What Dale Jr. Thinks About Dodge's Rumored Return To NASCAR

Summary

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The Dale Jr. Download

Episode: What Dale Jr. Thinks About Dodge's Rumored Return To NASCAR
Host: Dale Earnhardt Jr. (with T.J. Majors, Eddie, and SVG/Shane van Gisbergen)
Date: June 30, 2026
Podcast by Dirty Mo Media & SiriusXM

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Episode Overview

This episode is an energetic blend of race recap, bracket talk, inside stories, and industry rumors—anchored on Dale Jr.'s candid thoughts about Dodge’s much-buzzed possible return to NASCAR. The crew discusses the implications, tie-ins with recent Cup news, and how legacy teams like Kaulig might fit into the picture. The show also covers recent races at San Diego and Sonoma, bracket challenges, and features SVG as a special call-in guest.

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Key Discussion Points

1. San Diego and Sonoma Recap

• San Diego Street Course: Mixed opinions on repeating the event.

  • Logistical challenges: Long walks, food shortages, massive lines.
  • "You only get that grace on the first go. Next time, gotta fix what didn't work." – Dale Jr. [07:27]
  • “That first one was so special.” – Dale Jr. [06:14]
  • Calls for NASCAR to use unique street venues in different cities each year.

• Sonoma Race:

  • Unique travel experiences with the team (Santa Barbara, Monterey, dive bars).
  • Isla gets the racing bug after riding with SVG post-win.
  • The racing itself: painful for mid-packers but thrilling up front.
  • Todd Gilliland vs. others—"boxing matches" in the mid-pack; notable feuds.
  • The showdown: SVG narrowly holds off Briscoe—SVG runs out of tires, Briscoe almost gets there.
    • "If he doesn't miss that one turn, he gets there." – Eddie [37:39]

2. Bracket Challenge & Playoff Implications

• Inside look at the NASCAR bracket system.
  • "The idea was 100,000% Denny Hamlin's. We did it at Dirty Mo, now NASCAR puts a million on it." – Dale Jr. [32:41]
  • Some refuse to fill brackets if Denny’s not named; friendly show banter and ribbing.
  • Dale’s picks: Denny to the final against Hocevar.
• SVG’s playoff odds:
  • “After San Diego, SVG’s playoff odds went from 67% to 20%. After Sonoma, back up to 35%.” – Russell, show analyst [85:53]

3. Dodge’s Rumored Return to NASCAR (MAIN FOCUS)

[Starts ~54:47; check-ins throughout]

• Dale Jr. is upbeat: "I think it's really high" the Dodge deal happens by 2027, maybe earlier. [55:20]
• Details from Jordan Bianchi's reporting:
  • Dodge’s body has done wind tunnel testing; engine breakthrough just happened.
  • Hang-ups remain in engine development/timing.
  • Charters: NASCAR will NOT expand from 36 to 40 for Dodge; existing teams must switch.
• Kaulig Racing likely to switch to Dodge for Daytona 2027:
  • “I think Kaulig goes into Daytona next year with Dodges. Probably the only Dodges out there. Maybe another similar team flips.” – Dale Jr. [56:31]
• Dale critiques charter model:
  • “If you go to 40 charters, you lock the door to the outside world… I’ve been vocal about the system.” – Dale Jr. [59:08]
• Chevy reportedly withholding sim and technical support from the soon-to-leave Kaulig team
  • “Almendinger has talked about the lack of sim time, lack of resources—since they’re a Dodge team, Chevrolet has pulled back.” – Dale Jr. [47:44]

Notable Quote:
"Chris Rice isn’t going to come on Door Bumper Clear and tell you 'yep, it's done.' But the announcement’s coming—it’ll be big, there’ll be celebrities—just not on DBC!" – Dale Jr. [59:35]

4. SVG (Shane van Gisbergen) Guest Segment

[69:14–83:04: Focused Interview]

• Talks winning Sonoma and O’Reilly weekend sweep.
• Shares S-section driving secrets, tire management tips, and how car setup impacts the race.
• Highlights the adaptation to ovals:
  • “It’s cool now, being more competitive… I can change lanes, try multiple lines… getting better at it.” – SVG [80:25]
• Defensive racing, working with Trackhouse, current place in points (14th), and qualifying struggles on ovals.
• Looks ahead to Chicagoland:
  • "Qualifying is a weakness for me on ovals… but we’re progressing." [77:31]
  • Bumps at 3/4 and off turn 1 will challenge everyone.

5. Playoff Picture & Strategic Insights

• Ty Gibbs praised for sneaky points accumulation strategy; "Top 3 spots in the Chase, every one’s huge for title odds." [44:41]
• Briscoe, Bell, Cindric, Erik Jones, Suarez—Dale previews who’s in, who’s out, and why consistency matters.
• On SVG’s chase to qualify: "After Sonoma, playoff odds at 35%; Erik Jones at 31%; Logano at 50%, which I don’t buy!" – Russell [86:15]

6. Inside Stories & Lighter Moments

• Dale buys and distributes boxes of "tiny Jesuses" to hide around Junior Motorsports, inspired by bar decor in Monterey. [12:18+]
• Reflections on family, hobby overload, card collecting, and Father’s Day gifts.
• Classic Dale+TJ banter on everything from garbage disposals to fans creating burner accounts to defend Hocevar, plus a story about Mike Davis losing his hat to a drunk fan.

7. TV & Broadcast Insights

[117:23+]

• TNT’s new inside-the-NBA approach to race coverage—fun, less scripted, more back-and-forth banter.
  • “Our pre and post-race show should feel like a podcast, just guys chopping it up." – Dale Jr. [122:23]
  • Casual, conversational, more personality-driven.

8. Other News and Notes

• Late model news: Chase Elliott racing for Junior Motorsports at Wilkesboro. [61:55]
• Bracket strategies for fantasy and betting; notable top 10 picks for Chicagoland (Keselowski, Suarez, Bowman, Erik Jones).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (w/ Timestamps)

• "[On Dodge] What is the likelihood and percentage of Dodge racing next year in Cup? I think it’s really high."
  – Dale Jr., [55:20]

• "I think Kaulig goes into Daytona next year with Dodges. Probably the only Dodges. Maybe another team flips."
  – Dale Jr., [56:31]

• "Almendinger has talked about the lack of sim time, the lack of resources...since they’re a Dodge team, Chevrolet’s pulled back."
  – Dale Jr., [47:44]

• "[About the charter system] If you go to 40 charters, you lock the door to the outside world."
  – Dale Jr., [59:08]

• "It’s fun learning how to do that and I think I’m getting better at it...especially like at Nashville, you’ve had some really strong runs."
  – SVG, on oval progress [80:25]

• "Chris Rice isn’t going to come on Door Bumper Clear and tell you ‘yep, it’s done.’ As much as I’d love it to, it’s not going to happen."
  – Dale Jr., [59:35]

• “That first [San Diego] race was so cool. If you could just take this neat little one-off, do it all around the country every year, that’d be badass.”
  – Dale Jr., [07:15]

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Important Timestamps

• Dodge Discussion/Industry Insider: [54:47–59:59]
• SVG Interview: [69:14–83:04]
• Sonoma Race Talk: [06:14–15:37; 36:07–41:46]
• Playoff/Bracket Breakdown: [24:15–36:07; 85:53–96:13]
• TNT Broadcast Commentary: [117:23–123:39]
• Lighter off-track stories: [12:18–16:42; 98:04–101:36]

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

Authentic and loose—Dale Jr. and team keep it real, mixing technical analysis with behind-the-scenes stories, humor, and barbed banter.
The Dodge/NASCAR rumor is treated with skeptical optimism: the return feels very likely for 2027, but there are hurdles around charters and engines. Kaulig seems the obvious launchpad, and Chevy’s already “icing out” departing partners.

SVG continues to impress and integrate, both as a road course standout and a quick-study on ovals, while bracket and playoff storylines churn up new drama each week. In short: a must-listen for fans who want both news and nuance—plus a bit of the unexpected, whether it’s tiny Jesuses or pickle beer.

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For full stories, deep-dive conversations, and more, listen to the episode at Dirty Mo Media.

Transcript

[Dale Jr.]

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[Russell (Analyst)]

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[Dale Jr.]

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yes.

[TJ]

I don't know if we've ever argued. Did I piss you off over the

[Dale Jr.]

weekend or I'm still sour that I wasn't the best man at your wedding.

[Eddie]

Who was your best man, Dale?

[Dale Jr.]

Tj. You don't need a cool vest for that race. What are you thinking? Get him DJ Hell. Way to start the show.

[TJ]

All right then.

[Dale Jr.]

Hey Everybody, it's Dale Jr. Back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download here in the Arby's studio. Don't forget about Arby's new Meat 3 box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meets and we have the show. T.J. majors is here. I'm back. We took a week off. Host of our was the host of last week's show. Thank you Carson for coming in here and just being a kick ass host. I think it'd be cool. We're going to talk about first San Diego. We're going to talk about Sonoma. We're going to have a lot of fun. We're going over brackets. We have. I have a whole list I want to share with everybody but I, I've got a lot of going on this year and there will be some other opportunities for some somebody else to come in here and host.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

I wonder who like fans would want to have.

[Dale Jr.]

I think that's a great question. Fans, who would you want to host this show? Carson, Joseph are did it. I would, I would open the opportunity and encourage any driver to come in here host the show. And that driver, do they get to pick their co host?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Didn't Carson.

[Eddie]

Yeah. TJ was away so I think maybe

[Dale Jr.]

if TJ's here, TJ wants to do it again. TJ, you want to take a couple shots off when you want to. You want, you want to take.

[TJ]

I like doing when you're there because I can talk about you.

[Dale Jr.]

All right, whatever. All right, well look, I think the person that's hosting, maybe they bring their spotter. Bring their spotter, their buddy, whatever.

[Eddie]

Another driver.

[Dale Jr.]

More comfortable.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

More fun. Could you imagine Jesse love Connor Zillich.

[Eddie]

That'd be great.

[Dale Jr.]

Co hosting the Download. That'd be cool. So let's see what the fans say. Let's see if we can get a couple. We got a couple other opportunities this year where I'm going to be gone and we'll get us a badass host in here. I think it'd be fun every now and then, you know, throughout the year to sprinkle in some. Some current drivers.

[Eddie]

Brad crushed it. Now host of our one who.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, Brad did do it.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Great job.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. All right, let's get to the show. We got a lot to talk about.

[Eddie]

Where you want to start?

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I don't know where y' all want to start. We are. We didn't, we weren't here, so we had a great. We can talk about, talk a little bit about San Diego being on aircraft carrier and all that. Everybody's kind of removed from that and moved on to the next one. We've already had another race.

[TJ]

Yeah, it's weird already.

[Dale Jr.]

It is kind of weird.

[TJ]

Feels weird.

[Dale Jr.]

But I do want to say, man, the. I heard the rumor that we might be going back next year. I think it might be a two year deal instead of a three year deal. I'm just hearing some rumors, but Harvick said on his podcast or his show that, you know, it was. It's probably better left one and done. You know, you just. And I totally get what he's saying. I guess they can't. I guess. You know, maybe NASCAR would love to do it once, but maybe the reason why they have to do it twice is to get the commitment from the other side. Because it's a big lift. It's a big lift for the Navy. I'm sure there's some stuff, a lot

[TJ]

of moving pieces going on with the

[Dale Jr.]

city and everything there. And this maybe that side said, no, man, we can't just do this once. So maybe there was a reason why it had to be two years. But I totally get what Harvey's saying about. And we, me and Steve were totally, you know, we were agreeing with this. This week. We're like, man, going back, it'll be great. But, man, that first time is so special. And it's kind of like when we went to Wilkesboro with the late mall stock cars in 22, man, you'll never recreate that feeling that we had there. And this was a sort of similar. Man, you were just pinching yourself all the time. You were up in that. You were up in that aircraft carrier. Just like, man, this is amazing. You know, And. And you got to go up in that thing every day to do something, you know, with the ra, with practice or whatever. And, man, it was just fun. Racetrack turned out to be pretty solid.

[Eddie]

The race, the racing was great. Whoever designed that track, kudos.

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah. Everything went really well. I mean, weekend wise, like, getting in, like, it was a little challenging at times. I guess Thursday was a.

[Dale Jr.]

That's the other side. And I think to Kevin Harvick's point, the other part of. The other part of the conversation is there was a lot of that didn't go good. You know, there's a lot of folks that had to endure long lines, tons of walking. On Friday. I did like 15,000 steps. I think Stephen Stephan, who's working for Junior Motorsports and a few other people out there did 25,000 steps on Friday. So, I mean, you're walking all over the place to get to where you needed to go and ran out of food on Friday or Saturday. Just ran. You know, there was a lot of things that didn't go well. And you'll get that grace on the first go, right? And when, you know, when you're. When everybody's excited to be there, they'll give up or for, you know, therefore go or. Or ignore or overlook, you know, let some slide, right? You won't get that the second time. You shouldn't, you know. And so if they do go back and run it again, they got to make sure that the things that weren't good or the things that they misread or whatever are cured, fixed, cleaned up. I'm sure they will, right? They'll try. But, yeah, I kind of. I kind of agree with Kevin. Like, man, if you could just take this thing, this cool little one off, neat race that we're going to do every year and just take it all around the country, that would be pretty badass. And maybe, you know, we get there one day, but I don't mind that we're going back. I think it'll be fun. But it just, you know, that first one was so cool. Be interesting to see if they kind of changed the racetrack. I know SVG had a couple comments where he's like, man, I wasn't real big fan of the course for some reason. He didn't like a few things about it. I thought it was fine. But I mean, I'm not. I'm not driving, I'm not racing it. So maybe there's some things that can improve all the way around. Even with the track itself.

[TJ]

They figured it out. The drivers Were figuring it out. You know, they figured out pretty quick.

[Dale Jr.]

It seemed like, no, it was a lot of fun, man. After, when the race was over with, I went downstairs in the hotel, and I saw Denny Hamlin and Jimmy and Jimmy Johnson and a couple different guys hanging out down there. And so it's kind of fun. Like, you know, usually when the race is over, we all. Everybody goes home, you know, San Diego. A lot of people stayed out there for the, you know, couple at least a day or two, and then drove or flew to Sonoma. And so that's our plan. So it was kind of cool going to the hotel and hanging out and seeing. Seeing folks, your peers. And, man, we had a lot of fun. We drank a little bit, got up in the morning and drove to Santa Barbara. And then we went from Santa Barbara up to Monterey. We spent the night in Santa Barbara. Then the next night, we spent the night in Monterey. Monterey's badass little town.

[TJ]

Sounds like it.

[Dale Jr.]

It was Santa Barbara's great. We get to Santa Barbara and Monterey, both towns. We get on our phone, found the closest bar and, like, a block and a half from the hotel, and we went to the. Me and Stefan and Latarte, his family, Adam Alexander. We went. We went and had drinks and stuff and just hung out.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

And

[Dale Jr.]

that was pretty cool to be able to kind of sit in these little dive bars you'd never have a beer in and drink in one of the bars in Monterey. We were sitting there, and I noticed that in. They had this thing on the back wall, and it had all these little buildings on it, and in the doorways of all the little buildings were these little miniature Jesuses. And. You ever seen things?

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

And so, you know, after about, I don't know, six or eight beers, I was like, man, you've got those little miniature Jesuses all up in the buildings there. And he's like, oh, man, there's. There's a lot of them in here. I was like, yeah. He's like, how many do you see? I was like, well, I'll probably see about four up there. He's like, there's a whole lot more in this room. He's like, you got to take a look around. And so all around the room, they had all these tiny little Jesuses hiding everywhere. And I thought, that's hilarious. And, you know, six or eight beers, I'm like, you know, I'm going to Amazon. I'm going to order me some tiny Jesus. So I brought them.

[Eddie]

I just wondered what you brought in.

[Dale Jr.]

There's a box full of them.

[TJ]

Nice.

[Dale Jr.]

Look at that, man.

[Eddie]

Are you just going to put them throughout Junior Motorsports?

[Dale Jr.]

I'm just going to hide them places. There's already one in here.

[TJ]

Here, dude, I've already got them.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, you don't want one?

[TJ]

I've already.

[Dale Jr.]

How could you say no to Jesus?

[TJ]

I've got a lot of them.

[Dale Jr.]

How could you say no to this little guy? Oh, my God.

[TJ]

I've got a lot of them.

[Eddie]

One.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

All right.

[TJ]

My mom gave me one of them.

[Dale Jr.]

Give you a handful.

[TJ]

My mom gave me one of them. She's like, here, you need.

[Eddie]

Hey, I got an idea. We could. We can hide them in Mike's office.

[TJ]

Yes. You need to put a whole bunch of them in there.

[Dale Jr.]

So you keep them. You walk around and you just put them places when people aren't looking. So Steven's sitting next to me, and he ordered a box, too, and he just tried to bring them in here and give them to me. I'm like, no, that's your box, man.

[Eddie]

I thought you had trading cards he was bringing in.

[TJ]

That's what he had. That's what he.

[Dale Jr.]

That's hilarious. Like, that's your box of miniature Jesuses.

[TJ]

I lined my. I lined up my spare bedroom, my house with those things.

[Dale Jr.]

Did you.

[TJ]

My mom gave me one, so I'm like, okay.

[Dale Jr.]

They've been around a while, huh?

[TJ]

So, yeah, so I bought a box like you did, and I put them in her room whenever she comes. And they're all. There's like a hundred of them in there.

[Dale Jr.]

Things are awesome.

[TJ]

They are. You just put them all over the place. Race cars.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, for the race.

[TJ]

For the. For the race on Saturday. Drive, walk up and give one each driver.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, Yeah. I have one in my backpack that somehow I got it. Somebody gave it to me. Yeah, we drove up. There's a name for this road. What is it?

[TJ]

The pch.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, there it is. Why do they call it that?

[TJ]

Pacific Coast Highway.

[Dale Jr.]

Okay. There you go. All right. See, I'm not familiar. The pch. So we drove up that thing, man. It was a. It's badass. If you go on Google or go on your phone and take a look at that road or the pictures of it, you'll. The pictures that you see, that's what it looks like. It's badass. The whole way up, just on the. On the edge of a mountain, probably hundreds, maybe thousands of feet. Yeah, there are hundreds of feet up from the coast, but you can see. I mean, just the ocean. See it as far as you can see. And so that was a blast. We stopped and ate it. Some little restaurant on the side of the road. Man, it was just fun. We were just normal for a few days, you know, no responsibilities, no job, no. No work, no. No podcasting. None of that. We just kind of got to goof off. So I had a lot of fun. Then we got to Sonoma, and Sonoma is great. There's a lot of great places in the area to stay at. So we. We landed in Sonoma, and my wife and kids came up or out to Sonoma, So they were there the whole weekend, and we had a pretty solid weekend. In the. In the O'Reilly race, SVG won with Junior Motorsports. Little Lila got to drive, got to ride in the car after the win. So that was pretty cool. And she seemed to. To really enjoy that, and so did svg. He seemed to appreciate being able to do that. That was a pretty cool deal. Got to spray champagne and victory lane.

[TJ]

Yeah, that'd be fun.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[TJ]

She probably didn't saw that Nicole liked it before, so she's probably more likely to do it this time.

[Dale Jr.]

She was. She made. She changed her mind about three or four times before she got in the car. She was like, I don't want to do it. I'll do it. I don't want to do it. I don't know what the deal is.

[TJ]

I'm glad she did it.

[Dale Jr.]

Nicole was standing there like, if she ain't doing it, I'm doing it.

[TJ]

Ready to go.

[Dale Jr.]

She's like, is she doing it because I'm doing it. If she ain't doing it, I'm not missing this opportunity. She was dying to get back in the car. She loves it. She's getting the bug. Big time. Big time.

[TJ]

She liked it afterwards, Isla.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, she did.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

She.

[Dale Jr.]

She said she'd do it again.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

So now, you know, we're going to Chicagoland, and we've got our guys driving our cars along with chase Elliott in 88, so got another shot at it. Chicagoland ought to be pretty badass. I'm excited.

[Eddie]

It'll be fun to go back.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I think so. I heard ticket sales aren't going. Aren't going. Going well.

[Eddie]

That's what I've seen. I don't know.

[Dale Jr.]

I've heard that, too.

[TJ]

Yeah, I've heard anything about it.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. And I guess Chicago street course is coming back, so I don't know that. I don't know if Chicago. Chicagoland stays. I'm nervous.

[Eddie]

Yeah, you're not gonna get both.

[Dale Jr.]

I don't think so, buddy. Yeah, I think we haven't even gotten it back yet.

[Eddie]

The reason is for ticket sales.

[Dale Jr.]

We already lost it. I, you know, that's probably why we stopped going. Everybody. I mean, you can look at the races and go, hey, man, that's awesome. Why, why did we stop going there? But, man, if it don't sell tickets, if, if the land's more valuable used as anything else.

[TJ]

Yeah, it makes sense. But even if the racing is good, if the people don't want to watch

[Dale Jr.]

it, if, if the tickets aren't selling me, if it's selling out, it never left.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, so that's probably. If it doesn't stay on the calendar, that's why. And that's, that's, that's, that's tough because it's a. What should we expect? It's a badass racetrack. They'll be racing from the apron to the wall. And it's got some really nasty bumps and difficult things that are going to be really hard for the next gen car. Challenging for the next gen car. So I'm sure we'll see some accidents or some guys busting their ass. Especially there's a tunnel bump in three and four. That's pretty bad.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Yeah. It's going to be interesting how the track, how the grooves move and when they move.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I think it'll be pretty, pretty badass. I'm looking forward to it. Before we move on, here's a quick look at Dirty Mo Media's newest show. Hey, this is Jerome and Tiffany Davis. Jerome Davis. Most people know me from the dirt eight seconds at a time. So there's a lot more to life than the rides. We've never really stopped to tell our story. That changes June 24th. This Cowboy Life is our new podcast on Dirty Mo Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and come see what this cowboy life is all about out.

[Eddie]

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[Dale Jr.]

On the way up the Pacific coast highway, we didn't have a lot of cell service, but when we did, I bought this badass shirt.

[TJ]

Limp Bizkit shirt.

[Dale Jr.]

I had a cut, had a couple margaritas at no booze in Malibu.

[TJ]

And you walked out with that feeling pretty good.

[Dale Jr.]

I bought it on the Internet, dude.

[TJ]

Sorry.

[Dale Jr.]

Come on.

[Eddie]

Yeah, no boost. Sell Slim Biscuit T shirts.

[TJ]

I didn't know if there was a store next to it or something.

[Dale Jr.]

You walked out like, I'm going in, there's nothing there.

[Eddie]

Buy a steak dinner. Get a free Lip Biscuit T shirt.

[Dale Jr.]

Most of the houses around Nobu burnt down.

[TJ]

Yeah,

[Dale Jr.]

we bought a bunch of cars. I told you about that. So listen, I get to Sonoma. Amy doesn't like the card hobby.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Right?

[Dale Jr.]

She, you know, of course, I've. Everything I get involved in, I'm overboard. I overdo it. Cards everywhere. She's like, man, the house is sinking. I'm like, what you talking about? She's like, all the cards in here. House is sinking. I'm like, okay, so we don't really have a foundational issue because I'll get the foundation guy out here. But so she, we get to Sonoma

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

and

[Dale Jr.]

she comes in. What happened over the course of the weekend in San Diego? You won't, you won't know about this. What happened for us, tj? What happened for our kind over the course of the weekend at San Diego?

[TJ]

In San Diego now.

[Dale Jr.]

What happened for us? It was a holiday that came very special for us.

[TJ]

Oh, Father's Day.

[Dale Jr.]

That's right, buddy. Yeah, Father's Day. It's a grand day. It's a good, good day for all the fathers out there to be dads. And we just get to do whatever the hell we want. And so for one day. Right. And so we weren't together with our families. When Amy gets there, she's got Father's Day gifts. She gives me cards. Whoa. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Big, big deal. And good ones. She got me some Topps, chrome, platinum baseball there.

[TJ]

Yeah. Nice stuff.

[Dale Jr.]

That is an awesome set. Yeah. So I was pretty pumped about that.

[TJ]

Yeah, that's pretty good.

[Dale Jr.]

I got some good cards. She gave. And so she gave me a box of those. I had already bought a box in San Diego. All right. So now I got cards and then more cards. And so I'm sitting there opening up the box she gave me and also opening up the cards that I got. Trying not to let on that you had some. I had lots more cards. And she's like, man, you still. You still opening them cards? I'm like, oh, yeah, still opening them. But eventually I had to tell her. I'm like, yeah. I stopped at a store in San Diego. You know, we had a little time, but, man, I was really. I was really taken aback. She bought me. Not only did she buy me, like, a box of cards to open, but she also bought me a slab or two. She got me a 1985 Jose Canseco or 86 Jose Canseco. Pretty solid scope.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[TJ]

That's nice of her.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. His cars do pretty good, even considering all dumb. He did.

[Eddie]

The fans love him.

[Dale Jr.]

They do.

[Eddie]

That's the thing.

[Dale Jr.]

I don't. And I want his cards. I don't understand it. I thought that he had, you know, he dates Madonna. He does. He gets. He's kind of guy. He had some, you know, controversy, I suppose. Yeah. Toward the end of career, but, yeah, the fans do love him.

[Eddie]

Yeah, the fans love a lot of the. It's the media that doesn't like them, but that doesn't control the market.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I know he. I know. His cars do well, so that was cool. We're going to talk about our brackets. Did you fill one out?

[TJ]

Yeah, we filled one out at. Well, I did the one out there at the show.

[Dale Jr.]

I got mine here. I got like 110 points. What'd you get?

[TJ]

Have no idea.

[Dale Jr.]

Awesome. Travis, how did you do?

[Eddie]

I didn't do one.

[Dale Jr.]

Man, this is turning out to be a great segment. Well, you didn't do a bracket. Denny Bros don't do brackets. He came up with this idea.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

I know, but if they're not gonna

[Eddie]

put his Name on it, then put

[Dale Jr.]

his name on it.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

It should be the Denny Hamlin bracket Challenge season.

[TJ]

Oh. Oh, my gosh.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, so. Good Lord.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

We're.

[Dale Jr.]

We're boycotting. Yeah. Year two. We're boycotting. We didn't boycott year one.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Boycotted last year, too.

[Dale Jr.]

Did you?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

No brackets for me.

[TJ]

If they put his name on. Are you doing it?

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, my God.

[Eddie]

We're focused on the regular season.

[Dale Jr.]

You're petty.

[Eddie]

Damn straight I am.

[Dale Jr.]

You gave me a hard time for blocking TJ on my phone. You said I was a little. I think that's a little. Wait. What you're doing is pretty.

[TJ]

You won't do a bracket because Denny's name's not on it.

[Eddie]

You blocked TJ over a video game?

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

You won't do a bracket because Denny's name's not.

[Dale Jr.]

We needed a break.

[Eddie]

Mine is not the same.

[Dale Jr.]

It.

[Eddie]

I didn't fill out an NCAA bracket last year either.

[TJ]

Well, you just. It's the fact that you say you won't do it because then he's not on. No, you're not. You're not joking. Eddie's name was on that. You'd be doing it.

[Dale Jr.]

You didn't fill out a NCAA bracket.

[Eddie]

No.

[Dale Jr.]

What the hell?

[TJ]

Denny's name's on.

[Dale Jr.]

Bet on the games and stuff.

[Eddie]

Yeah, betting is that. I'll bet on it. So, like, I'm not gonna do a bracket.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, all right, look, weirdo. Well, me and TJ will have this conversation.

[Eddie]

I mean, I can talk about them.

[Dale Jr.]

No, you can't. You're not allowed.

[TJ]

I feel like I did pretty well. A couple upsets, but I gotta find

[Dale Jr.]

how to get to mine. This is the most confusing. You know, the thing about the bracket on NASCAR's app is. How did you print this?

[Eddie]

I forget. Because the printable bracket on their website is not printable.

[Dale Jr.]

It isn't.

[Eddie]

It puts it into, like, eight pages.

[Dale Jr.]

That's right.

[Eddie]

Get your together, nascar.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I want this.

[Eddie]

That's why I didn't fill out a bracket.

[Dale Jr.]

There you go. That'd be a reason. I got my bracket in here. Oh, here it is. Yeah, I went to try to, like, print my bracket or screenshot it or, you know, anything. Right. I wanted to screenshot it in full to tweet it out.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Can't do it now. You can look at it in blocks or chunks.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Cause I saw you screenshotted your winner.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Because you're a Denny bro. For the next four weeks, I pulled

[Dale Jr.]

for Denny, and he. He got the job Done against Ty Dillon. Ty Dillon. And it was touch and go there for a while. Ty had this engine issue, misfiring bull going on. They got it fixed. He's back running again. Denny's doing really well. Denny gets spun and then up his splitter. And luckily, though, over the course of the long run, his car handled well enough.

[Eddie]

What? No, it's.

[Dale Jr.]

I think Ty started having some more trouble.

[Eddie]

Ty had issues is really what it came down to. But, I mean, Denny was beating him the entire race until this.

[TJ]

I mean, early too. Just like terrible day for Tyler.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, like so.

[Eddie]

No, we're talking about Ty.

[TJ]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

So I had Tyler Reddick over Bowman. Bowman upsets there for me, so that up my bracket a little bit. Bowman, good job.

[Eddie]

There can't be that many people that had Bowman.

[TJ]

I had Redick.

[Dale Jr.]

Let's not. Let's not on Bowman. I mean, he's a pretty solid road course racer.

[Eddie]

Yeah. But I mean, who picked him, though? I know probably not many.

[Dale Jr.]

The next person that I didn't have following going through was. So I got Reddick going all the way to Atlanta. So that's going to hurt me a little bit, but I got Josevar beaten. Reddick in Atlanta. Oh, yeah. The other person that, in the first round that screwed me over was Suarez. I know I had Suarez over Gillen.

[TJ]

I did, too.

[Dale Jr.]

And Gillen, boy, what a day he had.

[TJ]

He did.

[Dale Jr.]

He got some boxing matches out there. Well, he got 11.

[TJ]

He got.

[Dale Jr.]

I loved it.

[TJ]

He was throwing them too. Someone.

[Dale Jr.]

How about it?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

He.

[Dale Jr.]

He. Bubba runs into him. He, you know, Bubba just got loose down in 11 and cleaned him out. Just a mistake on Bubba's part and. But it's a bad deal. You're pissed off. You go back in the next corner and you send Bubba in the dirt.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Fine.

[Dale Jr.]

Bubba recovers. But then the next corner, he goes down and knocks Riley Hearst out of the racetrack. I was like. We were laughing our ass off in the booth. That was hilarious. I was waiting some to pop off, you know, in the race. And there it started.

[TJ]

Todd heard you.

[Dale Jr.]

And then later in the race, Herp spun Todd out, down in 11. So, yeah, that doesn't end till the, you know, once you're. Once you and a guy are kind of going at it, Gloves are off at that racetrack because it's. It's a. You know, when you're running mid pack and you're struggling all day, it's not a fun.

[TJ]

Something about Sonoma.

[Dale Jr.]

It's not a fun track.

[TJ]

Something about Sonoma makes it where guys can get back to you only. You know what I mean?

[Dale Jr.]

Like, only the top five guys are having fun.

[TJ]

The rest of us.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Rest of you aren't.

[TJ]

Yeah. When you're in the soup, it's not, it's. But Sonoma, like if you get. I feel like Sonoma, if somebody roughs you up, you can get back to him somehow.

[Dale Jr.]

I up here on Briscoe vs Almondinger. I picked Almondinger I that up so bad because Briscoe was great last year and I picked him to be one to watch. I picked him to kind of be a guy that could challenge for the win in my bracket. I didn't pick him. I don't know what the hell I was thinking there.

[Eddie]

This next matchup though is going to be great. One him for Skibbs.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. I have Ty Gibbs moving through. Honestly, going into Chicago. I have Gibbs versus Elliot at Atlanta. I got everything else right there. On that side of the bracket. On the right side of the bracket.

[Eddie]

It's very chalky.

[Dale Jr.]

I had two.

[TJ]

This is tough side over here.

[Dale Jr.]

I had two cups. Eric Jones over Logano. I had Logano going through Joey.

[Eddie]

Just can't get anything going right now.

[TJ]

Jones is fast right now too.

[Dale Jr.]

And then I didn't think C. Bell would beat Chastain. I don't know what I was thinking there either.

[Eddie]

What a performance he had on Sunday with that wrist. I mean, really fast it was.

[TJ]

He wasn't getting out.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, it was impressive. So there's my bracket. I've got 110 points. I've got remaining 620. I think that's pretty decent. So my bracket's still alive. I got Denny going all the way to win the million bucks. Don't let us down, Denny. I've got Denny versus Josevar. I feel like the bracket is something. Jose var even though he steps up he step. So have you noticed, like the last two weeks he. He's popped off and gotten, you know, qualified really well. And it seems like the more that gets talked and the more sort of barbs, you know, trading of, you know, comments on social media with other drivers and whatnot, the more he's meddling in all these little disputes and whatever you want to call them, the more he gets up for qualifying in race weekends.

[Eddie]

Yeah, he thrives in chaos.

[Dale Jr.]

I think he thrives.

[TJ]

He does.

[Dale Jr.]

I think he. I think he thrives or he's.

[TJ]

Something about him gives him an edge when he's bored.

[Dale Jr.]

You better be. You kind of better be worried if you're spire right.

[Eddie]

You think about like he's not married, doesn't have kids. So he's not. Like he doesn't have these responsibilities at all these other jobs.

[Dale Jr.]

I think he looks at this bracket and he's like, hey, this is cool. We'll try to.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

He's.

[Dale Jr.]

He's just going to, you know, he's going to be like, I'm going to make sure I'm going to beat the guy I'm supposed to beat every week, this bracket. He'll find a way to. He'll find a way to almost do

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

it or do it.

[TJ]

The way it's lining up is. It's like he could do it. Like it's lining up really good for him here.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I think it could, it could happen. But I think Danny takes it. That'd be cool. Danny versus host of our in the final.

[TJ]

Maybe they'll name it after him.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Should.

[Dale Jr.]

If Denny wins it, maybe they'll name it.

[TJ]

Maybe they'll name it.

[Dale Jr.]

Look, I'm, I agree to, to Travis's point, the idea of the bracket was absolutely 100,000%. Denny Hamlin's.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Came up with this. We helped him implement it here at Dirty Mo Media and then NASCAR took it. Turn it into something real. Because when we did it with Denny, there was no money involved.

[TJ]

Yeah. It was something aside.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. But NASCAR's like, hey, this is a cool idea. We'll put a million dollars toward it. We had coincidentally the two new partners coming in with TNT and Amazon. And so it was like what NASCAR needs to give. So if you got a TNT or an Amazon coming in or any new partner, they want a big shiny thing to sell. Right. And so it might be San Diego street course. Right. Or it might be Chicago street course or whatever. Right. And if NASCAR can convince the new partner that, man, this is a cool thing, fans are going to love it. We're going to give you this. We're going to put this in your five race block. They're. They're more than likely to write a big check. So this was one of the shiny things that NASCAR brought into the series, into the sport when they were bringing in these two new partners. And so NASCAR took it. It's definitely Denny's idea. There should be some recognition.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And I'm glad that they tweaked last year. They tweaked it and the seatings was all messed up. They went back to what our idea was and it makes it better and easier for fans to digest.

[Dale Jr.]

They wanted to also have those races for am. They wanted that there was A little shiny thing for Amazon. Right. During their five races last year. And it just didn't work. It was forced and it, yeah, didn't make sense. It was hard to follow. This is super simple. Amazon didn't really care about talking about how their races developed, the seating. It wasn't fun for us as broadcasters to try to force it into the show because it wasn't really. It didn't matter. And we talk about it at tnt and we're like, hey, first round, we're going to tell everybody about it. We're going to try to tell everybody to fill out a bracket. We're going to talk about it on the front end of the show and say, everybody, come on, let's all do this together. Because you don't want to be that guy that gets around in. Didn't fill out a bracket like Travis, and everybody's talking about it, and you're like, man, that is kind of fun. I wish I would have done it. You know, that happens with the college, you know, basketball bracket all the time. I forget or something does.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

You know, you get around in. You're like, I should have done it. I wish I would have done it.

[TJ]

Yeah, you're mad if you don't get in.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. So we. We talk about it on the front. We won't. We won't talk a ton of bracket once, you know, once the race starts. We really didn't go bracket heavy, and we didn't really cover it a ton after the race. And we might, you know, each week it kind of will ramp up. Right.

[Eddie]

Well, you guys did it perfectly. It was like when Denny fell back after the wreck, it's like, okay, here's an update on the bracket. Or like Reddick is like, so when it presents itself. But you're not forcing it.

[Dale Jr.]

As we go, though, it'll be more important to talk about, obviously, with the final race between just two drivers, we'll. We'll cover it pretty good.

[TJ]

The matchups were good. Yeah, I thought so.

[Dale Jr.]

Anyway, we had a pretty solid race in Sandy in Sonoma. I was entertained. Could it have been more exciting as far as the product on the racetrack? Absolutely. But I was happy with it, especially with the Gillen stuff going on.

[TJ]

Do you think coming from San Diego, though, because we kind of get spoiled at street courses like that because those are really challenging, and I don't know that.

[Dale Jr.]

I think that there's a target on. I think there's like a. Everybody's watching the road courses going, all right, man, is we making this better? Because road courses have sucked for a while. And so I think everybody's kind of skeptical going into the Sonomas in the Watkins Glens. I am. At least I'm skeptical going into them going, we're going to get a boring race. But I thought the race was entertaining. There was a bunch of goofball going on in the middle of the pack. That was hilarious. And then we had a really badass race to the end. SVG's car, SVG running out of race car running out of tire was real. The 19 being faster, running him down, that was a real thing. There's people, I mean, I'm seeing on my social media, we're driving to the airport after the race, after we get done with post race, and they're going, man, y' all hyped that up. It wasn't that big of a deal. Y' all make that. You know, y' all hype it up and there's nothing really going on. I'm like, nah, he was really catching him. SVG really was at a race car, he even says so at, you know, he gets out of the car. And Briscoe believes it, too, because he's liking all my. On social media.

[Eddie]

If he doesn't miss that one turn, he gets there.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. And he's absolutely going to put the bumper to him and turn 11. Now he's not going to. I don't think he spins him out, but I think he knocks him up track a little bit, or at least makes a. You know, makes a shot happen, you know, gives him an opportunity to race side by side off the corner. But I was. I was in the booth, and, man, that was a lot of fun watching those last three or four laps, trying to see him. You know, we had to. We had to watch him. So Sonoma's about two corners, seven and 11, that's your passing zones. Sometimes you might see some guys cross over 3, 3B and pass down into 4. But it's just rare.

[TJ]

It's messy.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. So 7 and 11 is your passing zones. And so if you're wanting to pass a car and you. If you're watching two cars go around the track and the faster one is behind and you know he's going to pass him. You're. You got to watch him set that pass up and try to run the course well enough to be in position for those two places to pass. Right. So you're waiting. There's this anticipation building, and that's what you're doing with the. With the. With the end of the race there, Briscoe, every time you know, they're running the lap, you're sitting there thinking, I, Briscoe, come on, hang in there. I mean, I'm. I'm pulling for a finish, right? I'm not pulling a good race, I'm not pulling for Briscoe, but I'm pulling for something, right? And I'm like, is he gonna. Is. You know, when they go through the S's, right? SVG super good there. Can Briscoe stay close enough, you know, to be able to charge into 11 and have something happen? You know, same thing on the other side of the track, up the hill through 1, 2, 3, 4. Can he stay close enough to have something happen in 7? Because where Briscoe was good was the braking zones of 7 and 11. SVG was just a little better everywhere else. And so SVG would, like, gain a half a car length back, and then Briscoe would get a car length in the next breaking zone, right? So it was like. It was like one step forward, two or two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back. Lap after lap after lap. It was amazing because Briscoe had to be perfect. He wasn't. He made that mistake into one. That was the difference. And he said, so after the race, man, I up. If I hadn't that up, I would have probably had a shot. I was so entertained. Really, really solid race.

[TJ]

That's a solid run for Briscoe.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, he did the same thing last year at Sonoma. It was a solid run. Tj. Pretty interesting to see Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell do what they did on strategy. That's the fun part, I think, about road course racing. I used to hate this. I used to. I mean, you know, I'm not saying I'm a. I'm. I'm a full believer in stages and all of that, but for a road course race, stages are much more entertaining than not. The race begins, and the entire debate in our TV compound was, what will SVG do? SVG has up San Diego, right? Not his doing, but he came out of there with no points. It was supposed to be a big points day for him. So he's going to go into Sonoma and how greedy will he get? Is he going to try to win, sweep the stages and the race? Could he do it? Could he possibly do it? He's starting six. I don't think it gives him a shot to do it. If he qualifies on the pole and can sprint out to a big lead, he controls it. Yep. But he could. But starting sixth, he wasn't able to drive through the field quickly enough to really make that happen, but he still was able to score points in the stages. You know, once he cycled through pit stops and so forth, he ends up seventh in both stages. So that. That, to me, was interesting to wait and see what happened there. What I didn't anticipate was Ty Gibbs staying out and winning both stages because you, you know, you make it almost impossible to win the race. If you don't flip a stage at

[TJ]

some point, you're burying yourself.

[Dale Jr.]

You can't win. Yeah.

[Eddie]

Especially if you're racing in someone like Shane.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. So I know that Ty Gibbs was really disappointed at the strategy. At the end of the day, he sat there and said, you know, we had a fast enough car, I think, to win the race, and he. He would have loved to have won it, and I get that. And he may have been right about the speed they had. Yeah, they might. He might. He might have been able to beat.

[Eddie]

I love his confidence, Shane. But from a team aspect, very rarely does someone go, well, toe to toe with Shane and get him. So go get your points.

[Dale Jr.]

Look, he. He. He was sitting right on top of Larson and Elliott in points coming into this race. He leaves Sonoma about 18 points clear of Larson. Now in fourth place. Ty Gibbs, fourth place. Fourth place. That's awesome.

[TJ]

So that is good.

[Dale Jr.]

It is. He has 28 points to Blaney. Blaney is. Blaney's beatable.

[Eddie]

Laney, he's.

[Dale Jr.]

I'm sorry, 26. Blaney is beatable. I was looking at my table there. Blaney is a badass race car driver. This dude is. Is. Is. Is wheelman. Yeah. But I think Ty Gibbs. Can Ty Gibbs catch Blaney, that's kind of one thing I'm going to be paying attention to. But, boy, if you can put yourself in the top three, every spot that you gain for the Chase is massive. Your. Your odds of winning the championship go up by chunks with each spot you gain. And so Ty Gibbs will want to try to pass Blaney. There's room to do that in the next several weeks. I think Blaney has even said, hey, I'm not even looking at the two guys in front of me. I'm just trying to keep third. And that's a real thing for Ryan Blaney, so I'll be paying a lot of attention to that. Christopher Bell was able to, you know, do basically the same thing for. For stage points. I think he finished Second in stage two, ended up having a really good result, got a bunch of points when it was all said and done. 50 total of the day on the day, and he needed that as well. He's back in 10th right now. I think he jumped a couple of spots. He improved two positions, I believe, from 12th to 10th, and he is 12 backs from Suarez, and Suarez is 25 back to Hosavar, who is nine back to Buscher. And so all of. If I'm Christopher Bell, I'm like, I'm running them down.

[Eddie]

It's going to be entertaining the next

[Dale Jr.]

several weeks for Christopher Bell to have a real shot at trying to race for the championship is to. Is to go out there and try to try to take seventh, be on that fringe. We talk about it all the time, and I'm sorry, you have to hear it over and over, but the likelihood of the championship, the champion driver for this year coming out of the top six in the Chase is 85%. So if you're Christopher Bell, I don't think you can get Chase or Kyle Larson, I don't think you can get yourself into the top six. But you can be seventh, you know, and you can be that guy that can sit there and maybe upset that 85%.

[TJ]

So he's gonna have to.

[Dale Jr.]

He'll have to hustle.

[TJ]

He's gonna. That's what this point system is built for. Those.

[Dale Jr.]

Is that so. Ty Gibbs trying to catch Blaney or even Larson or Chase Elliott trying to flip that as well and trying to get up in there. That top six is going to churn a little bit, but outside of. I think Brisk or busher is in seventh right now. He's 36 behind Chase. I don't know if he can get up there and take a spot. So I think the top six are going to battle, and then Bush are back through. You know, I don't know. 12th is a battle, and then you got a lot of guys right there on the cut line. SVG is going to be a lot of fun. He's sitting in 14th in the points. Can he. Can he keep that? Can he. Can he just make the Chase? Right. That's the. That's the big debate when. After San Diego, his probability on the predictor to make the chase went from 67% to 20. After Sonoma, we'll ask Russell if we think that's. That's improved. Ryan priest is 15th, man. It's hard to say whether he can do it. Austin Cindrick sitting right on top of the cut line. At 16th, Erik Jones, Brad Kislowski, A.J. almendinger, Logano.

[Eddie]

Do you think SVG can make it?

[Dale Jr.]

I. Who. Who? Let's. Let's try to identify a threat.

[Eddie]

Erik Jones.

[Dale Jr.]

Erik Jones. Okay, well, Legacy put a hell of a run together over the last several weeks. Then we got to the road courses. If the road course, you know, San Diego, Sonoma combo didn't upset their momentum, there's a threat there. Erik Jones can go up there and take a spot from svg. Who else outside of that? I don't know if Brad can do it. Too inconsistent. Yeah, we've been inconsistent, aj. I just don't think he can do it. I think the resources that Chevrolet has and they're the. They've.

[Eddie]

They basically have no resources. They have.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, they can. They have some, but very little.

[Eddie]

The fact that he's out driving Joey Logano right now.

[Dale Jr.]

I agree. Well, yeah, AJ has talked about the lack of sim time, the lack of resources they have. Since they're a Dodge team, Chevrolet's taken back or pulled back some, if not all of the. Of the support. And so that's going to be difficult and I think it'll get tougher. If Chevrolet wanted to make it tougher,

[Eddie]

do you think Ross could go on a run if Chevy's trying to.

[Dale Jr.]

If they're starting to back in 20 seconds. I don't know if I think, you know, I know it's tight. You look at it between all these guys, it's like 1.5 points, 13 points all the way up to Austin Cindrick. I mean, there's not a lot of points between 16th and. And Ross.

[TJ]

You know, most of the. In this whole group here is a lot of inconsistency, though. You know what I mean? Like, you could.

[Dale Jr.]

It's almost 40 points or so to Ross out of. That's a lot, man. I don't think he can make it. I don't think he can do it. Shane's got a couple guys. I think, you know, Eric Jones would be a threat, but I don't, you know.

[TJ]

Yeah, I've got a. Still has to. Indy is going to be a big one.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, we'll see. I mean, SVG's gotten a little better on the. On the ovals, and that might be just enough to get it done.

[TJ]

But, like, if you go back, though, like, after. After what, the third or fourth race of the season, we got away from Cota, like, kind of faded pretty hard.

[Dale Jr.]

He did, but he ran great at Charlotte. He ran great at Nashville. Remember him Getting it up there and duking it out with the leaders at Nashville.

[TJ]

Yeah, man. Yeah. I mean I. I just don't know what to expect.

[Dale Jr.]

I don't either. And that's great.

[TJ]

Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, it is good. It's fun to talk about.

[Dale Jr.]

Couple of things from this past weekend that surprised me. The 45 steering issues. Just surprised of, you know. I know those things are going to happen, but that's the one thing that worries me with Tyler Redick is the gremlins, the brake issues, the possible, you know, rack and pin, you know, steering issue. That's the one thing that kind of concerns me. I don't. You don't really see that as much out of the Gibbs. There's a little more reliability, I suppose. I know that Denny's faster right now, just a little bit faster than. Than Ty. Still. Still looking at both of those guys as probably the championship favorites. Denny more so than. Than Tyler. But this weekend that I just. You ever, you ever watched a race and felt like you were seeing like an omen of the future, you know, and so that's kind of. That, that was like, man, you know, this field, if the Chase, if I, if I, if we, if we fail into the middle of the Chase, you know, I feel like this is what we're going to witness is like not something in. Something out of Ty's control.

[TJ]

Tyler Reddick, which happens to everybody at some point. Yeah, he just started the year so good. It was like when this happens, it's going to stand out.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Suarez, man, it surprised me how, how tough their day was. I know they had a tire issue early.

[TJ]

He did. Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

But it never really seemed to be get. You know, once they changed tires and got going, it didn't seem. I thought he run better.

[TJ]

Yeah, me too.

[Dale Jr.]

And he needed it because he's sitting there ninth in points right now and now he's a dog. He's going to run hard and he's going to get. He's going to finish better than he should in a lot of races because of his stubbornness, which is a compliment. But he's a driver that I've got my own. I think they overachieved him and host of our both overachieved to this point in the season sitting in eighth and ninth in points. And there's some real, real fast race cars right behind them in points like Christopher Bell, Chase, Briscoe, William Byron. Some guys that I feel like should start to heat up. So that'll be interesting to see if they can Maintain their positions in the top 10 in points. Going into the chase. Got a shout out Connor Zillich, first top 10 of the season. Connor run second on Saturday and the junior motorsports car and ended up with a solid result.

[TJ]

Yeah, he needed it.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Pretty good deal. He's. It's wild, man, how, you know, how kind of tough the sport can be on you and how it can beat you up and beat your confidence up and you just gotta, you know, you sit there and watch Corey Haim go out there and win and man, you know, win on a racetrack that you think you should be able to compete at and you get taken out of the race in a gigantic wreck. That was super fascinating. So I don't know, I good to see him get a good run. Hopefully he can start to build on some of that. Maybe the corner, you know, he's turning the corner a little bit. Those kind of weekends where you can, you can, you can kind of start to put together.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Put together some things. Hey, this is Dale Hart Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. Download gear, including the I'm will 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. All right, you guys, something big is going on at Arby's. And if you're ready to seriously upgrade how you do meat and cheese, you'll want to hear this. It's bold, it's craveable. It's meat and cheese done right. This is the new Arby's cheesesteaks and they're here and they're on the menu for good, which means you just found your new favorite. Arby's brought lunch to the shop last week. Carson was one of the first ones to dive into the new 100% Angus cheesesteak. And he said it might be his new favorite. The cheesesteak is a total upgrade compared to other boring meat and cheese out there. It's got this rich and melty Cooper cheese that's the real deal. Straight from Philadelphia. That's how you know it's good. The new amoroso's sesame seed bun gives you the perfect balance of crispy yet soft that really makes this cheesesteak elite for real. This will change how you think about getting lunch in the drive thru. Why settle for a run of the mill burger when there's Arby's cheesesteak right around the corner? This is an authentic, higher quality sandwich. Burgers wish they could be this good when you're craving Something that's just better. Arby's has your new Go to the new 100% Angus cheesesteak. Prices may vary. Third party marks of the property of their respective owners. Get your Arby's Angus Cheesesteaks delivered or at an Arby's near you today.

[Eddie]

When racing through life, staying informed helps you stay on track. And as a leader in the GLP1 space, Ozempic is making moves with the bold way forward the ozempic pill. Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit ozempic.com to view the medication guide. And before the next turn in your treatment journey, ask your doctor If Ozempic semaglutide tablets 4 and 9 milligrams are right for.

[Dale Jr.]

So that was on door bumper clear Chris Rice was here and said. He said that they have. Dodge is not committed to racing on Sundays yet for 2027. Yeah, for 2027. I feel like that. What if there's, you know, if there's. What is the likelihood and percentage of Dodge racing next year in Cup? I think it's really high.

[TJ]

I'm leaning more towards happening than not happening.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

But.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, per Jordan Bianchi, challenges remain for Dodge to be ready for 2027. They've made progress in key areas. Their body has already undergone initial wind tunnel testing. They have had a breakthrough in recent weeks in how it would produce engines.

[Eddie]

I think that's the biggest hold up too.

[TJ]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep. Their expected return to cup will not trigger NASCAR to increase the number of charters available from 36 to 40. The teams that have charters are guaranteed specific revenue streams along with the starting spot guaranteed in the, in, in the, in the field. Increasing charters would ensure the new manufacturer a presence in every race, including the Daytona 500, without taking any away from others. What is.

[TJ]

I don't get that they're saying like add charter so they're locked in.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, I mean if they're already on a car that has charters, they don't need charters.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

If they're with colleague, they don't.

[TJ]

Yeah, they don't need charters, but doesn't

[Eddie]

seem like they're gonna add. So just be calling moving.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. So I mean the, I think the thought process behind that is, is I know they made some, they made some concessions for them in the truck race right early in the season to be able to make sure they didn't get, you know, misqualifying and not get to run. I don't believe so this is what I think happens. I think that Dodge gets their car ready. I Think colleague goes into Daytona next year with Dodges. I think they will be probably the only Dodges. Maybe another team flips over, I don't know. But you know, I don't know who it might, who would it, who it might would be. It would probably be a similar team like, like Colic. It's not going to be one of the bigger teams. But I don't, yeah, I don't think that they grow the charters. I don't think that they introduce new charters to a, to a brand new team. The reason why is because, as it says in this article from Jordan, the teams are guaranteed a certain amount of revenue. And if you add charters, you dilute the revenue. And so by quite a bit for each team, they would sacrifice hundreds of thousands, if not a couple million dollars per year. If you introduced four new charters to the system and the new or the current owners probably wouldn't agree to that. And that's, I'm not really that surprised by that. And that's probably a good thing. I think that you want to have some open spots, right. Should the open car model actually become viable at some point, you want to still have that door open. If you, it should be right. If you go to 40 charters, you literally lock the door to the outside world and you're dependent on the current owners of those teams to field cars for the series. And I don't love that. I, you know, I've been vocal about the charter system. It's, you know, I, I, I like the system in, in the O'Reilly series where you can build a car, show up and race. You can still technically do that on the cup side, although the, the way the payouts work and everything, it's like you're guaranteed to lose money.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

They've almost built it into a model that would persuade you to not race an open car. And so they don't want people coming in and starting parking and just grabbing money out of the back of the field. Right. So they don't pay very well for the open cars. And I get it, I understand it. 30 they're thinking in their mind is if you're an owner of a charter, 36 is plenty. We got plenty of car. 36 is a good field.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Right.

[Dale Jr.]

I think Dodge comes back. I think they're ready next year. I think they race in the Daytona 500. They're just, I mean, this is the thing. Chris Wright, they're going to have an announcement. It'll be a big announcement. They'll have celebrities. Chris Rice isn't going to come on door bump clear and tell you, yeah, we're good. We're good. Dodge ready? That's not happening. As much as I'd love it to, it's not going to happen on doorboard clear.

[TJ]

No.

[Dale Jr.]

Is this news ready to go out?

[Eddie]

Yeah, it's already out.

[Dale Jr.]

When did it go out?

[Eddie]

About 35 minutes ago.

[Dale Jr.]

Really? Well. All right. We got a little late model stock news here for you. The cars tour. We just had a big meeting with the cars tour owners. Team owners?

[TJ]

Yes. Charters.

[Dale Jr.]

We're doing a charters. I'm just kidding. There's a lot to talk about with the cars Tour. We just had a meeting yesterday with all the owners. We did that in the off season. I thought it was great. We had some great conversations around some protocols and things. We're always trying to improve. But this past weekend we raced at south Boston. The triple crown of late model stock racing is going on. Triple crown at south Boston, Langley and then Martinsville.

[TJ]

Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

We have Kaden Cooppel racing in the triple crown along with Lee Pulliam. Lee struck, Lee wrecked out. Got wrecked out at Sobo. Gotten a crash that these other fellas started and Kaden finished sixth, I believe, after running pretty well throughout the day. So pretty solid. Lee will retool for Lee and go to Langley. We're going to run Lee and Kaden in all three races. So that's pretty, pretty cool. The driver that will be driving for junior motorsports in the cars tour race at wilkesboro was at the shop today getting his seat dialed in. That is Chase Elliott, the one and only. He will be racing our second junior motorsports late model stock in the cars tour race at wilkesboro. I think there's a few other cool names that'll be in that race as well, so you'll want to tune in. I think I'm going to be on the broadcast for float.

[Eddie]

Oh, let's go.

[Dale Jr.]

Yes, sir. So I'm going to be up in the booth helping call the race a little bit with the team. Just given a little here and there. Nothing too crazy. I'm not going to be leading it, leading the booth, but I'll be up there having some fun. Hopefully we have a great race. Hopefully it's pretty exciting and folks can

[TJ]

better be on it.

[Dale Jr.]

Kip, Danny. Danny's our race control does a great job. That race is July 17th, so mark your calendars. That's Wilkesboro weekend on Friday, July 17th. We'll be out there practicing and qualifying on the eight on the 16th the day before and then show up and race that evening. Hopefully the weather's good.

[Eddie]

It's a hell of a weekend to come out to see some races.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, man.

[TJ]

Yeah, it's going to be good.

[Dale Jr.]

First points race for. For Wilkesboro in 30, 40 years.

[TJ]

96 on the cup side.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

96 was the last one. So pretty awesome to have Wilkes. This is Wilkesboro. Getting the points race was. It's for me, the final.

[TJ]

The final validation.

[Dale Jr.]

Validation or the final leg final. All right. It's all the way back.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

It wasn't all the way back yet. All star race was cool, but for it to feel like, man. Yep. All right. We have completed the mission.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

The points race is the deal.

[TJ]

I'm looking forward to lap traffic and 450 laps. Lap traffic just.

[Dale Jr.]

Is it 450 in it or 350? They. They gave the race like 50 extra laps or something because it used to be The Holly Farms. 400. So the cup races like they extended at 50 laps. Yes. The Window World. 450.

[TJ]

Yep.

[Eddie]

450 laps.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

That's a long one, boy.

[TJ]

It is.

[Dale Jr.]

Buckle it. Yeah.

[TJ]

I just like the fact that there's going to be like left traffic. Like there's going to be things going on at the whole race like that you're going to be able to key in on and see being there is going to be great.

[Dale Jr.]

The coolest is when they repaved this racetrack. It took the groove down in one and two and ran and put it on the wall. And now. So you run the wall in one and two and then you run. Traditionally you run the lower bottom groove in three and four.

[TJ]

So they try to move up in three and four, but just. It's close.

[Dale Jr.]

It's close. It might be there.

[TJ]

They work that high entry into one up. Like you don't even. You don't even chop the corner anymore. It's like.

[Dale Jr.]

It's badass.

[TJ]

It is.

[Dale Jr.]

They do that in a late model stock, too. They run wide ass open down the hill. So the front straightaway is downhill and you're hauling ass off into the corner and you just roll right up into the wall. Right at the wall, turn and go.

[TJ]

And you got to turn down, too. So if a guy dives inside, takes that line away. Yeah. And it promotes maybe some contact time.

[Dale Jr.]

For sure.

[TJ]

So, yeah, I'm excited about.

[Dale Jr.]

It's a badass little racetrack.

[TJ]

It is.

[Dale Jr.]

So we'll have some fun with that. Yeah. Chase, Elliot.

[Eddie]

That'd be awesome.

[Dale Jr.]

I'm excited, too. He's excited. I text him this morning. He's like, hey, man, I'm wanting to get over to the shop, put. Get in my seat. We've been messing with the seat. He came over a couple weeks ago. I'm like, all right, man, they're there. They'll be there. Go check it out. I'm like, I'm. Hey, we're racing with Chase this weekend in Chicagoland and we're going to race again with him with the late model. He's. We're like, dude, this is fantastic.

[Eddie]

I was like, when you see the cup drivers go racing the car store just to, you know. I think it's just good for the sport.

[TJ]

Yeah. When's Danny running?

[Dale Jr.]

I don't know. Well, Denny needs. I told him this. Denny and 2311 need a late model team, a cars tour program.

[TJ]

Now I'm trying to talk Brad into it too, boy.

[Dale Jr.]

Because Corey Haim, he's going to run two or three more races with us.

[Eddie]

It'd be great if they had one.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. I told Corey, Corey, race with us at ace. And the race was over. And I went over to him. I was like, dude, thank you so much for running with us. He's like, no problem. I'm going to run some more. And then he won that race in San Diego. And I was like, hey, you're going to run? He's like, we were. I saw him after the race and I was like. We were drinking a beer at the bar and I was like, he's like, hey, man, where are you running next? And I told him. He's. He's like, I got a couple more. I'm excited. He's excited to race in the cars tour. And I was like, hey, I told you at ace thanks for running with us. But now that you're a cup winner, it's even a bigger deal to have you come run. It's totally different.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

So pretty fantastic. All right, everybody. It's time for this month's selection of the ultimate racing collector. Presented by Lionel Racing, the official diecast of NASCAR Lionel racing. They're your go to source for your racing diecast needs. Check out the latest pre orders@lionel racing.com. here we go. This month's winner is Ryan. Check it out, man. Big time host of our fan. Look at all these diecasts.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Wow.

[Dale Jr.]

And so you love this because you know that he's bought a lot of these recently.

[TJ]

Look at all them.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep, look at them. 88s.

[TJ]

A lot of 88s.

[Dale Jr.]

A lot of junior motorsport stuff there. Connor Zillich.

[TJ]

Wow.

[Dale Jr.]

There's some My die casts. I love it, man. We had some cool paint schemes, Indy cars.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

Look, there's no favoritism, even though you see a lot of Earnhardt stuff here.

[TJ]

He's very organized.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, dude. You got to put them in order. I just got a couple die casts the other day to put in my tower. And you got to move around.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

If you have them out of order, that's just, like, psychotic.

[Dale Jr.]

They got to be in a chronological.

[TJ]

This guy is. He's organized,

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

man.

[Dale Jr.]

Solid. Oh, 64.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

A good collection here. Race winners. Larson's. This guy pulls for a lot of great race car drivers. Oh, Blaney's.

[TJ]

He's got the Blaney's.

[Dale Jr.]

You know it. Look down there. I wonder if that's little Zane Smith action. I saw a Brad Kislowski.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

I think just a fan of just great race cars.

[TJ]

And he is. He's a fan of racing. Chromat.

[Dale Jr.]

Good Lord. Whoa. Chastain's Ross. My goodness. This guy, very selective. He is more.

[TJ]

Larson.

[Dale Jr.]

Just bring them. Just. If it comes out, he's ordering.

[Eddie]

It's like it keeps going.

[TJ]

There's a butterbean.

[Dale Jr.]

Damn.

[TJ]

Look at the 40 car. Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

A lot of 40s. It's pretty solid. Dang.

[TJ]

He's got AC. Holy cow.

[Dale Jr.]

Here we go. 23.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Let's go.

[TJ]

23.

[Dale Jr.]

11.

[TJ]

He is very organized.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, we got some late models. Look at those beautiful late model stock tools.

[TJ]

That's the most late model stock diecast I've seen.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, got some dirt. Oh, dirt.

[TJ]

No way.

[Dale Jr.]

Hell, yeah.

[TJ]

Sprint cars.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Some old school is pretty good, man.

[Dale Jr.]

Like, he's Larson. Old school Larson.

[TJ]

Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

We even got some damn arc.

[TJ]

Yeah. Trucks. More trucks.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, man.

[TJ]

Rfk.

[Dale Jr.]

A lot of variety.

[TJ]

Here he is. He's got everybody.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep. List goes on and on.

[TJ]

The 14 Daytona 500.

[Dale Jr.]

Good Lord. Ryan.

[TJ]

Ryan. Nice. Yeah.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yep.

[TJ]

Really good job.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, I appreciate that, Ryan. That was a great collection. I envy it, as does everybody in the room.

[TJ]

Yeah, that was nice.

[Dale Jr.]

If you want to be like Ryan and send in badass videos like that, YouTube might be selected for next month's selection of the Ultimate Racing Collector, presented by Lionel Racing, the official die cast of nascar. All right, SVG is called into the show. Svg, the big winner. Over the course of the weekend, swept the races in the O'Reilly series and the Cup Series at Sonoma. Badass job. Thanks for calling in today, man. How's it going?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah, pretty good. Still on a high. Finally caught back up on sleep, so I'm good now.

[Dale Jr.]

I was going to ask you if you got some rest yesterday. I think everybody slept all day yesterday. Yeah, Good lord. I did.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

The three hours kind of mucks you up on that time zone. But yeah, the 4:00am get home on Monday wasn't too fun, especially when it was just flying home, not out partying. So that wasn't good.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep. Shane, One time I ran third at Sonoma with Steve Latart and that was like a win for us. And so is that a fact? Hell yeah.

[TJ]

We ran third.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Oh yeah. We put tires on late, come out, we ran, we came from like 15th to third.

[TJ]

That had to be fun.

[Dale Jr.]

In the last run you were there.

[TJ]

I don't remember it, but it had to be fun.

[Dale Jr.]

We flew home from Sonoma and we all met at my house at 5, 6 in the morning and drank beer till like 2 in the afternoon. Yeah, I don't know if I could

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

do that these days.

[Dale Jr.]

Those, those were. Yeah, I have, yeah, we were a little bit younger back.

[TJ]

Yeah, I don't think it happened.

[Dale Jr.]

We were so happy to have run in the top five at that place. I ran my entire career at Sonoma and my best finish for a long, long time was like 11. I just couldn't figure the place out. It's a tough racetrack. It's one of your favorites and you seem to really have a understanding of how to get around there especially the most impressive part to me is your ability to get through the SF. I've always found, you know, 6, 7, 8 to be a very challenging turn. You know, putting those together and making that sort of section of the racetrack perform well is really, really tough. One of the things that I was, I want to kind of get in the weeds here. One of the things that helped me there was, and this is different cars, different tires, all that years ago. But I would go, you know, you use up a lot of curb on the right side trying to stay right to turn into turn seven. Right. The first left hander of the S's. And we would take our old cars really and climb all over those little curbs which is this little entrance into the road course or into the infield. And you kind of jump them. They're like little speed bumps. And then you use a little bit of curb in seven, there's a bit of a little straightaway between seven and eight and then you kind of pop up over eight, you know, and you spin the, spin the tires down the hill. I would just fly through there as fast as I could, but I was never on the gas at any point during that whole section. And Ron Fellows, who was a road course racer that used to run with us, he told me about how he popped throttle right in between the S's. In between 7 and 8. He'd just go just a little gas that would kind of drive the car snug and help tighten up the right hander going up over the hill, down into, down into nine. And I was kind of curious as to what, what do you think is important for you? That's, that's one of the most critical parts of the racetrack because if you don't get through there, good, you're defending an 11. And so what is important about the esses? What do you need to happen there and how do you use the curbs or what is, what is the things you're focusing on?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah, well, I think we had speed in the wrong places for tyre life and we were really fast through the S's. This is in the cup car and we just had so much front grip through there. But I would kill the tires and the slow speed. But yeah, if I, if I got on the throttle between 8 and 9 or 8 and 8A I think they call it, if I got on.

[TJ]

Sure, yeah, they do.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

It meant I went there too slowly. Like you should be flying through the left. But yeah, using that, I think there's like a cut through for the road course on the right there.

[Dale Jr.]

That's right.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Curbs are so you can kind of run them and open up the left. But it's pretty risky in the cup car. The O'Reilly car went ride over it like a Cadillac. But the cup kind of bounces. It's hard to do. Yeah, I mean it's just flow there. It's so hard to. So hard to take speed. But that's where you can take the most out of the tyres as well. So it's real, real compromise.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. What was, you talked about the slow corners. What was it about the, you know, turn 11, turn 4 7. Those corners that were beating up the tires. Was it just rear drive?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

I mean it's just so hot. The surface there is. It's degraded a little bit, but it's so dark. It's very black tarmac. And it just, you know, when it gets the sun beat on it, it just gets slick and I think, yeah, it's just so hot and the massive traction zones and you just, you just slip in the whole time. And that's where the Gibbs cars were unreal. They had really good straight drive, but we had better braking and turning so it kind of was a bit of a battle, but I would definitely, definitely have swapped some of that for some rare grip like they had.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Do you like tracks like that? You know what I mean? Like, they get real slick like that. Is that fun for, you know, for you?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

I mean, it's fun going flat out the whole time as well, but, yeah, the management's fun when you're decent at it, too. Like when you can see it. Yeah, yeah, it makes the last half of the stint fun, that's for sure. When you see other.

[TJ]

Oh, yeah, if you. Yeah, it's a big difference in speed if you do it right.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's really like if you can take it out of the tyre on restarts to gain a couple of spots and. But, yeah, you certainly pay for it later.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, you've told us it, you know, during San Diego weekend, that the, you know, the Cup Series competition was tougher than we all were giving them credit for. And I think Briscoe proved that out on Sunday and really made you sweat it. You know, he missed a corner in turn one and two, but if he hadn't done that, I'm not sure what would have ended up going on on the last lap. You know, when you're racing,

[Eddie]

when you're

[Dale Jr.]

racing with him, are you really paying much attention to what he's doing? Are you trying to learn some of the. Really learning anything from watching him as much as you're trying to pay attention

[Eddie]

to what you're doing?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

No, no, not really, because he was. He was behind me the whole day, but I spoke to him in. In the driver's meeting. Now we sit in qualifying order, you know, so you kind of sit who you're starting around. And he said he was really happy with his car. And I was a bit worried about that. Yeah, I could see him all day, you know, and I was kind of. Kind of interested why the 54 flipped the stages. I guess they. They ended up with a massive point stay, but, you know, they would have a real problem if they didn't. But, yeah, I saw the 19 all day in my mirror and it was getting closer all day as well.

[Dale Jr.]

For sure. Yeah, we were kind of wondering about the 54. Ty Gibbs got out of his car at the end of the day and said he thought he had enough pace to. To bring the battle to you. And he may have been a little better than the 19, but they did choose a unique route considering where they were in the. In the championship. That may be the right play when it's all said and done. You know, he got a. He had like a 54 point day and ends up, you know, kind of separating himself a little bit from some guys around that fourth position in points. You're now 14th in points. I guess you're feeling a little bit better after, After Sonoma. Considering what happened in San Diego, you probably haven't had much time to really reflect on it, but, you know, can you forget about San Diego, Let that go, not worry about it, focus forward, go to Chicago land with confidence that you absolutely can make the chase. There's going to be. And don't get pissed off about that. There's going to be debate whether you can do it or not. That's what's fun about sports. There'll be a lot of people pulling for you and looking at you as kind of an underdog to be able to score your way into the chase. You don't feel that way about yourself, but that's the way you're going to be positioned. It's like there'll be this debate. Can he do it? We'll talk about it Sunday. We'll talk about it next week. How do you guys feel?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

I mean, that's horns format certainly made it exciting. Yeah, our mindset definitely changes now. We're back into points accumulation mode and just trying to get as many as we can every week. And I need to not get involved in the stupid stuff like I did at Pocono and wherever else we did like every week. I got to maximize my position and you know, that's probably going to be 10th to 20th and you know, if we run good like we have in a couple of races, maybe we can be in that top 10. But yeah, 20th every week or 15th, we gotta, we gotta do that and gotta execute as well as we can and try and get ourselves in there, you know. But yeah, the hard part is the stage points. Qualifying is a weakness for me on the ovals and it's hard to get stage points when you start back there. So, yeah, I need to. Need to improve that and just be consistent. Not make mistakes, but, you know, not give anything up either. Keep being aggressive and try and stay up the front.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, the one thing that I, that I, that I find interesting now though, is I think you have improved a lot in your oval stuff. And there is. You're now sort of in a situation where there could. If you're, say you're at a sim session with your group or you're sitting in a meeting with your crew chief or your Team engineers. There's a bit of a line now in the sand where it's all right. I see that I could get better here. But also the program itself has some things that it can do better. I know that Trackhouse has made some gains this year, and we saw some of that at Nashville. We saw some of that out of you at Charlotte. But what else does the team, the organization, need to be better, to give you guys the car? Chastain. You and Chastain are running right on top of each other at the ovals at a lot of these races. Right? And so, you know now, hey, all right, you know, he's good. Chastain's great. The organization needs to gain a bit of performance.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Where.

[Dale Jr.]

Where do you guys. Where do you guys need to improve?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah, I mean, you sort of summed it up in your question. I mean, for me, I'm really referencing to Ross still, because I know he's capable of winning races when. When the cars and equipment's right. As a team, we're definitely on the up. I feel like we've had a lot more flashes in the last couple of months, so it's coming, but we really just need to keep working, keep trying stuff and. But, you know, we can't take too much risk on the 97 car, but, you know, the other two can, and hopefully they try some stuff and hit on some stuff and. But yeah, for us, we just need to keep improving and keep trying to get that average position up. That'll really help. But, yeah, I think we need to find some performance, too.

[TJ]

Yeah. So do you, like. How do you look at the ovals now?

[Russell (Analyst)]

Are you.

[TJ]

I know road courses. You got covered. Do you get more excited about them? Because you. Obviously, you're progressing, and we. You're obviously starting better and better at them. Like, they're becoming more fun. Are you enjoying them?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

I mean, they've always been fun, but, I mean, it's cool now, being more competitive and understanding and being able to adapt and change lanes and move around and start understanding how to do that. Whereas I'd be welded to one line before, now I can go top to bottom and try and understand how to make speed and multiple lines, which is. That's been a big improvement there. But I need to, you know, it's all about trying to find clean air and tracks is. It's fun learning how to do that. And I think I'm getting better at it. But still, you know, I'll make a wrong choice and follow someone in on their. On their bumper and Just plow up the track.

[TJ]

Yeah, you're definitely becoming more versatile as a driver, you know, especially like the Nashville. You've had some really strong runs, so it's got to be fun to be in that position.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah. And then as soon as you get up there with those good guys, it's even. It's like on the road courses, too. The racing's just better, too. They're not as much in a hurry and they're not dog eat dog. And it's the racing good up front, but you got to get up there.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Some of the. The racing in the back half of the field is insane. Like, it's crazy.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

30th in any other series.

[Dale Jr.]

Do you know much about Chicagoland? Have you done much sim in that track? What's your expectations this weekend?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah, so I'll be on. On sim later. Haven't done too much. I've seen some of the videos from the tire test and Larson's on board. It looks crazy. That bump at 3 and 4, he kind of just.

[TJ]

Oh, yeah.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Before he hits it. To not hit it with any door. And it looks. It looks really, really tough. But yeah, all the testing footage was on the bottom, just running the line. But every race I watch on YouTube tracks. So I'm sure, I'm sure once we, Once we start racing and.

[Dale Jr.]

Absolutely, yeah, I'm, I'm excited for this weekend. It's a badass racetrack. And there's a. Yeah, there's a bump. The bump you're talking about in three and four. We. We'll tell fans about that all weekend long. It's nasty. Really, really bad bump. And then driving down the front straightaway off into turn one. It's almost like you drive off a set of stairs. There's a. There's a. It's not a. It's not a bump. It's more of a jump. So, yeah, getting into turn one, there's like a drop off almost where the car just kind of drops, you know, drives off about a set of three stairs.

[TJ]

Yeah, you've always ran good there too, so.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I loved all the tracks where you could get up against the fence. That was my fun. I enjoyed those.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah. Cool.

[Dale Jr.]

All right, bud. Well, appreciate you calling in, man. Good luck. We'll see you in Chicago. And hoping you can have a couple of. Couple of good weeks. Stream. Couple good weeks together. Keep that oval progression going forward.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

[Dale Jr.]

All right, you guys, something big is going on at Arby's. And if you're ready to seriously Upgrade how you do meat and cheese. You'll want to hear this. It's bold. It's craveable. It's meat and cheese done right. This is the new Arby's cheese steaks and they're here and they're on the menu for good. Which means you just found your new favorite. Arby's brought lunch to the shop last week. Carson was one of the first ones to dive into the new 100% Angus cheesesteak, and he said it might be his new favorite. The cheesesteak is a total upgrade compared to other boring meat and cheese out there. It's got this rich and melty Cooper cheese that's the real deal, straight from Philadelphia. That's how you know it's good. The new Amoroso's sesame seed bun gives you the perfect balance of crispy yet soft that really makes this cheesesteak elite for real. This will change how you think about getting lunch in the drive thru. Why settle for a run of the mill burger when there's Arby's cheesesteak right around the corner? This is an authentic, higher quality sandwich. Burgers wish they could be this good when you're craving something that's just better. Arby's has your new go to the new 100% Angus cheesesteak. Prices may vary. Third party marks on the property of their respective owners. Get your Arby's Angus cheesesteaks delivered or at an Arby's near you today. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Place your bets. Get your bets down, ladies and gentlemen. Get your bets. All right, everybody, it's time for dirty modo. This segment is brought to you by fanduel. We got Russell here calling in to talk to us. There's no lines out yet for this weekend's race in Chicagoland, but I've got one question for you. We just got done talking to SVG on the show. The predictor said that after San Diego, his chance to make the playoffs went from 67% to 20%. I was wondering if there was a new percentage considering the results from Sonoma.

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yeah, we're back up to 35%.

[Dale Jr.]

Ah, we're up to 35%. Very nice. That feels about right.

[TJ]

We are back to frozen Russ as well.

[Dale Jr.]

We're gonna sit on. We're gonna talk about that a lot. So I want you to keep that stat in the notes.

[Eddie]

Where does that sit with, like some of the other drivers around him though? Like an Erik Jones? What's his percentage like?

[Russell (Analyst)]

Erik Jones is 31%. It's all pretty even through there. The. The biggest one. Logano is the one that I don't totally agree with there. He. He's at 50%.

[Dale Jr.]

He ain't making.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Whoa.

[Russell (Analyst)]

I know. But. But if you look at the next. What do we have? 8 to go. If you look at the next 8 tracks, there's some decent tracks for Joey Logs.

[Dale Jr.]

Could you put that in the notes where we could get that percentage for everybody?

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yeah, you got it.

[Dale Jr.]

For everybody? Yeah, man. Give me the top 25.

[TJ]

Yeah, that and I want spider grass for every driver in that area.

[Dale Jr.]

We don't do spider graphs.

[TJ]

I like the spider grass.

[Dale Jr.]

I do, too, but it's hard to correlate that to. To the screen, to fans.

[Russell (Analyst)]

Dale's a snap guy.

[Dale Jr.]

They love percentages. You tell me a percentage, I get it right away.

[Eddie]

Dale, how are Russ's notes this year?

[TJ]

They.

[Eddie]

Are they good for you? Do we need any tweaks? Like, where are we at?

[Dale Jr.]

I like the notes a lot. Okay.

[Eddie]

Just making sure.

[TJ]

Just. Why y' all laughing?

[Dale Jr.]

I mean, I could tell you in detail.

[Eddie]

Well, in years past that it wasn't written out specifically how Dale wanted, so I just wanted to make sure that Russ are great.

[Dale Jr.]

Notes are good. This easier this year.

[Eddie]

Russell, what's the model say since we don't have lines out? What's your predictor? Safer.

[Russell (Analyst)]

It's exactly what you expect. Denny Hamlin, Larson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, William Byron.

[TJ]

Where's Bell?

[Russell (Analyst)]

So Bell is down. He's, like, 10th.

[TJ]

Really? What about Briscoe?

[Russell (Analyst)]

Briscoe I like a little better. He. He's right in there, too. He's right with him. It's there. That's a coin flipped. You know what. What hurts a lot of these guys is, you know, we still use some track information, so a lot of these guys haven't been there, so they get a little hurt on some of that.

[TJ]

Does that hurt them? You know, do you think it's going to hurt them in the race not being there before, like. Or is this, like, a whole new track?

[Russell (Analyst)]

I think it. It helps the guys that have been there, but I don't think it hurts them more than it helps them. Does that make sense?

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Russell (Analyst)]

So, like, anytime you go back to a place where you won, I don't think it matters that it's been six or seven years. It's, you know, you've won there.

[Eddie]

We've also got extended practice this time. How much is that gonna help, guys?

[TJ]

Oh, it's big. Anytime you have more practice, it brings the field closer. To me. At least I think so, anyway. And at the same time, as well. Right. Like when you're all practicing with the same track, like we talked about the whole deal before, where everyone's qualifying and practicing on different tracks.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. So I'll be. I'll be thankful for the extra practice to be able to really kind of handicap the field, understand who we think.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Might have a shot at it.

[TJ]

Get two runs, too, on tires, I believe. So you'll be able to see guys come in, put stickers on, and then

[Dale Jr.]

two sets of tires. Yeah.

[TJ]

Yeah. You'll be able to see more down the road. Who's going to be good.

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yeah. So I found that interesting that, like, the top three drivers from each manufacturer were the ones that did the tire test there. So you had Hamlin from Toyota, the best Chevy, and then Blaney from Ford.

[Eddie]

So you say Byron. Wasn't it Larson?

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yeah, it was Larson. Did I say Byron?

[TJ]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

That's okay. Hey, Sometimes we make mistakes. I've made a bunch of mistakes on this show today, so I like to do top tens. So let's figure out who we think is. Give me a guy that I would expect to make. Make, you know, get a top 10. That's going to get one this weekend.

[Russell (Analyst)]

This. This one's going to surprise you, but it's. It's Brad Keselowski.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Whoa.

[Dale Jr.]

Really?

[TJ]

I don't get him in a wreck.

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yep. It's all up to tj, but it's

[TJ]

going to be Brad avoidance.

[Dale Jr.]

This. This predictor definitely is leaning into the historical data,

[Russell (Analyst)]

but, like, his worst finish on a mile and a half in the last sevens been 15th.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[Russell (Analyst)]

So it's. It doesn't go back. But also, it doesn't hurt that he had nine straight top tens at Chicagoland just since we been there, so.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Decades ago.

[Eddie]

But that was a different car. I don't care.

[Russell (Analyst)]

It's still the same. Same track. Ish.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Tell Chase Elliot that on the road courses. So you don't like the Brad K1i.

[TJ]

Is there going to be a lot of fall off?

[Dale Jr.]

There's going to be a ton of fall off.

[TJ]

I was asking Russ what he's predicting.

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yes.

[TJ]

There's gonna be a lot of fallout. That definitely caters to a guy like Danny and Brad. Those guys that can. They just have a feel for that,

[Dale Jr.]

man. All right, Brad Keselowski. I. You know what? Brad did a damn good job this weekend managing his race.

[TJ]

Didn't run him in anything.

[Dale Jr.]

Dude, now, dude started last on the field. Everybody's like, holy, what the hell's happened to Brad? Because last year, boy, he's fell off, but he did a good job.

[TJ]

Yeah. We were actually doing decent at San Diego and we just got the caution at the wrong time and got caught up in other stuff. But

[Eddie]

what about Bell? If he has him 10th, I'm guessing Vegas is probably going to have him kind of around there too. Do you like putting him in a top 10 parlay?

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Who?

[Eddie]

Bell?

[TJ]

I do because I feel like he's since Michigan, he's kind of. They've put him back a little bit compared to where he normally is and I feel like he could pop back off.

[Dale Jr.]

And what's our good comparison to this racetrack in the. You know what, what is a good comparison? I mean, you know, it's not like Charlotte.

[TJ]

A little bit of Kansas maybe. Yeah, Kansas.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

But I don't know. Kansas doesn't have. I don't think Kansas has quite the amount of fall off. Right, Russ? I mean, it has some but like not like what we're maybe expecting this weekend.

[Russell (Analyst)]

No, I'd say it's has less than we're expecting this weekend for sure.

[Dale Jr.]

So.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

So you're wanting me to make a bet where I put Brad Keselowski in. In the. In a top 10 parlay.

[Russell (Analyst)]

I said that. That's what I would like to do.

[TJ]

Yes.

[Dale Jr.]

When we go to these, these type of racetracks, the Toyotas have been dominant this year.

[Russell (Analyst)]

You said a surprise. You said a surprise.

[Dale Jr.]

You're going to have. The top 10 is going to be riddled with Toyotas and some Chevy's. Brad's not even the best Ford.

[Russell (Analyst)]

He's gonna be good because of the fall off.

[Dale Jr.]

That's.

[Russell (Analyst)]

That's my answer.

[Dale Jr.]

All right. All right, I'll do brag his Alowski. Who else. You know who I think you know who might surprise at this racetrack, man. Erik Jones could do well. This is a real big reach. But I don't know why I feel like Suarez,

[Russell (Analyst)]

he's high on the predictor.

[Dale Jr.]

So he. Listen, Suarez, I've, I've watched this guy and he seems to do well on these older surfaces. You know, he just, he just does. And he wanted Charlotte.

[Russell (Analyst)]

I know it's a little bit of a weird thing.

[Dale Jr.]

A little bit of.

[TJ]

Yeah, that was a little bit of a stretch, but he was still fast.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

I feel like Suarez would be a good gamble now. I would not put. I would not put Suarez and Brad in the same bet. But you know, you just pick. You're going to Pick your one long shot and then you're going to add two automatics into the parlay.

[Eddie]

Yeah, not for a parlay, but what do you think about Shane's chances to have a good finish? He's going to qualify, he's going to start, go out later for qualifying. His going to have a good skills. Like what do we think that he can do this weekend?

[Dale Jr.]

Great question and great, great, great point about him going out later in qualifying. So he's got a good draw for qualifying. Not so they don't draw anymore, but that's what I like to call it.

[TJ]

Yeah, he's got a good qualifying.

[Russell (Analyst)]

He was really good the last mile and a half. We went to Charlotte.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. And Nashville.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Like, I think a top 15 for him could be doable. Absolutely. Obviously you can't bet that, but I think so.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, that's pretty good. What do you think, Russell? Anything else?

[Russell (Analyst)]

What do you think about Bowman? He won the last race there.

[Dale Jr.]

You like him coming off some decent momentum from Sonoma. What's Bowman?

[TJ]

I mean, Bowman's always good at Kansas too. Like Kansas is one of Alex's best tracks, I think.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And HMS is starting to find some stuff.

[TJ]

So I, I, Bowman, I really think could have a really good run this weekend. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, you know, I love that. I like. We like Bowman, we like Brad Keselowski, Suarez. I wouldn't be, you know, there's some good names. Jones is a great one that you brought up, tj.

[TJ]

I mean a super long shot to me could be John Hunter for top tens. Yeah, yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

I mean, sure, he's had to go out there and both those cars could run in the top 12.

[Eddie]

What do you think about legacy though, on a track like this? Denny was saying that these kind of tracks, they still haven't really nailed it

[Dale Jr.]

like where they Toyotas aren't quite the advantage. The Toyotas have maybe aren't quite as. It ain't quite as strong on the, on these abrasive races.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Especially for legacy.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, possible.

[TJ]

I do think the abrasive racetrack, racetracks bring the field closer together, don't you, Russ? Like, it definitely changes the raw speed of the car. Can kind of hurt at times. I guess.

[Russell (Analyst)]

Yes, but especially when you talk about legacy. Erik Jones has been great at Darlington and that's, you know, where we has the most fall off of anybody.

[Dale Jr.]

10, 4. All right, thanks, Russell. Hey, I'll see you at the racetrack this weekend, buddy. Appreciate it.

[TJ]

Great. Good job on the notes this year.

[Dale Jr.]

Good notes this year.

[TJ]

Great job.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Thanks.

[Dale Jr.]

The Dirty Modeau segments brought to you by FanDuel, the premier gaming destination in the United States. Hey, everybody. We're live here on the Dale Jr. Download for an Ask Jr segment. We've been doing our show. We had SVG call in. We did Dirty Modo. We talked about all kinds of fun stuff. We've been drinking our Red Bulls. I'm almost done with my sugar free red edition. Pretty good. This Ask Junior segments brought to you by Xfinity, of course. And Xfinity is waving the red flag on Internet price hikes, and they're raising the green flag for savings. You're going to get the speed and reliable WI fi that you need locked in at one price for five years. No surprises, no late yellows. Right to victory Lane. Xfinity. I am an Xfinity WI Fi customer. I have Xfinity WI fi at my house. And we lean on it. Well, we do. It works really good, though. You know that. You just don't know how spoiled you are till that don't work one day and you're like, damn. Nothing. We can't do nothing.

[TJ]

Seriously.

[Eddie]

You're like, I don't know how to survive.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

You're like, I don't even know.

[Eddie]

I'll go sleep next. Go to bed.

[TJ]

Yeah. Really, It's. And honestly. Yeah. Because that's tv most time, that's everything.

[Dale Jr.]

I know. It's connected to everything. You end up. You know, when you get service, you start connecting everything to it then.

[Eddie]

I can't even control my thermostat now. Like, it's everything.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. I'm getting ready to redo my. The electronics in my house. So the. The. I know. I got this. It is a big project. So this. This. All. This stuff is 2008, and all of it's been hit by lightning multiple times, and everything's been replaced and. And, you know, strung out and tied together and. And patchwork, and most of it's done by me. I'll go in there and try to fix something and break something else, but it's. It's a. It's a mess. I'm getting ready to read this summer. I'm ready to redo my house. And so I'm going to be going through all that stuff again, like, reconnecting everything back. Oh, it's gonna be. It'll be good when it's over with. I'm getting all new light switches. Oh, I've got a bunch.

[TJ]

Everything. Everything.

[Dale Jr.]

I got a lot. I got some light switches. Just don't Even work.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah,

[Dale Jr.]

I had. I had a. My faucet broke. Oh. Had to replace my faucet.

[TJ]

Is that on the network, too?

[Dale Jr.]

No, but I'm just saying my house is old.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

My dispos. This disposal unit, it needs to be repaired. Replaced in my kitchen.

[TJ]

Garbage disposal. Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep.

[Eddie]

Just one thing after another.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Right.

[Dale Jr.]

I was putting some food down in there the other day, and so, you know that little rubber thing that's in there? I pull that out and I'm looking down in there and it ain't doing nothing. I'm like, it's spinning. It's spinning, but it ain't. It ain't getting rid of the stuff.

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

I'm like, all right, this thing. This ain't working. Gotta fix it.

[TJ]

Do you have any, like, what. What don't you put down there? Do you, like. Is there. Like, where do you draw the line?

[Dale Jr.]

I put all the food down there.

[TJ]

Like, everything.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[TJ]

Everything but a bone.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

I don't put bones down there. Yeah, but, like, if it's food, it's supposed to go in there, right?

[Eddie]

Well, it depends on, like, the size of, like, if.

[Dale Jr.]

I mean, if it's thick and consistent. Can go in the trash can. Fine.

[Eddie]

Yeah, but.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, you know, normal. My garbage, disposable, common sense usage.

[Eddie]

I have, you know, live in an apartment. My garage disposal. I can't do like, a lot of stuff because it. The blade just doesn't really.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Work. And then I have to. I feel like I have to throw one of those cleaners down in it, like, once a week because.

[TJ]

You ever drop. Have you ever. Has either ever dropped or Nicole ever dropped something there and you got. Had to stick your hand down in there?

[Dale Jr.]

I've dropped a bunch of bottle caps down in there.

[Eddie]

Oh, no.

[Dale Jr.]

Did you stick your. Who hasn't had a bottle cap in their. In their dishwasher disposal?

[TJ]

Did you stick your hand there to get it?

[Dale Jr.]

I think I magnetized it out of there. Got a little magnet. Little stick magnet.

[TJ]

That's sketchy.

[Dale Jr.]

I magnetized it out of there. I don't know.

[TJ]

Yeah, something. Listen, magnet fishing.

[Eddie]

The worst is we have to take it apart. Yeah.

[TJ]

Oh, it's terrible. Yeah. Take that thing apart.

[Dale Jr.]

So. Hey, I brought some beer today. It's Donna. Donna's pickle Beer. They don't pay us nothing. I don't have a deal with them. But I like this stuff. I drink it every now and then. Donna's Pickle Beer. We're going to put some of this in the Back of the Tahoe that you can win on when Dale Junior's ride. If you go to the website at the Dale Junior foundation, when Dale Junior's ride, you can buy a raffle and win the Tahoe. And in the back of the Tahoe is a bunch of cool stuff. Of stuff. Lots of stuff, including a little pickle beer. Also in the back will be a bunch of the world's best beef jerky from Jerky Boys.

[Eddie]

I've went and bought the little speaker that you put in there. I've got one myself already.

[Dale Jr.]

The tiny speaker. Yeah, yeah. There's multiple speakers. The tiniest speaker that I could possibly find. It's perfect for traveling. It is. So it's this tiny tiny speaker. It weighs nothing. And I used it on my road bike because you don't want to put any weight on your road bike. The damn thing needs to be as light as possible because you're pedaling it. Right. And so I found the smallest Bluetooth speaker to put it right there so I could hear music while we're riding. And I ended up buying a bunch of them and giving them to friends. So I put one of them in the back of the car. Yeah, but there's. That's some of the fun stuff that we've been having fun with today.

[TJ]

You still have your road bike and

[Dale Jr.]

I've got this box.

[TJ]

Oh, the box of.

[Dale Jr.]

I've got a box of tiny Jesus. Jesus's. Have you ever seen these guys? I mean, must be thousands of them in here.

[TJ]

This was read the count when you ordered them.

[Dale Jr.]

Well, you'll have to listen to the rest of the show to figure out why I bought those.

[TJ]

Yes.

[Dale Jr.]

And what we're. What, what, what that's all about. But anyhow, I hope everybody's brackets doing good. If you didn't fill out a bracket, you're late. Too late. But anyways. Yeah. Let's just get some questions.

[Eddie]

Well, first question is a topic we didn't get into. Who's to blame for Denny being wrecked?

[TJ]

Denny shouldn't have been there, man.

[Dale Jr.]

Damn, tj.

[TJ]

I'm just kidding.

[Dale Jr.]

Now that I've seen it, I think it's just road course racing.

[TJ]

There's like four things that happened.

[Dale Jr.]

It's just chain of events.

[TJ]

Yes.

[Dale Jr.]

Bumper cars. Bang, bang, bang. So Brad gets pushed. The 48 is pushing Brad. Right. It's what you do.

[TJ]

You know these cars. That's what you do.

[Dale Jr.]

You get in the braking zone, you get against a guy's bumper and you just kind of shoving him into the corner.

[TJ]

He's not trying to move us or anything. That's just what you do into the corners there then.

[Dale Jr.]

Absolutely. He's not trying to wreck Brad, but he's just kind of shoving him into the corner. And he's only doing that to protect himself because he may be getting hit from behind too. And he doesn't want. What you don't want in these cars that I've learned from the drivers is to be hit in the back bumper and hit into the next car because it's like a. It's like a bam bam. It's like a bam bam thing with the headrest your head. It's really uncomfortable. And so they don't like to be. They. They want to be against the car in front of them. If they. If somebody runs in the back of them, it's not like a pop pop.

[TJ]

Yeah. So Alex into the back of Brad. Brad hits the back of seven, but the 77 kind of fades back left over in front here and Denny's a little wide. So there's like four or five things that happened. It's just racing. I mean, nobody went in there. And Carson did not even go in there even thinking he was going to turn to any.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

No.

[TJ]

No way.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I agree.

[Dale Jr.]

Carson Hosavar has been absolved of all fault.

[TJ]

Yeah, he is.

[Dale Jr.]

It's official.

[TJ]

He's cleared.

[Dale Jr.]

It's official. His fans, man, if you say his name, they're like. What'd you say?

[Eddie]

They're ready to go.

[TJ]

They are. They're like teed up, waiting for a moment.

[Dale Jr.]

What'd you say about the hurricane?

[Eddie]

Yeah, and I'm starting to see a lot of like, just like hosts of our Fan77 1. Like there's a lot of just like non names out there that are just ready to attack.

[TJ]

What are you saying? They're creating accounts.

[Dale Jr.]

I wonder if it's Carson.

[Eddie]

Well, I would think so.

[Dale Jr.]

What if a lot of them are Carson Hosvar. He seems to be able to respond to about any comment made.

[Eddie]

I would say yes. A lot of these were happening during the race. I don't think those.

[Dale Jr.]

He's even in the comments on some Instagram post going at. It was Zipadella.

[Eddie]

Yes. It was great.

[Dale Jr.]

Where does it. How does he see all this?

[TJ]

I don't know.

[Dale Jr.]

Is somebody sending him every one of our. His. You know, he's. I got them friends.

[Eddie]

His army.

[Dale Jr.]

We all got them friends. They'll be like, man, do you see this?

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

And you'll be like, why'd you share? Why'd you Send me this. I don't want to see this.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

I don't need to talk about. I don't need to respond to it. You know? I mean, if I didn't know, it's better off. I'm better off not know.

[TJ]

100. That's. Yeah, absolutely.

[Dale Jr.]

He's got people that are like, hey, man, look at this guy. Said, what are you gonna do about it?

[Eddie]

What you gonna say?

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah, you gotta respond.

[Eddie]

You should tweet something.

[TJ]

Yeah, you should do.

[Dale Jr.]

He does, you know. You know, he's got all them guys, all them buddies of his that are, you know, they're all about the same age, probably a little younger.

[TJ]

I don't feel like we ever. I don't feel like we were ever like. You should.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Really.

[Dale Jr.]

No, not bad.

[TJ]

Not like that, man.

[Dale Jr.]

When we were younger, we used to. With each other all the time on. On text messages and stuff.

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Dale Jr.]

Now it's public prod.

[TJ]

Yes.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like, me and TJ Would instigate each other into doing something stupid. Like, I'm gonna try to make him get. Get mad about this, get frustrated, and go say something to this guy.

[TJ]

We used to. Mike Davis, like.

[Dale Jr.]

Oh, God, yeah. Like, weekly.

[TJ]

That was so.

[Dale Jr.]

We did that all the time. That's what he's got. He's got going on. Yeah, man. You gonna do something about that?

[TJ]

You're gonna.

[Dale Jr.]

You gonna let him say that you're

[Eddie]

not gonna do anything?

[TJ]

The guy. The guy in Michigan that took the

[Dale Jr.]

hat off Mike's head.

[TJ]

He talked that guy right into that. Mike so mad.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

What happened?

[Dale Jr.]

A guy. We were standing.

[TJ]

We ran that special scheme.

[Dale Jr.]

We were standing, waiting for our ride to leave the racetrack. And we were waiting. Some fans had come around, and we were signing autographs. One fan was very drunk, said, I want that hat on your head, Mike. You ought to give it to me. And Mike said, no, I'm not giving you my hat. I knew Mike had more of those in his bag, and I said, why don't you give it to him, Mike? You got a bunch of them in your bag. The guy just yanks it off Mike's head. And Mike lost his.

[TJ]

He's so lost. The maddest I've ever seen. Mike, like.

[Dale Jr.]

And we were laughing because I'm like, mike, wow. You had three or four of them in your bag. He's like, nobody takes my hat off.

[TJ]

We had run that special scheme, the

[Dale Jr.]

Ralph Earnhardt Father's Day.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Mage car. It was badass. It was run third. We were all happy.

[TJ]

Mike wasn't.

[Dale Jr.]

We were in second or third. I think. I think Casey Kane won. Edwards was second. I was third.

[TJ]

Yeah. Good day.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah. Fast car.

[Eddie]

Next question. People want to know what was it like meeting Travis Kelsey, San Diego.

[Dale Jr.]

That's cool. You know, you. You hear people are going to be at the racetrack, and sometimes it's people you want to meet. Sometimes you're excited about it. We were up on the carrier, and I wasn't sure who was coming all the way up there. It wasn't easy to get on that boat. You had to. It wasn't easy to get to where the boat was.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

You know, it's way off from the other side of the racetrack.

[TJ]

Complete opposite side. Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

So we're on the back of the racetrack. You had to drive through a bunch of gates, get clearance through those gates. There were guards with guns and all kinds of stuff and multiple points to be able to drive through. You had to show your passes and all this stuff. Not a big problem for a guy like him, but it was just a process. And then you had to go up several 10 flights of stairs to get to where the deck was, and then to get in the tower and go up in the bridge was another, I don't know, four or five, six flights of stairs. But anyhow, you know, you're sitting there thinking, man, this is a big ass race, a big ass deal. The one thing that I'll tell you is Mahomes. And all those guys came to that race on their own accord.

[Eddie]

My boss, it's a bachelor party.

[Dale Jr.]

I think my boss has told me, well, usually every celebrity you see has been brought to the race through a partnership, a request from a sponsor of theirs, or even the outright series is paying for them to be there or giving them something. And they reached out to NASCAR and they reached out to Amazon and said, how do we get to this race? We. We want to come. We're going to be in the area and we want to come see it. I thought that was pretty neat. That felt very Formula one like, right? You see celebrities at Formula one races. Now, if I see a celebrity at a Formula Formula one race, I don't think they're all getting paid to be there. That's a bus. They want to be seen at that event. And that's what San Diego felt like a little bit.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Especially when that happened. So I just thankful, you know, they wanted to be there. They weren't asked to be there. They wanted to be there. And that was neat.

[TJ]

There was the same.

[Dale Jr.]

That made me want to meet them more.

[TJ]

Yeah, Talladega, when the packers, all them pack, the whole packers who came for fun, like all them players, that was.

[Dale Jr.]

What was even cooler was Morgan wanted a picture with him. Yeah, our Morgan, who's a massive fan of Taylor and him and all that, she was like. I was like, I'm going to take a picture. And then as soon as I got done, I was like, all right, Morgan, hop in there. I saw her photo.

[Eddie]

I saw her right after, and she was like, guess what? Travis is here. So she was pumped.

[Dale Jr.]

It was pretty neat.

[Eddie]

Speaking of San Diego, one of the

[Dale Jr.]

things we didn't talk about, his brother too.

[Eddie]

See, that's what probably got him going, is he saw Jason with Hendrick a couple weeks back. I need to do myself.

[TJ]

Gotta win.

[Dale Jr.]

They were great.

[Eddie]

Speaking of San Diego, we didn't touch on this, but what was it like going to the Ibar Sunday night?

[Dale Jr.]

Ibar was awesome fun. I'll pick on Steve Latard a little bit. We go to the I bar. You know, you've seen the movie and you've seen the bar and you hear the stories. And we drove by it every day, going in and out to the aircraft carrier to work. And it just looks like. It looks on the outside like every other building.

[Eddie]

Nondescript.

[Dale Jr.]

Don't even. And I'm thinking in my mind, like, you know, man, you know, the pictures on the pictures from the inside, it looks like a cool place, right? It's like, not out here, but it doesn't look like, like, okay, so. But that's the greatest dive bars. You know, you walk up on them, you don't even know they're there till you go in. But we got told, like on Saturday night, hey, we're all allowed to go and have a beer at this bar when the race is over. And I thought, man, all right, I wonder how you know, wonder who all got this invite. So I wasn't sure who it was, but we were all allowed. But we were also supposed to keep it real quiet. And so race is over and we get done with all our post race and stuff. And our TV compound was literally only about 300ft from it, or not very far at all. So we, we walked right over there, walk in, and it's slammed full of people. It's got all the NASCAR people in there. Ben Kennedy, everybody, from NASCAR Hilton. There was a lot of. A lot of military in there, but it was slammed full. And some regulars, just normal people, regular old people just hanging out On a Sunday evening that were just to go there all the time. And it's everything you hear about, it's all the mugs hanging and all the airplanes and everything. And people walk in there with their hat on, and they'd ring the bell, and nobody had to actually buy beer because it was an open bar. But they messed with a few people that put their phones on the bar and wore a hat in there. I almost walked in there with my hat on, and somebody said something, and there was a couple military guys at the door, and they're like, why'd you tell him we were ready? We were ready. Yeah.

[TJ]

Somewhere at Ernie's. Get your phone out at Ernie's. You buy around.

[Dale Jr.]

And then really cool to watch Corey Haim come in. It's part of his post race celebratory process, Right. He comes in, still got his driver's suit on, goes back, gets his beer, you know, gets a big cheers, hangs his mug up. And that was pretty cool. So that made me think, man, you know, that that's the kind of NASCAR needs to be doing. You know what I mean?

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

Like, you win a race and you go get a beer at the damn bar down the street, the famous bar in the area. You go and have a beer and a big cheers, and everybody's invited. And that was a really, really neat moment.

[TJ]

Do you think it's like. It's because a lot we're staying. It just makes it, you know, everyone's not in a rush to get out of there.

[Dale Jr.]

And it felt ceremonial, but very natural. It felt like it. You know, something that could be, like, ceremonial, traditional. It just really added to what you thought the weekend was supposed to be and how cool it was. And, you know, because you. You go to. You go to San Diego, and it's badass. Everywhere you look, you've never seen any of this stuff before, and you're on a carrier doing the race, and the race is on a street course. It wasn't there. And beautiful area, San Diego. Weather's great. So, I mean, just the whole. But as soon as the checker flag falls to your point, T.J. like, it's over, they start tearing the track apart immediately. I mean, we were on the flight deck of that boat, of the ship. And when the post race was over, all those. All those kids, those men and women in the white uniforms that work on that carrier, their officers were shouting at them, we got to certify this deck. Let's go, everybody. This, you know, party's over. Get to it. Back to Work.

[Eddie]

It's an active naval base.

[Dale Jr.]

It happened immediately, and it was such a reminder of where we're at.

[SVG (Shane van Gisbergen)]

Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

This is real for them. This ain't. You know, they're. They were so thankful to, like, have a little reprieve from the. From the. From the routine of what they do every day and then. But as soon as that was over, their officers made sure to let them know that it's over with. Back to work. Get to it. We got to certify this deck. We're going to be flying in 24 hours.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[TJ]

So my experience with the people that worked on that base, and they were awesome.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Like, the experience that, like, going on to there and stuff, and the. The. The people that were there working and stuff was really good.

[Dale Jr.]

It just. It's true. But, like, when you're. When the. You know, you. It's just interesting to be around the military because in those moments. Because when it's. When. When it's. When it's. Recess, for lack of a better word, everybody's. All the officers, all the upperclassmen and women are. Everybody's nice and kind and everybody's. Everything's good. But when that's over and it's back to work, like, it's. They snap back into, like, work mode. What. What. Who they are, what they are, and the rank and file.

[Eddie]

Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

And it is a real deal, and you better get out of the way. But it's just. It's just really cool. And. Yeah, that was badass. Going to the bar. I. Bar was fun, so I was going to pick on Steve. We get there, we're going to have a beer. I'm thinking, you know, I'm. It was hard to get up there to get a beer, so I order two for me, and I drink those really fast, and then I order two more and. And so I'm sitting there, I'm three, four beers in after about 30 minutes. And Steve brought his wife Trish. God bless. God bless her. Steve had his beer, and he's like, all right, I've had my beer. Let's roll. And she goes, we ain't leaving. She had some friends there. She's like, I. Bar. Are you kidding me? We're going to have more than one beer. And so they were going to head back to the hotel. But, yeah, I had about. I had about six beers. Plenty of beers.

[Eddie]

I mean, you never know the next time you're gonna be back there. So you gotta. Next year, take it in.

[Dale Jr.]

I hope next year, hopefully.

[Eddie]

But if not, you know. Yeah. At least you did it right.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Next question. I forget who in the chat said it. You know, the prime's over with, and now it's the tnt. And they want to know what you thought of the pre and post race set with Jimmy and Marty on there with the rest of the guys.

[Dale Jr.]

So. Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question. TNT made a lot of changes. We upgraded badass stage for our pre and post race. Makes the event feel bigger, makes it feel more important. Having, you know, Jimmy and Jamie and Marty on there was a lot of fun. We knew coming in to our shows that we were going to be just so there's no. There's not a lot of producing. There's not a lot of direction. With tnt, they don't tell you. They don't put. So with most people that I've worked with, when we get there in the morning, there'll be one or two pages of the run of show, and it'll be like, okay. On the run of show, it'll be like, all right, Marty's gonna say this at the top of the show. We're gonna show this video we're gonna show. We're gonna show this stat and graphic, and then we're gonna ask Dale this question. We're gonna ask Jamie this question. It's very itemized to the minute.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

At tnt, they're like, they. The producers have these sheets, and you're like, hey, do I get one of them? And they're like, why do you need one? Just sit down, just talk, and Marty's going to ask. You know, Marty's going to start it off, and y' all just go, if you got something to say, say it. And they. They haven't, like, said this outwardly, but the impression is. Is like, they want that stage and that pre and post race to have a very inside the NBA feel. And, like, if you got something to say, if a guy's talking and you got a counterpoint or a joke or a comment that you think solar. You know, something that you think they said, that's silly. You say it.

[Eddie]

It was like, inside the NBA slash college game day.

[Dale Jr.]

That's right. And, you know, and so the only problem.

[TJ]

Or.

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, it's very fun. The only problem is every now and then, we're going to talk on top of each other. So we were doing the interview with svg. I've got a couple questions in my mind that I'm ready to ask him, but I know there's four other guys. They got the questions they want to Ask as well. But my ass is going to ask two back to back questions. I'm going to listen to SVG answer and as soon as he's done your follow up, I'm coming with the next question. And sometimes at the same time Jimmy's going to do the same thing and that happened in the moment and that's going to happen. And you know, if I've got a question in and I'm trying to get another one and Jimmy's got one, I'm going to get out of the way. Jimmy, go ahead man. You ask your question.

[TJ]

Was it Jimmy or Jimmy Jam?

[Dale Jr.]

Jimmy Jam. So you know, it's, you know, we, we did not know that they were going to play the drunk Jimmy interview. I didn't know they were going to show that video of Jamie Murray dropping his pants. Everybody on flow. But they want the show to be cool and chill and know, you know, it is what it is and we're all going to, you know, we're all going to make fun of each other and get made fun of and it's just going to be, it's going to be what it is. So I'm excited about it. I think, I think from last year TNT made some big gains. We had heard we had some audio issues. So that's the only part that I can't hear and see. Like I don't know when we're having audio issues because I'm not listening to the broadcast. So we do the whole show and we get done and I'm like that felt pretty good, you know. But then you hear in the, in, you know, on the backside of the race there was some things with audio and stuff and they'll work on that, they'll improve that we had. I noticed that when I got back down to the post race desk that we had went away from the cordless to the cord corded mic. So I knew that they recognized there must have been an issue because we would be up there talking and I would, my audio would drop out of my earbuds and I'm like, I wonder if that's happening on the other end for tv for viewers. And it must have been. But you know, just little bugs like that they'll work out. But I like TNT's casual approach to it and they recognized, I think after their first year some things they needed to change and they did. And that shows me commitment, that shows me that they care about it but they also have an identity and they're going to stick to that. And their identity is fun. Casual, easygoing, not goofy, not hokey, not corny, but just laid back and just say what you say, say what you feel, say what you think, and come with your opinions. So I think, you know, almost like doing this podcast, like the, the pre and post race show should feel a lot like you're listening to some guys. Just chop it up.

[Eddie]

Yep.

[Dale Jr.]

And I'm, I'm excited about that. Marty's going to get more comfortable once he sort of does a couple of weeks he'll start to see how is

[TJ]

it good at Marty back?

[Dale Jr.]

Good. He's, he's, I mean, he's one of our friends, so it's like just hanging out with a buddy. But I think he'll as he's like, oh, okay, this is what this is. I got it. Oh, this is. Oh, this will be great. I think the first week he was kind of nervous about how it was going to go and how it was going to come off, but I don't get nervous for it anymore. I don't know why.

[TJ]

He's a natural, though.

[Dale Jr.]

I used to get so nervous, but I don't anymore. I guess it is what, you know, you're going to get up there, do it. People like it, you get to stay.

[Eddie]

I love it. Just felt loose. It felt like it was like, like guys that you want to just go have a beer with and talk racing with is what it felt like.

[Dale Jr.]

It'll get better. One week, some weekends, Jeff Burton will be up there. Jimmy's doing three races, Burton's doing two. But that's what they, I think what they want that pre and post race desk to be is very inside the NBA.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Dale Jr.]

And just like, you know, kind of

[TJ]

just chatting it up.

[Dale Jr.]

Yep. If you got a comment or you want to. Oh, what I didn't. I don't agree with that. Or, or, man, I can't believe you said that.

[Eddie]

Or.

[Dale Jr.]

Damn, that's a hell of a thing. You know, just come on up there and just talk.

[Eddie]

Next question. They want to know what did you remember from your victory at Chicagoland in oh, five. Anything special about it?

[Dale Jr.]

Yeah, we took two tires. We had to pass. I think Scott Wimmer was driving for Bill Davis and had to hammer down. My crew chief was Steve Meal. Steve Meal is a legend in this sport. Now he's worked for. I'm going to miss a few. But he worked for the Petties for a really long time in the late 70s and early 80s. And then obviously a lot of people remember him as a big part of Mark Martin's team. He helped Mark Martin and Roush build that or that original 6 car into a winning program. And he ended up coming to dei, and he was part of. He was a competition director for DEI. I got us in a real spot in 2005, and he bailed us out. He was not. He was not a crew chief anymore. Didn't really want to be. He was a competition director. He was over a big majority of. Of the company managing stuff. And. And I loved it. I loved having him in there because I admired him being over at Roush all those years. And my dad would talk to him, and I knew, you know, he was very respected. So I get to win a race with this guy. We go to. He's.

[Eddie]

We.

[Dale Jr.]

We're in a spot in the season. We are changing crew chiefs. And I said, hey, man, would you do it? And he's like, I'll do it. So we go to Chicago, and we had a pretty decent car, but late in the race, so we had a late yellow. We come down, took two tires. I don't think we had too many laps on our lifts, gave us a shot. And Matt Kenseth, I think, had the best car, had run good all day long, and we were able to hold him off to the finish. And that was the one bright spot of the year for us. And I got to say, I won a race with. With Steve as a crew chief, which not a lot of people can say.

[Eddie]

Awesome. Yeah, I think it's a good spot for us to wrap ass.

[Dale Jr.]

JR yeah. Thank you guys for tuning in. It's been a lot of fun. I miss being on the show. Thank you for hosting last week. Host of our. We're going to ask y' all at the top of the show how many. Who y' all want to host next. We might have some open opportunities. What drivers would you like to come onto the show and control things for a week? Thank you, Xfinity, for waving the red flag on Internet price hikes and raising the green flag for savings. You get the WI fi, the reliable speed that you need locked in at one price for five years. So if you get us. If you get the service, you won't. You want to pay more for five years. Pretty incredible. No surprises. No late yellows. Straight to Victor Lane with with Xfinity. Appreciate everybody joining us here in the Arby's studio. Don't forget about Arby's new meat and three box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. Thank you, T.J. yeah, it's good show, Travis.

[Eddie]

That was fun.

[Dale Jr.]

All right, we'll see y' all next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook X and Tik Tok.

[Eddie]

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[Dale Jr.]

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