606 - Cleetus McFarland: Do It For Dale

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dale Jr. Download – Episode 606: Cleetus McFarland: Do It For Dale

Release Date: February 19, 2025

In Episode 606 of The Dale Jr. Download, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. engages in an in-depth conversation with YouTube sensation Cleetus McFarland. The episode delves into Cleetus's journey from a hobbyist content creator to a prominent figure in the automotive and racing community. Throughout the discussion, they explore the challenges, milestones, and future aspirations that have shaped Cleetus's career.

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1. Cleetus McFarland's Journey as a YouTuber

Background and Early Beginnings Cleetus McFarland, born Garrett Mitchell in Omaha, Nebraska, began his YouTube career in 2009. Initially creating RC plane and boat videos, Cleetus's passion for content creation was evident from a young age.

Transition to "Cletus" In July 2015, Cleetus's channel underwent a transformation when a spoof video led his friend Kyle Loftus to nickname him "Cletus." (03:05) This moniker resonated with his growing audience, prompting Cleetus to rebrand his channel accordingly. The collaboration with Kyle Loftus of 1320 Video played a pivotal role in mentoring Cleetus, helping him navigate the complexities of content creation and social media management.

Notable Quote:

"Kyle helped me spread my wings and create my own thing so that I'm doing what I do today." – Cleetus McFarland (05:34)

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2. Challenges and Milestones in Building a YouTube Channel

Audience Growth and Negative Feedback Cleetus recounts the rollercoaster of growing his YouTube channel, emphasizing the emotional highs of reaching milestones like 100, 500, and up to 10,000 subscribers. However, he also candidly discusses the challenges posed by negative feedback and the importance of perseverance.

Notable Quote:

"People are so... they'll bring you down to rock bottom. But then... there were times when I was like, this is the greatest day of my life." – Cleetus McFarland (07:22)

Content Strategy: Titles and Thumbnails A significant turning point for Cleetus was refining his content strategy. He highlights the critical role of compelling titles and thumbnails in driving viewership, illustrating this with his most successful video: "800 horsepower Corvette vs. turbo whistles" which garnered 14 million views despite its simplistic content. (07:47)

Notable Quote:

"The recipe is more predictable now than it used to be." – Cleetus McFarland (14:44)

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3. The Birth of the "Redneck Aircraft Carrier" Project

Cleetus reveals an ambitious project: constructing a "redneck aircraft carrier" using pontoon boats to land his airplane, a Carbon Cub. (15:25) This innovative endeavor underscores his penchant for blending creativity with automotive passion.

Notable Quote:

"We're gonna put an arresting cable on. It's gonna be moving, and we'll get some headwind off of that." – Cleetus McFarland (16:02)

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4. Acquisition and Management of the Freedom Factory Racetrack

Purchasing the Track In a bold move, Cleetus purchased the DeSoto racetrack (now renamed the Freedom Factory) for $2.2 million, with $1 million financed by the owner and an additional $400,000 loaned by his business mentor, Alan. (21:28) This acquisition marked a significant investment in his racing ventures.

Challenges with Local Development Shortly after purchasing the track, local commissioners approved a massive housing development adjacent to the racetrack. Cleetus discusses the ensuing conflicts, including mandatory agreements for homeowners to acknowledge the racetrack's noise and limitations on legal actions against the owners. (20:06)

Notable Quote:

"We definitely try to be respectful to our neighbors... But we just had top fuel there, so it's gonna rattle their windows." – Cleetus McFarland (20:55)

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5. Transition into Competitive Motorsports: ARCA Series

Entering ARCA Racing Leveraging his connections with NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, Cleetus ventured into the ARCA series. He shares his initial experiences, including his first test laps at Daytona and the exhilarating yet nerve-wracking moments of competitive racing. (35:57)

Notable Quote:

"The feeling was incredible, man. I can't really put into words." – Cleetus McFarland (38:42)

Racing Setbacks and Future Aspirations Cleetus candidly discusses a pivotal race where inexperience led to a crash, emphasizing the importance of patience and learning from mistakes. He expresses eagerness to continue racing, particularly at super speedways like Talladega. (44:35)

Notable Quote:

"Views come and they go... push through." – Cleetus McFarland (13:27)

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6. Racing Strategies and Experiences

Understanding the Draft A recurring theme in their conversation is the strategic use of drafting in racing. Cleetus elaborates on the physics of the draft and how experience enables better decision-making on the track. (41:44)

Handling Crashes and Mistakes Cleetus emphasizes ownership and accountability when accidents occur on the track. He advises aspiring drivers to acknowledge their mistakes openly and support affected teams when possible. (78:32)

Notable Quote:

"You gotta just own it... get out and say, I made a mistake." – Cleetus McFarland (78:37)

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7. Life Balance: Family and Risk-Taking

Impact of Parenthood Cleetus reflects on how becoming a father has influenced his approach to risk-taking. While his adrenaline-fueled pursuits remain, he prioritizes his family's safety and well-being. (17:45)

Notable Quote:

"I think the last time... that's the drag car 250... I think about them when I'm in that." – Cleetus McFarland (18:02)

Personal Reflections and Advice In a heartfelt segment, Cleetus shares life lessons about cherishing moments, maintaining relationships, and balancing personal ambitions with family responsibilities. (83:54)

Notable Quote:

"Don't let the good times pass you by. There is..." – Cleetus McFarland (84:08)

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8. Advice for Aspiring NASCAR Drivers and Business Entrepreneurs

For NASCAR Drivers: Cleetus advises new drivers to avoid unnecessary risks by making informed decisions and staying patient. He underscores the importance of experience and understanding race dynamics before making aggressive moves. (71:31)

Notable Quote:

"Don't do what you don't know. If you're absolutely in the least amount unsure, sit still." – Cleetus McFarland (72:50)

For Business Entrepreneurs: When managing a motorsports venture, Cleetus emphasizes financial prudence. He recommends obtaining multiple opinions on expenses and maintaining strict control over business operations to prevent overspending. (80:06)

Notable Quote:

"Keep the garage, keep the key, keep the parts room locked." – Cleetus McFarland (81:17)

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9. Reflections on Legacy and Future Plans

Honoring Dale Earnhardt Sr. The episode concludes with Cleetus and Dale reflecting on the enduring legacy of Dale Earnhardt Sr. Cleetus appreciates the mantra "Do It For Dale," highlighting its significance in driving their passion and commitment to the sport. (93:57)

Notable Quote:

"It's a nod to dad and his legacy. It's tasteful and thankful." – Cleetus McFarland (94:22)

Future Endeavors Cleetus expresses his enthusiasm for future projects, including expanding his racing repertoire and enhancing the Freedom Factory's offerings. The conversation hints at upcoming races and further content creation that will continue to engage and inspire their audiences.

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Conclusion

Episode 606 of The Dale Jr. Download offers a comprehensive look into Cleetus McFarland's multifaceted career and personal life. From his humble beginnings on YouTube to his ambitious projects and racing pursuits, Cleetus exemplifies resilience, creativity, and a deep-rooted passion for motorsports. His insights provide valuable takeaways for aspiring content creators and racers alike, all while honoring the legacy of NASCAR's most iconic figures.

Do it for Dale – an epitome of dedication and legacy, as described by Cleetus McFarland.

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Notable Quotes Overview:

• 05:34 – "Kyle helped me spread my wings..."
• 07:22 – "People are so... they'll bring you down..."
• 07:47 – "The recipe is more predictable now..."
• 14:44 – "Or we'll do it. The recipe is more predictable..."
• 16:02 – "We're gonna put an arresting cable on..."
• 20:55 – "We definitely try to be respectful to our neighbors..."
• 35:57 – "The feeling was incredible, man..."
• 38:42 – "The feeling was incredible, man..."
• 44:35 – "Views come and they go... push through."
• 72:50 – "Don't do what you don't know..."
• 78:37 – "You gotta just own it..."
• 84:08 – "Don't let the good times pass you by..."
• 93:57 – "It's a nod to dad and his legacy..."

Note: Timestamps are provided in the format (MM:SS) based on the transcript timing.

Transcript

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Cletus McFarland]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Cletus McFarland]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Cletus McFarland]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Cletus McFarland]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Cletus McFarland]

Is there a video or an idea out there that you don't want to do that? You just. It's not possible at the moment, but you got this grand plan.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Should I say it? All right, well, this one we were going to keep on the wraps till it happened, but I'm going to say it because I'm with you. You're the legend.

[Cletus McFarland]

All right, it's time to bring our next guest onto the show. This is going to be a lot of fun for me. Cletus McFarland, he is a YouTube, you know, creator, something that we do here at Dirty Mo Media. I have a lot to learn about that from him. I can't wait to dig into his approach and just hear his story about how he turned himself into one of the more popular YouTube content creators out there. And he bought this racetrack. He does a lot of crazy stuff. He races. And now he went and ran an ARCA race at Daytona. And so just a lot there this dude is. And what's next? 29 years old, got the whole world in front of him, got his whole life in front of him. And it seems like the creativity and whatever may come next is limitless. So let's bring him in the room, get started. This will be a lot of fun. Here. Cletus McFarlane on the Dale Junior download.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's been a exciting thing to come meet you.

[Cletus McFarland]

I know. I'm excited to talk to you. I've been watching you. I mean, probably since you bought that racetrack, I've been paying attention to what you're doing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah, that's cool.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so. And I think I. I kind of, you know, the algorithm showed me the. The three truck and all that stuff for.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Back in the day.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Curious if you had seen it.

[Cletus McFarland]

I had seen it. Yeah. So, 29 years old. What's your real name?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Garrett Mitchell.

[Cletus McFarland]

Garrett Mitchell, where were you born?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Omaha, Nebraska.

[Cletus McFarland]

When did you start your YouTube page?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

2009.

[Cletus McFarland]

Where were you living then?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Omaha, Nebraska.

[Cletus McFarland]

What was the motivation behind creating that page?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, originally it was my normal name, you know, and I made RC plane and boat videos.

[Cletus McFarland]

Really?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

That was what you were into?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And then 2015, July, my buddy called me Cletus in a total spoof video just as a joke. And then when that took off, I actually didn't do anything with it for a few years, but I finally decided I wanted to pursue a YouTube career, and I changed the name of the channel to Cletus because that's what everyone called me, pretty much.

[Cletus McFarland]

So the videos of you, the original.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Stuff that still exists, like the RC stuff?

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. All those original videos, Right. Is that all on the same page?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so take me back to, like, when you're, like, growing that audience and.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay, how you.

[Cletus McFarland]

What was. What was the motivation? Where were. What were the milestones? You were like, this was a cool moment, you know, because, like, I've got some friends that have a few pages and they'll get the plaque or something in the mail about, you know, have a certain amount of followers and so forth. So tell me how that. Tell me how you enjoyed that process and how that process grew.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So, you know, when I was young, you know, 10, 12 years old, making RC plane videos, I purely did it for the process. I liked editing videos and posting something about my airplanes. I didn't even care if it got views when I was. When I came back, started doing it again. I had been working for a YouTube channel, so I kind of knew how to make a title and thumbnail. You know, we made street racing videos.

[Cletus McFarland]

Who.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And 1320 video.

[Cletus McFarland]

You made racing videos?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So really, the guy I owe my entire career to, his name's Kyle Loftus, owner of 1320 Video. And I filmed a video of a street race. And I showed it to him because he was the only guy with a YouTube channel in town. I thought it was the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. And he ended up using the footage in his video. Around this time, Instagram and stuff was coming out, and I said, hey, like, could I help you do your social media? I'm just in high school, you know. And he was like, sure, you know, give it a shot. So for years, I just didn't, you know, work for any money. I just helped him make his stuff. And then I was around the YouTube channel a lot, so I just learned a lot. And he's the one who called me Cletus in a video. You know, years down the road, I was always behind the camera. And I'll never say this enough, he's the most gracious person I've ever met. Because if someone, you know, when the video went viral and I became Cletus, a lot of business owners would say, whoa, like, let me grab a hold of this deal, see how I can make money off it.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Kyle helped me spread my wings and create my own thing so that I'm doing what I do today.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so when I started my channel, I was working for Kyle in law school because I didn't know what to do with my life.

[Cletus McFarland]

I went to law school.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Made it through college, graduated a year early.

[Cletus McFarland]

Wait, wait, wait, you got a degree?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

In law.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Well, no, so I graduated college with an entrepreneurship degree.

[Cletus McFarland]

That's impressive.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was terrified of what to do with my life, you know, So I went to law school. Stetson University.

[Cletus McFarland]

Damn.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And about a year and a half in, I was working for Kyle full time.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So every day I'd go home from school and work on his videos and his pages and things like this. It was a full time job. At this point, we were killing it. 4 million followers on Facebook. We had like the biggest automotive Facebook page. We were crushing it. And I was watching all these YouTube videos because that's how we would drive content to. His page is posting other people's videos. And I'm like, man, these. These guys, I could do this, you know, I could make videos like this in my garage. So I asked Kyle, I said, hey, you know, the Cletus thing, like, think about making some YouTube videos in my garage after school. He's like, as long as it doesn't, you know, affect your work, go ahead. Even, you know, post your links on the page, you know, if you need help getting traction, whatever. So, you know, as you talked about those milestones, you know, I remember the first time I got 100 views overnight. You know, that was a big deal to me. Yeah. And I remember when it was 500 views in a night and then a thousand in a day. And I remember when I hit 10,000 in a day and I have some really terrible videos on my channel that went super viral because I knew the thumbnail title. Recipe. Right. That's key.

[Cletus McFarland]

What is the recipe?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So. Yeah, that's right, the recipe. The way I look at it is you could have the best video ever made. But if no one goes through the door. What does it matter what's on the other side? Right. The door is the title and thumbnail. So, like, my biggest video on my channel is a Corvette C7 exhaust with four whistle tips. You know the whistle tip things that you can screw in your exhaust?

[Cletus McFarland]

Yes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

With four of those in each tip. And it's just a picture that makes you say, like, what does that sound like? Yeah, and it just says 800 horsepower Corvette verse turbo whistles. And it has 14 million views. The video itself is terrible, but, you know, like, this is back when I had, you know, maybe 10,000 subscribers.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So, you know, then. Then you enter a whole new thing I call the Gauntlet, where you have enough people watching your videos to hate on you so heavily.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And until you make it to about a hundred thousand subscribers, where you get some people to start defending you and say, hey, I kind of like this guy. It's brutal. It is savage out there. Yeah. Because it also matters if you have a reputation or not. Like the Biff, you know, he's starting a YouTube channel, but he already has an excellent reputation. Everyone knows him. If you're just some kid making a YouTube channel, the World wants you to fail. You know, the Internet wants you to fail for some reason. That's just how it works. So if you can make it through that. I do remember sitting in my room many times thinking, why am I doing this? You know, people are so. They'll bring you down to rock bottom. But then, you know, there was times when I was like, this is the greatest day of my life. You know, I got this silver plaque at 100,000 subscribers. You know, so certainly many milestones in those smaller numbers. Then it gets a little easier, you know, about a hundred thousand. You're. You're not worrying so much if the video is not performing that well, because it'll still get, you know, decent bit of views regardless, because you starting to.

[Cletus McFarland]

Have that fan base you have in a competitive field. Right. Do you look. I mean, so that is.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That is an interesting question, that.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. So how do I. How do you look at it? Because to a lot of people and myself, I think the. We look at you like I spend. I would rather sit down and grab my iPad and sit on the couch and watch YouTube videos than watch TV.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And that is something. That's something that took a long time to happen. Right. I had. You know, I watched. I watched Cheers when I was a kid. Night Court, the Office. I mean, you know, I had all these sitcoms and that's not the way I spend my time anymore. And so when I go there to watch, I'm getting things in the algorithm that it thinks I want to watch. And there's, you know, there's a lot of automotive stuff. Do you look at that landscape as basically just this wide open prairie, or is it. Is it a competitive space? Do you compete?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I have gone down this conversation. You know, I've. I've talked about it many times with friends. I don't think it's so much competition. Like, I have to win over the viewers versus them watching my buddy's videos, because that's never seemed to be. That's never seemed to be the case. It's like. It's almost like they'll just watch both.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. You don't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know. I've never felt that competition, but I've always driven myself to be like, I want to be the one with the best content there is when it comes to drag racing and stuff. So maybe that's just automatically worked out that way for us. But I don't feel like my neighbor can pull views off of my channel, if that makes sense.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. Who are some of the people that you respect in the space that do some similar stuff?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, wow.

[Cletus McFarland]

Or maybe not even that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of friends that have made channels off of just the most outrageous things you. You can do. And. And I have a ton of respect, Obviously, Kyle, with 1320 with the street racing stuff and streetcar stuff. But then there's guys like Whistling Diesel. You know, he's a good friend of mine. He has totally built a channel off of destroying stuff, you know, and a lot of people think he's crazy, but he's taken massive risks. Sometimes he's destroying cars that are worth $300,000 and then banking on the video doing so well, he can make his money. Right. He's making risky business moves, you know, so you got to respect it at the end of the day because he pulls crazy views and a lot of channels that I respect. You know, the Hoonigan guys built an amazing platform, and, man, my buddy jhd. So I'll give it to him. He's done a great job building his channel, and many friends around me have.

[Cletus McFarland]

What are some of the. What are some of the pitfalls in this business?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I would say some of the pitfalls. People let off the gas when they're at the top, really. And I see that a lot.

[Cletus McFarland]

What about. That's a good. That's probably common across the board. And Everything getting, being successful in sort of turning, you know, going idle at throttle. What about, what about like, not, not writer's block, but like creative blocks or.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I think YouTubers call it burned out.

[Cletus McFarland]

Golly, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. How do you handle that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I've never had that feel.

[Cletus McFarland]

Never had it. How do you handle, like, how do I. This, I did this. Now what's, you know, what's next? How do I do this?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What happens to YouTubers more than often than not is they'll have, they'll work super hard on a video and then it does poorly and that brings YouTubers down big time, kicking it. And you just have to set the expectation. When you work really hard on a video, that's going to be your worst video of the month. Like for some reason that's how it is. And I think getting over that can be tough. You just gotta, you just gotta push through. You'll. I always tell the guys, views come and they go, you'll have your best week ever, followed by the worst week in the fiscal year. It just.

[Cletus McFarland]

When I'm doing, when I'm working on podcasts, I've learned to not get real excited about certain bits or certain pieces of content because it's the stuff that I think that people are going to love. They tend to just go ho hum about. And then there's this thing that we talked about that I didn't think was a big deal at all that they want to know more about that they draw to. And so it's kind of unpredictable. But is there like a scientific method to the process of you. What you release, when you release? I know you have to know, like, all right, man, the shorts accomplish this. This is why I do this shortage. It has this purpose. Right. You do, you have all. Are you like the man behind the.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep. So I edit all the videos and make every thumbnail and title along with George here, who's my right hand guy. He helps me out on all that stuff. And you know, in the past two years we actually switched from just doing fun stuff and recording it and then posting it to making sure it's a title and thumbnailable idea. Then doing the fun stuff.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And recording it and publishing it. And that's made a significant upgrade to our channel and viewership because if you just look at the title and thumbnail and it can't make something that him and I in our brain think hits. We just won't do it.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Or we'll do it. We can still do it and just include it in a Video that has a title and thumbnailable moment. And now we just know the recipe. It's more predictable now than it used to be. You know, eight years ago, I would just do it. You know, if my. If I spun a rod bearing, then I would just have to change rod bearing, and the video would be titled Changing a rod bearing on Leroy. You know, so that's just what it was.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Now we can actually produce based off what we want that moment to be.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. Is there a video or an idea out there that you want to do that? You just. It's not possible at the moment, but you got this grand plan.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Should I say it? It's Dale Junior's podcast. I gotta say it. All right, well, this one we were gonna keep on the wraps till it happened, But I'm gonna say it because I'm with you. You're the legend. It's happening. It's going to be a little bit longer, but we're building a redneck aircraft carrier.

[Cletus McFarland]

Really.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Out of pontoon boats that I'm gonna land my airplane on.

[Cletus McFarland]

What?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, we're pretty excited about it.

[Cletus McFarland]

What kind of airplane?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Carbon cub.

[Cletus McFarland]

Okay. How much. What's the Runway performance?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I mean, well, are you gonna. Aircraft carrier is gonna be underway.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, it's gonna be moving.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're gonna get some headwind off of that.

[Cletus McFarland]

You got a cable. You're gonna stop the plane with a cable. How you gonna get this thing from.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right. We're gonna put an arresting cable on.

[Cletus McFarland]

Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, you know, I compete in, like, stole competitions. One, one, one recently in that. In this plane. Right. It's a high performance, extremely lightweight.

[Cletus McFarland]

What kind of competition?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Stole, short takeoff and landing.

[Cletus McFarland]

Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

So you compete in competitions doing this?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Damn, dude.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So this. This plane, I mean, on a good day, it can get off in 60ft, you know, pretty much just in its normal weight. But if we take it down to nothing.

[Cletus McFarland]

How many pontoons?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think we're just doing three.

[Cletus McFarland]

Three.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So the ship is only going to be 60ft long.

[Cletus McFarland]

How fast is it moving?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, we're hoping to get her to go about 15 knots.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep. And that'll create the.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Plus a headwind.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, plus the headwind. That'll create the. The performance. Landing performance.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We think we got it. Yeah. It can land like, nothing, especially with an arrested.

[Cletus McFarland]

That's wild.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I'm excited that that's out there now. That's. And if you're the fa. Give us a minute. We're going to give you a call about this.

[Cletus McFarland]

Are you do you have to handle all that legal stuff too? I mean, is it because it's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

I mean into some issues in the past.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh yeah. I get calls from the FAA a lot. But we, we really do follow the rules. Like I think aviation safety serious. You know, something like that idea might sound crazy, but worst case, I end up in the water. You know, my airplane's gonna float and I'll get out. Yeah, it's. The airplane's gonna be wet. We'll fix that. But it's really not a dangerous situation in my opinion.

[Cletus McFarland]

So you're married?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, sir.

[Cletus McFarland]

Kids?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep, two kids. Beautiful wife, Maddie. And we have a 11 month old and a 2 year old.

[Cletus McFarland]

Gosh. When you had kids, I know it's still new, but did that affect your risk taking ability?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes. I definitely think about them more. You know, there wasn't you would think about your wife and, you know, your life, but your kids pull a different cord.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, certainly.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think the last time, you know, the most significant times I think about them is when I'm in my drag car that goes 250. You know, 250 is fast.

[Cletus McFarland]

That's fast.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I think about them when I'm in that. But all the other stuff, as dangerous as it does seem, seems pretty calculated. You know, the aircraft are inherently dangerous. We have the best equipment you can get. We use the best service centers. We don't work on them ourselves for the most part besides the carbon Cub. So I feel pretty good about everything we do. But the, the drag car 250 is getting it, you know, and it. That's on its low side, you know, it can do 270.

[Cletus McFarland]

So how often do you mess with that thing?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We pull her out. We, we just got that one. The one I'm referring to done. It's called Eagle. And I don't know, we'll probably run it a dozen times this year.

[Cletus McFarland]

Do you just take it out and do appearances?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We go to competitions.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right, competitions. You enter and try to perform.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Cletus McFarland]

You're not just showing up and now we doing a celebrity appearance.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We don't do any of here.

[Cletus McFarland]

No appearance.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We only go for racing.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep. So, all right, so let's talk about the racetrack.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep. What was DeSoto formerly known as? DeSoto now the freedom Factory.

[Cletus McFarland]

What would have happened to this track if you hadn't bought it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, funny you asked that because the week I bought it, the developer that now is developing behind the track came to me and tried to buy it that week and offered me think it was a million more than I bought it for. Which at the time, to me was, you know, it's still a significant amount of money, but, like, it made my eyebrows rise because I was like, maybe I should do this.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right. Sure.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, it would be. It would be part of the development. No doubt. So right now, behind our tractor, how.

[Cletus McFarland]

Are you fighting that, though? Because that's a problem.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So the.

[Cletus McFarland]

I think I saw you talking about that recently.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. The commissioners, our local commissioners, approved a massive housing development behind our tracks recently, which is crazy, because, you know, if you had the nicest development, you know, around, you wouldn't let them build a racetrack next to it. Right. That's just common sense.

[Cletus McFarland]

And that happened recently, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So the commissioners approved it. Yeah. This is all while I owned it, and they approved it, and now none of the. I think one of those commissioners is still in office. So they all. You know, they all get their money and go do something else, whatever. So now we're dealing with it. All the homeowners have to sign this agreement that says, I understand there's a very loud racetrack, and I'm moving next to it. I cannot sue them. I cannot sue the owners.

[Cletus McFarland]

Do you play good in terms of your. Your. The hours you operate?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We definitely try to be respectful to our neighbors. Yeah. I mean, doing it right. I mean, I can hear them from my house, you know, but we just had top fuel there, so it's like, where they're putting these houses, it's gonna rattle their windows.

[Cletus McFarland]

Sure. It's a. You got the oval track and the drag strip.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, Sir. I own 50% of the drag strip, and then I own the oval myself, so.

[Cletus McFarland]

So why did you want to buy that? Was that. Were you looking for a place to operate and it just so happened to also be a racetrack? And you're like, damn, that's kind of a bonus.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Not. I wasn't really looking for a racetrack.

[Cletus McFarland]

Like, where are you living then?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Tampa.

[Cletus McFarland]

How did you get to Tampa?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, the drag strip. I always. Oh, I lived in Tampa because I went to University of Tampa.

[Cletus McFarland]

So you. You moved from where you were born?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I said, I want. Yep.

[Cletus McFarland]

And went to college. And you stayed?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I went to college in Tampa and stayed because, you know, you can do car stuff all year round.

[Cletus McFarland]

Okay. And so when did you find the track?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Found the track in two. Well, the drag strip I just went to automatically when I moved to Florida, so it was about an hour drive. And when the YouTube stuff started getting, you know, busier, and, like, I'M sure you've seen the video where I got pulled over in the three truck. Yeah, that stuff is start. Was starting to get frowned upon by YouTube ads, you know, things like that.

[Cletus McFarland]

What do you mean?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, like, if you go out on the street and just do straight illegal.

[Cletus McFarland]

Illegal stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Activities. It's kind of hard to not do it, you know, when you're doing the content that I do. I was like, man, I need a playground, you know, And I was working.

[Cletus McFarland]

With the Dragster, but so YouTube will frown on that and try to. Try to.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Pressure for sure. Success on that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

If you're out, just.

[Cletus McFarland]

But that wasn't illegal. You were. That truck was legal.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I guess.

[Cletus McFarland]

Truck was street legal.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

The guy didn't ticket you?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, he didn't take it. But, like, it was just one of those things. It's a bad look for all your sponsors and stuff. And, you know, you don't want to hurt somebody, whatever. So we. It didn't click at all. But this DeSoto had been sitting there for years, shut down because several reasons. Bankruptcy. A couple times, you know, a driver that passed away, things like that. So I drove by. I mean, the place was a dump. But one day clicked in my brain as I started doing these burnout events called Cletus and Cars. I was like, man, if you think about it, it's just a little stadium. If it had a burnout pad in the middle, it'd be a little burnout stadium. So I called my. My best friends Victor and Alan, and we got a hold of the owner, and he. I mean, he basically named the price and wouldn't budge. This guy was on it. Yeah, but it was 2.2 million. He Owner financed a million on it, which I. My last payment is this month.

[Cletus McFarland]

You're still paying on it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, the owner finance part. Yeah. And then Allen loaned me 400 grand.

[Cletus McFarland]

You didn't have this money?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I didn't have the money. And then I sold my Porsche Turbo S that I had 2011. Like, we just, like, sold everything we had, gathered it all up, and I literally went to that closing with everything I had.

[Cletus McFarland]

Damn it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Every dollar I had. And this was December 19th. And then Covid hit, you know, my master plan of having all my fans out to make some money really, really took a while. Really crushed me.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, actually. So how did you. Was it hard, I guess, to get through the next couple of years with having.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Basically, I can tell you that that month, my IRS check balance, my quarterly prepayment that I gave in December hit. I didn't realize it hadn't left my account. It hit, like, a week after closing, and my bank went to negative 90,000 or whatever. And then it bounced. IRS is calling me. I'm literally so stressed. I thought I was sick. And Covid's hitting, and I'm trying to gather it up. You know, I'm trying to make payroll for my guys. How many people you got at this point? I had three employees. James Cooper and our merch girl. Trying to gather it up. I'm trying to sell some T shirts, you know, because that YouTube check comes once a month. You probably know that. And trying to make it to the YouTube check. We make it. We're getting through there. Covid literally hits as I'm gathering it up. And I was laying in bed at night, just really stressed out, Just all time low, honestly, rock bottom. And I'm thinking, how are we gonna buy some of these parts we want to put on Leroy to get him back going and whatever? And I thought, what if I. What if I do a Crown Vic race? I'll buy 20 Crown Vicks from state auction, and we'll do a pay per view.

[Cletus McFarland]

Where did the Crown Vic idea come from that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It just came to me in bed.

[Cletus McFarland]

And I just, how are you gonna get the money to go buy these?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I called Alan, my. My business mentor, and I was like, brother, I need, you know, 20 grand or whatever.

[Cletus McFarland]

How much was the Crown Vic?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We got him one. This is unbelievable. We. We averaged 900 bucks at the state. Holy.

[Cletus McFarland]

That's awesome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So me and JH and my buddy Chad went to the state auction, and I don't know if Alan had to give me that 20 grand. I think I got a YouTube.

[Cletus McFarland]

I've always wondered where you get 20 Crown Vicks from.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, we bought 20 that day, and we didn't put any. We didn't do anything to them. They're on their tire. The same tires that came from the auction. We didn't change it. We didn't even check the fluids. Yeah, some of my friends that I invited to this race, you know, I advertised, I'm doing a race. And, you know, this is. Covid was hitting. So, like, I remember this, getting so many. So much scrutiny from the town.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh. Cause you're gonna have a race. They're like, wait, what?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're gonna have more than 10 people on the property. You know, that was the law they had just set. I thought I had Covid because I was so stressed out. I was so scared of getting arrested and this and that. And my dad Also got some paperwork from an attorney that said they had to have a warrant to come on the property because the sheriff was calling us, telling us they're gonna arrest me if I have more than 10 people on the property.

[Cletus McFarland]

How were you able to. I mean, that was some weird rule.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They had in place you guys didn't have. When Covet hit, you were only allowed 10 people.

[Cletus McFarland]

I got you. No. Yeah. I mean, I never heard of that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But I believe you guys didn't get that.

[Cletus McFarland]

No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, in Florida, it was like, 10 people per property or something.

[Cletus McFarland]

Damn.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay, so. But. But it was like 10 people per acre, but we had 40 acres. So I'm like, all right. So we had to spread out, and we had to make it look good on camera, because if you remember, like, people were losing their minds.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

People were calling me, like, cletus Covid, super spreader and stuff. It was. And I didn't really know what to think because I didn't know if Covid was real or not. I was kind of terrified that I was gonna go to, like, prison for this deal. So, anyway, we. We hosted the first ever Freedom 500 that night, and they initiated the lockdowns for the day of my race. The local town did. So we moved it up a day, and whatever we got, all my friends show up. Some of them even flew from California on a plane with, like, one person on it. This is, like, literally when Covid was going down.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And we hosted the race, and I had no idea if it was sticking or not, if they even had the stream up, if the website was holding anything. I didn't know. Alan was just radioing me from the car, kind of telling me things are okay. I guess the stream was pretty botched, but my fans were, like, it was the most pleased thing ever. So I get out of the car, and I've also. I don't think I've ever said this online before, ever, but I get out of the car, and I'm thinking it was. There's probably 5, 10,000 people on or something. And I actually won the race.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I get out of the car, and I run over to Alan. I go, did the stream stay up? You know, and I'm getting chill saying it. I go to the stream, stay up, and he goes, Garrett, there were 75,000 people on the stream. And I was just. I remember just, like, being so mind blown that we had just made a monumental amount of money and successfully, like, saved what I thought was all crashing down in that moment. And I didn't get all that money because we partnered with the Stream company and stuff. So, like, you know, some mistakes made there, but, like, what an amazing feeling to go from, like, rock bottom to like, we actually pulled off this, this Freedom 500.

[Cletus McFarland]

Damn.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really, really? One of the probably best moments of my life, I would say.

[Cletus McFarland]

Since then, you've had this race multiple times. You have it annually.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Cletus McFarland]

So now it's grown into something that, you know, it's kind of. I don't know if you know this, but it's kind of become a common knowledge in our industry. Like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I was curious if you. If you knew about it.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I have reached out, you know, through a lot of avenues, obviously, to try to get you to race. I'm sure you've been hit up about it. So it's. It's become fun. We do the Freedom 500 in April, and then we do the Indy 800 in May.

[Cletus McFarland]

What's the Indy 800?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's Luke soil Raceway. We go to Indy.

[Cletus McFarland]

You go to a different.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Take all the Crown Vicks to Indy. Oh, we do Lucas Oil. Lucas Oil, Luke Soil Raceway.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So we had Tony Stewart race the last one.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And then we take the Crown Vicks up to Stafford Speedway in Connecticut. We did Bristol. We're not doing Bristol this year. And then we do lay mullets back at the. At my track again. What is that of the year? It's. It's like the kidney bean shape. So you run the front straight. Yes. And then you come into the infield and Vic. Same Crown, same Crown Vicks all year.

[Cletus McFarland]

So these are your cars?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. I own them all. And all the drivers show up. It's zero pressure. All you. I don't even care if they post about it. All my buddies post about it because they're just great people. But like, you know, when we have celebrities on, you know, great guys like you or Greg Biffle, like, it's literally zero pressure. As long as we can say you're on the driver's list. That's all I need. I'm not going to put out an ad that says, you know, Greg Biffles coming to the Freedom 500. We just. We just have them out. They get in the car, they can have their fun. They can wad it up and leave or. But it's not a demolition derby. It's just if. If you do wad it up, don't feel bad about it.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's just they're Crown Vicks.

[Cletus McFarland]

You share a car.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Lay mole. Lets you share a car the rest of the season. It's all one driver.

[Cletus McFarland]

One driver. It's pretty interesting, the track. You've had to. You've had to do maintenance on this track.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

So wore out, busted up when you got it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Exactly. So the pay per view money, I mean, I don't think I've ever pocketed from the pay per view. It has all gone back into the program and the racetrack. The lights alone were $440,000 to do lights and poles. The bleachers were upwards of 350,000. And I have just spent all the money we get from the pay per view basically ever since just building the track and now the drag strip. And how close do you live cars? Five miles.

[Cletus McFarland]

You now have super late model races there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, sir.

[Cletus McFarland]

Like it's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, it's ripping.

[Cletus McFarland]

Ripping.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's ripping.

[Cletus McFarland]

What is that, what is that experience like for you to have a traveling touring division come to your racetrack and do something completely unique to like the content you're creating? You're. This is a. I always looked at that racetrack is like. That's your workshop.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Cletus McFarland]

And that if all you did there was what you do and your Crown Vicks and all that stuff, that would be the pro. Sole purpose of the property.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

But now you've introduced true touring racing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

With super.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So what, the track can absolutely self sustain with just our events.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But I love the motorsport industry, you know, and like I want circle track racing to thrive.

[Cletus McFarland]

Is there just. Is that super late model race the only one you have right now?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No. I mean just this week.

[Cletus McFarland]

How many?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just this weekend while I was racing Arco, we had Crown Vicks racing. And is it. We have sportsman's and so there's some local. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't do like a weekly program at the drag strip. We do weekly test and tunes. But what does the oval do? The oval. We don't do weekly. The oval runs. We do like tour of destruction. We do. Have you heard of the Bigly?

[Cletus McFarland]

No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay. We do the Biggly, which is a big race on Thanksgiving with late models and all kinds of stuff. I mean there's like 90 cars. It's. It's awesome. So we've allowed some really good outside promoters to come in and rent the track works. It's more of a partnership.

[Cletus McFarland]

They buy the track for the weekend.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's a partnership and it's.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So we still run front of the house and stuff. They. We just let them handle the race because you know the moment.

[Cletus McFarland]

How is those. How Many, I guess that's been going on for just a couple years now.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, we didn't really start, we didn't open the track, start doing that stuff until about two years ago. We were trying drifting and some other stuff.

[Cletus McFarland]

And how have you enjoyed doing those things?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Does it help hurt, like just having them there? Yeah, I mean, they definitely make some money and they bring new people to the track because some people don't care for my stuff. You know, they don't care for the Crown Vic kind of thrill show. They want to see real racing. So it's great to have the real racers come out. And they also offer opinions on the track repairs and things like that, which is nice.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It makes the back of the pits busier and it just, I think it helps the industry and I think it's great. You know, it definitely helps us. Works great for us.

[Cletus McFarland]

What does your wife think about all this?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, my wife's been very supportive of it all. She's been around. She, she, her and I started dating after I started my YouTube channel, but before the, the track. So when I wanted to do the track deal, she, she, we were just dating. So she didn't know how deep in the finances I was. Yeah, I've taken her down to zero. You know, I've taken my stuff down to zero twice. And she, she's, she was cool though. She bought me dinner when I was, when the bank account was negative and stuff. And she's just always been there for me. Yeah, she knows I'll figure it out.

[Cletus McFarland]

So let's talk about, I guess let's bring this to racing in the ARCA series. You know, you've done, you did the Crown Vic races at Bristol. And I guess from my perspective, seeing you do that, I was, that was kind of the first time where I was like, I bet this guy starts trying to do some legitimate racing. Like I bet you, I bet I could tell you're gears were turning in your head and you're like, I want, I want to really get in real, you know, I want to get in a real competitive competition environment.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Outside of what you had created for yourself.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, we, we compete really well in drag racing, so that's always been fun and circle track. The Crown Vicks are great, but I was like, man, talking to George was like, we should go race nascar.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How freaking cool would that be? And it just so happened that I met Greg Biffle earlier this year due to a software issue, you know, at Southwest. Like, one of my racers, Brad Deberti, couldn't come because that software outage. And then he called me. He was like, hey, do you know who Greg Biffle is? I kind of do. And then Greg and I met, and he's just the greatest guy ever. And then that's how I got my door into nascar. I figured, let's try this ARCA thing out. And now my mind is blown.

[Cletus McFarland]

Had you done anything in motorsport beyond that, outside of what you, you know, what we've seen with your Crown Vics and drag racing and all that? I mean, so did you ran a late model race anywhere?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, I ran Sportsman's, but I've done at my track.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. What's your sportsman car look like?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I just rented one.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, okay. Yeah, but it's like. It's like a late miles, late models. I think it's just a different engine.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They're a little slower. Yeah. But I've done. I raced on dirt at Bristol. I drove a late model at Bristol on dirt for a few laps.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yes, I remember that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. With. On the front. And then I've done. I used to do autocross when I was younger.

[Cletus McFarland]

What is that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Autocross is like cones in a parking lot.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, that's just fun stuff. And I've done. I've competed in drifting, you know, drag racing. Obviously, there's no turning. It's pretty simple driving. But I've just done a number of random different automotive things.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so, yeah, this is definitely the most serious.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so when real. When did the. When did the conversation turn real?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I hit up the Biff. Mr. The Biff. I said, brother, how do I get in a nat? Like, I want to race the Daytona 500 is what I told him. He's like, yeah, you gotta start an arca. And I mean, this is the first time I've ever heard arca, to be honest with you. I have been watching NASCAR race in five years, unless I was at the race cheering on my buddy, Alex Bowman.

[Cletus McFarland]

Gotcha.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, just drinking beer with my sleeves.

[Cletus McFarland]

Alex has come out to your place and done some of this stuff. Run your Crown Vicks or something.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, sir. Yeah. And Greg kind of explained a little bit to me, said, there's this ARCA series. It's where you got to start. And we went and visited a team, tried to sit in some cars that don't fit in a gen 4 arca car. So then we had to find a gen 5 arca car with the Rhett Jones racing dudes. And then they were like, I guess their driver fell through or something. And Bowman calls me, says, hey, this team I know, they got some fast stuff.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I flew up, I fit in their car, and then they told me the price, and I got a. I got it, you know, sponsored it out. And I said, let's do Daytona.

[Cletus McFarland]

That was that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Now we're just. Just doing it.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. You went to the test.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right. To the test. Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

So that climbing into the car to run the laps at the test are your first laps?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Cletus McFarland]

Describe your emotions.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I can tell you, when I got on that back straight and, you know, went into third and then fourth and they, you know, Biffle told me to stay wide open. He's like, you don't have to lift, you know, I was like, damn, this is awesome. And you know when that thing's singing 7,400, 7,500, that baby's singing, and it's just a sick feeling. You're just bombing out, you know, and your spotter's talking to you. I'm like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. It was. It was unbelievable. And that feeling was incredible, man. I. I can't really.

[Cletus McFarland]

I remember when I. My dad took me to Talladega. I had ran some short track stuff at Myrtle beach and, like, little half mile bullring stuff. Like your track?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Dad's like, get. Get your helmet and your suit and get on the plane in the morning. It's going to bring you to Talladega. He was down there testing, but I didn't know what I was going to do. But I had an idea, but pull it out on the racetrack, and I'm going down the back straightaway. And he told me. He's like, gotta hold it wide open. You gotta hold it wide open. If you lifted, you're gonna burn the piston the way they had to jetted back then with those engines. And so he made me scared to lift.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Cletus McFarland]

I was gonna burn the BAM Pistol.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so I'm going down the back straight away. And I just. I was like, I don't know how it sticks. Like, I'm looking at the turn three, way out in front of me, going that way, and I'm like, how does it stay?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

I'm thinking of mine. I'm like. And you go in the corner, and it's like, oh, yeah. Okay, this makes sense.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. When it's pressing you down and your whole body is tense. I remember in the test, I felt like I ran two miles after four laps because my whole body was just flexed, you know? And I'm just in there with my big old neck getting bent over.

[Cletus McFarland]

You run the first handful of laps with, like, every muscle in your body tense, just flexed. Just flexed. And when I would go to Atlanta, even 20 years into my career, like, I still ran the first five or 10 laps at Atlanta like that. And I would. I'd run five or 10 laps on Thursday or Friday morning in Atlanta, slow down to come to pit road, and my hands hurt because I had to hold the wheel so hard, and I had no clue, you know? And you're like, God dang.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. It's a feeling that's, like, really no other. It is it? I like to think I've experienced almost every motorsport or I'm getting close. I've probably done 75% of them or something. I've done sprint boats and helicopters and you name it. I would say that rip in Daytona is like, a significant step above all other driving experiences I've had.

[Cletus McFarland]

When you get into the race and, you know, I'm sure, like, everything's coming at you a million miles an hour and trying to understand, like, the draft, and I'm sure that in your mind you have a concept with things that you've done in the past. Silly stuff. Like, I. I think I always tell people when. When drivers are going out to Daytona stuff. I describe, the draft is like a wake of a boat, but it's coming off the nose of the car instead of the back of the boat, Right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so the following. The car in front of you is making a wake. And so, I mean, I'm sure while you're out there racing, like, you're computing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All of this, trying to see the hair.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. You're like, oh, God, I'm learning this. I think that's working. I think that's happening. And I think I understand why that did that. And so talk about. I guess I really am curious as to understanding, like, as you're going through that process of being in the draft and trying to, like, be. Yeah, you're excited, you're trying to learn. You know, you need to be a little patient.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to.

[Cletus McFarland]

God dang it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, we got a lot riding on it. The whole team decided. My grandmas are there.

[Cletus McFarland]

You must have been, like. Your mind must have been slow in, like, a rubber band going back and forth between, like, how excited you were, but also, like, how calm you needed to stay. Right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And I got so much great advice from Greg and the team and Max and my car sucked up good, so I had some room to get off the guys. And then if I wanted to, I could just drive right up into them. So I was really happy about that. But computing was definitely a factor because the cars were moving so much around me.

[Cletus McFarland]

Dude, I was. You were talking about that in the. In car during the. The stream where I was watching this car. There was a. Early in the race, or I don't know when it was, but there was a car in front of you. The driver was just not very good at just holding the. They were just. Yeah, they were chasing the car in front of me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think people are so tense, but.

[Cletus McFarland]

One of the things this happens on sim racing on line two is you're trying to draft of the car in front of you, and you chase it. If that car moves, you go, you and you. And it ends up looking like this little snake. And the car. They look terrible because they're not. They just need to. It's okay to be a little offset here and there as the. As the. As the lap is happening. It's just. Hold the wheel.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And the guy in front of you. It was making me nervous.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I was nervous about that. I don't know if it's. My car was just different, but, like, I just held my steering wheel straight and that thing drove.

[Cletus McFarland]

It looked like the person in front of you was having a hard time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And then wondering how you were.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was getting. You know, even I was looking out my door and like, that was right.

[Cletus McFarland]

Before you got clipped off. A4.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. Which is wild.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's. That car you're speaking of is ultimately what took me out. But, like, even there was someone outside of me, and I'm just watching them close it to one foot, back and forth, one foot. And I'm like, hold the damn wheel. Like, this is kind of. This. This isn't ideal.

[Cletus McFarland]

Do you think back, like, when you're, you know, hindsight's, you know, one thing, but do you think, like, damn, I knew I should have got out of there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Absolutely. I've been thinking about that for last.

[Cletus McFarland]

I know you'll never forget it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I knew when. When she, you know, that she was. Her tire was smoking and she was going into one and two, bombing out. And I'm just. I was just chasing the. Right up in there. What the hell was I doing? I should have just stopped and waited for the caution because we knew it was coming.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But, you know, who knows? It could have been freaking oil dripping on the header. And that was the smoke. I just, so I just went up in there and I think that's just my inexperience, the foolishness to just go because I'm like, I can't get any farther behind the pack than this. You know, I don't want to lose. Right? Yeah, you lose patient.

[Cletus McFarland]

No, I thought that was, I listened to your post race interview and I appreciated you saying I, I was inexperienced and, and you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Like I, I, I like people that are honest about certain things like that you've got to be you and you were right in that moment. But you also gave us a human moment when you said that would have been better had I had more experience. Next time I will, you know, next time I will have that experience.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I try to always have that like factor of. Because I am inexperienced in most of the sports I do. And you just can't be good at this by doing. It's like being a pilot. You can't be good at it unless you've just done it a lot. I'd be a fool to say everyone's like, cleat, you need a cup ride. I'm like, brother, I'd be a fool to go race with them, you know, right away because I just don't have the experience to do it. They would, they would walk all.

[Cletus McFarland]

I know it's early because you're probably still processing the financials and all that stuff and, but when it's all said and done is this, was this. I know you had fun. I know you enjoyed it and I know, you know, the content that you create around it's probably going to, it's crushing. It's probably going to measure all the things, you know, that you can do everything you want when it's, you know, racing's expensive.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sure is.

[Cletus McFarland]

When you close the door on Daytona. Are you eager and excited to try to recreate another opportunity? You talked about going to Talladega.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I'm going to Daga.

[Cletus McFarland]

You're going to Daga?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Going to Daga.

[Cletus McFarland]

You're going to figure it out. Yeah, we're going to figure out how to get there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're good for Dega.

[Cletus McFarland]

You're good for Daga.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And we're actually building some content around it on the YouTube channel that'll, that'll cover it.

[Cletus McFarland]

So we're going to see you race again this year?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Should I say what we're doing for Dega? Okay.

[Cletus McFarland]

We don't get everything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're, we're going to Dega. So.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I don't know man, it's like a part of me wants to jump. Don't get me wrong, there's some good drivers in arco. I really think there's some great drivers. But with all the crashing, it's like, it's all everyone talks about is, oh, I got a 50% chance of finishing because ARCA is so in crazy.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. Well, let me tell you this. I don't know where you're going, but in the trucks in Xfinity, I think it's 80%.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's as bad, it's worse. So, so that, that's, that's a factor I've been thinking about is, like, how will this pan out for my viewers if I can never finish a race? And me, I don't know how I'll feel after.

[Cletus McFarland]

If that's the risk you take, I wreck out and Daga. I mean, Daytona and Daga are going to have that high.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They got the high risk, high risk.

[Cletus McFarland]

And it's not. You're you. There's nowhere you can go in terms of a different series to escape it. I don't believe.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, Talladega is wider, so hopefully it'll be better. But I love the super speedways. Like, there's something that attracts me to them, so that's why I want to race them. But they're also the ones you crash the most. Yeah, but. So I don't know what to do on that front.

[Cletus McFarland]

I would just go to Dega and try to hope for a better result.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's what I was thinking.

[Cletus McFarland]

Do you think that you would do other races, though, do you think? I mean, you know, because.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I don't know, man. It's like if, if I, if I.

[Cletus McFarland]

So get your Arc A car or.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Or any ARCA car for that matter, and take it over to your racetrack and just cut laps.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And go. And, and cut enough laps, you know, probably take you a week. And you'd be like, ah, I think I'm. I think I've found the limit. And then you'll go, you can go run these short tracks with these guys.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know. Well, there's a factor for me too, that the short tracks for pulling in viewership too, you know, like Talladega. Oh, I know everyone's watching that, but.

[Cletus McFarland]

Everybody would watch you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I gotta mentally weigh that, you know, I gotta.

[Cletus McFarland]

I will watch you run Talladega, but I would. I think I would be just as excited to see you go run, you know. Winchester.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, there's. You know what? There's really no risk in Me finding out. Yeah. If my fans are into that. Well, I'm thinking they'll tell me. They'll say we don't. Let me ask you this.

[Cletus McFarland]

So you're going to get in a tricky spot where you're going to have to make.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm already in it.

[Cletus McFarland]

You're going to have to manage the. You're going to have to manage at some point. Like the business decision.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right. Of like, all right, am I a race car driver?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Or what do I want to be here?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What am I constantly managing that.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yes. But I mean you're probably already. You've got a handle of that, I imagine, because of what you're doing and other things. I always, I almost forget that you drag race, that you got the airplane, that you do all these other things. I'm, I'm like, I'm. I see you like singularly as this guy that owns this racetrack and races and cars and runs and circles, which.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I get, you know, not. That's the stuff that creeps into your world a little bit.

[Cletus McFarland]

So you're not just that. That's like a tenth of you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Our best performing videos have nothing to do with competition racing.

[Cletus McFarland]

Well, you're going to get your got the bug.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I got the bug bad, though. I'm fired up to go super speedway racing. That stuff's badass.

[Cletus McFarland]

Well, if you can. If that's what it is, that's what it is. And, and you run two, three races a year. It's Daytona, Talladega. And that's the content you make. And you get your, you get. You scratch your itch.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And that might scratch my itch. Or I might do good in Talladega and say, screw it, I'm running the season. I really don't know. Yeah, it's just, it's doable. It's a beauty of being a YouTuber is we, we really can kind of. We can wait and just pivot whenever we want. So that, that's one thing we're really lucky to have.

[Cletus McFarland]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

When did you and Greg connect?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So originally, yeah, Microsoft outage caused Brad Diverte not make it to the and.

[Cletus McFarland]

Greg comes to your Stafford race. How did that get y'all together in Carolina?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So Greg came to the race. We talked briefly a couple minutes before the race and then he rolled out right after. So that was like our whole interaction.

[Cletus McFarland]

I gotta ask you what happens after the race? After the, after the Vic race at Desota or at the Freedom?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Usually. Well, tell me. Usually we tear it up in the pits. We all hang. I don't go as late as I used to because I got, you know, I go home because the next Day is really the one I gotta work at because we do the burnout show the day after.

[Cletus McFarland]

Well, that's a problem you gotta have. No, you don't need nothing going on the next day. Put the burnout show the day before the Dick race.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, we're thinking about changing up the schedule a little bit.

[Cletus McFarland]

If I'm coming all the way to Florida, I'm gonna want to hang out and drink some beer.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Dale, if you come to the free 500, which, by the way, it's April 4th and you have an invite, we'll build you a car brand new. I'll even wrap it Dirty Mo Media. So I just need you to tell me yes or no after this or whatever, but if you come, I won't even sleep.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, all right, I'll stay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'll stay awake till the next day. That's a guarantee. If you listen to this. If you come to the Freedom 500, I won't wear sleeves for a month.

[Cletus McFarland]

I couldn't believe. I couldn't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'll cut them off. They're gone for a month.

[Cletus McFarland]

I couldn't believe Greg left. I was like, you go all the way down there and you don't hang out? Because I know Greg. Greg. Would Greg have a couple cold beers?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He was racing at that other race in Limestones. Lime Rock. That's what. That's where he got.

[Cletus McFarland]

If I come down there, I'm gonna have so much adrenaline. I'll be like crushing beers after.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm telling you, it's gonna be some of the most fun you've ever had. It's so fun because it's not a lot of pressure and you're just having a damn good time. So we would love to have you.

[Cletus McFarland]

Sorry we got off on that. So how did you and Greg reconnect?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So, literally, I get a call from a helicopter buddy. He said, hey, man, I tried to get in to these mountains. I guess there's a lot going on. I couldn't get in because the weather. But tomorrow they're saying they need help. My wife and I were taking the helicopter we just rebuilt to dinner. We bought it from Venezuela. I don't know if you know the story. That blue MD 500 I have, I bought it from Venezuela. Hadn't flown in 10 years. We fully rebuilt it on the channel and just got it done. It had like five hours on it or something, you know, so I'm still doing the real thorough pre flights on it, getting it, you know, she's. But she's running good.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. How did you get a license?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I've already had my license, so. I got my license in 2020. Yeah. Just because I have. I've always loved helicopters. I flew. I was making videos with them when.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was a kid, you know, and now that I had a little bit of money, I said, I'm getting me a helicopter.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So the MD was just a new project. I already had a helicopter. So we. I say to Maddie, I go, hey, like, this is a call I just got. She's giving me the look, which, you know, you have a wife. The look of you're about to leave home for a while, a couple days. And I just said, why don't you come with me? Let's go to dinner in North Carolina. Because it's only four hours to get to you guys in a helicopter. That is fast, which is what we got. So we flew up, and as I.

[Cletus McFarland]

How many fuel stops?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

None, I think. Just one. Yeah, just one fuel stop. And that thing was that.

[Cletus McFarland]

What do you fought. If you're flying four hours, what's your altitude?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're flying about maybe 500 to a thousand AGL above the ground, just chilling. Unless there's a huge tailwind, I won't really go up.

[Cletus McFarland]

I got you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But we're cruising in, you know, and all of a sudden, I'm like, there's no power. I'm like, it's black because it's nighttime now.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, shoot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, it is black. And I made a post of my helicopter at the fuel station or even on my pat at home or whatever. And I said, heading to North Carolina to see what's going on. And when we landed, it had like, 10,000 shares. And I'm like, what? And my phone is exploding with my friend saying, I can't get a hold of my grandparents in Asheville or whatever. I'm like, what the heck? And then so we're flying, and I'm like. And Biffle texts me, too. And he only has my phone number because of their race.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But we'd only talk for two minutes. Whatever. He says, hey, if you want to come stay at the house, that's fine. I said, no, don't worry. I already booked a hotel. And I was just gonna land at the hotel or whatever in the parking lot next to it or something. And because it's, you know, these crisis situations, you kind of get off the hook on where you landed your helicopters and whatnot. Well, the power down the whole Greenville area. Like, imagine you're just rolling in and it's all the lights stop And I didn't expect that. So I had to call Biffle because the hotels were closed. And I go land in his. In his yard, Lake Norman, or actually I think I landed at Statesville that night, but then his yard the next night. And we just got dinner, made a game plan. This is him and I hanging out for the first time essentially ever. And I just. I realized in that moment that this dude is selfless. He is a guy that's willing to help people and go out of his way. We didn't know what we were getting into. In the morning. I had put out my email and I had probably a thousand emails. My wife and I went through them systematically, marked them down on our foreflight. And in the morning we took off with water bottles that Greg had filled to the roof in the back of the helicopter. Went in under this little cloud layer and were just blown away at the damage that we saw. We immediately stopped, helped some people, dropped off the water, pulled some people out, got back in town and I'm like, where were their cell service? And I just started calling people, got more helicopters and we just flew all day for the next couple days, just helping people.

[Cletus McFarland]

I guess what you said about Greg being selfless, none of us knew that about Greg until recently.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

When your competitors on the track, you think of each other as very selfish.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And you know, God, you know, I like Greg, but, you know, he's. We race against you jerks.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Cletus McFarland]

But we've learned just what kind of person he truly is down in the gut. Yeah. But I wondered, I guess, how dangerous that must have been for you all to be flying you. Well, I know you probably want to downplay it, but.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It'S the most dangerous flying you can do. Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Over the. And over the course of the days, as more and more and more helicopters. I know showed up. Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You guys are all bad weather.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. Flying all around each other and just in these terribly hilly conditions.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Incredible about that too is that there was zero ga. General aviation accidents in the whole thing. How I don't understand that blows my mind.

[Cletus McFarland]

Like, how much traffic control did you have? If at all?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just. Just in the vicinity of the airport.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's it.

[Cletus McFarland]

And once you left that area, once.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You'Re four miles out, you're on your own. Now my helicopter has traffic systems in it, but not everybody does.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And also too. You know, a lot of guys are in low powered helicopters. Right. In a race car, you run out of horsepower. You just stop at that speed. In a helicopter, you run out of horsepower. The rotor slows down, you know, so that was scary enough seeing these low powered piston helicopters around, but brother, nobody wadded one up. I cannot. When I left, there was like 70 helicopters there. And I thought, there's no way. There's no way. There won't be an article later this week about one going down. There's just no way. Somehow all the pilots just did a fantastic job and they're, they're all. It's amazing. But like you said, the dangerous flying, I mean, when you're hovering high above the ground, like to say there's a bunch of trees, you got to go right down on it. That is the most vulnerable position you can be in in a helicopter. And we did it so many times. And then we're just pulling people out. Yeah. So then you're going out heavy.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And when you have high performance helicopter, it's fine. But like if anything goes wrong, you're toast. There's FOD everywhere. Like there's just debris and stuff flying everywhere.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It was a recipe for disaster. But I don't know if God was on our sides for all these pilots or what, but it's. I think it's a miracle that no one wanted one up.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's emotional just to think about it because of the. Obviously it was a terrible position for everybody to be in. That was. That was there the property owners and the families that were struggling with all of the things that they were dealing with. But then for you guys to go in and, and risk yourselves and everything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You'Re blind to it. It doesn't, you're totally blind to. Can't even compromise when you, when you pass over a spot and there's people on the ground waving their arms, you're motivated. You are you. The risk is gone.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It doesn't even cross your brain. And it's just, how do you. It's up to you and your skill at that point, I guess.

[Cletus McFarland]

How do you. Knowing that the job is never done. Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

How do you make the decision to leave?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So when we got back to the airport, Matt from Operation Hilo, I said, you know, we had already been doing it for a few days and we left for dinner. We were going to come back that night. You know, Maddie's mom, bless her heart, Susie. Shout out Susie. She was watching our kids and, you know, then it turned into a two, three day thing. So she's skipping work to watch the kids and.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, yeah. Back home.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so we really had to kind of get home. And I said, matt, is there any, like, calls right now that are, like, people have to. You know, it's critical because we've been hauling insulin around and stuff, and he just didn't have any that were like, this has to happen right now. So that's when. When all those calls seem to subside, we. We decided to go home. But it was a sad ride home in some ways.

[Cletus McFarland]

Was there a specific experience with an individual or. Or a particular specific flight that was one that was touching?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think there's. There's a couple. And I'll try. Try not to get choked up, because when I talk about it, I do, but, like, maybe I'll be fine. Right now, it's Cattail creek is a spot out there, and, man, those guys just got drugged down so bad. And we were the first people they had seen. And I remember all the people at the fire station when we landed. Like, we were the first people they had seen since I think happened Friday morning, and we were there Sunday, and they. They asked me to go up and look at some of these houses and see if there's people on the porch or whatever. And I remember flying, and there just wasn't any houses. And those moments were hard, man. Like, it was sad, and. But we just continued to help people, and it was okay, you know, like, we just did what we could. And I think it was pretty cool working with some of the people that really busted their butts to help others up the hill. Like, I remember when we landed, I asked a guy to go clear more space because I had just landed in a spot that was, like, so tight. And I'm like, guys, I know, like, they were putting in X's on the road. We landed, it was so freaking tight. And I said, brother, go open up a spot up the hill. I came back, dude, this guy had cut down, like, a square acre. I was like, how'd this guy do this? In and out, you know, people were going above and beyond because it was a literal life or death situation, and it was. That's just one of the many. Have you crazy things we saw.

[Cletus McFarland]

How many times do people come up to you today to tell you thanks because of, you know, some connection to a direct member of their family that you had encountered or helped? That's got to be pretty incredible. I know it has to happen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, there's been a few, definitely. A lot of, you know, indirect. A few direct. Like, we were on the news in Miami for picking these, you know, just a Florida couple up, you know, that was on their vacation home and, you know, random stuff. But I've never done anything in my life that I've been thanked so much for. And then the North Carolina helicopter flying, which is for sure not our intention. We didn't go there for this. And you know, Greg and I talk about it all the time. Like it is mind blowing that it's still today, like even at Daytona. So many people came up to Greg and I and said that. And we obviously appreciate, appreciate everyone's thank yous, but we helicopter pilots will fly for any reason. Pretty much like if, if my neighbor's dog is missing, I'll probably fly because I just love to get it out.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, so we'll, we'll do it. And especially if we get a mission where we can help people like any of us pilots. I think I speak for all helicopter pilots. We just love flying.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So no thank you needed. We'll do it again in a heartbeat.

[Cletus McFarland]

Hey, Andrew Dalton. You guys heard about Community Coffee?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I had it this morning.

[Cletus McFarland]

You did?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I sure did.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, did you know it was family owned?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I did, yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Fifth generation roasters. The story from those guys began from a simple belief that great coffee has the power to bring people together. 105 years. That's how long these guys have been roasting smooth, rich coffee. And they build that community one cup at a time. Community in every cup since 1919. That's crazy. That's. Wow. Long time. They've got this breakfast blend that is one of their best sellers. It's a bright and smooth medium roast and with a full body taste. They also have Mardi Gras King Cake coffee. Fancy. It sounds festive. It's got a little cinnamon spice and a sweet vanilla flavor in there. That blend from Louisiana based Community Coffee is available year round, not just during the.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Not just during Mardi Gras time.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can get that anytime you want it. I do drink coffee from time to time. Amy drinks a little coffee at the house and I'm always jealous. She'll make herself a cup and. And I'm like, damn, I want a cup.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We, we got some of their coffee.

[Cletus McFarland]

Sent to us and I made some of them King cake.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you can smell it throughout the entire office. The cinnamon and the vanilla.

[Cletus McFarland]

Everybody was like, what is that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm like, it's King Cake coffee.

[Cletus McFarland]

You gotta try it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Their breakfast blend is really good.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, it's just a good cup of coffee. Nothing better. Simple. Well, you can visit communitycoffee.com and you can use this code Dale 20D A L E 20 for 20% off of your first order of this great tasting community coffee. That's code Dale 20 for 20% off [e-mail] Travis I don't know about you, but in this business you need to hire the right people quickly. There's many times where we've been looking.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

For somebody we're like when you need.

[Cletus McFarland]

To hire like just like that. Exactly. Yeah. I mean in this business you realize you needed to hire somebody yesterday, not today, yesterday. And how can you find amazing candidates fast? It's easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Your relevant candidates so you can stand out and reach the people you want faster.

[Cletus McFarland]

There are no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Than non sponsored jobs.

[Cletus McFarland]

There is no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring process now with Indeed and listeners to this show will get $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more [e-mail] dalejr just go to indeed.com dalejr right now.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

[Cletus McFarland]

Indeed.comdalejr Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Hey everybody. You want the latest Dale Jr. Download apparel? Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com we're always adding new stuff all the time. Especially like when we say something silly on this show. We'll put it on a T shirt again. Check it out at shop.dirtymomedia.com well, outside of all of that, man, I have really enjoyed, I've really enjoyed talking to you. I want to know. I guess you know, you're not. You don't. We talked about your racing and kind of where you want to go with the arcadeal and that's, you know, that's the near term. You've built this, you've built this Persona.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right on, on your, on your channel. Certainly. There's got to be a big vision beyond YouTube, beyond what you're creating today. Or is that where you want to be? Is that where you want to live?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know. I want to buy Daytona speedway.

[Cletus McFarland]

The whole racetrack.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I want to build my house inside it. All my buddies.

[Cletus McFarland]

That's. I don't want to tell you that's unrealistic because I don't think that you have any.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You don't have any ultimate life goal. It's just one of them. But, yeah, I think our visions are big. I don't know where we're gonna go.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But we're just having so much fun. And do you bring as many people?

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. But now, like, you see yourself in network television, do you see yourself. What is it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Tv? I definitely don't like.

[Cletus McFarland]

Don't like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't. I don't mind being like the Fox. Last week was perfect. But, you know, TV is like. There's so many moving parts of limitations.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I don't know, maybe. I don't know.

[Cletus McFarland]

You don't need to be there. Maybe where you're at, where you're supposed to be.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

You have all that freedom.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. That freedom, brother. You know, and, you know, that was one of the ques. I had a couple questions I wanted to ask you too, you know? Yeah, let me just pull them up. So I don't.

[Cletus McFarland]

I love it. This is rare. Nobody ever has any questions for me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right. What is the best piece of advice you could give someone entering nascar? On the driving side?

[Cletus McFarland]

On the driving side, don't do what you don't know. So specifically, when you go to Daytona and Talladega, when you're going down the back straightaway and you're unsure about what to do next, sit still, slow down. Just sit still. You don't have to slow down. Just don't do what you don't know. Don't. Don't. There needs to be a purpose and a reason for every choice you make. When you race around the racetrack in the pack, you're making multiple thousands of choices every foot. Right. You know, you're always thinking and always wondering whether I'm in the right line or should I get behind this car or whatever. Right. And so if you're absolutely in the least amount unsure, sit still. And the race. There's a million variables that are going to play out over the next mile and the next 50 miles. And that choice to sit still is so insignificant. Right. In the grant, in the finish. So if you're unsure, don't do what you don't know. Just sit still, wait and learn. And then eventually, like, the right choice and the right thing that you might need to do will be obvious.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Cletus McFarland]

And you'll go, am. I'm glad I sat still for a minute because now I'm able to choose this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Got it.

[Cletus McFarland]

Right. And so there's a. If you, you know, when we watch it, we talked about it on the show yesterday, a lot of the guys, they get to reckon going down the back straightaway on the last lap, and they don't even give themselves a chance to get around to the finish because of the choice they made in that moment. And so some drivers, Denny Hamlin, in one particular race, comes off a turn two, leading the race, Daytona 500. There's two cars coming. They're eight, six, eight miles an hour faster than him. He knows he can't block them, so he doesn't throw a block because he knows it's going to be a crash. And he lets them go by and he dives onto the tail of the second car as it passes, and he creates a run around three and four that eventually puts in position to win the Daytona 500 at the finish line, and he wins it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Genius.

[Cletus McFarland]

Genius. Patience. And so a lot of people want to be active and doing and doing and doing and trying to always make something happen. And in those races, and specifically, I'm just sharing with you about Daytona Talladega, because that's what you're going to focus on for a while. A lot of times just sitting and waiting because don't do what you don't know. Don't do something unless you really know why you're doing it. And the draft is important and it plays a role in, you know, the choices you make. And I would probably just say, I know it sounds boring and not as fun, but svg, you know who svg, Shane.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I do.

[Cletus McFarland]

He's from Australia. Race road courses his whole life. Never ran at Daytona and Talladega before. But he will finish in the top 10 often in our Xfinity races because he sits still and he's not making problems, creating problems. He's not doing something he knows nothing about, and he's learning and letting other people make the mistakes around him. I know that what you need to do is create moments because that's important to what you do with your channel and your content. You'll get those opportunities, right? If you are patient in racing, right, what's gonna get the best views, right? You. You being in the mix, in the picture when the cars cross the finish line, you being one of those cars in that photo, right? So that's how you gotta. You gotta make sure you can get to that point, right? And if you had, you know, not that you did anything wrong in that race, you're a victim of circumstance, but, you know, that's what you prefer, right? To be in the picture. And so, yeah, I think after about two years of running Daytona and Talladega consistently, you'll be able to really turn it loose because then the, you'll start to understand the draft and yeah. You'll start to know. Okay, this is how this works.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay. Can I add two follow up questions?

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What would you have done in my position if you had already driven in that far and the car was spinning in front of you?

[Cletus McFarland]

If I remember correctly, you went, I.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Tried to go high, high. But she was low at first.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So just all brakes.

[Cletus McFarland]

No. Probably don't have enough brakes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I didn't. The closure rate was too high.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. The cars won't stop. Like a cup car has better brakes. But your car. So the, it's tough to do because this is hard to articulate. But what when you drive the car you've, you've rode in enough machines. Right. To know. I think you, you, it should come to you pretty quickly. Like if you come up on a situation where a car is out of control, knowing the weight of the car, the speed it's going, whatever the scenario is with the, with the terrain, the banking of a corner or a flat space. Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Your mind is going to tell you where that car should go, physics wise. Right. Where the energy should send it. And I think, you know, given the opportunity to be in that situation two, three or four more times, you're gonna make the right choice because you're gonna go. Yep, this car is going up. Yeah, I can tell.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Should have known.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. But it's okay. You know, when one of the, we go to Dover and it's a self cleaning racetrack. It's so banked anytime a car hits the outside wall, it comes down, it's going down a hill into the inside wall. And sometimes that's, that's not always an obvious thing to remember when you're going around the track and so you come up on an accident, it's not always obvious to you which way to go. And I drove left and followed that car careening off the wall, down the hill into the wall.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I followed it right up.

[Cletus McFarland]

That happens. It just happens. And so, but I think over time when you're in those situations a few more times, you'll start to understand, alright, the energy should take this car this way. And I think choosing this direction is gonna be the route.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay, I appreciate that. One more on that then would be it's what it's not when or it's not if, it's when. What's the best way to handle yourself if you wreck somebody and ruin their day? What do you Think the best way to handle that is.

[Cletus McFarland]

Like, your race continues.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No. Like, if I. If I screwed up.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And just totally whacked two cars and take out half the field, what's the best way to handle this?

[Cletus McFarland]

I would get out of the car and I would say, I made a mistake. That was my fault. I'm owning it. If you truly believe that. Right. I would get out of the car and go, yeah, man. I mean, because people can see it, right. And maybe, maybe not a casual fan, but industry people can see it. Like other drivers, other owners that have been around the sport can go, I know what happened right there, so don't tell me anything otherwise. Right. Get out and say, hey, that was a bad choice I made. Or, you know, I lost control of the car and, you know, it ruined their day. And that's all you can do, I think, is just kind of own it. You know, you can go take it a step further and try to try to help that team. If they're a small team or whatever, you know, you can try to help them get their car back together and do some things on the back end that might.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Depends how bad.

[Cletus McFarland]

You supportive?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

So I wrecked somebody once, and I was like, damn, I was. I caused a wreck and they. They got into it accidentally. They were collateral damage. And you feel like a complete.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And, you know, if you can make it right, outside of admitting the fault, you know, you do whatever you can, but.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay. Yeah, I like that. All right. Best piece of advice you give someone entering NASCAR on the business side, you.

[Cletus McFarland]

Can spend a lot of money really quick. Right. And it's not always necessary. I would get second opinions, third opinions on, you know, if you're getting quoted for an expense, no matter what it is, I would absolutely be calling around and saying, hey, is this a fair price? Does this sound about right? A lot of. Unfortunately, I think for a lot of people to be involved in racing, it comes with a cost that they have to share. They have to shoulder. Right. Where you. To run that car, you had to find the partners to invest in it. Right. And help you get there. But you can call Greg Biffle or you can now call me and go, hey, this is what they quoted me for that race. Is that fair? Does that seem right? Because teams are going to try to get everything they can get, rightfully so. But maybe it doesn't have to cost that much. Maybe it's a little, you know, maybe that, you know, you can chop them down 5, 10%, get you a little bit better deal. The best Advice that I got in racing. I started a race team, and Kevin Harvick told me to keep the garage, keep the key, keep the parts room locked.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's a good one.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. And so there's two things that can run up the cost. And you may not have to deal with this specifically, but it's metaphorically true. I had. I kept. I keep my parts. Guy is not allowed to let anybody walk in there. They walk up to the counter, they have an invoice in their hand for everything they need. And the door stays locked. I have to knock on it to get through it. And the radio truck at the racetrack, Headsets, radios, earplugs, all that stuff. And any kind of parts truck at the racetrack. There's no open ticket.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's locked.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. You can't walk up there and go, I need this scanner. Put it on this car, put it on this bill. And so that. Think about that in just kind of how you might manage your motorsports venture. Right. Keep everything tight financially because expenses get out of hand, just like you experienced that already. Right. In everything you do, you have to be smart. And if you let. If you're not sort of keeping your eye on all the little things and keeping it itemized, it can get really.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Carried away quick and run it pretty loose. Don't.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, so I'd run. I just make sure that, you know, you don't want to get done with this year and look back and go, Damn, that was 50 or $100,000 more than I thought.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

You know, or that I. That I was told it would be.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Or.

[Cletus McFarland]

You know what I mean? And that can happen pretty easily.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay, That's a good one. Yeah, I like that a lot. Last advice. One is best piece of advice just relating to life outside of motorsports. And I asked this because I have a lot of respect for your humble personality. You know, you have a lot of cool race cars. You have a great family. You have a incredible building that we're in right now. And I guess I just would be curious what kind of life advice you would offer.

[Cletus McFarland]

Well, I appreciate you asking. I hesitate to give it because it's not, you know, I'm not perfect. I don't live that advice every day to the table. Of course, nobody is perfect. And everything that we see on social media isn't always how everything is in real life. You know that. Right. And so I know you know that. And we only put the good stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

On social media for the most part. Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. There's some tough days at home, you know, And. But I would say that. Golly, man. And this is. I used to tell my buddies, and it's such a silly thing. It's very cliche. But don't let the good times pass you by. Right? There is. There is going there. There were so many times where my buddies called me up and were like, hey, man, we're hanging out tonight.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And I'm like, oh, man, I'm. This new video game came out. I'm gonna do that. And I regret every one of those days that I didn't go and hang out. And I let something. I let a moment or an opportunity to be with my friends or spend time with a group pass me by because of some silly, trivial thing that I think I thought I needed to be doing in that moment. As I got older and I get older now, you know, I'm closer to. I'm closer to the finish line than I am the beginning, you know, And I think that even more self. I'm even more aware of, like how these. And it's not. I'm not perfect, man. I still struggle with it, but like these silly arguments or disagreements that I might get in with family or my wife or something. That's disappointing. Maybe erase didn't go the way I wanted it to or something on a project I'm working on wasn't successful like I hoped. I got to spend less time. Bummed.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It doesn't really matter.

[Cletus McFarland]

Bothered. Yeah. Because I'm wasting time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I try to hold myself to that too. I feel it. I feel it. About a couple days later, I'm like, why was I so upset?

[Cletus McFarland]

I still do it. I still don't. I'm not. I don't adhere to that. But God, I hate. And I'm. I'll get in some things. I'll get in some moods. Right. Or I'll have a rough couple of days over something and I'm in the middle of it and I'm the one. I gotta drop this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Feel that. Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

You know, I am wasting time. I want to be happy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

I want to make memories with my girls. I want to go hang with my friends. I want to be on the gas every day. Right. But I'm not. I. I'm not that. But I want that. And that's like how I try to live. I wish I would have been that way when I was younger. I mean, I ran hard, but, you know, I did take some days off, you know, and did thing, you know, just didn't do anything for the sake of doing nothing. And I wish I would have been. I wish I would have traveled the world more when I was younger. I really didn't get that bug until later, but you got to get out, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay. And a real quick question. Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

You don't need that advice because you're already.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I just. I love to hear it stuff. And I. In. Tell me if this is getting too personal. You have two kids, right? Do you wish you had more?

[Cletus McFarland]

I. I don't now. That could change, right? We. I've. I'm still Nicole's 2, Isla or Nicole's 4 and Isla's 6. And the way I looked at it was, you know, I thought that I couldn't love anyone more than my wife, or I thought. I thought I couldn't love harder, I guess is the way to put that. I thought that I was loving to my max with Amy. And then when she gave birth to Isla, my love for Amy went up another notch. Damn, man, I can't believe you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I remember that feeling in the delivery room.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I love you so much.

[Cletus McFarland]

And I'm like, I can't believe you and I made this. And you are the one that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's a mind.

[Cletus McFarland]

It's hard.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's so primitive.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yes, it is. And then, you know, your love for your kids is another level of love that you didn't realize you had in you. And. And so I kind of been riding that high. And I. Yeah, I mean, after two, I was kind of like, hey, man, I'm happy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's kind of how we feel.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But I was just curious, you know, you have a similar lifestyle. I would love to. I just wanted.

[Cletus McFarland]

I really am good, you know, where we are. And I think that. Yeah. I mean, I'm the other thing, too. I'll tell you my age. Right. I worry about, you know, my girls when they graduate. I'll be in my late 60s, you know, when they. When they're going through graduation and in college and things like that. And I'm like, man, you know, I gotta. I don't know how this will sound, but I felt like it would. I felt like having kids at my age. I was. I know what it's like to lose your parent when you're young. Right. And Even in your 20s, you're not really prepared for, like, losing that rudder, you know, or that guidance. And so I felt like, shoot, man, I don't want to bring a child into this world and then leave them in their early 20s or even earlier, you know, I don't know what's guaranteed for me. And So I was thinking about that, too. So.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's a tough perspective.

[Cletus McFarland]

It is a tough perspective, and it's selfish, maybe, but I don't know. I was just like, hey, I'm lucky to figured it out. I was stupid for waiting as long as I did to, like, figure it out and get my life into this position. I should have married Amy way sooner. I should have started our family sooner. I shouldn't have waited for that, because I thought, man, I got to do more wild. I want to have fun and race and selfish, and I want to do what I want to do. I ain't answering to nobody, and I ain't living by nobody else's rules and no compromising. It's very selfish, but I. I wish I'd have figured that out sooner, so. Because I got buddies that are my age, and they're like, my daughter's going to college. And I'm like, damn, I wish my daughter was going to college. You know? I mean, I wish I would have.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And I don't know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're also in such a good time. Oh, I'm loving, dude.

[Cletus McFarland]

I love where I'm at, but I should have figured this out sooner.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay. Okay. All right. I gotcha. George was wondering if you eat liver mush.

[Cletus McFarland]

Hell, yes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really?

[Cletus McFarland]

Hell, yes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He's a liver. What the hell is liver mush, dude?

[Cletus McFarland]

It's a quick description of the ingredients. I mean, I probably could pull it up, but I don't want to know. Let me tell you, man, when you. When and people are different, everybody cuts it different. But when you cut it thin and you get it almost cut it thin, cook it crispy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, my God.

[Cletus McFarland]

Oh, damn, it's good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right.

[Cletus McFarland]

Mustard liver mushroom with mustard toast or regular?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Big North Carolina thing. If you don't know what liver mush is, you should look it up.

[Cletus McFarland]

Holy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's interesting stuff.

[Cletus McFarland]

It is so good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Is it true Amy even eats it?

[Cletus McFarland]

She know Amy's my. She never heard of it, and she would not eat it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

She's like, hell, I gotta try it again. If Amy eats it, I gotta try it again.

[Cletus McFarland]

She finally ate some, and she's like, yep, she'll cook it every now and then. I get so proud when she cooks it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Is it true that Dale flew. Your father flew over your house party with a helicopter to shine a spotlight.

[Cletus McFarland]

On the party ran everybody off.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's the coolest thing I've ever heard.

[Cletus McFarland]

It wasn't great in the moment I. We had. I used to race on Saturdays in the Xfinity Series. And I think it might have been like, Darlington or Martinsville is a close track where dad would helicopter back and forth. And so I ran my race. It wasn't Martinsville. We didn't race Xfinity there. So it might have been Darlington. I ran my race and I'd already planned this, so, like Friday or. So I'm like, all right, boys, let's get the beer. We go shop. We get the beer. We got the whole basement. I got a club in my basement. Yeah, we got everything ready. And, man, when I get home, don't start without me. But when I get home, we're gonna be raising hell.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Cletus McFarland]

And tell everybody. And we just had a lot of people that we knew around town, friends and stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Popping.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. And so when I would get home from the race.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, what year is this?

[Cletus McFarland]

This is 98, 99.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

This is the prime.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah. I'd get home from the race around, you know, 8, 9 o'clock, and we would just crank the music and start party. And everybody'd show up. And for whatever reason, it was probably like midnight or something, man, we're right in the middle of it, about a. Probably about 40, 50 people. He comes helicopter helicopters around the house. And he. Like, there's. He's not flying it, but he's in the passenger seat. And they're nosing that thing around the house. And everybody's parked their cars out in this field next to the house. And he's flying that thing around and we're in. Everybody runs out of the house. We were in the basement. Everybody runs out of the basement door and to their cars and jumps.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Why they run? They're like, you guys.

[Cletus McFarland]

Well, they were like, dad, Dale's home. They thought he was. Yeah, they thought he's going to land and come in there and raise hell or something.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know what helicopter was it? Do you remember he had a bell. Bell for a school.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so he gets. He. He just flew it around. Then he went and landed. But, like, probably 80% of the people hauled ass. It was nothing but tail lights out the driveway. He loved it. He thought it was hilarious.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's awesome.

[Cletus McFarland]

Kind of control.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What do you think of the. The quote, do it for Dale.

[Cletus McFarland]

I love it. And when, you know, all these years later, I said this when he passed away, and I said it for probably a decade or so, everybody be like, you know, what's. What's your thoughts on. On losing your dad? And I'd go, my fear is that he'll one day just be forgotten. With time, my worry would be that he would just disappear into the distance. Right as we get further and further removed from his career, I was like, I just hope he's never forgotten because he left such an impact on the sport. And so that kind of thing is the staying power. That is the reminder to me, like, that he's. He resonated with people.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Now that you say that, I would say that he has the most long standing, legendary status of any real motorsports driver, maybe. I think he does.

[Cletus McFarland]

And so when I hear things like that, it's like, yeah, yeah, he still matters.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I say it at the end of every one of my videos, every YouTube video I've ever had. Yeah, maybe a few I missed, but I always just say, thanks for watching. Do it for Dale. I love frequency.

[Cletus McFarland]

Do it for Dale is like a nod to dad and his. His legacy. And. And it's. It's tasteful. It's, you know, I like, I'm thankful.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm glad you like it. I know I'm not the one who invented it. I just, you know, I think it's a great saying. It's like a lifestyle. My buddy just said it to me one time, and I was like, dude, for Dale. Yeah, it's literally. That's kind of like how we live our lives. It's like we're just doing it for Dale.

[Cletus McFarland]

That's right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's cool. I'm glad you like.

[Cletus McFarland]

Yeah, I do. I appreciate it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, been great talking to you.

[Cletus McFarland]

It has, man. I. I've always, you know, I've been following you for several years now, and when you bought the track, I was really kind of so curious and interested in what you were doing, and it's been a lot of fun learning who you are. And to be able to have you here today to actually talk to you is. Is very, very special for me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's an honor for me.

[Cletus McFarland]

Well, I appreciate that you feel that way. I'm thankful for how. I'm thankful for how you, You. You view my father and how you've incorporated some of those things into what you've done, and I appreciate your. Your respect for that. I'm glad that you came and raced in the ARCA race and you shined a light on our sport, and I'm glad that you're going to try to do more. And I. Yeah, just. It's been a great experience, man. You're a good dude.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I appreciate that.

[Cletus McFarland]

I appreciate you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Means a lot coming from you.

[Cletus McFarland]

Thanks a lot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Thanks.

[Cletus McFarland]

Cletus McFarland on the Dale Junior download.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Do it for Dale. Lowe's knows how to help you get the most out of your store run. That's why members save more with Milo's rewards. Earn points towards Mylo's money on eligible purchases. Get access to member only deals and free member gifts. Plus unlock free standard shipping when you reach silver key status.

[Cletus McFarland]

So what are you waiting for?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Join for free. Today, Lowe's we help you save loyalty.

[Cletus McFarland]

Programs subject to terms and conditions.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now boarding.

[Cletus McFarland]

Group A, please have your boarding passes ready to scan. If your phone is cracked old or.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Was chewed up by your Chihuahua travel.

[Cletus McFarland]

Companion, please refrain from holding up the line and instead simply go to Verizon and trade in any phone in any condition from one of their top brands.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

For the new Samsung Galaxy S25 plus.

[Cletus McFarland]

With Galaxy AI on Unlimited ultimate and a watch or tap also on them. Service plan required for watch or tap. Trade in and additional terms apply. See verizon.com for details. Free fries Friday. Three great words, especially in that exact order.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Get a free medium fry with $1.

[Cletus McFarland]

Minimum purchase valid one time on Fridays at participating McDonald's through 1231 25.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Excludes tax. Must opt into rewards.

[Cletus McFarland]

That was a great conversation with Cletus McFarlane. And I had always. I'd been following him for a while and of course I, I watch a little bit of YouTube. Like I said, when I get home and I'm sitting on the couch, I will fire that up. And instead of, like watching, you know, regular television, like, I just, I mean, I watch both. But it's just interesting to me, I think, how I've. How YouTube's become a bigger part of how I might spend that time. And so I see a lot of his stuff and I'm like, it's pretty interesting. And he's a, he's, he's a cool guy that has fun on his stuff and yeah, it's easy to watch. And then he gets the track. And I'm. First time I saw him, I think I was watching because of the truck. He has a good wrench, number three truck. And. And then, you know, he buys the track and obviously, yeah, I was like, wow, what's he gonna do with that? But just fun to talk to him and kind of learn about what his processes are and what's important to him and how he has prodded along and made this such a success. And. Yeah, we got some breaking news. We did. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah. Little teasers of what to come. What was your favorite part, Andrew? I actually thought it was really cool that last 30 minutes where he was. Wanted to pick your brain. Y'all ended up getting into like a life conversation. It was. That to me was pretty neat because it was. Just seemed very down to earth and it just seemed like a really neat, just life conversation. Hey, soak up all the good moments. Like, that's what it's all about, you know, I think so. I, you know, I, I am not all. I'm not great at life and I have my bad days and so it's hard to. It's hard to be giving out advice because I don't. I don't know that I follow my own advice a lot, but doesn't mean you don't know, you know, what, what you should be doing, how you should be approaching every day. And so it was fun to have that conversation with him. I really, I really was curious, I think, about the. When did he. When did he realize, I guess that I'm going to fully commit to this YouTube deal. And then once that, Once he makes that commitment and he starts seeing the success and he's like, all right, now I can make a living doing this. Right. That wasn't even a sustainable idea, you know, 2009, when he started the channel, not many people were like, yep, gonna make a living creating content like this. But he just, you know, stuck with it and didn't hear him too talk about how it's a lot of critical moments and a lot of critical people. That was interesting because I wanted to know that, you know, you. There is going to be absolutely a point anytime you're in the middle of creating or building something where a lot of people are going to tell you it's a bad idea or it's a waste of time or something you don't need to put any effort or energy into. And he saw that through. But it sounds, and I guess living it out in a social world, like, I guess living all that, living out that idea in the world of social media, not many people can stay the course when all they hear is, I don't like it. Not good enough. You're not right. You're not good. You're no good. This is no good. Well, and on the opposite side of that, when everything's going right. I mean, he's got a big following now, but he said the biggest mistake is you let off the gas. Yeah. So it's just like staying true to yourself seems to be. I mean, that's. Obviously people recognize authenticity, but that's critical, I think, to building something like he did. Yeah, I think it's, it's kind of, I imagine it's kind of like a band that has had a lot of success and the, you know, he may be, he may not be this way, but he seems like the kind of guy that he's an adrenaline junkie and a thrill seeker. And I think that he's always going to come up with fun ideas that you're going to want to see through and tap into. But then there will be these moments where he's like, I'm, I'm tired of doing these things. I want to try this new stuff. Anytime a band has had a ton of success, changes their sound, man, people are like, whoa, this thing, give me back my old man. But he's going to have, I mean, imagine if I were him, I would have those moments where I'm like, man, I'm ready to branch out. I'm ready to do something completely different. I need a new challenge. He's a great example of how YouTube has become must see content. There's this guy over in Europe that's been renovating this chateau that burned down and the bones of the thing are still standing. And he's documented this daily, everything he's doing for a couple years now. And I've seen at least 75% of the content. I'm like, watched that much of it and every day there's like a 20 minute clip that he posts of everything they did and worked on that day trying to put this chateau back together. And he's doing it literally on his YouTube salary. You know, he's doing nothing else all day but working on this chateau. And I've been fascinated not only by obviously the project he's working on, but how he runs his channel, what he shares with us, how what's important for him that day to show. There's other stuff too that I think is fascinating, where I'll see. There's this one kid that I was watching and he kept buying old boats. Like he bought this. I'm just throwing numbers, I don't know the truth, true numbers. But like he bought a 25 foot cheap boat, renovated it, used it for a year, sold it, bought a 35 foot dilapidated boat, renovated it, used it for a year or two, sold it, then he bought a 45, you know, and he's got, now he's in this like big 60 foot, but it was junk, nobody wanted it. And he rebuilt the guts of it, the motor and everything, got it running and you. And now he's running all over the world, right? Creating content. And there's people that sail, just go and sail for years and just document their sailing adventures, right. And the problems and challenges. And so the content on YouTube, man, it's interesting how it's. It's all reality TV but it's not scripted, right. And it's pretty fun. And you, and you know, you can't help put yourself like, man, why can't I do that? Or what? Man, that sounds fun. That seems fun. Gosh, this person is. This person dropped everything they were doing and now they're just selling the Caribbean for the next four years or however long they want to do this, right? Creating content wherever it is you want to go and be. And people are just doing it. I think we all spent so many years of our childhood growing up in our towns and watching everybody just do what they do. You get a job, you live, you work and you come home. And now we're living in a world where people are just deciding what they want and going and doing them at wherever that is. Right. Or not adhering to this sort of, you know, societal norms. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty neat. And he's a great example of that. He adheres to no norms, Right. I mean, just looking through his YouTube channel, I'm just trying to think like how would he describe what his YouTube channel is? And it's just like, then this guy is a compliment but just like doing cool random redneck. I got pretty close to asking him that, like give, like give me the short synopsis of what it is. Describe your work to an avatar. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Anyhow, really cool. A lot of fun again, man, I love when we get these non racing stories in here. And I know he's got some connections to motorsports, but his, his Identity is that YouTube content creator and fascinating to be able to get him in here and have a conversation. So thank you, Cletus McFarland for spending some time with us today. It's time for the white flag. All right, the white flag actions detrimental indoor bumper clear recorded on Monday. DBC had Bubba Wallace and Butterbean on the show. Denny had a lot to say after the race at Daytona. You won't want to miss that one. Action's detrimental and door bumper clear. Must listens for this week. Yesterday we did our dirty air show recapping everything from Daytona to the Junior Motorsports debut in the Daytona 500. And me and TJ had a lot of fun talking about all that IRS, Junior and Dirty Mo do segment was a lot of fun as well. Today Herman Schrader drops along with a new episode of Speed street. And then tomorrow Amy and I will have a new episode of Bless yous Heart. Plus DirtyMomedia is launching an all new e commerce merch line. You know we've had merch in the past but we got a whole new entirely newly designed line. Awesome. Del Jr download merch as well as much much more. Go to shop.dirtymomedia.com shop.dirtymomedia.com check out all the new stuff. Let me know what you like. Tell me what's your favorite? Tell me something I should wear on the show. I'll do it. We'll see you next time. Check out DirtyMo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Cletus McFarland]

Ball of broken string.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Lights Glad Force Flex Max Strength Strong enough for all of life's garbage. Two times stronger top versus 13 gallon force flex bags.