Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Dale Earnhardt Jr. Discusses His CARS Tour Race at Cordele | Matt Weaver

Transcript

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Discusses His CARS Tour Race at Cordele | Matt Weaver · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  All right, that was kind of an eventful night, right?
• 0:02
  Like, let's start with the end. I guess first the 22 missed the
• 0:05
  shift. Is that what happened?
• 0:06
  You went to talk to him about it.
• 0:07
  Yeah, I did. Yeah.
• 0:09
  He missed the shift. We got a lot of guys missing
• 0:11
  shifts, you know, And I think it's because this is such an
• 0:13
  old, antiquated. What does that word mean?
• 0:16
  Antiquated. Outdated.
• 0:17
  Outdated, right? So I thought.
• 0:18
  But it looks nice though I. Thought I was using the right
• 0:20
  word. The transmission is old school,
• 0:23
  right? And it's like nothing.
• 0:25
  So I went to him. I said, hey, let me tell you
• 0:26
  something. I was like, this thing is like
• 0:29
  nothing you're ever going to race again.
• 0:30
  All the other stuff you're going to race from here on out, It's
• 0:32
  going to have a short throw quick in and out of gear.
• 0:35
  I said this thing's got a real, you know, it's like 810 inches
• 0:38
  of throw from 3rd to 4th and we restart in 3rd, right?
• 0:41
  So all we got to do is go from 3rd to 4th.
• 0:43
  That's all you got to do. And so I said you got no muscle
• 0:46
  memory for that. So going down the back straight
• 0:48
  away, coming to the green, I'm, I'm going from 3rd to 4th over
• 0:51
  and over and over. Just clutch in rolling 3rd, 4th,
• 0:54
  3rd, 4th, just getting some muscle memory in my arm because
• 0:57
  I don't want to be that guy that destroys the field.
• 1:00
  And so I told him, I said you just got to, you know, come into
• 1:03
  the green, just practice it. If this 50 year old man's doing
• 1:05
  it, you ought to be doing it. So I hope he'll do that.
• 1:10
  And I'm sure he felt bad about it.
• 1:12
  I didn't want to. I didn't get angry about it or
• 1:14
  nothing. I mean, I was mad my car got
• 1:16
  destroyed and I was really frustrated with the race because
• 1:19
  we came down here to Cordia, a lot of people watching.
• 1:22
  We had a lot of folks in the in the stands and we had probably a
• 1:27
  good crowd watching on flow and we didn't put our best product
• 1:31
  together tonight. You know, we had a lot of, a lot
• 1:34
  of cautions. Umm, and just a Late Show show.
• 1:37
  What show ended way too late. And yeah, so just those
• 1:42
  frustrating things that we're trying to do better as a tour,
• 1:46
  as a series. Uh, and you know, I was talking
• 1:50
  to Kip a lot after this race. I was like, man, we're basically
• 1:52
  trying to run 2 features and our growth, which is a great thing,
• 1:56
  is working against us a little bit because we got 2 great car
• 2:00
  counts and we're trying to put 2 features in front of these
• 2:03
  people tonight. And it's maybe unrealistic.
• 2:07
  And I know, I think, you know, we had to start sooner or do
• 2:09
  something and, and there's going to be some push back to that
• 2:14
  different, different people, but just to get our show done by
• 2:17
  10:00 or 10:30. So there's a lot there to I'm I
• 2:22
  was happy to even had fun. I I got to drive my car and, and
• 2:25
  I hate that, you know, that I didn't get a good result or get
• 2:27
  something reasonable. I was sitting there in 5th going
• 2:29
  on, you know, let's just get home.
• 2:31
  But the the series and, and and our product.
• 2:36
  There's some things we need, You know, we we can improve or we
• 2:39
  need to improve. So not not our, not our best.
• 2:45
  How valuable is it for you to be able to be a driver a couple of
• 2:48
  times a year? To be able to experience it, not
• 2:50
  from the outside as you know, series owner, but experience
• 2:53
  what it's like to feel what the drivers feel.
• 2:56
  I'm in the car tonight wishing that I was in the booth helping
• 3:00
  them, you know, move things along.
• 3:05
  And I don't know everything going on.
• 3:07
  So, you know, you're sitting in the car going.
• 3:09
  All right, man, why didn't we get to choose that time by
• 3:11
  right? Why didn't we go ahead and do
• 3:13
  that? Like, you know, every caution
• 3:17
  feels like it adds about two or three more laps than it should
• 3:20
  and why, why are we, why, what are the reasons for that?
• 3:24
  And there's probably some good reasons, right that I don't
• 3:25
  understand, but uh, you know, I, I feel, uh, I like, I like to
• 3:31
  drive and I think it, umm, I think it helps the racers
• 3:37
  appreciate what we're trying to do with the series.
• 3:40
  Umm, you know, if we just showed up and talked at a couple
• 3:45
  drivers meetings throughout the year and didn't do anything
• 3:47
  else, they might, they might think that we might question, I
• 3:50
  guess our real, our interests or our motives.
• 3:53
  And, and, but I love this and I want it to work and I want it
• 3:58
  to, I want, I want to experience it as a driver and, and so that
• 4:03
  they know our owners and our other drivers know that like,
• 4:06
  Hey, I understand what you're fighting.
• 4:08
  I understand what you're upset with.
• 4:09
  I understand what you want us to do better or what you want out
• 4:12
  of the tour because I'm experiencing it.
• 4:14
  I got a car, two cars tonight in the field.
• 4:18
  And so I see it when they come to me and they're like, man,
• 4:20
  this needs to get better or man, why did we do it this way?
• 4:25
  We can have that conversation because I'm, I'm seeing it, I'm
• 4:28
  seeing it from all sides. So I mean, I got to pay the same
• 4:31
  bills they got to pay as far as equipment and just to come out
• 4:35
  and race. So it's a there's a trust there,
• 4:37
  I think, or appreciation amongst us all.
• 4:40
  So that's good. I don't want to race these cars
• 4:43
  forever, but eventually I just want to, you know, really focus
• 4:47
  on the series and and try to get the series going.
• 4:49
  But I'll run a few more years maybe.
• 4:51
  What do you feel like you guys as a series could do to clean up
• 4:54
  some of the messiness? I got some of the driver's
• 4:56
  thoughts on it, but I'm curious of yours.
• 4:57
  Yeah, I, I. You know, I think that, you
• 5:06
  know, it could be more bodies up in the booth.
• 5:10
  We need to establish the wave around or the free pass and the
• 5:15
  line up and be getting to choose quicker.
• 5:20
  And we've got a great we've got a great group that's been doing
• 5:24
  this a long time. But they, you know, the, what
• 5:29
  we, what we have going on really is we're, we're trying to run a
• 5:36
  short track race like we always did before streaming.
• 5:41
  Now that streaming's here, you got to serve this in a neat
• 5:44
  little package. And so my, my request or my push
• 5:49
  to our team is like, look, y'all got to, we got to flip our
• 5:53
  minds. The guys that have been doing
• 5:54
  this are, you know, our people in the booth and our people that
• 5:57
  are that are managing these, our staff that have been doing it as
• 6:02
  short trackers all their lives have to kind of shift their
• 6:05
  minds a little bit to really appreciate what they need to
• 6:08
  accomplish for the streaming audience.
• 6:11
  And so that's that's I know that doesn't answer the question and
• 6:14
  our drivers have very fair arguments and just just, you
• 6:19
  know, disappointment and I do too.
• 6:21
  I'm in the car. I was so freaking frustrated
• 6:24
  with all the cautions and just all the mistakes, you know, and
• 6:28
  all the drivers mistakes and everything else.
• 6:30
  It just, I mean, we had a great opportunity to to to showcase
• 6:34
  the great things about this tour and we missed it today.
• 6:37
  We missed that opportunity and I hate that because I know the
• 6:40
  tour's, I know the tour's awesome and I want people to see
• 6:43
  it for what it really is. And we just didn't have our best
• 6:45
  night tonight. Shifting from series ownership
• 6:49
  perspective to team ownership perspective, how many positives
• 6:52
  are you taking away from this Connor Hall's victory?
• 6:54
  Yeah, Connor's going to take care of Connor.
• 6:56
  He's awesome. He he's going to do what he
• 6:57
  does. Good driver, good winner and we
• 7:01
  give him a good car and he's going to finish good with it.
• 7:03
  I told him he can't run be as rough as he he used to be.
• 7:06
  You're going to clean it up a little bit when he's driving my
• 7:08
  car. But I don't want to be in the
• 7:10
  middle of no controversy, but especially as a series owner.
• 7:15
  So he he understands that he's got a, you know, he's got to
• 7:19
  walk a straight line and buckle down and man, he's done
• 7:22
  everything we've asked him to do.
• 7:24
  Awesome driver, two time champion, national champion.
• 7:27
  I'm not, I'm not going to change the thing really about what he
• 7:29
  does on the racetrack, but everything we've asked him to do
• 7:32
  off the track. I mean, he basically gave up
• 7:34
  everything he had going on back, back home, his job, which was a
• 7:38
  great job. He's got to put everything on
• 7:40
  hold, moved away from his girl, which they're very close.
• 7:43
  And and that was a tough decision to take this
• 7:48
  opportunity and live down here. And he's got him an apartment,
• 7:52
  he's room with a buddy and he's at work every morning and
• 7:56
  working on our cars and get everything ready and fixing my
• 7:58
  tore up cars. So he's doing great.
• 8:02
  So I'm enjoying, you know, it's fun for me.
• 8:05
  This happens from time to time when you bring other bring guys
• 8:09
  into your car to get to know him, right, Get to know him as a
• 8:11
  person and get to understand what motivates them and what
• 8:14
  excites them. And then you become great
• 8:16
  friends. The next thing you know, you're
• 8:18
  trying to figure out how to get him that next opportunity,
• 8:19
  right? That's that's kind of where we
• 8:21
  are. I I think we're there with
• 8:23
  Connor because he's had so much experience already.
• 8:27
  We're looking for ways to figure out how to get him getting
• 8:29
  chances in Trucks or Xfinity or whatever it may be.
• 8:34
  He's got to win race sports all year long.
• 8:36
  That's the way I look. At it, did the late model stocks
• 8:39
  prove they can travel a little further outside of the
• 8:41
  bandwidth? I think that there's like one
• 8:43
  weekend out of the year where they'll accept some some unique
• 8:50
  situation. And I don't know if we come back
• 8:53
  to Cordele next year, we'll talk to the track and see how they
• 8:56
  felt about it. I come down here Monday to do an
• 9:01
  autograph session for nothing. And what I I made a deal with
• 9:07
  the track. I said I I'm going to ask y'all
• 9:10
  to to put this money, this amount of money in the purse to
• 9:13
  raise the bottom of the purse. I said I'll come sign eyegrass
• 9:16
  at you store in town on on Monday or Tuesday.
• 9:19
  Tuesday was so that's what we did.
• 9:22
  I can't do that every week right for all these tracks.
• 9:25
  But so I don't know if that deal's, I don't know how we can
• 9:28
  make this deal work again if I can't somehow sweep the pot for
• 9:33
  the track a little bit. And they're going to have to
• 9:35
  change their their testing fees for next time, which I didn't
• 9:41
  see that on the radar until it's too late.
• 9:43
  But you know, we, they're a great facility and, and you go
• 9:47
  to the bathrooms and look around here at the buildings and stuff
• 9:49
  and you realize why they charge what they charge because it
• 9:52
  takes a lot to keep a place like us going and put everything they
• 9:54
  put into it. They've spent a lot of money
• 9:56
  here. I don't want to, I want to
• 9:58
  commend them on that. It was a great facility and I
• 10:00
  think our teams enjoyed their their trip.
• 10:02
  I know we talked a bunch. So there's probably some people
• 10:05
  not too happy about dragging their tour cars home, but I
• 10:08
  think there's a weekend out of the calendar year where we could
• 10:11
  do something fun. I was talking to Brian and he
• 10:14
  was like, you know, a lot of our guys are north of us in
• 10:17
  Charlotte, like our car in Mooresville, right?
• 10:19
  That's where our shop is. There's a lot of people that
• 10:22
  race out of Mooresville, but there's also mostly, you know,
• 10:25
  north of Winston Salem, VA, that's where most of our teams
• 10:29
  are. So maybe going to Jennerstown is
• 10:31
  a realistic opportunity, right? That's that's maybe similar to
• 10:37
  Langley. I don't know, just throwing that
• 10:39
  out there. Brian thought that might be a
• 10:40
  reasonable idea. So, but anyways, we take this
• 10:43
  one weekend and we go, hey, what, what fun thing can we do
• 10:46
  with it? Where can we go that we haven't
• 10:47
  been before that our teams would love to go to?
• 10:49
  There's not a lot of tracks on that list that are that's in
• 10:52
  that sort of 6 to 8 hour bubble, right.
• 10:55
  And, but maybe maybe we go somewhere we've been before when
• 10:59
  we go somewhere new next year. I've always wanted to go to the
• 11:03
  fairgrounds, you know that I don't even need to race that
• 11:07
  race. I just think it'd be cool to
• 11:08
  take the the tour there. And we really don't know how
• 11:11
  long we got the fairgrounds for. So that could be going any day.
• 11:14
  But so we might, that'd be a big ask for our teams, but we would
• 11:23
  certainly not do anything they didn't want to do.
• 11:25
  I thought this would be something they would enjoy and
• 11:29
  we'll see if it's something we might come back to it.