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Well, you've crashed under 100 miles an hour.
You've crashed over 100 miles an hour.
You've crashed over 200 miles an hour.
Now over 300 miles an hour, it's probably enough.
Breathe a sigh of relief and just go, what just happened?
Is it peed in your face yet?
Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR
on Fox.
And today, we have two great friends, Tony, Leah.
Thanks for taking the time today to fill us in on life.
I guess that's the only way I know
how to start this conversation, because I feel like that you guys
go as much as Delaney and I do all over the place.
But thanks for taking the time.
No, thanks for having me.
So I guess the first question is, tell me about this wreck.
Yeah, definitely not what I saw in the playbook for Sunday
by any means.
But yeah, we, Doug Coletta, we raced together clear back
in the 90s in USAC and Sprint cars.
And Doug wins a championship.
We win a championship the next year against him.
And then he goes drag racing.
And we go the NASCAR route and don't see each other again
until literally till COVID.
And I see Doug racing with Leah.
But we've been good friends and have a lot of respect
for each other.
And Doug's literally the last guy you
would think that you'd ever have to worry about on anything.
It was weird, though, with the way that that wing drop like that
in the front.
Well, it's still under review, yes.
Exactly what came first.
But essentially, whether it lost a valve stem
or whether the tire got cut, the tire ended up
coming apart, getting the A-arm
and drop that corner on the ground.
And when it did that, it just drags Doug's car
across the center line to us.
And the way our cars are, the windshields
don't come all the way back to your peripheral vision.
So it's out further because you run 300 miles an hour.
You don't need to know what's directly 90 degrees.
You don't need to know what's in your blind spot.
Right.
So I don't even seem coming.
And when I climb his wheel, it gets up.
And looking at it on video, I'm
glad it didn't get over the wall.
If it got over the wall, it was going to be a much larger crash.
But we made contact at 240 miles an hour.
Holy crap.
So that's definitely the fastest crash.
Somebody had put something online and said, well,
you've crashed under 100 miles an hour.
You've crashed over 100 miles an hour.
You've crashed over 200 miles an hour.
Now over 300 miles an hour, it's probably enough.
So I'm with them.
I don't really want to crash anymore.
But yeah, it just was a crazy circumstance.
And I think it's the great thing that I have learned and enjoy
about drag racing is that you don't
have that driver rivalry like what we had in an S-car,
and Indy car, and Sprint cars, and other forms of motorsports.
Because you're literally running in your lane.
So when something like that happens,
somebody had a problem.
Something happened.
But the second words out of my mouth when they got to me
were, is Doug OK?
And Doug, all he cared about was, was I OK?
And I think that's a statement to what
camaraderie we have in NHRA that we really,
we've had in other forms of motorsports.
But this is after a run, we both lost cars
that we're trying to race in a six-race countdown
to try to win a championship.
So that was a big drama for both of us.
What did you think about all that?
Have you wrecked anything like that?
Yes, in 2020, wonderful year of COVID.
I had a fly high situation.
My chassis broke in half at about 200 feet.
And same thing, Tony's on the starting line.
I'm in the car, you just see like a plume of smoke
and debris and you don't know what's happening.
I was OK, thanks to our safety apparatuses.
But I was on the starting line when they're running.
And for those that aren't following NHRA points,
I think Doug was in third at that point.
Tony is in first.
And so this is second round of the first race
of the countdown.
So each round is like so much is on the line.
And you're watching, and from the starting line,
you're trying to figure out which car is getting small
quicker, which one's more ahead.
So they reach the finish line.
And for all of us, our eyes go to the scoreboard.
What do we run?
Where are the blue lights for the wind?
Saw that we didn't win.
And then all of this massive smoke.
And then the first thing I heard over the PA was, oh,
and their parachutes are tangled and Doug gets into Tony.
And then it's just pure silence.
And I go to radio check, Tony.
And silence, silence, nothing there.
And then, of course, I don't have a scooter
because we'd parked so close to the staging lanes
and was able to get a ride down with Tim Wilkerson.
And again, there's nothing on the radio
that I'm hearing from our team, from Tony.
So just trying to think of the best case scenario,
definitely not the worst.
But then as I'm going down the side of the racetrack,
I start seeing some debris.
And I'm like, those are our body panels.
Those are our renais stickers.
And then I come up to Doug's car.
And Doug's car is sideways.
And Doug is already out.
And then Tony's is a little bit farther down.
And Tony was already out.
And I mean, then you just breathe a sigh of relief
and just go, what just happened?
Tony is asking me what just happened.
And I'm like, ah, I have no idea.
The jumbo tron was way behind me.
And man, from there, you've got two incredible race
machines that are now out of commission.
And Doug, that's a testament to their team.
They turned around, got their spare car out
within 60 minutes.
We're in the next round, believe won the next round
and went to the final.
But we would have had to do the exact same thing
given if we won that round and we were also prepared to.
So it, very scary, but it's part of what you subscribe for,
I guess, like a small percentage of it.
But yeah, I don't, let's not do that anymore.
You know, we'll wreck or something.
And that's always the conversation.
If you're going to race, you're going to wreck.
Yeah.
And that's a great lesson for all the people
who are pretty slack on their safety stuff.
I see it time and time again.
And Keelan wears me out.
He's like, dad, I don't understand
why we change all this stuff so much.
I don't understand why you're so concerned
about my head height or my insert
because he grows like a freaking weed.
So you got to change this stuff all the time.
And it takes a couple hours to pour the insert
every time you do it.
I said, you're not, you're not preparing for every day.
You're preparing for that one moment for it to be right.
That's right.
And it's, I think people forget that
it's not the scenario that we're planning for.
It's the somebody else's scenario
that we can't plan for that.
And that was a perfect example of it Sunday.
I mean, Doug's the last guy I would worry about.
I mean, I'd have more confidence
because of our history together.
And so when that happened, even when you find out
that we both crashed into each other,
you're like, I know whatever happened wasn't
because he did something wrong.
It's something happened.
Yeah, it wasn't.
It wasn't me banging into the side of you
because I was pissed off at you
or something that you did wrong.
No, and you can see Doug's right front.
He's got it turned, trying to not go over
that center.
I mean, immediately it's still at 300 miles an hour
trying to make sure he doesn't hit Tony.
So what was the difference in a NASCAR wreck compared to a,
compared to a, was that the first time you'd crashed it?
That's the first time I've crashed anything
in drag racing, but really took a small nap.
So I really don't have a clear answer for that,
but literally knowing what I feel like this week.
I mean, we've crashed hard at, you know,
I crashed in your car at Charlotte and Saturday
did the same thing on Sunday
and the cup car blown two tires out.
Felt worse than what I feel this week.
The biggest thing is just the fact
that I banged my head a little bit.
And you're old and I'm old.
Thanks for reminding me that you too are old.
We're both old now.
So every time that something happens,
we could fall down the stairs and hurt ourselves
the worst that we probably could in the race car.
Exactly.
But it's, yeah, I think that was probably
the bigger concern was that I banged my head
and took a really short nap.
But physically from that standpoint,
I don't feel any different than I would have
if we would have had a crash in a cup car
or if I had a crash to sprint car.
Well, I actually thought he was almost Iron Man
afterwards because the HRA came over
with the crash box information
and the raw data showed it was a 50 G swing.
And from that initial hit when he got shoved over
and toppled back and then, you know,
Tony's like, you know, I feel pretty good.
I'm going to do all the precautions
and doing the concussion protocol.
I'm like, man, he, you know, is speaking very well
and his balance was fine.
I'm like, that was, you know, a huge hit.
But then the filtered data came back
and it was really 20 Gs.
And that made more sense for how he was.
Otherwise I was like.
50 Gs would have been a big shot.
That would have been a big shot.
We used to, now they do all the mouthpieces
and things on the NASCAR world
and they compare that to the football data.
We're not really hitting anything that hard
compared to how hard those football guys hit.
I mean, it's still hard,
but it's, it's those, those football players,
they, they pull some massive.
We always talk about what the hard part,
it doesn't matter how fast you're going.
It's about how quick it stops.
Right.
So the good thing is our lanes are pretty close together.
The walls are pretty close together.
So it's, it's hard to get a lot of angle across the track.
And it does happen in the shorter wheelbase cars.
It does happen, but when you're running 300 miles an hour,
when something happens,
you're not going to just make an immediate 90 degree turn
and have a 300 mile an hour head on crash.
So I think that's what's different in this that,
you know, the lanes are so close together
where when we ran really wide racetracks
and have a big corner,
if you were on the bottom, by the time you got there,
the corner had moved around a lot further
and you had a bigger angle that you hit at.
So I think that's a good thing
that we, that we don't deal with on the NHRA side.
Well, we hope it goes better as you go through the,
go through the end of the season.
I know that's not the, not the way that you want it
to go, but good news, bad news.
You kind of got kicked out of your seat
because boss is back next year.
Leah's getting back in the car
and that has to be exciting.
I know we're talking about crashing and not a great week,
but this has to be exciting after the amount of time
that you've, that you've spent out of the car
and to be able to consistently get behind the wheel again
and do what you love to do has to be
really exciting for you.
It's, it's wild.
We tested, I tested Tony's car in Richmond.
So about May and after that I knew absolutely
going to gear up for 2026.
And then I'm like this off season,
I'm going to do all of my, all of my regimen,
my simulations, my practicing gear up.
Well, then after Tony's wreck
and we just, we just wanted to play it safe.
I drove the spare car on Monday
and I was back in the seat much sooner
than I was anticipating.
And I was actually exactly where I wanted to be
performance wise on the track.
The car ran really well.
I did really well.
And I was like, all right, put me in.
You just put me in, now put me in.
But they've got a lot of work to do to wrap up,
to compete for that championship.
But yeah, next year it's, there's a lot.
You know, we've had some big announcements today
that come out with, besides just me being in the car
but where Tony will be.
And that specifically would be in the other lane
in another car with another team.
So I got to, I got to hang out with, with coach
when we came, I'm going to call her coach.
And it was by far, it gave me a whole new perspective
on what drag racing is all about
because we sat up there and watched all the divisions.
And she explained the difference between all the divisions
and was picking things out.
And I'm like, holy crap, this is just,
you don't know the details of a particular racing
division until you get somebody who knows
how to do it at a high level.
I had a great time with you guys on the suite
at Charlotte.
It was fun though, because of the fact that,
you know, I've gone to drag racing and it's just,
you know, you think it's, I know it's not,
but you think it's two cars doing down a track.
I see all the work going on,
but when you start to pick apart the details
of what somebody does or cylinder goes out
or out of the rubber, whatever, whatever was happening
every time you went down the racetrack,
that has to be fun for you guys,
even though that you're going to compete
against each other, but teaching him along the way
to have all those details and the experience
that have gone with it, that,
I would assume was fun.
I'm sure sometimes you were like, hey, you know, get off me.
I think they were, I was excited about learning from Leah
and having her as a coach.
And then people are going, are you sure,
are you sure that's a good idea?
And not because she's not a good coach,
but because of our relationship and having us as husband
and wife and her telling me how to do this.
But she doesn't beat around the bush.
No, not at all.
No, she doesn't let me either.
It's not like, oh, give us off at all.
I love it.
It's direct.
I told her when we started, you know,
and she was going to help me with this.
I said, I don't want to do this 98% right.
I want to do it 100% right.
So if I'm leaving anything on the table,
you have to tell me that I'm not doing this right.
And, but the way that, the way from day one
that we went about this together,
she is a very, very good teacher.
She knows how to say it in a way
that you're going to understand.
If you don't do it right and you make a mistake,
she's not going to go, man, you screwed up.
She's going to say, you know, this was off,
but this is how this is what you do to fix it
or this will help.
And so it really made the process
of learning a whole different sport.
The driving part from A to B isn't the hardest part.
It's all the procedure and the cadence of the procedure
and all the different things
that you have to think about.
What classifies a good driver in drag racing
is a totally different criteria
than how they would judge you and I
as a good, good race car driver in NASCAR.
So having her experience and our relationship
and knowing how to talk to each other
really was a huge asset,
probably accelerated that learning curve from me.
Well, I think it was really interesting.
She's obviously been a great coach
because, and you must be a good student
because you guys have got there pretty quick.
Fantastic student.
I mean, I think Tony saw in himself
a little bit short and anybody listening or watching this
definitely would categorize him
as one of the world's best wheelmen.
So he has the natural talent behind the wheel
but his discipline to want to be the best
and I don't have to teach him how to learn.
He already knows how to learn in any type of race car.
So it's just a slightly different conversation.
But he, even when he would have an absolutely perfect run
and he is staged thin and a perfect burnout
and great brake pressure and a snap throttle,
he's still actually looking for something else.
And so for a while like, nope, this is good.
This is good.
And then when there might be one thing
that would be a little bit off,
as you get comfortable other things happen to rise up
and he would get so upset and so mad.
And recently when you had done one thing twice in a row,
he was so mad like for an entire day,
I can't even drive this race car.
What am I even doing?
Can I even do it right at the same time?
Tony, it's okay.
It was just a little thing.
But just a statement to how perfect you want to be.
But there is that whole other element of the reaction time
and there are different ways to go about improving that.
And that is very driver-centric.
There's different ways I go about it
and Tony is learning his own way to go about it.
Now, wait a second, is this a,
are you insinuating that older people
have to go about it a different way?
I'm trying to just, because I feel like
that there might be a little side jab in there
of trying to get there from a,
is it trying to repeat the process
because our reflexes are slow?
No, no, Tony will be the first to say
you very much just like testing and practicing
in all forms of racing, right?
You as a teammate know that for sure.
And so he will work really, really hard
to not have to do that.
Which then he does really well.
Others, I will work really, really hard
at perfecting that craft and do a whole bunch of work
and just to get maybe the same result
or a better result just a different way.
But it is funny.
I think it goes back to when we raced together though
and when you were with us at SHR.
I mean, we had four drivers and every Sunday
I would go to all four of you
right before the race started.
And you, it was like, you drop you in there,
you tap you on the head and what I always tell you
before you go off, go play nice with the other kids today.
That's right.
And make you laugh and that was it.
And off you went.
That's all I had to tell you.
Eric Amarillo, different conversation.
Cole Custer, different conversation.
Chase Briscoe, different conversation.
Brian Priest, different conversation.
All four drivers, there were different things
that you had to remind them and some needed encouragement.
Some needed rain back.
Some of them you just had to give them a different mindset
and something to think about
that was unique about that track.
And I think that's where how she works through things
is different a lot of times than how I work through things.
And Matt Hagen's our funny car driver.
He sometimes works in a way different way than both of us.
So it is about how people go about the learning process
and how they go about how do they make themselves better?
What are the steps that they do that they know work for them?
So that is part of the learning process with Leah
that I watch how she does things to make herself better.
Sometimes I try it and I don't feel like
it does anything for me.
I need to find a different channel
and a different way to figure that out.
So it doesn't, there's no one playbook for it.
Every person's different, how we all learn,
how we all process information,
how we all understand what it takes
to get two more percent out of ourself.
That's the things that we sometimes can't teach each other
but it's finding your own way to get there.
Well, it's been really fun to watch.
And before I get too far down the road here,
she said she's driving.
So where does that leave you?
I am going to be driving too.
So I said I would not race against my wife
and I've lied to myself obviously.
It's like saying you're not gonna race against your son.
I went down that road.
That's never gonna not happen.
Well imagine if I have to go down the road
and I have to say that it's happened twice now.
But yeah, I have a great opportunity
with Richard Freeman and everyone at Elite Motorsports
to drive a top fuel car next year.
And I didn't think that that would even be a possibility
nor did I honestly at first and on paper
that I think it was a very good idea.
I thought if we race each other and I win,
I get kicked to the couch
for an undisclosed amount of time.
If I lose then I have to sit there
and listen to my phone blow up
about how I got my ass kicked by my wife.
Yeah, that'll be typically the worst part of it.
That is the much greater concern.
Yeah, I at least knew that the couch we bought
was comfortable and I could sleep on it
for multiple days if needed.
But the phone call part would be the hard part.
But no, it's, Leah's been the one
that actually has convinced me that,
hey, this isn't a bad thing.
I mean, we can definitely do this.
It kind of is a scenario like what Dale Senior had
with Richard Childress Racing and DEI.
It's just kind of the reverse order.
So we have TSR and we have Leah getting back in the car,
but we have a marketing alliance
with Elite Motor Sports
and they have pro stock cars, mountain motor.
They've got a big fleet of cars
that aren't even in our categories.
But we've done the marketing alliance
and then an opportunity came up
and Richard was able to acquire a team that was for sale
and next thing you know,
then I'm getting a call that I've got a car to drive
if I want it.
So I'm excited about it.
I think it's, we've talked about it since then
and this has happened very, very fast.
It's a lot's happened in a short amount of time,
but we've talked about how much of a unique situation it is
for us to actually be able to do what we love
and actually compete against each other.
And it's not gonna be fun when we have to run.
It's not like we're looking forward
to the bracket going, all right,
if we get by our first round matchups,
we're gonna be running each other second round.
We can't wait.
I bet that changes.
I bet you guys look forward to that
after you do it once or twice.
It'll be, I think she will.
She will look forward to that way more than I will,
but I still think it's gonna be fun.
I think our personalities can definitely handle that
and first and foremost, before the race team,
our relationship and our family comes first
and no matter what the outcome is at a drag race,
we're getting in the car together as a family
and we're going home as a family
and wherever I have to sleep
at the end of the day is where I sleep.
I think a lot of what moved this was
we want to race and have fun, right?
And then do it with who we wanna do it with
and we enjoy our teams and the question was
can we build a second top field team?
No, we're not gonna do that.
It was a lot of work in the beginning.
We don't wanna put our team through that.
It's a lot of money.
And so when Richard bought Josh Hart's operation
and this is all within the last couple of weeks,
Tony is the main portion of the pie
and as he calls it all the time, I'm the crust.
And so the three of us work very closely
with Richard, me every day
and the biggest part of it is getting that team funded.
Tony is not going to race that car
until it's properly funded.
And so that falls on the shoulders of elite, myself,
TSR, TSR still needs to be funded itself
and we will be competing for a championship.
So when we look at it, we love the people at elite
and want to race with them.
You wanna race with your friends.
So it's just a different type of expansion for us.
And then hopefully that'll lead into
some type of technical alliance along the way
that some of the parts are very similar
and you wanna make sure the mindsets
of the crew chiefs are similar.
And so we're in the process
of selecting crew chiefs right now.
So I feel like that team is the extension
of what we've already created.
So I think that they will do very well
out of the box as soon as they get going.
Was there ever a moment that you thought
when you had Dom, was there ever a moment
after you've been mom for a while that you thought about
I might not ever drive again because I like this
or was it always that burning desire
to get back in the car?
There was always that burning desire
and it specifically came at the moment
that I lost the world championship in 2023.
Final round at the final race, everything on the line.
Me and mine versus Doug Coletta and his
and we lost that round.
We lost the championship and I knew
and I was the only one that knew
that I wouldn't be racing that next year.
And I also knew that I would be back
to go back after it again.
Now is there a soft side that has come out?
Absolutely, but at the same time
I've missed the intensity that I feel
and how I get geared up
and my mindset when I'm racing.
It's addicting.
It is and it's so much a part of who I am.
So the times that I have been able to test
including this past week, I instantly have that back
and I find as part of myself that I've missed
and I can definitely balance them both.
Yeah, there has been no doubt
and there's this past weekend after that crash
and everybody walked away
and both race cars were built by PBRC
and that's one of the cars I'll be racing next year,
one of the new ones.
It's a safe sport overall.
Tony's been on some keyboard wars this past week.
Everyone has a lot of opinions
and what you had said,
you have a higher chance of getting hurt,
driving to work every single day than we do
in these race cars.
So why sacrifice something that you absolutely love
and what propels us and who we are,
live together, work together, travel together,
we will be competing against each other
at all brings life to us.
And now we get to do it with Dom and I get to hold him.
Actually, at the end of my second run on Monday,
Tony came from the motor home
because he was recovering and he had Dom
and I have never gotten out of a race car
and I'm not sure I will, right?
When you're in a race, they're not allowed down there
and here comes my baby, Tony is holding him
and I still have my helmet on
and I take it off and take my hybrid off
and there he was and it was cool.
So you think that you guys think
that this is difficult right now
as far as deciding to get back in the car,
you're gonna compete against Leah.
This is not even hard
because what'll happen is Dom
is going to get to the point that he's old enough to race
and then you have to start making harder decisions.
So the hard decision is, are we gonna go straight?
Are we gonna race on dirt?
Are we gonna race on asphalt?
When do these conversations start?
Because you can't get out of them.
He's not gonna play golf.
We're gonna try.
Not gonna work, you watched it.
I know, I saw.
I was gonna try to use your playbook.
The thing that I have learned about racing families
is they don't ever quit racing.
If you're a true racer,
you race your whole life,
you race whatever it is
and you race all the way through.
So I tried to make myself think
that that wasn't gonna happen.
Not even possible.
It's funny because I went to Millbridge this week
and watched the kids race on Tuesday night at Millbridge
and I remember going back to the hotel
and telling Leah, I said,
I just saw our future.
Yeah, you did.
It's like, and I was just laughing
because I'm like, I don't know
where to laugh or cry about it.
Yeah, as soon as the announcement went out
that Leah was pregnant,
that was immediately what across social media
and our friends were like,
are you buying junior dragsters?
Are you buying quarter midgets?
What are you buying?
That's what I'm asking.
I'm appreciating the time right now
where we're not having to make that decision.
No, it's coming.
Well, you think it's not far away.
It's literally four years.
It's sooner than we think, obviously,
but the thing that it was amazing
when we sat down and had a conversation
of what are we gonna do with this?
And the conversation lasted less than 60 seconds.
We literally, before the conversation started already,
we're on the same page of saying,
we're not buying anything until he looks us in the eye
and says, this is what I wanna do and I'm all in.
So...
However, I don't think we did also talk,
we didn't talk about that that's a child
and then make a decision one day
and the next day it's something else.
And so you would have to be,
you need to be persistent with them, right?
And you need to teach them dedication
and not giving up and so whatever that looks like.
But I don't think we care which aisle,
which lane, which racetrack if he decides to race.
But we've been in the racetracks our entire life.
So wouldn't be a surprise to see us there
and I don't think it'd be a surprise to see us
somewhere else with them.
Nobody will be surprised.
The great thing is not dirt bikes.
The great thing is we have a good friend
that already has a playbook of how this works
and how to navigate it.
So it's like, hey, I need some help here.
How do we do this and do this the way
that we would want to do it?
So when you go back and you kind of analyze all of this
from where you guys are now with TSR,
what you've done in Dragster
and you've been around it enough now
to see the NASCAR side of things
and the things that he done.
How would you compare just the way
that the two sports work,
the two racing divisions from NHRA to NASCAR?
Because I hear you talk about 1990,
it sounds like 1990s NASCAR to me
is what it sounds like where the group of people
travel together, you drink beer together,
you eat together, you wreck together.
Everybody does everything together.
And I think that NASCAR has changed
from what it was in the 1990s to what it is now.
Compare the experience from what you've had
the last several years to what you had in NASCAR.
And I'm not trying to put you on the spot
to say the last five years,
just in general from when you started
to where you are starting this now.
Yeah, you and I have spent the majority
of our lives in the NASCAR system
and I don't think the system's wrong,
I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
At this time and this point in my life,
I love the NHRA environment.
I love that it's not March of the Elephants
where all the crew guys come in at a certain time
and they have to be out of the garage at a certain time.
They each team comes in at whatever time
they wanna get to the track each day,
they leave when they wanna get done at the track each day.
But what I do enjoy about it
and that I feel like brings us back
to very early 2000s or the 90s was
you'll have teams and even with our two teams.
I mean, the top fuel team might get done
before the funny car team's done service in their car.
Our guys are milling around with the funny car team
and there's other guys from other teams
that they're done servicing their cars
and the fans are gone for the day by this time.
But they're all milling around,
the whole pit areas milling around,
visiting with each other
and drinking beer in the pits together
and it's like, wow, this reminds me
of when I used to race sprint cars back in the day
and when we started in NASCAR,
guys from different teams were milling around.
The races I went to last year,
the teams don't mill around with anybody
but their own organizations.
They don't go talk to other people in different teams.
So it's just a different time in the NASCAR sport
but I do enjoy that.
I do enjoy the camaraderie with the entire pit area
and it's people from ProStock,
it's people from ProStock bike,
it's different funny car teams coming to Dragster teams
because they all know each other.
It's the same as the motorsports industry
has always been, it's a tight knit family
and to be able to do that two nights
during the weekend on Friday and Saturday nights
and be able to mill around and see people
and just kind of let your guard down
and relax and have fun being with your peers.
I miss that.
Yeah, well, I think as you added Dominic
into this whole equation,
for me it was something that I always hoped would happen
was to see him as dad.
I'm glad that he met you
because that kind of brought it all to be real.
Is that part of the equation?
Yeah, I think back and I wrote this story down.
So I landed in Kansas one day
and my friend there calls me and says,
hey, I need a favor.
Like, okay, what do you need?
He's like, I left the monkey at the airport.
I need, it's in the plane.
I need you to go to my plane.
I need you to go get my monkey
and I need you to take it and put it in my motor home.
So that scares me a little bit from a parent.
Did he forget the monkey?
No, I think he decided to go do something else
at that particular time or go somewhere,
had an appearance or I think he was late
is the way I remember it.
No way.
I think so.
I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure he was late.
So I gotta know, have we had,
I gotta, there has to be some fun moments so far
where he's like, what the hell do I do?
He's got peed in the face, pooped up the back
or something that, because I think back to this monkey
and I'm like, the monkey has beat him up,
the monkey has been left in the plane.
What in the world has happened?
The angle that you think you're working on this
is spinning 180 degrees as we speak right now.
Go ahead, answer his question.
Okay, so he didn't leave the monkey, right?
Okay.
No, he made sure that he had a plan for the monkey
before he left the monkey.
Okay, well, I'm gonna start off with,
Tony has not had the opportunity to forget
or leave Dominic anywhere
because that requires carrying the mental load.
Okay.
So that's wrapped up with myself,
but what we're laughing about is,
the not once, not twice, but third time that stopped.
Three, why I forgot our dog at the racetrack.
A, because I'm pregnant
and I have pregnancy brain B at Phoenix
when mom brain and someone else was walking him
and I just thought that he was anyway.
Two days in a row at Phoenix, by the way.
Usually the first thing that happens when you have kids
is you wanna get rid of the dogs.
That was the first thing that happened for me.
Delana and I love the dogs
and the first thing that happened was baby dogs.
Who left cash on them this weekend?
I didn't leave him.
No, but you suggested that he not be here.
There's a difference between making other arrangements
as we previously discussed
and literally having that pet with you on the road
and it's in the hospitality trailer by itself
because it got left at the racetrack at the end of the day.
The first time we were in Bristol
and we have the hospitality trailer, our motor home,
we're trying to get to the plane,
we're in the car, headed to the airport,
realize I've forgotten cash
and I'm pregnant at the time and I was so mad
only because I knew that Tony would be holding that
against me for so long.
By the way, I didn't even say anything.
Like that question did not come from me.
No, I know, we haven't even seen any of the questions.
I know.
It's like, Moi, mom of the year.
Who's stricter?
Who's the enforcer here?
Mom.
Yeah, dad gets all the fun in the playtime.
When he cries himself to sleep,
the next day I'll go, yeah,
after you got done crying yourself to sleep,
she came and gave me a dose of it
and I cried myself to sleep
so we're on the same page, bud.
Has he peed in your face yet?
No.
You've got to change a diaper for that to happen.
I've changed.
My man, I have changed two and a half,
two and a half diapers and somebody goes,
well, how do you change a half?
This was literally at the end of the day
and I got his diaper off, got him cleaned up
and then to leave for the bath before bed.
Cleaned up as in pee or cleaned up as in poo?
No, poo, poo and pee.
I mean, I've seen the video of the mask.
I can do it.
You can do it by yourself without a mask now.
Yeah, I can do it.
Well, I haven't tried lately
and now he is squirmosaurus rex.
So the element of difficulty has gone up,
watching these guys.
It's the ankle grab, man.
Time up.
Yeah, like I say, now he's learning his voice
so you grab that and then he's going to tell you
he does not like that,
but she does a really good job of putting her foot down
in those scenarios and when he wants to push back,
she's definitely going to be the one
that's going to be the tougher that he is.
Knowing you, what have you bought him
that he's like five years from being able to use?
I haven't bought him anything yet.
Nothing?
No.
Oh no, a lot of Amazon.
Yeah, a lot of Amazon.
Our driveway for literally over probably a year
and a quarter looked like an Amazon distribution center.
Just trucks up and down.
That does change.
But I think at our ages,
I mean, she's in her 30s, I'm in my 50s now.
The amount of friends and people we knew
and know sent so much stuff.
We haven't bought anything.
I mean, we've bought,
we have so many clothes for this kid
that he wears it one time
and then by the next time it comes around to wear it again,
he's already grown out of it
because of how much has been sent to us.
So Leah's sister now has a child,
so Leah's an aunt and we've been taking
a lot of the clothes that we were gifted
and get a great sponsor.
Gifting him down.
I will say that there was a walker that we got.
We had to prepare Dominic first, first race
with the US nationals at nine months old.
And so we're practicing in that,
which he got second place.
We had a practice car with a walker.
Found out exactly what brand they were gonna be racing in.
She immediately gets on Amazon,
finds it, gets it to the house the next day
and we practiced religiously up till the event.
But what I wanna say about that
is the practice walker he has.
And then if he saw his race car walker that we have,
it's this elevated Indy car looking red hot rod.
He screams when he sees that
cause he wants to be in that one.
Screw this other little practice thing.
So now we don't let him see the other one.
And that's so, anyway, he rolls around,
walks around in the race car one.
It's this absolute favorite toy, favorite thing.
His favorite color is red.
Any fire extinguisher, any red car.
Yeah.
But no, we haven't, we haven't bought anything
because we're on the road all the time.
Well, and you forget when you have,
when you have everything that you need it just,
it all just kind of functions.
And I think that, you know,
for us that was always kind of the way it was.
It was just Keeling came along.
It was just a new, new way that you live.
You had cribs and walkers and everything that you needed.
You just had to have more stuff.
That and, and as far as toys,
you don't even need to buy toys.
Like a half drink water bottle is the best toy for him
or the spring door stop.
He's mesmerized by that.
So it's crazy.
You buy, you acquire things to keep them entertained
and then everyday things that are already around the house
entertain them all day long.
Yeah.
Well, it won't be long and he will be mobile
and then it becomes a, then it becomes a new name
or a new, a new game, I guess is the best way to put it.
So last question, have you ever driven anything else
besides a going straight?
I drove a vintage formula Ford
for a couple of races at Willow Springs.
And I love that.
It's actually didn't suck podium a couple of times.
And nope, drag racing has been my jam
from factory stock nostalgia, funny cars
all the way from the beginning.
Will you ever drive anything else?
Or are you just a straight-liner now?
When am I ever, whenever I said no.
No, I'm just saying, I mean,
I saw you jump in the midget that you guys,
you know, that was great.
Oh, sorry.
I did run Tony's 410 Wings brand.
Oh, you did?
I did.
Where were we?
We tested at Putnamville, Indiana.
Yeah.
Wow.
This is what leads me to the statement
that Tony is a fantastic student and a terrible teacher.
I would, I said, well, as soon as the tires get
spinning and you see oil pressure flip the,
or flip the fuel on and flip the ignition switch,
she goes, what after that?
I said, sneak up on it.
Oh, that sounds exactly like my first dirt car experience.
My man here says, hey, I need you to come run
this El Dorre race.
Okay, never driven anything dirt in my life.
I get there and he says, all right,
when you want to go, push the clutch in.
Mike, push the clutch in.
Well, he got exactly what he deserved.
I destroyed two race cars and looked like a complete fool.
And didn't have very much fun,
but that sounds exactly like my first dirt experience as well.
I just had to watch her run her first run
to then sit there and be able to talk about it.
But the hard thing about,
we put her in a 410 cubic inch wing sprint car.
Yeah.
That's brave.
You have to hustle them.
That would have been great to know in the beginning
that I need to be at least, you know,
partially through the straight.
I mean, I did Corey Kruseman's sprint car drive
in school years ago and do understand, you know,
turn right to turn left.
And I mean, I thought I was ripping.
Oh my gosh.
I thought I was just, you know, nose into the infield.
I saw video just rallying around
and my forearms were on fire
and I had to drive later that weekend.
My forearms were on fire for two weeks.
And I'm really, yeah.
Well, because I wasn't going fast enough
for the steering to work as it should.
So I'm fighting at the entire time and Tony's laughing.
Did it have more power than you thought it would have?
Oh, absolutely.
I think what scared me the most of it was,
I always thought I was going to flip over.
Clearly I'm not, but you want stability
and that's the name of the game in drag racing and traction.
And so seeing the wing just tilt
and being in the wrong direction
and, you know, not knowing my capabilities
and the car's capabilities, you know,
where is that end point?
So having to sneak up on that.
Meanwhile, like Tony's in the infield
and he's going like this, move out, you know,
move out, quit running the bottom.
So you're not going to race anything else?
I, you know, do you have any aspirations to race?
There's nothing on a list per se that I'm like,
I definitely want to try this before it's all said and done.
But, you know, I never thought I'd even be around
or involved in drag racing alone.
After being an owner, I didn't even know
I was going to ever have an opportunity to drive.
But I think in my career, in my life,
I've learned you never say never.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know I'm in my fifties.
My dad's in his eighties and still racing a three-quarter
midget now he wants to get involved
and try drag racing.
You don't miss any of it.
I miss a lot of it, actually.
Really?
I miss dirt racing more than anything.
That is probably running the dirt sprint cars
is what I miss the most.
You know, I loved what we did with NASCAR
and I think NASCAR works really hard still
to continue to evolve and make things better.
But, you know, I, there's no shot
I'm going back to IndyCar.
I'm way too heavy, way too old to do that.
Even the dirt sprint car stuff.
I mean, in your fifties, I mean, the pace has changed.
Pace is quite a bit faster.
That's the thing I noticed with Keelan.
Like the pace is just like it's,
there's never, it's just hammer.
Yeah.
Right from the time they start practice.
And it's like, do we ever just creep into things anymore?
There's no creeping into anything anymore.
I mean, it is.
When you go, it's, we're going.
If you've not been to the track before,
you're still going because you think
you know where you're going.
And it's just a, it's just a hammer down pace.
I think the game's changed.
I mean, we've been lucky enough to be
in a partnership with the SIM companies.
And eye racing has been huge.
And now things that we had to physically
go on a racetrack and we physically had to learn
and you had to be fearful of,
I might crash this race car
and A, tear up a guy's car and B, tear myself up.
Now they get to do that online.
And if they crash, they hit a button
and it gives them a brand new car in the pit
and they go right back out on the racetrack.
And that in itself, I feel like has been probably the,
I feel like one of the biggest game-changers
in motor sports is having eye racing.
I think it's great because drivers can now go to a track
before they ever see it in person.
And actually it's a good point.
Have a really good idea of where bumps are,
how to get around the track to where they're not
a nuisance when you're around them
while they're trying to learn the racetrack.
They show up and they know
and they're on pace right away because of that.
So-
It scares the shit out of me.
Absolutely.
I watch them go out there sometimes.
I'm like, oh my God, can we just,
can we just try to just creep into it?
Just maybe one or two laps, but it is-
Did you watch yourself when you drove at that age?
It's different than when I was at that age,
but maybe it was like that.
I don't remember it being like that.
I always remember just kind of creeping up
on trying to find the next marker and the next marker
and they don't try to find,
there's no try to find it.
I already got it, I'm going to it.
And I think to your point, that's just where it's become.
But thank you guys.
I know we went off on a bunch of tangents.
And congratulations on getting back in the car.
Hopefully we can find more money than we need
to put on that dragster for you to get in there
because I want to see you compete.
I want to see, really all I want to see is her beat you.
So that's really the only thing I'm looking for.
All of my buddies want to see her beat me.
So all my good friends.
Yeah. So thank you guys and good luck for the
good luck for the rest of the year.
And hopefully we'll catch up again soon.
Thanks.
Thank you.
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