Mark Martin's Radical Idea To Fix The Next Gen Car

Summary

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The Dale Jr. Download

Episode: Mark Martin's Radical Idea To Fix The Next Gen Car

Host: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Guest: Mark Martin
Date: August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special episode, Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with legendary NASCAR driver Mark Martin for his third appearance on the show. Their conversation is wide-ranging and deeply candid, spanning the release of Mark’s new book “Mark Martin: Never Lift,” personal stories from his racing career, the collaborative process with his son Matt, the complicated politics and changes of NASCAR, and a passionate discussion of the next steps the sport could take—most notably, Mark’s radical suggestions for the future of the Next Gen car and the point system.

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Main Themes & Discussion Points

• Mark Martin’s New Book & Storytelling Process

  • Collaboration with his son Matt, challenges of sharing truthful, sometimes painful stories.
  • Insights into selecting stories, accuracy, and the emotional journey of documenting his life.
  • Candid anecdotes and never-before-shared racing stories.

• Inside the NASCAR Reform Committee

  • Mark and Dale’s roles in advocating for changes to NASCAR’s championship format.
  • Mark’s persistence in fighting for a return to the Chase format fueled by fan perspective.

• Radical Ideas for the Next Gen Car

  • Mark’s proposal to rethink aerodynamic philosophy: advocating for minimal front downforce in pursuit of better racing.
  • Discussion of industry resistance, challenges in implementation, and historical context.

• Reflections on Racing Culture, Competition, and Motorsport Values

  • Candid discussion on the evolution and sometimes unintended impacts of rules.
  • Why some changes have helped — and sometimes hurt — the competition and fan experience.

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Detailed Section-by-Section Summary

1. Mark’s Book & the Martin Family Bond

 [04:36–16:20]

• The Creation of "Mark Martin: Never Lift"

  • Mark opens up about the years-long process of creating his autobiography with his son Matt—a self-described historian.
  • “He knows everything. He knows who, what year Dale won the championships. He can answer any of those questions because that's how he is. He went super deep down the rabbit hole.” — Mark Martin, 06:22
  • Mark shares that Matt’s obsessive attention to historical detail—down to uniforms and old books—was essential.

• Truth, Memory, and Vulnerability

  • Dale inquires about difficulty in including tough or embarrassing stories.
  • Mark: “It probably has to do with your dad in RC Childress. Probably has to do with that 1990. Because I don't want to cry, I don't want to whine, but you got to tell either. Either the truth or what you saw.” (08:24)
  • Mark reflects openly about choices made in his career, like turning down the famed 28 car opportunity, and how those decisions look different in hindsight.

• Sharing Untold Stories

  • Mark recounts how the book includes candid, never-told incidents, e.g., multiple wild rental car mishaps with Robin and team (22:03, 23:23).
  • “Thank god we were on private property [when the rental crash happened]... It never got out anywhere.” — Mark Martin, 22:11

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2. NASCAR War Stories & Hard Lessons

 [25:00–46:33]

• Trials with Underfunded Teams & Early Career Missteps

  • Mark details racing with teams where winning wasn’t possible and how demoralizing that was.
  • Shares the story of alcohol-related crew chief problems, racing uncompetitive cars, and learning the hard way about the necessity of contracts and preparation (30:17–32:42).

• Technical Innovation & NASCAR's Cultural Resistance

  • Introduced floor-mounted pedals and hand-clutch after breaking his left foot—ahead of his time.
  • “Beatty was nice... he looks at me and says, ‘We don’t run that Indy shit down here.’” — Mark Martin, 34:54

• Choosing What Makes the Book

  • The daunting editing process: “Our biggest fear was that they would tell us it was too much because it was going to be giant... It’s 500 text pages...” — Mark Martin, 39:36
  • Author Bones Bourcier brought unprecedented research depth by back-filling Mark’s recollections with new factual context.

• Why Jeff Gordon Wrote the Foreword

  • “He had an appreciation for me that didn’t come just common. And I think through the years, Jeff understood that I had a chance to do what he did. He changed the sport 100% because of his age.” — Mark Martin, 43:58

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3. NASCAR Playoff System – Behind the Scenes

 [49:56–57:50]

• “I Did It For the Fans.”

  • Mark and Dale recount how their feedback helped shape NASCAR’s return to a more fan-preferred championship structure.
  • Mark’s blunt advocacy: “I’m just telling y’all what the fans are telling me. This is what they’re telling me.” (53:42)
  • Dale credits Mark for doggedly advocating for the change: “I believe, I truly feel, that all your effort is THE reason why the Chase is back.” — Dale Jr., 53:04
  • Mark: “The life I live today are because the race fans, they’re more responsible than NASCAR is. They’re everything to me.” (54:54)

• The industry politics and TV pressures

  • Concerns over yes-men committees, industry “group think,” and the difficulty of prioritizing fans over institutional inertia (55:48).

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4. New vs. Old: How the Chase Format Changed NASCAR

 [57:54–63:41]

• Why the New System is Better for Competition and Fans

  • “If you’re running 24th now, it’s real important to run 23rd. It wasn’t before. Under the playoff system, it didn’t matter.” — Mark Martin, 61:37
  • The revived points system has increased race-to-race importance, kept mid-pack battles relevant, and given more weight to wins—“Everybody was Hail Mary. If everybody Hail Marys, it ain’t a Hail Mary anymore.” — Mark Martin, 62:32

• Unintended Consequences of Bolder, Winner-focused Rules

  • Discussion of how “win and you’re in” inadvertently reduced the impact of a big victory.

• The Media’s Role & Building Stars

  • Dale highlights how the current system boosts driver recognition: “Denny Hamlin this year has benefited probably in recognition, name recognition, more this year from his competition...”

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5. Stage Racing, Broadcasts, & the 'Shortening Races' Debate

 [66:11–70:07]

• Stage Racing: Good, Bad, and Ugly

  • Mutual agreement that stage cautions have become unnecessarily long and need fine-tuning.

• Debating Race Distance

  • Mark and Dale poke fun at how the ‘shorter races’ debate snowballed from social media, yet most races remain within classic time windows.

• Ideas for Improving Show Flow

  • Dale suggests potential fixes: more efficient caution procedures, changing how lap-down cars are handled on pit road, possibly finishing stages under caution if needed.

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6. Why Fans Need More Transparency

 [75:13–79:23]

• Mark and Dale agree that NASCAR often leaves fans in the dark on processes and decisions—fueling misunderstanding and scapegoating.
• “What they need is… a voice that is telling people why things are being done the way they’re being done. And they don’t want to hear it from NASCAR… but there needs to be a way for fans to truly hear some of the reasons why…” — Dale Jr., 77:20
• Number placement on the Next Gen car as a case in point: often attributed to NASCAR, it was originally a team/owner (RTA) initiative.

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7. Mark’s Radical Proposal for the Next Gen Car

 [81:41–93:32]

• Advocating for Minimal Downforce

  • Mark lays out his core belief: less front downforce, or even front lift, would restore classic-style racing.
  • “I want zero downforce in the front... If it’s nothing, it shouldn’t lose anything when it gets behind a car.” — Mark Martin, 82:24

• Historical Context & Why It Matters

  • Stories from the 1980s/90s showing how lower downforce meant cleaner, closer racing with more passing opportunities.

• Why Industry Reluctance Persists

  • Mark: “Their unwillingness to look at it. It's been since 1995… The unwillingness to look at no downforce is really a problem. It's always, it's ate at me since 1995 and I just know that the racing was better.” (89:23)
  • Acknowledges the risks of drastic rules changes and the weight of TV contracts, but believes a fundamental rethink is overdue.

• Technological Challenges and ‘Spec Racing’ Issues

  • Comments on the field being so close in performance that it stifles real battles: “One of our passing problems… is that the cars are within three-tenths, you know, at a lot of tracks. The whole field runs the same lap time. That's the problem.” — Mark Martin, 91:01

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8. Closing Thoughts & Looking Ahead

 [93:32–94:55]

• Mark and Dale reflect on the personal rewards of the book project and their conversation.
• Mark says the best place to find the book is martinarchive.com.
• Dale thanks Mark and credits him for being a continual force for positive change in the sport.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

On why he wrote the book with Matt:

“It’s been such a bonding experience and so much fun… I’m not a big talker, and the reason I’m not a big talker is because I don’t know a lot about a lot. I like to talk about what I do know. And so I know a lot about racing. And so his interest in that has been incredibly bonding and really, really fun.” — Mark Martin, 09:48

On refusing the famous 28 car ride:

“Not only did I not even take a beat, I didn’t even take a breath. I just said, no. What else? I’d rather do my own deal… I look back on that decision, and I wonder, well, if I would have taken that ride, I could have possibly been the Jeff Gordon.” — Mark Martin, 11:21

On pushing for Chase return:

“I did it for the fans and it’s hard for the people inside to do that… The worst thing they could do to me is take my hard card and I don’t go for very many races anyway. I love the sport, but I love the fans even more because the life I live today are because the race fans, they’re more responsible than NASCAR is.” — Mark Martin, 54:53

On Next Gen innovation:

“I want zero downforce in the front… If it’s nothing, it shouldn’t lose anything when it gets behind a car… We never ever, ever heard anything about aerotite ever [in the old days].” — Mark Martin, 82:24

On the state of the championship:

“We got as close to a full year point system as one could have… I have been, from the drop of the green flag in Daytona, glued to the point situation...” — Dale Earnhardt Jr., 58:45

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Key Timestamps

• 04:36–16:20 – Mark and Matt’s book process; family history; untold stories
• 22:03, 23:23 – Wild rental car mishap anecdotes
• 34:54 – Floor-mounted pedal story; cultural friction with NASCAR
• 49:56–57:50 – NASCAR playoff committee, Mark's advocacy, Dale credits Mark for the change
• 61:37 – Why every position now matters under the Chase system
• 75:13–79:23 – On fan transparency, broadcast explanations, uniformity misattribution
• 81:41–93:32 – Radical Next Gen proposal, technical breakdown, industry reluctance
• 93:32–94:55 – Where to find the book, closing gratitude

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Conclusion

This episode is essential listening for any serious NASCAR fan or motorsports history buff—rich with behind-the-scenes insight, memorable stories, and forthright, sometimes radical opinions from one of the sport’s legends. Mark Martin remains a vital, passionate advocate for both the sport’s past and its future, and Dale Jr. masterfully draws out both humor and honesty as only a fellow racer can.

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Transcript

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[Mark Martin]

So when we're getting ready to leave. I don't want to race. I don't want to do. You know, I don't want to act a fool. I just finally, you know, he bumped me in a back bumper. So I floor all of a sudden I come up on a 90 degree right hand turn and I am flying and I slam on the brakes and about the time I get to that turn, this Isuzu trooper rolls around there and I hit him in the left rear.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh no.

[Mark Martin]

And that thing jumps up in the air, turns around and knocks the rear end housing out.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh my God. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. You're Dale Jr. Should I say it? It's Dale Jr. Podcast. I got to say it. Hey Everybody, it's Dale Jr. Back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. It's day number two of being back in the studio. I've been gone and y' all been giving me hell. Sometimes the guys gotta get out, go do some stuff. I was thankful we didn't talk about this yesterday on on the Dale Jr. Download. But I was thankful that we had some folks fill in, we had some drivers fill in, Noah Briscoe, all kinds of great folks that pitched in to allow this show to kind of continue steamrolling down the road. But we're back in the studio for pretty much the rest of the season. Kids starting school. So I ain't going nowhere no more beach trips. But we're here today and I got my guest coming in here, Mark Martin. In a minute. Mark has written A book. And he wants to. He told me. He's like, I'm coming to the studio. Y' all remember for, like, years we couldn't get Martin come here. He was always. He was always with his motor coach out in the Phoenix or somewhere. And he sent me photo photos of him on these res. On these, like, resorts. They have motor coach resorts. I mean, it's super nice. And he's like, yeah, man, not gonna make it. Not coming in. I'll let you know when I'm back in town. It just never would work out. But he's got this book that he's been working on for all these years. Matt, his son, has been helping, and it's gonna be an incredible Reed. Trust me on that. I know who put it together. I know who. I know how Matt has been passionate about working with his dad on this project, this book. If you're a race fan, you've got to have this book in your collection. Trust me. The detail and, man, the information is going to be unreal. Mark's going to come on here and just tell us a little bit about it. Obviously, anytime anybody comes in here with a book, they're careful about not giving too much away because they just won't, you know, they don't want to mess with the demand. But we're going to hear a little bit about the book. We're going to hear a lot about Mark's take on NASCAR today. There's been some changes that he was an influence to. We'll see what his opinion is about, you know, the sport, the directions going, see if we. We're still aligning. Me and him are pretty similar on our take over the last several. Several years. So I'm looking forward to getting it started. Let's bring Mark Martin into the room. This episode is presented by Arby's and their new meet in three box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. All right, everybody. We're here with Mark Martin. Mark, your third appearance on. On the show. I'm thankful that you're here. You brought Matt with you, which is pretty awesome. Always like seeing you two together. He looks more and more like you every day.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, he does. And he's a historian. It's hard for me to do these kinds of things without. Without him because he knows a lot of the details that I don't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I've seen. Mark is here to promote his new book, and what a beautiful book it is. Mark Martin never lift. There's a. There's a unique or a good story about the design of the COVID Yep.

[Mark Martin]

Harrison, Emily Lou did the artwork for this and extensive work all through this to help us make this happen. Matt was real adamant that he wanted a, you know, really striking look that represented the heyday of my career. And I think we, I think they captured it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I almost wish I could get Matt to, to comment, but. So over the last, you know, roughly handful of years, I've noticed just from a distance in Matt's obsession with your career now, it might have always been there, but he has taken it upon himself to sort of tell the story again. Right. Or put the story out there in a more forward facing position. The book is obviously something you guys have wanted to do for years, but he does a lot of social media around your history. What's the, what's, what's the conversations among between you two like around all of that? Why do you think he wanted to do that? How does that make you feel?

[Mark Martin]

Well, you can relate to this. You know, when you grew up going to the racetrack and your dad racing and all, it was just racing. It just, you know, it wasn't a big deal. That's kind of how it was for Matt. You know, he didn't really dive deep into my career at all. And he started on me. He's a historian, very much historian in all kinds of ways other than racing. And that's just his nature. And he's a deep diver in the things that he's interested in, very much like I am. And so he started on me about doing a book and I'm like, no. And he knew the importance of putting it down in history. A lot of the details. He knows the stories, a lot of the stories and all. And so he started on me. And finally after he. Because he's so into books, that's one of his things. He collects old books. He's got books that were, you know, were printed in the late 1800s. And so he's very much historian and very much into books. So he decides that he wants to do this. And through. Once I agreed, he started doing all the research, the deep dive, the photographs, and now he can tell you if it's 92 or 93. The uniform, you know, he can look at a uniform. I can't do that. I can look at the 80s stuff and do that. But he knows everything. He knows who, what year Dale won the championships. He can answer any of those questions because that's how he is. He went super deep down the rabbit hole.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So what, what was the hardest thing to put in this book. What was the one thing that you put in this book that worried you the most?

[Mark Martin]

It probably has to do with your dad in RC Childress. Probably has to do with that 1990. Because I don't want to cry, I don't want to whine, but you got to tell either. Either the truth or what you saw.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You can call everything the truth, but not everything is. It's how you perceive and what you know. So everything in this book is either 100% accurate and studied and researched or it's the recollection of what people have.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so were there some moments during the research where Matt had questions about your decision or. And you had to go, well, this is why things were done that way was, you know, I imagine

[Commercial Announcer]

if you

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

dive back into your career, not everything is. Not everything, you know, not everything's going to make complete sense to him. Right. And so how. How was that? I'm. I'm just imagining that you and him doing this together.

[Mark Martin]

Yes, it was. It's been such a.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Quite a.

[Mark Martin]

Such a bonding experience and so much fun because I'm not a big talker, and the reason I'm not a big talker is because I don't know a lot about a lot. And I don't want to talk about something I don't know. I like to talk about what I do know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And so I know a lot about racing. And so his interest in that has been incredibly bonding and really, really fun. And we've had a lot of fun with it. And I've told a couple of stories that are so embarrassing. I had never told Arlene or Matt.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Mark Martin]

And I put it in this book, you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right. And. And so what were those conversations like when you told them them stories?

[Mark Martin]

They couldn't believe it, you know, and one of them has to do with wrecking rental cars. And, you know, that's one of Matt's favorite things is, you know, telling the rental car stories. Because in today's age, it's just ridiculous. It just probably doesn't happen. And so he loves, you know, he loves that story. And are those stories. There's multiple stories like that. But I think that, you know, when he's. When he's uncovered a few things and then I explain, like I've questioned. I never question my Waddell Wilson phone call in November 1981. Mark, would you be interested in driving the 28 car?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know, the magnitude of that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

That could have been life changing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Martin]

The whole course, the whole. And not only did I not even take a beat, I didn't even take a breath. I just said, no. What else? I'd rather do my own deal.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know, and, and so through our experience, I've questioned that more than I ever did before.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Question of.

[Mark Martin]

Question that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But then was that. You mean. Are you saying that you almost had to relive the frustration of making that choice, Making maybe the incorrect choice in that moment? You had to write this book. You had to kind of go back and drum up some tough moments that weren't fun.

[Mark Martin]

Well, my failure after that, you know, I, I, I wanted to do my own deal, and I didn't have any idea what I was getting into because I'd only done five races spread apart, and I had them. I mean, I almost. Almost won.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Already led two races, set on two poles out of five with my own little guys. And so, so, so I, I thought I had them, and I had no idea. I ran the full 1982 season with two race cars. Yeah. That's how unprepared I was to do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Destroyed your holler.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. Yeah, that too. And, you know, and, and sponsor didn't pay and everything else. So I look back on that decision, and I wonder, well, if I would have taken that ride, I could have possibly been the Jeff Gordon.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

I was only 23 years old.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I mean, that would have been Davey Allison's car. That would have been Yates. That would have been all of that.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. It would have been KL Yarborough.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

One term, you know what. The 83, that's on the 500. It's. And it went straight to Daytona and set on the pole in 82 after I turned it down, however. So I could have been a real. You know, if I'd have taken that and had been able to drive it, you know, to the degree that they were looking for, then I would not have been a good person.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really?

[Mark Martin]

No. I mean, I wouldn't know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I mean, I can't. I can't imagine that, but I can't imagine you being a guy.

[Mark Martin]

Never failed a guy that everything he touched went gold.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Every. You know, I mean, and should be the kid, you know, so you worked hard for it. I worked hard for it, but I don't think. So getting back to that decision, I have to explain why my first thought was, what do I do with David Lavendahl and Banjo Grimm and whoever my third employee was. I don't even remember, because that one changed a lot. And what do I tell Ray Dillon, who was giving me free race cars? And what do I tell Ray? Ron Neal, who gave me free engines? I could not be a NASCAR driver and might not have ever been a NASCAR driver if it hadn't been for ron Neal. In 1981, I ran an ARCA race and won at Talladega. Five Busch races, five cup races, a whole bunch of ASA races and won and a bunch of late model races, and one. And you know what? My engine bill was zero. I could have never, ever done it without Ron Neal and prototype. And, you know, I wasn't. I didn't own any of those cars. Those cars were given to me and I raced them. I built them and raced. You know, me and my guys built them and raced them, and then we gave them back when we were finished with them. So I didn't have the money to get to nascar. And I was like, what am I supposed to do? Say, see you guys, I'm off to the big time?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the. The book, you talk about some of the stories in there, and I don't want to. I don't want you to. You don't. You know, you can share what you want, but, you know, I definitely want people to want to go out, buy this book, get the audio book. I'm assuming there'll be an audio version. Are you going to read the entire thing? That's always a question.

[Mark Martin]

I can't do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Will Matt do it?

[Mark Martin]

He won't do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He won't do it. What the hell, Matt?

[Mark Martin]

That's what I say.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Damn.

[Mark Martin]

Do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All this work.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. We need an audio book. I'd love. I'd love to ask Matt, Mike, Joy to. Maybe he might do it, because I think he would be great. But there. It's pretty complicated.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Matt has Ask the Question publishing side of it. Yeah. It's very challenging. Yeah. What stories would you share with us

[Mark Martin]

today that I haven't shared already, you know, in the past? I'd like to. You know, Matt can pop out a

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

bunch of them, but give the whole bag away.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. My relationship with Jack Roush, it will be very interesting. I was really scared of Jack. He held my entire career in the palm of his hand. No one else in NASCAR would touch me. And. And he gave me. Gave me the chance. So I was. I was very scared of him, and I think that. And he was very intimidated, and I think Steve was, too. I can't speak for him, but as an observer, I felt he. He was.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He was what?

[Mark Martin]

Afraid of Jack, intimidated by Jack. We weren't given free hand to do what we knew. You know, Jack didn't trust us. He did well. He wasn't in the. He wasn't in the shop every day. I think if he had been in the shop every day, we would have been a lot more successful because Jack Roush is brilliant, he's a smart guy, and he would have figured out whose heart was there and whose wasn't. But him not being there, he was a little bit afraid that someone was going to take advantage.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Guarded.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, he was very guarded. He didn't. He wasn't like, overly rich. I mean, I went to sit down with him, he said, I got $4 million, my own money saved up, I'm going to race two years, sponsor or

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

not,

[Mark Martin]

build a team from scratch and everything. Now think about that. That wasn't a crapload of money. And so, you know, he was afraid somebody was going to come in and, and, you know, take his money and not deliver.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And so I was pretty scared of Jack. And so I'm. I'm leading up to one of the stories that I'd never told anyone. We were 1989, we were going to do a test for Talladega. Instead of going to Talladega, though, there is a test track in Ohio that's like seven miles around, so it's like a straightaway. So we were going to do real world drag testing. And so Jack had a Cessna 421. So Steve and I, and all of us, we pile up in the 421 and we fly over there and just land inside this big car test center. Well, we've got it, you know, we've got it reserved. As you know, it's ours for the day. We fly in there. You're supposed to get authority to do it. So as soon as we land and get out, he got in trouble.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Who?

[Mark Martin]

Jack. They come and ripped him a new one for doing that, landing that plane inside. Oh.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Without getting authority to land it.

[Mark Martin]

And I hate to tell it, but the truth is I loved it because I liked it. Jack was getting in trouble because I was the one that had got in trouble. He made me cry ball before we ever went to our first race.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Why?

[Mark Martin]

Because I was going to drive the Bill Davis Busch car down there, too. And he. You know, you used to smash exhaust pipes down underneath the frame rails.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Well, he was smart enough because he's smarter than all the rest of us down here to cone the tailpipes so that when they were smashed, they still flowed the same. So you had to take a bigger pipe than your three and a half inch or three inch, you know, and smash it down. So. And so I saw that. So I went over to Bill Davis and built a set for the Busch car because it seemed like smart. And he found out about it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, I bet he didn't like that.

[Mark Martin]

Oh, my God. He tore me off. He tore my tail off. And I cried like a baby because I wanted to be approved of. All I wanted, you know, was to be approved of and to be proud of. And. And so it broke my heart. Crushed me. Anyway, so it was good to see him getting in trouble because I'd already gotten close to gotten in trouble anyway for other things. And so we go and we do our test for the day. We have two rental cars delivered out there. And then Jack has a car, and Jack and the pilot, Zantop, they leave after the end of the day. And I stay with the guys because I'm riding with them back to hotel. And we didn't drive in there, we flew in there. So when we're getting ready to leave, Robin is driving the car behind and I'm driving the car in front and Steve's in the right seat. There was five of us in each car. And we're going down through there and Robin's dogging me. I mean, Robin was probably the least on the maturity scale in this way anyone. He's dogging me, dog me. And I don't want any part of it, you know, I don't want to race. I don't want to do, you know, I don't want to act a fool. I just. And he's dogging me finally, you know, he bumped me in a back bumper. So I floor it. So we are flying down and we're still on the property, but we don't know where we're going. And all of a sudden, I come up on a 90 degree right hand turn and I am flying. And I slam on the brakes. And about the time I get to that turn, this Isuzu trooper rolls around there and I hit him in the left rear.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, no.

[Mark Martin]

And that thing jumps up in the air, turns around and knocks the rear end housing out.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. And I get out of the car and I'm like freaked out. And Robin parks and he comes walking over there and he reaches down and picks up the headlight from his car. So he hit me when I hit that car. And so thank God we were on private property. This 1989, it never got out anywhere.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Unbelievable.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, unbelievable. And the guy was cool. And we didn't. Did call the cops, you know, because we were on private property still, thank goodness. So it never got out. But. And then. So we go call the rental car place to get another rental car because that one's totaled. And they said, you got our last two. The only two we have. So the rest of the other two days, we had to shuttle back and forth. Ten people with one rental car.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Martin]

To the. To the track and back.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I imagine Jack was not happy about the rental car so destroyed.

[Mark Martin]

So I don't know if he didn't know. He had to know. He didn't act like he knew. Oh, my God. I didn't hear about it. But then when Robin. Then we tore up a couple rental cars at Dover at a test that year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Doing what?

[Mark Martin]

So it rained, and. And so we were going to drive the track. So Robin was riding with me. And, you know, we were running around there. You could run wide open. Oh, my God. 110 ride after it dropped down into turn one at room 110, we're out there running wide open around there, Robin riding with me. And all of a sudden. And I said, we just blistered right front. So we come in there, and, you know, we chunk to right front, which that's not a big deal, but Robin took the other one. And you remember over by the garage area, there's that thing where it was, like, overhead. You could drive over under it, and they would put probably that gravel stuff that went up in the horse track. Yeah. Well, somehow or another, he got under there and dropped all this stuff on the car, and that messed the car up pretty bad.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn.

[Mark Martin]

So that was the second one. But then on the way. You remember going from Watkins Glen to the airport, from the track to the airport, you went through the back and all that stuff. Well, Robin, he.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Robin's involved in a bunch of these.

[Mark Martin]

He's all of them. And so he hit the guide wire for, you know, tore that one up. And so then Evan Lyle was the man. You know, he ran Roush Industries up there. And the word come down, you guys need to take it easy on them rental cars, you know, no more trouble for me. You can. You can guarantee that. So that's one of the stories.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What's the story about the hole in the floorboard at Pocono? Ronnie Thomas subbed the car because of the heat.

[Mark Martin]

Well, you know, back then, we ran Hearst shifter and a her shifter boot, which is that rubber boot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And this in the early 80s, I imagine.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. This is 1982.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Your own car?

[Mark Martin]

Yes, it was. It was my car. I was running a full schedule with two cars, and I'm out there running and it's. It's not. It's not a cool day anyway. But all of a sudden it gets really, really hot. And I look down at the shifter and that boot is running. It looks like pizza cheese. It just dripping. And a chunk. A chunk of the tailpipe had blown out right underneath it, so it's blowing straight up. And, you know, I had to get out. I mean, I just. I had to get out.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Didn't you feel bad putting Ronnie in there a little bit?

[Mark Martin]

I just. As long as I got out, I didn't care. But I told Ronnie before he got in, I says, you won't last long. And he got in there and I think the record shows that he did get back out. But I remember, I thought. I remembered he finished. It wasn't very long to the end, but I do remember sitting on that old pit wall, which we're sitting there, Ronnie's sitting next to me, and his head starts going like this, like up and down, and then he's just folds over and throws up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, no.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, it was. It was rough.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Hey, this is Dalenhardt Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. Download gear, including the I'm ol drink some beer T shirt we've been talking about here around the office, head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch.

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was wondering back then, in those days, you know, you drove the 4 car for McClure before they were really McClure. You drove, I think, Roger Hamby's car a time or two. You drove a bunch of different cars and your own car in 82, you struggled at times, right? I imagine I'm thinking like, I know you and I know you as Mark Martin that drove for Jack Roush and you went to the racetrack every week with a car that you thought you should have a chance to win the race. You built this prepared with the intentions of going and running really well. And I fortunately have been in the every car that I ever went to the racetrack with. But had, you know, we had the same idea that we got a good enough car we should win. Now, I never was in a situation like you and a lot of the guys, Ricky Rudd, all back in the early 80s driving piece and deals together. Rudd did it, Morgan Shepard did it. You name them, they got in cars that they knew weren't going to win the race that day. And I'm trying to imagine what it must have been like to be out on that racetrack at Pocono or going to go to Talladega and put the pedal down and watch Harry Gann or Daryl Walter for somebody drive away from you and there's nothing you can do. How do you feel like you're doing the right thing? How do you not sit there and go, am I, do I need to be doing this? Is this where I need to be?

[Mark Martin]

So at the end of 81, everything I had ever touched was gold, including my final race for 81 was the bush race at Charlotte that I ran second in. And it paid $15,100 to run second that day, which was more money than I'd ever won in my entire career. It looked like this was going to be easy. I ran five cup races, led two of them, ran third, ran seventh set on two poles. It's just, it all looks like it's going to be easy, like it all had been. So I made the mistake of hiring Bobby Jones for Crew Chief for 82. And we were going to keep my Pontiac, the car that I'd sit on the pole and run the five races with and going to build one car and built a new Hutch Buick. And Bobby dictated the whole thing. I, I didn't know what, you know, I didn't know what to do. So we get down to Daytona and go through inspection first time and they run this thing to the left front rocker panel. Bam. It missed by inch. Bobby hung the body at 4 inches on the left front and they had a 5 inch rocker rule. And so we had to run the Daytona 500 an inch high. An inch high. And the Busch Clash as well.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So the roof and the spoiler and everything else is inch higher than everybody else's.

[Mark Martin]

We're junk.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know, on top of that, you know, we're using prototype engine. Who had never built cup engines, so who knows where we stood for power. I'm not saying it was great or not. I'm just saying if you don't do it all the time. You're probably not at the cutting edge. So we're inch high. That's not all of it. So we go. We're waiting Sunday morning, we're waiting Sunday morning for Bobby to show up. The whole team's there, I'm there. Ready to go through inspection and get out on the line for the Daytona 500. No show. No, no, no show. So finally we push it through without Bobby.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damn.

[Mark Martin]

And finally Bobby shows up, you know, after the car's out on the line and you know, of course I fire him on the spot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Why did he.

[Mark Martin]

Alcohol.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Mark Martin]

And it was alcohol related. And so I had to fire him on the spot then. So. And then we go out and we

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

blow up in the race, in the

[Mark Martin]

race and I'm going to have to race off my purse. Basically. I had a sponsor that never didn't pay and never paid. So it was over. We left the Daytona 500. I mean, I was going to be ill prepared to start with, but that set the tone for the whole thing. So after that, yeah, I wasn't going to win. I was going to, you know, run as good as I could. And that was hard to stomach for a guy who'd never not, you know, think I could win every time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

But yeah, it was a, it was a real challenge. And then as you say, I went to Morgan McClure and they weren't ready yet. You know, I mean they were, they had one junk worse than, worse than the cars. I had a Cutlass and they had G.C. spencer, who, you know, I thought I knew it all about chassis and he thought he knew it all from the 60s and we were oil and water. He didn't think I could drive and I didn't think he knew nothing about, you know, today's race car. And so at the end of the year, they never called me back and I never called them. So we never said we're not, not going forward. We just weren't interested.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, you got a car, you got the opportunity to drive the two car that had been in that car, JD Stacy owned car I think at the time was miss. Was Inman still the crew chief.

[Mark Martin]

Just left one two races with Tim Richmond, right. And Inman. And I had no idea what I was getting into. I was just, thank God I got a ride because it was Christmas and I didn't have a ride yet. And I had sold everything. I didn't even hand tool. So when I got the call, it was like, heck yeah. So I go up and I sit down with Stacy. And you know, we make a deal for 40% of the purse and I drive the car and we'll get engines from prototype. They'll, you know, pay for them. And so I've helped run out and he says, well, get your lawyer and have somebody draw one up. I ain't got no lawyer, I don't need a contract. And that's not the end of contract problems. So I learned from that and then I got a contract when I didn't need one and then I needed to get out of it after one year because it was two years. So I learned a lot of things. But anyway, Inman was gone. The money was drying up. He was a millionaire broke. Millionaire broke. Millionaire broke. And he was on one of his broke spells and they were going to run out the winner circle thing. So Robert Harrington was going to be the crew chief. Booby Harrington, booby. And they closed down their engine shop and basically I ran seven races and got fired.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Said they wanted somebody with more experience.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Tell me the story about you using a hand operated clutch.

[Mark Martin]

So I ran neo pedals, which they made floor mount pedals, dual master.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You ran floor mat pedals before anyone else. Everyone else still had hanging.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, well, I had that and I had these in my late model. And the reason I put them in the cup car first cup car is because I got them free.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did NASCAR look down in there and go, hmm, what the hell is this?

[Mark Martin]

Well, first, first race, first inspection and it was Dick Beatty. It wasn't gas away, it's Beatty. And Beatty was nice to me, didn't treat me like an outside northerner. He puts his elbows on it, looks down in there and looks at those pedals and he looks at me and he says, we don't run that indie shit down here. And like I was like, oh, I get those freaking. Can I turn?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Turn upside down.

[Mark Martin]

And he said, yeah, do it for next race. So I took it home. And that wasn't easy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I bet it wasn't easy.

[Mark Martin]

That was not easy. But I did it because.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh my gosh.

[Mark Martin]

But yeah, that, that's kind of that story.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So. But you had a hand operated clutch.

[Mark Martin]

Oh, yeah, so. So the Neil pedal. So I broke my left foot and ankle in July of 1980 with my late model and I was erected. I was at Madison, Wisconsin. They called it Capitol Speedway, but you know, they still race there now. High bank racetrack, inverted 12 cars. I set fast time. I think I drove to the front of the first 50 Twin 50s drove the first. You know, that's against trickle and solder and all of them and. But my car, that Dylan car that we had designed, nobody had a chance. So I driving up through there, I think I won the first one. So they inverted us again. And I'm driving up through there and I catch Jim and Jim, we had etiquette, driver's etiquette. And Jim was closer on the etiquette. You know, everybody else, you know, Jim, he lived by the etiquette, but he cut it a lot closer. And I got under him going in and he cut down and of course I would not touch him, you know, so I spun because the etiquette was you don't hit people. So I spun and I my door and bob straight drilled me in the door and. And so they, yeah, they stuck me in a helicopter. Crazy. Landed on the, on the roof of the Madison General. And Eric and Beth Hiden, the Olympic figure skaters. Father was my doctor on Sunday.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

So he comes in, he tells me you're, you won't race again this year. And I said I'll race again in 30 days. I'm going to race the ASA race in 30 days. I'm leading the points, I'm going in championship, then I'm going NASCAR racing. So he heard that and so he understood it because of, you know, athletes. So I go back in three weeks for my checkup. He cuts the, the cast off. He says, now get up and walk out of here. I said, no, no, I got a hand clutch, you know, I'll be fine. You'll heal faster without it. And I got up and walked out of there three weeks after. And so what I had done in the shop is I took that hydraulic floor mount Neil pedal off the floor and I mounted it in the frame rail next to me and I cut the pedal off and that stub there. And I take a piece of one inch round tubing and I slipped it over there and put a bolt on it. And then I put me a bicycle hand grip on it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, you could push it with your hand.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah. And I right foot braked. I went to the 30 days. I went to Cayuga, Canada for the next day ASA race set on the pole. Junior Hanley did beat me, but. But I got the pole and run second. And then that was on Sunday. And then on Thursday we went to Milwaukee and I had an epic battle with trickle and won the race. But only had to use the clutch obviously on pit stops. Yeah, the rest of time always shifted without the clutch anyway.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

My gosh. Well, the book is full of Stories like that. Um, I imagine there were some stories. I mean, I've had the chance to write a couple of books or be involved in the writing of books. In the last one that I had the chance to write. Racing to the finish. I don't feel like we were ever sitting there with a story that we decided didn't go in or couldn't fit in. Right. But this. This book is your life. What, Where, Where. How hard, I guess, was the decision of, like, what warranted being in the story and what maybe. Maybe doesn't make it in the story.

[Mark Martin]

So we put it all down, and then our biggest fear was that they would tell us it was too much because it was going to be giant. And it is 500. 500 miles. 500 text pages, not including the forward. And all that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Intentional.

[Mark Martin]

No, that was. That was a lucky deal. That was a lucky deal. But it's. It's, you know, it's over 500 pages. The book is lucky for us, working with Octane. We said up front, we want to have a lot of control on this and we don't want it cut. So there's nothing. The only things that are left out of this book are things that I didn't remember to bring up or Matt didn't. But the interesting thing is Bones Bertiere, that. That's the author, you know, just checkered past with blue.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know, did Richie Evans book so many great books, you know. Yeah. He was the only one to. To write this. Like I. He's. All his books are my favorite books.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Bentley, Warren, all that stuff. And what heat. What he did in this book was way above and beyond. If I. If you let me tell you a story.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sure.

[Mark Martin]

Okay. So in 1976, you know, I raced late model dirt, no asphalt. And, you know, if you caught somebody and you were behind them for more in the corner, you hit them in the button, went home. That's just what you did. Yeah, that's racing I grew up doing. And so I go. I go to New Smyrna for speed weeks. First year on asphalt, and I go to New Smyrna and speed weeks and because I could get nine nights of experience, and that's two months at home. So we go down there and I'm behind this car that doesn't look like a nice car. And he's. I'm faster than he is. And so, boom, up off a four. Bam. He hits the wall.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Holy.

[Mark Martin]

And I'm a little kid, you know, I mean, I'm 110 pounds and 17 just turned 18 and look 12. And at that time, that was ridiculously young. And this guy turned out to be Bobby Brack. And I. And as I. Unbeknownst to me, he was Florida superstar, and he went to the hospital and was hurt really bad.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh.

[Mark Martin]

And, you know. You know, I tried not to pay attention, to bother me. And it did shape me going forward, because that's my kind of luck. I. I kind of be dramatic when I say what you people say when you bump and run, because if I bump and run somebody, it might kill them. That's my luck. Everybody else just bumping runs and whatever. You know, this. I would live with that for the rest of my life. For sure, it had an effect on me, but Bones gets it all. Like, I tell what I know, but this, you know, is injuries, how long he was in the hospital, what all the back. So all the stories in this book are backfilled with all these facts. So it took him years.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

To do this. This book is five years in the making, by the way. Is painful. You know, it was kind of painful for me. Extremely painful for Matt, emotionally. Yeah. Just takes so much, you know, pride and work and Arlene, Matt and I previewed every single chapter.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And usually when something's not right, it's. For me, in the past, it was too much trouble to fix it if it wasn't too bad. Yeah. We fixed everything. We fixed everything that we knew to fix. And so this, you know, that's one thing. It's historically accurate, or it's from my eyes, what I perceive when somebody sit next to me might see something slightly different.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You had Jeff Gordon write the forward. That's an important decision. I think when you. When you're writing a book that's important to use, this one would be. How did you approach him to. And I'm sure it was an easy yes for him. How did you. How did you approach him about asking him to do that?

[Mark Martin]

It was a little bit of a challenge to decide who would ask because you were high on the list. But Jeff had. He had an appreciation for. For me, that. Not. That didn't come just common. And I think through the years, Jeff understood that I had a chance to do what he did. You know, he changed the sport 100% because of his age. Before that, if you were pre 30, you weren't going to get a chance. It wasn't going to happen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And.

[Mark Martin]

And I had a chance to do that. I mean, at 23, I could have been driving that 28 car. Another story on that that I didn't say was Benny Parsons took the ride he did. He lasted seven races and got fired. So if I'd have taken that, alienated everybody that got me there and then. And then got fired, you know, so that's what I always harped on as well. Benny got fired. Do I think I could have drove better than Benny? You know, and I. What I should have done really was I should have said, waddell, I've got this problem. I got these guys got this stuff. I'll talk to you about it. But I got this car and I know it's better than anything you have. And you know, we've got to solve all these problems and I have to be able to dictate the cars, the car build and all that stuff. That's the only way that I didn't even. I didn't even do that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, well, I think that a lot of people are going to be excited to, to pick this thing up and I'm thankful that you finally got it done. I know you've been working on a long time and we've talked about it over and over. I'm sure there's an incredible, awesome amount of photos inside this book that'll take everybody on. That's the best thing about a book like this is all the imagery and your imagination. 75, you know, tying that, tying your imagination for what's happening, what you're reading into the, in the images itself.

[Mark Martin]

75 photographs, many have never been seen, you know, so it was hard work for Matt to, to, to drum them up. That's a whole story.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What's next? Yeah, yeah. You've done this herculean task of writing this book for your dad. I wonder what you guys are going to do next besides run around trying to see sell this thing.

[Mark Martin]

Running around selling. It's going to be a lot more fun.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, you're going to do some book signings, stuff like that. I imagine that'll be great. People always. People always enjoy those. The Dell Jr. Download is brought to you by FanDuel. Baseball fans, do you think you know who's going to hit a homer today? Well, FanDuel is giving you a free chance to call your shot. With Daily Dingers. Joining the action is easy. Just make your free pick on who's hitting a home run in their game. And if you're right, you'll get a profit boost to use on your next bet for a chance at extra winnings. You got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. And don't forget you get to make a free pick every day during MLB season. It's just another reason why fanduel is the home for home runs. So are you ready to play your game today? It couldn't be any easier. On FanDuel, you log in, you you check what different boosts they are offering, you click the one you want and you go fire off your bet. It's that simple. And if you're a good friend like I am, you can also share your bets with your friends so that they can tell your bet. Join all the [e-mail] that's fanduel.com to play Daily Dingers and make your free pick on who's hitting a homer, play ball and swing for the fences on FanDuel. An official partner of the MLB must

[Mark Martin]

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[Mark Martin]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right, you guys, something big is going on at Arby's, and if you're ready to seriously upgrade how you do meat and cheese, you'll want to hear this. It's bold. It's craveable. It's meat and cheese done right. This is the new Arby's cheesesteaks and they're here and they're on the menu for good. Which means you just found your new favorite. Arby's brought lunch to the shop last week. Carson was one of the first ones to dive into the new 100% Angus cheesesteak, and he said it might be his new favorite. The cheesesteak is a total upgrade compared to other boring meat and cheese out there. It's got this rich and melty Cooper cheese that's the real deal, straight from Philadelphia. That's how you know it's good. The new Amoroso sesame seed bun gives you the perfect balance of crispy yet soft that really makes this cheesesteak elite for real. This will change how you think about getting lunch in the drive thru. Why settle for a run of the mill burger when there's Arby's cheesesteak right around the corner? This is an authentic higher quality sandwich. Burgers wish they could be this good when you're craving something that's just better. Arby's has your new go to the new 100% Angus cheesesteak. Prices may vary. Third party marks of the property of their respective owners. Get your Arby's Angus cheesesteaks delivered or at an Arby's near you. Today we're going to pivot mark over to kind of what you've been doing with NASCAR for the longest time. Man. You kind of, you kind of hung out in your neck of the woods. We might hear from you on an opinion, opinion of something or thing or. But you weren't never really in the

[Mark Martin]

room

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

in terms of nascar didn't really ever open the room up right. They would say and, and maybe this is absolutely true but they would have said, well you could, he could come talk to us anytime. But it's not quite that comfortable, that easy. But somehow or another you and I both ended up serving on a sort of informal committee for the playoffs, the NASCAR playoff system and changing that and what would be the future of that? And we were invited onto a call early last year to start those conversations and you were, you were the one that was the most vocal right out of the gate. We were, I remember sitting in that first conversation. This might have been, I think this might have been the first or the second conversation. But we, we basically had like an initial get together. Here's what we want to do. We don't know what, what we're, you know, what this means if we don't know if anything changes, but we just want to look at it. And then we got down to, you know, having some zoom calls and conversations got more intense. But I remember early on there was zero chance that we were ever going to go back to full point system and there was not much of a chance that we would ever go back to a 10 race chase system. There was this idea early on that was, it wasn't really spoken, it wasn't really completely verbalized but there was this idea that we got to hang on to the rounds, we've got to hang on to elimination. We can't give up. When in your end there's all these things that just, they were too, they were, they were not willing to release. And I remember on one of the first calls, it was either the very first one or the very second one. I think me, maybe one or two other people on this call are biting our tongue, not really wanting to say what we want to say. Feels like it's a waste of my time to really kind of get on a soapbox and talk about something that I don't think 85% of the people on this call are interested in.

[Mark Martin]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you did it. You said, at the end of the call, you said, you went on this sort of five minute ran rant that was like, this is what we need. This is the only way. This is the way to do it. And at the end of that, at the end of your rant, I think the, the NASCAR executives on the call said, all right, well, we know how everybody feels a little bit of a chuckle. We're going to, we're going to meet up again down the road. We had a couple more meetings. You may remember this better than I do, but we had a couple more calls and zoom calls and so forth. And you continued to pressure this idea and I still didn't feel like it had much of a chance. But you wouldn't let it up. You wouldn't let go of the. You just were, you had, you've said this over and over and over. You're like, man, I'm just telling me, telling y' all what the fans are telling me. I'm just telling you all what the fans are telling me. This is what they're telling me. And you just would not stop. You had this conviction of I'm just going to tell. I'm just going to push this narrative. I'm going to push for this change, whether it's realistic or not, whether it's even possible. This is what I believe in. And I believe, I really, truly feel that all of your effort is the reason why the Chase is back. We got the Chase, which I didn't think was possible, and we got, we got as close to a full year point system as one could have. And so, you know, now that we are in the back half of the first year of this new or old system, however you want to look at it, where, where's your satisfaction? Where's your pride? How are you enjoying what you're seeing? What's been the experience, I guess, for you?

[Mark Martin]

You know, first of all, I did it for the fans and it's hard for the people inside to do that. It, you know, they all, the worst thing they could do to me is take my hard card and I had. I don't go for very many races anyway. I love the sport, but I love the fans even more because the, the life I live today are. Because the race fans, they're there.

[Commercial Announcer]

I.

[Mark Martin]

They're more responsible than NASCAR is.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Mark Martin]

They're everything to me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And I wouldn't have stood up for that for my. And I never do try to really push for what I want. If the fans really want something I don't want, I'll at least stay out of it. If not, back them up. Because I think it's about the fans and you do, too. But, you know, television and the broadcast stuff has taken over to the point that even if they don't say what they want, a lot of the people in the industry were backing it up because they believed that's what they wanted. Which mostly what they want is for it to succeed.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right.

[Mark Martin]

That's really what they want. But if they don't know our sport like we. We know our sport, then that's the problem with the committee. You put the wrong people on the committee, you get the wrong answer, and that's all I'll say. You know, and there were way too many yes. People and people that had to cover themselves and had to watch. Look, when I drove for Jack Roush, I kept my mouth shut, you know, I didn't run my. I could not have survived if I spoke like Tony Stewart did. That's why I love Tony Stewart. He said everything I already thought, you know, but I didn't have. I don't. You know, he had the talent that they couldn't fire him or run him off. And that's kind of the same thing. If you're in this sport and your livelihood has to do with, in the end, the TV money, you know, then you're going to do what they want, even if it, if, Even if it hurts the sport. From a fan standpoint, you know, I don't think. I just, I just didn't feel like that anybody was in a position to tell it like it was. And I'm telling you, I was certain where the fans stood. It was not. It was an 8020 issue.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know, it was only 20 wanted playoffs. If you combine full season, which was stronger than, than, Than the chase, but you combine the chase and full season, it's 80%. And in the end, if you remember on the last conversation we had, I said, I will, I will get behind a 10 because I knew we weren't getting. It was positive. Yeah, but I will get behind 10 race chase.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Mark Martin]

But I won't anything less because I'm on stand and squall like the, like the fans, like, like the fans were so. I couldn't believe. I was shocked when they came back and said they were going to do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was too.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, shock. And it's great. So good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was. I don't know whether it's, I don't, I don't know whether it's because it's new, but I just was not interested in the, I wasn't interested in the bulk of the NASCAR season with the old system because I knew it really didn't make a difference what somebody's body of work was. By the end of the deal, you were, you were, you'd either want to race, a couple guys are going to point in that don't matter. And if you, if you won enough races, you're going to be in the playoffs. And, and so I could check out. It was like invite. It was like giving me an option to check out. It's like giving me chances to like turn away and tune in later or come back mid season or at the

[Commercial Announcer]

end of the year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And when this. I, I know that me and you are huge fans of the direction we went. And so that plays into it. I'm sure there's a little bias here, but I have been, from the drop of the green flag in Daytona, glued to the point situation, and now we got some, we got some really fun turn of events in terms of Denny Hamlin closing the gap and passing Reddick and. But there's, if there's this idea. So there's a couple of things that have been pretty fun to watch happen at the start of the year. The guys who were responsible for this system, determining how much the winner would get, determining what the split would be from first to 10th in the Chase, determining all of those numeral factors. The people that were responsible for that would run 10,000 simulations. And of the 10,000 simulations, the champion came out of the top six 85% of the time. So I go into my broadcasting window in the summer going, telling everybody, hey, you know, we can talk about the bubble and who might get in, because that's important. If you miss the Chase, it's embarrassing. If you make it, you feel like one of the people that got invited to the party. But our champion is going to be one of these top six. So we need to kind of be talking about who can creep into that right where that's the new cut line. We got about five or 10 races into my summer stretch, and I was talking to Christopher Bell and he said, man, that line's moved. He's like, we all heard the same thing about simulations in sixth and top six, and that's where you want to be. He said that lines kind of move because we've seen what Denny did. He overcame the 100 points. Blaney had this really cool run where he chewed into that points a bunch and made a big run. Logano made a huge leap into the playoffs or into the Chase. And so. But Christopher Bell's like, man, that number might be eight. You know, you still might have a 50% chance. 50, 50% chance of winning the championship, being seventh, eighth. You're not out of it. And so that, to me, is what's going to be fun. And that to me, is what's been entertaining. That, to me is what keeps me watching the next race to see who falters, who excels. And then looking at that points at the end of the day and going, wow, he lost two spots.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He was in such a damn good position, and now he's not.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, and now I'm here every Sunday.

[Mark Martin]

And another thing about that, too, and I know you'll appreciate this, if you're running 24th now, it's real important to run 23rd.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

It wasn't before. It wasn't under the playoff system. It didn't matter.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, it didn't matter.

[Mark Martin]

It just did not matter. And so you see fierce disagreements over real estate and over etiquette and all these things way back in the pack. And we need that. We need it to not all be that had been.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That had disappeared.

[Mark Martin]

Yes.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And another thing, the playoffs were all good intention, all of it. Winning in your end was great intention, and it was important if you won because you were in. But it also took away from how important it was to win in another way. You know what I mean? I mean, it's you. If you're going to Hail Mary to win a race now, you've got to be willing to take a bigger penalty. There's no penalty. Yeah. So everybody was Hail Mary. If everybody Hail Marys, it ain't a Hail Mary anymore.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know what I'm saying? So it's changed in a way that I approve of. I always wanted Bubba Wallace's Brickyard win last year to be bigger than it was. All it was was in the playoffs, and it just. It irked me because that's such a. A major, masterful win.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And we didn't celebrate that, that he was such an incredible bad ass for winning that race in dominant fashion. And that was just. That's just one example of, you know. You know, I just think that it changed what winning meant in a way that I didn't like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, there's this idea that we had went. We had gone in this direction of making sure that we covered everybody. Now this is important to do. When you're on a broadcast, we would always sit down and say, all right, man, we got a 30 or 50 minute practice. Let's try to get as many cars on the screen as we can. Let's try to. And we got a list of all kinds of information about every driver. If the. You throw a guy on the screen, I got something I can tell you about him. And we had kind of taken that to the extreme where we were. It, it had. It was a good thing when we were talking about the big three. It was a good thing when we were focusing on two, three, four guys that were up at the top. That's how we were making them household names. Right. Denny Hamlin this year has benefited probably in recognition, name recognition, more this year from his competition and how well he's done than any other year in the past decade. Because we talk about him more this year because of the points and everything, how important it is. And so I guess I think that this system tends to make stars a little bit more. So we focus more on the guys who are out there truly kicking ass. And so that I think there's a good, there's a lot of good benefits from it. But I think the number one benefit for me is that I am here every week. There's a lot of other things, you know, that are going on in the sport. We talked about this yesterday on my podcast, Stages stage cautions. It's a complicated issue trying to shorten up the stage caution and there's a lot of great ideas. I think that first off, I want to say, start this conversation off by saying that I believe that NASCAR absolutely recognizes that this is a conversation that they need to have. And they're probably actively running through scenarios about how to speed this process up. Rate cautions, just in general, you're. If you're a series owner or running a series or running any race, cautions need to be as short as you can make them. You need to get back to racing. That's your best promotion is have. Is your actual green flag competition. The stages have made cautions longer, particularly when you have a caution come out prior to the end of the Stage, they run caution to get to the end of the stage. Then they have the traditional eight or so laps. Stage caution. Now we're under caution for 20 minutes.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So, you know, I think there's a lot of great ideas floating around. That's probably the next challenge to tackle. And if they do half as good a job as they did on this point system, I think that they'll, they'll have some positive results.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, I do, too. You know, I don't subscribe to shorting, shortening the races. One reason is because I don't think stages are going away, and short stages really kill it for me. I can't stand on my. It really hurts. The truck races, that's some of the road course races.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There's. I have never ran a truck race, and having never ran one, I'm not going to go get in a truck at Kansas. Right. I'm not going to go to Charlotte and race a truck. I'm going to go to Martinsville. But they run 40 lap stages. They knock the out of each other, run over each other. There's no tire fall off, and it just doesn't look like a lot of fun. And I remember when we were racing at Martinsville, I knew Jeff Gordon could run that track faster than me. I knew that Jimmy Johnson could run that track faster than I could run it. But if I, if I knew we got an 80 or 100 lap run, I could do some things that would make me better on the back end. And, man, the stages at some of these races make it difficult for a driver. You know, now the tires have gotten better. The tires are, you know, wearing out and falling off a little bit. But, but managing a long run was a lot of fun for me.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, same here. And I understand stages. There are a lot of things about stages that I like. There are some things I don't like about it, but realistically, I don't see why that should go away. The cautions need to be addressed. But shorten the races and keeping the stages.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's. That's so funny how the shortening the races conversation got started. So this literally came from a tweet from Scott Dixon, IndyCar legend, badass dude. But he made a comment about how he takes a nap during some of our races, and I think it was ingested, just a joke. It ends up getting some traction in the media. They asked Kyle Larson about it and he goes, yeah, I feel like some of our races could be shorter. And so there's this snowball effect on social media and Next thing you know, everybody's either for shortening races or defending shortening races in like a week's period of time. I'm like, how the did we. How did we start this? Why is this conversation even happening?

[Mark Martin]

I know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like, it's so unnecessary.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you know, everybody was saying that Mo Wilkesboro, 450 laps. That was a long race. It was over in three hours.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, it was a good race.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It was short. It wasn't a long race.

[Mark Martin]

If I was laying that race out, I wouldn't have made it 450. But I sat there and watched it and I was like, it was okay. And I thought it was a great race.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I thought for sure it was going to be a 400 lap race. When they came back and said 450, I'm like, well, that's odd, but no big deal. And they had the race. And in terms of a timed event, it was. It was landed right in the middle.

[Mark Martin]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Of all of our events, it wasn't long. Yeah, most of our races, some are 2. 2 hours, 45 minutes, some maybe 3 hours and 30 minutes. But I think that's. That's the window and we're in it for most of our events.

[Mark Martin]

But we do need to clean up the caution thing. Yeah, we need to tighten that up. Figure out a way. And with the smartest people as we have in nascar, they should be able to. And I know they're working on it.

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Mark Martin]

One of the problems that we all have, you and you're really close to this, but there's still. And the fans are so far away. There's so little information shared with the race fans that they don't understand a lot of these things. Yeah, like I know the fans, a lot of fans hate stages.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, they do.

[Mark Martin]

And they really would love to not have a stage caution if you leave them no caution. And they need, a lot of times they need more information to understand why. Why we're doing it, why we're doing it. And I'm not opposed as the stages themselves with wording the points really makes extra different racing and. And strategy. It's not a bad thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I'm going to say something controversial. So I. When I was a racer and you were probably the same way, I was super narrow minded. What. What do I want? What is good for me? What would be better? What do I think is better for all of us? And when I got out of the car and we got up in the booth, I started, I was like, oh, that's why we do it that way. Right? And there was all of these things that I saw and I went, damn, I was an idiot. I can't believe I was so stubborn to not see the reasoning for this process or the reason for this process. And now that I wasn't driving the car, I would go to NASCAR and go, man, why did y'.

[Mark Martin]

All.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Why did y' all do that? Or I'd call them, hey, I'm gonna get on my podcast. I'm gonna say some. I want to know why you did what you said, you know, did what you did. And they'll be like, okay, man, here it is. This is the reason I go, man, that makes sense. Okay. All right. So in. If you. If we laid down 10 things that we were not. Not that NASCAR has done. Decided to do processes, they've done a decision during the middle of a race, whatever. If you laid 10 things down here that we. We were. When we saw it, we were like, what the hell was that? Eight of those things. Once I have a conversation with NASCAR with I understand it 100% and would have done the same thing that they'd done in that scenario.

[Mark Martin]

Agreed.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What they need is to your point, they need a voice that is telling people why things are being done the way they're being done. And they don't want to hear it from nascar. They don't want to hear it. Unfortunately, there's some great, great people that work there. They don't really want to hear it from. From some of the folks that work at nascar and they don't really want to hear it from like NASCAR radio. But so there needs to be a way for fans to truly hear some of the reasons why there are some processes in place and why things are slow to re. And why the. You know, they are slow to react like there was that one, one great thing that me and you freaking me and you will die on this hill. The number placement, right. I think you and I both feel like the best number placements the middle of the door. Well, when they came out with this idea that the numbers were going to be moved forward, the. The reaction that I was a witness to was, man, how can NASCAR do this? And NASCAR didn't do it.

[Mark Martin]

They did not.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They didn't do it. They hadn't. They. They were like, hey, put the number wherever you want.

[Mark Martin]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And the RTA said, let's have something uniform, that we all do the same. They had their reasonings, but it wasn't a NASCAR decision. NASCAR really was going to let them put that number anywhere between the tires that they wanted buy. Want to push it back, push forward, wherever you want.

[Mark Martin]

If you pushed it back and put the sponsor on the front, you know, up toward it looks good that way, too. My Miller car looked great that way.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I've seen a lot of race cars with the number placement all over the side of the car, and I've liked all of them at some point. Like, I don't. I'm not against the number forward if it looks good, if, if the design is appealing, but that fans are quick to go. NASCAR can't believe NASCAR made this choice. And a lot of times NASCAR isn't even the one that made it.

[Mark Martin]

No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so. And similarly, there's some influence from network, there's some influence from RTA in certain scenarios. There are some influences that they aren't in control of, you know, and so

[Mark Martin]

a lot of influences. You know, RTA has a lot more to do with a lot of things that we, the fans aren't crazy about.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

You know, that, that are. That are good for the teams.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Mark Martin]

And I just, you know, I, I'm quick to. To bash NASCAR when they got it coming, but, you know, I do see them taking a lot of. Lot of grief. It's like the, The. The sponsor and they say you can't see the sponsor. Well, yeah. First thing I would have seen when I saw the first drawing of. Of, you know, the Gen 7. What's wrong with the quarter panels? What y' all do? I mean, it doesn't have a trunk lid. It looks like a hatchback.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

First when I first saw it, I said, why didn't they push the body back? But then I got to looking more, and it's like the rear wheels are rubbing the back bumper. Why is that? You know, it's just looks so not like a race car. Well, the OEMs wanted all that, you know, and I'm like, well, dude, if it's got to be that way, push the body back and narrow up the tread width because we've got to flatten those quarter panels out. I still would have made room so that the. And then if you want a sponsor on the front side of the door, you can do that. I had that in O2. You know I had, I did it in night in, in the O2 car. And in 1981. Yeah, I had sponsor. You know where you slid the number back. Yeah, I set it back a little bit. I had a sponsor and a quarter. I had a sponsor on the door, front side of the door. You could do all that. But man, I'm not, you know, I'm not a fan of the few little things that were done there with the shape of that car, with that body that made it look so much different than every other race car we've ever seen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. You've stated in the past that you would love to be to oversee an open test of the next gen car. What would you, what would your function, what would your responsibility be at this open test?

[Mark Martin]

Well, I would, I would, you know, work with the engineers, the smart engineers from the teams to make the underbody not work at all. And I know there's a challenge and I know why there's an underbody because all the money was spent before there was one making, you know, downforce. There was getting out of control. So I get it. But I would want, man, I'm just tell you I won't. I want zero downforce in the front.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Zero lift and it will or lift and you know, I don't know. Start with 300 in the back. Maybe you need more. You don't need a ton but you need the front to be virtually nothing. And if it's nothing, it shouldn't lose anything when it gets behind a car. I can tell you I raced cars at Atlanta and Charlotte and all those places. I raced cars that were around zero or front lift. And you never ever, ever heard anything about aerotite ever.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did you run up behind people right on their back bumper?

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, of course. I mean we all the cars, it wasn't just ours. In 1990 when we went to Atlanta to race your dad for the championship at the end of the year we, we had three cars that we wind tunneled and we had two that in race trim that had lift in the front and one that was zero and it had like 270 hell and we all race that. I know your dad had the same thing. Everybody had it. There was no such. Then we get into the mid-90s, we start making some serious downforce in 93. You know, by 93 and we get in the mid-90s. And I'll tell you where it went off the rails, in my opinion. Yeah, it went off the rails. We started making downforce and then people started saying arrow tight. I even told Steve Neal at Martinsville, I said, I'm telling you, I can feel it. And everybody thought I was nuts. You could. And so they come with the 5 and 5 rule. And that didn't suit your dad's cars and it probably suited Ford's better. I don't know. I don't know what story was. And everybody squalling arrows tight. And your dad says. I say we need less front downforce. And your dad said we need more. And that's a fact.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And it never in. Your dad had a lot of pool and it just kept going and it kept going and it kept going and it kept going.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I remember in 99 we went to that, we went to Japan to run over there and it was a six and six, six rule and it was awful. But like, you know, you had this gigantic blade on the back of the car.

[Mark Martin]

Right. Well, if you just take it all off, you've got to start over again. You can't just take a good race car with a good tire and take all that off. It's going to require a different race tire. It's very complicated.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't care if they even ran it or tried it. I would love to watch a team try to take a next gen car and get it to no downfall.

[Mark Martin]

Well, that's what I'm saying.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know. Yeah, I would love to watch. Not. I don't. I'm not saying that it's improbable. I would just love to watch someone engineer in that direction and try to achieve it.

[Mark Martin]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And then really see what a driver thought about it on the racetrack. Oh my gosh. Because that would open up Goodyear's window. You know, as. As the more downforce the car has, the tougher the tires got to be. The more durable, the more heat the tire is going to produce, the more it's going to be shoved into the racetrack. Yeah. You know, I've always. I, as I've watched, I've watched races on TV and i1, one of the. I've watched races and I'm careful. I'm real hesitant to mention this publicly because people think, well, you know, you just, you're. You're just, you know, farming nostalgia or just wanting to, you know, you're just wanting something that never going to come back. You're Just, you know, you remember all the great things about the old days and not the things. And there's one race that stands out to me, and there's a funny little. I. I'm. I'm passionate, right. Sometimes my passion for things makes me do some pretty silly things. But the 1980 World 600, Darrell Waltrip and Benny Parsons are racing for the win. And in the last 10 laps, they changed the lead eight to 12 times. It was remarkable. Whoever got the lead was gonna lose it in the next lap or two. And I don't pretend to know why those two cars interacted with each other the way they did, but both could easily pass the other lap after lap after lap. And I put that. I put a clip of it on the Internet, and I said, man, this is one of the greatest races I've ever seen. Kevin Harvick gave me a hard time. He's like, well, there's only two cars on the lead lap, I think thirds, four laps down, but. And I said to him, I said, I'm not really saying that the. The race itself is actually how the two cars are working together. And he goes, yeah, that's a. You got a hell of a point there. They're actually. That's fun to watch, and we don't have cars that do that today. And so, you know, my. I was so. Adam, I was so confident that the answer to what we want and what we want our product to be is in how those two vehicles interact with each other. I wrote a letter, an email to o', Donnell, I think it was to o' Donnell and Hilton. And I wrote this long letter, and I gave him a link to the. To the video. And I said, this is what we need. You know, this is 15 years ago, maybe 10 years ago. And I'm like, man, whatever's going on between these two cars, in terms of aero, terms of downforce, in terms of drag, there's something here. Now, I'm not asking you to go build me a 1979 Monte Carlo and tell me you're going to. That's what we're going to race on Sunday. But whatever the numbers are, whatever's going on here is what we need to know. Can we reproduce it? I don't know. But we need to know what this is, because this is gold. And so, you know, to your point, you know, you ran cars in the 80s and the late 80s, up to 90, with sim, you know, with similar arrow probably than what they had in 79, 80, I imagine. And so whatever it is, I Mean there's, there's an. I don't know if we'll ever, ever get there. But man, if, if they gave you the keys to the building and you went to the racetrack and you think you could figure it out.

[Mark Martin]

Well, you know, their unwilling. Unwillingness to look at it. It's been since 1995. You're talking about, what are you talking about? You know, 40 years or something, you know, 30 years. They're not willing to look at it. And it's very complicated. And of course, anytime you take a chance, even, even this points thing, man, if this thing turned out bad, I was going to be hammered.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Mark Martin]

So it's pretty scary. Yeah. And you have the whole weight of the industry, you know, can't get it wrong. Yeah, you can't get it wrong. You got billion dollar television. You know, you've got all this stuff that rides. It's, there's a lot of complications but the unwillingness to look at no downforce is really a problem. It's always, it's ate at me since 1995 and I just know that the racing was better and so I know that the world's different now, but people look back at the races from the 90s and a lot of people watch those races from the 90s and says that's better than today. Well, it depends on what you're talking about. You know man, there's 30 cars, 25 cars on the lead lap usually now.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

Does that make up better? Yeah, I'm not sure, I'm not, you know, I guess it's in the eyes of the beholder. But one of our passing problems, you know, is that the cars are within three, 10, you know, at a lot

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

of tracks the whole field runs the same lap time.

[Mark Martin]

That's the problem.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Wild.

[Mark Martin]

That is a problem. I could have told them that before they, you know, oh my gosh, when they started taking tear down shocks and showing everybody your shocks, I'm like dude, this is wrong. You don't want everybody the same speed.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'll stand in the booth and we have this timing scoring right in front of us and you can. Any given lap of the race, I'm talking we're midway through a tire run at Chicago and you'll look at the lap times that everyone just ran and there'll be guys that are clearly faster, but it's very minimal. It's like a half, a tenth, a tenth maybe, maybe, maybe there's a tenth and a half, 210 max between the entire field. And like if you have Any, any challenge with Arrow and you're only, you know, two tenths faster than the slowest car, you know, you're going to easily get stuck behind them. Yeah, if they want you to.

[Mark Martin]

Yeah, of course. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, there's. Today's racing is challenged a lot of. In a lot of ways. You just can't. I don't know what you can do.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I don't either.

[Mark Martin]

I mean, and talking about downforce, they've all done it, you know, F1, you know, had the problem before anybody, you know, Indy cars have, you know, and we should have looked at that, you know, before we continued to go down bigger and bigger. I mean, gosh, in 19, in 2013, that 55 car I drove made 2000 plus downforce.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

And. And today's car, you know, on the draggy package makes £2,000 of downforce, you know, and, and that's where. That's where they go to try to make the racing more interesting. Let's take power away and put more drag so that people get runs and it just creates insanity.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mark Martin]

But then if you take it all away and a car, Cars get spread out, then that's not good because it's not entertaining. So I don't know where you're supposed to go, because traditionalists like you and I don't mind seeing cars get spread out, but at the same time, we enjoy a good race. That, with cars like that, where there's a good battle, but you get those excitements further, farther, you know, between. Fewer and farther between. So, you know, it's. It's a tough thing to balance, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, for sure, man. It's been a fun conversation. We went a lot longer than I thought we would. Again, I appreciate you and Matt coming all the way. Mark Martin's never left. I guess I can buy this anywhere. You can buy books.

[Mark Martin]

You can. Mark Archive is. Is the best place, but you can get it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Martin Archive. All right. So if you want to get yours strictly directly from the man himself, Mark Martin Archive is the place you need to go. I can't wait to read it, Mark. I've been excited about this. You've been talking about it for five years. Congratulations on the finished product, buddy, and I hope it's everything you want it to be. I believe that, you know, there's a. You put a ton of hard work into it and I know that it was difficult, difficult, but the reward on the back end, when you hear all the people that are going to read this book, you're going to have people coming up to you 20 years from now that are still just picking this up, going down. I can't believe this. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about this. You're. You have unlocked the key, buddy. You're going to be busy the next couple of decades continuing to talk about this book and the stories within it.

[Mark Martin]

Well, I appreciate you for having me on, but just what you do for motorsports, you know, I tell you all the time, but you, you know, you are awesome. What you do for motorsports, it's just incredible.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I appreciate that and appreciate you, man. You've always been a great, great friend. Mark Martin on the Dell Jr. Download. All right, so there's Mark Martin on the Dell Jr. Download. Man, that was a lot of fun. I'll be honest, just privately, personally, between you and I, I get a little nervous when I have guys in here. The second and the third time, I'm like, man, what are we going to talk about? Because I've got all the notes. My great staff here at dirtymome media has provided me with the things that we haven't talked about, all the things that have happened in Mark's life since the last time he was on the show. But then there's a couple of sheets here of here's everything you've talked about. So that's off the table. But, man, Mark comes in here and he just kicked ass. So we had a great conversation. That was fun. I, you know, I just think the world of that guy and hopefully 67 years old. 67. That's. Man, he's. He looks like he's in great shape. Matt's doing a great job of keeping him young. That's amazing. They get to spend a lot of time around each other. I can't, you know, can't imagine what that's like for Matt, right, to be able to be with his dad and for the most part have his dad's full attention. You know, Mark was a racer, forever dividing his time amongst all types of things, his son included. So pretty awesome. And that made my day getting him in here. So appreciate Mark joining us. Appreciate y' all joining us here at the Arby's studio. Don't forget about Arby's new meet in three box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats and we will see you tomorrow with bless your heart. Check out dirtymomedia on instagram, Facebook x and TikTok

[Mark Martin]

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