip the bandaid off and say it.
I think Kyle Bush is winning the most popular driver award this year.
I think that the drivers and fans are going to rally behind him on this.
I think it's something that Dale Jr's kind of alluded to
that he's really going to appreciate or would have appreciated, I should say.
So I will go all the way on it.
So we're in that one together.
I just didn't want to quite say it like that,
but we can both be right on that one.
Yeah, and I think we will.
I'm going to kind of carry over.
I hate to do this, but I'm going to carry over in the same realm.
And I pre-ordered it.
Kyle Bush's Dover wind truck will be Lionel's number one selling truck diecast this year,
and it will land top five overall.
Cool. Yeah, that could be number one overall.
I'm just going to keep it as I have it, but it might be number one overall.
All right. That's our prediction segment.
I just want to give a shout out real quick.
I saw in the in the chat, the official cat ass just donated $100 to the
Samantha and Kyle Bush bundle.
I appreciate that.
God bless you, official cat booty.
Is that Shuggs' burner?
But now that's awesome.
That's really generous.
That's extremely generous.
We appreciate everyone who's gave to that.
And I'm going to keep the fundraiser up on my channel.
It's up for 33 more days, it says.
So you'll probably keep seeing it here and there over the next month or so.
Good deal.
With that being said, gentlemen,
I think it's time for Danny and I to hide the chat for a few minutes.
It's time for random driver of the week.
Week, week, week.
You all right.
Well, very dramatic.
All right.
Well.
Danny is 42.
And Eric is at 40 when it comes to random driver of the week.
Looking at the last five.
Danny has three to Eric's one and my one.
Danny has Danica Patrick last week.
Brian Scott and David Ruderman.
Eric has the lake speed and I got you guys on Buddy Errington.
Let's clarify.
Eric has like speed squared.
He got him twice.
Fun fact.
That just means you had two options to get him and you didn't.
Lake speed was on the appeal panel today for Ryan Priest.
Don't know which way he voted, but he was on the appeal panel.
I did see that, which I was like, damn, that's, that's an interesting one.
All right.
So I'm going to warn you all there aren't many clues this week.
So you're going to have to be on it and you're going to have to be on it early.
Hmm.
Uh, this random driver is a Kansas native from Halstead, Kansas.
Hmm.
We also, none of us have tweeted about this random driver as well.
So it's not Clinton because I'm sure we've all said something about him at some point.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Immediately the chat just says clip wire, wire.
It's not a good sign when neither of us have tweeted about them.
I love you.
You can see the delayed reaction and then blue Jimmy Clintus from Emporia, Kansas.
I'd really can't remember what city is from.
I just know Kansas.
This random driver also grew up as a farmer.
Makes sense for Kansas.
A lot of farming out there.
Oh yeah.
The chat's pretty much, I think already getting it.
Where'd you say this guy's from, Homestead?
Halstead.
Halstead, Kansas.
Is that like, is that like a suburb of Kansas City somewhere?
Like where?
That's a farming place.
Well, yeah.
This random driver started racing at the age of 16.
Kind of a late start.
Or early, considering what era it was.
True, good point.
This random driver's nickname was Alfalfa due to crashing through a fence early in his career into an Alfalfa field.
Okay.
Interesting story.
Not because of his hair or anything?
No.
This random driver's racing career was put on hold by a nationwide racing ban.
Oh, this is an oldie.
This is one of the oldies.
Can you tell us what year the racing ban was?
It was, you know, I actually don't remember exactly what year it was.
This random driver won a track championship in Wichita the year before entering NASCAR.
So, did well in local.
This random driver actually found out about NASCAR through a local newspaper comic strip.
Okay.
I'm going to waste one because I can't remember exactly if it's Kansas or Missouri this person's from.
But is it Ken Schrader?
I'll just waste one.
Nope.
That was a reasonable guess actually.
The name crossed my mind as well.
Would you like this random driver's numbers in NASCAR?
Yes, please.
34.
What?
Would you like the OEM?
Sure.
Lincoln.
Your guys' face has made that.
There's no way it's this guy because I don't think he's from Kansas.
But I'm just going to throw out Wendell Scott.
Didn't he drive the 34?
Okay.
He probably drove many other numbers.
Yeah, that was a good one because I thought 34 instantly.
I couldn't remember anything else.
He's not.
I know he's, I'm always almost certain he wasn't from Kansas.
But yeah.
All right.
Shot in the dark.
34 Lincoln.
My goodness.
And six clues left.
This random driver drove his car from Kansas to Charlotte and back in order to race.
I drove the race car on the road.
I read that.
I've seen that story.
Heard that story before.
Who is this?
You're going to get this one.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But I've heard that story.
Was it David Pearson?
No, that would be David Pearson.
Nope.
No.
Obviously he drove.
I didn't mean to actually make that a guess because that's a dumb guess.
That's fine.
Thanks for the quick trigger.
I was more just thinking out loud.
That's okay.
I definitely wasn't David Pearson, but I was trying to think of a Pearson story.
Okay.
Go on.
I don't have it.
This random drivers racing career in NASCAR were only in the first and third NASCAR races ever.
Okay.
I'm not getting this.
We ran two races.
They got to be famous for racing outside of NASCAR.
So this random drivers racing career ended due to a crash in a sprint car where he broke a vertebra in 1955.
When this random driver knew his career was over, he actually flipped a coin on whether or not to raise a horse in Washington or Texas.
Texas won and he lived in Texas from that point forward.
Come on, Texas man.
Man.
David Star.
No, don't not.
I need to be careful.
No, no, we've already done that.
Do you remember we've already done that one?
This random driver became a flag man during his post driving career.
See, that's something I don't really hear much of is like flag man's of the day.
All right.
Last clue.
This random driver won the first ever NASCAR race.
Sorry I had to.
I always get the first race and the first champion mixed up.
But they only ran two NASCAR races ever.
Do you want to add?
Oh, what's the, what's his name?
No, no, I'm blanking.
I got a prediction online at Jared.
We'll get us two more times before we get to 50.
So I have thrown a towel on that one.
I mean.
I don't think I know it either.
I know who won the first championship and that obviously wasn't.
Like.
I'm looking at the chat made two starts.
So I don't or made more than two starts.
I don't know.
I'm going to say I don't know.
I don't know who won the first NASCAR race.
Jim Roper.
Oh, okay.
That is a name I know.
I was never going to get that one.
So I got it.
Good job.
Yeah.
I just need Jared to do that one more time.
I got a prediction right.
I decided on all these drivers before the season two.
So like I didn't like space them out necessarily to stump people.
I just, I have a specific way I choose drivers for random driver.
So chat is pointing out that Jim Roper is actually related to Corey Roper.
So is he really not sure if he's dad or granddad, but that's what I'm reading.
When I, and when I, I feel dumb when I guessed and I didn't mean to guess David Pearson,
I was thinking of a story I read recently about David Pearson driving his car.
Like I think it was him driving his race car from like California because he was racing like out west, I think.
For a period of time in the early day.
So that's where I was like trying to think who was he with.
I didn't mean to guess.
I know David Pearson drove like the 17, 20.
I was finger on that one.
No, it's okay.
I don't want to make sure people know I'm not an idiot.
Not totally.
I'm no David Pearson expert.
Let me say, but I just want to make that out there for the record because I was kind of embarrassed.
Good job, Jared.
You've stumped us on that one.
That's a, but now we know who won.
I will never forget now who won the first ever cup series race.
What track would that have been at?
Do you know?
I was the old Charlotte Speedway, the one before Charlotte Motor Speedway that they raced at.
I want to say if I'm not mistaken, there was like 13, was it 13,000?
They don't have the, yeah it was.
Oh my God.
I remembered the attendance for it because I looked up these facts a while ago.
Yeah, he, he led 197 laps.
Or no, he finished 197 laps.
So if you on racing reference, everything's missing.
Like the amount of laps that all but five drivers ran.
And then Glenn Dunaway was originally the winner, but got to huge.
So Jim Roper won the race that way.
He won $2,000 for winning the first NASCAR race, which actually really good money for back then.
Yeah, let's go into the inflation calculator for that one real quick.
So this would be June of 1949.
If the very kind inflation calculator would work for me.
Could he buy a new race car that much?
How much did a charter cost?
That's what I wanted.
$12.
Pack of figs.
So $2,000 in June of 1949.
I know the chats probably got it, but I like to do it from my own sick fun.
That would be the equivalent today of $27,867.
Do not bad for an upstart organization.
That's not bad at all.
It won't be on one of the Liars, Thieves and Lawyers slap shoes videos.
You know, they actually paid out real money.
There you go.
Well, that was fun folks, but now it's time to get into Nashville.
Nashville Super Speedway Race Weekend, a triple header music city baby.
Danny, I know you said you might be there hopefully for the truck series race.
May get a chance to be there.
We're flying out Saturday morning for a family trip to Florida.
So Friday is my only option via the track.
Yeah.
Well, hopefully it all works out.
This is like the first national race in a while.
I won't be at, which is it's a weird feeling, I suppose.
But let's get into the details.
Some notes here before we make our picks.
Austin Hill back in the RCR 33 for this week.
Once again, Chad Fincham is in the 66.
Corey Heim in the 67 on the O'Reilly side.
Jordan Anderson has Rajah Karuth in the 32.
Cletus McFarland is back in the 33.
Kyle Larson is driving the 88 car for J.R.M.
Brandon Jones.
That was originally supposed to be Alex Bowman,
but I think he's trying to be with his dog at this time.
I think that's a big reason they'd make that change up last second.
Could be.
I did see somewhere that I guess Bowman was originally scheduled to that race.
So yeah, I'm not sure why he's not.
Could be that.
Brandon Jones now talking trucks is in the one truck.
So wallach is in the five.
Rajah is in the seven.
I mentioned earlier.
Daniel Dye is back in the McMackinally 20.
Carson Ferguson is in the 25 for Collig.
Ross Chastain in that 45 for Nice.
Parker Retzloff is in the 62.
And Jesse Love is in the 77.
This is his first truck race in three years.
First since he became a Chevy driver.
Fun fact there.
All right.
Three races this weekend.
Truck races, the Allegiance 200 Friday.
150 laps, 45, 45, 55.
Those are the stage breakdowns.
It's an eight PM Eastern start on FS one.
The NASCAR racing network.
Rajah Karuth is the defending race winner for the trucks.
Could be a reason why Spire tapped him for that seven.
The O'Reilly race is the sports illustrated resorts 250.
I mean, I guess this is shows NASCAR sponsorship still has value
because I did not know sports illustrated how to resort
or a collection of resorts anyway.
What do you even do there?
Just looking magazines all day, I guess.
I don't know.
Just by the pool and read the latest sports illustrated.
Do we get to go to like the Bikini shoot for like that one?
Yeah, that's true.
They just sell the swimsuit edition at the resort
because you're at the beach.
Just saying.
That's the couples wing of the resort.
We're part of the resort standing on or sitting on.
It's the sports illustrated resorts 250.
188 laps.
It feels like a Thaledega race.
Maybe they are a super speedway.
45, 45 and 98.
Those are the stage links.
It's a 730 PM Eastern time start on Saturday.
So Saturday night race under the lights CW PRN.
Justin Allgaier is the defending race winner.
And the cup race, the Cracker Barrel 400.
300 laps 90 95 115.
That's the stage break breakdown.
Also a night race Sunday night at 7 PM Eastern
on Amazon prime video.
Also PRN Sirius XM.
Ryan Blaney is the defending winner.
Penske's gone back to back.
If I'm not mistaken the last two years.
Let's take a look at the weather.
Danny, do you have the latest report from our good friend?
We do.
I'll pull it up here from meteorologist Jeff Borek,
aka Borecast.
It's what he's called his little forecast.
He sends us.
Nash Vegas forecast, as he says.
Fairly short and sweet here as we are in a summer storm pattern
of extra steps, as he says.
Friday is the day of the highest rain chances
as a storm system pulls into Middleton Sea.
Afternoon through truck time will be dicey with showers
and storms in the area.
The best hope is if the storms move through quickly in the day.
It's only slightly delayed.
Saturday does bring another round of the same with a better
opportunity for storm chances winding down quicker for the evening.
Sunday brings storms again,
but these will be the more typical scattered thunderstorms
to contend with either way pack rain gear this weekend
and do take care as always with lightning in the area.
Sweet deal.
Sweet deal.
Of course it's going to be the worst on the one day I can go to the track, right?
Yeah.
Well, it is what it is.
Hey, things are looking up for you here though, Danny.
Jared's back on top.
That's what we're all under right now.
Jared's on top of the pickpoints.
Danny and I are tied for second though.
Danny has the tiebreaker via more wins.
We're both one point out.
And then the chat's right there too.
You guys are only six points behind,
but chat, that does mean you guys get the first pick for all three races this weekend.
Nashville super speedway style.
Let's just rock and roll right into it.
The truck series chat, you get first pick.
Who is going to win the truck series race?
The Allegiance 200.
Who do you pledge your allegiance to chat?
That's the real question.
Who are you ride or dying with here in Nashville at Nashville?
Because it's not really in Nashville.
It's at the track known as Nashville.
I like Chicago and Joliet.
But we can't call it the Lebanon super speedway.
It just don't sound as good.
No, no, no, no.
I think I might have to pull this.
It looks like it's the Spire guys that have everyone's splits.
What do you guys think?
Should I do any more than that or just the Spire guys?
Yeah, just the Spire guys.
So it's a love and I'm going to put their names.
Because otherwise people may not know who they're even voting for.
Love or Karuth starting the poll.
You guys have about 10 seconds.
Maybe last by the time you're actually hearing my voice.
So click, clack, make your pick.
Meanwhile, you always do your polls by name and not number.
I find it easier to look at the number first,
but you make them think of it.
Well, this one, I actually did it just because I don't like these are
unusual numbers for these drivers.
So I want to make sure they actually knew who they were voting for.
And they are going with Rajah Karuth to go back to back in the truck
race at Nashville.
I have the second pick.
I'm going to go with the calm, the hot hand.
I will go with Lane Riggs.
All right.
Well, that was my first and third pick off the board.
So I'll go with my number two, Caden Honeycutt.
Wow.
This is the first time ever I have picked fourth and none of my four are off the board.
Ross Chastain.
Okay.
I mean, I just, Ross get in that nice truck anymore.
Just don't do it for me, but go ahead and prove me wrong.
I mean, that's a good number four pick, but was he your number one?
Yeah.
That's all right.
I like Ross at Nashville in general, and it's a better truck in comparison to the
field than track house cars are.
And he's still doing pretty well.
He did just win Charlotte.
No Riley stuff.
Hi.
Momentum.
Chat O'Reilly pick start getting them in because y'all are leading us up here.
Who is going to win the O'Reilly series race on Saturday?
Chat, let us hear it.
Who do you got?
That's one of Saint's-Port of Yunanima so far.
Yeah.
I guess I should have assumed Kyle Larson would get the call.
Hmm.
All right.
Larson it is.
Yeah.
I'll take Justin Allgaier.
Yeah.
I kind of thought y'all would go that direction.
My number three pick I'll end up going with Taylor Gray.
I like that pick.
I'm going to go with somebody who's either going to be upfront, probably on the top
three or is going to win either way.
It's going to be fun to watch.
Sam Mayer, he's usually pretty good here.
He's pretty good everywhere and then something usually goes wrong.
Unfortunately for our buddy Sam.
I'll pull in for him.
Hope he has a good run.
He's on that chase bubble.
All right.
Cup series suck picks.
Chat, I guess y'all can start off, but we're not doing this one for points.
I guess we can all just sort of name names, point fingers, all that good stuff.
I'm going to go Brad keselowski this week.
I don't know why.
I'm just not feeling bad, but can I change that?
No, I'm not going to change that.
I'll stick with Brad.
No, you go with everyone.
No, no, no.
I don't want us.
I don't want us.
I don't want it to change.
I'm putting more people on plus.
I think man chat are kind of on the same same one here.
They keep going back with the four between one and 48, but I'm going to 48.
This track's just never been good for Bowman.
Unfortunately, actually that's a very good pick.
He has struggled here for whatever, even when it was the ally 400.
Yeah, it's just never been his track.
I'll go Austin syndrome.
It's never been his track either.
All right.
Dark horse picks.
So I actually like Ross Chastain as a good dark horse here.
He's one year before.
Yeah.
He's he's been hit and missed lately, but he was top 10 at Texas.
Felt like track house had good cars.
Like Zillich was good at Dover.
SVG was good at Charlotte.
Like they're bringing at least one fast car every week.
I think this week it's Ross.
So I would.
I'd say Ross is a good dark horse.
Zane Smith seems to be the one I'm singing most from the chat.
So I think that's who they're saying for their dark horse.
My dark horse is someone who made this track his playground
two years and run to trucks.
And that's Ryan Priest.
Oh, good, good choice.
Good choice.
That's a good choice.
I'm on the same boat though when it comes to Chastain.
I mean, I don't think he's going to be going for the wind necessarily,
but I do think he can be a this can be his first viable top 10.
That's not a super speedway or top 15 even.
That's not a super speedway this year.
Yeah, this should be circled for him.
Yeah, you saw the same stat I did.
Ross does not have a top 15 this year on a non super speedway.
I know it's only.
That's what 10 races, but 10 races is best finishes 16th,
which is not great.
All right.
Time for the wind pick.
Who is going to win the Cracker Barrel 400 chat?
Start getting your picks in.
I know there's like a five second delay.
So I'll give you all a few moments to.
Side note.
We're all winners because we don't have the new Cracker Barrel logo
for this race going into this weekend.
I thought they walked that back though,
and they're not even going to have that logo anymore.
No, that's what I'm saying.
I'm saying we're all winners because we don't have that or bullying worked.
It would appear.
I need to look one thing up,
but before I make my pick, I forgot to do this earlier.
But Chad seems to be going to any Hamlin, by the way.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
That was my number one is Denny time.
Yeah.
He was, I think probably everyone's number one.
Although I don't think he's won here,
but he has like a third place average finish or something ridiculous.
He hasn't won here,
but I mean just the way this season's going,
he's a clear favorite for this kind of racetrack.
I'm going to go with a guy who has not won in quite some time,
but has won here before.
I think his only win here was in the gen six though.
I'm going Kyle Larson.
Yep, the very first race.
Kind of what direction I thought y'all were going.
So that was my one and two.
So yeah, go full reliable.
Tyler Reddick.
All right.
Well, I'll go somebody who is even when he's not having a good year,
still runs really well here most years.
I'll go Joey Legato.
He's good.
He's good here even when he has bad years or the speed ain't there.
That pick will either bring you back down in the basement
or will really send you far ahead of us.
It's true.
That is a high risk, high reward pick because you could have gone like, you know,
Christopher Bell has been pretty fast.
Yeah.
Ty Gibbs.
You could have gone a lot.
You could have gone Blaney if you wanted to stick with Penske.
He's been a little more reliable.
I just picked a defending winner of this one.
That's actually crazy.
Who won last year?
I already forgot.
Blaney.
Oh yeah.
Blaney did.
Gold talking from everyone who is less pick point championships.
We're one point behind you.
We're under a blanket cuddling to get around the point.
What are you going on about?
I've never finished worse than second.
So if we actually look at our all time average finish,
I think I'd be curious to know if me or Jared has a better all time average
finish in the pick points because I finished like first, second,
second, second or something like that.
I do have multiple numbers of finishing first though.
You also have a basement here.
I do remember that.
You had a fourth one here.
Yeah.
I might have been a fifth back in the day.
We got to go check the tape.
No, I didn't finish.
I've never finished last.
I was just prepping for the next year in advance.
I'm just trying to defend last this year.
Chat.
You guys are in the danger zone right now halfway through the regular season.
Well, this has been fun gentlemen.
It's been a good show.
We're going to wrap up with our final handful of super chats.
Our final super chat stage break, but before we go,
once again, want to encourage everyone to, if you're able to,
donate to the Samantha and Kyle Bush bundle of Joy Fund,
a cause very near and dear to that family's hearts and personal lives
and they're just their family in general.
And then Jared had that graphic on the screen, but yes,
next week, 8pm Eastern time, we will be will be on the iceberg.
We've raised on, by the way, to that guys.
We've probably put together, I think probably over $500.
I think we were a little bit above 2000 when we started tonight.
Now we're at 2546.
So a huge thanks to all of y'all who donated tonight.
And I haven't really seen him in the chat or anything,
but huge shout out to Michael Maroutes because he was doing a stream
the other night and I got him to partner up that stream with the fundraiser
and his community came through a big way getting us above $2,000 right off the bat.
So much love to all of y'all.
Good stuff.
We'll get to the final super chats here and now from Gian Nascar.
Fans has went to Fontana 2010 to 2023.
Core memory is the 2013 Auto Club 400.
Kyle slipping by on the high side to steal the win.
2010 was booed in 2023.
People cheered.
That again speaks to how he evolved.
I think in the eyes of all the fans over his career.
From Ryan Idias says Kyle is the only celeb passing I've cried for.
There's a lot of folks that were certainly feeling those emotions all week long.
Jeffrey King says I'm so sad for the Bush family says RIP KB.
And we got a very generous super chat from Ryan as well.
Says, hey guys as a fellow Christian.
I appreciate Danny's video and it got me wondering how your spiritual journey is.
No amount of words can make things better.
But Kyle's death is a stark reminder that we live in a broken world.
Romans 23.
Romans 623.
623, I'm sorry.
Thank you for your message.
I just want to get in there and talk about it.
My thought was in a moment, it's best to pray.
Find a moment to chat with who you call.
God in my case, I'm a Christian.
I believe in Jesus Christ and I work for a Christian company.
So that's where I'm at in my life.
No, like I said earlier, just sending prayers to the Bush family.
And to certainly everyone because I think everyone has been rocked by this.
Jeffrey King sent in a couple more super chats here.
Said getting back to the racing here.
Should they have run it to the end in the trucks probably?
Then says Chase Elliott is bad so far at all chase tracks.
It's an interesting observation.
We'd have to go back and check that if that's true.
That is something to watch in the fall.
You want Martin'sville and you want a Kansas set in a chase?
Yeah, he was good at Kansas.
Top 10.
He's one of two chase tracks.
He's good at Kansas.
He was good at Vegas.
Those are both in the chase.
So I don't know how true that is, Jeffrey King.
I think he's been a little inconsistent,
but I don't think he's been there.
He's top five in the standing.
I don't know how he can be that bad, per se.
Calypso says rest in peace, Kyle.
Hashtag rowdy forever.
Race in peace.
I started saying that during the post race.
We're going to say RIP to a driver.
Race in peace because the race has got to be good.
Well played.
Nice.
Shadow King, thank you for the five.
Clips have also added on a completely different note.
How can you hate Fox's perfect coverage?
We got energy.
We got swearing and we got creative nicknames,
like the Jackster Fetnick names that I don't feel comfortable
repeating on this show.
You say once, Karen.
That's good enough.
Ross Crashdain says sorry if it's too soon to ask.
And it probably is, but I understand asking the question.
How does Kyle's passing affect silly season with all the rumors
with Spire and Hendrick?
I think it's too early to figure all that out.
I understand people curious.
Don't fault you for asking.
You're being interested in that topic,
but I feel like that's probably a topic for further down the line.
Yeah, it definitely adds to it.
It's not the most important conversation.
Yeah, it certainly adds to it.
I don't think it impacts Hendrick really,
but we'll talk about that at a later time, I think.
Indy Carson says, hey, NWP Charlotte trucks worst decision ever to collide with the Indy 500.
O Riley, c'mon Nascar, you got to do better than that.
Having three races called by rain.
Nascar's done everything they can to fight the weather in the last few years.
Rain tires, all that stuff this weekend they lost, unfortunately.
Hunter Nixon fishing says I was at the race this weekend.
Definitely the most emotional race I've been to.
We love and miss you, KFB.
Napa racing fan says mother nature was rowdy at Charlotte last weekend.
That is true.
And then we got a couple more here from Indy Carson.
Coke 600, too many crashes and weather.
Thanks Nascar and fans for standing together with the bush family.
Absolutely Indy 500 best race of the weekend.
Since I was there, seeing closest finished ever.
You need to go.
That was a good race in general, what I saw of it.
Was probably the best race of the weekend.
Best finish for sure.
The only finish really.
And then Indy Carson says favorite Kyle Busch moment in person.
2015 Miami.
I was there for Gordon's final start.
24 to 36 hours due to snow in Chicago day before and getting to Miami before race started.
Thanks to rain delay start.
So you're up against it.
But that's cool.
You got to see your favorite driver and you got to see Kyle Busch win his first championship.
Jeffrey King says Jim Roper documentary coming soon.
Five minutes long.
I got a little more story than that.
Man, Jared cranked it out in about an hour.
Sounds like Jared already did all the work.
He's got all the fun facts.
Law Pug says first race was Charlotte in 2000 and saw Dale race.
Kyle Busch was my Dale.
I've been to 60 races since and never saw KB win.
That's surprising.
That's a good.
That's a good point and something that I kind of thought about for a generation like mine that grew up without Dale Earnhardt.
Kyle Busch was the closest thing that I had.
And I think I would agree in many ways.
Law Pug adds that fans since 08 as my uncle built motors for JGR was at the race and cried a lot in the stands.
That's a very cool connection.
Hope you're doing all right.
Law Pug Napa racing fan says favorite KFB ad.
He's all over the track.
Wait, is Kyle in reverse?
Yeah, you don't see that every day.
That is bad, bad driving.
This is not like Kyle at all.
Meanwhile, Busch is tied to a set of tires.
That's a good one.
My favorite might be the one of him with the puppies and kittens and baby seals on his car.
Design a car.
I love you.
I love you and the dad's like, oh, thanks, sweet.
No, put that on the spoiler.
You had that one during that time period and you had it's to any time.
Those are some good ones, man.
Side note, thinking of M&M's, I did say that even though, you know, that relationship ended a few years back, I did say that they did pay tribute and honor him as well.
Yeah, yes.
Now the tributes from all outside the like NASCAR racing world, I mean, have blown my mind as well.
It just goes to show how huge of an impact he had.
Like you said, he's kind of the closest thing to Earnhardt since Earnhardt in a lot of ways.
And part of that was the brand, the energy, the reach.
He embraced it.
I want to shout out our good buddy Jensen, Aloha Jensen.
He also donated $100 to the bundle of joy fund.
Very generous.
That was awesome.
That's super cool.
Shout out to Jensen.
Final few super chats here from the Dom Goblin.
I will always cherish going to the premiere for Rowdy.
I got to ask Kyle a question.
I sat next to Danny, one of the best nights ever.
Kyle was my number one.
That's cool.
Hold on to those memories.
That was such a good night.
And I don't remember if Dom got one, but I got a signed poster from the premiere of the rowdy kind of like what they call like the cinematic poster or whatever.
That one's never, never going away.
From NWP pick monkey.
Sad we'll never get Kyle versus Brexton in trucks.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And no worries, Jeffrey King.
That was a, it was.
That was your good.
You're all good, Jeffrey.
But thanks for the super chat.
And then Dom Goblin says KB was the only driver to win at all current tracks.
I'm sure he would have been in the mix at San Diego.
Good road racer last few years.
So could have kept adding to that, but.
And then, oh, then we got one more, two more.
Sorry from PT and Billy after Sunday, the fire suits will go away for now.
For those of you that don't know PT and Billy, I've got to know him a lot because he's from this Nashville area.
He, he always wore what it was, the Gibbs days or RCR days.
He had, he had some, some fire suits, not like the same identical pat like materials, but he wore like a fire suit with the logos and stuff to the races of Kyle Busch.
And I think he was telling me he was kind of undecided on which one he was going to wear a Gibbs one or an RCR one.
But no, I think that's, I think that's fitting man to come on out to the race this weekend wearing one and then, and then kind of put that one to the side.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's cool.
And then a final few here, Steve O for Kyle.
Everything's great.
Classic.
Dom Goblin says they gave those out.
Dang, I didn't get one.
I didn't get one.
But you got the great memories though.
So hold on to those.
Hold on to those tightly.
Agree with them.
Martin fan for life chat rock the donations 100% right.
Super cool to see all the money raised for for Kyle and Samantha's charity.
And then lastly from Napa racing fan.
I want to fly like an eagle.
Beautiful.
Good stuff.
Well, thank you everyone for being here tonight.
I think this was a.
It was a great show.
I think it was a really fun show.
We talked a lot of racing.
We remembered somebody great and unique Kyle Busch memories.
And hopefully this helped everyone who is still processing because I think we all are.
Hopefully this helped with the with the healing and grieving process to some degree.
We appreciate you all sticking with us and watching every week, watching tonight, listening.
If you're listening right now, we'll be back next week, Wednesday night, June 3rd, 8pm Eastern on the iceberg.
You can subscribe to both of these gentlemen.
Their links to their channels are down in the video description below.
We'll catch you then have a wonderful weekend.
Folks, stay safe and we'll talk to you again super soon.
Let me do my job.
Let's go.
About this episode
Hosts remember Kyle Busch with personal Bristol and Nashville memories, then revisit the weekend’s Charlotte chaos—weather-shortened racing, lightning and rain cautions, and the “Coca Cola 559.5” finish. Daniel Suárez’s wet victory lane gets tied back to Kyle’s signature bow, while Toyota/JGR strength, stage points, and restart timing shape the race talk. The show also pivots to silly season charter rumors, championship math, and Charlotte’s standout racing feel, plus listener tributes and fundraising updates.
Original notes
It has been a tough week since the passing of Kyle Busch. We want to do our best to both pay respect to a legend of our sport as well as give you all at home some time to get away from all that has happened and talk racing. We hope you enjoy. Visit the Daily Downforce at dailydownforce.com
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