Lake Speed: Driven By Something Bigger

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dale Jr. Download – Episode: Lake Speed: Driven By Something Bigger

Introduction The Dale Jr. Download, hosted by NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr., features insightful conversations with prominent figures in the racing world. In this episode, released on March 26, 2025, Dale Jr. interviews Lake Speed, a distinguished racing driver known for his 15-time Most Popular Driver accolades and his two Daytona 500 wins. Produced by Dirty Mo Media and available on SiriusXM, this episode delves deep into Lake Speed’s illustrious career, personal struggles, unwavering faith, and the driving forces behind his continued passion for racing.

Early Life and Introduction to Racing Lake Speed begins by recounting his humble beginnings in Jackson, Mississippi. He shares how his journey into racing started almost serendipitously:

"I started out with a kid lived just a little ways away. He got a two-seater go kart for Christmas one year, and we rode that thing everywhere." [06:12]

Despite having no racing lineage, Lake’s innate passion and mechanical curiosity propelled him into the world of motorsports. His father, a practical businessman, initially viewed Lake’s racing pursuits as "total foolishness" and was uninterested in supporting his son’s ambitions.

Karting Success and Challenges Lake details his rise in the karting scene, highlighting his transition from American-made engines to European models, which marked a significant turning point in his career:

"When I switched to the European engine, it was success from then on. We were killers." [20:30]

He recounts winning his first national championship and his ventures abroad, including trips to Hong Kong where he achieved early victories. However, Lake faced fierce competition and structural differences in international karting, leading to initial setbacks before ultimately claiming the 1978 FIA Karting World Championship.

Transition to NASCAR and Team Building Despite his karting prowess, financial constraints and personal challenges, including a difficult divorce, led Lake to explore opportunities in NASCAR. An inspiring call from a Car and Driver magazine editor steered him toward stock car racing. Lake’s hands-on approach and mechanical knowledge were pivotal in building his own competitive team under tight budgets.

"God had a plan. It's not doing things God's way is not always easy. It's probably never easy." [75:08]

By 1988, Lake successfully built a competitive race team, culminating in a memorable win at Darlington Raceway—a testament to his resilience and strategic acumen.

Faith and Personal Transformation A significant portion of the conversation explores Lake’s deep-rooted faith and its transformative impact on his life and career. Following a particularly challenging race where he narrowly missed victory and faced personal turmoil, Lake found solace and purpose through his Christian faith.

"I went and asked Christ to be the Lord of my life. And everything changed." [72:41]

This spiritual awakening not only altered his personal life but also influenced his professional endeavors, including founding Motor Racing Outreach (MRO)—a ministry aimed at providing support and community within the racing industry.

Legacy and Continued Passion Even at 77 years old, Lake Speed remains actively involved in racing, particularly vintage go-karting. He emphasizes the importance of legacy, community, and faith in sustaining his lifelong passion for motorsports.

"God had a plan. It's not doing things God's way is not always easy... but it’s a blessing." [75:37]

Lake also touches on the emotional challenges of parting with his cherished racing memorabilia, reflecting on the balance between holding onto memories and passing them on to future generations.

Notable Quotes Throughout the episode, several impactful quotes highlight Lake’s philosophy and experiences:

• "When you switch to the European engine, it was success from then on. We were killers." – Lake Speed [20:30]
• "I went and asked Christ to be the Lord of my life. And everything changed." – Lake Speed [72:41]
• "God had a plan. It's not doing things God's way is not always easy. It's probably never easy." – Lake Speed [75:08]
• "Nikola Toyota already got another one of those cars from the past." – Dale Earnhardt Jr. [specific timestamp not available]

Conclusions Lake Speed’s story is one of passion, perseverance, and profound faith. From overcoming familial skepticism to building a successful racing team against all odds, Lake exemplifies the spirit of a true competitor driven by something greater than mere victories. His ongoing commitment to racing and his community through MRO underscores a legacy that transcends the track, emphasizing the importance of faith, teamwork, and personal growth.

For listeners unfamiliar with Lake Speed, this episode offers an inspiring glimpse into the life of a racing icon whose journey embodies resilience, innovation, and unwavering belief in a higher purpose.

Key Takeaways:

• Humble Beginnings: Lake’s entry into racing was driven by passion rather than lineage.
• Mechanical Prowess: His deep understanding of racing mechanics was crucial to his success.
• Faith as a Foundation: Personal struggles led to a spiritual awakening, reshaping his life and career.
• Community Building: Founding MRO highlights his dedication to fostering a supportive racing community.
• Enduring Passion: Even in later years, Lake remains active in racing, demonstrating lifelong dedication.

Final Thoughts Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s conversation with Lake Speed not only sheds light on the latter’s remarkable career but also emphasizes the interplay between personal faith and professional success. Lake’s narrative serves as an inspiring testament to the power of belief, resilience, and community in achieving one’s dreams.

Transcript

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[Lake Speed]

I find myself leading the race and we've been leading it a lot going down the back straightaway and Richard was behind me and Dale and Benny was behind me and we had checked out on the field and this little voice spoke to me and said, lake, what you gonna do if you win here too? I couldn't get away from that. Hearing that voice, I started crying out.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. All right, so Lake Speed's out in the, out in the lobby, just right outside the door here, waiting to come in and do his interview. And Lake Speed has a very recognizable name. Some people may know some of the high points in his career, especially his win at Darlington, or maybe more recognizable, being the WKA 1978 World Championship World Carding Champion and beating Ayrton Center. Ayrton center was in that race along with probably many other talented drivers that went on to have, you know, decent careers in, in, in Europe and F1 and so forth. So either way, I mean, we always marveled at the fact that Lake Speed has that on his resume, but that's all I know. I don't know how he got there. I don't know any of the details. I've been, you know, kind of curious all of my life. About what? How Lake Speed, this guy that came from nothing in terms of a racing lineage, became a world karting champion. He won national championships and all kinds of stuff, but he became the world karting champion. How in the hell does a guy out of Jackson, Mississippi, just create that opportunity for himself? Well, we're going to learn that. That's going to be a lot of fun. We'll get into the other details around the cup stuff. The Ray mock race at Daytona, his reaction to that. His faith. He's very heavy into his faith, which I think we'll have. We'll have to talk about. And also we'll talk to him. I'll ask him about the Michael Waltrip deal on pit road at Michigan. I won't leave that out. Know that'll be important for a lot of people. Not sure how you know much he'll open up about that. That's not really a. Probably a fun experience for him, but. Yeah. So we'll see what we get to. It's gonna be a fun conversation. Ready to get started? Let's bring Lake into the room. You got some notes?

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, I got me a cheat sheet here. Let's go. I'll tell you what. When you get to be 77 years old, there's a lot of stuff that starts not working quite like it used to.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It happens before then.

[Lake Speed]

This memory thing is. I've always been terrible about remembering people's names because, you know. You know how it is. You're out there and you're meeting how many people every week?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

You know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

You expected to remember all them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know.

[Lake Speed]

I just gave up and quit.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So I was the same way. I always admired, like, Rick Hendrick and certain people. My sister Kelly, they can remember everybody.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And we'll walk into a room and they'll go, that's such. And such the. You know, that's the. That's the PR manager for this or the person for that, or the person that does this for this company. I'm like. I used to just be like, how do y'all remember all that? Like, I can't remember that. Even if I tried, I couldn't do it. I'd have to study all day. Well, Lake, Speed, it's awesome to have you here. As you mentioned, 77 years old, Cup Series winner and 1978 World Karting Champion, car owner, driver, had a lot of success over the years, and you've got to tell the story. So I'm. I'm excited to learn more about it today. I was able to, fortunately, be kind of plugged into the sport as a little kid and a big fan throughout the 80s. And I remember. We'll get to this in a bit, but the very first memory I think I have that has any relation to you is when you must have been renting over where Osterlin was. So this was right around the very front end of 1981, and you had your orange and green Oldsmobile number 66.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I just. I was I was probably seven.

[Lake Speed]

Man, I remember you running around there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I remember that car. But we'll get to that in a bit. One of the things I want to get to is just the incredible accomplishment of winning the 1978 FIA Karting World Championship. But how did you even get involved in racing as a kid?

[Lake Speed]

Started out with a kid lived just a little ways away. He got a two seater go kart for Christmas one year, and we rode that thing everywhere, you know, we could. And we lived up pretty far out in the country. So it wasn't. It was a development there, but the development was just at the very beginning of it happening. So there was a lot of dirt roads in between and whatever.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What part of the country is this?

[Lake Speed]

This is Jackson, Mississippi. And so we ran that, Rode that thing till it fell apart. And it was a friend of mine. It wasn't mine. And then I wound up talking my folks into buying me a little single seat go kart had, you know, it was a yard cart, knobby tires on all that stuff. Well, when I wore a oval track in the front yard, my mother said, that's got to go.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

So my return to her was, well, let's get me one that's got slicks on it. Got racing slicks on it. It won't tear the yard up. So they wound up letting me get a go kart with racing slicks on it. About that time, another kid in the neighborhood comes on Christmas morning. We hear all this loud racket outside. Go outside and look. And here he comes up the street. He's got a real racing go guard, straight header on it. All this stuff. Man, that looks pretty cool. I'd been fooling with horses all my life. My fool family liked horses, whatever. And I'd done a little junior rodeoing with them, barrel racing and this, that and the other. I wound up getting a big old horse that looked like Charles Atlas. And it threw me off right in the middle of practicing one day. And I was mad, tried to land standing up because I was ready to. I was gonna whoop that sucker. Broke my leg, just both bones and leg. And I got to thinking. I said, you know that thing, that go kart doesn't have a brain. So I think I'm gonna do away with the horses and just work on this cart thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so that was the beginning of my karting.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Your brother apparently raced a little bit as well. Was that. Is he older than you?

[Lake Speed]

Older, yeah. One brother was eight years older than another. One was 16 years older than me. The eight year older. Was. He was a wild man. He was into trouble all the time. He called himself the black sheep of the family kind of thing, but so he kind of was instituted talking my mother into getting me the racing go kart.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Lake Speed]

And that was the beginning. And my dad took me to the first go kart race that I ever went to. That's the only one he ever went to.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Why?

[Lake Speed]

He said, this is total foolishness. You know, you're crazy. Oh, just.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How old were you?

[Lake Speed]

Probably. I'm gonna. I'm guessing I was kind of go back and looking at school ages and whatever. I'm gonna say maybe 13.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

12, 13, something like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Maybe he thought it was a waste of time.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, yeah. He was businessman. Yeah. You have to understand his background. He was one of eight kids, I think seven boys and grew up out in the sticks down in South Mississippi on a dirt farm. They were just, you know, just plowing a mule. He said one day, he said, I'm tired of looking back in this mule. I think I'm gonna go to the big city, see if I can make. Because nobody down here, nothing happened with their lives. He went to the big city, and the year I was born, he was a mayor.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn.

[Lake Speed]

Of the city. And he went there. 8th grade education and just worked hard. Worked hard. Straight with people and did really well.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so that was kind of his background. He was all business.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

You know, that his. I asked him one time, I said, dad, how come you don't have a hobby or anything? He said, son, I do have a hobby. He said, I hunt and fish. Only things I do mine on Capitol street, huh? Yeah. Never thought about it that way. And he said, I'm really good at it. Yeah. That's awesome. That was. That was it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So you continue to race. Obviously. But how did you. How did you handle that without his support or who was with you?

[Lake Speed]

I found out there were some other kids that had go karts, too. And so I started a little cart business in the garage. At the house.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Working on other people's carts, selling parts, buying parts, you know, whatever, to finance my carding stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Wow.

[Lake Speed]

Dad. Nothing to do with it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He didn't appreciate the business that the businessman that you were, because that's quite impressive.

[Lake Speed]

You know, I've never thought about that. I don't know if he did or not. I mean, we had a great relationship as far as me and him went.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

But I never remember getting any bada boys or atta boys. But. Yeah, but like I said, it was he was just all business. The first race that he took me to, that was the last race that they had at that track. They closed it, I think the next week. I went to the. At a go kart club. I went to the go kart club meeting. That was the last meeting. They disbanded the go kart thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn. When you went to the races, is this road course, oval asphalt, road course stuff. And how did you stuff about the.

[Lake Speed]

Size of, you know, what they call a GoPro, but now it's tracks like that. Yep, that size.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you developed your own ability, knowledge, mechanical knowledge, just by trial and error.

[Lake Speed]

Like I said, dad was developed make. Building this development that we lived in. So he had a lot of construction equipment. They. It was like a construction company building this thing, putting streets in and plumbing and all. Everything. Well, this black guy that worked for him was kind of his manager guy. And Warren took me with him when I was really little. He'd take me with him every day. Wherever we went, we'd go. I was riding in the pickup truck with him, and I watched that man. There wasn't anything he wouldn't try to fix or work on. Do whatever. So I grew up before I even going to school with men all day, building things, doing things, fixing things and whatever. So I wasn't scared to, you know. When I got that first knobby tire car one day, I said, I'm gonna. I wonder what this thing looks like inside this motor. I take something off, put it back on, see if it still run. Yeah, take a little bit more off the next time to see if it still run, you know. And I'm trying to figure it out. And then when we started doing the racing part, then I said, oh, these guys are working on these things. So I went over to one of the guys that was supposed to have been really good, and he was showing me some tips and things. And so then I started. Just started letting my mind do it. God just gave me an understanding how a lot of this mechanical stuff works.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How did all of this racing fit into your education?

[Lake Speed]

Education kind of got in the way, but other than that, you know, you just kept. Went. Went to college.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Where'd you go to college?

[Lake Speed]

Mississippi College. Well, first year, I went to Ole Miss. Everybody's heard Ole Miss, okay. Went there for your party school, big time. It's crazy. I flunked out. And I said the first year, and I said, yeah, I ain't doing this. This is stupid. Just stupid. I want to. Plus, it really hampered my racing stuff. I was, you know, just I was too far away. I wasn't getting to. To work with. It wasn't getting to race much. Yeah. So I went back home, went to Christian college. It was right outside of town there, and I'd commute and that way I could still work on the carts and doing my cart business was getting a little bigger and things were going along when you're.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but you brought up going to that Christian college. Everybody knows that's. Watched you in the. In your NASCAR career, knows you're a man of. Have of heavy faith. Like you, you know, it's a big part of your life. Had that always been that way, or was that something that developed through that experience at the college, or was that something that was always part of your household or.

[Lake Speed]

No. Well, we. Our family went to church every, you know, most every Sunday, unless it wasn't convened or something. It was. It was a kind of a convenient faith at the time. It wasn't anything serious. I was just going through the motions and, you know, doing whatever. And I believe there was a God, but, you know, I wasn't talking to him and he wasn't talking to me, and it was. I was just doing my thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

You know, just out there calling myself Christian. I went down front, joined a church when I was 15 years old. Just because. Did it on Sunday night when the crowd was low. I wouldn't embarrass myself, you know. Yeah, well, those kind of things, you just check the box off kind of thing. I thought I had my ticket to heaven in my pocket, and now I can just go right. And that was kind of why I was living crazy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You were living crazy?

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Raising hell.

[Lake Speed]

We were the bunch a lot of people talked about me and some of my friends that I ran with, especially in high school.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, as we go through this career of yours, in this life, really more than a career, don't let me skip past the part where that started to change for you. Okay, well, let me if.

[Lake Speed]

If you'll give me this grace.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sure.

[Lake Speed]

The carding thing grew out of the garage. One day I started working as a. Went to college when I got to college, came back to. From Ole Miss, back to Jackson. My dad said, well, why don't you go to work and help me with real estate stuff? I'll give you some. Some job here to do some things to take care of. So I actually started doing commercial warehouse. He'd been mostly residential stuff that I've done. So we're going to Start doing some commercial stuff and get you involved with that. Building some buildings and leasing some stuff and whatever like that. So. So I was getting my feet on the ground there, but at the same time I was racing the carts. And one day I walked in the office and I told dad. I said, dad, I know you think I'm crazy, but I'm gonna quit working for you and I'm gonna open up a cart shop, go full time. He said, you absolutely lost your mind. Yeah, and just what I want to do. He said, well, have at it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so I went and rented a place and Jackson rented a place and started one of the first mail order go kart parts places in the country. And I was doing it super cheap. I went in and was wholesaling everything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And were you working?

[Lake Speed]

Things blew up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Were you selling for a specific manufacturer, like Margay or Horseman?

[Lake Speed]

Sold them all.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All of them?

[Lake Speed]

All of them. Everything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What was your preference?

[Lake Speed]

Oh, back then, at that time, whatever was the best one, the hottest one going. I'd run that, you know, and push it. But we sold stuff all over the country and then started selling stuff out of the country. Getting, exporting important stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn. So this thing took off.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah. 71 was the. 71 was the year. First year I wanted national championship. I switched From American made McCulloughs and all American made stuff to European engines and won everything we could win. End of the season, I'd won my first national championship. End of the season, the guy that was helping with the motors and whatever, we got an invitation to go to Hong Kong. I said, what? He said, yeah, they got a big race over there and they pay a lot of money and they'll pay us to come over there. They'll pay us and then I'll sell them all the carts and don't even bring them back. They gonna give me a bunch of money for the carts. Yeah, we jumped on an airplane, went to Hong Kong. There's a park right in Hong Kong in the middle. Big race. They did it. Did good. Me and the guy, the guy that was with us, we first and second.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And sold you stuff.

[Lake Speed]

Sold your stuff, got on the airplane, went back. Then I don't know what happened. Several years later, somebody tells me it was world championship thing. I had a really good year, you know, several years I won like national championship for like seven or eight years in a row.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I guess I fill in a spot for me between coming back home to college from, you know, going to college locally at home and getting back to racing. And starting your karting business to winning a national championship. Like did the winning come, for lack of a better word, did the winning come easy? Did. Did. Was success always part of, part of your experience? They had to build up to that.

[Lake Speed]

Sort of prior, prior to changing to the European engine. Just, just doing the McCullough. I was probably overly aggressive and I just blew them up all the time. I could keep the motors apart. I mean, we'd start taking a little two cycle motor and trying to put nitromethane in the thing, make it, make more power. I found out years later why I couldn't outrun some of the top guys. They had some parts that were not aftermarket products. They had a lot of titanium parts that they were putting in these motors. I didn't even know what titanium was.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

But anyway, when I changed to the European engine, it was success from then on.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really.

[Lake Speed]

We're killer. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You go to the racetrack in night. Let's just say 1971 when you're winning the national championship. When you go to the racetrack, who's with you? Help me understand.

[Lake Speed]

Me and my wife at the time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You and her?

[Lake Speed]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You didn't have anybody else helping you? Nope. You unload the cart? You do any tire treatment? No, they didn't do tire treatment back then. You got everything ready soon as you hit the track, it's ready to go.

[Lake Speed]

I did the motors. I did. Did all the prep, did everything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You got a little. You got a little.

[Lake Speed]

I still got. I got a dagnan. Little old. What do you call them wagons? Little old red wagon. Yeah, I got the same little red wagon. I still take it to the cart track today.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

That I put my toolbox in and a fuel can in it. And they gave you a place wasn't much bigger than this table to work as your pit when you were at the racetrack and you had everything there. And that was the way it was for a long time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And then before carding really took off.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What was your dad's reaction to your karting business and its success? And then your.

[Lake Speed]

I said, I never really got any.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Even after you went and when you go home, you go home and sit that, you know, to family reunion, set that national championship trophy on the table. Nothing.

[Lake Speed]

Nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No.

[Lake Speed]

Did you want.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

She would have.

[Lake Speed]

Hey, look, my mother never saw me race a go kart.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's crazy.

[Lake Speed]

Ever.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's crazy.

[Lake Speed]

My dad never saw me race. But the one cart deal, my mother, when we did the Buck Stove deal, yeah. That was the first time she ever saw me race, ever. With her eyes. She saw me on tv, but that was the first time and the only time she ever got to do it. So when I've watched your show here and watched stuff, it seems like everybody that started out, either them or their family or something, that's been a family tradition kind of stuff and whatever. And I'm thinking, no wonder people looked at me like I was odd, you know, because I was. Yeah. The background. You. You know, I tell somebody the other day, I said, well, I guess I'll just. I came to NASCAR 40 years too early because now most all the guys that are coming in are all go karters.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Well, when I was running, we had never gotten to the point, me going to Europe after running the business for a while and winning a whole lot of stuff, I forgot what year it was. Well, I know what it was. 73 was the first time I went over there. I just had one three national championships, I think, that year, or something like that, in three different divisions and really confident. Overconfident, I guess you might call it. I said, well, we don't want all this stuff. We just need to go on over there. Tell me they got this world championship thing in Europe. We just go over and kick their butt, too.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And say, it's all, you know, we're done. We got it all done. I went over there and they embarrassed me so bad. We could. I mean, there was like over 100 carts. We couldn't even make the main event.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What were you missing?

[Lake Speed]

The main 30. Everything. Yeah, it was. Their style of racing was completely different. The rules and regulations they used were different. The weight. They had really lightweight cart stuff, which I could get to get down to the weight without any problem. But our American style equipment was not competitive with what they had. Their track layouts were a lot of wiggles and a long straightaway. So with centrifugal clutch was okay with American stuff. But they had direct drive, just chain over the crankshaft, you know. But there's instant response. And when you're in all those wiggles every time we go to hit the throttle, that gapped me a cart lane while I was waiting for that stupid clutch to. So we didn't even make the main event. We got to watch it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And me and another guy that I raced with all my life, he'd gone with me over there. And my wife, the wife that I had first. My first wife raced herself, and we just did everything together, and that was pretty cool. But after it was over, we're sitting in the parking lot looking at each other, saying, well, we want to just go home and play like this never happened. We couldn't even make the main top 30 carts. And are we gonna go home and work on this? Yeah, I said, I'm going home and work on this. So we went back to the house and ordered some European carts and started running them. Even in the states, I was running them. It's like running a race with a weight bag on you or something, you know, I was. But I found out. I woke up one day and I said, you know, when I won a world championships, I woke up and I said, you know, all that time I was running all those races at a disadvantage. I was just like a runner practicing with weights on. He took the weight off when it was a real race. And I think that really helped me a lot to make it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That was in 73, when you went there the first time. Did you go back each year? And finally in 78, you won all of it. Had you come close in those other years?

[Lake Speed]

First year, didn't make it. Next year, next year. Cool. I came back. One of my competitors in the cart business, he had a big business up in Ohio. He imported a different engine than what I'd been running successful for lots of years there. He calls me up and says, I'm gonna make you a Proposition. I said, I understand you didn't have too good a time at the World Championships. He said, you put away all your stuff and start promoting my engine, and I'll get you factory support next year at the World Championships. I said, deal. I didn't have to even hesitate, really. So I just parked all my stuff and he started supplying engines for me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Lake Speed]

And so ran his stuff. And we went over there that next year. I think the final. The last final of the World Championships. I think I was like 12th or something. 12th to 12th. 15th somewhere right in there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

So that was encouraging. And we went back the next year, and I think I finished sixth. And then getting. Before we go back to the following year, calls me up and tells me, said, they've sold the business to somebody else and they're not going to have any factory support anymore.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And I went down to do now. So I said, I called back to people, the company in Europe, that I'd been running their product and selling it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Lake Speed]

I said, I want to make you guys a proposition. They made several different brands of motors, and the one that they raced, the factory team raced, wasn't imported in the United States. I said, you let me. You give me factory support, and I'll. And I'll start selling that engine in the US in the States. I'll start marketing and sell it and promoting it here in the United States. And he said, you got a deal. And he said, do you got a go kart yet? I said, no, I was going to work on that next. He said, well, call Burrell. He said, they'll take care of you. And so I started importing a barrel cart and a Perla engine and pushing it. And then I went back over, and I think the next year I finished fifth. And then the next year flipped back to sixth. I think that's right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Sixth, fifth, somewhere, anywhere. And then the year in 78 was a crucial year for my life. My first wife decided she didn't want to be married anymore. Yeah. Dropped that on me. I think probably June or something like that. And World championships are in September every year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so I'd call the factory guys and told them I wasn't coming. And they told them, but they, you know, tell them about what had happened. Everything we understand. Then my oldest brother, this 16 years older.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

That was all business, too. He calls me up. It's emotional. Said, I was at the World Championships watching you last year. You got to go back because you're so close. I called back, guys in Europe told Them, I said, I think I want to come anyway. They said, well, we've just about handed out everything, all the stuff. I don't know. You come on, we'll take care of you. You come on. We'll. We'll make it work.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so we went. And this is a cool part, too. I didn't understand what he meant by give out all the stuff, because, I mean, this is a factory. They got buku, anything, everything. So we get over there and we get the carts. And me and my friend, the same friend, would go over there every year. Lynn Haddock was. He was probably the most widely named name. And carding me and him, the two of us just, you know, kind of dominate a lot of stuff. Anyway, we get over there and get everything done. We go to the racetrack and we get out there and we're practicing and qualifying and doing everything. And we were out of, you know, like I said, Over 100 drivers. We wind up for the first final, for the world championship. We're sitting on the grid. We're third. We're gonna start third. And I'm on the go kart sitting in the cart, ready for him to push us off. And this young Italian kid comes running up there with four tires in his hands, wheels and tires, said, put these on the cart. I looked at Lynn, Lynn looked at me and was scrambling. We understood right then there was something when he said he'd given everything out. This kid was one of the top drivers for the factory. He had crashed out. And they brought me his tires.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh.

[Lake Speed]

Won the first final, won the second final. It was over. I was the world champion. They run three. It's the best two out of three. And I won the first two. It was over.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

They wouldn't give me another set of tires for the third final. They said, we got two guys, other two factory drivers. We want them to battle it out to see which one of them is going to wind up being second or third. Yeah, that's kind of where that program went.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You didn't know it at the time. Um, but, you know, there were over hundreds of, you know, hundreds of drivers in this field. 27 countries, just a bunch of talent.

[Lake Speed]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And one of those drivers in the field was Aaron Senna. You didn't know who, you know at the moment who he was going to be.

[Lake Speed]

He wasn't one of the Italians. I wasn't concerned.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Those guys were the ones you had to beat.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That is forever tied to the story because of who he would become. Right.

[Lake Speed]

He's one of Probably a handful that I raced against that was less than 20, less than 18 months were driving Formula 1 cars. Time I was racing them in the world championship. So that's why I said I came 40 years too early.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're an American that went over there and did that. What was the reaction?

[Lake Speed]

The fans were. Seemed to be very pleased about it. I mean, when they have a parade kind of walk the teams around. Each country's only allowed six drivers. And so when it comes to the parade, it's just me and Leland, my buddy with the flag. Yeah. Us. We the only US Representatives. A few years of the world championship, some other drivers from the states went over but. But none of them ever, you know, never made. Never made a main event.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It was so the reception was good.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, it was good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're at 30, you're 30 years old. Yeah. I don't want to drag your emotions through too much today because I know you're emotional guy.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, I am.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But being in a marriage, right. That I'm, you know, we both have experienced that and know how like when you make that commitment, you know, you kind of all in. Right.

[Lake Speed]

It was pretty hard. That was.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I can't imagine, you know, how you pull. How you pulled yourself together. Right. Because I, I think that no matter how great everything else in the world is going for you or anyone in that situation, when that leg gets kicked out from under the table, it's hard to. To your point, like you didn't want to even go over there and run. You just didn't. You didn't really have motivation to.

[Lake Speed]

It's a weird, weird deal. Cause the two of us were just like this always. She was. Did all the marketing and everything for the CART business. Theirs raised some too. And did you ever. We had like Junior and I had him started carding. You know, he was getting, getting his early start with it and it just. Yeah, it. It was devastating. It was devastating. And I, I think my older brother said, you know, you, you just need to go because you know, how you race, you get. We're laser focused, you know, when, when it's time to go race, you know, set you on fire. You don't even know it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so it took over when I got there. Yeah, it took over and that was helpful. Yeah. I think for the short term it just, it just made the drive that much harder. You just, you just. I was, you know, I don't kill.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Did you. I mean, I assume you eventually at some point come to terms with the, with that and carry on with your life, right?

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So you're 30 years old now. Take in 1978. Is that. Where is that on the. You know, if a 30 year old man won the world carton championship today, I don't know what the reaction might be. You know, these, everybody, the kids, everybody getting younger and younger. Used to. I started.

[Lake Speed]

I was a little older than the guys. Not a lot, but a little older than all the guys over there too.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I started in Xfinity and my. Feels like my mid-20s. And now these guys are jumping in these cars as early as they possibly can. We got, you know, Wyatt out there racing a limited late model at Hickory. At 12 years old, when you won the world championship and left to go back home to the United States, where was your motivation? Because like I would imagine, you've been there so many years, you've won national championships, all these. You've done it all. You're 30 years old. So we know that you move on to stock car racing. But when you got home, was there any. Still some fire to compete in CART and continue to do that?

[Lake Speed]

I had a business. That's what I did for a living, you know. So you got the businesses still going. I just won a world championship. That's gonna be good for business. And it was really good for business. Business picked up. It was already good and it got better. Yep. But. And I got invited to go to. I raced in New Zealand and I've got a few other trips where the people just wanted me to come. Yeah, go show up World champion. They paid the bills and sent me there and it was cool, you know, it was all right. Sucked to be by myself doing it, but, you know, that was. That's just the way it was. Yeah, but because I guess I think it was the year before I won. Yeah, it was a year before I won the world championship. One of the Italian drivers had moved on and he was in Formula one. Well, he came to the world championships just, you know, he was in Italy and that's where he's from, whatever. So it was easy for him to show up. So he comes at a racetrack. There's a guy named Elio De Angelis. And I was talking to him and I said, elio, what's it like driving a Formula one car? He looked at me straight as I'm looking at you and said, it's just a big go car. Put that in the back of my mind. I don't really want to live in Europe. I like going over there and visiting and everything. And it was, you know, it's different and it's nice and whatever, but I don't live there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And I got to thinking, well, you know, I've done everything I could do in carting. I just need to find something else. I started going to some open wheel events, looking at some of the open wheel stuff and was thinking maybe this is what I ought to do. And then I got a call from a total stranger and he happened to be the editor of Car and Driver magazine, I think. And he tells me, he said, lake, I understand you're thinking about doing something professional racing. He said, you know, most all those organizations you're looking at are on life support. They might not be here next year or the year after. They're just struggling big time. He said, but there's another one that is taking off like it's going to the moon. That's nascar. I said, I don't know, we think about going to circles, whatever. He said, if you want to do something professionally, you better look at this. You need to do it. Said, if I've got some people that would like to have you come up to Charlotte and let them show you around, I'll be weak.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, really?

[Lake Speed]

You remember he had a, a knack for doing this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Lake Speed]

This is, this was not a new thing for him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He had an agenda.

[Lake Speed]

He had agenda. Well, the same year I won the world championships at karts, Mario Andretti won the world championships for Formula One and Kenny Roberts won the world championships for motorcycle. So we had three world champions the same deal. So we were, I guess that was part of the. Probably helped get me some attention because carding otherwise wasn't going to have any. Nobody's, you know, might as well won a baskin weaving world championships. But so I said, he said, well, you know, if you come up there, show her around, do. I said, well, okay, I guess I, you know, what the heck? Ain't hurt anything. So I flew up here to Charlotte and at that time the Charlotte airport wasn't as big as this building right here. You know, it was a little bitty small thing, you know, and got out and. But, you know, he had a retired driver, guy named Darrell Derringer picked me up at the airport and Darrell took me to Martinsville that weekend and first took me to the speedway. Showed me around Charlotte Motor Speedway and it was, you know, didn't have all office tower and all that stuff there yet, but it was still, it was a highly impressive facility. And then we drove up to Martinsville and of course, probably just things just on the other side of Winston Salem, you started seeing banners and all the. You know, how it used to be. You thought you were there at the track and no, you're not at the track yet. It's a long ways yet, all that going on and to get to the track and all the stuff that was happening there, compared to the road racing people, this was on steroids. This was out of sight. I was impressed with all that and walked around the pits and thought of cars and, you know, looking at the cars some and this, that and the other, and didn't really know what I was looking at particularly, but talked to Ricky Rudd because he had been a customer. And I raced with him one time, I think, road race track on the big track where we went on sports car tracks. And he hadn't been in it very long, maybe three years or something at that time. And he said, oh, yeah, you know, it kind of encouraged me a little bit. Not a whole lot, but encouraged me a little bit. Anyway, then they put me up in the press box to watch the race. And I'm sitting up there in Martinsville and watching the guys go around the track. And I'm sitting there. Darrell's asking me, he said, well, what do you think? I said, I'm thinking, look like there's about a half a dozen guys down there know how to drive. He said, what makes you think that? Well, there's only a few of them that just, you know, right on the where they ought to be taking a good line around the corners. Whatever. Darrell said, he said, I think you'll find that it's a lot harder than it looks. And so next thing they did, they offered me a test ride. Yeah, in the car. So if you remember the term bear grease.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah. I didn't know anything about that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Well, they took me to Rockingham, and I guess that was in October when it's nice and cool outside, and that's where we tested. So they put me in the car, and first they just want me to jump in the car and go. I said, ain't no way, Jose. I don't have nothing about. I have no clue what this thing should feel like or nothing about it. I said, you drive it, and I'll just let me crawl in the right side over there. I'll just hold on and just go out there and run some, and then.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'll go, who's driving it?

[Lake Speed]

Dk.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay, DK or it?

[Lake Speed]

Yep. So dk, he goes out there and runs around a little bit and come in. Okay, all right. Now, all right. I got some idea of what it's going to be like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So you rode in a passenger side of this car, hanging on.

[Lake Speed]

Just crawled in there and held all the roll bars, huh? We ran fairly fast. I mean, fast enough to.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

If you're showing somebody something that they're gonna be driving in a minute, you go in there. Pretty. Look, I've never been scared of much of nothing. You ride a go kart 160 miles an hour or something, and ain't nothing there but you and whatever's around you. Yeah. Upside down. Turned over on them and all this stuff, too, you know, So I didn't. I wasn't scared or nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

So I crawl in the car and, you know, I bulk all this bolted stuff on. I ain't ever said it was five pointed hard. I didn't know anything about anything. I didn't know anything about nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You'd never been in a car with a harness?

[Lake Speed]

No. No. So I put it all on like you would a streetcar. I just, you know, hooked everything up and just pulled, you know, hook it up and everything. So I got there and run. Run around a little bit, just trying to fill out the. God dang. This weirdest feeling. Thing is moving all around. It's flopping. It's 3,800 pounds they weighed back then. And. And it's big. And this is what go with Monte Carlo.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. You've been sitting.

[Lake Speed]

I'm sitting over here, and I'm saying, man, I know you're supposed to run close to the wall down here, but, I mean, how far? I don't know how wide it is when you're looking.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

So, I mean, it was so out of the. My wheelhouse that I couldn't even hardly figure it out at all. So I'm. I'm running around there, and then I finally get going. The first thing I did is I mashed the gas. Minute it's going. But I've been driving rocket ships. Go kart with right. At 100 horsepower on it, weighs 150 pounds.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

When you mash a pedal on it, you best be paying attention to where you're going, because you're going to be there like. Like this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And this thing didn't take off at all. But it never quit taking off. It just kept on going, you know, that was pretty good. So I made a few laps and come in, and they said, oh, man, you're doing awesome. Doing great. I hadn't even been close to running hard. What are you talking about? So I Went back out again and worked my way up a little bit, and I crashed.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah, crashed.

[Lake Speed]

Tore it all to pieces. Got bruises all over my shoulders from the shoulder harness. It wasn't tight. I didn't know. I didn't know anything. And I was just stupid as you could get. So I learned a lot of stuff the hard way.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I went to Charlotte in a bush car that dad and his Tony senior nim let me Drive in 96, and I ran erect on the fourth lap, and I had no idea what I was doing. Same thing, just no clue. Don't know how far to go in the corner. Don't know what it can do. Know what. What the limits of this thing is. And I just ran.

[Lake Speed]

Add bear grease.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so I bust my ass, and I. And I think that's it. That's the end of my career, that I ain't gonna get a chance to do that again. I done wrecked it. And so when you. When this happens, what was your. What was. What was the general emotion from you or the people around you that day? Was it like, well, that's unfortunate. We'll test somewhere else? Or what was the plan?

[Lake Speed]

I was shocked. I was shocked that I'd crashed, for one thing. And then I was even more shocked when Darrell and all of them said, wait a minute, man. You were doing. You were doing really good. I mean, for somebody that's never been in one of these things at all, you're. You were doing good. They were encouraging me, and DK even said. I said, yeah, man, look, there's a race coming up here in a couple weeks. I. I'll prepare another car for you if you want to go try again, you know? And I was out of. I don't know how long it took me to say yes, but I did. And so they took me to Atlanta, and we went down to Atlanta, and sure enough, in practice, I think if I remember right, I was about halfway up the board in practice, and so I was supposed to qualify fairly far down the list, you know? So I went and got up on the hauler to watch the guys qualify.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Lake Speed]

And we were parked down right inside of turn four, and I watched. I think Buddy Baker had been really quick or something and practiced, and I watched him qualify. And he went off in the first turn, and it didn't look like he lifted out of that thing till he was almost in the middle of the corner. Yeah, I thought, damn, no wonder I hadn't been running faster than I am. I'm used to being on the top of the sheet, wherever I am, or dang close to it anyway, you know. And I'm sitting there saying, huh? And see, also, the carts were. All the carts were the same. If you got one brand you got, they wouldn't. You could take this one, that one. Then they all were the same. It just drove them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

It was up to you, you know, to drive it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Lake Speed]

And so that mentality had never got in my mind yet, that these cars aren't all the same and they don't all drive the same.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Somebody's is better.

[Lake Speed]

Yes. Yeah. Some of them have more grip than others do and whatever like that. So that. That wasn't even in my mindset at all. I just said, well, I just didn't drive it hard enough. That's all this is.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Lake Speed]

And so when I came. Went to qualifying, I went down the first turn. That thing started spinning out before I'd ever cracked a throttle, buddy. I was still wide open. I hadn't got to the middle of the corner yet. And so didn't hit anything. Turn around this way. I was acting real fool. Didn't hit anything. I thought, bad guy. I still could turn this thing back around. I could go around still. Get me another lap. I'm gonna have to spin it out next time. I'll let up a little early.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

I didn't know about inner liners and all this stuff. I'd cut the right rear tire down, had gone down on me. I went back out and I come sailing off into turn three. Lost it. Damn it Crashed big time. And I think everybody in NASCAR knew me within five seconds. And they said, this fool is out of his mind because I hit the outside wall and then came down and hit the pit wall. And all those people, the steel locked cars that were laying. I thought I was going over the wall into the. Into the lane.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And luckily I did, but that was my entrance to nascar, so.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sounds like a tough one.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, it was so the say the least.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So this is something that I learned too, that I thought, you know, it would. It would. This is something that I think a lot of people might not think about, But I remember this exact sort of phenomenon not being absolutely obvious to me even when I was young. Go to the racetrack and you standing in turn, you know, you standing in the middle of the front straightaway or down in turn four or whatever. And you listen to the car, a lone car on the track qualifying, and it sounded like he lifted it the, you know, middle of the corner or lifted at the 30% mark of the corner. But it just takes the sound that long to travel. He's actually lifting earlier, way earlier. But the sound don't get to you till a few seconds later, and he's already another 200ft down the race, you know, further down the racetrack. And so, you know, it's easy to get confused. You know, it's easy for that. It sounds like something I learned.

[Lake Speed]

It come easy that day. I learned that real good that day. Darrell was the one that pointed out to me. I told him what I'd done, and he said, blake, you're half a dang mile away from where it was sound. I said, well, dang, that makes all sense in the world. No wonder.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just that little beat of time, that little moment of time for that sound to travel to you, just that half a mile. He's another 200 foot. And so you see you thinking he's lifting deeper in the corner. I It so the same it took when I was. I watched dad run hundreds of races, it seems like in the 80s and 90s. And I didn't get that. I didn't understand that thing about that till I drove myself at a big track. And I went, oh, I better not pay attention to that, because that's. That's giving me some bad information. And so you ended up having a tough go at it. But you. You decide NASCAR's for you.

[Lake Speed]

Let me back up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Why'd I do this? Why did I even come to nascar?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Something new. New challenge.

[Lake Speed]

I was trying to find something couldn't win. I wanted something where I wasn't supposed to win. Because I went to a cart track, I was supposed to win. And that can be a pretty heavy burden to put on you. And it gets to where it makes things not so enjoyable. The cart thing had gotten because of the business. I had so many customers coming after me at the track that I couldn't concentrate on what I was doing. I couldn't relax and enjoy myself.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And I'm supposed to win.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's like being Dylan. Like being Dylan Hart's son is what that sounds like.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you probably could get a little bit of grit with it. Relate to this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so I wanted to go, I need to do. Find something that I. That'll be hard. And because I like. I really enjoyed the. The mechanical stuff of it. I enjoyed trying to come up with a better mousetrap, new tricks, all that stuff that. I love it. I love coming up with new ideas and trying to design stuff. That's it. I just need to find something that I probably can't be successful at but I can enjoy the fight to trying to, to get there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And when I had this experiences with the stock car, I said this is it because I ain't got a snowball's chance. And hey, D's doing any good here. I don't know anything about, I don't know anything about a car. Don't know what the shock is. Don't know sway bar is. I don't know nothing. Yeah, this will be tough. So that's. That was the challenge.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Where did you get your first car from?

[Lake Speed]

Daryl found the first car from me and bought it from a guy in Chicago. The great NASCAR state of Chicago. I'm thinking afterwards, I don't know, what have we got? What have we got here? You know. And it had a zero. The number on it was zero. And it looked rough. It was pretty rough looking when we got it. And guy John, I forget what John's last name was. He sold it to us and he had a little box truck, I think probably like 16 foot box truck and open trailer, pulling it on and whatnot. So we just had two or three guys there and we rented a little spot there when I was out. Buildings from Austerlin.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

When you were over at Osterlin's, we working kind of next door to them. I remember seeing your car there and.

[Lake Speed]

We wound up buying a car from Osterlin later.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Lake Speed]

I think it was that later. Yeah, it would have been later that year. Sometime along there. One of the head of a car there your dad wouldn't like or something.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's not the first interaction that you would have with dad. You and him. There's a picture of you and him standing in victory lane at Charlotte. Y'all had won some buck stove challenge or some sort of challenge where I don't know if you.

[Lake Speed]

Veteran and top rookie. And some rookie.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so dad won the race and you were the top. You ran seventh or sixth or something in the race and got best finishing rookie. And y'all standing, y'all both your teams are in victor lane together. But what do you, what do you remember about that, that time frame? Kind of being around. Connected somewhat to. I don't know if it was, you know, you know, they were, they were.

[Lake Speed]

Giving us some help. There's some of the guys who were over there, you know, give us pointers on this, that and the other. And that was before we bought the car. And once we bought the car, then they would. They really were helping us even more, you know, give us more information what to do to it. Whatever you do, don't you hurt that nose of that car. It's got a lot of hours in it, you know, but. And we, we were running better too, you know, we just got to running better. We just didn't have much, didn't have much any sponsorship to amount to anything. And my funding was running low. I'd sold my cart business to fund all this stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really.

[Lake Speed]

I just liquidated the cart business and yeah, that was it. I put it all. Put it all on the table.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Had you moved down to North Carolina full time?

[Lake Speed]

No, I was still. Still living in Jackson and just commuting. I did that until it was New Year's Eve. 84, 85, before we moved up here full time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You end up getting some sort of a radio call over the. During the race at Ontario in 1980. Explain that to me. This is a story I hadn't heard.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, I don't. I don't really remember the details of it. I just remember. Remember we had messed around and I don't know what happened. We got a lap down somehow or another. I remember this is one of those highlights in your career stuff. I passed three cars. I mean, Cale Yarber and I think it was Neil Bonnet and somebody else. All in the. Coming off the. I remember that track layout. Would have been coming off the fourth turn, passed all three of them. A one shot. My car was hooked up and I was going. But we'd gotten a lap down. And every time when we come around for a restart, whatever, them guys are running the side of me doing anything, try to get me out of the way and not let me start back up there with them. So the car was really good. And I get this thing on the field. They said, dale needs you to help him. And I don't remember. I can't remember if I was running in front of him and slowing down to let him draft with me, or if I was running behind him, help him, push him, push him, you know, more or less. But anyway, that was at the end of the race. It was, you know, last. I don't know, last several laps or something like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I believe Judge. I mean, I'd never heard the story, but I would imagine that it would be connected. So, Ontario, 1980. Dad's trying to win the championship, and they had had a bad pit stop and had to come back down pit road to replace a lug nut. And so they had lost the lead draft, and they were really hanging on by, like, one or two spots to the. To the championship. And I imagine that you were likely called on, being that you were in the proximity of dad, somewhere near him. They were like, hey, we need him. He needs somebody to draft with. You got to help him out. Pretty unique deal. I'd never heard that, but absolutely believe it's possible that it happened. And.

[Lake Speed]

I don't make up stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No.

[Lake Speed]

Hell, no. Bridge the guy enough real stuff. I don't need to make up anything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Bridge the gap between your, you know, driving your own Car to getting a call to come drive for Raymock. You talked about your funds running out. You talked about how, you know, how tight the budget was.

[Lake Speed]

There was a lot between those two.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Lake Speed]

Stuff. Yeah, let me know. Roger Hamby saved me because after that year, at the end of that was 80. Yeah, 81. We changed over to the small car, worked through all the details on that, ran a few races, and then I was. I'd spent it all. I was toast. And so we just. I had to close the shop, let everybody go. Took what little bit of stuff we had, put it on a truck. A fan, one of my fans had a trucking company. And he put the stuff on the truck, sent it back to my brother. My middle brother had a motorcycle dealership. He had a big shop there, big storage area.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Put all the stuff down there. And that was it. I was over, you know. Yeah, I thought, well, I tried. Did the best I could do. It's over. Well, then Roger calls me over the winter and says, how would you like to drive my car? I'd love for you to drive the car, if you would. He said, you know, I don't have a budget and I'm there just to go have a good time and I just love racing and, you know, that's it. So I said, yeah, I'll do it. I'll be glad to. Give me some more seat time, more exposure, get out there and go. He did have one carrot he hung in on there. He said, he said, I do a lot of work for Junior Johnson. And he said, basically, I'll run out of his trash pile the stuff that he ready to throw away. He don't want anybody else to get it, but he'll let me have it. Yeah, because he knows it won't go anywhere. So that year with Roger, and there's two guys there, and I can't remember one of them's name. Donnie Disharoon. Have you ever heard of Donnie? He. Him and another kid were high school. They were in high school, they were building the motors and they were doing the cars. And then he had a few other weekend guys that would come in and help on the weekend stuff, but that was it. We'd go to the racetrack and because of what the parts were, the thing could run pretty dang fast from time to time. We'd never had any, you know, never put new tires on. We never had a new tire on the car ever. You know, the whole year is always somebody else's cast off stuff. But we ran really good every now and then. Then it usually break or blow up or something. Or something. I break or fall off of it or something like that. So it got me enough exposure, I think there were people saying, wait a minute. Roger's car ain't supposed to run. Ain't supposed to be running that good. And so that opened the door for me to go to Hollis Ellington's shop.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Lake Speed]

That's when the real magic happened. That's when the real magic happened. Shelton Pittman, they call him Run is one of the smartest, smartest guys ever walked through that garage. I'm gonna tell you that right now. And he took a liking to me, and we had some magic going on. Hoss was he just wanted to play and have a good time and whatever. So he wasn't super serious. We probably could have won a few more races if he'd have been cooperative. He'd have been as serious then as he was later when some of the other guys came along a little bit later and they had more he wouldn't have to do it paying out of his pocket. But Shelton believed in me and gave me some fast cars. And when the thing happened at Talladega, it wasn't a surprise. Again, you have memories that are special. Once in weird Talladega. I don't know if it was that race or one of the other races at Talladega. I remember Leonard Wood, they were pitting right beside us and everything. We'd been practicing and he said, dang, you guys don't hardly ever. You run years. Once in a while they said, maybe we ought to quit going to all these races and just stay home and work on our stuff a little bit more before we get to it because y'all kicking our behinds every time y'all come to the racetrack. Yeah, you know. And so it was that kind of stuff then that day. That day, I think it would have been the spring race or the fall race. But I find myself leading the race. And we'd been leading it a lot. And I'm just unreal. Just a few laps left in the race and going down the back straightaway and Richard was behind me and Dale and Benny was behind me and we had checked out on the field and this little voice spoke to me and said, lake, what you gonna do if you win here too? Somebody wrecked. Had pits, Pop. I went in for everybody. Went in to get some tires for last seven, last lap dash there or whatever. I'm going down pit lane. And they said, stay out, stay out. I can't stay out. I'M already on pit lane. Said hoss didn't buy any more tires. Ain't got no tires for you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh.

[Lake Speed]

So anyway, I think I finished third, but I couldn't get away from that. Hearing that voice, I started crying out to God. I said, what's this all about? I don't understand. I don't have a clue what this life's all about.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And he said to me, back again, you need to pick up that book's been around since thousands of years. Instruction book for life. You'll find the answer. And I went home that night and took that book out and started reading and been reading it ever since.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn. Right after that race is kind of the moment that.

[Lake Speed]

That was it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You made that decision.

[Lake Speed]

Well, I didn't make the decision right then.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

But I just knew. I knew I needed to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, which is all about. And it wasn't very long after that that me and my girlfriend at the time, now, we got invited to go to her church. A friend of hers, Church, she was a nurse, and it was her person was in charge. Inviters said, you know, come over to our church. You know, boss asked you to come to the church. You need to go to church. Go to church. So we went to their church and went in there, and it was different than any church I'd ever been in. It would. I was used to going to the biggest church in the state. You know, every. It's quiet and reverent and you hear a pin drop, you know, just all that kind of stuff. And this place looked like there was a concert going on. It was drums on the stage and electric guitars, and everybody was talking, and it was just. It was happening. People, you could tell they were glad to be there. It wasn't anything. And then. And the pastor got up and he didn't preach like normal preaching that I was used to. He was teaching the Bible. He was just line by line, he was teaching, you know, what it's all about. Like, better as good or better than any professor in college I ever sat under. And at the end of the service, typical for most evangelical churches, every head bowed and every eye closed. Anybody in here would like to ask Jesus to be the Lord of their life. He'd come down front and we'll lay hands on you and pray for you to receive Christ. Old voice came back to me and said, you've been reading about a church like this, haven't you? Said lake, you've been driving your own Little red wagon. Look at it. Looks kind of beat up, bent up, scarred up. You'd run it off in the ditch quite a few times. Why don't you let me drive a while? Up off the cha came.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And as I was coming off of it, another old loud voice that I was used to hearing a lot said, if you go down front, dude, you'll never race again. He'll send you off somewhere to be a missionary or something. I don't care. I'm done down front. I went and asked Christ to be the lord of my life. And everything changed. Foul mouth went away. Alcohol went away. I was a new person. Came back to the racetrack thinking, man, that got on my side now. Next race was one of the darlington races. I went southern off what used to be the third turn back there. You know, you challenging yourself all the time, how deep you can run there. I said, I think I'm gonna. I'll probably be able to run this thing wide open now. And just about wrecked little boys came back to me and said, lake, you're not the only one out here. We got out. Yeah, reality here, you know. No. And so that was really the beginning of a life change for me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

My. My experience of following you and just, you know, experiencing your involvement in the sport. You've always spoke openly about your faith and how big of an impact that's had on you. Do you think that that. Is it any coincidence that, you know, you would then kind of find yourself in a really good situation at Ramock shortly after that decision, you would go have a really great year, a big moment in Daytona that we all, you know, look back on fondly. You would then be able to build your own race team into a competitive race team, end up winning, driving your own car out of your own shop. You're winning at arguably the toughest racetrack and the toughest race to win. You sort of. Do you feel like that that decision allowed you to find all, you know, find a way to get. Get all the other components necessary in life to be successful in this?

[Lake Speed]

Absolutely. God had a plan. It's not doing things God's way is not always easy. It's probably, probably better said, never easy. From the time I've made that decision, I was driving for Hall Sin and then the situation. Raymark came up and a couple other offers came up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What were they?

[Lake Speed]

They did not talk about them. Oh, the. There's other people involved. There's other people out there. Anyway, so we prayed hard as to what we should do, where we should go and Decided that we felt like God told us to go to Butch and Bob's. So we went there and Hoss and them, you know, were probably disappointed. I feel sure they were disappointed because we were, we were doing really well and had a lot going on for us anyway. Felt like Lord told us to go there and went there with them having no sponsor. Yeah, nothing. But I went there on God's direction and immediately started dialing for dollars. You know how that is. Yeah, dialing for dollars. Nothing happening. And one day was we getting really close to go to Daytona. I was sitting at the desk, Butch's and I went pick up the telephone to call somebody. And a voice came back to me and said, you gonna trust me with this or not? Put the phone back up. We went to Daytona with a car, nothing written on the Saturday, during the Saturday's race. I was up in the Goodyear tower watching right before we gonna have last practice, you know, got your uniform on, all that stuff. I'm up there and watching around. This guy comes over to me, bumps in to me and says this is the first time I've ever been down here. Can you tell me what's going on? And I explained to him what was happening and he was asking more questions and I was answer his question to him. He's a nice guy. And after the race was fixing to be over here in a minute, I told him I got to go, I'm practicing here in a minute. He said before you leave. He said, I came down here and there's a big team was supposed to be meeting with me. We were going to put a sponsorship deal together. Wasn't going to be a big one, but a sponsorship deal with them. And he said, I got down here and they won't even talk to me. You, is there any, you got any ideas, anything I could do someplace I could put, put some sponsorship, put my name on. I got a whole ton of people guests that are here. And it was a Nationwide auto park guy. And I told him, I said, well actually we've got a white car down here has nothing on it. And I'm sure that the owners would look love to talk to you about anything, doing whatever. And so they got together that night and had dinner. But you Bob, instead of a little small decal put on there, they wrote Nationwide all over the whole car like it was a big time full deal. And I remember when I came to the track, you know, you normally go you garage stalls so car and see what's going on, you know, whatever I got there and car wasn't there. I said, well, maybe it's gone through tech. And I went over the tech area, wasn't there either. I'm saying, where's the car? And somebody pulled me, said, oh, it's right around the corner over there. Sign painter, still painting. We started that race with wet paint on it. It's pretty cool.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Went out there and had a heck of a race. The only car, the lead lap with Bill. When it was all over with, we won. We won our class.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And this was when Bill ran, you know, all that crazy 10 mile an hour faster than everybody else. They had. They had it going on. Elliot did.

[Lake Speed]

I don't know if any of us have ever heard yet, figured out what it was. They have some sneaking ideas that. Of what it was.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right. They wasn't anybody going to be able to run with him. But y'all really could. You know, your car, your car would hang in there a little bit.

[Lake Speed]

Neil's was real good, too. Neil was pretty close. He was. He found something happened to him there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Blew up on the front straightaway, I think.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, something like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But you. That was a.

[Lake Speed]

That was a big deal. Let me tell you what the part that was why I was so dang emotional. This is really important, I think. So we come off the racetrack and you go to the gas pumps, you know, and as soon as I pulled out, lines of the next, you know, third place car get in, the guy from Nationwide runs up to the car. How he got there, I don't know if he was in the grandstand. I don't know how he got there. But he comes running up to the car and he's hollering at me in there and said, I don't care what we have to do. We're not taking our name off this car. He said, I'm gonna get the money to sponsor y'all for the rest of the year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so then you get out of the car and you know, the camera people and all the stuff is at the Winter Circle, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

I look up and here they come, the whole shooting match.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And I think it was Mike Joy. He sticks a microphone in front of my face and says, what does this mean to you? And a voice came back, said, I told you I was going to take care of this. I exploded.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

You know, just thanking God for, you know, what he had done. Just miracle.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, it was.

[Lake Speed]

And that was just a beginning.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

There's a bunch more miracles that he did after that to let the rest of the stuff happen. I don't know how long your show can go, but I could tell you some more that will flip you right out.

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

To take me to Darlington in 1988. If you watch you in, you know, 86, 87 in 88, you'll understand that you were building something. You were building a team to your standard, right? You had had this kind of knowing now, right, that with a story we've heard about how you developed such a successful operation and business in karts. I can totally see how you applied the same sort of business mind to how you ran your own operation. And by 1988 your car was very competitive. This team that you had built on your own and you had a very intentional way of going about your engine program and everything. And you did it all smartly with a budget a little bit tighter than a lot of other people's, but you could go out there and compete. And so here you are in Darlington one afternoon with one of the best race cars in the field Led A lot of laps and put yourself in a great position late in the race to. To have a commanding lead. I guess, you know, walk me through what those emotions must have been like as you're closing in on the finish of this race. Because, man, winning in your own car is one thing, but doing it at Darlington and track, where every driver in the field knows that that's where drivers shine. That's where real drivers shine. You kind of conquered a huge mountain that day. I just kind of wondered. I was there. I was watching, you know, watching you run the last handful of laps, coming through turn three and four and thinking, man, he's gonna win. He's gonna win today. It's his first win. What were your emotions closing in on the finish of that race?

[Lake Speed]

I had almost won several races that year already, and my emotions were, don't let anything else happen. You know, we had to hold a lap down in Richmond and figured out a way not to win the race. Rockingham, we were really fast at Rockingham. Didn't win that one.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Started out at Daytona, that Daytona was leading the race. And the harmonic, where the end of the crankshaft, where the harmonic balancer goes on, it broke off. The car was so fast that Bobby and Davey drafting together couldn't pass me. That was the first one. So when it came to Darlington and dominated the whole race and then just sitting there, please don't let something happen again. Please don't let something happen again. And when it didn't, I was quite relieved. It was. People had to say, what was. What'd you feel? Like? I said, it was the biggest relief. I just got dang, finally. Finally, you know, something didn't happen because so many things had happened before when I thought I was going to win the race and didn't, you know, I kind of gotten used to being shot down at the end. And when it didn't happen, that was. That was. It was very rewarding first, to say the least. And like I said, one of the things you said, the driver does not make this happen. You don't have the car under you and the support behind you. It ain't gonna happen. I don't give your dad or there ain't no human being can make one of these cars stick to the racetrack more than it's sticking to it or to make it run down the straightaway any faster and it's running. Everybody's got the foot wide open. There ain't nobody out there running part throttle.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Lake Speed]

You know, so I give the guys credit for helping me to get good cars. I got. I got a list of people here that I wanted to shine. Some people that I gave the first jobs to in NASCAR that. Michael McSwain, Troy Selberg, Tony Gibson, Drew Bleckader. When I was helping Bobby Hillen with his bush car, Drew was PR guy and office manager.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn.

[Lake Speed]

John Callis. He did my engines for us there the last years when we were so fast out there at Charlotte. And Robert tried to hire him that night for me. And Randy Clary probably did motors for you. Tony Gibson. Most all these guys, their first jobs in nascar, I don't remember. You might not ever even known. Gary and Walter Smith were the first ones that were doing pit crew coaching and getting everybody healthy and, you know, working all that stuff. They were my pit crews. They were pitting my car at Darlington. All right, people, there's just. It takes a whole team.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Lake Speed]

You know, it's not an individual. The guy that's managing, it's trying to make things happen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Lake Speed]

But I just. I was blessed to have a bunch of people work for me that were hard workers.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I think that that is the one thing that I've learned about you that I didn't realize, is how for your team to be successful, you had to have. You had to make the right choice.

[Lake Speed]

Had to be 100%.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You had. Not only in parts and pieces, but the people that you put in all those places had to be, you know, had to overachieve or, you know, had to be great.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you. You know, you had to see greatness in them and the potential in them. Right. You couldn't have this one guy over here just not quite measuring up, you know, because the whole. Your. Your operation banked on every little pillar being strong.

[Lake Speed]

I can't. I can't. I can't not tell you this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sure.

[Lake Speed]

When Reymach let me go, like, second race or third race of the season, I thought it was over for absolutely, for sure. I mean, what am I going to do? There's no seats coming to Bugaba. Whatever. I'm sitting at the house trying to make a garden. I mean, a garden, a flower bed on the front porch, around the front porch. We'd bought this old farmhouse, and God spoke to me again. He said, lake, nobody's gonna hire you. They gonna argue. You're gonna have to do your own team. I laughed. Lord, you know, I owe money on this place here. I had to borrow money to buy this land. He said, you just do today what you can do. Let me take care of the rest, I had an old bulldozer that I'd gotten to clear pastures for the horses. And I said, well, Junior Johnson, most successful guy in racing right now. And his shop's about, maybe 50 yards, 75 yards behind his house. I said, I got placed right back there about 70, 500 yards from the house. I clear some trees off and get a paddle. I started building a pad for building to go on. Didn't have no money, no nothing. I started doing what I. What he told me to do. I got a check in the mail for exactly how much money it cost to build that building and put all the equipment in it. My father had ended. Invested in something for me as a kid. As a child. I'd never gotten a penny out of it, ever. They decided to liquidate it and the check covered exactly putting it all together. People started coming up the driveway when they heard that I was going to start volunteering. Volunteering to come work with no money. Actually, they started doing that before the check showed up. And we put that thing together and had the first car at Talladega testing in December. I think it was wound up buying most of this stuff from Cliff Stewart. When he shut down, we went to auction up there and bought most of the stuff there. And that's where I think got connected with Daryl and Jay and a few of the other key people hadn't already gone find him another job. A lot of his crew had, you know, when something shutting down, they'd bail out and go get somewhere else. But. Yeah, but then people just started coming up. I didn't have to ever solicit anybody.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

God made all that happen, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's a heck of a story.

[Lake Speed]

It's crazy. It's crazy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And there's lots more we gotta get you back. There's a couple things I need to ask you before we turn you loose. What'd it feel like to get the call to fill in for Davey? When we lost Davey, you got a call from Robert Yates. Drawing of the best cars in the garage.

[Lake Speed]

We were trying to race and I had a. We had a Chevrolet and I couldn't even buy the raw castings for the cylinder heads. The latest and greatest stuff. And John Callis was doing the engines for me. And John came in and said, lake, they won't even sell us the castings. Said, but there's another company to weld them up and do them all. But they want $10,000 for a set of heads. He said, I'm talking to Kawicki's guys up the street here. Kowicki shop was just up the road down there from me. He said, those guys are bolting on them. Take yates heads out of the box and bolt them on and make 700 horsepower. Only cost 2,500 bucks for this. He said, we need to change to Ford. I said, yeah, based on that. I mean, we don't go to the racetrack just to ride around and just to be there. We're trying to do something. So I said, okay, I'll call Robert. I said, robert, any chance I could buy a used engine from you? He said, oh, yeah, we'll fix you up. Got something to fix that. Anyways, he sells me a used inch. I'm going to make this quicker. He's selling the used motor, would take it and run it runs like, yeah, okay. It wasn't really very good. John had a background and callous, had been building fords for a long time. Before he ever started with the Chevrolet stuff. He said, like, how about let me work on this thing? So he took it apart, did some work on it. I think Charlotte race was coming up. Next race we went to, we went out there in practice. We had the fastest car. No doubt about it. We had fast car. One of the writers for the newspaper, there's a sleeper out there. Nobody's been paying attention to him, but he's bad fast. And after practice, Robert and Doug come walking down the charms. And that ain't the motor that we sold you, is it? Said, yeah, it is. He said, ain't supposed to be running that fast. John's done a little work on it, and, you know, we wound up going out there. And I don't know if you remember anything about that race, but when the 600 started, I qualified 15th. I think it was 15, 16, something like that. I was one of the early ones. Out was hot, you know, track hot. Anyway, I went from 15th to second. The first stop, they dropped the jack, and I dropped the clutch, and it snapped off the. Whatever you call that thing on the front of the gear.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The pinion. Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Canyon deal. We pushed the car back in there, and you're done. They put another gear in it. Not have one of the right gear. Sure, put another gear in there. Went back on the racetrack. When I come back on the racetrack, your dad David were on the front row coming around, and I just. I just pulled off pit road as they were catching the green flag. So we're running, and the guy said, montreal said, Dick Beatty just said that. David told. Told him, said, y'all be sure to get Get Lake out of the way when we catch him. And baby told him, you catch him, I'll get him out of the way. They never caught me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He's gone.

[Lake Speed]

Done 25 laps down or whatever it was. I don't remember what after that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I remember that race, but that car.

[Lake Speed]

Was so freaking fast. Every practice session, everything. Well, it wasn't Just a couple of weeks later, we were at Talladega and David just had his accident. Whatever. I'm sitting on the pit wall getting ready to go out and qualify, and Robert walks up to me and says, like, any chance I can get you to drive this car next week? They're working on something with another driver, trying to get him out of his contract, whatever. But it may happen, may never happen. I don't know. He said, but anyway, can you do that? I said, well, it just so happens this is the last race we have sponsorship for. We're shutting down after this race. And yes, I'm available. Then he called me Monday. Or, yeah, called me Monday, said, we've changed our mind, so we want to put a road race wringer in the car instead of you, and said, you can run the car after the next week. I said, robert, you don't understand that I am a world champion road racer. That's all I've ever done my life before. I came into this. He said, let me call you back a minute. So he called back a few minutes later, said, okay, yeah, we're going to give you a shot at it. Yeah, yeah, we'll give you a shot at it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

So we went up there, and it was. It was some funny stuff happened in my life, but that went out. Don't dance. A lot of practice, a lot of pressure on you and everything. You just be calm. Don't try to do. Don't overdo anything. Don't try to impress anybody. Just go out there and run. Said, do you. Since you drove up here before, they got this bus stop thing back there in the back now, you. You know, you have to slow up for that thing, but if you. If you miss it, you know, you can just stop and then go again, be all right. So I went out and ran practice, come in, he comes running up there, pulled the net down. Did you go through the bus stop or did you go straight through there? I said, I went through the bus stop. He said, well, you're right up here close to the top of the sheet. I said, robert, I named. I ain't run hard. I promise you, I didn't run. Run hard. And then Went out and qualified. Qualified fourth. He was over ecstatic. Said we never qualified in top 10 before ever at a road racetrack. I said, I'm still not running hard. I'm still taking it easy. I'm trying to be careful, just understand what the circumstances are. Race started, I'm running second and I'm running the leader down. The transmission brakes. So that was the beginning of it. Next weekend we went to Michigan and qualified outside pole. I don't remember what happened in that place, but something happened. But then the next weekend was Bristol and we'd practice, I guess we went and tested at Andy and then tested at Darlington right before Ernie got out of his contract. Before I could get to Darlington.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, you're looking forward to that one.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, buddy. Was I ever. Was I ever darlington? I don't know if my road racing experience or what, but something about Darlington. I finished eighth, I think as a rookie the first time I ever went there. And then the next race, I think was that rookie year when I didn't know Adam House. I didn't know nothing about the cars or nothing else, but I just loved that place. Yeah, it was always good to me. And there was a bunch of other near misses, wins that were daunting. So I always felt like God gave me a bone. If I was gonna win, that'd be my choice of where I'd want to win.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. If you only got one, that's the one.

[Lake Speed]

That's the one.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. It's one that the drivers all appreciate.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

One thing I'm going to ask you about that. I can't, I can't. I can't release this podcast without asking you about this, but one memorable moment when you're driving for mailing in the 9 car, the spam car.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Michael Waltrip got upset with you at Michigan. What the hell happened on the racetrack that had him so hot?

[Lake Speed]

You know, I think the truth of the matter is I think it's something that happened at another race before that. One time at Pocono, he thought I wrecked him on purpose. And your dad did this one time, too. You're on a corner and you're driving by somebody and you think you've cleared them, but you hadn't and you turned down. You wrecked yourself. I didn't wreck you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And that's what happened, I think, with Michael. And he just never believed I didn't wreck him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And so that particular day, we had been running pretty darn good up front. I think maybe we had a bad pit stop or something. And I'm coming back up through the pack this late in the race. I mean, just a few laps left.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And he was trying to block me and keep me from passing him, and I didn't have much time to wait. I did a slide job on him, but I didn't go buying the slide. I slid, kind of pushed him up the track a little bit going on.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And he was hot about that. Did y'all ever have. Did y'all ever talk about that?

[Lake Speed]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Immediately, like the next week.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, no, no, no. Down the road, I'm five foot five, and he's what?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, he's a big seven or whatever.

[Lake Speed]

It is, you know. So I think the wives actually did this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Worked it out.

[Lake Speed]

Worked it out first, you know, kind of help. Help.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That makes it a little easier.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah, real good thing. But I'll tell you something else. Another one, though. This one. Yeah. When he did that, when he. He walked away from the car and everything, that old voice, it was used to control me a lot. Told me, run over him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, no.

[Lake Speed]

Run over him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And Holy spirit said, don't you ever think about it? Yeah, don't you ever think about it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You finished up your NASCAR career, but that wasn't the end of your driving career. You got back into karting, but it was a while. So you ran your last cup race right before the 2000 season. So like 98, 99. Five years later, you get into carding.

[Lake Speed]

You remember Steve Peterson? Yes, Steve, I didn't know this until this all happened.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

NASCAR official, right?

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Steve had been a go karter back in his teenage years, in early 20s, I guess, before he ever got involved. Involved with the stock car stuff. And so Steve still fools around with carts. Ricky Rudd still had a cart. He carrying a cart with him to the Sonoma and other places after the race is over. People playing with go karts and stuff. So find out. There's several people had carts and they were going out to Charlotte Motor Speedway on Wednesday afternoons, running over, just running on the road course out there, cart track. And so Steve started calling me and asked me to. To come out there. And I turned him down the first few times. And he finally, finally caught me a week one day. And I said, all right, I'll come out there and run. I was made to do that. So I went out there and drove his cart and I said, God dang, I forgot how much fun these things are, you know, I said, can I come back Next Wednesday, you know, in the next Wednesday. Then I started feeling bad about it. I said, well, Steve, I'll wear your stuff out. Plus, that I want to work on. I built these things and done all. I want to do all my own stuff, and so I'm gonna get my own cart. So I called the guys back in Italy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really?

[Lake Speed]

I called the guys back in Italy, said, can I get a deal? I was all, I'm always hunting a deal. I said, can I get me a deal on a motor and a cart? And the guy said, yeah, I get you a deal, I'll send you one for nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn.

[Lake Speed]

Shipped me a cart. And so I started running. I went back out there a bunch more and run, run, run, run.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And where were you racing?

[Lake Speed]

I'm just saying I was just going out there in Charlotte. Just Charlotte. Going out there on Wednesdays and doing that and doing that. Also. There was no go kart tracks around here. No, not sprint tracks. Nowhere. I mean, you had to go closest one probably in Georgia or someplace. And so I'm having a good time with that, but I want to. I'm starting to race. I'm wanting to race again. And so I find out there's no sprint racing anywhere in the southeast right now. But there is road racing. They do it on big sports car tracks, and there's a bunch of them around here, and they were racing them all the time. And I said, okay, well, go to one of those and see what they do. And they do a few little things trickier on them than they do on the sprint tracks. Different stuff for it. So I went there and looked and, okay, I'll take my cart and I'll convert it and make a road race cart out of it. So I did that for a couple years there, I guess, maybe two or three years.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And won a national championship again.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So in 2000 and. Yeah, in 2008, you won the WK National Championship in the particular class you were in. You also got into the historic stock Car Racing Association.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah, that was a little bit after the cart thing. You know, we had a big economy thing or something in a cart deal. All of a sudden, Instead of having 30 carts in the class, there was five or six. Ten are showing up. And I said, this ain't no fun racing nobody to race. You know, this is no good. So one of the guys is on the board of directors from motor racing outreach, lived in Phoenix, and he had gotten, I guess, on the west coast, that vintage stock car thing had come to life and was pretty active he had bought two cars, he had one of Davies cars and he had one of Rusty Wallace's cars. And he was saying, come on and we have a race here at Phoenix. Come out and drive one of my cars. And I said, what, what, what kind of cars you got anyway? And I'm thinking, yeah, you know, not so good, you know, I don't know if I'd do that. He said, no. I said, I sent my cars down to Elliot, Ernie and those guys, they've gone through it. And he'd done the motors and cars and everything. Oh yeah, that sounds, I'll be there. So I flew out there and went out to Phoenix. They had a road course that was in the inside of the tractors too, used part of the oval. So went out and ran. First practice I went out, I came back in. I'm crying, man, I'm crying, you know. You know, it's first time I'd been in CAR since 98 and so my Lord, this is amazing. And I thought I've got three cars sitting in the shop at the house, your own, that are all covered up, killed. Just got dust on. Ron, thank you so very much, but I will see you at Daytona with my own car, you know. And so we went back, I went hard on taking one of my cars and converting it into a road race car and went down to Daytona and had a blast.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep. So you raced in go karts up to 70 years old. The amount of time and the amount of laps that you got under your belt, the experiences that you've had, the personal transition that you had, I would say that you have to be quite content, pretty satisfied.

[Lake Speed]

I hate the ones that got away.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Of course, we all have them.

[Lake Speed]

I believe that God gave me how much I could handle. I probably couldn't handle. I might not be the same person I am today if I'd have had more success than I had. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Where are you personally though? Because I've seen, you know, social media content, some things you've done here recently where you do have some mementos, your jacket from your go karting days and the trophies and things like that. But you're finally having to part ways with those old cars that you've had under a cover for all those years that you ran and fooled with. And these are things that even though it's probably time, so that's something I think I want to learn from you is like I hang on to a lot of stuff too. I got all kinds of stuff and I know that I got more stuff than I Probably need to be hanging on to. Right. The pieces and parts, the body panels, the cars, the trophies, the collectibles and all of these things that I think, man, that matters to me. But I think there is a time that I'm probably. I am aware enough to know that there is a day where. Or a point in my life where I'm going to go, all this ain't nothing. It don't matter. Someone, you know, someone else can have this value, this. I don't need to leave this burden to my girls. They don't. They're not going to understand the value. It's not going to have the same value that it has to me. Right.

[Lake Speed]

We're close.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right. And so, like. Like, how are you in that transition period?

[Lake Speed]

That's where I am. That's where I am right now. It's just started in the last year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's got to be a bit emotional to have to have that realization of, man, I hung on to all this and it mattered to me. You can see how proud of all that stuff you are and how y'all were able to do what you did.

[Lake Speed]

We did a whole lot with a little.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

God blessed us to be able to do what we did against. I always felt like I was a big team's worst nightmare. Because on Monday morning and having to explain how come is nobody run faster than you did. Yeah, you know, something like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But now you're in the. In the point. You're in this kind of a tough spot where you're having to.

[Lake Speed]

This is. This is where I am. I. You probably saw the picture of the big display place that's in my office and that's going to stay there forever. Yep. But that's all I need. I don't need any more than that. Yeah, I need to. I've got stuff back there that somebody else could be enjoying. I got a car, that one we took to VR. VR. And you know, my son and the guys at Pro Motor went through the engine. I don't know if you know all about that. The whole deal there, development, seeing what the difference is and everything. This awesome, awesome piece. I won a bunch of races with that thing in the vintage thing. Somebody else needs to enjoy that thing. When I went out there and rented. Tell you what, that thing went down the straightaway faster I'd ever been down the straightaway over there. And I'd won several races up there in the past. But the idea of being 77 years old and crashing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Lake Speed]

Not cause I did something stupid, but. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many times you were testing and something broke.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Lake Speed]

I mean, I had lost brakes a couple of times. You know, things broke and crash big time. In a brand new car that was. Everything's supposed to be perfect.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

So I just.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That part's understandable, but.

[Lake Speed]

And my wife is not happy at all that I'm out there going out there risking this, you know. You know, she's on this, whatever, you know. So anyway, I just decided that there's somebody else needs to own this stuff that can enjoy it and put it to use and not just sit here and have it just deteriorate into nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right. You know, and that's, that's probably worse than, you know, so seeing it go out the door down the road.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah. And to me, before I had the auction that we sold all the. Sold almost everything but the cars. Every time I'd walk out there in the shop, Dale, it was like I get sick to my stomach.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

I mean, it was just gut wrenching. Think how much energy and effort you put in to putting this all together and making it happen for it just to sit there and do nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

And that just drove me nuts.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Lake Speed]

And so I got rid of that, you know, 90% of it went to auction. And the cars, we had some of the best cars on the racetrack that was sitting in my shop and they were going for almost nothing. And I, I got, I got sick. Then I said, I'll let them rush before I give them away.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lake Speed]

I just bowed up. I should have let him go, but I didn't. At that time when we, we were right before. When we closed up in 83 and went to do the deal with Yates, we'd already built, I think, one or two cars for Ricky. That's when Rudd was just starting his shop. He bought cars from us. We built cars for him. And so most of the guys that were on my team went to work for Ricky sort of thereafter. We had really nice cars on top, lightweight, some guns that Arrow Norman agree was doing body stuff for us and we had some good pieces there. It just made me sick. So.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Anyway, what's there now?

[Lake Speed]

I've got one of them sold. Finally one of them sold, got in. California's supposed to be kind of picking it up. Pretty soon the other other two are still sitting there, you know, fresh motors, fresh everything. Somebody will go, you'll have some fun with it, you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Somebody will one day.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah. Hope so.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They ain't depreciating in value, that's for sure.

[Lake Speed]

I don't know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Now that stuff's historic, man. I think the further removed we get from it, the more. The more difficult it is to find those cars and decent shape.

[Lake Speed]

Some of them want them for nothing, though. People that call me want them for nothing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The right personal call. I've enjoyed sitting here talking to you.

[Lake Speed]

Oh, yeah, we could talk forever.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Listen, this is the great thing about this show for me. I grew up watching you race, but due to my. Due to my youth and where you were in your life and where I was as a young man or child, you know, our. We. We didn't. We didn't communicate.

[Lake Speed]

Right, right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you were one of my dad's peers. But I get to bring guys like you in here and sit down and have a real conversation. It is a. It is a blessing. I am thankful.

[Lake Speed]

Before we. Before we finish this right here.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Motor racing outreach.

[Lake Speed]

That may be the reason it all happened. Oh, everything we talked about. Yeah, I. In my heart, I feel like God knows the future. He knows the future. What's going. I think he led me through this journey to get a hold of me at Talladega, turned my life around to start this organization. Shortly after I made my profession of faith, I come to the realization that I can't go to church on Sunday anymore. It's not going to be one. As I'm reading the Bible, I'm realizing the church is not a building. The church is the people. I said, we've got people in that garage area that are Christ followers and we got a whole bunch of them in there that need to be. And so I got with some of the drivers and wives that I knew were Christ followers and we started praying for God to send us a pastor because we could. We don't have to have a building. Yeah, we can have a church right here in this garage area. And shortly thereafter, Max Helton shows up from California with a wife and five kids or whatever, says that God told him to come back here and start up church in a racetrack. And MRO came into existence. 1988 at Darlington was the first time that Max held a service in the garage area.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Man, that's interesting. So the mro, that's where it all started. Yeah. For a lot of people that are listening, MRO Motor Racing outreach. Outreach is church at the racetrack. Church. And so I remember.

[Lake Speed]

And now church in the garage and then. Oh, yeah, shops.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You'd go. Yeah, you'd go to. Yep, they do. They do. Throughout the week. They are moving in and around the industry, from building to building, having prayer and services and so forth. They do a lot of amazing things on the charitable initiative for our, for our sport and our industry. But one of the things that I remember is dad going, you know, dad would go to the service and it might be, you know, they'd throw down some chairs in the garage in the o. Empty end of the garage somewhere. They do it wherever we could.

[Lake Speed]

Good years set on some tires. Good years.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. And people just kind of sat around and there would be a short, short, brief, you know, 20, 30 minute service.

[Lake Speed]

We even had for period of there we had some singers that people that were involved in racing and we're singing that music.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh yeah, it was a lot. I mean, and I don't remember, I didn't know the origins of the mro, but I will, I'm thankful for it today because it's really my daughter's favorite thing.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So like Isla, six years old, I don't know what her interest in racing might be and I won't, you know, if she were to. Racing for me has been every day. It's what I, it's, it's in part of my DNA. Right. And I want to be a part of this board or do something in it to be, be a piece of it somehow, some way. And I hope whatever we have going on professionally might be something they would want to carry on. It's not a necessary necessity, but it's, but I want it to be available to them. And so for her to have any interest in being at the racetrack is like the first, this first hurdle. And so she loves going to the racetrack and the reason why is MRO and it is a safe place for them to be in and around the racetrack. Young kids, there's a lot of places where they don't have access. I can't take my girls to the pits. They can't sit on a pit box. They can't, you know, I can't be in those areas. So the MRO is a place where I know they can have fun, be around other kids their age, get some.

[Lake Speed]

Learn some very good character qualities. Just life changing things, foundational things.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And they have a little staff there. That's amazing.

[Lake Speed]

Unreal.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so I'm very thankful for.

[Lake Speed]

I'm going to tell you something else they do that probably most people don't know about is they have training for chaplains to be chaplains at other racetracks all over the country.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, that's pretty cool.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah. They come and teach you how to do ministry at the racetrack.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. One of the other things, too, that I think is really neat about that is the pastors that we do have at the racetrack, they become so woven into the fabric of your life, they'll be the pastor that officiates your wedding or a crew member's wedding. So since, to your point, we don't go to a regular church, I'm a member of a Lutheran church in Mooresville, but I rarely go because we've been at the racetrack for all these decades. And so the pastor at the mro, at the NASCAR events tends to become your personal pastor. Right. And when you got questions and you got things you need to talk, they're there for you. It's awesome. And I'm thankful for your involvement in that because it has served so many people in our industry in all kinds of ways. And it's become. I don't know, it's become an. An integral part of our. Of our DNA.

[Lake Speed]

I've had a NASCAR official tell us at one time said, mro is a glue that keeps everything stuck.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

[Lake Speed]

Back when it was really, really dangerous to be driving these things.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's true.

[Lake Speed]

They were the ones that were at the hospital. They were the ones that were handling the families.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And when we ever had. Any time, we ever had a. Anytime we ever had a very traumatic event, you'd always have a few more people show up next week, and it got their attention, you know, when we'd have some close calls. And I know that, you know, we all kind of. We'd all like, have these moments in our lives where we. We needed to gravitate towards something, and we tended to go toward the MRO and trying to find some. Some answers or just some, you know, making sense of what's going on. Either. Personal life.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so I'm very thankful for that. Thank you for bringing that up and shining a light on the mro. They're still a massive part of what we're doing in our industry, as you know, and that's a great way to close this out. I've enjoyed this conversation, me and your bo. Thank you for coming by. Thanks for being available and still being out there telling your story. I will tell you this. I've always thought you had a great story and a neat story, but I've seen you sharing it a little bit here over the past couple of years on social media, taking people through your shop. Stapleton came through and done a story with you. I thought that was fantastic. And I'm thankful for you doing that because it does introduce some of the younger fans to who you are. Your name's recognizable. It's an amazing name for a race car driver.

[Lake Speed]

I got a sense of humor, doesn't it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so, you know, people recognize the name, but now they're really, truly being reintroduced to you and I think they're going to enjoy this show. So thanks a lot for coming through.

[Lake Speed]

Yeah. And it's not made up. Dad's one of seven speed boys. There was a bunch of them back in Mississippi where we were from.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I believe it. Lake Speed on the Dell Jr. Download.

[Lake Speed]

Foreign.

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So great interview with Lake Speed. I'm thankful to had the opportunity to talk to him. Lake is, you know, leans heavy into his faith and I wanted to give him the opportunity to talk about that because it is something that's important to him. And so I feel like we allowed him to share, you know, share that. And I really found, you know, I guess this is the way the kind of interview went for me. Like I was really interested in the go karting part because it's, you know, Blake Speed. Yeah, that guy that won the world karting championship beat Aaron Sennett. That's. And then that's where it Ends. Right. So I kind of wanted to know, all right, what was the lead up? And so it's a lot of fun for me to get into those details. The only problem is, is you get to, you know, right around 1984, when he gets to the Raymond deal, and it's an hour and 15 minutes into the conversation, and I got to figure out how to get us to the finish line in 30 minutes, but. Or in somewhere around that. So we kind of did, you know, compress the back half of his career. There's probably a ton there. I'm sure that I would have loved to have gotten to. But there is one thing that he mentioned when he got up from the table. He's still racing go karts. At 77 years old, I thought he had quit racing and even said that to him, but apparently he still messing with go karts and says that he goes all over the country running vintage carts and just having fun. He's got some old vintage carts that they still. There's still a group of folks that enjoy those. So pretty fantastic. Guy looks like he's in great shape for his age. And it's kind of one of them deals where certainly. Yeah, you wish. You know, what. What. What could he have done in the right situation? He did find himself behind the wheel of a couple of really good rides that just didn't really kind of pan out. The opportunity with Yates was very brief because they were bringing in Ernie Irvin. But I'm not somebody that speaks about their own faith a lot. I have my own position and beliefs, and I do feel like that his life. I don't know if predetermined is the right word, but, like, the path he went down was the one he was supposed to go down. And I think that's probably why he might be able to be more content with the way things didn't pan out, because, I mean, he really did have some moments that really impacted him personally throughout his life. He sees a bigger picture, right, than just top fives and wins and success at just the racing level. There's something, you know, he's sort of driven by something bigger than that. And the other thing, too, is he did take this team. And, I mean, if you dive into some of the details and especially some of the things he's done lately on social media and this story today, you will learn, right, that they had to really hit. They had to kind of, like, strike gold to a certain extent. With almost every hire and everything, they. Every person part and every dime spent had to be really, really clever and smart. And for him to have success in the WINS car and build the speed that he's able to build in that car, you know, to go from, you know, Raymond to start his own team to win Darlington in 1988. I know his budget was super tight with the wins folks. They were involved in racing, but probably not one of the bigger sponsorships. He had less people, less finances, so pretty incredible they were able to get the speed. They were. He capitalized on the Hoosier tire in some certain areas where some other teams did as well around that time frame. But just. Just got a go. He's got a cool story. And the fact that he. I like the fact that he ain't stopped, you know, that, you know, I talked to all these guys. I'm like, how do you stop? I don't know if I can stop. And he ain't stopped. He's still having fun and, and driving and at some level, right. Getting out there and feeling the adrenaline. That's pretty cool. So thanks for Lake and his time. Great interview. Another one of these fun DJD guest interviews in the books. Let's get to the white flag.

[Lake Speed]

All right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The tear down. They were live on Twitter and YouTube following the race at Homestead. Some great, you know, great reaction to. To what we saw on this. This past weekend at Homestead. Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. Just, you know, those guys, they're their take. It's measured, they debate. You can. You can kind of buy into both sides at times sometimes maybe not, but it's still fun to listen to these guys conversate. Because I'll be honest with you, I think I know freaking everything about this sport. Now, I know in the back of my mind that that is not absolutely true, but I get really heavily convicted on some certain stances, right. And I need this tear down. Like, I need to listen to these guys because they kind of get me into a better place in a lot of areas. And I'll. I'll be frustrated with one thing or frustrated with another thing, and they kind of calm. They kind of give me the details, the things that I really need to know. It's such a great show. Door Bumper clear had Jamie McMurray on this past Monday. Jamie is always an incredible guest. A lot of people are really enjoying what he's doing in the booth for the cw. Just a fantastic addition to our broadcast ecosystem in nascar. And, you know, when we can get him on the show, it's always a lot of fun because he brings a lot of great vantage points and opinions. Carson Kwapple surprised Jamie during the show to announce his Darlington throwback paint scheme. If you haven't seen it, it looks amazing. Great job by the folks upstairs to bring back that historical car that Jamie McMurray had so much success with. Actions Detrimental also dropped on Monday. Denny having a pretty solid day out in Homestead, gives us his feedback and take on everything going on in the Sport Lake Speed, obviously the guest today, and Herman Schrader and Speed street. That drops as well today. You want to listen to what Herman Schrader think about what's going on in the industry. They touch on something sort of outside of all of the conversations that we have here at Dirty Mo Media. It's always fun to see what they think is important or what they think we need to be talking about. And Herman and Shrader, they do a good job with that. Speed Street's always a great listen, especially as we're diving into the IndyCar season. They bring a lot of great insight on what's going on in the Indy car world every Wednesday. Bless yous Heart is back on Thursday. I got a new chair. I'm excited. Me and Amy had a blast last week. No telling what we're going to get into this week. And don't forget, you're starting to see some of the gear that we've been talking about at our new merch store, shop.dirtymomedia.com We've got hats, shirts, sweatshirts, even drink wear. I'm wearing all this stuff on the show because I like it. This little sweater right here, this logo. Awesome stuff. Last week had a hat on. So trying to drop in some of this stuff where you can see what we have. If you haven't checked out the store, shop.dirtymomedia.com any of our podcasts, we've got gear for all of those. We've also got some just fun, silly stuff that we've created T shirts and whatnot with from things we said on our shows. Amy is doing a lot of the creative or part of a lot of the creative on any of the Bless yous Heart stuff. So if it looks different or it looks better, that's why Y'all have fun. It's been a great week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.

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