Ryan Blaney Gets Candid About His Commitment to Roger Penske

Summary

---

The Dale Jr. Download

Episode Title: Ryan Blaney Gets Candid About His Commitment to Roger Penske
Date: May 6, 2026
Host: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Guest: Ryan Blaney

---

Episode Overview

This episode features NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Blaney, who joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a candid, wide-ranging conversation. The main focus is on Blaney’s just-announced contract extension with Team Penske, his loyalty to Roger Penske, and insights into the state of his career and personal life. The duo also discuss the current season’s ups and downs, pit road struggles at Penske, the points system, technical challenges of modern NASCAR, fatherhood, and their shared passion for life outside racing.

---

Contract Extension and Loyalty to Penske

Announcement Insight

• [02:24] Blaney confirms he’s signed a new contract extension with Team Penske, ending speculation about his free agency status.

  “Yeah. Signing a new one with Penske, you know, really excited to get it done for sure.”
  — Ryan Blaney [02:25]

• Free Agency Chatter:

  “We never put out years in our deals. … There was all this speculation going on, you know, Blaney to this car or that car, free agent. In the back of my mind… we already had this done.”
  — Ryan Blaney [02:47]

Longstanding Relationship with Penske

• Blaney reflects on arriving at Penske in 2012, grateful for the opportunity and their loyalty.

  “Roger’s been loyal to me and that’s—I want to be that way back to him.”
  — Ryan Blaney [03:34]

On Roger Penske

• Both Blaney and Dale Jr. praise Penske’s legendary presence, memorable speeches, and his focus on people.

  “He will remember everybody that he ever meets. … People is his biggest thing.”
  — Ryan Blaney [07:56]

---

The 2026 NASCAR Season: Performance, Pit Road, and the Points System

Team Performance & Pit Road Woes

• [09:05] Dale Jr. notes Penske’s year has been “a bit of a struggle,” mainly on pit road.

  • Blaney details a recent pit road mistake at Texas, illustrating how even experienced drivers make rare errors.

    “I stalled it three times before I realized I was in third gear. That’s how unaware I was of what I did.”
    — Ryan Blaney [11:04]

• Despite some poor finishes, Blaney remains optimistic.

  “I think we’re in a good spot, though. … It’s getting to that point of the year… you’re starting to see who is the best… I think we’re right there.”
  — Ryan Blaney [12:39]

Modern Points System & Playoffs

• [13:43] Both discuss the impact of NASCAR’s new points system and how bad days “hurt way worse” while good days are more rewarding.

  “I find myself looking at the points way more than I did before… makes the stakes going to the racetrack so much higher.”
  — Ryan Blaney [17:29]

• Dale Jr. notes the focus has shifted from the playoff cutline to the top-five or six in points.

  “The cut line doesn’t matter anymore… It’s more about the top six.”
  — Dale Earnhardt Jr. [22:05]

---

Team Penske: Organization Assessment

• [24:21] Blaney says Penske needs improvement, especially at mile-and-a-half tracks where RFK and Hendrick have the edge.

  • He describes NASCAR’s tight technical regulations, yet notes each manufacturer has unique strengths:

    “I look at Toyota… a little bit more downforce… Ford, a little bit less drag… Chevy’s kind of in between on the downforce and drag numbers.”
    — Ryan Blaney [25:16]

• Optimistic about incremental gains:

  “If we didn’t have our problems at Texas, I thought we could have ran sixth to eighth… I think we made a gain from Kansas to Texas.”
  — Ryan Blaney [27:05]

---

Race-Specific Topics and Technical Talk

Watkins Glen Changes and Weather

• Discussion about the move of Watkins Glen in the schedule, potential rain, and track modifications (tire packs, turf).

  “Their main thing, I believe, was they don’t like us running all off the racetrack. … big old tire packs.”
  — Ryan Blaney [27:30]

• Both share ideas on enforcing limits and keeping the track safe and challenging.

Pit Crew Changes

• Blaney confirms that while pit crew changes happen, he has only minor input:

  “I’m not the one with the gavel and, you know, making the calls… My main job is to get everybody together.”
  — Ryan Blaney [33:19]

Superspeedway Racing: Current Challenges

• Blaney and Dale Jr. analyze why the “slingshot” and dynamic movement are gone in superspeedways with these cars:

  “When you pull out of line… the car is so draggy you’ll drop to the back of the pack. Everybody knows it.”
  — Dale Earnhardt Jr. [34:56]

  “You gotta take drag out… There’s nowhere to go. … We’re just beating the rear bumpers off these things all the time.”
  — Ryan Blaney [35:44]

  • Both advocate for reducing drag, possibly by changing spoiler angles, and reference past eras for inspiration.
  • Notable discussion about the importance of technical testing and historical comparisons.

---

Life Off the Track: Family, Fatherhood, and Farming

Fatherhood Reflections

• Ryan shares heartfelt thoughts on being a new dad:

  “Charlie’s never been a great sleeper. He doesn't nap very good. … I think the toughest thing for me, like… is leaving. Is way harder to leave the house for the weekend.”
  — Ryan Blaney [45:52], [46:49]

• Talks about the joy of witnessing "firsts" and watching his child grow rapidly.

  “First belly laugh I got to witness. … We actually got it on camera!”
  — Ryan Blaney [48:47]

Relationship with His Dad

• Blaney describes how his father, former driver Dave Blaney, has transitioned from mentor to more of a spectator, enjoying his son’s growth both professionally and personally.

  “He likes watching me do the outside stuff more… just loves, like, seeing me live, you know, as an adult.”
  — Ryan Blaney [51:13]

Hobby Farming: Animals & Country Life

• Blaney shares tales of their menagerie—goats, chickens, a llama (with a side story about a problematic original llama named Cusco), the value of fresh eggs, and backyard animal hijinks.

  “They’re funny little animals… they just dig for worms all day. … I can’t eat store eggs anymore.”
  — Ryan Blaney [59:30], [60:16]

  “We had to get rid of [Cusco]. … He was a breeding llama… get pretty aggressive… Now we have another one from the same breeder, and he’s only six months.”
  — Ryan Blaney [57:19]

• Dale Jr. shares his own adventures with donkeys, mules, and building a new barn.

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Speculation & Loyalty:

“In the back of my mind for a second, like, we already had this done. … I really wanted to be like, start stirring the pot.”
— Ryan Blaney [02:47]

On Roger Penske’s Leadership:

“He will remember everybody that he ever meets. And he’s always put a huge emphasis on, you know, people. People is his biggest thing.”
— Ryan Blaney [07:56]

On Pit Road Mistakes:

“I stalled it three times before I realized I was in third gear. That’s how unaware I was of what I did.”
— Ryan Blaney [11:04]

On Racing Today:

“You do it enough, you make mistakes that like you never make before.”
— Ryan Blaney [12:03]

On the New Points System:

“I find myself looking at the points way more than I did before… makes the stakes going to the racetrack every week so much higher.”
— Ryan Blaney [17:29]

On Superspeedway Racing:

“There’s nowhere to go, we’re just beating the rear bumpers off these things all the time because they’re so draggy.”
— Ryan Blaney [35:44]

On Parenting:

“It’s a huge 180. It takes a little while to get used to. … Leaving is way harder to leave the house for the weekend.”
— Ryan Blaney [45:52], [46:49]

---

Key Timestamps

• 02:24 – Blaney announces Penske contract extension
• 03:34 – On early days with Penske and loyalty
• 09:05 – Team struggles, pit road mishaps
• 12:39 – Assessment of season so far
• 17:29 – Points system discussion
• 24:21 – Organizational performance at Penske
• 27:05 – Watkins Glen and schedule changes
• 33:19 – Pit crew changes explained
• 34:56 – Superspeedway package technical talk
• 45:52 – Fatherhood challenges
• 51:13 – Changing role of Blaney’s dad
• 57:19 – Llama tales, hobby farming
• 60:16 – “I can’t eat store eggs anymore!”

---

Tone & Chemistry

The conversation is relaxed, friendly, and peppered with humor and vivid storytelling. Dale Jr. often reflects on his own experiences, drawing out Blaney’s honest, relatable takes on racing, family, and life. The episode is as much about two friends talking life as it is about motorsports.

---

Conclusion

This episode delivers a heartfelt deep-dive into Ryan Blaney’s career-defining moments, loyalty to Team Penske, and the reality of balancing racing with fatherhood and rural life. With honest insight and engaging banter, Dale Jr. and Blaney offer listeners an inside look at racing’s current landscape and the humans behind the helmets.

---

Transcript

[Ryan Blaney]

When we went to Fontana and they'd have the freaking mile per hour board. Turn one, and you're running down the front stretch and you're looking at that thing, you're like, Ah, 212, 213. Yeah. Oh, I got a turn.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Support is available 247 with VRBoCare. We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help. Because a great trip starts with the right support.

[Ryan Blaney]

To Covis is the go to for premium handcrafted Western boots. Stop by any store location for a warm welcome, a cold drink in hand, and a truly one of a kind shopping experience. Let our friendly staff help you find your new go to boots, whether your first pair or your 50th. Finish things off with a complimentary boot brand to make them extra special. Come for the boots. Stay for the good times. To Covis Forever West.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. You're Dale Jr. Should I say it still Jr. Podcast. I gotta say it. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. Back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. We got a great guest for you today here on this show. Uh, Ryan Blaney is coming into the studio. We're going to talk about the season he's had. He's got a big announcement to make as well. That's really the sole reason for him being here. We won't delay that any further right here in the Arby studio. Don't forget about Arby's new meet in three box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. We got Ryan Blaney here. Let's bring him in. All right, so Ryan Blaney's coming in here. I'm excited about this, man. Appreciate your friendship. Thanks for coming through. You got a. You got a little bit of an announcement. Do you want to put that out now? You want to shelve it for later in the show? I want. You know, I'm excited.

[Ryan Blaney]

You're running the show, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm running the show. They ain't no plan. So usually Bobby Marcos, he's our badass historian, always gives me a big old couple of sheets of notes, but. But since we're such good friends, man, we're just going to wing this one.

[Ryan Blaney]

Good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But you getting a contract extension.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What does that mean?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. Signing a new one with Penske, you know, really excited to get it done for sure. And there was a little bit of talk, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Free agent. You were.

[Ryan Blaney]

You know, I was seeing that on social media.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You like that you got. I mean, I don't know if you like that because you're happy, you're. You're good. You know what you were going to do.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But, man, it feel, it feels good. People, people say things like that about you.

[Ryan Blaney]

It does, it really. It does. And I, yeah, I, I see the social media stuff and, you know, we never put out years in our deals. Right. We, we just never put that out there. So there was all these speculation going on, you know, Blaney to this car or that car, free agent. And in the back of my mind for a second, like, we already had this done. It's, it was, it's been in place for a while and I really wanted to be like, start stirring the pot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

In the media and be like, well, I don't know, you know, options are open. But, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm really pumped. I mean, gosh, I walked in the door over there in 2012 and, you know, young, 18, 19 year old kid and just got an opportunity that Roger wanted to give me. And, you know, whether it was running their Nationwide cars at the time, running Brad's trucks.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Ryan Blaney]

I owe them a lot. You know, I owe Roger a lot. All those guys, Walt Bud Danker, Jonathan Gibson, all those guys that really helped me out along the way, Mike Nelson, Tim Cindrick, you know, is a huge part of that. And for them to stick with me for as long as they did when they could have canned me at any time if I wasn't performing or even early on, and to still be here, you know, 14 years later, it's. It's unbelievable. So really no place I would, could ever really see myself being because they've treated me so great. Roger's been loyal to me and that's. I want to be that way back to him. Yeah, right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I might have told this story to you before, man, but, you know, we all know Roger Penske is a super badass dude. There's only a couple guys like him in the whole industry. Like him and Rick, you know, there's just some really, really just bad ass businessmen that just can kick ass in everything they do.

[Ryan Blaney]

It's another breed of human being he is. I just don't like him. Rick, Leonard Wood, the Wood family, like, they're all that way. I don't have that in me. Like, I don't do.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You don't. He was, you know, that's not. I don't believe that's entirely true because Roger Pinsky when he was your age, probably wasn't the way he is today. Right. He built that resume, he built that Persona, and he built that respect. I was always nervous about talking in front of our crowd, but much less our peers. We go to the banquet every year, and if you finish in the top 10, it's years ago. If you finish in the top 10, you spoke, you got up at the podium, you talked.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And, man, I was always terrified of that. And so we were at the banquet one day, and I always wrote it, Wrote any speech I'd ever give. I wrote it out, and I had it on a prompter, and I try to memorize it, and I try to deliver it naturally, but it always sucked, and I never felt great about it. And we were at the banquet one year, and I think y' all won the championship. I don't remember it was as. Well. Maybe it was you. Maybe Logano. I can't remember. Maybe it's Brad. I don't know. But he gets up there and gives his owner's speech and didn't have any notes and just went.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And he didn't care. He didn't worry, I suppose, about who he might forget. Of course, he probably forgot nobody, but he just gave this very matter of fact, honest, most of the time, when people get up there and they're giving a speech, man, it's just hard to plug in. You know, they're reading it, you're happy for them, you care about it, you're glad that they're doing what they're doing, but you just can't really feel it.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

His speech was so freaking awesome. And I challenged myself from there on out that I would go up on the podium of any time and just go for. Go, go off my gut and golly, it was scary at first, but it's so much easier.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I think it's great. It's way easier, I feel like. And it comes more from the heart.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. But I was down. I was so impressed by his ability to just. To go up there and do that and do it with such class and dignity and perfection. I mean, it was just. It said a lot of. It's who he is. Right. And, man, I've. I didn't really know him, know him until I got the chance to. To get to see him around our kind of, you know, in the cup garage probably in the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years. I really never really interacted with him much at all.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Until. Honestly, I think when you started driving for him and we had become friends, he would text me Every now and then about dad and a couple other things, but pretty, pretty neat guy.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. He's an unbelievable human being and it's been a pleasure to get to know him, you know, kind of like you and, you know, just to have somebody that, you know, you can call up anytime, you know, I'm going to answer the phone whenever he calls me, no matter how early or late it is. And same way there, even if it's not about racing, it was just about how's everything going? You know, and the speech thing is. Is nuts that he can just get up there and do that. And someone told me it was. Maybe it was one of those speeches he gave at the banquet because, you know, you have your, your notes and then they put it up on the teleprompter behind everybody and someone was like, you know, Roger's halfway through his speech and I'm like, gosh, this just is so natural. And this person looked behind him to see like, man, is he. How's that teleprompter looking? It was. This is not on. I was like, yeah, that's how he does it. And he will remember everybody that he ever meets. And he's always put a huge emphasis on, you know, people. Right. People is his biggest thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

If you mean that, you don't have that. That's the one thing I don't have. Like, Rick's the same way. He remembers everybody. He remembers anecdotes about their lives, their something they're going through something with their kid, their wife, whatever. And golly, man, I wish I had that ability to like retain all that.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, names and, and all that stuff.

[Ryan Blaney]

And I'm good at faces.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Names.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm doing my damn best, bud, but I ain't nothing like they are.

[Ryan Blaney]

No disrespect, but I'm trying. But no, man, it's great. I'm happy we finally got this out there and you know, commitment level from their side to my side. It's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Was it easy?

[Ryan Blaney]

It was easy. It was great. You know, it's just when you are comfortable with people like that, you know, it's. It was very short talks of. I was honestly really, you know, honored that they came to me when they did and wanted to do this for a long time and, and things like that. And I'm like, of course, like, I'd love to continue to be here and things like that. So it was pretty short conversations as far as that side goes and you know, put it in the drawer and then we move on to the future. Yeah. So, yes, it's good to get it out there. So stop the social media rumblings, that, that's for sure. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Now you're, now somebody else arise to the top of that, that conversation. Whoever else is a free agent, but like Kyle Bush, boy, he's going to be. That's going to be as I'm. We're stirring it a little bit here, you know where he might go or could go. Right. But so y' all season has been a bit of a struggle. Honestly, man, I, I look at things from, from a really wide perspective. I, I think a lot of people, maybe yourself, look at week by week. What was it like last week? Was it better? Was it not better the next week? The next week? The next week. But when I look at it, when I back up, I don't really see. Only thing I see with you guys is pit road. Pit road's a struggle and this week it was a little bit of, a little bit on you, I suppose. But other than that, your car like the first run at Texas this week, man. Yeah. Really good speed. I think if you don't get mired back in the back of the pack, I mean, you find yourself up in. With an opportunity to run top five.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, yeah. Honestly, I think, I mean, the last three weeks haven't been. The finishes haven't been great. Like Kansas, we were a little off Talladega, we were fast and got, you know, tore up there. And then this week, like you said, I mean, the first round of the race, we qualified bad, drove up to, I think, 13th. And then I had a brain fart on pit road, did something I never did have done before on pit road. And how do you think that happens?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Because it does happen. It happens to people where you do something completely, you know, you've never done, you know, you do something like that and you're like, if you do it

[Ryan Blaney]

long enough, you're going to do things you've never done before.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right.

[Ryan Blaney]

And yeah, I've never done this on pit road. You know, pit road for us is like, it's mainly routine, right? Like you have.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What exactly happened?

[Ryan Blaney]

Bang, bang. Yeah. So I. We're coming around the 48. He was in the stall before us and it was at the timing of it was like his guys were running around the right side, so they're as wide as they're going to be. So I'm looking at his guys like, I don't want to hit any of them. I'm trying to get outside of the line. The mark where you have to be outside of. To, you know, if those guys are working on the right side, you have to be outside this orange line. Oh, did you know that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, no.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. It's like a safety net for those guys. So I'm looking at that, looking at his guys, and I usually coming down second, and I usually bang, bang into neutral and then get into my box. But, like, I had a lot going on trying to get around his guys. I'm like, all right. And I'm. This is like afterthought of like, how did I do this? Because at the time, I had no idea what was going on. So I just pushed the clutch in, kept it in gear, and I kind of got around because I needed to get my hands back to the right, my wheel straight. So I just kept my foot on the clutch. But in my mind, I thought I went to neutral, and so they dropped the right side. I pull back a gear thinking I'm in first, but now I'm in third. And I don't look at my dash, right? Like, you're never like, oh, what gear am I in? On the road, it's always, you know, it's up here. And so I leave the pit box, stall it, Leave the pit box, stall it again. I stalled it three times before I realized I was in third gear. That's how unaware I was of what I did. Like, I thought I broke a transaxle or something because it wouldn't get going. And I looked down and I'm in. It says big old three right there like an idiot. And then get back down to first and go, so you. Yeah, I mean, it's just one of those things. Like I said, you do it enough, you make mistakes that, like, you never make before. You do things that you never do. And, yeah, that was. That was pretty foolish of me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Well, hey, I mean, I guess, you know, I always. When things don't go well, you know, if we're fast, I can take it. You know, it's when you're not fast and you have those kind of days. It's when you don't feel like you kind of climb out of that.

[Ryan Blaney]

But yeah, I think we're in a good spot, though. Really. Like, I mean, like I said, the last three weeks, the finishes haven't been great, but we're still decent in points, and I look forward to going to Watkins Glen this weekend. We were great at Cota, and hopefully that side is continuing to go, but, I mean, there's. It's getting to that point of the year, right. We're 11 races in. 11 races in, I think. And like, you're starting to see who is the. The best. Right. Obviously you got the 45, the 11, the 9 is really starting to shine. Like chasing that group have got it going on right now. I think we're right there. So there's like five to seven of us that are kind of in this pack together. And some guys haven't gotten the finishes. Like, the 20 has been really good and he got. Gosh, he got wrecked leading at Texas 19. The 19 has been good. He got tore up a little bit. Like, you know, the 5 is going to get it together, the 24 is going to get it together. Like, it's just, it's. It's the normal guys, I think, that are running good, are running good, but some of them have kind of had bad issues that you're going to have to really pay attention to. And, and you just fingers crossed that the 45 starts having problems. So we can have a prayer to catch him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't think, you know, if I was in this, you know, pack, right. I would pretty much assume that I'm probably not going to get to that guy and start thinking about what I need to do to. Where do I need to. Where do I want to be? Where, where. Where do you want to be? I know, of course you want to be second. If you can't catch 45, you want to be second. But, like, what's so acceptable at the end of the regular part of the season?

[Ryan Blaney]

I think if you can put yourself in the top five, that's a pretty good spot. Top five or six.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did you hear they did 10,000 simulations with this point system? It was like 85% of the time came out of top six.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I saw that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So there's like a 15% chance.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

From seventh. Eighth. But outside. Outside the top ten. No chance.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I think you could. You know, you could. I mean, if you're.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're going to start 90 points back,

[Ryan Blaney]

if you're outside the top 10. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's a lot.

[Ryan Blaney]

I mean, it could swing a lot, though. You never know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're going to have to win, too. You're going to have to do what Tony Stewart did, you know, or going

[Ryan Blaney]

to every half of five races, you know, which.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't see anybody doing it.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But then again, you know, the 45 did what he did. Hey, this is Dale Hart Jr. And for all the latest D. Dale Jr. Download gear, including the. I'm old. Drink some beer. T shirt we've been talking about here around the office. Head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch.

[Ryan Blaney]

Working outside in the springtime means you're dealing with chilly mornings, hot afternoons and everything in between. Not to mention mud, rain and whatever else the weather decides to throw at you. You need workwear that can keep up with the changing conditions, and True Work has you covered.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Springtime is the perfect season for the T2 work pant, which keeps you comfortable over a wide range of conditions. These pants have four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing, a water resistant finish to shed rain, and nine intelligent pockets to keep tools just where you need them. Working in the spring means you never know what the weather is going to be. Could be cold one day, could be hot, could be rainy. Grass sometimes throws a little dew on it. You never know what you're going to get. But with the T2 work pant, it doesn't matter. They get the job done. The other weekend I was out working in the yard. Didn't want to get grass and weeds on me. But I was also worried about being too hot. But the T2 work pants had me covered and unlike jeans, they're easy to move around and get the job done. Plus, with all the pockets, you don't have to worry about holding on to all your tools. The T2 work pant is built different. It's built for people who hold themselves to a higher standard.

[Ryan Blaney]

The work doesn't just stop because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your first order at true work.com with code Dale Jr. That's T R U E W E R K code Dale Jr. True work. Built like it matters, because it does.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I love this. I love, I'm probably too obsessed with it. I don't. Everybody I talk to seems to be a little bit less excited about it than me. Yeah, I love the format. I know everybody loves it, loves it. But I'm like, I'm a little bit too obsessed with it. Yeah. So I remember as a kid going, you know, you know, and you probably do too, going week to week to week wondering whether you were going to gain, lose, lose big chunks or you know, you just, even just as a, watching my dad, right? Not even in my own career but like all through the 80s and 90s going, man, if he, you know, middle of the season we're Bristol or something, it's 10 races in and he has four flat tires leading the Race and gets slapped twice and. And we run 25th. I mean, it was devastating.

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It was so devastating.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. I mean, we said this when it started. Like, your bad days are going to hurt way worse. Yeah. And your good days, you're going to get really rewarded for having good days and winning the race. Like, and I find myself looking at the points way more than I did before.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Ryan Blaney]

You know, because, you know, you would. I would honestly look more through the regular season, like, how many stage wins do I have? And I would look where I'm at in points, like, because that's where I'm going to get a little bit of bonus points. But like wins. Where are my bonus points at? And now like you're watching like a hawk every single week and makes the stakes going to the racetrack every week so much higher, I think, you know, and that's good. Perfect. Perfect.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I love hearing that. Yeah. There's. There's a lot of energy and excitement. I think around, you know, we're not. I think this helps a lot of causes. I mean, we could just sit here and talk about it forever, but you know, we, we used to. So I tuned in Sunday and we're, you know, we get the race started and Christopher Bell has his accident and I'm like, holy, that's huge.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, no stage points. And then the 22 on pit road, I'm like, oh, man, that's freaking massive. Yeah, no stage points. He's gonna fall. You know, the. And, and Ty Gibbs. And there's a couple other issues some other people had. And I'm like, oh my God. I mean this, this wouldn't be happening. This wouldn't matter, you know, and so I'm. The race is the race, a good race is less critical now. Like all these little things that are happening are making this race good for me as a fan. Right. I'm seeing this guy's having trouble that's, that's gonna be terrible for his points at the end of the day. And this guy went out and. And gobbled up a bunch of stage points and had a great result and that's gonna be massive for him. And so I'm less likely to zero in on whether I was entertained by the on track product in this situation. I'm more. Because I'm entertained by some other things, you know, and like you say every race has higher stakes. It's that way. For a fan watching you realize that when, when the, when, when the sun comes up on Sunday, damn, this is important. And you know And I, I think, I feel that in the Riley series as an owner, you know, I tell my guys, I'm like, y' all don't know. You ain't, you can't go out there and bust your ass underneath somebody trying to take a high risk pass.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, and ruin your day. You can't be more about not do that this year.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You get away with it last year.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. And you know what I love too is when someone wins the race, if it's their first win of the year, the first thing out of their mouth anymore is not. Welcome to the playoffs. Like, you're celebrating the win.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The moment.

[Ryan Blaney]

The moment. Because that's what it's all about. You did a great job that day. Who cares about you? You know, this is months and months down the road that this is talk about the win. Like, these guys did a great job to win the race. And, and it means a lot on points. Obviously winning the race means a lot. And you're not talking about, they're locked in, you know, to the thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I agree. Yeah, they did a good job, man. I, I, you, you just said it a minute ago. Bad races are going to matter and wins matter. Like, you know, we've really weighed wins to, to really make a big difference. And you can see that when you look at the points for the O'Reilly series and the Cup Series, the Truck series is a lot tighter. So, I mean, it could go either way. Not going to have this, you know, 100 point lead for every, you know, every year for the guy out front.

[Ryan Blaney]

But I mean, it's tight. Like you get like obviously the 40 an R deal. Right. The 45 is out there a lot. The 11 has a little gap on the 9. The 9 has like a 30 point gap on me, but then like me to, and I have a little gap, I think, on 5th. Like a 25 point gap. But like 5th to 14th. Yeah. Is like separated by like 50 points or something. Like, it's not a lot of separation from putting yourself fifth to the back half of the chase. That's right. Like it's, it's a dog fight in that area. And that's, that's fine. I look at that side even, I don't even look at my own points. I'm like, oh, where'd these guys, you know, how'd their day go?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You mentioned Christopher Bell and in the 19, Briscoe. There's, there are some guys that in our little stretch as broadcasters in the summer, there's going to be some People that we, we're going to be watching that I, I'm going to be entertained by how much ground can they make up? Right? They're going to climb. How high can they climb? Right. You know, we're all, we all starting to realize that top six, that top five is kind of where everybody wants to be and end up. And so it's going to be fun seeing who can, who can survive who's in that 10th to 16th that can survive these guys climbing through. It's bumped out, right?

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Because even though, look to, to, even though like we were in a, we were in a meeting the other day with our, our Amazon folks and I stood up, and not literally stood up, but I was like, the cut line doesn't matter anymore. Let's not, you know, we always show the cut line every race.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

At the end of the day, here's a cut line gal. I was like, the colon don't matter anymore. It's more about the top six. Let's get this all in our heads, you know, and some folks were like, well, I don't know, the cut line is kind of cool still. And to their point, it's like making that, making the playoffs. Even if you are one of those guys in the back and you privately, deep in your mind, no, you don't have a shot in hell, win championship. You did get the invitation to this private club, right. And if you're not in it, it feels like, like if you, if you miss this and you're not one of those guys and you're not highlighted, celebrated, talked about when the, when the, when the chase starts, it feels like, you know, big letdown. So there's some folks that are going to be trying to stay in there and some guys are trying to climb in there. That's going to be fun to see.

[Ryan Blaney]

And I think once the chase starts, like, you look at those guys that are going to be the back half, right? Like the, the bottom five or six, right. I'm excited, I'm be interested to like, I mean, we could end up there. I'm not saying we might not, but like the mindset as opposed to the playoffs for those guys, if you're in that position, it's like if I can, if I can average a 11th place finish for 10 weeks, I might, I could have a shot, you know, I could have a shot at getting to the top five. Like, it's not like I gotta go run, I gotta win one of these races or I gotta like three race stretch. I gotta be Reset, you know? Yeah, it's just like, man, we could just put some solid days together here, and we'll climb. You know, we can. We can inch our way up there. So I think that's. That's the best way to do it. That mindset, I think, is going to be. It's going to be pretty cool.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I want to ask you about Penske performance. We talked a little bit about yours, but I feel like, you know, just looking at the organization, Cedric seems to. Seems to be doing better this year. I just. I don't. You know, my. My own observation, I see him running better. Logano struggling a little bit. Barry, with the association with the Wood brothers, struggling a little bit this year. Your results not as good as you would probably. Most people would assume. So, you know, would y'. All. Y' all recognize. Is there some ground to gain? Is there some speed to find? Where do you sort of see yourselves as an organization at this point?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I definitely think there's areas to improve. I look at the mile and a half have kind of just been our biggest struggle. We gotta find speed at those places. The Toyotas, the hinder cars, they kind of got our number at the mile and a half, you know, Kansas.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Is it a Ford thing? Is it a body thing? Is it.

[Ryan Blaney]

I mean, RFK definitely runs better than us at mile and a half, so they've figured it out. So I. I think the potential is there to go run and go run. Top five.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Do you think that. You remember when we were younger, there was always talk about whose body was best?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Where. Where's that conversation today? Does it matter? The body's pretty similar to the teams look across the aisle and go, damn, Chevy's got nice quarter panels. You know, we used to do that all the time.

[Ryan Blaney]

It's definitely not like it used to be, right. With this car, even the previous generation of car, right. You could kind of see some things a little bit more here and there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There.

[Ryan Blaney]

Now it's a little bit more set. But, I mean, NASCAR has everyone in a box, right? Like, there's this performance box you can be in, and it's not very big. But I do think some teams, like, I. All the bodies are different. Like, I look at Toyota stuff, you know, I feel like they have a little bit more downforce than everybody. I look at the Ford stuff, I feel like we have a little bit less drag than everybody. And I feel like Chevy is kind of in between, like, on the downforce and drag numbers, you know? But I look at you know, where our speed has been, like everywhere else. I think we've been really good, like, you know, outside the mile and a half. Outside the mile and a half, I feel like we've been really, really strong. So that's been our biggest emphasis is how do we get the mile and a half closer, you know, to. To compete? How do we get them closer to rfk, who seem to have a little bit better idea of where the speed is at at these bigger tracks Now I feel like we're better than them on the other tracks, like short tracks and road courses and stuff like that. But, yeah, I think there's. There's room to. To gain on the mile and a half, and those are. Those are really important. We have a lot of them, and we got to. You got to get stage points in them. You got to go run in the top seven, you know, so that's been the biggest, biggest point for our group and our whole organization is how do we. How do we get the mile and a half a little bit better? I think we're inching in. Like, if we didn't have our problems at Texas, I thought we could have ran sixth to eighth. Pretty good. But woulda, shoulda, coulda. Yeah, if, if, if. But I do feel like we get. Well, I think we made a gain from Kansas to Texas, and that's just my. My side speaking. I thought we got a little bit better. Yeah. So that's. That's hopeful. I think we're moving in the right direction this weekend.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You go to Watkins Glen? There's been some conversation. They moved it up in the schedule quite a bit.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And there's been some conversation about that. Weather's looking a little iffy, at least for the rally. I don't know about Sunday.

[Ryan Blaney]

Sunday looks okay. It's cold.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, cold.

[Ryan Blaney]

And Saturday's kind of 50%.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep. And they're doing some tire packs.

[Ryan Blaney]

Tire packs, maybe. Oh, they're coming.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So what do you think about all this?

[Ryan Blaney]

So the tire packs, they're gonna put tire packs off of turn one, and they're gonna. They're gonna space them out. So you can do like, four of them? Yeah, we can slide them through there like the toll lane on 77.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And.

[Ryan Blaney]

And then they got a tire wall off the carousel. Yeah. Their main thing, I believe, was they don't like us running all off the racetrack. And this is their best way of doing it without enforcing track limits. They're kind of self enforcing. Do I think there's a better way to do it? Yeah, just Big old tire packs.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Do you remember why we took the sand out? Other than it would be an automatic caution when somebody got stuck?

[Ryan Blaney]

I think that was the only.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That was the only reason.

[Ryan Blaney]

That's the only thing I could think or if I get an explanation for it. But you know, you know they did the, the ground. They like did all those grinds in the racetrack. On the exits.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Knocking the.

[Ryan Blaney]

Well, they. No, they like. I don't know what they called them. Indents. Right. So they made like these big.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yes.

[Ryan Blaney]

Rumble strips on the exits.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Ryan Blaney]

That didn't do anything. We still ran over them rougher and hell yeah, it vibrates a little bit and that didn't do nothing. They weren't big enough. I've always thought put like turf, like turf is super slick. It's kind of self enforcing. There's nothing you can hit.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

No one's gonna run out there. You can brand it, you can put whatever sponsor.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How much turf. They don't need to do the whole thing.

[Ryan Blaney]

You got the, you got the exit curbing in one.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And then if you had a lane,

[Ryan Blaney]

leave like a lane and then turf it all the way.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, but you gotta have something to slow down.

[Ryan Blaney]

Okay. Maybe 20 yards of turf, you know. But then I feel like we'd still just go. I mean you do need something. You can't just have turf to the wall.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

If a guy comes down the front straightaway and loses his brakes, you got to have some sort of plan.

[Ryan Blaney]

Let's be honest though, how much is that really?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Stopping the sand was pretty decent.

[Ryan Blaney]

There was. They were saying when Jimmy Johnson lost his brakes, that didn't stop and we're going to jump.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, he drove down into the inside curb and took the biggest ramp you could possibly create.

[Ryan Blaney]

That is accurate. I don't know if any job to say jump it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the best way to do is.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

But you do have to have safeguards. You know, if you do lose breaks

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

and stuff like that, I feel like you guys will. I feel like you guys will find the. You'll go out there and run and run. Learn how hard you can push it to get to them packs.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you're. Y' all are going to be slapping the packs probably in the race.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, just a little bit here.

[Ryan Blaney]

Hope they don't grab you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Pushing them, pushing them, pushing them.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You knock that away. That changes the whole racetrack for everybody to have to.

[Ryan Blaney]

Well, it was like I never ran it when it was like this. But Sonoma, when they had the tires on the tires, like, by the end of the race, it was like a lane and a half down. And now there's a wall.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Some were missing somewhere over on their sides.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. But, I mean, you can't, like, slalom through them for speed. They're going to call you on that. Yeah, NASCAR will, like, if you get pushed out, then that's a racing thing. But it's not like you can just bomb it off in between them and come back because they're going to call you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They will. Yeah, but that'll be interesting. Yeah. So. And I mean, the wet, the cold temperatures, what will that do? What. How will. Does that just make it fast?

[Ryan Blaney]

Fast? Yeah, I mean, the Glen is one of the fastest road courses we have anyway, so, yeah, you're going to be really, like, hauling the mail through 2, 3. Qualifying is going to be pretty quick.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

If we.

[Ryan Blaney]

If it's not raining, if they rain,

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

if it rains and they race Saturday, more than likely going to have pretty nasty little racetrack. Yeah, could be pretty.

[Ryan Blaney]

That's not a wide racetrack, too. No, because we did. It was a few years ago, we had a rain race in the cup cars, and it was. It's kind of fun, but you can't

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

get offline as much.

[Ryan Blaney]

No, you can't get offline trying to

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

get out of the traditional racing line, but you can't.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, it's not. It's not as much runoff. And it was raining so hard, there was a freaking waterfall coming down the hill from three to two to one. It was. It was. I think they ended up delaying it for a little bit because it got pretty bad. But, yeah, it's. That's going to be it. That would be one of the toughest places to race in the rain.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We talked. We talked about the. The pit. Pit road. Y' all did make some changes, and so we've yet to, I guess, really see how those are going to net out. We were talking about it on this show, about how much input you might have on a decision like that, and my estimation was your input would be zero. Yeah, there's coaches, there's. There's really, really smart people that know these crews and know the backup guys and where all the. Where everybody's at and who could actually come in and make, you know, who you could switch a guy out with. So when that, you know, do you just get a call and they go, hey, man, I have a new guy on the right Rear.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I saw the clip of y' all talking about that on this show and you are like 95% accurate on that. You know, like, I'm not one sitting there like, we got to change this guy with that guy and this guy. Like, I mean, we have pick coaches, higher ups that are making these calls that see these guys work every single day. We have a great team of coaches back there that really understand what's going on and where do they think is going to be the best route. They will ask my opinion, you know, of, hey, we're thinking about doing this and that, you know, what do you think? And it's not like my opinion has much weight, but it's. They want to make sure I'm on board. So I appreciate them, you know, including me in the conversation, but I'm not the one with the gavel and, you know, making the calls. Right. So I leave that to those guys. But I mean, I, what you said on the show when you were talking about it, like, my main job is to get everybody together.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

On board, happy no matter who it is. If it's your new guy, welcome to the team. Here's how we do it. We're happy to have you. Like, you know, let's, let's go to work. You know, so I'm the pump up guy. Right. With those. I'm not the decision maker on that. Like, I have to make everybody part of the team.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You're a good cop.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I want to talk to you about fatherhood and a couple other things, but before we move on to some personal life stuff, the next gen at superspeedways, you know, nascar. I know NASCAR is going to be curious as to how this conversation goes, but I want to commend them because they're trying. Yeah, right. We, we, we, we didn't have a long enough Runway to make any meaningful change to the car. So they, they do the stage thing and, and they made an attempt to try to make things better at Talladega. But as we've talked about on this show and Denny's pointed out rightfully on his show, Chase, you guys all have said this and your opportunities to talk in front of the media after races and before races and whatnot, that when you're. The reason why I think we see these cars run two by two and, and race to the finish without anybody making any moves is because when you pull out a line, even if everybody's saving fuel, running half throttle, if you decided, hey, I'm going to pull out of line, I Got to run and I'm going to mat it and go 100% throttle. The car is so draggy you'll drop to the back of the pack.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And everybody knows it. So they're not going with you. Yeah, you know what, there is some testing that is planned and it's being promoted. Kind of like we used to have, we used to have speed week. Speed weeks or. Yeah, the January test dates. We'd go down to Daytona for three days and try all these little puffs and, and cows and all kinds of fun stuff. And we don't do that anymore. But they're going to go down there and try a bunch of stuff. Right. And no, I've not heard anything about what they might try or what they're. What they're dreaming up. But you know, what's your thoughts just about that entire conversation? Do you have opinions on some things that you hope they try? You may have heard they're going to try?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I mean I definitely think these just got to get drag out of them, you know, I mean that's the, the spoiler is massive on them. And especially after you get. If you have a wreck and then your cars, your car count is drastically reduced, then it makes it even worse for like a third lane to ever come. Like it can kind of develop in some cases when there's a full pack and you get like full commit of guys. But if you have a wreck and then there's 20 cars left, you're never going to get a third lane right. It's just going to be two by two. And that's how it goes. And I do think you got to take drag out. You have to get spacing in between the cars, you know, now we're just all on top of each other all the time. There's nowhere to go, there's no holes. Like, you know, when we were running in 16, 17, stuff like that, like we had the air bubble but like there was spacing in between cars. You can kind of shoot. The middle guys would kind of separate a little bit. You could kind of pull into a lane, island hop type of thing, you know. Now it's just. There's nowhere to go. Like we're just beating the rear bumpers off these things all the time because they're so draggy and you're just running through the guy. So I think that's where it's got to start. You got to take spoiler off of it and then whatever math you have to do to keep them under your mile per hour, that you want, if you want to keep them under 200 or whatever, you just got to get the Delta from a single car qualifying run to the pack. It's way too big.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Now like it's like once 180 to. It's 180 by yourself. 188 or 181 or some.

[Ryan Blaney]

I think it's even slower than that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Slower than that.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So it's like 20 miles an hour right now, 15 to 20 mile an hour running by yourself versus the pace you'll run in the race, which is. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.

[Ryan Blaney]

And like when we used to qualify in Daytona with the other car, I think the pull speed one year was like 195. And the pack we were running 200.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

You know, like so you can do it. I think that's a big thing. You got to get that a little bit closer. And that's just drag. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. It's going to be fun. I, I, I don't know that I don't have, I don't know that I have any idea of what they could try. I, I have a similar, absolutely similar opinion as you about to drag. I would love to like be in the, be in the room or hear some of the conversations about what they're planning or what they eventually, when they eventually start to have those conversations.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. I mean, because that would fix the fuel save. The only reason we fuel save now is because it's hard to go from the back to the front.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

So you have to position yourself at the front.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right.

[Ryan Blaney]

So if you eliminate that where it's easier to where you can use your skills or your car handling is better, you can go from forward or backwards, you know, a lot easier.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So the, the thing that I think, the thing that I think I'm hesitant to do this because a lot of people will say that it's probably not possible or it's silly to think about it like this, but. So I'm just going to go back. There's a lot of years I could pick, but I'm going to pick 1979. I could pick 84. There's a lot of races that are popping up in my mind, but in. If you look at the last lap of the 79 Daytona 500 and how Donnie Allison laid back in turn one and two, he knew, he planned this run, that he would get down the back straightaway, and he was able, his car was able to develop this run, pull out and probably clear Kale Yarborough. If Kale didn't drown him into the grass. What happens to allow that car to develop the run off of the draft, and then when he pulls out, it doesn't completely kill the car. So there's, there's something that we need to be doing about the drag of the car that's, you know, wanting to make the move. But there's also something that needs to be considered about the lead car. And so I'm afraid, I guess if we just, if we just stripped a bunch of drag off the cars they're going to run instead of only, you know, bumper to bumper, it'll create the beach ball effect again, which is fine.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But they'll run a half a car length to a car length apart, and nobody will be able to get a run at all. And, and we'll have, yeah, we'll have a, you know, airbow run to the top and we'll have a, you know,

[Ryan Blaney]

and that was the issue.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That was an issue.

[Ryan Blaney]

That other car was if you got really good at playing the beach ball like you were really good at it,

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

you could take everybody.

[Ryan Blaney]

Brad was really good at it. You could string everybody.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

40 laps, single foul.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. So that's the fear of that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Ryan Blaney]

So how do you eliminate the beach ball effect? Yeah, right. How do you eliminate that air bubble type scenario? And I don't know. I'm not smart enough.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know, but I, you know, I, I don't think that we need to. I just, I, I, I use that 79 Daytona 500 example. In 84, they still had what was called the slingshot pass. All through the, the 70s, all into the 80s, all the way up until we put the plates on. When we put the plates on, the slingshot pass somewhat went away. What I think would be good or, or what, what might be a nice test is to take a lot of our different cars to the wind tunnel. So take, take the car we ran in 79 to the wind tunnel. Get numbers on that. Yeah, take the car we ran in 88 or 85. Pick a year. 95, 2004. Get all the data on all these different versions. Just for information. Just really for nothing more than just to know what the drag was, you know, and what the downforce was. Just to have that information in your, in your hand as you're going through this process. Because there's something that, you know, there's something to be said about how those cars interacted with each other that allowed them to be able to do these things now, you know, you also have to look at horsepower and all that to torque, and then things are a lot different. But I think that's one of the things that, you know, could help them understand. I don't know that they truly understand really what direction to go.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Other than. Yeah, okay, take some drag off.

[Ryan Blaney]

Right. But it's easy for us to sit here and be like, just take drag off the cars.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And that's might be more important to know specifically where on the car to remove the drag. The spoiler is a great idea. You know, back in the day, they didn't run spoilers. They laid them down 10, 20 degrees, right? And they had got a lot of great passing, right. So maybe, you know, spoilers, a gray area to focus on. But maybe the front of the car needs to be draggy. Maybe the nose and the grill and all that needs to have drag.

[Ryan Blaney]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, so that, you know, the guy. I don't. I want to allow you, the following car, to create a run big enough that you can pull out and pass. But I do want you to stall at some point. Right. I don't want you to just drive away.

[Ryan Blaney]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So, you know, there may be. There's a balance between how much drag remains on the front half of the car versus the rear. I think that's kind of where I'm. Because, man, every car from the 70s all the way through the 90s had quite a bit of drag on the nose.

[Ryan Blaney]

Right. The noses were right, stock noses, but

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

the back weren't right. They made the backs tiny, small, narrow, laid the spoiler down. There's nothing back there right behind the back glass.

[Ryan Blaney]

I think it'd be neat if we went to those places and you could pick whatever spoiler angle you want to run, dude. Like, here's your size spoiler. Yeah. But you can pick whatever angle you want to run in. Like. And everyone be like, well, you know, they'll just engineer it out to where everyone's going to be running the same angle. Like, no. I mean, some people might get a little more bold, more aggressive than others. Yeah, let's take a shot. Let's. Let's lay this thing down a couple more degrees than everybody else. That's. Tilt this thing up a little bit to where we can really run hard the whole run, you know, I think that'd be a pretty fun. Fun thing to try. If we do this, like, testing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think it would be cool. And this was mentioned in some. In some conversations that we've been in, if they had a different package for qualifying that allowed us to go out there and really flirt with some of the records.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Because people just want us. That would make qualifying quite compelling, right? To see guys go out there and have to actually drive them things.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. I mean, you look at, you know, back in the 70s, they go to Talladega, they'd enter on the bottom, big old diamond, and just hanging on to the thing, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes. Busted ass.

[Ryan Blaney]

That would be awesome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know, man. You might do it and go, holy. Never again. I used.

[Ryan Blaney]

I say that now, before.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's what qualified at old Atlanta was like. You remember that, right? Like, that was white knuckle.

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

White freaking knuckle.

[Ryan Blaney]

I mean, there's. Yeah, there's some places we go to now that are like white knuckle stuff. Right. But I remember, like, even, like Michigan, we go there, like 16 or something,

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

we'd be almost wide open.

[Ryan Blaney]

Freaking almost wide open. And you're like. You get through one and two and you're going to the back stretch. You're like, all right, I can do this one more. Like, I. One more. I got just. And hold it wide open. And sometimes it would stick, sometimes not. But like, that. That in the back of your head, like, that's really cool. It is like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

The worst was when we went to Fontana and they'd have the freaking mile per hour board in the turn one. And you're running down the front stretch and you're looking at that thing. You're like, 212, 213. Yeah. Oh, I gotta turn.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. No, that was a distraction. All right, man. So got a chance to. To see you find the love of your life, get married, had a great ceremony, now you're a father. What's the. You know, what's the. What's. What's the challenges today with fatherhood? I remember, you know, waking up every few hours in the middle of the night. I don't know where exactly you are on the path. It kind of changes.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, it changes every week. Yep, changes. It could be seven hours straight. You get a little of the rest, or it's every couple hours. You know, it just depends. And I would say Charlie's never been a great sleeper. He's been. He doesn't nap very good. He don't sleep very good. I mean, that's the challenging part. I mean, I think just getting out of your routine, especially right away, Right. You're used to this style of life, you know, no, kid, you can kind of do what you want, Sleep all the time, yada, yada. And then just the Shock of like, oh wow, this is just a huge 180. It takes a little while to get used to. But then I think you get comfortable with that. Like I don't mind like if he. Oh, he's having a rough night. Waking up every couple hours. Like, all right, that's fine. Like I'll go hang out with you a little bit and try to get you back to bed. And I think the toughest thing for me, like, and it's going to get even harder when he gets as he's getting older, is like leaving.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Is way harder to leave the house for the weekend. Even during the week. Like if I have to go to the race shop for meetings, I'm going to be gone all day. It's hard to leave, you know, but it makes up for it when you do come back and you see em and they haven't seen you all day and they light up. But yeah, I mean everything has its challenges and I'd honestly think the most, the most challenging part was when Gianna was pregnant and getting close to giving birth, she had a lot of issues she had to go through. So that was tough to watch and obviously tough for her to go through. But we're lucky. Everything turned out great. But it's been, it's crazy. I leave for the weekend for three days and I come back and he's a completely different kid, Looks different.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That is hard to explain.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

To people that haven't never experienced it.

[Ryan Blaney]

Nuts.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Because you're like, no. I mean, three days, how could they change?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But they've got a new word or two.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And they've got a new smirk or a mannerism.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. I'm like, when do you start doing this? She's like, oh yeah, the day you left. Started doing this. I'm like, just like no big deal to her because she's seeing it and she's like had experience with this for a couple days. I'm like, man, it's just overload.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, for sure.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Have you been able to witness some firsts?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. First we're starting to get them on to some foods. So that's been fun. Like he likes peaches.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

You know, like ground up, mushed up, you know, not like I'm not giving him a peach, but he likes peaches. Does not like bananas. So that's, that's fun. Those are the only two we've tried so far. I'll tell you. I don't know if you ever ate the baby food, the mushy peaches. Dude, it's good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, really?

[Ryan Blaney]

What I. I eat.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I never tried it. Yeah, that's probably one thing I should have done.

[Ryan Blaney]

It's just mushy peaches. Like, it's. It's just, like, kind of liquid form. It doesn't. It looks like a smoothie. Honestly, like, if you put it in a smoothie, it's fine. But first laugh was kind of fun. Like, first belly laugh I got to witness.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

And. And we actually got it on camera. We were changing him in his crib, and we got the little camera, and so that was fun. We were getting ready to give him a bath, and, like, I was taking his stuff off, and he liked it. And, like, first belly laugh, and I started cracking up, man. And we had it on camera, so that was. That was kind of sweet. Yeah. That was the coolest first, I think, man. You know? Cause he would kind of grin, smile, but not really make a ton of noise. And the first time he, like, cracked himself up, I was like, oh, that's pretty funny.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's awesome. What's your. What's your dad like? What's your dad. I've been a big. I've been a big fan of your dad's.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just love the person he is and just wondering what he's like.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. As a granddad. Yeah. He. I mean, he's unbelievable. You know, he had some experience. My older sister has had two kids.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right.

[Ryan Blaney]

You know, five and seven. So. But they don't live here. They live in West Virginia.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So are you. Did she have boys, girls?

[Ryan Blaney]

All boys. All boys.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He's had boys.

[Ryan Blaney]

She has three boys. Three boys, yeah. She has a five, seven. And her youngest one is, like, three months.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh.

[Ryan Blaney]

So, yeah. So it's all boys that he's got. But no, he's. He's great. Like, it's funny to see my dad. Like, I know how my dad was with me. Right. My dad was kind of, you know, stern guy. And then with Charlie as a granddad, he's like a mushy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Ryan Blaney]

Teddy bear. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny to see.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did you look at him, you know, when you were deciding to. When you were deciding to make these changes in your life? So, you know, you've. You've won races, you've done things in a. In the professional world where your dad was a witness to it. Right. And you. You were. You know, you. You'd win a race or you'd win a championship, and your dad would be there, and you would get to see his pride and his joy in it. And you get really, really, really enjoy that. I'm sure when you're making these milestones in your personal life, marriage, you know, buying land and just trying, you know, doing general adulting. Right.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And now becoming a father, do you allow yourself to kind of like, watch him and be proud, you know?

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, I've been really lucky that my. I've had a great family like around me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

You know, and you know, my turn my dad turning into like the, the race coach dad to like, you know, he's still there a lot. I'll call him up, get his opinion on some stuff on the racing side. But like, he just, he likes. I think he likes doing the outside stuff now more. He likes watching me do the outside stuff more. Yeah, the same thing. Like he, the just loves like living, seeing me live, you know, as an adult and things like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Let that track because like when you were going through, I guess I'm asking you, when you were going through your championship, you know, trying to win in your, your Martin's, he was all in. Like, he's hands on. He was talking to you every day like, like in your ear. And so there's less of that now and there's more of just kind of enjoying you, your, you know, the life you've created for yourself a little bit.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. I mean, he's still, still there. I mean, but I would say for my dad, like the last five or six years, I'm kind of more pulling on him. Like, hey, what you, what are your thoughts on this? What's your opinions? Like, he kind of took a step back of being. Instead of calling me first, like, I'll kind of call him first about some stuff. I'm like, where are you going? Like, I still need your help. Like, I want your opinion on this stuff, man. So I think. And I think that's just the. I don't think my dad has ever wanted to be too into. Like, especially now that I'm, you know, racing for a long time on the cup side. He doesn't want to be the guy like always there and in the. But and earlier in my career he wanted to be there to help.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep.

[Ryan Blaney]

And now he's like, well, you don't need my help. Like, but I, hey, I need it. Like, I want your opinion on this stuff and come to Martinsville, you know, go stand in one and two. And he came to Martinsville this year in the spring for practice. And I was like, hey, go if you want to Go stand in one and two. Well, I asked him, I said, what corner are you going to today? He's like, I might. I might watch the entry to one a little bit. I might go watch the entry to three a little bit. And I was like, all right, well, come talk to me after practice and see what you see. So I just think he enjoys me, like, growing my personal life because it's always been racing, racing, racing. That's all I ever cared about. And then like, still being passionate about that, but also having this thing away from your job that you obviously love and the people that you love. I think he enjoys kind of seeing me go through that. So that part's pretty neat. And I always have to tell myself, like, it's my parents first time going through this too, you know, like, you think your parents have been through it all and stuff, but it's their first time that their kids are this age and this is going on for their kids.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You just assume they know.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, yeah. But like, they're new at this side. They're new to me having their son, having a son they don't know. So that part is. I think it's just neat because. Yeah, you. Like you said, you assume they know everything and they know a lot, but when their kids are going through things for the first time, they're also going through these things for the first time. So that's. That's been kind of neat for me to. To see, like he was. I mean, he was in the hospital all the time when we were, you know, Gianna. When we were giving birth and stuff like that. And seeing him kind of be nervous too, just like me was. Was. Was kind of neat. We were in it together.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So, man. So you h. You got some. Some llamas. And that's one llama. One llama.

[Ryan Blaney]

One llama.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Any other animals?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, we got goats and. How many goats and three goats.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How many chickens?

[Ryan Blaney]

We had five. One died. All right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

By old age. Just died. No. No coyote.

[Ryan Blaney]

No coyote, No. I just was deceased one morning we were actually gone and we had a.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Did you. Do you got a pet cemetery yet?

[Ryan Blaney]

No, not yet. We buried her in the back.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There's your pet cemetery. There you go.

[Ryan Blaney]

Starting it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Hopefully that pet cemetery doesn't become too big. I've watched the movies.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You have? You have. You're going to have a pet cemetery because you got chickens, goats and llama. Now that's just the beginning. That's the very. That's the front. Front end of this whole thing.

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh, yeah. That's the early draft board we're going to get. Gianna has plans on many, many more. Sure.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm. I'm building a barn.

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

As we speak.

[Ryan Blaney]

Nice. What are you gonna put in there?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's got eight stalls.

[Ryan Blaney]

Horses.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's right. And it's. If you look. If you walk, if you're standing in my house looking out the front door, it is right there.

[Ryan Blaney]

Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's right across the driveway.

[Ryan Blaney]

So horses are coming or.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, we have. Right now already we have three. I get this backwards, but we have five donkeys and one mule.

[Ryan Blaney]

Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So they're. They're all rescues.

[Ryan Blaney]

What differs a donkey from a mule?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Donkeys are shorter. I probably have this backwards. Donkeys are shorter. Mules are bigger. Maybe I got five mules and one dog.

[Ryan Blaney]

Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't know. But there. There's, like, there's the mule. The donkeys are the mules. They're like half the size of a horse. But then we have this really big, beautiful mule. Yeah, yeah. And she came. Her name's Tilly. She came from the Amish.

[Ryan Blaney]

Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And she's beautiful.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just. I mean, just a really stout animal. And she. We. We have a tiny barn that doesn't really have but a couple of stalls, and it's really, really small and not a lot of coverage for them. It snowed the other, you know, this year pretty heavily, and we were out there running around, trying to put covers on them, chasing them down, trying to get the covers on them and do. Trying to get under a mule or a donkey, snapping that and not trying to get kicked in the head. Yeah. That's pretty treacherous.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. We thought about doing the donkey before the llama because we got the llama to protect the goats. Llamas are like lifestyle, really. Guardians. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Because the goats are in danger.

[Ryan Blaney]

Well, coyotes and stuff.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Y' all have them out there where you're at?

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We haven't seen many, but you hear them a lot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, we do. Same. We don't see them that much, but we hear them. I see one every now and then. Run across the field.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, llamas are great. And we got talking to our friends. That's why, like, we were kind of going, thinking the donkey route, but then our friends were like, you don't want a donkey? They were like, we got llamas. We love them. They protect all of our goats and sheep and stuff like that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Had a couple llamas.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. They're funny animals. They're really smart. We actually had to get rid. We have another llama, our original llama we got. We had to get rid of.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What happened?

[Ryan Blaney]

He was aggressive. No, no spit. He never spit. He never bit us. I never had many problems with him.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Was he just talk or what? Was he aggressive?

[Ryan Blaney]

So he. He was a big boy. He was £350.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, gosh.

[Ryan Blaney]

He was six years old and he was never snipped.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Ryan Blaney]

And he was a breeding llama. So you gotta think this. This llama, his name was Cusco. This llama came from where he was raised with 100 other llamas. Was a breeding llama. Tons of fun, getting tail every day. Now we take him to our place. No tail around, no ass to chase. Like, just, you know, different. Whole different thing from the six years of his life. He'd get pretty aggressive. Like, he'd kind of charge at Gianna every now and then when her back was turned. Oh, I had to set him straight a couple times with me. And then the one thing was, my Gianna's mom's boyfriend's kids were in town, and his son is pretty big. He's 16, but he's like a. You know, he's a pretty big kid. And Cusco come up to him and he kind of got a little nervous and, like, put his hands up and made himself bigger. And Cusco, I guess, got on his hind legs, freaking pushed him down and was like. And so Gianna called me. I was gone racing somewhere, and I was like, all right, we should probably. Yeah, time to send him back. And so we got another one from the same breeder, and he's only six months, and he's like, only 120 pounds. So he's going to grow into this place. It's going to be more of his life. So. And he's been fantastic. So. Yeah, we had a swat. Wait, his name's Kevin. We named our other one Kevin. Yeah. So they've been fun, though. I love. I love all different types. Every animal has its own personality, and that's what I love about them. Like, everything acts different than a dog. Or they act different than the goats or llamas or the chickens have funny personalities. Like, I just like hanging out down there and seeing their different personalities and kind of how they're going about things.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, we haven't gotten chicken yet. I've thought about it. We've got.

[Ryan Blaney]

You should do it. It's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What's the.

[Ryan Blaney]

I was a big. I wasn't a big. Oh, yeah, we gags all the time. I mean, and we only have four.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And who's in there getting all that out?

[Ryan Blaney]

It depends who goes down in the morning. Me or Gianna. We'll go down and get the eggs out. But we already had a coupe on the. On our property. The previous owners already built one, so it was kind of nice to. It was already 90 done. But yeah. Chickens are funny, man. They're hilarious. Like, they just dig for worms all day. That's what they do. And then they'll go and lay a few eggs and go dig for more worms and like they're. They're funny little animals. Yeah, yeah. But the eggs are great. They make a mess. No, no, they don't make a mess. Not bad. I can't eat store eggs anymore.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You can't?

[Ryan Blaney]

No. It's so much different.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Like, if you even like the farm

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

raised, you're selling me organic eggs.

[Ryan Blaney]

Eat eggs a lot that you buy at the store. Ass compared to like fresh chicken eggs. It's unbelievable. You got to do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Ryan Blaney]

Get like 10 of them. Because you got a.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

10 chickens. Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Well, you got two girls every day.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Who's gonna take care of these bad boys? They gotta get fed. You gotta clean the coop every now and then. Do you clean the coop?

[Ryan Blaney]

I don't. No, I don't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Ryan Blaney]

I mean, it kind of. It's a kind of a wire net under the coop, so it just kind of falls underneath it and you know, insects will eat it, stuff like that. But you should do it. I start off with five.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Five is a good one because it's smaller than 10.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, yeah. Get you five. Get overwhelmed and. And you will be. And I can't wait till you do it. And you're going to text me like, these are the best eggs I've ever had. Yeah. It's crazy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right. That's the deal. We're going to do it, man. I've really enjoyed this. We got nine minutes left, but I'm going to let you go. We've had, you know, it's been a while, I think since we. Since we last had you on here. Yeah, you know, I feel like that it's good to get you in here and talk to you a little bit about fatherhood and all that stuff, how things are going this year. Love your comments about the point system. Because, dude, you know, I'm going to talk to Chase a little bit and look, love him to death, but he's like, yeah, whatever. The chase, the points, whatever. I don't care. You know, I don't look at the Points, you know, and most like Kyle Larson. Same thing. Yeah. I don't look at the points.

[Ryan Blaney]

I don't.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It is what it is, you know,

[Ryan Blaney]

I think they're lying to you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

I think they look at it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They don't tell the truth.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, Yeah. I think they. I think they look at them a lot, but.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, host of our. At the Met Gala. Yay or nay? I think I know what you're gonna say.

[Ryan Blaney]

He was at the Met Gala. Yeah, he went, what is the Met Gala?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So the Met Gala is a place where they get dressed up in weird clothes, but it's kind of this big thing.

[Ryan Blaney]

Okay. I mean, great. That's good. That's probably a good viewership.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Right.

[Ryan Blaney]

I don't think anyone's been to the

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

ME So you're one of the guys that will know. We'll say yes to about anything, you know, in terms of promoting yourself, getting out there. Hey, sitcom. Hey, this, hey, that. Go to New York, L.A. whatever. You're. You're one of those guys that are like, yeah, all right.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, I'm on board, I'll tell you that. Stuff was a lot easier when I was right, single, didn't have a family, like.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I'm sure it's tougher to. You're a little more selective.

[Ryan Blaney]

It's hard now. Like this year, you know, I've been asked to do some pretty neat things and it's like, man, I. I can't. Like, I have a five month old at the house. I just can't leave.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But you gotta. You can appreciate being one of those guys, right? You can appreciate seeing, seeing Carson out there. I mean. Yeah, yeah, that's. We, you know, we obviously need people doing those type of things and we don't need everybody at the Met Gala, but we need one guy there. We need a guy over here and a guy over here and a guy over here. And so I didn't even know he was going to go do that. And. And I thought, okay, how's he going to do. And then I watched his interview and dude, he's like. I'm sure he was nervous as. But he came across like totally regular normal. Right. He didn't like, he, he wasn't like struggling to like, explain why he was there. Yeah, he didn't struggle to explain what he was wearing. Cause I guess he had a really nice suit on by. By some specific name brand. Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. Nice.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He knew all this, right? He's talking about his shoes and everything else.

[Ryan Blaney]

Nice.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It really was impressive.

[Ryan Blaney]

That's no I think it's important to do that stuff. Right? I mean, I was, I've said this for years. Like, I, yeah, I mean, back. I go do tons of stuff. God, I would go film TV shows and stuff in Hawaii and fly back and like, that was, that stuff was fun to me. And not only for me, it was beneficial. It's beneficial to the sport. Like, and it's, it's a win, win type scenario. So when you get these.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Handsomely dressed, wearing a watch that his dad gave him, his very. The first watch. The first watch I think he ever owned.

[Ryan Blaney]

Nice, dude.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm telling you, he did a good job.

[Ryan Blaney]

White shirt, white bow tie. Nice.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So, yeah, he, he won the other week and there was. I was taken aback a bit by how positive. Just how much fans enjoyed that or thought of that. You know, he's, he's a polarizing guy. He's done all these things. He's made a lot of mistakes. We've all been hard on him and honest and he, he's taken all that really well. You know, I've talked, I talk to him all the time and I'm like, you know, I will totally brutally assess something he does on the racetrack and then I'll call him the next week and I go, hey, man, just doing what I'm. So I'm doing my job. This is podcast and all that stuff. I got to be honest.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Or on the broadcast or whatever. And he's like all good, man, you know, and so he's. I don't know what it's like racing against him because I haven't really ever done that, but I do like his unique personality and I think he's an asset to the sport.

[Ryan Blaney]

He's got a unique personality for sure. And I think he's.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

He's getting better on the track.

[Ryan Blaney]

Open, like, he's open with his personality. Right. Like, he's, he's not afraid to show it. He'll go do these things. He's gotten better on the track, I think.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Easier. Getting easier to race with. He wants to win bad. He wants to win real bad.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, we all do. We all do.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But he wants to win super bad.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. I mean, you're trying to think what he's thinking.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm just saying, like, you want to win bad, but you're not doing the things he's doing.

[Ryan Blaney]

Oh, right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like reckless running through guys.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah, recklessly. Yeah. I mean, we, everyone goes about it in their own ways, but I think we've gotten a little bit better. You know, we had Our. He spun me at Atlanta a year or two ago into one, and ever since then, like, we. We kind of had to talk about it and Been pretty good ever since, so. I know he. And I know Kyle Busch had some choice words for at Texas, but Kyle

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

put him on his list of three guys he doesn't like.

[Ryan Blaney]

I saw that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And then they were hanging out before the truck race. Yeah. Laughing and talking, which you're gonna. You're gonna run into guys, even the guys you don't like, and you're gonna be nice.

[Ryan Blaney]

You're gonna smile around, run into everybody.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I mean, you're gonna walk up on

[Ryan Blaney]

them like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like, dude, this is a old. This is an old fable, but every time you run into somebody, you end up in the truck with them. Next week, it intros every freaking time.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. It's inevitable. Yeah. Or if you say something bad about somebody you're in the truck with.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, you are.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You qualify. 18th, 19th, and then you're riding in the truck again.

[Ryan Blaney]

Yeah. It's fate. And it could either go a fairly silent car ride or.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So weird.

[Ryan Blaney]

It's or bs, like being nice to each other, or you could be like you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

I don't like you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

No telling. But it always happens. It always happens.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It does. All right, man. Hey, what's next? What you doing? This. What you doing today?

[Ryan Blaney]

Today? Do you get to go back home doing sim?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ryan Blaney]

Doing sim guy for the Glenn. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

One of the big sim guys out there.

[Ryan Blaney]

Not a big sim guy. No, I'm not a big sim guy. I do them before road courses, though. I do enjoy the road courses. Just to kind of get my visuals down and stuff like that. Gear and stuff. And then. Yeah, I'm going home, right? Yeah. Yeah. So pretty decent day.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, buddy. Well, hey, enjoy it. Thanks for coming through.

[Ryan Blaney]

Appreciate having me on. Thank you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Brian Blaney on the Dale Jr. Download. All right, so Ryan Blaney on the Dale Jr. Download. That was a lot of fun. You know, they've had such a tough year on pit road, and. But I believe the speed is there, and I thought they. They had a really, really good car. Texas track, where he says that they, you know, the mile and a half, they kind of need to improve on. But honestly, man, even though they had the issues on pit road, they made the pit crew change. They were seventh overall on the metrics in terms of just the pit stops themselves. So, you know, maybe they've gotten some of the bugs worked out of the actual pit stops. And once Ryan can get on and off pit road in good form with the pace they have, maybe they can start, you know, climbing the rankings a little bit. Just a lot of fun talking to him, man. Such a good dude. Just honest, easy to talk to and thankful that he gave us some time today. We know he's got a busy schedule between fatherhood and racing and prepping for this weekend in Watkins Glen. So thank you, Ryan, and congratulations on the extension. Well deserved. And I think Penske knows the value in that young man and rightfully wants to retain his services, man, because he's, he's, he's doing a great job for him. So. All right. Thanks again for Ryan joining us here in the RV studio. Don't forget about Arby's new Meet in 3 box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. And also don't forget about Fan day coming up here at Junior Motorsports May 21, Dirty Mo Media and Sirius XM, they're going to be hosting a handful of shows all throughout the day live and starting with Larry Mack, Daniel Trotta at 9am live on the RB stage. And then at 11am we're going to kick off more Dirty Mo live with our crew. You don't want to miss it. Kenny Wallace, Mike Davis, they're all going to be up there. Some surprise guests as well. At noon we'll have bless your heart with my wife Amy and myself. And then door bumper clear at 1pm Joining them will be Jordan Bianchi. Come hang out with us on Thursday, May 21st. We'd love to see you out here. A lot of other things to check out as well. A lot of booths, kiosk, sponsors will be promoting all kinds of things. Jerky boys, all stuff, filter time, whatever. There'll be race cars to look at. Tons of things to do. Come check it out. Check out dirtymomedia on instagram, facebook x and TikTok.