
Why NASCAR Doesn’t Need to Step in on Sawalich vs. Day
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“If you're like me, you have a lot of things on your mind. Work things, family things, what's for dinner things? So here's one last thing to think about protecting your engine.”From the transcript
Brake failures caused calamity at World Wide Technology Raceway this past weekend, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back with a new episode of Dirty Air to react. He joins co-host TJ Majors to unpack the cautions, the current point standings, and who is still in contention for the championship:
- Gateway’s pit road is challenging
- Corey Day and William Sawalich have another on-track incident
- Race-winning crew chief Cliff Daniels joins the show
- A huge swing in temperature is leading to brake failure
- This format is causing drivers to be more aggressive
- Who is still in contention?
During the Ask Jr. portion of the episode, listeners wrote in questions regarding:
- Proper etiquette for fans when their rival driver crashes
- How Dale’s fantasy football and draft are going
- Carson Hocevar signing autographs after the race
- Dale’s contributions to the NASCAR 26 soundtrack
- The field letting Denny Hamlin off the hook
- The shoving match at the CARS Tour
- The NASCAR swear jar
Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia
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The Dale Jr. Download — Why NASCAR Doesn’t Need to Step in on Sawalich vs. Day. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
If you're like me, you have a lot of things on your mind. Work things, family things, what's for dinner things? So here's one last thing to think about protecting your engine. Just wing by your local take-five for an oil change and ask for Penzoil Platinum full-synthetic motor oil. It helps protect against wear, keeps your engine running clean, and gives you the kind of peace of mind you don't have to overthink. Just remember one thing. Ask for Penzoil Platinum by name at your local take-five. Penzoil. Long may we drive. On September 25th. No one's coming for us. It's just you and me, boy. 58 miles. Part of the beast is the must-see adventure of the year. An incredible story of survival. I got you. One of the most extraordinary on-screen bond you'll ever see. Only the greatest dog ever walked the earth. Rad pit. I'll get you home. Part of the beast. The creator, September 25th, ready PG-13.
Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. 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. I don't know if we've ever argued. That pissed you off over the weekend or? I'm still sour than I would the best man at your wedding. Who is your best man, Dale? He's Jay. He's Jay. You don't need a cool vest for that race. What are you thinking? Get him, DJ. Hellboy, it's starting to show. All right then. Hey everybody, it's time again for another episode of The Dale Junior Download here. It's Tuesday. We got Dirty Air and TJ's here. How's it going, TJ Travis? That thanks. It's going to room James. New haircut, James. It's looking good. Is that really a haircut? Alias is in here. Y'all can't see everybody in here, but there's five people in the room. This episode is presented by Arby's. Don't forget about Arby's new meat, three bucks. You get more meal for your money in Arby's.
We had the meats. That's Arby's slogan. And we got a lot to get into. We had the cars tour this weekend. At track out, it was rained out and delayed until Sunday afternoon. Brody Montey grabs the win in the pros. We had a wild battle between Connor Jones and TJ to care. It's spilled over into the pits at the end of the day. It spilled over into the pits after the race. Lots of frustration. But what I saw on the racetrack was kind of right up to the limit of aggression without actually going over. That's as much, I think, as we want to see. But I don't think the guys really did anything that warranted all of the anger and frustration after the race. But you know, guys get heated and competitive. Both drivers used each other up a lot, but both got to finish in the top three and didn't end up on the back of the record. The points in the pro late models are wildly exciting. Mason Walter is holding on to a slim six point lead over Connor Jones. And in third is a surging Brody Montey hand who's won a few races here lately.
He's only 10 back from the lead. 86 drivers have attempted starts this year in the series TJ. Is that a high number? I think so. 86 drivers is a lot. It is a lot for a exciting race. I thought the, I thought like you said, the racing this weekend was to the limit. Probably a little more for one than the other. They thought, but disagreement there. But good race. In a late model stock race, Connor Jones would get some, some version of redemption and grab a needed win ahead of Carson Lofton and Kaden Quappel. Quappel had the good fortune of starting on the pole because qualifying was rained out. He turned the track position into a top three. Qualifying has been Kaden's, you know, weakness. He's, he's not, we have not qualified. I say we junior Merge sports Kaden Quappel has not qualified well usually around eighth to, to 13th or so. But with a qualifying rained out him being the points leader. He starts up front. He gets a third, a third probably finish Connor's zone.
Connor Jones is 50 points back from Quappel in the points situation with only two races left. So not a lot of races left. Not a great chance for Connor Jones to be able to win out and try to get this championship. But yeah, still if Kaden, Kaden Quappel just kind of does what he needs to do, the last two races. He should come away with a championship. Trayton Lapsovich had a great run, foiled by a flat tire, right front tire with flat with just a few laps remaining in the race. 94 drivers have attempted a start in the late model stock series this year. That's a lot. The next big race for late model competitors is the Martinsville 300. That's up on the 26th of this month. And the next car store races at Newport, Tennessee. I'm racing in that. That's October 3rd. I'll be running with the late model stocks. That's going to be a wild one. It's very high banked really small track. 13 second laps. I predict we're going to tear a ton of shit. So I hope we don't.
But I just feel like it's going to be a pretty rough race. Hopefully it isn't. It's the final event of the season is at South Boston on October the 17th. And then the season will be over with every week. A team in the pro and the late model stock gets a free set of tires. Thanks to keen parts or care Corvette parts. So we're very thankful for that. And we'll move on to the NASCAR action this weekend at St. Louis. All right. It's time to get into some NASCAR coverage here with our dirty air segment. This week's dirty air segment is brought to you by Bass Pro Shops North America's premiere outdoor and conservation company. Playing your next adventure at a Bass Pro Shops near you. You can also shop online at basspro.com. I have the app on my phone. And it's badass. You know I love the app. Check this. I go on the app and I can buy whatever I want right. You can shop in the app. Obviously. And I can also go to my club card and see that I have $2812.
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If you get yourself a Bass Pro club card, we're going to go to the O'Reilly series. But before we do, pretty incredible what happened in the cup race. A lot of crashing. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk a lot about the chase. And all the things that developed in terms of the points and where Danny Hamlin and other drivers are. But in the O'Reilly race, TJ, you know, we had a big crash on pit road, something that I don't want to say I've never seen that before. But I can't remember ever seen that before. I've seen the track blocked at Richmond. Back when we had the old fairgrounds, they'd have cars wrecked on the front straight away. Like Porter wrecked in the early 80s and he bounced off the inside wall, the outside wall, the inside wall and blocked the race track. That's happened at Richmond multiple times on the front straight away in the 70s and 80s. I've seen that before they reconfigured the track.
I've seen tracks get both. Well, Martin's will try to got blocked in your race there at one time. Yeah. That one because we drove through the wreck and yeah. I have watched the replay of this accident on pit road over and over and over and I really can't say that I can see exactly one thing that was responsible for all of it. It was like a series of different decisions that different drivers made or didn't make that sort of like the 18th 18s got to get around back it up again. 18 of swallow it was. 18 of swallow is trying to get into his pit saw and he has to drive around. None of these views are great. They're all sh**. We don't really get a good look at this. There is one that starts a little bit earlier. I don't know if we're going to get it on on the TV right now. Yeah, probably not every every all of this is garbage. Like I can't tell what's going on. You're skipping around.
Are you skipping around? You're doing that. That's frustrating. Go back. Yeah, a little bit. It's not one. Right here. So what happened? I don't see anything. Okay, so it starts me. I mean, the 18 has to he kind of starts to turn and he has to stop a little bit. It's not much. No, it ain't. The 18 kind of slowed down a little bit to get into his box. He started to turn and then stopped a little bit. I think if we can back that one up. Back that one up. Right here. This is it right here. Right here. That's a f*****er. That's a terrible view. Go back to the other view that we just saw. Stop. Stop it. So I think the 17 is the first stall. He gets in. Look how far out these guys are trying to change the tires. This is a very, very narrow pit road. It is. The guys aren't far out. It's just that they're so close to the oncoming traffic. With all of that going on, other. You see other guys also in box two, three, four, whatever.
They're all coming out into their pit stalls. That's like 43. Yep. Because there's cars coming into those stalls. So they're coming out. So so Swallich is just trying to be careful. He's slowing down, trying to get into his box. You also see the 19 peel-in-off a little bit because he's also coming into his box. So there's two cars. Well, if you want to count to 17, there's three cars in the top 10 that are picking up. And one of the first eight or six stalls. So there's a lot of cars like slowing down early on pit road. And usually early on pit road to get into their stalls. And that sort of creates a chain reaction back here in the field. These guys aren't ready to slow down. They feel like they're going to enter pit road and continue at that pace as they traditionally do. But you've got three cars in the first top, you know, top positions that are going to get into their stalls early. And create a bit of a slowdown that no one was prepared for. And so it was just a perfect storm.
I can't say that I put responsibility on anybody. The one thing I'm really thankful for, and I know we all are, is that no one was injured. I think, you know, the cars get spun around into some of the JGR pit crew mentioned. The grindback has got close. That was very close. That could have been awful. I was, I was present at Lanhamer Speedway way back in the day when I was in the middle of the road. I was going to be way back in the day when someone was killed on pit road. And you see right there, it was very similar to that accident right there that cost the life of the crew. Crew member or tire changer on Bill Elliott's crew in Atlanta when Ricky Rudd spun into his car. So, so to me, that's what starts it. You can't, the so Walsh goes a turn in and then has to stop turning in. And that jams everyone. I mean, it was just a busy pit road. It wasn't like it was this pit road is super narrow. Yeah, it's like Indy. Well, we've had a lot of drivers talk about how difficult this pit road is. Should NASCAR, should the track should, should something be done?
Can something be done? So, go back to that video Travis. I was wondering if you could take where the pit wall starts and just move it out. Another car length, make the front straight away a little bit more narrow or three quarters of a car like move the wall to the left a little bit here and just kind of continue. Make the race track more narrow. A little bit because we wouldn't be really run down there, but yeah, okay. I don't hate that. I'm sure that might be a little cheaper than actually moving pit wall. If you're moving pit wall, you're moving all of those lights. You're moving out. You know, there's a lot. I would say that the track, if they were actually going to physically change anything, they would go the most economical route, which may be that front straight away. I mean, is eight feet, 10 feet too much right there? You know what I mean? I just don't know whether they want to spin. I don't know. I don't know. That's a million dollars. Honestly, does it? I would say moving that wall, that front straight away wall is by time it's all said does it really? Does it really? Don't be costly. Does it really need it? Yes. It does. If it's, I mean, money is the reason, like we're talking about safety, we always talk about safety safety.
Yeah. I mean, is a million dollars worth of life? Yeah. But I mean, I, the wreck has still happened. Just like, a car can still get spun out. No, but I think we need to, if you, we're getting close to something here. Listen, is, is this the most narrow, most difficult pit road on pit road on NASCAR? It isn't. I don't think I think Dover's challenging Dover, Dover is very similar. Dover is very similar. Yeah. So I mean, there's other pit roads that are probably somewhat similar to this in, in shape, size and different. I mean, Martin'sville is already a little bit worse than this. Maybe. Yeah. So, yeah, Martin's is tight. Let's not go overboard and overreact and say, man, it has to change. We can't go, you know, we have to change something. They, they could look at it. Um, is this, again, I'm telling you, this is kind of the perfect storm. You had three cars. You had three cars in the top 10 peeling off early into stalls. Yeah. A lot of check up there. The rest of the field behind them is not thinking we're going to have a check up. Mm-hmm. As soon as we get to the stalls, we're going to say, they're not thinking that.
They're thinking we're going to have this steady cruise down pit road and. So I will say that's become more of an emphasis on even in when I'm looking, well, we're coming down pit road. You told me one of the first races I ever spotted for you was that you like to know where the car in front of you is going. I just see you have an idea, but we're even a step further than that now. Gotta tell you more information. I'm going, I'm counting the gap in front because you don't want to run that guy over in front of you. And if he's got a soda out, you're actually spotting like a plate race. You're spotting off the car in front sometimes down pit road. All right, later in the race, we had an accident between Swallich and Corey Day. You got to lose. If you look at, you know, if you remember everybody that watched it, Darlington, these two were talking after the race. Swallich was upset at Corey Day. Hey, man, you freaking, you know, you're going to get it. I'm going to wreck you. Corey Day said that Swallich had some pretty tough words. So you know, there's a history there and they're not happy.
This was just last week at Darlington. We go into this race. If you watch getting down into term one, Corey Day gets down in the corner, gets loose up the racetrack in the side of Swallich. Same thing in having in Darlington. Yeah. And then as they are exiting turn two, just an outgir, a few other cars are now packed up into the back bumper of Corey Day and pushing him on, on corner exit. And he continues to hit Swallich. Now that part Corey Day has has has not much control over, but he's already got into Swallich in the middle of the corner. So I want to talk about Swallich is in the outside groove, right? You know this guy, Corey Day is on your inside getting into turn one. And you told him that you don't want no more. Right. You don't want no more. You want to wreck you. You're mad at him because he's been driving like, and you want him to stop. Get down in the corner and he slides up and gets gets loose underneath you and doors you. Swallich's thought right there is.
Wrap the corner. If you're underneath me, hold your f*** on. Don't hit me. Right. And so Corey Day gets loose, doors him and Swallich sees red. Now they're coming up off a turn two and he and Swallich is driving his car and he continues to get hit. He doesn't know who's pushing the 17. He does. At that point, he doesn't care. He's hit me in the middle of the corner and now he's hitting me more. And he snapped. Swallich swerves, doors him down the back straightaway. Does the 17 wreck right there? 17 does it wreck off that initial hit. Not that initial hit. Yeah, agree. Yeah. He only gets wrecked because the seven happened to be in his path as he's trying to correct his car. And unfortunate for Algar, it ruined an opportunity that he had at a top five or a top 10 finish. He got heavy right front damage. I was upset about that. But what I saw Swallich do happens a lot.
Guys, door guys all the time. That was a very, you know, egregious and very severe during. It actually hurts Swallich's car pretty bad. He had a tire rub. That's taking it to the limit in terms of aggression. Trying to door a guy going down a straightaway. But guys do that. You door people under caution. Whatever you're mad. You're going to go up there. You're going to show him your mad. Sometimes camera catches it. A lot of times the camera does it catch it. Yeah, a lot of times it don't know. So a lot of people were calling first Swallich to be parked after this race or be suspended by an ask car. It's not even close to a suspension in my opinion. Um, yeah, that right there is unfortunate for day. It's terrible luck for his championship hopes because he's got a ton of talent and he's got plenty of race car to go up there and try to win this championship. And he still might. A lot of racing left. But, um, look, Swallich warning. And I would say that Swallich has nothing to lose.
And that's not the kind of guy you want to, you know, you, I think if your day, you take a little extra care after what he said to you on pit road after Darlington, you take a little extra care and he didn't. You know, you take a little extra care not to rubble feathers with his guy. Don't give him a reason to snap. And so, yeah, I mean, we saw like Carson seem like he was racing around braddle like he was trying not to do anything. Host of our, yeah, in the cup race. Well, host of our played really nice on Sunday. Yeah, I didn't even think twice about it honestly. That's what I'm saying though is like, we were coordinating resorts and stuff together and yeah, a lot of that sort of after a week, it a lot of the ruffle feathers in the cup series. Those guys calm down. They're professional. They're, they're going to, they're going to not do anything like this. Yeah. But we see this a lot in the truck series. We see this a lot in the Arali series. And it's because we have these young guys that are sort of learning how to blow off some seam, learning how to check themselves, learning how to make these mistakes. Look, I bet you, I would say that if these guys were to run this race again in the same
situation, would where to happen again, I don't know if swallow it, doors him. He probably realizes after the fact that was a pretty stupid move on my part. I damaged my car. Even though I, you know, I may sent, I may have sent my message and got my message across the quarry day, but also damaged my car. And I bet my team had a problem with that. I bet my guys said, hey, I like you standing up for yourself, but you can't cost yourself a good result here. He had a heavy tire rub after that contact. One of the things that some people brought up is you, this incident impacted another chase drivers. Yes, that's why I was talking about that. Does NASCAR need to handle this? Listen, no, I'm sorry. Listen, you're a chase driver. That's, that's something that I think we need to be careful with. Under, if when in NASCAR, it is unique that we have a group of people that are racing for a championship and you're going to call them chase drivers, I will too. And then you have another group of people that aren't.
We're all on the same racetrack together. And those guys that aren't in the chase have as much right to race, to win, to race hard, to be aggressive, to do everything that they would have done and race one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, all the way through the year. I'm sorry. If you get taken out and this could happen to Junior Motorsports tomorrow, if you get knocked out by a **** non-chase guy, that's the risk you take when you sign up to put your entry into the ****. We're all on, we're everybody, there's no like, we're not going to like, they don't have different treatment. We're not going to treat these chase guys differently. I agree. They're punished, the non-chase guys, they're already punished. They didn't make the chase, right? And they're mad about it. And they're frustrated that their season didn't go the way it should go. I would probably give the non-chase guy a little more room. He's not to be **** with. And there were comments last week about, oh, well, he's not, they were, there was comments last week about, well, he's not in the chase, like a chase guy or not, chase guy.
Like, it doesn't matter. Everyone's still racing to win the race. Non-chase guys don't. You're trying to override and how he races. What you're referring to. I'm saying like, there was comments made that said, you know, that Brad wasn't in the chase. So taking out a chase guy like that. Non-chase guys don't want to be treated as second class. It's almost worse, right? Yeah, they don't want to be thought of as not. Yeah. You know, and so is less than, right? And so they're probably the guys to be not to be mess with as opposed to like, chase guys, they got **** loose. They're going to be trying to, well, we thought they're going to try to race some of them didn't Sunday. But, you know, the non-chase guys are more dangerous even now in this system. Because it's, they're frustrated. They're mad. So these are some of the things that race craft comes into play early in the year and throughout the year. You race guys and with respect, a little bit of give and take because if you're a year and don't go as planned and theirs is, you know, you don't want to. You want the payback. If I'm a non-chase guy and I've, if I'm a non-chase guy, right?
And there's a guy that's in the chase that's drove me like **** all year. You were racing the **** in the ****. That's exactly. But you're big brain in it. If you're early in the year, if you're letting, yeah, you're letting go like making it easy on yourself. I like that. All right. So, um, junior emergency sports struggled again to get the results that they wanted to get. We saw the seven car of just an hour with the right front damage. They did have great stages similar to Darlington. Great stage of results. But not the good final result that we want. Not quite sure what's going on there. Wire cars kind of aren't as good as they need to be in the final stage as opposed to stage one and two. But it's kept this point situation in the, um, Arale series. Real close relatively close. So, um, Shelton Creed is now leading the points over Justin Algar. Crazy. And Carson Quoppel is only nine points back. Jesse Love is 16 points back. Those four guys have separated themselves from the rest of the field. You got Sam Merrillston Hill at 61 back from the leader in Sammy Smith 64.
Cory Day now 69 after the crash. They're not out of it. We saw in the Cup series, Kyle Larson, a win gained 40 points on Danny Hamlin. So think about that. Jesse Love hit with his win. Gain 32 points to the leader. So a big weekend can throw your ass right back into this thing. And, um, consistency. You've got to be consistent. I know. And I'm loving it. If you get a 70 point day, dude, I'm loving it. I'm loving this point system. It is thrilling. And we're going to talk more about that as we go into the Cup, uh, the Cup action. It's going to become more important every week. And I think it's a about time to move on to the, to the Cup here. The Earnhardt family has always trusted bass pro shops for our outdoor adventures. And that's something that hasn't changed even today. I grew up shopping there. And now I enjoy bringing my family along as we gear up for our time in the outdoors together. That's also why I'm proud to partner with Johnny Morris and bass pro shops.
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I got you. One of the most extraordinary on-screen bond you'll ever see. Only the greatest dog ever walked the earth. Brad Pitt. I'll get you home. Part of the beast. Lean theaters September 25th. Ready PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. Larson is flying home. He went to the running out of football chiefs game last night. He's on a plane coming home. So Cliff, the winning crew chief is going to call in to be able to talk to us. And we've got questions for him. I'm hoping you guys are ready. But basically the big story from Sunday was the wrecks. A lot of crashing, a lot of cautions, a lot of break failures that drew a lot of yellows. Drivers lost their minds. And we are all going to sit here and sort of debate on why we think that happened. I think there's a lot of different things that are that are going to play into to that answer.
And we'll ask Cliff. One of the things that I thought was interesting though. I saw a couple of different points. Danny Hamlin turns 46 November 18th. Whew. The oldest driver to win a cup championship is Bobby Allyson at 45 years old in 11 months. Lee Petty won it twice in 58 and 59 at 45 and 44 years old. And my dad in 1994 was a champion at 43 years old. So if Danny Hamlin wins the championship, oldest ever, he would be the oldest. When's the last race? November. Second week in November. So if he wins. Yeah, he's in November. Is he in November? He's the older than Bobby. He turns 46 on 18th. It's no, the championship's on the eighth of November. 10 days short. And Bobby was 11 months, 17 days. So Danny would be the oldest by three days. Three days or so. Wow. Be a heck of a way to win your first. I mean, that's a problem.
That's a hell of an accomplishment though. To do it as the oldest in the history of NASCAR ever. Yeah. Hell of a thing. And the other thing I wanted to do, I was going to save this to the end of the show. I want to give a shout out to Danny Hamlin also for his 750th cup start this weekend at Bristol. I give NASCAR a hard time. Their social media team for celebrating drivers who are having their 100 start, their 30th start, their 15th start, their 200 start, their 300 start. Those are not numbers that really weren't any kind of notoriety or recognition. What about 500? 500 is a nice number. Ricky Stenhouse had it this weekend. All right. I would give five, I would celebrate 500. That is some s***. 750 cup starts for Danny Hamlin. Only 15 drivers have hit that mark. 15 drivers think about all of the drivers that have raised in this in this whole industry
since the 40s. Danny Hamlin is one of 15 that'll make 750 starts. That is bad ass. That's a lot. Yes. So shout out to Danny for his longevity. You know, and and be another competitive too. There is not many if any of those 15 that were still f***ing winners at that number. So now I was thinking there may be one or two. I don't even know the list of the 15. But that's also his his ability to still be not just a potential winner. Right. Not a guy that might win a race or two a year. Yeah. He's literally like a the favorite a lot. Favorite every week. He's one foreign. He hasn't wanted to why on people are like. Yeah. What's wrong? I don't think I've started that conversation just yet. I think you give. I'm not saying you but yeah. I'm just that's that's the first time I'm here. Yeah. You got to get a great credit though for being the competitor of that long because he's been in really good cars this whole career. So that's you can give him the credit. TJ, good job. It's a good mix. Yes, sir. Well, one of the things that we want to talk about when when Cliff gets on
obviously is the break issues. Blaney had issues chase Elliott Noah Zane Smith. Zane Smith's out. She hit. That's scares me man. It scares me. That is a nasty hit. We've got to get to the bottom of this. We need to certainly listen to Cliff and what he may say about it. But is it time for NASCAR to maybe kind of step in and try to help figure out how we can avoid some of this? I have said on the show. I know that I've said on the show that I I want parts to fail. I want I really want engines to be more or less durable. I want I want you to need to make sure you know, I want you to I mean, I want things. Listen, it's not fun for me. If the car is indestructible, no, I I agree, but you can't like say you want to you can't say you want to fix all the breaks. Listen, all right. Listen to my point. Okay. I don't like, you know, we have guys that have break failures getting down into
turn one at Poca-No. And those are hits that a lot of these guys have a hard time getting over. And so, you know, you see as Ainsmith hit the wall like he hits and you just kind of I think it's it's a concern and it's it's something I think we need to figure out how to How to mitigate out of the series. Clif Daniel's zone. Thank you Clif for for joining us today. We just started our conversation around the Cup Race this past weekend. A lot of things going on. Kind of wanted to get your take on it. I as a broadcaster, we went to Nashville. We went to a couple of different race tracks and breaks were a topic of conversation. We as broadcasters wonder if we're making a big deal out of it. But then you start seeing the issues in the race with a couple of different teams.
And it at a place like Nashville, for example, it just seemed like one or two cars maybe went to an extreme setup. Not everybody in the field was having issues. Now, it seems like St. Louis presents maybe the worst case scenario in terms of this, you know, what what we can do with breaks, how breaks can be considered and how we approach breaks. We had more cars having issues. We had more different manufacturers having issues. And so, I ask you, is this something that maybe we, you know, NASCAR can keep their hands off of and the teams can sort out over time? Is this, are you concerned that y'all don't have enough information to know how to avoid it? Or is it, or do you believe that just the teams will figure it out? And if we just stay the course, no action needed. We'll go to the race track and have less issues. Certainly a lot to unpack with a whole conversation.
So, I'm going to hit you with a couple of different angles, but I think it's all important points to make. Where we are now in the tough part of it is, I think you've illustrated really well the history of break issues that we've had from, you know, Nashville, of course, Gateway in the past. I think one or two of the tracks we've seen it here and there. You know, it's a safety concern for the drivers. It's a safety concern, even beyond that of parts and debris getting kicked up into the grandstand. So it is absolutely a safety concern from multiple different angles that, yeah, I think we have to take a good look at. Then if you go off of just the history of NASCAR and how they've responded to safety concerns always, from updates to the next-gen car, you know, after our big-headed teller-deget with priests years ago, other things they've done. I think they've always responded really well in those situations. So what I will tell you is now, even after the race, some of the
guys at NASCAR came up to me, hey, what do you think? And we're going to need to go with this. I think they're trying to do the best that they can to understand exactly what you're asking. Is this a team-side thing? Is this something we need to get involved in? And I think my answer would be multiple different levels. I do think that there's some evolution of where we are with the parts and pieces, from a, you know, brake duct versatility aspect, from potentially how we're conditioning and just what we can push AP to do on the roader side of things, because they're open to, you know, kind of exploring some technology that they could put into effect to helping the roader conditioning. Even I've heard kicked around going to carbon brakes, which a lot of other racing series in the world uses. There's a whole nother layer of cost and expense, you know, that comes with carbon brakes, of course, but they're durable and they last longer. And then another piece too, that they could be even more short-term. And I had mentioned
this directly to some of the guys at NASCAR post-race. For a long time in the Cup Series, when we would have practice events, and Dale, you know this was anybody at short tracks. And I'm talking pre-coded, just a normal NASCAR weekend. You'd show up on Friday, you'd practice Friday morning, you qualify Friday night, you'd have happy hour, say, well, you'd have a morning practice Saturday, you'd have happy hour Saturday afternoon. It was normal that you would just completely put on brand new brakes everything from Saturday night going into Sunday to start the race. So now that our series has evolved to these impound style weekends, you know, young load, you get for a while, we're only getting 25 minutes of practice. Now we get 50 minutes of practice, which I'm an advocate for. I think we should be practicing more. It's a lot more to showcase for the fans. It gives us more time to work on the cars. When we go to these type tracks and we have a longer 50 minute practice, which we want and we love, that's that much more duty cycle on the brakes.
How do we allow in these impound style weekends where, you know, we're very, let's just say, limited on the amount of changes that we can make? How do we open it up? So, hey, SOP, normal operating procedure, when you're at all the short tracks plus these, you know, my list tracks that are very high breaking tracks, let the teams change, brake pads, brake rotors, like for like going into the race. That could be a short term fix while we're looking at the longer term solutions with, you know, kind of what I'm talking about on the AP side of what they can do and it sounds like they have some ideas or even as far as carbon brakes, that's probably a bit farther out of the future. Yeah, I love the, I love that the cars aren't bulletproof, but yeah, there's a balance between having to take care of equipment, be a smart driver and seeing these vicious hits when the brakes fail at some of these tracks with these long straightaways. Yeah, and to your point, and I
guess I would add, like when you're asking if the teams can, you know, manage it on our own, like they're in the case of this weekend, that the, any of the differences between the four-hitter cars were incredibly small and incredibly subtle, that just that margin is so close for us, you know, do you have what you need for the driver feel, the balance, the grip, the cooling aspect, and the way that whole formula kind of comes together, it ends up being a very small one. But you mentioned, I think you brought up on the radio to Kyle about the nine having a different setup or package than what you guys ran. So teams are doing different things though for different feel, like you said though, creating some of these problems, correct? To be very clear, what I was describing over the radio, and I was hesitant to just completely call it out at the time, which was really just small, only in the aspect of cooling, and here's
what's really up. So pad for pad, setup for setup, we were super close, just on everything that was in the core of the brake package build, the nine actually had more brake opening than we did. Yeah. So when I was calling that out to Kyle, it was more of, hey, there's a little bit more cooling to that, and I don't know that we have enough information at this point to say that more cooling is what led to their problem. But when we've seen issues arise, and especially with you know, some of the Nashville failures that happen, the Nashville failures, I would argue they had too much cooling, and so, okay, hold on, how can having too much cooling present an issue? Well, you're just really increasing the thermal cycle, but the brake goes through around the lap, and when we've, I say, been conservative, when I have been conservative on brakes, I'm actually conservative of keeping them very hot, and you're almost aggressive to cool them too much.
Yeah. Well, that's kind of a weird, unconventional way of looking at it, you know, cars of old, like, hey, you have a great problem, okay, you just need to pull the brakes more, and now we just have this big, you know, temperature swing. When you get more cooling, which comes from a lot of different aspects, these rotors are bigger, the veins are wider, they pump a lot more air than what we used to do, and then another element that maybe gets overlooked at times, these wheels, the wheels that we have now have so much more opening, and they almost act like a paddle wheel of pumping air that the five lug wheel, you know, the the acid arrow wheels, they have such small openings that the wheel itself coupled with the rotor itself just don't pump as much air to cool, like we have on the nation car. So a lot of things to pick apart there. And again, for us in nine this weekend, the only thing to suck out on paper is they had a little more, like that's, that's why you're talking hundreds of degrees, right? On one straight away, you're talking hundreds of degrees of hot to cool every twice a lap, right? Like, you know, just for people to know, like,
you're talking huge swings and temperatures really quick. Yeah. Yeah, you're, I would say max peak brake pressure, corner entry there, you're anyone anywhere from 1200 degrees to 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. And then if you do the straightaway, you're probably, you know, high seven low eight, and so that's just a shoe, or a motorcycle of the max heating, and then you have these long straight ways where you're going from 140 miles an hour up to 180 miles an hour of, of just cooling, you know, the whole length of straightway. Yeah. It's so fascinating when I was walking around in the garage this summer, seeing knowing that we were going into a racetrack where teams were going to hope that they didn't have brake issues. We were going to go to a racetrack where brakes could be a concern. And you'd walk through the garage and you'd have guys wide open on the grill. Guys completely solid on the grill, people in the middle, and you're thinking, wow, somebody's got this right and somebody's got this wrong in the in the in the nervous energy as the race begins is
it's there. But that thanks for describing that to us. There's you talk about the the veins in the rotors. There's there's there's pieces that can you guys can put into to kind of slow that down or control the how much air there's so many components in your hands that that you're responsible for. It's so fascinating. The role you have to kind of make sure that you've nailed to your point a good package that's going to survive, but also give the driver the exact field that he needs. And it's going to be fun to kind of follow this as it continues to develop. As we're getting into the chase, it's great to have you on as opposed to Kyle to be able to ask you a couple questions about transparency. You have a four car team. Everybody's trying to go out there and have great success. Whether you're in the chase or not in the chase, you all want to run as well as you possibly can and be a great asset to each other. But at the same time, you know, if everything goes well, you're going to be racing each other for the championship. How do you manage or how does a
company manage the sharing of information? The you know, the company line or the easiest thing to say is we're wide open. Everybody sees everything. But I know even as an owner that when it widows down to those final few races, things get a little tighter. Maybe there's less conversation. You know, maybe there's, you know, there's always, you know, the meeting starts and everybody talks and the meeting ends, but those conversations after the meeting, walking down the hall, those, you know, stepping into some eyes office and picking their brain for a moment about this or that those things slow way down. So how do you kind of manage the relationships and information sharing in such a competitive atmosphere? So I'm going to come to this at a place that I think you know you're familiar with. Obviously, your time here at Hendrick, you know, predated mine a bit, but I came in in 2014 and in the shop for still split at that point, you know exactly what that looked like, what that felt like. And there was the division of information share and how
all that went, you know, there were certain things that you would share. You'd have, you know, kind of a basic set up sheet and a basic car build, but some of the more particular items were kept, you know, between the shops and even at times in between the teams. So I think it was 2017 that the shops got combined. That was a big step forward of kind of us, you know, sharing all those things from set up sheets to car builds. And then the other really interesting angle that I think we now do very well is just with the the nation era. It is presented so much higher of a need for all of us to be fully open of, you know, anything from our great package builds and how we're going to cool the brakes to, you know, to car setups and air pressures and car builds, coupled with the fact that, you know, newsflash has been a really tough year for Hendrick this year, right? We've had to lean so much more into each other and just
putting, you know, all of the collective intelligence, the experience, everything that we can together, to dig out of the performance hole that we've been in, that we're as close now as we've ever been, and you hear that right as a talking point from Hendrick, you hear, you know, Jeff Andrews, Jeff Gordon Chad, Mr. Hinter, talk about that. Yeah, we're as close as we've ever been. But I'm telling you that from conversations we have during the week, to even conversations during the weekend, Alan, Rudy, Blake and myself, there really isn't anything that gives stowed away that we don't know last night. Here's the late night last night. I think last night at 10 o'clock, I was writing my car detail list for Bristol, for Kansas. And when I email that out, that gets shared to other engineers on other teams that are helping us all kind of create what we want for a target car build, aero balance, things that we're looking for. And I'm coming at that from a place of just
needing help and wanting to expand all of the collective intelligence that we have. Hey, here's what I think the vision for the five car build for Bristol should be and for, you know, Kansas should be, what do you guys think? What's your approach? What do you guys think are our moves that make sense to stack up for aero balance of this track versus another track? And putting all of that together has been really important for us this year to lean into one another and to share that difference of opinion or perspective. It doesn't mean that all of our cars are built the same, but it means that at least we're being very transparent with the idea for an approach. And of course, those little things that you have to put together to execute it. If there's anything that we're working in an award of black and white, are we working in the gray or some of these just very fundamental items that you've built into your car for the weekend? Having that be presented on the front side just helps everyone see that much more clearly
what their approach can be. And Kyle likes a certain feel of a certain track is compared to chase. So you know, there's going to be inherent differences in that. But yeah, the communications great. And I guess to the next part of your point of, okay, that's cool for now. You guys have been digging through the performance step as that you've been at. Now what about, you know, when it gets down to being time in the final five races, final two races, final race. I think we continue where we are because we have helped each other so much stick together to build out of this hole that if I'm going to be racing, let's just say, you know, the three of our chase cars, if I'm going to be racing Rudy and Alan going into homestead, I'm still going to want their help. And I think they're still going to want my help to know that we're maximizing everything that we can to go competing against those guys that have been fast and they've been tough all year. I just don't see a way out of that without the help from those guys as well. And I'm sure they
they share the thought as well. So it's a different page than probably what you've seen of of Hinderkin the past. But it's a really healthy page and there's a there's a very high level of transparency with the when this past weekend, you guys gained 40 points on the on the points leader, Dini Hamlin came into the chase 55 out. I feel like, you know, going into Bristol, you guys have to have a lot of confidence. You had a couple of great stages last year or earlier this year, I think. So you know that, you know, there's potential to go out there and gobble up points throughout the race. How did that race, you know, you're surely thinking about last, you know, the earlier Bristol's result, how that race may have got out of your hands or out of your control. What's the approach this weekend? How important, you know, you're I don't think that we've actually been to a legit mile and a half to understand truly where
you guys are comparable to Toyota. We're going to get that in a couple of weeks, but we're going to Bristol where you know you can win, you know, you can gobble up a lot of points, have a big point today. How much pressure do you think you put on yourself to go maximize and execute this weekend, not knowing what Kansas and Charlotte in those places may look like for y'all? We put a lot of pressure on ourselves every week and I think you know that, but, you know, for all the reasons that that you just described, we do, you know, put that much extra pressure on Bristol just because Kyle is so good there, he just has such a natural knack for that place and he car that he gets in, whether it's one of your cars on a Friday or Saturday night or one of our cars on a Sunday like he's so fast and you're so good. And then you bring up a good point that, you know, in the spring we had strength, you know, at times of the race, we let a bunch of laps, certainly in the race I think that 12 and 54 were probably both better than we were and we have evolved a lot
just in and what we know of ourselves and how to tune, you know, the body that we have this year, how to improve our setups this year. So we're pretty deep in the weeds right now of picking through. What are the important things to carry forward? It's kind of a home baseline for, you know, the five-card Bristol, which we've had for a while, you know, the last handful of years that that we've been running up front at Bristol. We've kept a very solid consistent baseline. What are the right things to apply that we know that we've learned through on the year that have helped, you know, get our performance back more in the game? How do you apply those things? And then how do you address the specific, you know, balanced efficiencies that we had kind of at the end of the race in the spring and try to just get the setup dialed in a little bit better. Another small question mark, I don't think it's a big question mark but a small one, is what are the temps going to do for the track in higher response? I don't think we're going to have
a powder, you know, tire race. I don't think that's going to happen. But it's kind of sitting off, you know, in the background of, okay, well, what would that look like and what would those changes need to be built into our baseline or how do you respond to that as the weekend moves along? So a lot to put together for the approach this weekend and our team has been really deep in doing that. Kyle was in the sim, what we could go. He's going to be in the sim again this week. He's really leaned into being more of a sim guy in the show, which hasn't been in the past, but he's enjoying it. He's done a good job and it's helped us. It's helped iron out a few car build details just with steering and brakes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so just fine-tune the setup so a little bit. So we're geared up to go have a good sim session hopefully tomorrow and keep jipping away at it. And into your point, we just don't know what that string, I think it's Kansas Vegas Charlotte. We don't know what that's going to look like. We know the Toyota's have been sitting on a lot of speed and we've just got to be very smart of putting a good baseline out
there, of applying the things that we've been learning to make us better and it still just comes down to execution like you know, because even though we had a great point stay in Gateway, super happy about that and grateful for that. I think the illustration is very clear there that it can flip and it hurts. And there's guys that had bad days at Gateway that you didn't expect to have bad days because of the crashes or the brake failures. Man, that's just where we are in this season of the chase. I almost think the previous style may have been easier as in the right word, but may have been less pressure at times because when and you're in, if you get locked into the next round, like, okay, well, we can just go focus on the next trio of races and you know, kind of forecast your thoughts ahead. Now every week is such a big deal. Every stage point matters. Every little thing can just build and carry with you for so long that it's fun. It's a whole different type of pressure that we have now, not only for our life and our journey, but just
kind of looking at the way the format is. It's cool. I like it. I do too. Man, so thanks for your time. I got to say every time that I need to talk to a crew chief, I'm a little hesitant. Like Steve Lathart can walk into any hauler and go up and just bang out a conversation. And I'm an old driver and I'm a little hesitant, but I can always go to Cliff and get the answer I'm looking for. And he's always great with his time. And you were again today. Thank you so much. I know you got a lot on your plate, but you sat down with us and gave us articulated so much great information. Congratulations on the win. I appreciate you. Good luck going into Bristol. Thanks guys. Thanks for having me always want to be on here. Don't hesitate, man. Come stop. Stop. Stop. I don't worry about you, man. You're always great. Thank you. See you, man. All good, man. Thanks. Yeah. You know, that was awesome. We got to talk about breaks and a lot of other things. One of the things we haven't really covered yet was just the wrecking. A lot of aggression. I wanted to sort of dive into that just a minute. I had some opinions about what I think it is. I actually called a couple of
drivers to talk to them. Honestly, the answer that I got from them was they weren't sure. But they did tack on a few ideas about why they feel like that gateway sort of got out of control in terms of some of the decisions the drivers made. One of the things was obviously with the next gen car, it's difficult to pass. The trail and car is really at a deficit in dirty air. And so on restarts, you really have to send it in. You really have to you either take advantage of the opportunity to make a pass or you get taken advantage of there's no middle ground. You either are the one trying to make the pass or you're the one getting passed on restarts. Everybody is full on knowing that that is the opportunity where they can grab a few spots because as soon as we run three or four corners and
things single out, it's tough. You're not getting that spot or two back that you lost to a car that you were kicking its ass all day long. You can be faster than this guy, but if he gets by you on a restart somehow, that can be problematic and difficult to fix. So that's one thing. Also, the brake failures. We had a lot of brake failures that created cautions that created restarts. It created opportunities for contact and wrecks. So more brake cautions, just cautions in general, produce more restarts. And I think those cautions and red flags then created more brake failures. Yes. Exactly. The other thing too, and this might be difficult for me to articulate, these are some of the points that the drivers were given to me as reasons why they think the drivers were wild, the ones that I just mentioned, but also this one. So the chase, format versus the elimination rounds. All right. Now imagine
when we go into the playoffs with elimination rounds, you got round one, right, and you got 16 drivers. Well, there's probably 12 of those guys thinking. If I just go out there and just have a normal day, I don't get eliminated. I'm not trying to win the championship this round. I'm just trying not to be one of the guys that gets kicked out. Somebody's going to break a motor. Somebody's going to have a brake failure. That's going to eliminate a couple of guys in that first round right away in that single race. So if you just go out there, mind your peace and cues. Don't fuck up. Don't run into nothing. Don't bounce off nobody. Survive. Survive. All right. I had a driver tell me this in the first round of the playoffs. He raced way more conservatively. And he would also do that in the second round. If you're one of the top six guys or one of the top eight guys, you're just trying not to fall into that bucket of two or
three guys that are going to be eliminated. Cause it's really easy to throw it away. It is. So you ran in round two or the or in the first half of the playoffs. Guys were driving very conservatively, very smartly in the in the chase that we have today, you're not afforded that opportunity. You have to start from the very beginning piling up points, piling up results. And a lot of guys started such a deficit. They're having to throw the deep ball and race one and race two. And you're seeing them, you know, send it into these corners into these three and four wide situations because they got to get the points. They have to. Right. And if you miss that on stage points, if you're one of those guys that missed out on stage points early in the race, you know what? How are you going to claw yourself into this championship when you're already now 10 to 20 points down to some of the guys in the field that got those stage points. And if you'd
threw away them stage points, and then you could caught up in a wreck. It's like double. That's right. So we worried. I think we had a comment or a couple conversations earlier in the season about this. We're seeing less cautions. We're seeing less crashes. Our guys not is the is the win in your end took away a little bit of the wild ambition, you know, and and hell raise for it. Because when gets me into the playoffs, yeah, I don't know that I can answer the question in the regular season, but I can say now that it appears that the chase produces a bit more intense action at least early. I know this, this definitely wasn't an anomaly that we saw so much carnage and chaos and St. Louis. This is not what I think we're going to see in every week of racing every year in the chase. But listening to drivers, they're like, look, man, if I was a if I was a top five or a top 10 guy, I'm cruising in round one. Just not
f***ing up. Just cruising through no mistakes, no big risks. And around two probably doing the same thing. Not not no more. They can't afford it. I also wonder like even for the non-two drivers, I forget, we tend to forget that like they're still racing for something. Like their owners, they're like 17th is more valuable than 20. So like they're still going to be aggressive back there. Josh Barry talked about that. He's sitting there 30th in points. They clawed their way up to 25th and he said, man, we're going to 20th. We're trying to get to 20th because that's a big financial game for the company. And you know, now he's had this bad result at St. Louis. So you debrailed that idea. But you know, that that tells you, yes, teams are sitting there in 20th in points going, we got a chance to finish 15th. Let's go do that. They set these all the teams had these sort of individual goals of what they would love to accomplish in the remaining weeks of the season, whether they're in the playoffs or in the chase or not. Like even Sunday, I mean, we're leading the race with a
good shot of win. We weren't really worried about any playoff or chase drivers trying to win. We're trying to win a race. Great. Great. You knew you had an opportunity that day. 100%. You don't, like you're going for the win. Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty interesting. So we talked about the chase standings. Who's, you know, let's discuss a little bit about who's in and who's not who's in trouble. Obviously, great weekend for Kyle Larson to be able to claw back from started 55 points out of first place. Now he's nine. Christopher Bell was 50 points out. Now he's 18. Crazy. Do you just want to go down the list? I'll give you guys like 30 seconds each to decide if they're in or out. Yeah. I think we all assume that the top four are in, right? I think right now Larson, Bell and Blaney. So Blaney, you know, I was going to tell you all, Blaney started the, I know he had the break failure. It was a shit. Yeah. Blaney started minus 25. And he's only minus 33. So if you're a Blaney fan or if you're Ryan Blaney himself,
you're only, you're sitting there going, look, I gave him two races. I basically am in the same spot as I started the chase. I'm just going to have to do this in eight races instead of 10. Could be way worse. It could. It absolutely could. So let's start with Tyler. Reddick. All right. It sets 42 back. TJ, you go first. I think Tyler. To me, he's going the wrong direction right now. Started the year off really hot. Fading is a late. I just can't see if really fine. He consists of your momentum. He's been fast, but this is where consistency pays off and you can't have the big mistakes. I agree. Tyler. Reddick. Is it running like he did at the start of season? We all see that. Still 42 points out after St. Louis. I think he's still involved and still got a shot at it. But he's going to, I mean, one weekend where he goes out and wins a race, he's probably sitting right on top of the points lead. Next driver. Ty Gibbs 51 back. I think Ty is going in the right direction. He's quietly knocking off some good finishes. He's got another win in the books. I think he's confident. He's always been confident.
And I think he's going to the right direction. You think he can still win it? I think he said he's going in the right direction. I think he's still with it. Let it live. Go in the right direction. TJ 40 points is where he started the playoffs or the chase and now he's 51 out. So he's strong tracks coming up. Hey, it's my turn. He's 40 points. When he started the chase, now he's 51. But we are going to Bristol where he's been very strong. A great result this weekend. Some stage points. A top three finish and my guy Ty Gibbs is absolutely still going for the championship. Joey Laguna also 51 back. I think Joey, I don't know if you can really ever count Joey out to me. He's the guy that just won't go away. And the worst thing for the field is to let Joey go and have a great Bristol and carry momentum. I know he's got some tough tracks after that. But giving Joey momentum just makes him more dangerous as this playoffs and or chase goes on. Absolutely. TJ Joey Laguna was it in the chase. He was not even in it. I didn't
even think he was going to make it bubble. And so he's clawed his way not only into the chase, but he's sitting here in the top six top seven 51 points out. Joey Laguna was trying to prove to the world that they didn't change the chase for him. And he can win it no matter how you line it up. Oh, Jesus. What the f**k is loud? It works. I was right on the dot. You went over 20. Have a f**k. What about TJ? He went over. He hasn't gone over yet. I've been way under. All right. Chase briskos 59 back. All right, Chase. Can we get a ding instead? Hey, this my time. Chase is just not consistent enough for me to care to be a huge threat. He can knock off a good runner too, but just not because it's enough for me. I like. He's so sorry. So scared. I like chase brisco 59 points out. That's quite a big haul. But if you can get a win. Again, anybody that wins race, they're going to swing 35 40 points. So I think chase brisco still alive.
Carson hosts of our 88 back. Yeah, I just haven't seen enough speed lately. All consistently again. Like this is all about consistent finishes and he's probably going to go run a good or bristle. I feel like that's one of his better could be good there, but just in the long run. That is good. I think Carson has far over achieved this year. Spire over achieve this year with getting two cars into the playoffs. I think they're just trying to over achieve again, finishing anywhere in the top 10 and points overall is a good good year for them. Bubba Wallace who is 90 back. I think Bubba can still knock off. He's going to have a good stretch of races coming up, I believe. But 90 back with the names that are in front of him, just a little much to overcome right now. Bubba Wallace, I think he's looking at trying to finish around fifth or sixth in the points. Best again, TJ, you made a good point. A couple of good tracks coming up, maybe pop off a win or a couple of good results. And he just might be able to get up in there in the top six. Chase Elliott, 93 back. 93 points is a lot, but I think chase Elliott could he just can get
hard, I believe still. And he's one of the guys that I think can make a jump up from a lab with I think chase can make a good run out of still. In the last 17 races since his last win, one top five two top 10 finishes and average finish of 19.5. I'm worried about chase. I don't know where the speed is in this car, but he's got a little bit of work ahead of him. All right. Is there any other driver that you want to bring up that you think has I think we're good. I mean, if you want to cut it off right there, I'm fine with that because we got also a standard busher priest by wearing all those guys over a hundred points out. I think their season is over. I agree. A huge point day in Bristol like when two stages and a win maybe. I mean, we saw what that can do. I think those guys are you know, just challenging for them to even get to fifth. Fifth and sixth and points. You're asking a short term too. And you're asking all these other guys to bad days. The Earnhardt family is always relied on Bass Pro shops for our outdoor adventures and that tradition continues with me today. I
grew up shopping there and now it's a place I love sharing with my own family gearing up together for everything from weekend getaways to fishing in the pond at the house. I'm also very thankful for the support Johnny Morris and the entire Bass Pro shop team has shown us across all of our business ventures from the race team to dirty Mo media. They're behind us all the way. They believe in what we're building and they're not just great partners though. They're great people. We are be sure to check out all they have to offer no matter what you're doing whether you're fishing, camping, hunting, you can find everything that you need at your nearest Bass Pro shop store or you can shop online at BassProShops.com. Hey everybody, the 2026 season is in full swing and we've already had some really incredible moments while we love this sport and when it comes to capturing those historical NASCAR moments, nobody does it better than Lionel racing the official die cast of NASCAR. Their race win die casts are some of my absolute favorites in my collection.
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learning about it then also talking about sharing information. Fascinating. I love it too. We talked a lot about the chaos at St. Louis. Obviously we talked about everything. Dirty Modo is badass this week as well. I think you're really going to like this show. This may be our best show of the year in terms of the Tuesday dirty air and the Tuesday day of junior download. I think I prepped and worked harder for this show than I did any other show. So I hope you all might see a difference. TJ's here Travis Elijah everybody James is still here. Will the fresh cut. Yeah. Exfinity is waving the red flag on internet price hikes raising the green flag for savings now you get the speed and reliable Wi-Fi that you need locked in at one price for five years. There's no surprises and no late yellows right to victory lane and that's how they love it at Exfinity. Imagine that. Exfinity. Imagine that. That's their slogan. You have we had the meats and then you have imagine that. Can we talk about our new partner or no?
No, it's like about our new partner. Yeah, we got a new partner for the studio. Not yet. You're going to love this one. You're going to love this one. I promise you the new partner. Okay, I guess wait to talk about it. I've actually pretty bummed. Yeah. So all right, we're starting everybody starting to trickle in. We got about 200 people in here checking out the chat. Good morning. Mac Mundi. Pamela says she's here. Good to see everybody. I like the rolling in. Great weekend for the Denny Bros. Ohio State Chote and Larsen won the race. All right, let's get right to it. So we'll just go kind of right down that one. Similar vein. Somebody want to know what is the correct response as a fan when another driver crashes the car? What if they are a serious threat to your bros championship chances? All right, all right. This needs to be discussed and explained. So during the race, Ryan Blaney had break failure. There was a person that tweeted a media member tweeted, oh no, Blaney's in the wall break failure. Travis retweeted that with FUCK. Yes.
In all caps. And I said jerk move. I said a gift that said man, we don't really do that around here and it started to snowball from there. Travis doubled down said man, I'm just pulling from my driver Travis. I'll let you kind of take them there. So yeah, how I can understand where people didn't like how it was just all caps that way. So like maybe could I have I worded it differently? Yes. I will. Yes. I will. I will give you that. But the I think there's a bigger conversation on how fans react and celebrate. All right. Here's my situation. I don't have a problem with what you did. If that's a fan in the grandstands or another guy watching at home on his couch or a guy on his laptop or a guy with his buddies, whatever, however you're absorbing the race as a fan, if you want to have that type of a reaction over a guy having an accident or somebody you don't pull
for, I, you know, I've sat in the grandstands or an I've sat I will take myself and put myself in the in the sweet short and worshiped way as a teenager. I have watched fans do as much as they possibly could to the driver that they hated the most every time he come by, right? Whether it was dad or anybody else, man, they would blip and birds and they were, you know, boy, when somebody crashed, they cheered like hell and they booed and this, you know, when darewaltzup got announced in the 80s when he's driving the mountain to car, they booed the hell out of him. When Russy wrecked Darrell, man, he caught hell for weeks, months. Yeah. Very passionate. You know, and that what you did, Travis is absolutely acceptable and not a surprise to me. But I'm just going to say, you're, I believe in a different position than that person. You're not a fan. So that's where I will push
I am not a media member. You are, but I'm not. You, I'm sorry, brother. You are. You're a, you're a podcast producer, but also you're a person like that's that's your personality on this show. You are, you're talking head on the show personality. You are your media member. This is, hey, I'm sorry, dude. You are. I see that's what you are now under a new, you're in a new box. And you got to act accordingly. You got to we have, we'll have Ryan Blaney come on this show. He might win the race and come on here next week. I don't need you doing that and him not want to call in or him want to call in and be awkward. Now I will give you that. If that's, but there's a difference between being a media member and like listen, you're reasoning. Now your reason in there, I will, I will, I don't disagree with that. You do you, but I expect different. But and I'm not, look, I am not your boss. Mike Davis is your boss. Well, you are my boss. Let me, well, let me, we work on a level playing field. Yeah, we're in this room. We're all the same.
But I just wish you would do it differently next time. I agree. And so if that happens again, you might say that sucks for him. That's great for Danny, right? Or damn, man, that's a, that's a tough blow for his, for his hopes that you got to get super descriptive. But you can't go, oh, hell yeah. Whoa, you know, I don't disagree with you on that. Yeah. Like I understand the reaction. If I see that from a fan in the grandstands who's there to he bought his ticket, he's there to he's having a good time. That's sports. And I, and so I, but you're in a position where you have, you have to like, understand like you can't do that. You're, you've become, you've become more popular, whether there's a lot of people that don't agree with that. You have, you're more well known, you're more, you have more notoriety. You're, you know,
you're, you're on, you're more of a talking head on Denny's show that you ever were, right? You're growing this sort of reputation, whether you like it or not. And it, and you have to make these adjustments. And so if you want Ryan Blaney, not to want to come in here on Tuesday and knock your head off, right? Yes. You got to kind of, you know, know how to, you're on a personal level with these people now. You are. Yeah. I don't, I don't disagree with you're not, you're on a personal level. The, the tweet didn't want to go hard. No, it's fine. And I, I, you mentioned that you want to talk about this. I said, let's have it on here. So that, you know, I think the chat, you know, is so you can try to dig yourself. And he says, quick Travis, bring up, compady. That's hilarious. So that's going to follow us. But I, I do have a question. So I don't disagree that like I should have ordered it differently. But I, Brandon says, getting disciplined loud on air is crazy. Travis, what's the company that you work for? I work for Dernima Media. What's the last word? That is, I'm not a member of the media though.
You are. Yes, you are. So I have a question of free day. And I'll say that all seriousness here, though, if you were in Ryan Blaney shoes, and I tweet that about you, how, how do you, how do you think as a driver, you would take that? I'm, I'm, if I was in Ryan Blaney, yeah, I'd be pissed. I'd be so mad. Yeah. I agreed. I'd be mad. And then I'd also be mad at myself that I was mad. Does that make sense? Because I'd be like, if this guy, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go give him a piece of my mind. And then I'm gonna be like, why am I so mad about this? He's just a producer or podcast. I'm overreacting. Maybe Ryan will win this week. I hope Ryan wins Bristol. So he has to come on this show. And he wants to come in. And he wants to come in in person. Yeah. Listen, the funny thing is like, if it's, if it's not Danny, Ryan would probably be my driver. Ryan's, yeah. Oh, wow. You're very, you know, he's like, he's from Ohio. Like, he seems like a good, like a good time to do. Like, I've talked him before. I have no, it's not like an anti Ryan Blaney thing. It's that Ryan Blaney
is really freaking good. Look, that you're, you know, I wasn't celebrating rex Riley Herbs. Listen, but I agree next time it won't tweet that way. It just sounds bad. Looks bad. We're all right. All right. People are, people are saying we're going a little bit too hard. I think. No, I know. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, I think it's a fun conversation because what you did, I've seen it all my life. And I, it's, it's a very, what your reaction to that is absolutely an important ingredient in our sport for the fan. The fans need to have that passion. They need to have that love. Hey, yes, no, you know, they need to have that very stern shorter line of guys they love and guys they really want to see have bad days. You know, nobody, I don't, all the fans in the grandstands at St. Louis. I don't want them all up there going, man, I hope they all do well. You know, I want them to like, hate some people and love some people that,
that, and we see that, we see that play out on the racetrack between drivers and all that. But I just think you being attached to this and what you do with Denny and all the things, it's like, it's a bit more out there than you think. I think sometimes I feel like I'm reminded to when I get on social media and I say something and I go, oh, she's a lot more people read this than I remember or think, you know, I think I'm just having this kind of general thought that I'm going to share with a couple of hundred people. And then I'm reminded that it's, it's quite a bit bigger than that. Yeah, we had an incident. Yeah. So, next question, how's your fantasy football going? How did that draft go? So, AI has been a big topic of conversation in the world. At least that's what my algorithm has been sending me for whatever reason. I thought it would be fun. So chat GPT,
is that right? I always get them three letters. I call it Chad. I'm a, I'm a ass Chad. Another buddy of mine calls it Jack or something. So, that's a little weird. It is. I'm going to talk to Chad and I'm going to say, I just thought it'd be fun. So, let me just back up. The last couple of years, I ain't done no prep. I've sat down, drafted my team, no prep. I used to do prep, paper, study, print out like top 200. All this crap. Used to sit there, watch the draft, mark guys off and worry and worry about what I was going to do. And sometimes I'd win, sometimes I sometimes I'd lose. It didn't really seem to make a difference. So, I quit prepping. And so, the last three years, I ain't done shit. And I've actually had less fun with my fantasy league. Me and TJ have been in this fantasy football league for 25 years. A long time, what do you say? It's been a long time. Yeah. We've been in this thing forever. So, we're going to do it. Whether we really love it or not. And there's some years where it's more fun than others. And
that's all right. But I was losing my, I was losing my love for it. So, I decided, you know what? I'm going to see what Chad thinks I should do. And I didn't listen. The thing, the funny part is, is that I asked Chad what he thought I should do, who he thought I should draft. And I would sit there and I'd take a picture of the, the, the board, you know, when it was my turn to draft, round two, round three, round four. All right, Chad, what you think? Here's the board. And I never did anything Chad said. And so, don't give me s**t using AI to pick my team because I did absolutely the opposite of what. Because he would say something and I go, I don't want that guy. You know, he's bored. And so, I actually told Chad I said, hey man, I want you to help me draft like the breakouts. I don't want to try it. And true, I don't want the guy that's had three great years. I want to draft a full team of might have been or could be. And so, most of my team are
like second year players, third year guys. And they're all that, you know, on that breakout list, except for my tight end. I got the tight end from Arizona. I had him last year. He was bad ass. And then I ended up getting my home super late. Nobody wanted my homes because he's coming off that injury. So I got him super late. He had a great night last night. Yeah. But I think I got the running. I got a, I got that rookie, wide receiver from the Panthers. The rookie this year. It is rookie last year. Oh, I'm sure. I'm Tetrua McMillan. Yeah, no, he starts with Tetrua. And that's right. Whatever it is. I got him. Yeah. I got got all my team as guys like him. Like man, might have a good year. We'll just have to see how did the length of the draft go. Oh, it wasn't bad. The length. It's like 45 minutes daily. Make a change. We had, I think we, I f***** up and started the draft. And it was like on a minute and 30 seconds. And so we got to like round 10. And I didn't tell anybody, but I just shortened it to like 30 seconds. I was like,
screw this. Yeah. I might not even. And I think the first two guys weren't ready for that. And they get to pick in that round because it went by some f***** and they weren't paying attention. I'm like, whoops. Sorry about that. But that was funny. That's pretty messed up. It's actually commissioner. It's good though. I mean, you just got to get my heads up. I'm, we've been doing this for 25 years, people. You'll know when it. You're very ready for anything. You're fine. At that point, you're fine. Yeah. All the guys that are in this pretty much have been with us from the start. Yeah, they know the shit. They were ready for shit. Bad to happen. We had to kick one guy out. But hey, auto-drafted every year. He moved to Ireland. Yeah. Yeah. TJ, somebody in the chat moved to Europe. You're out. Yeah. That's true. That's pretty messed up. Well, he auto-drafted because he's never late. Well, that's fine if you auto-draft, but you say he moved to Europe. Well, that was why auto-drafted. TJ, someone that chat wants to know do you have any plans to go to the new Bill Stadium? At some point, yeah. I'd love to go. This is, that's really not excited when I saw the Bristol schedule for the season, the NFL. When it came
out, I don't find up perfectly with their first home game. So Thursday night, I'll be spot in the truck race during the home opener for the bills. But at some point, I'd like to go up there and check out our looks awesome. I can't wait to go see it. Yeah. Well, Dale Jeter run an Xfinity race anytime soon. No plans. I did love when I watched the O'Reilly race. No, it says Xfinity. O'Reilly race. When I watched the O'Reilly race, I loved how much off throttle they had. Almost text Denny Hamlin during the race and said, wow, the off throttle because he loves off throttle. They would lift and be out of the gas for so long around the corner. It was badass. That kind of made me want to be out there. Somebody in the chat wants to know what you think of Carson Hosevar getting the fans out on the track to just sign autographs. That was great. Do it every week. I love it. I don't think it's performative. I think I learned in San Diego that it's not performative because we were so late and he said, I'll still show up and then stayed and signed
autographs. That's just who he is. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. Do you think that something that I actually took a week off from being in the middle of some shit sign that says like week since Carson O'Cevar was in Iraq and put in the studio and started a race. Let's just say not interact. Mark safe. Yes. Mark safe. Well, I do the 24 hours a day tone of now. I saw fans say they're playing NASCAR 26. Jerky boys as their sponsor on the track. Jerky boys is a sponsor in NASCAR 26. NASCAR 26, man. You should spot the 24 hour race with me one year. We should go do that race together. I got some codes. Should I put some codes in the chat? Well, we got to find a way for them to like, because you just put someone's going to like, well, first one that types in. I mean, that's how it goes. Yeah. First come for you got to be here present, right? Yeah. Somebody's going to type it in and get it. Okay. I'm all do it. Let me just give me a second. Y'all, y'all keep talking. Somebody on, I think it was on Twitter,
one another. They're going to Bristol for the first time this weekend, TJ. What's some non-racing things? They're like, what's around Bristol? Yeah. Bass pro shops. Oh, I can't. Here, I'm going to give it to do. I'm not going to put it in the chat because I don't want people to know who I am. Yeah. Send a Travis. Give it to Elijah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. This one is. Text to Elijah. I got it right here. I'm going to go sign up for it real fast. Yeah, let's text it. That's a PlayStation. I got PlayStation. And then here comes the Xbox. Dale, somebody wants to know what's one of the songs that you're really happy about. That's on the Check that out. What are you? Oh, there it is. That's nice, ain't it? I love it. Yeah. What's your one of your songs that you're one of your favorite songs on the NASCAR 26 soundtrack? Oh, man. Let me, oh, man. All right. One of my favorite songs. There's a song called Dale Earnhardt. Really? Hot skillet. Lickers. I think it's the name of the band. Hot skillet, lickers. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Dude. So let me tell y'all I couldn't help it.
There's there every year. Somebody sends me a Dale Earnhardt song. Man, my buddy wrote a Dale Earnhardt song or this guy's making a Dale Earnhardt song or, you know, every year there's a Dale Earnhardt song. And I'll be honest, man. Not all of them are that great. It's hard to write about him and they're all, you know, mostly sad or, oh, man, you know, Dale Earnhardt. So this song is not sad. This song is talking about how bad ass he is and it's just funny. I think it's a funny song. And so I was kind of thinking that this might be the last time that I get to create the music for this game. And I take a ton of shit for it because a lot of people do not like it. You're not going to like, you're not going to make everybody happy. But in this case, like when you make a soundtrack for a video game, you make a lot of people unhappy. And so I was like, you know, I'm just going to put this song in there. I don't care what anybody says. So
if you get a chance to listen to it, it's pretty funny. The band's not together anymore, but they were thrilled. I'd heard back that they were thrilled that we considered and put them in there. I put Tim Dugger in there last year. We didn't put Tim in and everybody said, damn, I'm surprised he didn't put Tim in there. He's buddy. So this year, I was like, oh, all right. What's all your ass? You know, you're going to get some Tim Dugger next year. So I'll put Tim in there. What song? Do you know? Um, Mama tried. Okay. He does Mama tried. It's pretty good. Um, let me see here. There. I'm going to say a lot of songs. And these are the ones that I put in there. I didn't choose every song. I only chose about half the songs. All the same by sick puppies. Bad ass song. Let him know by T.I. Bad ass song. Great to T.I. I mean, NBC was using them this week and I want to say like that song. Yeah. I feel like you're the first one though. It came by he right. He puts a song out and you're like, this new. That's 2000s. Sounds like it could be old,
but I've never heard it. And turns out T.I. Steel has it. Um, the hot skillet liquors, they learn hard. Great song. What it is to burn by Fitch bad ass song. Um, Tim Dugger, Mama tried. Angels and Airwaves tunnel. Amazing record. Every song on that is the best. Angels and Airwaves is as good as blink. I know a lot of people want to agree with that. Um, citizen coat. Sun's going to rise. Citizen coat. Good friend of mine. Been listening to his music for 20 years. Just a great song. Steven Wilson Jr. He's bad ass now, but I heard year to be young 1994 years ago. Tim Dugger sent me that song said, listen to this. I think you'll like it. Never had heard Steven Wilson Jr. before. And he was no one knew who he was. Yeah. And Tim sent me that song. Speaking of Steven, somebody asked early in the chat, have you heard corner man? It's one of your newer songs. DMX, where the hood at? Oh, we put that in there. That's DMX.
Reasons by alien ant farm, alien ant farm, dude. I was a massive fan of theirs back in the day. Yeah. I always kind of go back and look at the bands that I love 20 years ago to see if they're making new music. And they were alien ant form put out alien ant farm put out reasons this year. I was like, this is a pretty good song. I bet other people will like this song. And then um, I didn't choose this one. Steve Myers did, but I love it. Soul coughing. Super bond bond. Just a bad ass song. Move upside. Let the man go through is a great line. You could talk about, you know, how that's a great line in racing. Um, I'll tell you a little bit of a hint about sweet home Alabama. Yes, sweet house, sweet home Alabama has been used in other games. Um, we thought that would be a good intro for the, for the game. And without getting into details, we had a budget. You got to be able to fit all these songs in that budget. People were like, Oh man, look at this playlist. I could do better
than that. And they made, you know, they go out on social media and be like, here's my playlist. Look at my, I could do better. Look at, look at, look at, I did better. And I'm like, yeah, that's going to cost you about three million bucks. And so we don't have three million dollars. And so we had to kind of fit all of this. And we had to throw songs that we wanted that we, you know, bad ass songs that a lot of people love. We had to throw some of them out because they weren't going to fit. But Leonard Skinnerd was going to be the most expensive song. But you know what they said? They said, you pay us what the second most expensive song is. Whatever that number is is what you pay us, which I thought was really nice. Yeah. They could have said, you know, we want a hundred thousand dollars. But now they said, just pay us the as much as you're playing the neck, paying the next guy. That's cool. Super cool. And then you go to the second guy and say, well, pay what other third guy pays. Yeah. Have a nice bring it all down. Yeah. All the other songs, other people had influence and put them in. Um, they're great songs. But those are the ones that I, yeah. You guys post the code yet. Elijah, did you post code? Why is the code not out? Elijah,
we promised the code. No, you're putting it in the chat. Yeah. Man, follow the directions. Sorry for yelling. I thought you, I thought we were all all people. Everybody direct your hate towards Elijah. No longer Travis. Was it just me? Was it just me or did did everybody else think we were talking about putting it in the chat? I thought we were pacing it in chat. The chat definitely thought it was going in the chat. Yeah. Okay. Good. This is for people. Which one you do it first? Hi, here comes the PlayStation. Be ready. Code. While we're going to like to suck. Let's get back going. Hashtag Elijah sucks. Travis sucks. No, Travis is great now. Yeah. David Elijah. You're fired too. It's out. That's a playstation. Yeah. That's PlayStation. You need to put like what system it is behind it. So, you know, PlayStation. I think they can tell the difference. Yeah, they are because I think the PlayStation codes are much shorter. Here comes your Xbox code. Dawson Travis still doesn't suck. He's good now.
Comes your Xbox code for NASCAR 26. Everyone's there. There it is. The codes are out. Somebody's copying. What a great show. Copy and paste. What a great show. Next question. Do you think the field messed up this past week and not getting more ground on Diddy Hamlin? Not really. When I look at the points. Three drivers made a point. Yeah. Listen. Larsen gained 40. Legato 21. Jesus Legato. He's going to get in the middle of this. And in hosts of our gain one point. The guys that lost Christopher Bell six. Blaney 17. Boy, he's so lucky having the break failure and only losing seven two points. Super lucky. Chase got hurt. Yeah. I mean, these guys didn't lose giant chunks. It's still early. I know, you know, I'm sitting there. If I leave that racetrack and I'm anybody,
but Danny, I go, man, Danny didn't run to them. Good. What's going on? Yeah. You guys picked him to right. You know, it's kind of been this bit of a law where we haven't really seen that dominance. And I know we're not, you know, he may turn it around at Bristol. He may go to the Kansas, the Charlottes, all those tracks and get going because Toyota's been bad ass at the big mile and a half. I can't wait to go there because we don't know if the, the adjustments and ask are made to the front structure back in North Wolfsboro is going to affect the Toyota's at the mile and a half. Yeah, we haven't been to really one of those tracks to see. Darlington would be probably the closest thing, but I wouldn't count Darlington on a, you know, I wouldn't say that, you know, what you do at Darlington and the, and you know, and I'm trying to say that. Yeah. That's the one thing is you're like, man, I had a bad day break or whatever, but it's like, but did he didn't go crush it? I got lucky. Another bad pit stop. That's back to back weeks. Yeah. I, look, I'm not pulling against any at all, but I do want this to be close. Yeah, you want to go to
home, civil, two or three drivers, I wanted to be a battle all the way to the end. Yeah, I get that. Except for the in the O'Reilly series, I would like that one to not be close. Yeah. Justin and Carson, everyone else and we'll say me in Roger and then everyone else just get out of here. Sorry, I don't know your name, but someone want to know what you think of the shoving match at the cars tour. We'd rather people not put their hands on each other, you know, no matter what. I said it, you know, back when Huffman was gotten that little deal at Anderson, I don't mind guys talking to guys. I don't mind Cussin. I don't mind going to talk to each other and get mad and putting your finger in everybody's face or whatever you want to do, but you can't touch people. You can't put your hands on people that not the guy that pushed that really, I'm not mad that the guy pushed the guy is kind of a jerk move, but it just could escalate. What could happen beyond that is the problem. Say guy say a guy say he pushes the guy then somebody sucker punches him
or hits him. There's been stories in racing, lowell and history where guys have been hit by wrenches, jack handles, people lose their f***ing lines. And so, you know, you don't think you think you're there and you don't think about the world's watching. You don't think about the the repercussions that come with it in the moment. You see a guy get pushed and you're mad. You go up and punch somebody in the back of the head or hit somebody with something. It's a big bad deal then. And that's what we're trying to avoid. Everything that happened at Sirack track County, there will be no penalties for nothing that happened off track or on track. That's my expectation. We're not even close to having penalties for anything that happened there. I do like the drama. I love do everything I saw on the racetrack, pushing and shoving. Nobody got wrecked. Nobody got dumped. But the shoving physically out of off the racetrack is bad because of what it could turn into. Could turn that figure eight race. Did you see that? That's what somebody just
was like. Holy cow. Two guys got into it and like another guy. A guy was getting out of the car. Had a figure eight race. A guy was getting out of the real figure eight race. Yeah, like a real like cars are awesome looking. Oh yeah. The guy's getting out of his car. Another guy runs up and hits the car when he's getting out. Oh shit. Yeah. That's so good. And then he jumped into car and was kicking the guy. Oh, another thing we see somebody here. Dale, how much do you owe to the swale? Swear jar. I think it's a thing. Tammy. But I'm not sure. But I saw. So this swear jar thing come out right now. Scar's going to do the swear jar. And I'm like, I'm like, what the hell is this? You know, you were uninterested at first. Yeah. What are they doing? But now I see they got this list. All right. Here's how many F bombs, GDs and all this stuff and MFers and all that. And I'm like, all right, that's that's that's interesting. Okay. Now, but what it's got me wanting to know is who said, well, I know that's what I thought. I'm like, who is saying I mean, I don't, you know, I don't really need what I would love. All right. This is what I want. Nascar, give me this. Give
us put the chat back up there. I was going to try to search a. Too many times he cussed. No, no, I want. I want to see the chat. So this is what I'm looking at the chat like I'm actually looking at the faces of all these people. I know. So I like it. What I want to see. And I think what you would love to see is I need that list to be this driver has cursed more than this driver. Here's the leading cursor. Second, third, fourth. And beside the driver's name, what is the curse word that he uses the most? Yes. That would be awesome. Can we get that? I mean, they're literally talking about it in the radio about the swear jar. Yeah. Like it's they are the drivers are aware. I want to know who the leading driver is. And I want to know what his favorite word is. Surely they have that because then we can then turn that into content. Surely they got it. Yeah. Yeah. I will say this driver, because their t-shirts could come out with them. When I, I will say this, I would love to
poll. Let's go back to like 1995, all the drivers that started cup races and all the drivers that finished in the top 30 in 1995. All right. I bet if you pulled all of them, they would tell you that Rusty Wallace was the biggest cusser. Because I would stand with dad and Rusty and I'd be at the race track when I was a kid and Rusty and dad were talking just normal Saturday morning. Hey, man, how's it going? What's your been up to? And every sentence had an F bomb in it with Rusty. I don't know what he's like these days, but God, he dropped the F word a lot. I thought it was awesome. Somebody said, oh, yeah, uh, Turex and Kurt Buscher are still cussing in the retire. Turex was a little bit of a cusser. Kurt. Yeah. Yeah. He was. Kurt's got some social media YouTube videos. Yeah. Also crew chiefs and spotters. I think count towards the Swarge R TJ. I don't cuss a lot
on the radio. Hear me out. Wait, crew chiefs and spotters are counting toward this. Yes. I don't think that should have. You're getting either. You're giving the spotters way too much. Chris, the spotters don't need to I agree with you, but TJ. I mean, they might as well have. Can we start having a pop cast? Yeah, but the media members. The media members. Your swearing are today would be I know. It's up there. They don't need to have the spotters. I don't think I don't even know if the crew chiefs should be in there. Just drivers. Just drivers. I don't care about the show. I agree, but TJ, can we what have you cussed more to up the number? No, I'm not cussing. I try to diffuse deescalate situations. I had to do a little bit of that on Sunday. I give it out some football scores too. I did. Yeah. Then we used to use code words. Now we just football scores, but oh, yeah, we did. Yeah. Not for not for tires. We didn't use code words for tires. Just football games. Pits, tops. Yeah. Cause that'd be silly. Don't y'all think that's dumb? Code words? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's
so I get maybe at the end of the race, but for the most part, like they're kind of important. It was a good mix on this weekend, just seeing how it that's silly. Yeah. Well, teach their own. I love it when the code word fuck up and they do something wrong, because they forget what the code word means. I love that. Yeah. Somebody said I wish TJ would curse on I racing when he's spawning for me. Steve Myers can fix that. I bet there is a I racing. Yeah, there's a yeah, you can spot a pack. It's just all cussing. That'd be great. I did. I know I've shared this before, but I'll share it again. I did a voice for ways. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, there's some there's some color in there. That's the last. I posted it on I tweeted it the link to do it. And some people got it, but I don't think other people have to give it a try. Anything else? I don't know, man. I think we're in a good spot.
Yeah. TJ is vanilla. Yeah. No, he's not not on TJ is the radio. I am. That's the that's the that's the that's the that's the just of social media. TJ's vanilla in the most is TJ is fired to gasoline. Yeah. It's not my job to be gasoline on the radio. Is Amy racing in the mom pre? I don't know. Well, um, does Amy going to let you play some more hell at loose? Do I need to make another hall pass? I'm busy this week, but maybe this weekend. All right, everybody. That was a lot of fun. I've got a couple more codes. I'll give those codes. Next week in the chat. Yeah, I've got some few weeks next week. That's the same for me. We'll save the codes for next week. More codes, PlayStation and Xbox next week in the chat. Also next week, we're going to go live at a specific time. Travis, what time we're going to go live? 10 30 10 30. Be ready. We will be going live on Ask
Junior set your clocks. Give yourself a notification so you don't miss out. Um, this has been a lot of fun. 775 people in here. Exfinity, we got to thank you. Spinity because they're doing all these great things for us and sponsoring this segment every single week. They're waving the red flag on internet price hikes, raising the green flag for savings. You get the speed and reliable Wi-Fi that you need one price five years. Um, they're just straight, badass. Exfinity. Imagine that. Hey, this is Dale, hard junior. And for all the latest Dale, junior download gear, including the I'm old drink some beer t-shirt. We've been talking about here around the office. Head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch. All right, y'all college football Saturdays are already packed with reasons to get excited. And this season, Fandool is giving you even more. Make this the most exciting college football season ever with Fandool. From the first kickoff of the day to the final whistle at night, there are more ways to
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All right, it's time for dirty mode. O. This segment is brought to you by Fandool. We are back. Dirty mode media just acquired or teamed up or have become partners with an entity in the college football realm of podcasting and we're excited about that. So you're going to see a lot more of that on our feeds. We're going to talk a little bit more about that as well. But first off, we're headed to Bristol. This feels like a big race for title contenders. Every race is a big race for title contenders. Russ, you're back. You weren't here last week. We missed you. But we're ready. We're dialed in and ready to go over some of the comments between all of us in terms of who we think is going to win. So obviously coming out of the gate, I'm going to tell you that I think Carl Arson is a favorite. He's won three races in the last, I think seven or last eight. He's got seven top fives. The one that he didn't get the top five in, he got crashed out of
that was this race last year. But I mean, the guy's just automatic. This is one week where I don't think I'm picking Danny Hamlin as the favorite. What does the predictor say? He the predictor agrees with you. Kyle Arson is going to go back to back says the predictor. Vegas agrees with you. Two of the lines are now out. All right. Well, he's a Larsen is on a hot streak right coming off of the win. He wasn't the best car at St. Louis, but they got to they got the job done. He could go into Bristol, be the best car, have a great several stages and maybe possibly win the race and put, you know, put Danny Hamlin in a bit of a bind as they head to the mile and a half where Danny will have to perform. Who else stands out? I think you got Danny Hamlin. Yeah, can't ignore Danny Hamlin. So of course there, but also Christopher Bell. I like Christopher Bell there won this race last year. He's also been top 10 and six of the last seven there. Yeah. Blaney, even though he's never won there, he's been top six the last four
races there. You got taggibs as a sleeper. That's, yes, he won the race. Wait, I think we just don't think of tiegibs. You know, we just don't think of tiegibs. I feel like this happened somewhere else. Wait, we don't or you don't, Russ. I think the general we did the general we. Taggibs that just went out there one earlier this year is a sleeper. I mean, you've got zero respect. Let me tell you, you got guys that are hot. This is the information that I get from racing insights. You got a couple of drivers that are hot. That's Danny Hamlin and Kyle Arson. Then you got, you got guys that are strong recently at Bristol. Christopher Bell. You got Brian Blaney. We'll be a factor. You got Chase Briscoe. Consistence consistently lately at Bristol. You got a solid at Bristol. You give Carson host of our a solid at Bristol.
You give the winner. You give the winner from the race earlier this year a sleeper label. I would slip those two. Yeah, that is not good. But so that's a sleeper pick to win. All right, it should say to sleeper to win. Not sleeper sleeper. All right. No, we're just coming next week. We just coming for Dale. You know what? Respect zero. We're going to be working on racing insights to the end of time. It's a all it's a work of progress. It's like I didn't. It's never done. It's never done. It's never done. It's never done. It's not even any mission about how you know, getting beat on a reac了 last year. That's the only way C about one. I mean, dang. When I'm when I'm when I when you come to my visitation, I hope you lay down the most recent iteration of the notes in my casket. This is Dale's last work. All these changes. I'll make a sleeper. I'll come in there. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. I'll come in there like Kenny Powers. Don't bury me at holding the boom box and everything. So every week, every week, every week, I can play in about something with
the notes for no damn good reason and Russell changes it. So a couple of drivers stay away from Austin, Cindrick's cold Daniel Sures is also cold. Use caution with Joey Ligano. And I agree, Joey, uh, his his average results here, average running position, all that not very good. But I just got a feeling that they are funny about strategy and things and figure out ways to sort of get that track position needed. He might be a 15th, 20th place car, but that result, um, in this time of the year, they're just they're they're good. They figured out how to throw him his ass up in the top 10 and get it eight through a ninth place finish. I always feel like Joey and Paul Wolf are scary when they're like, they're when they're like 18th because that's when Paul Wolf can get creative with some things and you never know what's going to happen. Yeah, I feel like they excel in them times. Like they just find the little bit. Yeah. Russ, what do you think of Chase Elliott, a driver that needs to have a good performance? Uh, he's he's lost his Bristol touch, right, Dale? Is that
what we like to say? Um, he's finished 15th or worse in the last three at Bristol. Um, you know, he was eight or better. Bristol feeling. Yes. Whoa. In the prior four. So, but, you know, he's he's just struggled recently too. Like I just feel like this team. Yeah, I have. I need to do something else from this team lately before I think they're going to rebound. Yep. Yeah, I heard you you talk about that. I think they're rebound. Okay. Well, the, we'll see the results from last spring. Ty Gibbs won the race. Blaney was second, Larsen third. I definitely think that could absolutely. Ty Gibbs won. That could absolutely again be the top three. Um, Tyler Reddit, who, uh, you know, doesn't have an amazing, you know, it's not as best track is what you have him labeled as. Did get a fourth place finish. Briscoe was fifth. Like, I know, like I said, seventh place. I've got,
so if I scroll down here, we're going to go over matchups, but, um, when I look at top 10 parles, I want to do those top 10 parles. I think you bet Gibbs and you bet, Larsen on single all out wins. See if you can, you know, make a little money on Gibbs or get the automatic win from Larsen, whatever you want to do. Top 10s at Bristol. I got two parles for you. I'm going to go briscoe, host of our briscoe and plus 246 and then Lagano Blaney. Uh, Blaney and, uh, like, I know plus 102. Yeah. I like those two parles for top 10s. Mine was going to be, uh, Blaney, Bell and Hamlin. Plus one, I just think that this is going to be like a heavy weight. Like those drivers at the top are going to be all right. Hey, this is
absolutely the time of year where, you know, the chase guys, I know St. Louis aside, gateway aside, the chase guys all run up front in the chase, in the playoffs, in the, they all would, you'd look to run down at any racetrack and it's all chase drivers into top 12. So I think that's the brilliant way to look at it. If you, you might not stack three or four drivers in a parlay for top 10s earlier in the year, but when the chase rolls around, pick those chase guys if you want, um, and pile them in there. I'm going to go with Alex Bowman and Brad. No sh**. That's out there. I mean, is that great? They both run good there. That's crazy, man. That's crazy. Um, I like it. I like it. That's crazy. I like it. TJ. That's a plus 473. They're both plus money. You could bet that Alex, is Alex run good? You write this down. Does Alex run good at Bristol? You need to. We're going to bring it all right. I need to write that one down. Yes. Does Alex run good at Bristol? I mean, yeah. There you go.
Hey, AliEx. Yo, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. Thank you. Like, who did you have? He's been good here in the in the night race. I'll give him that. I went. I went. Hamlin Blaney Bell, both coming off a little momentum as well. So just makes everything flow a little easier with qualifying. All right. I got it. Pick. All right. Um, we got a couple of, we got four matchups for you. Larsen and Bell. I'm going Larsen. He's got two stage wins earlier in the year there. And confidence coming off of last weekend. And further record, we actually have numbers out on this Larsen's minus 175. So there's a heavy juice if you're going to bet it. Yeah. Gibbs Blaney. I'm going Gibbs. This is the close one though. I think these drivers are going to finish one spot apart. Could go either way. Yeah. Gibbs just got to have the edge here. He's probably really excited to get. I'm a big fan. Everybody knows I'm a big Blaney fan. But I got to be real. I think Gibbs. I just feel like Gibbs is going to, it's going to be like Gibbs second Blaney third Gibbs fourth
Blaney fifth. You know, it's going to be right there. Yeah. I think so. Didney Hamlin, Joy Lagana. This one's relatively easy. I'm going to go to Hamlin. Joey will not match Denny's pace in the race. But he will gut out a top 10 finishes my prediction. Same. Three to three to six spots behind the number 11. Uh, Denny's heavy favorite minus 200. So I would say on the betting side, unless you're parlaying this with something I wouldn't bet it straight up. Don't bet it. Then you got busher in priests. Priests has some swagger. It could go either way. But I like the confidence in the media that I've seen from Ryan Laitley's having a lot of fun. Yeah. Priests underdog plus 140. I love it. Hey, what was his guy? Yeah. He was, um, let's see. In the spring. What are the numbers say between Dale got Dale now has all the numbers right too. So the numbers agree with all of Dale's picks. Oh nice. Priests was eighth in the spring. Busher 13th. You tell me the numbers say Priests. Yeah. I'm betting that right now.
Busher's been outside the top 10 the last four, I think, here at, uh, Bristol. Yeah. Busher in in the next year in car in the seven races we've ran at Bristol. Busher has the better average finished in priests by three positions. But among the chase drivers in overall starts. So Priests has 11 and busher has 19. Priests has the edge by three positions. So it's really, really tight. It is. I would, I'm giving it to Priests now because it seems like his performance this year has just been better. And he's, yeah, that's the other part. He seems charged. He seems like this is starting to make sense to me. Yeah, he, I mean, he got it out of solid finish last week too. I mean, just kind of like what? And I know busher had to break issues. But yeah, just not, I'm not here in unseeing a lot of busher lately, right? It doesn't give me tons of confidence to go out there and put the bed on him. Bristol is the place. He can turn it though.
All these are tight. They wouldn't be matchups if they weren't. Except for the hamlin lagano. That's that's that's low weird. That was a strange one. Yeah, you want to, you know, Hail Mary that might work out, put a little money on Joey to be hamlin in the in the match. I like putting some of those out there just to like, too, I mean, if you're a lagano fan or just want to have a little fun and like, let's just see if there's enough set. Yeah, one or two bucks. Maybe this race turns into a little bit of a chaotic race. Yeah, people getting a little aggressive. All right. We're going to move on to our football college, Parley. We put a, I put together a couple of ideas and I'll let you all guys. Russ, if you try to, my, I will come find a punch. I text. I'm taking it. I want the Miami game. Travis, how would you like to proceed? Who do you want to go first? I'm going first and give me Miami. Miami 20 and a half versus Wake Forest. Miami scores. Miami scored 45 and 77 this year. They're sending a message. Meanwhile, Wake gave up 36th of Purdue last week. They're just not good.
Not good. They're not. And this is like, this is really the first, this is really kind of, wouldn't you say that like the NIAL and team's ability to sort of utilize that system. It's really starting to take more of an effect, like settling in this year. Oh, I said we're in full swing now. I would say last year was kind of like, yeah, like a high state was 24 was like the first year. We're like, I'd have done this differently. That definitely this differently. This is really the roster of all these teams in full swing. Yeah. Yeah. And Miami. Miami was only in I live in IL program well before anybody else. They're in the brand. They got a bit of a head start on really how this works. So they should be they should be doing it better than anyone else at this point. They're beta testers of the pro. They were beta testers. So yeah, that's my number minus 115. I love it. Who wants to go next? Russell, go ahead. So I'm rooting for a lot of points in the LSU and Ole Miss game. I'm going with the over 50 58 and a half. Yeah. All right.
Although I did have Miami plus earlier today and Travis cursing me out. You never had it. I think there's a big game down the road here. I think UNC's at Clemson, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm making that one as well. Yeah. I'm that's a tough place to go in and play, but I'm just going straight up UNC to win that game. I was a I'm pulling for Carolina, both North and South Carolina. I want Carolina beat Clemson. But honestly, I think getting Clemson at minus 172 is hard to pass up. Carolina's recent play has driven the odds in a good spot for folks on that on that side to try to bet Clemson to win. But I don't think that a lot of people give you and see a chance to win this game. But the odds would say it's pretty tight. So wait, who are you taking? I South Carolina over Mississippi State at minus 184. It's a home game for South Carolina. They got a veteran QB started to start to the year strong. Mississippi State started to year strong as
well, but they got a freshman. I think it's a close game, but South Carolina wins it out. My bet is going to be Mississippi State at plus three and a half. Parley with UNC at plus three and a half. All right. I I'm trying to say I want both my teams that I like to win North and South Carolina. But I'm going to bet more responsibly, not for them to win outright, but for them to kind of cover the spread. So your picks again. Mississippi State plus three and a half. UNC plus three and a half. I can get you plus four. Even better for you. Yeah. I'm trying to build this for us then. Well, but for our part for our sake, though, for our parlay, we're going to take UNC just straight up. That's TJ's pick. Let's do it. They always say don't bet with your heart. All right, so we'll take the point. I'm not a UNC fan. We'll take the points then. How about that? Can we take the points at plus
three and a half? I don't get I don't get to do Mississippi State plus three and a half? No, I have a met plus four. Okay. And then SEC, you said which game for us? You're taking oh, you're taking the over one dollar or when you're $12 and starting to five cents. Nice. Let's go. I got a bet right there. Yeah. We get a meeting three bucks. Yeah. Yeah. I also Georgia 25 and a half against Arkansas. Arkansas is really, really bad. All right, ma'am. Well, all right. Great. Dirty Modo segment brought to you by Fandule. Thank you, Russell, for coming in here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, buddy. Yes sir. Yeah, after that note. This week we're awesome. I love that we're going to be celebrating Denny Hamlin's 750th start this weekend. That's a big milestone. Great job. Great job sticking that in there. What are you going to do Travis since 750 tweets? Well, I can now. Dirty Modo brought to you by Fandule, the premier gaming destination in the United States. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us here in the Arby's studio. Don't forget about
Arby's new meeting three bucks. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. We had a great show for you today. Thank y'all for tuning in. We'll see you tomorrow. Check out Dirty Modo media on Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair, done well, kitchen sink install, done well, deck upgrades, done well, electrical upgrade, done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years. So we know the difference between done and done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust, find a pro for your project at Angie.com. Talk about regrets. We all know someone who's been in a car accident and said, I don't need to call a lawyer, only to regret it after their pain and damages were worse than expected. When someone hurts you, you deserve to be compensated fairly. Morgan and Morgan is
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