Martinsville: "Never Been More Disappointed"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dale Jr. Download – Martinsville: "Never Been More Disappointed"

Release Date: April 1, 2025
Host: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dirty Mo Media, SiriusXM

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Introduction to Martinsville Race and Penalty Management

In this episode, Dale Earnhardt Jr. opens with a humorous exchange about managing penalties for the upcoming Martinsville race alongside fellow NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin. The conversation sets a candid tone as Dale emphasizes his and Denny's commitment to overseeing the penalty process to ensure fairness on the track.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [00:00]: "I have volunteered you and me to work the NASCAR booth at the next Martinsville race... we will hand out the penalties as we see fit."

Reflecting on Recent Race Disappointments

Dale expresses his deep disappointment with the recent Martinsville race, highlighting the chaotic and unsportsmanlike behavior exhibited by several drivers. A significant portion of the discussion centers around Sammy Smith's controversial move during the race, which Dale criticizes as detrimental to team reputation and NASCAR's integrity.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [13:31]: "I saw decisions from several drivers that there was total disregard for the other competitors... Sammy's move was a terrible decision."

NASCAR's Penalty System and Proposed Improvements

A substantial segment of the podcast delves into the shortcomings of NASCAR's current penalty system. Dale and Travis Mack discuss the need for real-time penalties during races to curb reckless driving and maintain fair competition. They advocate for implementing a rule where any driver involved in a crash at Martinsville would be sent to the back of the pack, regardless of fault, to deter aggressive maneuvers.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [29:11]: "If you're involved in an accident, you go to the back... it just makes it clean."

Announcement: CARS Tour at North Wilkesboro

Dale shares exciting news about the CARS Tour's upcoming event at North Wilkesboro, emphasizing its significance for the series. He details the schedule, including late model stock races on Friday night broadcasted on FS1, and expresses enthusiasm about working in the booth alongside Kevin Harvick.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [01:51]: "Don't be skipping the CARS Tour for North Wilkesboro... me and Harvick are going to be in the booth."

Nostalgia and Storytelling: Martinsville Hot Dogs

Adding a lighter touch, Dale reminisces about the iconic Martinsville hot dogs, sharing anecdotes about past changes to their recipe and reflecting on Bill France Jr.'s decisive actions to maintain tradition. This segment serves as a metaphor for the need for swift and firm decisions in NASCAR's operations.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [07:30]: "Bill France Jr. Was in there. And when Bill France Jr. Learned about how they had changed the hot dog, it was fixed, and it was fixed by noon that day."

In-Depth Conversation with Denny Hamlin

The core of the episode features an in-depth discussion with Denny Hamlin, where they analyze the recent Martinsville race's failures and propose actionable solutions. Denny expresses frustration over the lack of immediate penalties and compares the situation to previous instances where similar issues were handled poorly.

Denny Hamlin [43:10]: "We got to trust that they got the bigger picture in mind... but the frustration remains."

Future Directions and Support for Drivers

Dale emphasizes the importance of supporting drivers like Sammy Smith despite setbacks, focusing on mentorship and constructive feedback to foster improvement. He highlights the broader issues within NASCAR, such as recurring reckless behavior and the need for cultural change to uphold the sport's integrity.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [22:15]: "He has to hear it. He's going to go to the racetrack this weekend and, oh boy, is he going to get asked about it."

Technical Insights: Tire Performance and Race Strategy

The conversation also touches on technical aspects affecting race outcomes, particularly tire performance by Goodyear. Denny Hamlin discusses the limitations of current tire technology and the challenges in balancing durability with performance, suggesting that softer tires could enhance competition.

Denny Hamlin [43:15]: "They gotta make the tire softer because right now, what I noticed... cars start taking a dump."

Personal Stories and Community Engagement

Towards the end, Dale shares personal stories, including memorabilia from the Snowball Derby and interactions with fellow drivers like Jeff Gordon and Ray Evernham. These anecdotes reinforce the sense of community and shared history within NASCAR.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [57:54]: "Here comes the back bumper of another Camaro... Robert G's Camaro number 17, Darrell Waltrip driving the car."

Concluding Thoughts and Upcoming Topics

Dale wraps up the episode by previewing upcoming segments and guests, including interviews with Casey Mears and Mark Martin. He reiterates the importance of teamwork, mutual respect, and continuous improvement both on and off the track.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. [100:06]: "We got a season to finish and try to kick some ass."

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Key Takeaways

• Need for Real-Time Penalties: The current delay in penalizing drivers for infractions adversely affects race integrity and safety.

• Support and Mentorship: Continuous support and honest feedback are crucial for drivers to overcome mistakes and grow professionally.

• Technical Adjustments: Improvements in tire technology could lead to more competitive and safer races.

• Community and Tradition: Maintaining traditions and fostering a strong community are essential elements of NASCAR's enduring appeal.

Notable Quotes

• Dale Earnhardt Jr. [22:15]: "He has to hear it. He's going to go to the racetrack this weekend and, oh boy, is he going to get asked about it."

• Denny Hamlin [43:10]: "We got to trust that they got the bigger picture in mind... but the frustration remains."

• Dale Earnhardt Jr. [07:30]: "Bill France Jr. Was in there. And when Bill France Jr. Learned about how they had changed the hot dog, it was fixed, and it was fixed by noon that day."

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Conclusion

In "Martinsville: 'Never Been More Disappointed'," Dale Earnhardt Jr. provides a candid and comprehensive analysis of recent challenges faced in NASCAR, particularly focusing on the Martinsville race's shortcomings. Through insightful conversations with Denny Hamlin and reflections on industry practices, the episode underscores the need for structural changes to enhance race integrity and driver accountability. Additionally, the episode celebrates NASCAR's rich traditions and the camaraderie among its community, setting the stage for future discussions and improvements within the sport.

Transcript

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I wanted to let you know that I have volunteered you and me to work the NASCAR booth at the next Martinsville race. Me and you will just manage the penalty process. Yes, we will hand out the penalties as we see fit.

[Denny Hamlin]

I won't even need glasses like yours.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

To see what I said. I said. I said that I'll let you penalize my drivers if you see fit. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. I'm still sour, man, that I wasn't your best man at your wedding.

[TJ Majors]

When will you start mentally, like, getting ready for the race?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Can you not tell I'm mentally ready? This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half.

[Travis Mack]

Yes, this is more fun. Travis has some dumb ideas, but I agree with him on this one. Well, I would agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What kind of question is that?

[TJ Majors]

What do you mean? What kind of question is it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Doesn't sound like you know what you're talking about.

[Travis Mack]

You haven't scratched the surface yet there, boy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I forgot what a wild menace I was. You don't need a cool vest for that race. I mean, what the do you want?

[TJ Majors]

I. I just think the last few laps, it was just like, stop every time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You ain't picky. This ain't walking in and have it your way, mother. All right. St. Burger King. That's just what I call preparing. Travis is like, wrapped us up. They don't have no fun around here. Hey, Everybody, it's Dale Jr. We're back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. It is Tuesday. This is Dirty Air. I'm with TJ and we're. We're coming in. We're coming in two days after the race weekend, right?

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. Cleaning up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

A lot of been said and done. Yeah, and done. But I'm saying, since the race, there's been.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Noah Gragson]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Plenty of comments.

[Travis Mack]

Plenty of comments. More reactions. Lots of stuff to cover.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right. So listen, everybody. We're going to get to all the. But before I do that, I got to tell y'all that there's an announcement for the CARS Tour. Okay? This is a big damn deal, so pay attention. Don't be skipping the CARS Tour for North Wilkesboro. We've been running there with the All Star race. It's a massive deal for us to be there on Wednesday to race during that week. It's just incredible for our series.

[Travis Mack]

Big weekend? Yeah, huge.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, it's getting even cooler because the late model stock portion is going to Move to Friday night following cup qualifying, and it will be on FS1. Wait, I'm not done. So you can still watch it on Flow, right? If you want to watch it on Flow, it'll still be there on Flow, but also you'll be able to watch it on FS1. And me and Harvick are going to be in the booth.

[TJ Majors]

That's awesome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So we're going to be on the. I can't wait for this. The pro class will still run Thursday night. They'll have their own day to do all the things they want to do. They'll practice. Late mall stocks will practice. Pros will practice. They'll qualify. But on Friday night, we're going to impound the late model stocks, and the late model stocks will race on Friday night on FS1. I mean, I'm so excited about this. This is so good.

[Travis Mack]

Big crowd.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, it's a good. It's great. Yeah. I mean, the crowd will be there and, you know, they're going to see qualifying and then they can see our late mall stock race Friday night at the racetrack. But how many people are going to be able to see the cars tour on FS1 for the first time? You know, I'm excited that it's going to be broadcast on Flow and FS1 at the same time, but being in the booth with Kevin talking about our series and I can't wait. I just can't believe it.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, that's. That's awesome. That's like. To run in front of that event, like on that. That night. That. That's like. It reminds me of is in one fun thing that I got to do is when I ran the dash series in O3, we ran before the all star race at Charlotte, and that was a huge crowd. It was cool.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So anyways, you know, the late model stock portion of the race weekend for us during all Star weekend is going to shift toward to Friday night following cup qualifying. I'll be in the booth with Harvick as part of the broadcast for the race. The race itself is probably going to fit hopefully in about an hour and a half window. So it's easy to consume everybody. Tune in if you're. If you're wanting to support short track racing and the cars Tour, the Z Max cars Tour, Tuning in is the best way you can do that. If you're watching on Flow, I love it. If you haven't, you need to check that out. But this particular night, you'll also be able to see us on FS1 that is the best way you can support us is by tuning in and watching, obviously. Also the CARS Tour. I'm racing at Cordell in two week, two weeks.

[TJ Majors]

Are you mentally promoting it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I am mentally preparing. I'm racing on the 12th. We'll be there practicing and qualifying a couple days there before the race. So in town for a couple nights. I'm excited, nervous, ready to get over to the shop, and there's, you know, cars kind of been sitting there ready to go, but they got to get the motor in it. But anyways, a lot cool stuff going on with the CARS Tour. They're two races in. They had a great weekend at Wake county this past weekend, and Mini Tyrell won the race. Great little story with many. But anyways, moving on. A lot going on on the racetrack, but. Anybody getting Martinsville hot dogs? I had three.

[Travis Mack]

You had three in a row, didn't you?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Does it matter?

[TJ Majors]

Yeah, it does.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Judging me. Yeah.

[TJ Majors]

But if you have three.

[Travis Mack]

Course, the text was like, one hot dog down, two, three. And I'm like, dang, is he gonna stop?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I had a bag of four, and I didn't know if I was gonna eat two and then save two for the ride home. And I had two, and I thought, I got a little time here. I have another third. They're small.

[Travis Mack]

They are.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They don't. They don't.

[Travis Mack]

They are small, but you get them all the way, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Nope.

[Travis Mack]

What do you get on yours?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I get them with chili, ketchup, mustard.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, I get mine with just ketchup.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I like slaw.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Hey, teach his own.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But the Martinsville hot dough is badass. I know people look at it, and they go, that don't look like much of a hot dog to me. But that's not what matters, man. It's easy consumes kind of small. And it's just.

[Travis Mack]

They do a really good deal that the price is great. Look as well.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It is good price.

[Travis Mack]

Mine really good price.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Mine was really good. I got discount.

[Travis Mack]

How do you discount, like, a $2 hot dog?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I did. You.

[TJ Majors]

You can't pay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I got. Yeah, I walked over there with money in my hand to give to the lady. I actually walked up there, I said, hey, I'll take. I'll take four. She hand them to me, wouldn't take my money.

[Travis Mack]

Did you tip them?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I put. Yeah, I was. I gave her my money and said, where's the tip jar? She said, right over there. I said, I'll put my money in the tip jar.

[Travis Mack]

Now take my Money, man, I feel better about it now that you said you tipped them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They wouldn't take my money. But the. Did y'all know that they changed the Martinsville hot dogs twice? There's a. We were around probably maybe a decade or 15 years ago when Smithfield come in and tried to bring their hot dogs in. I remember that they paid a little extra money or something. They did something that convinced the track to try to change the hot dog, and everybody got pissed off.

[Travis Mack]

Didn't go over well.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They all know. And I. But I was talking to the Wood Brothers, watching qualifying on top of the Wood Brothers holler, and he. They were telling me a story about how they tried to change the hot dogs way, way back before I was even racing. And so it's like Thursday morning, first, they used to get to the track early. Oh, yeah, right. Practicing on Thursday and Friday. So the Wood brothers are walking into the track, and Tony Glover met him at the gate. Tony Glover worked for the four team at the time, the Kodak car. He met him at the gate. He said, guys, we got to go talk to Mr. France. They were like, what's going on? He's like, it's. They up the hot dog, man. They changed them.

[Travis Mack]

That's serious.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so they went to the holler, and Bill France Jr. Was in there. And when Bill France Jr. Learned about how they had changed the hot dog, it was fixed, and it was fixed by noon that day.

[Travis Mack]

No kidding.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You damn right. So listen, now, that's a funny little story about hot dogs, but it's also what was badass about Bill France Jr. If he wanted something changed, done, no matter whether it was good or a penalty or hot dog, it freaking got done. Serious on the spot. That man didn't wait or, you know, he. That was a great. You know, this is connected into what we're going to talk about later in the show. I'm gonna promise you right now, if Bill. Bill Jr. Had been up in the booth during that Xfinity race, none of us would have left there disappointed. He would have handled business. The Xfinity series race. Let's get right into me. I mean, we can talk about that cup race.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Everybody wants to hear our take on this Finnity race.

[Travis Mack]

I think Xfinity was more exciting.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's one description I wouldn't use. Listen, first off, I did speak to Sammy Sunday, and, you know, I was. I've been. You know, I ain't been on social media a ton. I've been on there, you know, supporting some of the Car store stuff and postcards, tour, you know, celebrating Minnie's win and all that and doing a couple other things on there. But I see the comments, and there's a lot of people out there that are like, oh, man, NASCAR's got a parking NASCAR. Dale Jr. Should parking. Dale Jr. Should fire him. And so, you know, anybody who thinks I'm going to park Sammy, like, parking for a race is. That's out of the question, never going to happen. I wouldn't even suggest it again. It's waste of a tweet. But, you know, if I take a minute to. To kind of manage my initial overreaction, because when that. When I walked out of that racetrack, I was. I've never been more disappointed and frustrated than the. Not than that. Than that day walking out of. I mean, I've seen some. I've been sad, heartbroken. Now, it wasn't my worst day at a racetrack, but I walked out of there disappointed and frustrated at the whole thing. But then, you know, you go home, you look. I thought on it. Like, I mean, I didn't just freaking wipe it out of my mind and just going about my way. I steamed on this for 48 hours. I talked to Amy about it, but Sammy's my driver for me now, this ain't for everybody else. Y'all can continue to be pissed and think what you want, but for me, I got to shift to. What do I do to give Sammy the best advice, the most honest advice I can to help him shift to. To do better. Sammy's. I got to figure out how Sammy can clean this up. It's a mess he's made, and in the end, you know, I got to support him and try to try to give him the tools and the knowledge to make the better decision next time, right? NASCAR is going to make their own decision how they want to penalize him. I'm absolutely fine with that. I mean, I encourage NASCAR to act whenever they feel like somebody deserves some sort of penalty or I'm expecting it. And then I don't want to say I'm fine with what they want to do, but I hope that they handle this properly, and I expect they will, whatever that may be. We'll. We'll move forward. But listen, man, my blood was boiling during the entire race. I saw decisions from several drivers that there was total disregard for the other competitors. The. The racetrack, the facility, the. The organ, the. The total disregard for the. For the series, the Xfinity series, for the. The race cars themselves. Sammy's move was a terrible Decision. But I was. But I saw, I saw dozens throughout that race.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, you and me both.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Dozens, same guys over and over sometimes for sure.

[Travis Mack]

A lot of repeat offenders going in.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The corner and just not even caring about making the corner take, you know, knocking guys out of the way up the racetrack. Cars getting destroyed. The whole damn field was tore all to hell. Many drivers in that field did little to improve their stock in my eyes. Some of them, I believe, actually damaged their reputations. Some responsibility here also falls on nascar. You know, I, I wonder why the booth wasn't more reactive in the moment, you know, and having some conversations that I've had in the last two days, it's my opinion that NASCAR wants to do that, wants to get there. NASCAR would. NASCAR wants to get to where they can just say, yep, Sammy, you're getting last place points today for all that, or whatever, right? Or in the middle of the race, hey, you know, you're, you caused that crash. You wrecked that guy. You're going to the back. NASCAR wants to get to where they reactive. I don't know what the hurdles are to that. I really don't. I don't know why I can't go up in that booth and sit down and go, hey, guys, I'll handle the penalties today and just go, yep, guys, hey, send his ass to the back. I don't, you know, it is what it is. I don't know how. I don't know why that's not easier. As easy as it sounds, right? We're all sitting here going, damn, that sounds like it's pretty easy thing to do. But there must be some mechanisms that we don't know about. But having the conversations that I've had with nascar, they want to get to that. They want to get to where they can handle this, that day, that, that moment, in the moment while it's happening. But it ain't that way in the CARS Tour. Listen. Xfinity, CARS Tour, two completely different things, apples and oranges, not comparing the two. They are not the same. But in the CARS Tour, if you're involved in an accident, regardless of fault, you go to the back.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Landon Huffman's running third, trying to pass Ryan Millington late in the race for second. They get together in turn three. Millington spins, Millington spins. They both go to the back. Landon Huffman, who was, look, Ryan Millington, no disrespect, I didn't get a great view of the rap, but I'm just going to assume, let's just say Landon was low as he could be, and it was really nothing he could do. He's kind of up beside you. Well, Landon's sitting there going, I didn't do anything. But he doesn't come cussing me. He doesn't come cussing officials. He goes to Ryan Millington after the race. That's how it should be handled. He's not mad at the governing body for sending him to the back. He knows the rule. He knows he's going to go to the back. If you're involved in a crash, if you used this sort of standard, it would carry over. You wouldn't even need it anywhere else. Just do this at Martinsville. If you're involved in the crash, no matter your. Your responsibility, if you make contact, bump into anything, you go into the back. If you did this at only Martinsville, it would set a new standard that carried from week to week and went out to all the. They would race that way everywhere, even though you wouldn't have that rule at any other racetrack. That's what I would have loved to have seen in this race is like, look, man, you got to know that if you go down in this corner and you dump this damn guy, that you're going to the back. I don't care that you didn't spin out, didn't lose a spot. You're going to the back. You know, the 21 goes down in there and bowls into turn one and knocks three, four cars out of the way, wrecked his teammate and Carson, you're going to the back. The Sammy deal sucked. Sammy up. We're going to try to give Sammy everything we can and just support him going forward. We got a whole season to run. We'll see if we can't, you know, get him to where he's making better choices in them moments and see if we can't get him to realize the error that he made. But the end, the messed up part I think is, is that for most people, that's all they're going to remember from that race. And I told Sammy that, I said, you know, you. You know, we cost Justin the dash for cash opportunity, cost himself a chance to race for the dash for cash next. Next time. Wasn't going to win the race with that move. It wasn't a winning move. Dozens of cars destroyed on the front straightaway. That's all people are going to remember from that race. Now, I saw it. I remember that, too, but I remember all the other that I saw that was equally disappointing and stupid. But all people are going to walk away from that race. Is. Well, that's Sammy Smith. I'm not sure about him. And that we got a. There's a bigger problem. Denny said it during the race, like, golly, man, what's going on? Where's, you know, where's. Where's the black flag? Where's the penalties here? They ought to let me and Denny go up in that booth at Martinsville and just handle. Hand out penalties, Cosign. Hell yes. I would sit there with Denny and me and him would just hand out penalties the whole race.

[Travis Mack]

I think Sammy made it worse at the end. He just needed to take his top two or top three and leave. But the. What happened at the end there covered up all the other stuff that other drivers did.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Travis Mack]

Like Austin Hill, supposed to be a veteran of the series. Drove like a complete.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Austin Hill gets out of that car and he's like, I damn one. I won't. What the hell did I do wrong? Here I am, Victor Lane. I must have done it right.

[Travis Mack]

And he is the master of. I mean, he wrecked three cars in one wreck basically because he was mad.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Because the guy got inside him with tires and that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think God roughed him up a little bit. But it wasn't the, the penalty. The, you know, the, The. The payback didn't fit.

[Travis Mack]

No, but roughing him up, I mean, the guy. The guy had tires was forcing his way through every. He would have done the same thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Travis Mack]

But it doesn't mean you go in there to a lap later and wreck three cars. Like, that's the wrong example. He's supposed to be the veteran guy. Don't do this stuff. Guys. Like, like Justin, to me, and this is. After this race, I've seen more of a change. Justin Allgaier, more of a mentor, more of a, you know, more of the leader of, you know, this type of stuff. Like, hey, guys, we don't need to be racing like this. But it covered up what, you know. And Sammy didn't do himself any favors in his interviews.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He did not.

[Travis Mack]

And that. Which, which made it even. The wreck at the end was like, oh, wow. We've seen guys two or three years ago, we saw Ty Gibbs wreck Brandon Jones for the win. They just cleaned him out for the win and we all left. Same type of thing. But, man, just getting out and. And not just owning it. Be like, you know what? I made a bad decision. I should have finished second. And. And that's the part that bothers me more, is it was an eye for an eye. At that point. You moved him. He Moved you. You were going to come out of there with a top two.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

When they come off a turn two Taylor Gray. So if you did a great job. Yeah, Taylor Gray worked passing, you know, got into him a little bit. Sammy had done that earlier just to restart before. That was racing. That was just short track racing. And they were dead. When they come off a turn to. For the, on the white flag on the last lap, the score was even.

[Travis Mack]

That's what I thought.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, it was even. And so, you know, Sammy goes down in there and barrels into the corner, knocks the damn nose off his car. The hoods popped up and the 54 gets spun out. And then Sam, you know, it just was a no, that was a zero. There was zero chance that that was going to pay off in San Francisco.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. Work in your favor at all.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Zero chance. And so look, he, it's done, it's in, it's in the books. We ain't changing it. He can't go back and change it. I think that he maybe, I don't know if he knows the full weight of the freaking screw up. I don't know if he truly has learned his lesson perfectly. That might be a process. I'm sure. All of the, you know, the thing about, you know, all of the social media noise, all of us podcasting every day over the last 48, 72 hours, all of that noise is effective. It will, you know, he has to hear it. He's going to go to the racetrack this weekend and, oh boy, is he going to get asked about it.

[TJ Majors]

Did he seem receptive when you talked to him though? Because this is a podcast, but you're the owner and you, your name, you're not just any owner.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I called Sammy on Sunday and I talked to him for a while and told him everything that I needed to tell him after I'd calmed down. And you don't know whether it sinks in yet. You know, you don't. I can't sit here and tell you, oh, yeah, man, he's sorry. He's really sorry. And man, he's going to do better. And he, but he, he, he says all those things. He, he says that he understands that he screwed up. He knows he gives himself a black eye. He gave Junior Motorsports a black eye. He knows that, you know, that we're very disappointed and, and he certainly has tons of regret. But the work, the work forward is a, is a, is a long road. It ain't, you know, he ain't gonna fix it in, in 12 hours. He's got a lot of, you know, he's got a lot of work to do to repair his reputation. He's. He. That was a, that was a heavy blow. You know, people look at him. I told him, I said, hey, I said, everybody thinks you're a spoiled punk. That's what a lot of people think. I asked him, I said, do you, don't you agree that people have that perception of you? Probably? He's like, yeah. I said, you gave him all that. You gave him opportunity to be right. I was like, you can't do that. I was like, you're. Unfortunately, the situation that he's in and a lot of other drivers are in, it's perceived that they're only there because of some extra funding or family connection or what have you. Right? There's tons of drivers. It's talked about openly in the truck series and the Xfinity series. Fans have certain opinions about them being spoon fed and what have you. And I said for Sammy, I said that you have to work harder because of that to prove you belong there. And you can be frustrated about that or whatever, but it doesn't change anything. You still have to go. If you want to be a race car driver for the rest of your life. If you want this to work for you, you're going to have to work harder and you're going to have to walk the line straighter. And you can't do like you did this past weekend. You can't. And so he has two routes. He can continue to make it more challenging on himself and anyone associated with him, or he can try to clean it up. And that's a process. That's not something he's going to fix this weekend. He's not going to go this weekend and throw a couple sound bites into a microphone and it's all good. This is a. He's going to need the whole year to sort of turn it around, the narrative around who he is and what type of person he is. He can do it. I know him, he's a nice kid. Wants this really badly, wants to win, wants to be successful. And I want that for him. I want that for him here. And so we'll continue to. Now, you know, I guess we'll continue to try to, you know, help him understand how to, how to get, you know, how to get to where he wants to go, not only on the, you know, not only in success and performance, but as a, as a person, right in character. Hey everybody, you want the latest Del Junior download apparel? Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com we're always adding new stuff all the time, especially like when we say something silly on this show. We'll put it on a T shirt again. Check it out at shop.dirtymomedia.com do you.

[TJ Majors]

Guys think that the Xfinity series can fix this problem without NASCAR having come down? Do you think it went it was so bad on Saturday that maybe they'll correct themselves on their own or the drivers will hold themselves accountable? No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No.

[Travis Mack]

Why. Why is this just like why is this any different than Ty Gibbs three years ago?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Listen, I'll be honest with you, man. People ain't going to love what I'm about to say. But I sit there and watch a Cup race Sunday and Erik Jones drove into turn three three carlinks deep and knocked somebody's ass out of the way. Same damn thing. It was just for 20th in the cup race and even Sark NASCAR kasm a little tweet that said what. What Xfinity driver am I? You know, and because it was so identical.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But you know, it's for 20th and it's in the middle of it's a Cup race and probably happens every five laps there with some driver gets did.

[Travis Mack]

He wreck them or just.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, the cup car you can hit a lot harder modified tires on it so you can't spin it out going forward. How nasty. You know, the drivers are not going to. You're that thing about that thing they that thing they talked about on the at the opening of the cup race was all it's just almost cringe a little bit where they were like, yep. They told him in the driver's meeting the word of the day is respect. I'm like, oh my goodness.

[Travis Mack]

That that almost means drive like a tool.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's not going to they were like. They were like, okay, is this driver's meeting over. The way to do it going forward and maybe they'll get there is to penalize people in the moment while it's happening and the way that they can. So I think one of the reasons why they're hesitant to do it is because NASCAR's always had this sort of strange approach toward incidents for and one example of that is, is like if I watch a race and I see a guy spin himself out on purpose, I know it. I know he did it on purpose. And NASCAR won't really won't react to it unless he admits it. Right. Even though I watched it and I could tell any guy in nascar, you know, the guy did it on purpose, man. It's obvious so. Well we don't know. He. We don't know. We're not driving the car. We didn't. We're not in there. We don't. Even though we have telemetry now and all these things, we still. We're not sure. And so they won't really react unless a driver comes out and says, the damning admission I did it. And then NASCAR's like, they'll even say it. You know, we weren't going to do anything till you said you did it on purpose. So I think they need to. They need to. They need to pivot from that mentality of calling incidents just at Martinsville. Go to Martinsville and say, hey, if you're involved, if you go down in the corner and your right front touches a guy in the left rear and he spins, you are going to the back with him. That will stop this.

[Travis Mack]

Why? Why not? Just. I mean, if you drive like a. If you drive like a jackass, we're just going to penalize you. Like, there used to be a fear. There used to be a fear.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Even I just said that.

[Travis Mack]

I know, but, like, not even just that. Like, they would get mad. You'd be in the holler if you blew a motor and didn't get below the other line getting and talking to I.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's the problem with the. With what. There's a problem with what you're saying. Okay, you're trying. You can't. NASCAR doesn't want to judge whether one's being an and one's not. The great thing. Well, the great thing, you don't have to. With this type of approach, it's Adam, when you say, hey, we're sending you to the back regardless of guilt, it's out of NASCAR's hands, and there is no judgment. You watch a film, you see the contact. Sorry, man, I like you, but you hit this guy and he respond, I'm sorry, but per the rule, you now go to the back. And that driver, that. You know what that does to the driver is he goes, well, I don't want to. I don't want to do that again, so I won't do that again. Whereas the other day, they. They would just drive right back up through there and knock out of somebody else and spin somebody else out over and over and over, because there was no penalty to it. There's no repercussion. And so, look, I don't love this idea everywhere, but I think you don't need it everywhere. If you implement it at Martinsville, it would train them to think and Race uniquely, that that would carry over that mentality goes to the next event. To the next event, to the next event. You got to change the way the drivers are thinking. And NASCAR doesn't need to get in a situation where they're judging whether it was on purpose, not on purpose, whether the guy was. There was malice or. Or innocence or it was a up or he made a mistake. It's just make it. Make it clean.

[Travis Mack]

So is this just a truck Xfinity, or do you do it in cup as well?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sure.

[Travis Mack]

I mean, because I feel like when you get to the Cup Series, you should already know these. Yeah, this should already be in your mind, dude.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's the. It's. The cup race is the exact opposite of what we saw Saturday. It's too clean.

[Travis Mack]

I mean, I agree, but, I mean.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There'S some beating and banging and there's some anger and frustration, but the drivers get over things really quickly now. You know, I don't know. There's some guys that got out of their cars, like Logano talking about Chastain. I love that.

[Travis Mack]

We need that stuff to happen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We need it.

[Travis Mack]

We need it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I would. I would. You know, where we. Where we had too much of that Saturday, I would have a little more sprinkled into the Sunday race in terms of little controversy. Little. Little. Just at least one feud, you know?

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. I definitely. I mean, I think the cup race is clean.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

If you go to Martinsville with the cup cars and you don't come out of there with at least one feud, it was not a good race.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. There. There's four or five hundred laps of tight racing. Somebody's some. Something should happen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

At some point.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah. I am serious about coming up and. And working the NASCAR booth at Martinsville for the Xfinity race.

[TJ Majors]

I love the idea.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm not saying I won't. I'm not asking for an invitation to come watch. Like, I'll put on a headset. I'm. I'll make a call. And Denny both. That would be so fun. Yeah, he can. If he thinks my guys need to be penalized, he makes the call, I'll let him make the call.

[TJ Majors]

Why not?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I see no problem with this. I don't see anything. I don't see how that could go bad at all. Going to the cup race, odd thing going on with the Penske cars having battery issues. So Barry's leading. I'm pumped about that. And then he had some contact with Bubba Wallace on pit road. And oddly, I guess, unconnected or not, Related the car's battery died.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. Out of nowhere.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And then. And I thought, man, that contact shook something loose or whatever. They were like, nope, not related. Sure enough, here comes Austin Cindric. He needs a battery. And they ran out of damn batteries.

[TJ Majors]

How does that happen?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I'm sure they didn't expect to change four or five batteries that during the race, you know, I could see. I mean, they only got so many on the truck. I don't know. I mean, maybe they. Maybe they each had a spare battery between the four teams and they used them all or didn't want to use some because it might happen to the 12 and the 22.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, it's not fair to use all theirs in case they knows, who know?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But, yeah, yeah, they ran out of batteries. I wonder what was going on. You know, did they just have so much going on in terms of fans and driver comfort and so many amps they're drawing. They really do. At least from what I remember. They, you know, all of the amps are accounted for. And that alternator, what it can produce, all of that stuff is very measured and precise. And so maybe somehow or another something wasn't performing as well as it was supposed to in terms of maybe the alternator, and they were drawing too many amps to keep up. To keep up. They might have shut all of the driver comforts off, but everything in terms of brake fans and all the other things that the car absolutely needs still was too much for the system. So it sucks because I think that Austin. Austin Cindrick and Josh both could have had really decent days. We had Josh finishing top 10 on our fan.

[Travis Mack]

I think he. I think Josh was on pace to do that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

I mean, his car, top 12 car.

[TJ Majors]

What do you think about the tires?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, that's. That's another conversation, too, that. So they asked Kyle Busch if he thought that the short track package was better, and he's like, nope, not really. It ain't better. It's no different. I kinda, you know, kind of glad that he is as outspoken and as honest as he is. We need all the drivers to say what they think. And as we were all sort of as. As all of us that watch the races have been getting happier about what we're seeing with the tire. Tires that Goodyear has been producing, going softer and so forth and having the option tire, it's good for Kyle Busch to say, hey, man, there's still some things we got to work on. You know, we're. You know, I don't think that it's as good as everybody thinks it is. And we went to Martinsville, and it was all right. It wasn't that great. I mean, the. I do not want. I do not. I would have not preferred them to have two tires. Two. Two tire compounds at that race. That ain't what I want. I know that Gluck said that. He's like, hey, it'd have been more entertaining if we had the option tire. And I love this, Chris. Gabe Hart responded to the tear down. The guys were talking on the teardown, and Gluck was like, hey, you know, the text. Having the option tire might have made that more interesting. And Gabe Hart's tweet says this. I think instead we should make all the cars 100% identical and see if the drivers can overcome the natural laws of physics. I'll wait. Say what you will about Chris Gabe Hart, but he pulls no punches on Twitter.

[TJ Majors]

He's the best.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He is. He's a great follow, and he know he. Nobody's spared. Right. If he doesn't agree with your opinion or he thinks that he has a, you know, a take, he jumps right in there. But he's. He's right. You know, there's no. The cars are all identical, and the drivers really are, you know, kind of limited on. On what they can do. And so even when your car's off a little bit, you just slow down, get to the curb, downshift, and drive up off the bottom. The guy behind you just really has no. No way to sort of set up a pass. I watched Chase Elliott all day long use this traditional, very traditional sort of high entry, cross across, you know, drive across to the bottom to drive up off the bottom of the corner and try to get up underneath somebody. That work. That's a. That's like classic. Classic Martinsville. And, you know, he can make some lap time doing it, but he couldn't never really just get positioned on a guy and get up underneath him. And it was really frustrating. So I don't think bringing the option tire or giving them a couple option sets of option tires fixes it at all. It just, you know, then we just get to listen all day long about who's on what tire and who's going to do this and who's going to do that.

[Travis Mack]

They're gonna have guys bulldozing through there and it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And it ain't gonna matter because they're all gonna strategize and it's all gonna kind of be pretty much the same in the end. They're all on the same tire at the end. Nobody's. Then we're not going to ever have an option tire race where the race is ending, where people are on different tires to create some sort of, you know, wow, this guy's put his options on. He's in 20th. We got 20 laps to go.

[Travis Mack]

Changes the middle up some.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It does change the middle, but that's about it.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, it changes the middle. That's what we saw at Phoenix. We saw.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Guys, it was fine at Phoenix, but what they need, what they learned, what I think they should have learned when they walked out of Phoenix was we need to come back here with just the option tire or even.

[Travis Mack]

Even a softer option.

[TJ Majors]

Yeah, but that's what they race on Sunday was the option tire.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right.

[TJ Majors]

But the problem is too many cautions, though, Right. So there's no fall off.

[Travis Mack]

So we were getting ready to see a cycle. When the 88 wheel came off, we were getting ready to see the difference in. That was going to be a green flag, pit stop, and we were going to see what it did. Guys were going to be able to switch some track position around, run long, run short, you know what I mean? Like, and we never really got that opportunity. I liked the direction. I want more.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like, I want to see you want to go softer.

[Travis Mack]

I want to see the guys struggling earlier than that. That we were just starting to see. Guys, I could see it from the roof.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Guys fight the exit of the corner, which is what you fought every time in the other cars. You couldn't get off the corner.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

And the guy that took care of his. Of his rear tires, well, the guy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Was smart on the throttle, clean on the throttle, you know, just not hammering the gas and spinning the rear tires all the way down the straightaway. That guy was going to haul ass at lap 50. Lap 80, you drive by 10, 15 cars, but you could pass.

[Travis Mack]

Yes, you could do it then. And that's where it took in. You had to. You had to measure a lot of things. You had to measure in your brain how if you're saving them tires, should I go hard now? Should I save them later?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, the tires definitely could go softer. In Martinsville, the tire has to be problematic. Like, they need to make the tire to where it is so soft that you have to be smart.

[Travis Mack]

That's the best thing. It says the tire has to be problematic.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And if your car is not handling perfectly, you know, hopefully the idea would be that it will punish your tire worse than the other guy, and that will show up after lap 50 or 80, and you'll see some guys sinking through the field, some other people.

[Travis Mack]

I want to see him, you know, like that 40ish. I want to see a guy that hurt his tires early. I want to see him be like, oh, he's starting to fall off a little bit here now.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, so. But, I mean, the point that Gabe Hart makes is that all the cars are so identical, and so it's hard to. It's hard to back off of that. It's hard to change that. I would be curious as to what ideas you might have on what they could do to kind of open it up for some creativity or allow the teams to have a little more. Allow the teams to make a little bit more of a difference, to sort of set the field apart, change it up. I think we got Danny calling in our winner. Foreign. Thanks for calling in today. Denny. Congratulations on the win. I know that, you know, the broadcast was making a pretty big deal out of how long it had been, and it was. And the reason why I think they said that was. And I felt it, too. It's like, man, you're so good there. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. It feels like that you're consistently running in the top two or three at every race we go there, and we just kind of forgotten that it'd been that long that you had since you had won. And I know that you're partial to Richmond as well, but Martinsville sits pretty high on your list of tracks that you love to race at. So just kind of walk us through your day how. How the car looked flawless. You had control of the race, which. That's something I kind of don't understand. Chase was saying that he needed to get control of the race, and you said, you know, if I get the lead, I can set my pace and I don't have to. Chase talk about that.

[Denny Hamlin]

Yeah, I mean, you know, we knew. I had a pretty good feeling, really, honestly, after Saturday that, you know, while wasn't the fastest, wasn't, you know, the fastest in the long run, like, it still had the characteristics of the car that I needed to. That I've had there in the past. And really, as the race progressed, the car just kept handling better and better, truthfully. And then obviously, when you get out front and like, Chase was talking about controlling the race, that just comes down to you're able to set the pace. And, you know, the biggest, you know, hindrance that a leader has at that racetrack is lap traffic. And you don't really get it until about 40 laps into every run. That's really when you catch the back of the pack. And so when you're the leader, you can just kind of run the pace that you need to. To make sure that when you get to the back of the pack, you got a little bit left in reserve to get around those guys. And so certainly when you have to chase, it just. It just, you know, on a tire that wears. Wears out, or not really wears out, but at least gets hot enough to, you know, have a loss of lap time, it just. It's really tough to get around guys.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How much softer can Goodyear go with the tire at Martinsville?

[Denny Hamlin]

Well, it's. I don't know how much. It's about how much softer they. How much can they do? I think they got a process issue now where, you know, they're gonna have to do some retooling or something with their. I think they're at the limit of how soft they can truthfully build a tire right now with the equipment that they have. They're gonna have to invest more money in their equipment to get a softer tire, but it needs to be softer, because right now, what I noticed. And. And TJ probably can speak to this as well, is that by the time the lap times really start dropping and you start to see a disparity in the speed between the cars, that's when the caution comes out. That's when a stage is over. So it's just, we gotta shorten that window up a little bit, because right now it seemed like it was about lap 70, 80, that cars really started taking a dump, and it needs to move back to about, like, 30, 40. And that's what it was in practice. But the minute those cars get going around there and they start filling up the pores of that racetrack with tire rubber, it just goes away. And that's such a tough job for a Goodyear to have to do, to have to build a tire that they know when they go to a tire test is gonna wear out in 20 laps. But just have faith it's gonna go 80 when we go in a real condition.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Anytime you make a crew chief change in the off season, there's some excitement, also some uncertainty. You'd been working with Chris for so long. Y'all had such a great. And seem to be right on the cusp of realizing, you know, your opportunity to win a championship. When you make a change like that in the off season, were you concerned? Were you. Where was your emotions about. Around that? And how has that changed as now the season's underway and you're driving the cars and the communications going. How are the. How's that going?

[Denny Hamlin]

Yeah, I mean, there was a period there where I certainly was not happy with Joe Gibbs Racing or decisions that they. They decided to make in the off season, kind of without talking to me at all about it. But, you know, they. I got to trust that they got the bigger picture in mind. I understand it from, you know, the car owner side that. That I'm a part of that. Sometimes you got to make those changes and. And you have a bigger picture of things. But, yeah, I mean, I was worried. I certainly was worried. I, you know, I certainly felt like, you know, okay, I don't want to start over. I'm too late in my career to start all over with someone again. And I just wasn't really excited about that. And. But, you know, I thought about it. I slept on it for about a week or so and was like, you know, I'm gonna make the best of it. I'm gonna do the best job that I can. I'm gonna be a professional here, and I'm going to make sure that I'm doing my job as a driver to give Chris Gayle a fair opportunity to prove himself in the Cup Series. And when you look back at it, you know, I'm happy with the change. I feel like, you know, my relationship with Gabe Hart was strained for a while, and, you know, it's starting to get back on the right track, and I'm starting to build that relationship now with Chris Gale. And certainly my faith in him after just a few weeks really was unwavered and found that this was going to be a pretty seamless transition for him into the 11 team.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right, well, I appreciate you giving us some time today. I wanted to let you know that I have volunteered you and me to work the NASCAR booth at the next Martinsville race. Me and you will just manage the penalty process? Yes, we will hand out the penalties as we see fit.

[Denny Hamlin]

I won't even need glasses like yours.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

To see what I said. I said that I'll let you penalize my drivers if you see fit. I will not get involved.

[Denny Hamlin]

This isn't rocket science. I mean, you can see with your own two eyes. We don't need replays. We don't need anything. We know what we see. And I said yesterday, on actions detrimental, I said, this isn't a balls and strikes call. This is a shot to the head by the pitcher. Like, some are more obvious than others. And Certainly there were about three last. Last Saturday. That. That was easy calls.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Ten, four, man. Well, hey, have fun today. Hit it down the middle. What's. What's the. Hit the pin. Get a hole in one. All those good things.

[Denny Hamlin]

Yeah, all those stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right.

[Travis Mack]

Travis thanks you for his hat. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Travis is very happy today.

[TJ Majors]

They're giving me because I'm wearing the 11 against the world hat.

[Denny Hamlin]

Nah, way to go, Trav.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He's always got you back. We'll see you, Danny.

[Travis Mack]

Thank you. See you, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right. So that was great talking to Denny and interesting to hear his. What he thinks about the tire being able to make it softer. There's some. It's not like just, okay, let's change.

[Travis Mack]

I was.

[Alex Simms]

I was.

[Travis Mack]

I was interested in. That was interesting, what he was saying right there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And he knows some. He's done some homework. Right. He's done. Had some conversations with Goodyear and knows some things that.

[Travis Mack]

He's right about the test, though, because I've. I've been at a couple tests, and, man, we run 20 laps and you come in and be like, oh, these are going to wear out quick. And then you go back for the race and it's like, no issues. Magic.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, I mean, that's been the way it has. That's. That's been the case since as far as I can remember. You go to these racetracks, especially the ones that might have any kind of abrasive surface, they're going to wear the tires a lot. When you're out there testing with no rubber on the track, you're literally the one putting the rubber down. So. Same reason why, when we would go to racetracks, you wouldn't be the first one to the top. You didn't want to go up there to the top and be the first one up there because you was going to put a ton of rubber down. And where that set of tires. We go to Atlanta 2004, right. And drop the green flag. And I would tell them, I want to go to the top as soon as I can, but let me know who's up there first. I'm gonna go up. I'm gonna let somebody else go up there, run 20, 30 laps, start to put some rubber down, and then I'll go up there.

[TJ Majors]

What do you think about the crew chief change, though, that Denny had to deal with?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I was surprised that he was dishonest about it.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know how.

[Travis Mack]

How he didn't seem excited? I mean, even from when they talked.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

To him, I know we could sense in the off season when they made the change that he wasn't quite as.

[Travis Mack]

I wasn't happy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He wasn't on up to Speed, but.

[TJ Majors]

I think on his podcast. And then today he, I think, is even more than what we thought.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to.

[TJ Majors]

Well, he even said that his relationship with Gay part was strained.

[Travis Mack]

He just said that, like, and he said, I thought he was gonna be like, oh, I slept on it for a night. It's like, I slept on it for a week. Which probably meant it was two or three.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I mean, sometimes those changes happen and you don't get to choose. And it sucks because, like, you could tell that he really. He really loved Gabe Hart on, you know, as. As the leader of that team. He really.

[Travis Mack]

That he was good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He felt like that that was the best position or probably the best situation that he'd ever been in. And he was. He was comfortable and happy around that. But. And so when that changes and that happens, you know, whether, you know, in. Chris gets this incredible opportunity to. To move into a role that he's probably. Probably looking forward to. And, yeah, you can't turn that down. Even though you like what you're doing with your driver and you love running this team, this other opportunity is like a. It's like kind of the next step for me. Right. So.

[Travis Mack]

But did that start with Chris because he said the relationship was strained? Did it start with Chris and him maybe Chris wanting to do something else and being like, hey, I'm going to go off somewhere, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But, dude, it was the same when, like, me and Latart were building that team of ours, and I felt like that we were really starting to reach our potential. And he's like, hey, I'm gonna go to tv. I can't not do it. I got. I mean, it's gonna let me be home with my kids half a year.

[Travis Mack]

None of us liked it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was like, no, surely, you know, you can. I can convince you that this is.

[Travis Mack]

More fun over here.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But I didn't get that choice, you know, and that sucked. And similar to Denny, like, he didn't really get to choose, but he's starting to understand that, you know, this is going to work and that where he's at is going to be a good deal. And Gabe Hart's still very much influencing the performance of his car and the entire organization. So, I mean, look at how they're look at Joe gives racing this year. Holy smokes. To say that the changes they made have panned out would be an understatement. Underselling it a little bit. They are fantastic right now.

[TJ Majors]

How long does it take to build that chemistry with a new crew chief?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Me and Latart were good from the start. He came to my house and he said, both of us are in. Both of us are in a, you know, must get the job done situation. This is probably both. We were both looking at it like it was both our last chance, and so we had to get to work. The process of building that team into a contender took a long time. A long, long time. But where we were in the year, the final year, I guess 2014, I think we were at our. We were where Denny probably felt like he was with Chris. Right. Gabe Hart. And I wanted to work with Greg Ives. I. Kevin Mander in my lead engineer. At the time, I'd actually considered whether Kevin was the guy. He would go on to cre chief Jimmy. And now Kevin still works over with GM and Hendrick. But I thought, Kevin. I'm always going to be curious as to what might have happened had I had me and Kevin Meander and just kind of continued what we'd built with Steve. So in that situation, Steve would have left and Kevin would have just failed the role, but we would have been fine because we had been working together already for years. But I wanted to work with Greg. Greg had done some great things with Jimmy. As Jimmy's lead engineer, he'd worked here at Junior Motorsports. We developed a friendship and trust and. And that was comfortable right out of the gate because I knew him so well.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, it was.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And that we. We got. We hit the ground running and winning races.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

In 2015, it was definitely.

[Travis Mack]

Stevie was the most easy transition to me because he came in. I don't know, like, Stevie called me and he's like, hey, you got a little bit. Ended up being an hour. He's like, I need to know everything you know. I want to know everything you know about him. And he, like, picked my brain about you, which he did his homework with it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I will say, Travis, it. The question that might be good to ask is what makes it. What makes it happen faster? As opposed. You know, so instead of how long does it take it? What makes that happen quicker? And it's just exactly what TJ said. When a crew chief comes in the room and he goes, all right, you're my driver and you're my spotter. You're My car chief and gets right to work and just starts pinging everybody for information and questions and starts. And you're like, this guy's ready to get going. You get fired up. You as a driver, you get fired up. You're like, oh, hell, yeah, this guy's fired up. It's. You know, it's. It's the end of November, 1st of December, and we're talking about next year. I'm. I like this. And he's like, he's getting all the ducks in a row and getting every. You know, he's ready to work. He ain't going on your Christmas vacation and going to go down to the Bahamas and be with his family, and I'll see you in three or four weeks and we'll start. He's ready to go. And, you know, that's kind of the way Steve was. He was like, he pushed you to. Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Like he pushed you. He's like, look, you're going to be here one hour before we're on the track. I want you in here.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And it was awesome.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. I was like, oh, you get animated on the radio a couple times. And Stevie. I mean, there's a couple times. You're like this thing. He's like, hey, that's. I'm like, oh, you get in trouble.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That. That makes it quicker.

[Travis Mack]

It does.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Because that's. You know, the driver's like, oh, man, this guy's serious. He means business. That. That turns your mind into the same mod, you know, the same mindset. It's really cool.

[TJ Majors]

So I always found it's similar to a quarterback in a coach relationship, but, like, the driver's a star, but then the coach. So it's like the driver build that relationship.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, the driver's looking at the guy. I'm look the guy. Like, I'm like the driver. Like, we all do in this room, man. The driver is looking at the crew chief, and he's going, is this guy got his confidence? What's. You know, is he confident? Has he got this under control? Because he's got a lot of fricking stuff to manage. The crew chief and the driver's like, check the drivers, like, analyzing you right out of the gate for sure. So you got to come in as a crew chief. Like, I got. This is my team. I know where everything is. I know whatever. I know everything we need to be doing right this minute. Even if you don't, like, you got to. You got to fake it. And so. Because the driver. The driver will completely lose confidence in the whole thing. If he doesn't believe the crew chief and vice versa, man.

[Travis Mack]

Crew guys too.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And so if the. If the crew, you know, and same thing. Same for the drive, the driver and the crew chiefs of marriage. I know it's silly, but it's.

[TJ Majors]

You're with each other a lot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It is a marriage, but it's a marriage in the sense of you got to believe in them and they got to believe in you. If one doesn't believe in the other, it immediately is apparent and it freaking falls apart. And it's terrible.

[Travis Mack]

Slowly falls apart.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

God is terrible. When you walk into the holler and you know that the people in there don't think you're good enough to do it and they don't believe in you. They're the people that are working on your car and you don't feel like that. They believe you're the guy to do the job today. Oh, man, you're. It's failure. It's no. There's no. There's no running good then. None at all.

[Travis Mack]

It's going to be just a slow decline long year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you're gonna be hoping that maybe somebody makes a change in off season, but it ain't you. I brought a little gift today. I forgot about this thing, so I got this little. Let me get this out. So snowball derby. I'm gonna say 76. My grandfather, Robert G, number 17, orange and white. This is the headlight out of that car.

[Travis Mack]

Nice.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Darrell Waltrip drove it during the race and some time or another looks like he ran into back the back bumper of another car. This is the back bumper bar of another Camaro. He was.

[Travis Mack]

He's going to the back.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But apparently this fell off a gentleman. A friend of mine was nice enough to. To ask me if I wanted it and he's like, I was there that day helping the team and. And they. This was kind of dangling on the car when we were loading it up and I asked him if I could have it and they said yes. So this is around 70, maybe 74, 75, 76. At the latest Snowball Derby, Robert G's Camaro number 17, Darrell Waltrip driving the car. And. Yeah, so I brought it here and there you go. Tj. You drove the Camaro painted like that? We had it.

[Travis Mack]

We had a plate like that on that.

[TJ Majors]

You got any plans for what you're gonna do with that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's going to stay here.

[Travis Mack]

That's awesome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Love it.

[Travis Mack]

So you tell me that rivets over 50 years old or roughly.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Travis Mack]

That's crazy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Pretty cool.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, it is awesome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Drop that. I was gonna sit that on the shelf and. Oh, get that painting. Brought this too, man. I thought we could stick this in here because I didn't know where the hell to put it after. So there was a. We had the hall of fame events, and after the hall of Fame, if you haven't ever heard of the Thirsty Beaver, it's a bar in Charlotte. It's kind of popular. After the hall of fame stuff, I went to the Thirsty Beaver and I met Jeff Gordon, Ray Everingham, and Steve Phelps, and we had a couple of brusque and. Yeah. So Ray Evernham. I took this picture and I put. I'm trying to put it over here. I took this picture and I put that filter on it. And then Ray copied the picture off of his phone in the text message and then made it into a canvas painting. It looks like a painting, doesn't it? Look at that. How about that, huh?

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. I wonder what Jeff's saying.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We are having a good looks, good time, I'm gonna tell you that. So I thought I could hang that in here too, because I. I mean, Amy ain't gonna let me put that in the house, and I don't want to put it in storage. It's kind of neat.

[Travis Mack]

That's pretty cool. Yeah, It's a good memory.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It is a great memory. We had a fun night. Noah Gragson's here today. Noah has a special surprise. His throwback for Darlington is a throwback to the mom and pops late model stock days. And honestly, the. The. The. The scheme really resembles Kelly. She's gonna love that. But you got.

[Noah Gragson]

We got one for Kelly too.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Noah Gragson]

One for each of you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Good. I'm thankful be foroo is the sponsor on the car that. That weekend. How do you like Darlington?

[Noah Gragson]

I love Darlington.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Seems like your place.

[Noah Gragson]

It's a cool place. Cool place.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How have you been?

[Noah Gragson]

It's been good. Been going good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just got a new deal this year.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah. Yeah. So it's. Our results aren't there, but I feel like we've had speed at good times. We got a strong team. It just doesn't show up on the result. Result sheet yet.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So we'll get there. You will. You came out, you know, last year. You started the season off, had an awesome little string of. Of top tens and stuff like that, kind of showcasing the real potential. And then, you know, the wheels fell off of the whole thing. But I was pretty excited about your opportunity to get into this deal with front row and your teammates and yourself as well have kind of shown some great speed. That team's always kind of like the little engine that could always kind of over outperforming expectations, I think, from what our perception of the team would be. But to kind of get out of the situation you were in last year and into this situation, what's. What's the difference?

[Noah Gragson]

I don't know if there's a ton different. Obviously it's a different organization, but my core group of guys are really close to the same. So we brought over my engineer crew chief. So I have a lot of familiar faces within the team. We do have some new guys on our team, but it's one of those things where the transition has been really seamless going. It's almost like just moving houses. But you keep your family with you. You know, you have all your same stuff. So it's been relatively easy. I mean, there's new people that I'm working with, and it's. It's been good with Zane and Todd. They're my good buddies off the racetrack, too, so it's a good group of young drivers.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah. We work together. We push each other hard, and we're. It's not a forced relationship. Sometimes you have teammates where. Yeah, you might not. It's kind of like co workers. You might like some people more than others.

[Alex Simms]

Right.

[Noah Gragson]

And with. With Zane and Todd, we're good buddies off the track, and our girlfriends or their wives, they hang out and it's. You got girls pretty easy. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really? Yeah. How long has that been going on?

[Noah Gragson]

She told me last night that we met a year ago yesterday, so.

[Travis Mack]

Oh, damn. You didn't celebrate.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Been keeping that. You've been keeping that under the wraps.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah. I'm not a big, like, put my relationship out there kind of guy. Just. I don't know. Just a little more privacy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Noah Gragson]

There's some weird people out there. That stalker.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And don't let that backfire on you because Amy might get really pissed off that I said this, but, oh, boy. I was the same way as you. Like, when I. When me and her started dating, I was like, you know, she was like, yeah, I don't want to go out to intros. And I'm like, yeah, okay. I kind of prefer that and the story. So that was the way I was just like, yeah, man, all I care about is me and you. And you don't have to do this or do that or be here or put yourself there or you don't have to be with me all the time. It's not a thing. I don't care what the outside optics are. I just glad you're here and we're going to try this relationship out. Right. And. But today she'll say that I am the reason I kept her like hidden.

[Noah Gragson]

Really?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes. That's the story now like 20 years later, right? Is that. Or 15 years later like, yeah, you kept me, you kept me in the bus. Wouldn't let anybody see me. I'm like, no, I didn't like wasn't ashamed or I wouldn't try.

[Noah Gragson]

I'll have to ask her.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I wasn't trying to like hide the fact that I was in a relationship. Right.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Be careful.

[Noah Gragson]

I'm not trying to hide I'm in a relationship. I just don't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, be careful.

[Noah Gragson]

I can't believe Backfire on me. I know.

[Travis Mack]

He used to tell me Amy's like, man, I don't want to go out there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Shut up.

[Noah Gragson]

Stay in the bus.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know. I like. Well, I like that she didn't want to go out to go to intros because it's sometimes kind of chaotic and I was worried because she wasn't. She didn't grow up around it and I didn't know if she would be comfortable or nowhere to go. And I'm like, I'd be worried about that. Right. Instead of thinking about my race or my car. And man, when I left the bus to go to intros, I wanted to be like race car.

[Noah Gragson]

That's how I throughout the weekend. Like she kind of got mad at me and she'll probably listen to this, but I'm like, hey, maybe pick like one or two a month because I'm here to like work not. And I don't want to really have to worry about like you said her and hey, you want to come out to the merchandise hauler with us or whatnot?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like cuz there's really no.

[Noah Gragson]

If I was making burgers at Beefaroo, would she'd be sitting there in the lobby watching me make a burger. Make a burger. Probably not.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right? And you don't that I probably sound.

[Noah Gragson]

Like a dick saying that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But like I know what you mean.

[Noah Gragson]

My work is important.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know what you mean. Yeah. So like when you're. If you pray, if you take somebody, if you bring a girlfriend to the race, you're that did she ever. Does she around racing ever. So right. So that's, that's even more the reason because you're like, hey man, you know, it's not as fun or it's not. There's not a lot for you to do. I'm worried that you're going to be like, well, let's just sit in this bus, you know?

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah. Twirl my thoughts. I don't even have a bus. So she just sits in the holler.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

She's going to be like.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Noah Gragson]

So you're worried it can't be very fun.

[Travis Mack]

No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So your worry is that she's going to be not having fun, and then now you're worried about that all day instead of thinking about the things you need to be doing and work.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Exactly. That's it in a nutshell. And so you're actually thinking about her. Very kind. Yes.

[Noah Gragson]

Very much.

[Travis Mack]

Love you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, y'all are doing that.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Who said it first?

[Noah Gragson]

I don't remember.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, you do. You don't want to admit it was you.

[Noah Gragson]

It'd probably be me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Be me. Were you, like, nervous that she's gonna say it back?

[Noah Gragson]

No.

[Travis Mack]

So about this card.

[Noah Gragson]

I think I tried to wait until. Yeah. We're getting off on a tangent.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Are we?

[Guest/Listener]

I'll figure it out.

[Noah Gragson]

I'll let you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Keep going down this road.

[Travis Mack]

We're making. No. Uncomfortable right now.

[Noah Gragson]

No, very uncomfortable. I don't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's hard to do.

[Noah Gragson]

I don't get. I'm trying to think. I. Yeah, I think I tried to hold out until she said it first.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Noah Gragson]

Game on.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Don't we all? Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

You're gonna get in so much trouble.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Me? Oh, no. At this point, I'm. Yeah. He's locked in. Locked in. So the race coming up this weekend, say it's going to be kind of warm.

[Noah Gragson]

It's 85. That's what. We just had a competition meeting, so going over Martinsville stuff and then talking about Darlington, asking about track temp. They said it's going to be, like 15 degrees hotter than it was last year.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Noah Gragson]

This one.

[Travis Mack]

So perfect.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Good stuff. Good stuff.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You already got all. You make all your cool suit. Make sure your cool suit and everything.

[Noah Gragson]

Yeah, I was joking. I said I was going to double wrap and wear two cool shirts. So I only have one cool shirt. So. Can I borrow one of yours, TJ Drew asked me what if one of.

[Travis Mack]

One of mine goes out, because I got two as well.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

TJ has a cool suit on. On the spotter stand.

[Noah Gragson]

Are you actually wearing it this weekend?

[Travis Mack]

What's the. What's the Sunday temp?

[Noah Gragson]

85.

[Travis Mack]

It's 90 and above for me most time.

[Noah Gragson]

Okay. Yeah, that's the worst is when you get done with the race and the girls or the PR people will be like, God, that was a hot race today.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know.

[Noah Gragson]

It's like, shut up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So, man, I appreciate you coming through. Thanks for honoring myself, Kelly, Carrie, with your throwback, awesome looking car. Thanks for the Diecast. I'm now, which I've a lot of people might not know, but I'm a bit of a collector these days on Diecast.

[Noah Gragson]

That one's cool.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. The sundrop one. Yep.

[Noah Gragson]

Bandana car. Yeah, I thought it was cool. I. That was your first. The mom and pop car was your first Xfinity or Bush series.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Noah Gragson]

So we're the number four. I spent four years racing Xfinity here, so. Yep, there's like a lot of little ties. Very much on. You guys were a big part of my career, both you and Kelly. Lw.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's good times over here, I will say so. When they said that you were doing this, I was. That's what was the coolest part for me was that you. You know, I know you and I know that you're. I know that you're appreciative and thankful of what we did together and. And we are too, man. You were so much fun. You worked so hard. It was awesome to see you get better on the track and off the track and just change and evolve. And you gave us everything you could every single race. And I'm so thankful that it matter, that it matters to you as much as it does, because doing stuff like that is pretty cool and lets me know that. I know you do, but it just is another sign of the appreciation for what we, you know, what. What you learned here, what you did here, what you experienced here. And that feels good for all of us.

[Noah Gragson]

I still stop by here probably once a month. Yeah, Once every two months. Go see the engineers and hear all the craziness that's going on here. There's a lot of new faces here, though.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The one. The one thing I'll say about you, man, is that there's. You're no bull like you. What you see, what people see about you. And you're. You're fun and kind of goofy and you like to keep things light, and that's really who you are. And the. The moments where the fans kind of get to see your, you know, how you might care about something or you do something trying to do a good deed or you try to help somebody or you choose to do the right thing. Mostly I'm talking mostly being outside the Race car. That's really who you are, you know, and I really appreciate that about you, you know, and you've really really, you know, done a great job on, you know, on yourself. And you know, we all try to get better and better every day and you've done a really, really good job doing because you've done that on your own, right?

[Noah Gragson]

I've had a lot of people, I know you've been in my, I've called you late some nights and, but I.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Mean, there's, there's, there's. When the real decisions have to be made, you're having to do some of those by yourself, you know, when you're having to look in the mirror and you know, man, you know, I got to make a better choice than that or I need to work on this or that and the other. You had a lot of people around you giving you advice, but you had to do the work and, you know, and that we talking about it with, with Sammy to an extent with this thing at Martinsville. It's like, man, I can tell him all the things, but he has to go forward and he has to be the one that puts the effort in right, to try to right the right, the wrong there. And a lot of drivers, you know, some drivers struggle to kind of get that figured out, man. But I'm so proud of you. I love watching you on the weekends. I love watching you just be an asset to the sport. A great, a great personality. We, you know, we, we have some really cool guys coming in your, your generation coming in with, with some fun, you know, ways to create content and all kinds of different things. You're, you're eager to do it. You guys do some really great work with, with the stuff you're doing with your teammates on social media and so forth. I love it. Keep it up, keep being you. The results will come. We know you got the talent behind the wheel and yeah, thanks for coming by today. I appreciate it.

[Noah Gragson]

Thank you. I appreciate it, guys.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know that feeling you get when you're watching drivers fight it out on the racetrack, giving it everything they've got for the checkered flag? Well, you can capture that feeling forever with cars from Lionel Racing, the official diecast of nascar. The ultimate way to celebrate the biggest moments in racing. These die casts aren't toys. They're authentic, high quality replicas of your favorite rides from the sport's biggest stars, including myself and the guys on my race team. Whether you're a longtime collector or a fan who's new to the sport, Lionel Racing diecasts bring the heart of racing to your shelf or man cave. With incredible detail. They're built with precision, with all the exact decals, logos, and paint schemes you've seen on the actual cars. And trust me, these cars make you feel like you're right there in the middle of it. So head to lionel racing.com, your favorite racing team shop, or any authorized retailer, and start building your collection today. And don't forget, you can find a wide selection of die casts at the Lionel stores and Concord Mills near Charlotte Motor Speedway and Opry Mills in Nashville. All right, everybody, we're live here on the dirty mo media YouTube handle. Thanks for tuning in. It's S. Junior here for our Dirty Air show on Tuesday. TJ is here with me. Andrew's in there. As everybody knows, Xfinity has been a big supporter of not only the the sport, but here at Dirty Mo Media as well. And NASCAR fans need to check out Xfinity Mobile. You can get speeds up to. You can get speeds you need on or off the track with Xfinity Mobile. Xfinity customers have access to wi fi speeds of up to a gig in millions of locations nationwide. With the nationwide coverage that Xfinity Mobile provides, you're always going to be able to come through in a clutch. The nascar. Take NASCAR on the go with Xfinity Mobile. Xfinity is a proud premier partner of NASCAR as well, so very thankful for them. So, yeah, let's get to it.

[Guest/Listener]

Yes. This first. I guess it's. It's more of a comment. It's from the YouTube chat and it's for TJ. Iceberg said that you wrecked them on iracing the other night, so what the hell?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I saw somebody already say TJ was a jerk on Iris.

[Travis Mack]

I probably did. I'm sorry.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You probably did.

[Travis Mack]

I probably did.

[Guest/Listener]

Is that your mistakes, your rep just mowed through?

[Travis Mack]

It's not. No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There's TJ's reputation on iRacing is be careful. It's a bit touchy. Wow.

[Travis Mack]

That's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

People. People. He rubs some people.

[TJ Majors]

Listen, you can't race finity driver.

[Travis Mack]

You can't race with him because if you go to a plate race, 30 of them line up with him and then you're by yourself in a lane and you know. But yeah, I'm sorry.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Know that I'm going to the front. So they just hit your ride.

[Travis Mack]

It's pretty easy. Go to the front when they're all following you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They're like, this guy knows what he's doing.

[TJ Majors]

Tj, just give an answer that all the.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know what the giveaway is, but maybe the last name. I don't know.

[Travis Mack]

I had to do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Are you going to follow an Earnhardt or a Majors to the front at Talladega?

[Travis Mack]

Well, this one I'm probably. We're going to wreck if we get near each other anyway, so it's better off.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I mean, that is the way we do it now. So me and TJ's raced online forever.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, we used to race side by side for laps. Not even touch each other.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We used to race out of each other. Now as soon as we get in a race together within the first 15 minutes of the race, we've wrecked each other.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's just a given.

[Travis Mack]

It is.

[TJ Majors]

Why?

[Travis Mack]

I don't know. I mean, we just is.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We just do it because it's bound to happen.

[Travis Mack]

It's. As soon as one person even gets the little thing, 0x it's on. Like it. It's. That's that the gloves are on. They're off.

[Guest/Listener]

At that point, you guys are inseparable.

[Travis Mack]

It's fun though. We have a good time with it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There's a. There's a. There's the TJ sitting here at this table and then there's the online tj.

[Guest/Listener]

This next question has come from Jacob. This was from last week on Twitter. And he says they're rebuilding their house after Helene. And he wants to know what are the three must have items to put in the new man cave he's building.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I must haves for the man cave beer cooler.

[Travis Mack]

I was gonna say some sort.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, the old. I love the slide top beer cooler or the refrigerators that are the old vintage round rounds with the latch.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, the latch on the front.

[TJ Majors]

What about like a kegerator to have draft beer?

[Travis Mack]

No, it's too much work.

[TJ Majors]

What do you mean it's too much work?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Too much work?

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Great. The first time.

[TJ Majors]

No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But then after that you're like. Yeah. You can't just.

[Travis Mack]

Listen, Travis, this is experience.

[TJ Majors]

My dad had a. Has a kegerator in our basement.

[Travis Mack]

Did you work on it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did you ask how much work it was?

[TJ Majors]

It's easy. You flush the system every so often to keep the.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's what you saw. You didn't see all the other work that goes into it.

[TJ Majors]

I know I would help him.

[Travis Mack]

How old were you?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There's no chance.

[TJ Majors]

Well, for the story 21.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I want to walk over to the cooler, open the door, grab what you want and drink it. So let's put it all together, right? Kegerator, fridge, slide top, cooler, whatever. That's a. That's the first thing that has to go in there. It's not a man cave without a beverage dispenser to me.

[Travis Mack]

Sound. Gotta have some sort of good sounds.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Badass stereo. Absolutely.

[Guest/Listener]

What about like a jukebox? Good old fashioned jukebox.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, I mean, that's okay, but you.

[Travis Mack]

Just play stuff from your phone anyway.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. People are just gonna. So I would do. And what I would do is I would get a stereo. I would get the speaker system. I wouldn't get a head unit or any kind of a stereo. I would just get the marine Bluetooth. So, like the marine style Bluetooth, basically, you mount that hidden away in the back somewhere and it in it, and people can Bluetooth directly to it, play everything on their phone, all the apps there. So you don't have like a rack of components or any crap like that.

[Travis Mack]

Is that okay, Travis?

[TJ Majors]

Well, I'm. I'm loving the.

[Travis Mack]

So making sure.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Very stripped down.

[Guest/Listener]

Well, hopefully that was only.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That was only. That was two of the things, man.

[Guest/Listener]

Oh, I thought. I thought the. Anything you could put a beer in was like 1, 2, and 3.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No.

[Guest/Listener]

Oh, okay. Oh, good. All right, keep going.

[Travis Mack]

What's your third. I mean. I mean, if you could put a urinal in there, it'd be great. Yeah, maybe that's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Urinals are good.

[Guest/Listener]

Because, listen, I think that was good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So look, you know, if you're drinking beer, there's a lot of. You break the seal and then there's a lot of trips. So, yeah, urinal quick and easy that way. Because I'm gonna tell you, if this is a. If this is like a man cave kind of dive bar, I told it.

[Travis Mack]

Oh, gosh.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Gonna get his ass kicked. So the urinal saves you a ton of. You know, and then you get. You know, for the urinal, you can get the little soccer goal.

[Guest/Listener]

Oh, yes.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Guest/Listener]

Those are so much fun. It makes peeing so much better.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right. You said it, not me.

[Guest/Listener]

Sorry. I don't know why I'm so excited.

[Travis Mack]

Do they have, like, other sports or is just soccer? I mean, could this be a thing?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

When he goes into a bathroom and sees that. That's why we don't. That's why he didn't come out.

[Travis Mack]

Do you look? Do you. Yo, goal. If you.

[Guest/Listener]

Yeah, I do a little something.

[Travis Mack]

Put your shirt over your head.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Hey. I will say this. First time I ever saw one of those little soccer goals in the urinal was in Germany. I was in this town called oh gosh, Rotenburg. And I was gonna say very touristy. And the bathroom. So you go to the bars in this particular town at least. And the bathrooms were clean and decorated like you were at your grandma's house. Oh, wow. Yes. Like it was all the bathrooms. All the bathrooms and all the bars.

[Travis Mack]

What do you mean by your grandma's house?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I mean it had like nice wallpaper and a little flower in a vase. It was nice. Homey, Homie. Homey. And yeah, in the urinal they had a little soccer girl. I was like, dang, that's kind of. I'd never seen it before. This was probably 2014.

[Travis Mack]

Dang. So there probably is other sports you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Can get if you don't put in a urinal. I think then if, you know, along with the tele. Along with the sound system, you have to have a television. Smart tv. Be able to watch all your sports. Or four. Well, yeah, instead of getting the biggest screen, you get like 4, you know, 42 inch or 48 inch or something like that. Roku's. And you put them all together and.

[Travis Mack]

I've kind of wanted to do that. Have you done it yet? You haven't done it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We have that. That's what we have upstairs. Dirty Mo Media. And it is nice in the office Here we have a 4TV setup and it's Roku. Because I've. I've got an account. So you can just kind of just put anything you want on each tv.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Then we've got the sports ticker. Gambling ticker across the top.

[Travis Mack]

Can you make all the TVs one though? No, like I want to do that where you have. You separate them into four.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Or you could do one. I see the. I see the bezel. Like what? This is just a show off.

[TJ Majors]

Seamless.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I'm not even. This. People aren't doing that to like really, truly watch a movie or sit down and watch a TV show. That's just some bull show off. Look, I can. I can make thing. Yeah, I can make four TVs. Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Like if you are having a Super bowl party and you want to put the super bowl on there, you could make it one big screen for one event.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, it's kind of pompous. Pompous in my opinion.

[Travis Mack]

Well, you know, bezels on TVs now are like paper thin.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's very pompous. Move. Yeah.

[Guest/Listener]

Come on, tj.

[Travis Mack]

I.

[Guest/Listener]

The urinal was a good suggestion.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Sometimes I forget we're live. Let's Go.

[Guest/Listener]

This next question is coming from Lucas. How many alarms do you set?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

One.

[Travis Mack]

One?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. That's 6:45. Wow.

[Guest/Listener]

And you just, you, you get up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Guest/Listener]

That's risky.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Do you know that?

[Guest/Listener]

I could live like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You don't get a choice when you have kids.

[Travis Mack]

I didn't set an alarm.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They're getting up. Really?

[Travis Mack]

I don't even set an alarm. Yeah, it's like six. Little after six.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They're getting you up.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. Then you just, then you just start waking up early.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's weird. So I was talking about this the other day. I just picking a year go back to 1995. I slept till noon. I could sleep till noon, never wake up. I never woke up at 10, never woke up at 11. I could sleep all the way to noon. I slept until my ass woke up. I didn't. I got up and I went to wherever I wanted to go, whether it was work on my car or whatever. And my grandfather, Robert G, he had what they call banker's hours. They joked he would work whenever he wanted to work. If he wanted to work at 2 o'clock in the morning, he worked at 2 in the morning on his race cars. And you know, so I kind of always did that as well. But when I got married and Amy's like, man, you can't sleep till noon. My dad didn't like it either. He didn't love that I slept all morning. He would get up at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. He'd go to bed at 9 though, you know, you just went to bed. I went to bed whenever I felt I still like, stay up until I physically, like, I just can't. Like, I'm so tired. And I know it's probably not the healthiest thing in the world, but I just hate to go to sleep because I want to keep doing stuff around the house or whatever. Right. And so Amy will go to bed around, you know, 9:00 or 10:00. And I'll stay up till 1:30 every night. Dang. And then I set an alarm for 6:45. She gets out of bed around 6:15, starts getting the kids out of bed. And then I hop up and come downstairs, feed the dogs and, and do, do a few things, get the kids stuff in the car, get ready to take them to school. But to, to, like I said, an alarm. Because the one day that I don't, I will sleep. She'll come up in there in the bedroom at 7:15 and go, man, you got 15 minutes to go. Take, Take Isla to school. The one day I don't set the damn alarm, I'll sleep through it. But if, if I do set an alarm, I usually wake up before it goes off.

[Travis Mack]

I set two. I set two at the racetrack, but kids.

[Guest/Listener]

Racetrack.

[Travis Mack]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

When you have kids. He, he. I understand that too. When you're scared you're gonna be late for work.

[Guest/Listener]

That's me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right. I might. Yeah. So if I, if there is like a job or a thing, I might. Yeah, I might set two. Yeah. Just to be sure.

[Travis Mack]

There's always a backup. Because if you hit snooze or hit.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Stop on the phone or you, you're so tired when you said it, you forgot to put it on am and it's on P. That too. I've done that before. God dang. I've done it a couple times, but.

[Travis Mack]

At least two if you're responsible.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But the answer is, when you have kids, they change you from the person that can sleep past 10 in the morning any old day. They change you to the person that automatically will wake up at seven in the morning every single day. No matter if you went to bed at 5, you will wake up at 7.

[Travis Mack]

It takes a little while to transition to that, but once you get there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There'S no going back. You'll wake up and you'll be like, why did I wake up? And then all of a sudden, way off in the distance, you'll hear a little, little four year old giggling and you'll be, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Even when you're alone, you wake up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The kids are up.

[Travis Mack]

Even when you're alone, you still wake up. Yeah. Like it's, it's automatic when you leave.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The house and you're at work or traveling somewhere. Still seven in the morning.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, dang. Yeah, I like it. Because then I can text Amy. Amy's at home taking care of the kids and she's frustrated or she's slightly envious. Right. That I'm wherever I am. Right. And whether I'm on vacation or working and. But I'll wake up and as soon as I wake up, I text her. Morning.

[Travis Mack]

Even if I go back to sleep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Even if I go. Even if I go back to sleep for another hour.

[Travis Mack]

5:30, got to go to the bathroom.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're up here.

[TJ Majors]

Just do a scheduled text.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We're up here too.

[Guest/Listener]

Oh yeah, you can do those now.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, that's. That's the smartest thing he's ever said.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Because they'll be like, I bet his ass is Sleeping in.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I bet he's. I bet he's laying in bed sleeping. I'm up making bacon.

[Travis Mack]

You know, you can do it like 6:23, 6:31. Just do different times, like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Guest/Listener]

Make it seem random.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah. Good idea.

[TJ Majors]

You're welcome. Tj.

[Travis Mack]

Thank you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That could backfire. I'm sure I'm not doing that.

[Guest/Listener]

I have three alarms set for 6:13, 6:15, and 6:17.

[TJ Majors]

Just wake up just when the first goes up. Just get out of bed.

[Guest/Listener]

And I know I got two buffers. It's a good system. It works. This next question coming from JRM Designs. 7. Who has your 2017 homestead car, like your last couple of years car?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Me.

[Travis Mack]

You do.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Me? Yeah. Mine.

[Guest/Listener]

Mine, mine.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know why I said mine. Me. I have it. Beer can still in the back. Really? Yeah.

[Guest/Listener]

So is that a lot of the cases for those cars that they're mostly untouched?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, I don't know. I know that the 2014 Daytona 500 winners over at Hendricks, as it, you know, came off the racetrack and went into the Daytona museum. My Wrangler number three car that I won the Xfinity race with is still as it came off the racetrack. I have that. So. Yeah. I mean, cool. Yeah, I got a. I got. Yeah. Me, mine, mine. We're going to thank Xfinity Mobile. Appreciate everything they do for us here at Dirty Mo. Media customers get exclusive access to the most powerful WI fi network on the go with speeds up to a gig. For NASCAR fans, that means here comes the racing puns, fast downloads for turn by turn action. Smooth live streaming with fewer pit stops, a strong connection from the parking lot to the grandstands. So for more laps and less lag, stay connected with Xfinity Mobile. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets. All right, it's time for Nerdy Modeaux. Alex Simms has come into the studio, and we're going to talk about all of the great bets that we made this past week on Fanduel. Fanduel sponsoring our Dirty Mo Dough segment. And, man, I've had a little rough go. I'm not really losing any money, but I ain't making it either. I'm just kind of sitting there, just coasting up and down, up and down and every couple bucks.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, me too. I. I had a bad weekend this weekend.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did you?

[Alex Simms]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, no. Well, we all. All of our. I think all our predictions went in the tank.

[Alex Simms]

It was really kind of like a chalky race. I guess favorites were up there. No real long shots. AJ And SVG really didn't show up for us.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They didn't.

[Alex Simms]

But SVG was fast.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I wasn't going to make the bet.

[Alex Simms]

I made it. It was good odds on it. It was like 13 to 1.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was surprised AJ didn't do better. The Josh Berry top 10 probably would have netted out it if he had hadn't had trouble on the.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

On the batteries, but. So you didn't.

[Alex Simms]

No. I took some shots with Ty Gibbs and Jose Var and Gibbs probably would have had it if he didn't get spun there by Reddick, but he was looking decent. Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

I was happy with my pick right there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Alex Simms]

But honestly, like the sports books, they really. They left the odds pretty like you're gonna have to pay a price for the guys you want. And it really wasn't a great weekend I think for betting.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But I've been trying to bet put together like three or four, four leg parlays with the first inning on the Major League Baseball. Under one and a half runs and I. I hit two or three of those out of the gate but haven't. Haven't had any luck in the last couple days.

[Alex Simms]

It's a rare offensive start to the year for baseball. Those torpedo bats are taking a leak by storm.

[TJ Majors]

Did you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But only, Only the Yankees have those, right?

[Alex Simms]

No, they're all over.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh no.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah. The Yankees are just getting it. It's publicized.

[TJ Majors]

These bats have been in use since 23.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Oh, I don't know what you're talking about. Bats. They got good bats now apparently they.

[Alex Simms]

They took wood from the end of the bat and moved it to the barrel. So it's like you have more surface area. I believe I could be wrong about that.

[TJ Majors]

Like sweet spot has more but wood. But if you miss.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're probably striking out. Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, I gotcha.

[TJ Majors]

Did you take Tim's advice last night? Any of you guys?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No. The Dodgers bet No.

[Alex Simms]

Dodgers minus one and a half.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Alex Simms]

Never a doubt. Six one victory.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Wow.

[Alex Simms]

There was a trend that was. They were in this situation. They were 27 and three in the last.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like I did. There's the receipts. Well, I didn't. I wish I would have. I would have tailed that.

[TJ Majors]

The best part is the bet was that the game started like 10:00. 10:00. So go to bed. Game hasn't started. Wake up a winner.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, all right. We're going into Darlington and Yeah. I'd be curious to hear what you think about the best bets for that.

[Alex Simms]

I've already made one bet. Win bet. I like chase Briscoe. He's plus 1600 right now.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think.

[Travis Mack]

Not the fact that he won the last race there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

But really going on a limb, I'll be honest.

[Alex Simms]

I thought he would be like under + a thousand and his odds are + 1600. So I like that. It's good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You got the past winner and you got Joe Giz racing on a tear and.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, and he's. And him. He's gotten a couple really good finishes here. I think they're gonna catch that, that peak right here. William Byron, statistically is the best driver here in next gen and he's plus 950. That's not great. But it's the fifth highest. So he probably should be up there with Larson Redick in my opinion. And the other guy's Joey Logano. Plus 1900. I mean, he has not finished at all this year, but he's led a lot of laps. He's been there. It doesn't take much for that to finally go your way. So that's another.

[Travis Mack]

Well, but he's leading laps from swapping stages and stuff. Like, they're taking stage points instead of like, and hoping to get a solid finish out of the same approach they did last year. Yeah, they're doing the opposite of what a lot of people do and capitalizing on stages and stuff right now. But you're right. Eventually something's going to fall. But I don't know. This is a tough one to have that at.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, there's a couple long shots too. I like are Chastain, Buscher and Priest is plus 5,500 to win. I like him top 10 better. He's on a top 10 run right now. But yeah, it's a good long shot if you want something.

[Travis Mack]

I mean, Ross is definitely one. Ross, Will Ross is one that I would go with for sure. Ross and you know, Butcher, he finds his way there. He, Chris, he does a really good job of hanging out in these races and being there near the end.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

So I, for some reason I'm wanting to say, I don't know, man. Something tells me that like, Todd Gillen's gonna, is gonna jump up there in one of these. I, I, I don't know. I just. And I really feel like Ty Gibbs has been strong there and learned a lot last year racing there and how to race that place. And I think he could have a quietly solid day.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah. The top 10 odds aren't out as we're recording this, but Ty Gibbs was on my short list to See where he's at, his win odds tell me they're gonna get some good plus money on that one. And then Justin Haley, too, for some reason. I like Justin Haley. This weekend with Ronnie Childers, I don't know. They had that top 10 two weeks ago, but I mean, I think this obviously more of a driver's track.

[Travis Mack]

What's McDowell's odds to win? I have him top 10.

[Alex Simms]

Top 10's not out yet to win. He's plus 15,000 to win. You take. You take a little bit on that.

[Travis Mack]

I mean, my. If I'm throwing darts.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, that's a, That's a super long shot.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, he's.

[Alex Simms]

And he's in company with like Zane Smith, Daniel Suarez in that kind of range.

[Travis Mack]

I just feel like he's the Daniel.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Suarez one to me might be interesting for like a top 10. So Daniel was running. Daniel will be the kind of guy that, like, he did this, this past weekend. You're sitting there watching the race and you look at the top 10, you're like, damn, Daniel Suarez sitting there running sixth. And when you look at the Racing insights, I know that trackhouse has had their struggles, but when you look at the Racing insights information, Daniel's in the top 15 in all passing, defense speed, restarts, pit crew. His pit crew on the season average is third. His restarts are eighth. He's 13th and 15th in the defense speed and passing. So. And I. It's my opinion that Daniel, If Daniel, If I were to say, where will Daniel run? Well, it's at these worn out, gritty, grimy, rough racetracks like a darlington. And I don't know, I mean, might be a stretch to say he gets the top 10, but if the odds are really good, that would be something fun to do, maybe to throw in a couple legs on some top tens and have him one of those.

[Travis Mack]

Their homestead speed scares me a little bit here.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's a good point. That's a very similar sort of surface.

[Travis Mack]

And yeah, that scares me a little bit. But it is a hard track to pass. And if you give Daniel, like you said, a good pit crew comes out, gains a couple, he could easily run, you know, fifth to not eighth night somewhere in there and be quiet and be solid.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think about Darlington. I don't think about Daniel Suarez. Yeah, I just feel like he's over. He's overachieving a little bit. Yeah, quietly in some. Yes, quietly in some. And. And he might. I don't know if you can bet top 15s even, but.

[Alex Simms]

No, not quite. But you could. There might be some bets on finishing position, which he could be on there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

My kind of bet to make would be to parlay three top 10 some.

[Alex Simms]

Would you go, like, heavy with, like, Hamlin Larson?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I would put, like, a long shot. I would do the long shot.

[Alex Simms]

Long shots.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really? Yeah.

[Alex Simms]

That's a tough one.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ Majors]

I don't know if I would.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's not. It's not your bet.

[TJ Majors]

No, but, like, from a betting standpoint, though.

[Alex Simms]

Well, I mean, you're talking like, three long shots.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Three.

[Alex Simms]

Three long shot guys to finish top 10 is A. It's rare.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I get it. All right. Maybe I throw, you know, a C bell in there. Like somebody that, you know is probably going to be a top tenner.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, I would throw. Maybe. I kind of do it tiered, you know, very heavy favorite. Mid guy. Long shot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah. For top 10.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Or.

[Alex Simms]

I just put the long shot separately. Yeah, but how. I saw that the tire they're running is similar to the one at Vegas. How much stock do you put into that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The Vegas race, I would say now, not so much the Vegas race, but drivers do have tires they prefer. Drivers do have, like, the thickness of the sidewall, the stiffness, the way the tire feels.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, it gives them a great feel.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They attack. They will like, man, they'll. They'll perform better on a style of tire versus another one. Trent, there'll be trends that you can follow. If you really wanted to dive, dive deep. So, like, way back, you know, middle of my career, there was a year where we had. We had tires that had a little bit different sidewall construction, and I always liked those better because I understood where the car was and the grip of the car. So, I mean, I think there's probably still some of that going on.

[Alex Simms]

So if a guy really struggled at Vegas, you probably would maybe influence you to stay away.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Maybe. This is probably a good one for Chase Elliott, wouldn't you say? What's his numbers?

[Alex Simms]

Chase is up there. I don't have the exact number in front of me, but his win odds are he's plus 2100, actually. So that's actually a really good win. Yeah, that'd be pretty good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Alex Simms]

You know, my thing is he needs to, like, he led us some laps at Martinsville, but I want to see him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Great speed.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, they did, but I want to see him, like, dominate a race like he used to for me to win a race, because he just really has been leading a lot. Yeah, he's been second, third all the time. What's Bubba's Bubba is plus 1700. Don't love that value.

[Travis Mack]

No.

[Alex Simms]

I think he's a guy that if he doesn't qualify quite up there, you could probably get a better number there. Bush was plus 2600 to win. He's always in that category, though.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He's.

[Alex Simms]

He's one of those guys like Bowman. You can get value on him if you. You catch him on a good week.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Travis Mack]

I think Alex is.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I might do decent third top 10. I would. Or do a top 10 parlay with Busher, Suarez and Chase.

[Alex Simms]

Wow. Chase's. I'll be interested to see what Chase's top 10 number is here because his win odds tell me it's going to be a better number. We've seen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I won't. I can't bet, but I wish I could because that'd be a fun one to follow.

[Alex Simms]

Yeah, that would be. I actually like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right.

[Alex Simms]

That might be the best bet of the show.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, what do you got? Only if it hits this dirty mo. This dirty mode does segment was brought to you by FanDuel, the premier gaming destination in the United States. Thanks for coming by Tampa Tim's.

[Alex Simms]

Thank you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You bet you. All right, it's time for the white flag. The teardown was live on Twitter and YouTube Sunday after the race. Make sure you're checking all that out. Great. Instant raw feedback from Jeff and Jordan. And right after the race on Monday, Denny was back in the studio after his first win of the season. He had a cuss. He had a buddy with him.

[TJ Majors]

Yeah, Bozie. Don't ask me how to pronounce his last name. I didn't put it on there for you either because of that reason.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, he's a badass. Follow on Twitter.

[TJ Majors]

He's really good. Really good pit crew stuff. Some valuable information. I think Denny didn't even understand some of this, like, knows some of the stuff that he was telling.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I'm glad that Denny had a. A guest on. That was very. That was a good step forward for Denny. Podcasting. Podcasting.

[Travis Mack]

Look at him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Look at him go. Door Bumper Clear also dropped. On Monday, we had the incredible Mark Martin. Mark the Kid Martin. What a badass.

[TJ Majors]

He is the perfect guess for what happened on Saturday night.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So Mark. Mark came in and on Zoom and did a great job and so awesome episode of Doorbell for Clear this week. My interview with Casey Mears will come out Wednesday. Casey's coming through the studio and you will not want to miss that. We'll talk about his experience in the cup car this past weekend, but also certainly touch on his career path and learn everything we can about that. Also on Wednesday, Herman Schrader and Speed street come out as usual, two great shows and bless your heart on Thursday with Amy. The show's been a lot of fun and we're, we're having tons of fun doing those episodes each week with her. Don't forget to head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all of the new merch that we have. I'm wearing a hoodie right here from and TJ's got on a Dale Jr download shirt. Can't believe he's got my name on his shirt. Anyways, at shop.dirtymomedia.com you can check out all the new merch. We're always adding new stuff. Amy's designing a lot of new stuff for Bless yous Heart, so y'all go check all that out as well. We got hat, shirts, sweatshirts, all the good stuff. Even drinkware. Random as hell, but we've got it.

[Travis Mack]

Drinkware.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

A great show today. Had a lot of fun. Hopefully we didn't piss too many people off. Look, when we have weekends like we had at Martinsville, not everybody's gonna be happy. What's the rest of your week look like?

[Travis Mack]

Get ready for Darlington. Gotta get ready and get Carson. Carson's third trip there. Get Carson ready to go down there and come out of there with a solid finish and get back on track with Brad. We were looking okay on Sunday and then we were on pit road when the kasha came out or right. We had just pit and we were a corner away from getting a let back where which would have put us in a much better spot. So. But yeah, go down there and Darlington's one of my favorite tracks. I like going down there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

When are you leaving?

[Travis Mack]

Friday evening. We got a little practice on Saturday, practicing qualifying Saturday morning. So I'll go down Friday night and avoid speeding through Mac B and Pageland.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I'm going down there Saturday morning and sit on. Almost sit on Sammy's pit box this weekend. I sat on the Carson's last week. I think I'll see what see what's going on with that 8 car this weekend.

[Travis Mack]

Yeah, a little Saturday trip.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I'm gonna go down there, watch the Xfinity race and then come home.

[Travis Mack]

I mean you could always stay and watch a couple days.

[TJ Majors]

Was this not to extend this, but was this scheduled or was this Part of the reason is from everything that happened on Martinsville. You want to head down.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was already going. Okay.

[TJ Majors]

But I. I know people are gonna.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Think that with what happened at Martinsville that decided where I would sit. I want to show some support for my guy.

[Travis Mack]

That's good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know everybody's mad at him. I am, too. But he's still our driver here at Junior Motorsports. We got a season to finish and try to kick some ass.