Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Memories of Dale Earnhardt & Daytona | Mast Cast Ep 3

Transcript

Memories of Dale Earnhardt & Daytona | Mast Cast Ep 3 · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  Well, hey, you're not in the hospital.
• 0:02
  I'm not getting my child out of any sort of animal excrement in
• 0:07
  the floor. So I guess that means mass cast
• 0:09
  is back. Everybody's still alive, not
• 0:11
  sick. He's former NASCAR driver Rick
• 0:14
  Mast. I'm his non driving son Ricky
• 0:16
  Mast. And dad, this is a fun week.
• 0:19
  It's Daytona 500 week. That's always a good week.
• 0:22
  I alluded to it there at the very beginning just now, but
• 0:25
  thank goodness you're, you know, you're not in the hospital.
• 0:27
  Everything's been pretty calm here too.
• 0:29
  How's the how's the thumb, by the way?
• 0:30
  How's. That it's filled up pretty good.
• 0:32
  See, Yeah, It's it's pretty good.
• 0:35
  It's pretty good. It's on the Yeah, that's true.
• 0:40
  You just saw old. You just saw, you just saw old
• 0:42
  skin dropping off. That's all that is.
• 0:45
  Yeah, that's all good. It looks like the main character
• 0:48
  from the 90s horror show on HBO, Tales from the Crypt, The Crypt
• 0:52
  Keeper, whatever that thing was called, that's kind of it looked
• 0:54
  like his face right there. Well, that's good.
• 0:57
  Good. I'm glad you're feeling better.
• 1:01
  Well. Let's get into it then.
• 1:03
  Which we the clash, let's see, we recorded last week and the
• 1:06
  Clash was I think the next day right after we recorded because
• 1:10
  of all the rescheduling and all that we try here on mass cast to
• 1:13
  come to you around late Tuesday night, Wednesday every week.
• 1:16
  So we just went ahead and recorded before the Clash last
• 1:18
  week. Then the Clash happened.
• 1:21
  I'll I'll give you my brief take and we can dive into it as much
• 1:24
  as you want to. I thought that it started the
• 1:27
  last chance qualifier race was really good.
• 1:30
  I enjoyed that pretty much without a hitch.
• 1:33
  You know, it was some good competition there for Bowman
• 1:36
  Gray. And then the main event started
• 1:39
  and I just, I thought to myself, poor NASCAR, poor NASCAR,
• 1:45
  frigging Mother Nature just screwing with them again.
• 1:48
  And it just kind of turned into a mess a little bit just, you
• 1:52
  know, you got a weather delay then well, we're going to put on
• 1:54
  these wet tires and then we got cautions every two seconds and
• 1:58
  now everybody's got to run out of gas.
• 2:00
  And so then alright, we're going to let everybody come in and get
• 2:02
  gas. That's going to make some people
• 2:04
  mad, yada, yada, yada. So it was and it was going on
• 2:06
  and it was dragging on. I mean, the event was dragging
• 2:09
  on and then they had to switch from FS1 to FS2 because the
• 2:12
  mask, I'm sorry, from Fox to whatever the whatever was FS2
• 2:16
  because the mask singer was coming on so that, you know, all
• 2:19
  this stuff's going on. But here so it was, I was kind
• 2:22
  of feeling it like everybody else was like, oh boy, this is I
• 2:24
  just felt bad that it was it had gone that way.
• 2:27
  But I will say this, I think one thing that kind of saved it Ryan
• 2:30
  Priest winning. But more importantly, Ryan
• 2:32
  Priest's reaction and his emotion after it was over
• 2:37
  dropping F bombs. And then he's he's teared up a
• 2:39
  little bit and said, you know, a couple years ago, I didn't know
• 2:41
  if I was even going to have a job, which is, I think by all
• 2:44
  accounts true. So I thought that the way it was
• 2:48
  a tough way Rd. getting there, but I thought the way it ended
• 2:51
  was was actually a night. It was a nice ending to the
• 2:54
  whole thing. I enjoyed that, enjoyed seeing
• 2:55
  the emotion. It kind of to me, it came back
• 2:57
  to what you and I talked about the first week.
• 2:59
  Let drivers be themselves, let them be themselves.
• 3:03
  And I don't think you could, if you watch that Victory Lane
• 3:05
  interview with Ryan Priest, I, I don't know him, I've never met
• 3:09
  him, but I have to feel like none of that was an act that all
• 3:12
  felt pretty real to me. So that is my Cliff Notes in a
• 3:15
  nutshell version of recap of the class.
• 3:17
  What did you think? Yeah, that part was cool, you
• 3:19
  know, And you know me, I've always said every, if you watch
• 3:22
  my Twitter feed over the years or X feed and every time a
• 3:24
  driver gets out and shows true emotion, like yet I'm always all
• 3:28
  over because it truly is. It's an accomplishment.
• 3:30
  And he's been trying to do that for a long time and he got it
• 3:32
  done and history emotions come out.
• 3:35
  That was that was that was one of the positive notes, right?
• 3:38
  The weather, you know, the, the bit, you know what they're
• 3:41
  really the biggest thing was with that deal was it was just
• 3:44
  too long, right? And the weather's what caused
• 3:46
  that. You know, we have regular
• 3:48
  weather or dry weather. You don't have such a long
• 3:50
  event, but that, that that was just too long for everybody,
• 3:53
  even for Fox. And then that created the other
• 3:55
  problems, people fussing. But you know the one thing about
• 3:58
  it that it did do hell, everybody's talking about it,
• 4:00
  right? They might have been fussing and
• 4:03
  complaining, but but they were talking about it.
• 4:05
  And you know how again, you say poor NASCAR, but it just it's
• 4:09
  just weather did what it did right and it screwed things up.
• 4:14
  So then that leads us down the road, right?
• 4:16
  Do we what do we do with the class?
• 4:18
  You know what I was hosting Co hosted another podcast today.
• 4:22
  We brought this subject up and trying to figure out what we're
• 4:25
  going to do. And you know, my deal is and
• 4:29
  they were talking about maybe he's taking it back to Daytona,
• 4:31
  you know, not necessarily run at Daytona, run it over there, take
• 4:35
  it to Newton Mariners Revolution or whatever, right That you at
• 4:39
  least you're down there doing speed week.
• 4:41
  So what brings that up is, you know, before before COVID and
• 4:46
  before all this, this shortened practice and all that stuff
• 4:49
  happens with our sport. You know, we would.
• 4:51
  You go to Daytona, that was a big deal, man.
• 4:53
  You go to Daytona to be a week and 1/2 or two weeks.
• 4:55
  They call it speed weeks. You're down there all that long
• 4:58
  and you go down and it's a drive.
• 4:59
  That was my most exciting race and it's just because it's the
• 5:01
  first race. It's one out of the bat, one
• 5:04
  out-of-the-box, man. You're going to try to do good.
• 5:06
  All your new stuff you're going to show off and do and race.
• 5:09
  But you get down there and you got, you got races at Suburban,
• 5:11
  New Suburban, you got them over to Volusia, All right, You run
• 5:15
  up to Saint Augustine. I used to go up there and watch
• 5:17
  the World Outlaws, Kendra News guys, right?
• 5:19
  She had all that stuff. We had a big trade show that
• 5:21
  went on down there. You had all the fans that were
• 5:24
  there. They didn't come just Sunday,
• 5:25
  man. A bunch of were there for a
• 5:26
  week, right? Had all the radio shows and TV
• 5:30
  shows and interviews and all the things that we were doing down
• 5:33
  there was just it's like a magical time.
• 5:35
  And and the Bush class the week before just kind of it kind of
• 5:39
  kicked it off and said that that week of not insanity, but just
• 5:43
  week of a lot of excitement for everybody.
• 5:46
  We had to, we had the Bush class and then we had qualified or the
• 5:49
  Arc race, I forget what it was. All that stuff was going on and
• 5:52
  that kind of clip kicked things off and is a very exciting time.
• 5:55
  So, you know, but if you look back the last few times you had
• 5:59
  the Bush class there, there wasn't any, there wasn't much
• 6:02
  attendance, you know. So if you don't have much
• 6:05
  attendance, let's try to do something different.
• 6:06
  But you know, I wish it was down there.
• 6:09
  It didn't. It doesn't necessarily have to
• 6:10
  be at Daytona. Just be, be there, be at, be at
• 6:13
  Daytona. But it is cool to be in
• 6:15
  Wilkesboro, to be track that's got that history in the fan
• 6:20
  base, the madhouse and everything that goes along.
• 6:23
  I mean, Bowman Gray, yeah, the madhouse, right?
• 6:26
  And everything that goes along with that, that, that that's a
• 6:28
  cool deal. That part is cool and stand
• 6:31
  alone. So you know what they're going
• 6:33
  to do next with it, I have no idea.
• 6:34
  But, you know, like I was saying earlier or today sometime, you
• 6:39
  know, that we've talked about our Bass cast, that NASCAR has
• 6:42
  thrown a lot of stuff against the ball last three or four
• 6:45
  years, right? And they've had to, they've been
• 6:47
  afforded the luxury to do that because we're trying, just
• 6:49
  trying things out, try to see what works and what doesn't
• 6:52
  work. So they've got them a notebook,
• 6:53
  Dell, OK, they've got a notebook of, you know, stuff they've been
• 6:57
  trying and they can see tendencies and trends here.
• 7:00
  Do we go to Mexico again? Do we not?
• 7:02
  You know, we're going to go to San Diego, you know, do we go
• 7:04
  back to these Rd. courses and all that stuff?
• 7:07
  So you know, all this, all this the the Bush class just all kind
• 7:12
  of figures into all this stuff that it's all-encompassing
• 7:15
  NASCAR right now. What you know, what steps we
• 7:17
  take next. But All in all, you know, I I
• 7:20
  was sitting there watching that race.
• 7:21
  I'm like that Gummis is lasting a long time.
• 7:24
  But then I'm thinking, well, if it wasn't for this, I'd be
• 7:27
  watching some chick show with my wife or something, right?
• 7:31
  That wouldn't be fun. So anyhow, it was it was good.
• 7:34
  It was good. Yeah, I I so I like a lot of
• 7:37
  what you said there. I think one thing I, I
• 7:40
  personally think is whatever they do with the Clash, I do
• 7:43
  think that Bowman Gray, it's not like, OK, we're not going to
• 7:46
  have the Clash at Bowman Gray next year.
• 7:47
  I don't think that means you ever you just, OK, that's it for
• 7:50
  Bowman Gray. I think there's maybe in the
• 7:53
  future you put an All Star race there.
• 7:55
  Maybe you have a truck race there one year.
• 7:57
  I mean, I think it can be, you can rotate in and out.
• 8:01
  It is a good venue for for other things.
• 8:04
  I was kind of thinking back to the first year of the Truck
• 8:06
  Series and some of those tracks that they were going to and
• 8:08
  there's some pretty short ones and they were doing a lot of
• 8:10
  stuff. A lot of markets at NASCAR
• 8:12
  wasn't in at the time, which I think was part of the reason
• 8:14
  that series was founded. They were doing a bunch of
• 8:16
  stuff, Pacific Northwest out West, but a lot of little short
• 8:19
  tracks, even some I'd not even heard of at that time.
• 8:22
  So I don't think even if you do something different, if you move
• 8:24
  the class back to Florida somewhere, that doesn't mean
• 8:27
  you're done with Bowman Gray all together.
• 8:28
  I think it's, I think it's got a spot somewhere in the rotation
• 8:31
  and just just. You figure out what where that
• 8:33
  spot is and what with which series that is.
• 8:36
  And it will. But you reckon I'll tell you
• 8:37
  why. You know who owns it.
• 8:38
  You know who owns the track now. Just bought the track last year.
• 8:42
  Right. That's called.
• 8:43
  That's called, yeah. They bought the track, so it's
• 8:46
  gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna have shows there for sure.
• 8:48
  Yeah. And it should.
• 8:49
  It puts on a good. I'm, I'm, I'm not opposed to
• 8:52
  that. I do like I've been thinking
• 8:54
  about this a lot or I thought about it a lot last week.
• 8:56
  I've kind of shifted to Daytona now, but this is what I like
• 8:59
  after all that last week, what I kind of came up with and I'll
• 9:02
  hand up. I did not realize how close new
• 9:05
  new Smyrna is to big track. Like I looked on the map.
• 9:09
  I'm like, darn, it's right there.
• 9:10
  I mean, at least it looks like it on the map, but ain't it
• 9:12
  ain't too far. I, I kind of like that idea
• 9:16
  because I'm with you. Like, don't get me wrong, The,
• 9:18
  the, the, not the nostalgic person in me, the, the guy that
• 9:23
  grew up in your era, the traditionalist.
• 9:26
  I love that it was the, the original form of it was at
• 9:29
  Daytona at the big track and it was like a 20 lap race.
• 9:33
  And you know, that was all good. As I'll say it again, like Dale
• 9:36
  Junior said, it was like a good appetizer for the week of what
• 9:39
  was to come. But to your point, the tendons
• 9:42
  for it kind of wasn't great there towards the end.
• 9:45
  I really like the idea of let's make this a week.
• 9:48
  Now the Super Bowl we're going to assume is always going to now
• 9:51
  be that Sunday before the 500, right?
• 9:53
  So you can't put your vent on that day.
• 9:55
  Just nobody could. That's just that's that's event
• 9:58
  suicide trying to run it up against the Super Bowl.
• 10:00
  I mean, it just is. So my thought would be what if
• 10:03
  you started a run it on Monday, do it over at New Smyrna or
• 10:07
  somewhere one of the other tracks you mentioned, I don't
• 10:09
  know, do something there in the area.
• 10:10
  And then I would plan out an entire week of events.
• 10:13
  Use all your series that you can, which they kind of you do a
• 10:17
  lot of that now anyways, But really make that, like you said,
• 10:20
  for fans are there for a whole week.
• 10:21
  It really is speed week again, So have events all in that area
• 10:25
  again. It's like AI mean it's like a
• 10:27
  festival. You know, it's almost like if
• 10:29
  you look at, it's like a grander or larger version of like a
• 10:32
  music festival where like, all right, me and my buddy Tyler
• 10:35
  went to and Derek went to Bonnaroo a couple times back in
• 10:38
  the day when we were much younger.
• 10:40
  And what was cool about that was you had your mainstage, it could
• 10:43
  hold like 80,000 people, right? So that's your big track.
• 10:45
  But then you had your next smallest stage held 30,000.
• 10:49
  And they had, I think it was 8 or 9 stages and you had 120 acts
• 10:54
  of all different types of music and genres.
• 10:56
  And then you had comedians, you had all these other activations
• 11:00
  and attractions and fun stuff that people could do.
• 11:03
  I kind of look at it like that. Now, granted, in this this
• 11:05
  instance, it's going to be races all over town or all over the
• 11:08
  area. But maybe you do get, I mean,
• 11:10
  you, they do, they do have concerts and performances and
• 11:12
  they're doing that again this year at the 500.
• 11:14
  So make it a week long party that's that's themed around
• 11:19
  racing, you know, entice people to get down there and spend a
• 11:21
  week. Go check out the cup.
• 11:23
  Guys are going to run the Bush Clash over at New Smyrna on
• 11:26
  Monday night to start things or Tuesday if that's what you want
• 11:28
  to do. And then like you said, like you
• 11:32
  know, back in the day, I don't, I can't remember exactly how it
• 11:34
  was all set up or if you, if it was Bush clash and ARCA were on
• 11:37
  the same day. Sometimes it was Bush clash and
• 11:39
  qualify on the same day. However, that was all set up.
• 11:41
  But you get all these cool events.
• 11:42
  Just make a week long festival out of it or just call it speed
• 11:47
  week, make it truly speed week again.
• 11:48
  So that's, that's what I would like to see.
• 11:51
  I don't, I I never went to did you ever run?
• 11:53
  Were you ever even at New Smyrna?
• 11:54
  I don't I know I was never there.
• 11:56
  I had no idea it was that close. Yeah, it's close.
• 11:58
  Yeah. Yeah, we used to go there.
• 12:00
  Yeah, we went there again. We went up Saint Augustine,
• 12:04
  which is probably an hour's drive north, maybe maybe a
• 12:07
  little longer, maybe not quite an hour.
• 12:09
  So we'd watch a couple years, went up there, watch the World
• 12:11
  Outlaws again, Steve, those, those guys.
• 12:14
  So yeah, it could be a good deal.
• 12:15
  It's kind of like the CMA Fest, you know what CMA Fest in
• 12:18
  Nashville a couple times, right, A week long thing.
• 12:21
  You got big stage, a little stage and all that, and yeah, so
• 12:25
  that's a good idea. We're running that up to NASCAR
• 12:27
  Flight PO. Rick, yeah, there you go.
• 12:29
  I will say I was going to tell you before we move on from the
• 12:32
  Clash, one last thing. The morning of the Clash, this
• 12:35
  this year's Clash, I was I was like, you know, you and I had
• 12:40
  just recorded last week's episode of Mass Cast and we were
• 12:44
  talking about your first experience in the Clash in 1989.
• 12:47
  I'm like, gosh, I don't know. I was thinking about it like
• 12:50
  I've, you know, I feel like I've seen clips or whatever.
• 12:53
  I don't know that I've ever actually rewatched the whole
• 12:55
  1989 Bush Clash. I went on YouTube.
• 12:59
  I believe it's on. I think NASCAR Classics has it
• 13:02
  up if I'm not mistaken. We'll just say it was.
• 13:05
  I won't say I was watching a bootleg version of it on
• 13:07
  YouTube. So I watched the whole thing and
• 13:10
  the whole thing, including interviews, which I actually
• 13:12
  posted on our Mass cast social media channels at Mass Cast Show
• 13:16
  on X Twitter and Instagram and TikTok.
• 13:20
  And then the mass cast on Facebook.
• 13:23
  I posted a clip because I, I watched the 989 class that
• 13:26
  morning and Chris Iconomaki kind of did like a, a grid walk with
• 13:31
  all you guys and he talked to some of you, but everybody was
• 13:33
  standing at each car and he would say hi or say something to
• 13:36
  each of you. Then some of you would interview
• 13:37
  you being one of the people he interviewed.
• 13:39
  And of course, you were the funny one and said, you know,
• 13:41
  you were the your interview, each guy was like 510 seconds
• 13:45
  yours, yours stood out. So I clipped that and put it on
• 13:47
  mass cast show on our social media channel.
• 13:51
  But I sat there and watched the whole thing and the whole thing
• 13:55
  from grid walk to victory Victory Lane was it was 1/2 hour
• 14:00
  video. Oh man, I went and I know they
• 14:02
  cut out some stuff, but I was like turn.
• 14:04
  I watched the whole race. It was 20 laps straighter.
• 14:07
  Won it by the way. Do you want to guess?
• 14:10
  I had to look this up afterwards and I believe, I'm pretty sure I
• 14:13
  got this as an official time and if it ain't official, it's
• 14:16
  during close to it. close enough.
• 14:18
  Do you want to take a guess? There were no cautions. 20 green
• 14:20
  flag laps, 1989 Cup series. You want to take a guess at the
• 14:25
  total race time for the 1989 Bush Clash. 5040 seconds of lap
• 14:30
  20, 16 minutes. I don't know.
• 14:36
  That's pretty darn good, man 15 minutes and 33 seconds was the
• 14:39
  entire was green to checkered of the 1989 Bush class and I had to
• 14:44
  kind of I had to kind of chuckle to myself.
• 14:46
  Fast forward 1213 hours after I watched it that morning to the
• 14:50
  26th clash and what ended up happening there with all the
• 14:54
  with all the delays and everything.
• 14:55
  But I thought turn man, talk about different.
• 14:57
  I'll tell you another thing that was different.
• 14:58
  We've alluded to this before, you know, was not in that was
• 15:02
  not racing in that Bush clash in 1989 was Dale Earnhardt senior.
• 15:06
  And So what they were doing, what he ended up doing was they
• 15:10
  would they interviewed him a couple times during the
• 15:13
  broadcast and like, and he'd kind of give his analysis of
• 15:16
  what he thought was might happen or what such and such was doing.
• 15:20
  And I thought that's pretty interesting.
• 15:22
  But we talked about that before, you know, the biggest stars
• 15:24
  weren't guaranteed to to make the show back in that day.
• 15:27
  It was just all the pole sitters and then in your case, second
• 15:30
  round fastest wild card. And that was that.
• 15:33
  And it was a little 20 lap. It's Sprint for a lot of money
• 15:35
  to. Finish.
• 15:36
  I don't even know where I finished that race, probably.
• 15:39
  10th out of. 10th like 9th or 10th out of 13 or 14 cars.
• 15:44
  Like you said that was your 500 car and you were keeping your
• 15:46
  nose clean. Well, that we had worse motor in
• 15:48
  that car too. We had two motors, one ran real
• 15:50
  good so we ran in the 500 and the other one wasn't the stout
• 15:53
  and that's when we ran in the Bush clash.
• 15:55
  But again, when I had one car, a good car, put it that way, so.
• 15:58
  Well, it was pretty much just it's, it's pretty much Schrader,
• 16:03
  I think, Terry. And I can't remember the third
• 16:05
  car, basically three cars kind of got out front and three of
• 16:10
  them rode around the front. And you didn't really see the
• 16:12
  rest of you too much on the, I think straighter that week.
• 16:14
  He won the pole, he won the Bush Clash, he won the qualifying
• 16:19
  race and he led, he led a little over 100 laps of that 200 lap
• 16:23
  race. He had, he had him and he
• 16:25
  finished second. So he had, he had a good, he had
• 16:27
  a good weekend. There he did.
• 16:29
  He had a, he had a good, he had a good crowd car that week for
• 16:32
  sure. Well, well, let's talk.
• 16:35
  About the 500 a little bit. I'm, I'm, I'm excited.
• 16:39
  I talked about this last week. I'll talk about it again.
• 16:41
  There's just something special about a new season.
• 16:44
  You come up through that tunnel, you hear see the cars on the
• 16:48
  track for the first time. It's it's truly, it just feels
• 16:52
  different than all the rest of them.
• 16:54
  And everybody, it's a cliche, but it's true.
• 16:55
  Like everybody talks about how NASCAR is the biggest event of
• 16:58
  the year, is the the first race of the year.
• 17:01
  And that's still true. Say whatever you will about the
• 17:03
  race itself, but the, the, the event itself, the feeling of it,
• 17:07
  the prestige of it, it's just different.
• 17:10
  And it's, you can feel it when you walk in the place the energy
• 17:13
  is, It's different. It's kind of like I've said this
• 17:16
  about, you know, I work in baseball.
• 17:18
  I love, love, love baseball. I love being at the ballpark
• 17:23
  every, every game, a Tuesday game in August.
• 17:26
  I still love being there. I still love the feeling of it,
• 17:29
  but there is a different energy in walking into the ballpark and
• 17:32
  in the ballpark on opening day for one.
• 17:36
  But really on a postseason game, there is just a you can feel it
• 17:40
  in the air. And to me, Daytona 500 week.
• 17:44
  And you can apply that to any sporting event people, if you're
• 17:46
  big sports fans, you know, your rivalry game in college football
• 17:50
  or you know, NCAA tournament game, whatever you walking in,
• 17:55
  there's just a different feeling to it.
• 17:57
  It's a it's a good feeling. It's it's exciting.
• 17:59
  And that's what it feels like Daytona 500 week, at least to
• 18:02
  me. I'm not, I was never a
• 18:03
  competitor, so I can't speak to that.
• 18:05
  But just excited for this week. Is that from a competitor
• 18:09
  standpoint, how I just described it from the fan side?
• 18:12
  Do you guys feel any of that way about that week?
• 18:15
  The minute you walk off the plane because you're everybody's
• 18:18
  coming from winter weather. We've been in winter weather for
• 18:21
  three or two or three or four months.
• 18:23
  When you get to Daytona, you step off the plane and that
• 18:28
  humid or that cold, humid mist of Daytona off the ocean hits
• 18:32
  you, right? That's the first thing that hits
• 18:34
  you and that stays with you. After a few years, every time
• 18:37
  you get off the plane and get there, you have that different
• 18:39
  air quality and it's warmer, right?
• 18:41
  And you've been freezing all winter.
• 18:43
  And it starts right then. Honestly, the, the, the, the
• 18:46
  mood, the feeling about Daytona and what, what's coming the next
• 18:49
  week, week and a half, two weeks that, that, that hits you to get
• 18:52
  off. It hits you when you get off
• 18:53
  that race or off that plane. And it just, it goes through all
• 18:56
  week. I mean, you know, you got to
• 18:58
  understand Daytona. And I tell people this all they
• 19:00
  used to tell them all the time, if you if somebody wanted to
• 19:02
  cripple corporate America, you go to the Daytona 500 and blow
• 19:06
  up all the sweets because in our day it might be a little rough,
• 19:11
  but anyhow, it might be a little fun.
• 19:12
  Yeah. My point being, my point being,
• 19:15
  you know, every sponsor, everybody that partners, that
• 19:19
  everybody's involved with NASCAR, they're at the Daytona
• 19:21
  500, right? And it's usually the, it's not
• 19:24
  usually the lieutenants, it's always the generals, right?
• 19:27
  The CEOs of these companies, COOSCFOS that all be be there
• 19:32
  with all these companies is pouring millions of dollars in
• 19:34
  their sport. And a little small piece of that
• 19:38
  pie was concerns you or me as a driver, because my team has got
• 19:42
  two or three sponsors on our car and those guys are up in that
• 19:45
  suite, right? And so you've worked all winter,
• 19:48
  you made changes, you maybe, maybe change teams, you change
• 19:51
  crew chase, you change body designs, whatever.
• 19:53
  Did all the wind tunnel testing, did all the testing, all the
• 19:56
  changes, you're going to go, you got to go to Daytona, show
• 19:58
  everybody what you got, right. And when you get there and you
• 20:01
  unload and you go to start, you start running then.
• 20:04
  You're like, okay, everybody goes in panic mode because
• 20:07
  you're not running as fast as you want to and pretty much the
• 20:10
  whole garage will feel that way. Even the guy that's the fastest,
• 20:13
  he'll be like, yeah, but you know, I maybe I picked up a
• 20:15
  little bit of air off somebody. What that everybody there, It's
• 20:20
  a it's a it's a very nervous excitement, OK, for the being at
• 20:24
  Daytona because you want to show everybody and you want to do
• 20:27
  well, right? And everybody's there, all the
• 20:30
  titches there, the media's on you, right?
• 20:32
  You've got more, you got media day, you've got more interviews
• 20:35
  to do, more TV stuff to do, right.
• 20:38
  We used to do golly. And the other thing would happen
• 20:43
  every year after the qualifying races, all the local across the
• 20:47
  least the southeast in a big part of the country, all these
• 20:50
  local affiliates would have crews there, OK and they would
• 20:55
  film drivers from their area, whatever.
• 20:56
  And I don't forget, you know, after qualifying races, every
• 21:00
  time, you know, on Thursday at the six O clock news, you'd have
• 21:03
  to go down there to this area, media area where all these press
• 21:07
  was at. And you do live shots for your
• 21:10
  local station, right. And that used to be WDBJ in, in
• 21:13
  Roanoke. They used to do it every year
• 21:14
  down there. And all the other you look
• 21:15
  around and all these local stations are there.
• 21:18
  Then you'd have the national media.
• 21:19
  It was just, you know, every day the, the mall across the street,
• 21:23
  the Volusia Mall, maybe every year, every year they would do a
• 21:27
  deal. And I forget which day would
• 21:29
  happen. Two or three days you leave the
• 21:31
  racetrack, you go over to the mall and right in the very
• 21:33
  center of the ball, they'd have this stage set up and you go
• 21:36
  down and sit down. And I forget if it was Betty
• 21:39
  Parson's booty. I can't remember who it was, but
• 21:41
  the same guys over here, you sit down in there and do an
• 21:44
  interview with them and the mall will just be packed full of
• 21:46
  people, right, doing these. You watching them get their
• 21:49
  drivers. Oh, a catfight.
• 21:51
  And it was, it was funny or not that was funny.
• 21:55
  Be careful cats, but inhale the, you know, it's just everything
• 22:00
  every day, every night there's something going on, something
• 22:03
  going on. And it was just excited and you
• 22:06
  know, I don't know, since COVID, you know, we've cut out a lot of
• 22:10
  the practice and all that stuff. They've they've really condensed
• 22:12
  all this to save the team's money and all that.
• 22:16
  I just wish Daytona at least get us a week, you know, do the
• 22:19
  Bush, like you said, do the Bush class on Monday after the Super
• 22:21
  Bowl or whatever, get that week started off or just do it every
• 22:24
  day lead up to the 500. That would be, that would be
• 22:27
  cool if we could do that, but we're not going back in time and
• 22:30
  we're going forward. So now the guys show up, you
• 22:33
  know, they get there. What I guess they're getting
• 22:35
  there tomorrow there or what's today?
• 22:38
  Yeah, they'll be, they're qualifying.
• 22:41
  This is going out basically Wednesday.
• 22:43
  Yeah, I'm, I'm basing the solely off of just seeing Ryan Blaney
• 22:48
  and Bubba posted a picture on their search media of they're
• 22:52
  both dads now. So the pit, they had the
• 22:53
  pictures of each of them holding their kid on the way to Daytona
• 22:56
  with their their kids. This is this is Monday night, so
• 22:59
  you know they're doing and they don't have to be to be at the
• 23:02
  track to Wednesday. So they'll be doing other stuff
• 23:04
  Tuesday, all the media stuff and do a lot of stuff for NASCAR.
• 23:07
  So it's going to be good. It's going to be good, man.
• 23:10
  We got the the ORP race, we got the qualifying races, all the
• 23:14
  qualifying. We got truck race, that's 500.
• 23:16
  We got a lot of stuff going on, man.
• 23:17
  It's going to be, it's going to be, it looks like the weather is
• 23:19
  pretty good too. So it's going to be, it's going
• 23:21
  to be exciting week down there. I can't wait for it to get
• 23:23
  going. Yeah, me too.
• 23:25
  I remember the you going over to the Volusia Mall and you doing
• 23:29
  that deal. And I didn't know from my in my
• 23:31
  mind, I thought it was like an MRN guy, but I honestly can't.
• 23:34
  It might have. I I can't remember.
• 23:36
  I do remember as a kid, like I thought it was cool.
• 23:38
  You had all this excitement, all these people there and you had
• 23:40
  drivers live on stage right in the middle of the mall.
• 23:42
  I also remember, I don't if you remember this, remember they
• 23:44
  would randomly have like these not sand castles, but they had
• 23:49
  like somebody come in there and build like these out of sand,
• 23:53
  like race cars and like a like a big racing scene, but made of
• 23:58
  sand, right? I do remember that.
• 24:01
  Yeah, somewhere. There's probably somewhere in
• 24:03
  your archives there in your trophy room.
• 24:05
  I bet you there's some there's some pictures of that somewhere
• 24:09
  that I probably made bomb take because I thought it was neat
• 24:11
  that they had that in there. But I do remember that going
• 24:13
  over there. But that, that feeling like you
• 24:17
  said, we are moving forward, but I think we're, we're, we've
• 24:21
  taken something that was so successful in the past and kind
• 24:24
  of maybe saying, OK, let's update a little bit, modify it
• 24:27
  to where it fits a little bit better for today.
• 24:29
  But I think that that would be something worth worth exploring.
• 24:33
  Do you you remember off the top you had your best finish in the
• 24:37
  500? I think it was fourth, maybe
• 24:43
  with Richard Jackson, I believe. 1991 your 4th?
• 24:46
  Yep, that was Ernie Irving won the race.
• 24:48
  Sterling finished second, Joe Rutman finished third and you
• 24:53
  were 4th and then Dale Senior rounded out the top five right
• 24:56
  behind you. We had a we had a decent car
• 24:58
  that year. Sure did.
• 25:01
  That was, I still remember a little bit of that.
• 25:03
  That was, yeah, that was fine now.
• 25:06
  Patty Jarrett was my PR girl for school with my team.
• 25:08
  She's the Jarrett's son or daughter, rather Dale and
• 25:12
  Glenn's sister, and she's sweet girl lady.
• 25:15
  And how the race was over. I'd finished fourth.
• 25:16
  I was at the pumps. I got getting out of the car.
• 25:19
  We had to go to the fuel pumps to fill up to go through
• 25:22
  inspection. So I got out of the car and
• 25:24
  Patty was with me and I was grumpy and you know, I was
• 25:27
  really mad or not mad. I was just upset because I had
• 25:30
  detentions all week down of winning that race, right?
• 25:32
  We developed the car developed a real strong push the last half
• 25:36
  of the race, but I just couldn't do what I've been able to do
• 25:39
  earlier. And anyhow, I was grumbling and
• 25:41
  muff fussing and you boating and groaning and finally Patty
• 25:45
  looked at me and said, what's wrong with you Rick?
• 25:46
  I said, what do you mean? So what are you what are you
• 25:48
  upset about? I said finished fourth and she
• 25:52
  was that shit 4th. What is wrong with fourth?
• 25:54
  Well, I said, oh, I was expecting to win the race and
• 25:58
  and she looked at me like I was nuts right.
• 26:00
  She, she understood it better than me at that point.
• 26:03
  You know, to come in with a first time rookie of the, with a
• 26:07
  new team, go to Daytona, finish 4th.
• 26:09
  That was a pretty big deal for that team and that sponsor,
• 26:12
  right? And I was looking at it from the
• 26:13
  other direction. So that was that was a funny
• 26:16
  little moment from that race. It was.
• 26:20
  I did want to ask you because that NASCAR put this out last
• 26:24
  night. I recorded this on Monday.
• 26:26
  They they released this ad. It kind of kicked off their
• 26:28
  marketing campaign for the year. They released it right after the
• 26:31
  Super Bowl last night and I think the title of the video is
• 26:35
  America Start your Engines. But I feel like it's the launch
• 26:38
  of what everybody been. Would the rumor have been or the
• 26:41
  would have been written? I'd seen the offseason was that
• 26:43
  their marketing campaign this year is going to be hell yeah.
• 26:46
  And you can see it at the end of that ad.
• 26:48
  There's like a hell yeah. I'm like, OK, I think that is
• 26:50
  like the campaign for the year, which I'm I'm all for it.
• 26:53
  I like it a lot. I watched that ad last night
• 26:56
  when it came out and I went tag on.
• 26:59
  I think this is the best ad NASCAR has put out in years.
• 27:04
  And, and I always question myself a little bit.
• 27:07
  I'm like, is this recency bias? Am I just excited for the
• 27:10
  season? Am I over rating this thing a
• 27:12
  little bit? And of course, you know, social
• 27:15
  media, if you want to find a somebody that says something
• 27:18
  sucks, you can go on social media and you can find that
• 27:20
  right away. It's easy to find people saying
• 27:22
  this sucks, this is stupid, blah, blah.
• 27:23
  That's easy, right? That's a dime a dozen.
• 27:27
  And what I saw was the opposite for that ad.
• 27:29
  I saw a lot of people, whole lot of people saying the same thing
• 27:34
  that I did. I'm not saying everybody, but
• 27:37
  most did. So I felt like the reception to
• 27:40
  it was was awesome. It comes back to what we've
• 27:43
  talked about, you know, in the wake of the fallout from the
• 27:47
  trial and the settlement and then everything else that's been
• 27:51
  going on in the shake up and leadership and kind of what's
• 27:55
  happened generally speaking over the last couple decades in
• 27:58
  NASCAR. We talked about how you need to
• 28:01
  get back to reaching out to that core fan, the ones that that
• 28:04
  feel like rightly or wrongly, that they kind of got abandoned.
• 28:07
  You need to reconnect with those folks.
• 28:09
  And that's going to take time and you're going to have to show
• 28:12
  it. Just you can't say it and then
• 28:14
  do one or two things. You have to keep doing it every
• 28:15
  week, every week, every week. This add to me and I'm a
• 28:19
  marketing guy. So I probably, I nerd out a
• 28:21
  little bit over this kind of stuff, I guess.
• 28:24
  But to me, this was a huge step in that right direction.
• 28:28
  It really, it hit all the feels and the things it needed to and
• 28:31
  it also still had enough. I think of like looking forward
• 28:36
  and embracing what the sport is today in it that it just hit all
• 28:39
  the right marks. And it's one of these great
• 28:41
  things. There's all these little cool
• 28:43
  Easter eggs in it and all these little things.
• 28:45
  Like I went back and watched it a couple more times just to
• 28:47
  catch all the stuff, all the little things they thought to
• 28:50
  put in this deal. Josavar and Cletus MacFarlane
• 28:53
  doing doughnuts and shooting fireworks off in the Dale truck
• 28:56
  was great. Larson and his wife like getting
• 28:59
  in the car. Larson shotgun his wife
• 29:02
  shotgunning it was a Coca-Cola I guess Bubba and Marshawn Lynch
• 29:07
  doing that. I know you probably don't know
• 29:08
  the movie, but it's a movie from the 90s.
• 29:10
  Friday had start ice Cube and and there's this infamous moment
• 29:14
  where they the two main characters on Friday, they're
• 29:16
  sitting in the lawn. They go damn.
• 29:19
  And like having those two guys recreate that.
• 29:21
  I wasn't expecting that. That was really well done.
• 29:24
  The whole thing, the vibe of it and everything.
• 29:27
  I'm like, man, this is exactly right.
• 29:29
  I wish I'd saved the tweet. You know how sometimes you you
• 29:32
  see a tweet that you like and if you don't bookmark it or save it
• 29:34
  right then your feed refreshes and then you never can friggin
• 29:38
  find if you don't know who it was and you'll never find it
• 29:41
  again. But somebody said they talked
• 29:44
  about how that ad starts and almost like a we are the anti
• 29:49
  Formula One sport or crowd. Like we're and we're born like
• 29:53
  we're raised from bootleggers and this whole thing.
• 29:55
  I'm like, man, they are going full on in to roots of the sport
• 29:59
  tradition, core fandom, you know, beer, firework.
• 30:05
  I mean, just the, the, the whole thing I thought was so well
• 30:08
  done. I'm like, so kudos to them,
• 30:09
  whoever thought that up, whoever wrote it up okayed it and then
• 30:15
  whoever pulled it off. And again, I'm working in sports
• 30:17
  marketing now. I'm kind of knowing a little bit
• 30:19
  behind the curtains of like it's been a campaign like that in the
• 30:23
  launch spot, like the amount of people and work and time and
• 30:27
  hurdles and green lights and funding and logistics,
• 30:32
  everything that it takes to pull off these kind of things.
• 30:34
  It's a lot. So a whole lot of work and go
• 30:36
  into just a simple, well, I don't want to say a simple, but
• 30:39
  a 2 minute video. That's what that was, 2 minute
• 30:41
  video. But the amount of work and the
• 30:43
  amount of people it takes to put together something like that,
• 30:46
  it's hard. And even if everybody has the
• 30:49
  best intentions and you're giving it, you're everybody's
• 30:51
  giving it their all. Sometimes it just doesn't pan
• 30:53
  out the way you want it to or just the end result isn't quite
• 30:57
  what you were hoping for, doesn't really hit the way you
• 30:59
  wanted it to or is it received the way you wanted it to want it
• 31:02
  to, wanted it to be received. This to me checked all the
• 31:05
  boxes. I loved it.
• 31:06
  I I just thought, man, yes, yes, keep doing that.
• 31:10
  What? What you just did there, the
• 31:12
  mindset and the thought that led you to this spot.
• 31:15
  Keep doing that. That's how you get back to your
• 31:18
  face. So I think it's a collective
• 31:19
  effort. I think, I really think the
• 31:23
  hierarchy in in in NASCAR and what they've been through, where
• 31:29
  they're at, what they figured out, we figured out the
• 31:31
  missteps. I think it was, I just saw a
• 31:34
  clip a while ago of or quote that Steve O'Donnell put out
• 31:39
  that man, I should have read it again.
• 31:41
  But it's something to the effect of our fans, our fans of our
• 31:45
  sport feel like they have ownership in our sport.
• 31:50
  And we have to address that and make sure they strongly feel
• 31:55
  like they have ownership in our sport.
• 31:56
  So that, you know, that just kind of goes in line with the
• 31:59
  steps we were talking about earlier in our podcast.
• 32:02
  Step one, Step 2, OK, Step three, you know, getting this
• 32:06
  thing back to work or it was as far as the fan relationship with
• 32:10
  NASCAR in our sport. And that's that's key.
• 32:14
  That's going to be key going forward.
• 32:15
  I think they've got the right mindset at at at at NASCAR
• 32:20
  headquarters. Now it's just a matter of
• 32:22
  implementing it and doing the right things and people
• 32:25
  receiving it properly. And this ad you're talking
• 32:28
  about, I saw that. I, I agree with you 100%.
• 32:30
  It's cool, right? It's little, it's different, and
• 32:34
  it does touch on a lot of topics if you want to really dive into
• 32:37
  it. But we'll see how that goes, how
• 32:39
  that's perceived and how it goes.
• 32:41
  Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Well, and I said, I prefaced all
• 32:43
  that by saying like this is awesome, but you got to just
• 32:46
  keep doing it. You can't just do a couple
• 32:48
  things at the beginning and then not, you know, if you're going
• 32:51
  to if you're if you're going to say you're going to do it, then
• 32:54
  you need to be about it. So you got to keep doing this.
• 32:57
  You kind of have that again. That's why I say whatever the
• 32:59
  approach and the work and the mindset that led you to that
• 33:02
  spot, keep applying that everything you're doing moving
• 33:05
  forward. If I keep doing that, I think
• 33:06
  you're going to be OK. Yeah, I think they will.
• 33:08
  If they do that, they're going to be OK and I think they will.
• 33:10
  They understand, you know, let's not.
• 33:12
  You got to understand, man, it's not a bunch of dummies down
• 33:14
  there, OK? The people that run this sport,
• 33:16
  there's very, some very, very smart, intelligent people right
• 33:19
  now in charge of the sport. No one running the sport.
• 33:23
  And you know, you get to as a driver, of course, back in the
• 33:27
  day as a driver, you get to have insights a lot of people don't
• 33:30
  have. But even today, you know, bit
• 33:32
  involved with some of the deals I'm doing with NASCAR.
• 33:35
  I get you get to hear little things.
• 33:36
  You know, you get to be around people and you hear there you
• 33:39
  kind of get to take a temperature of the of the room,
• 33:42
  right. And it's it's different now.
• 33:46
  It's it's definitely different now.
• 33:47
  There's a full court press put on man to figure out, you know,
• 33:52
  whatever we may have done wrong, we're not doing it again.
• 33:54
  We're doing the right things with and it's all about, you
• 33:57
  know, the fan interest and, and, and taking care of the fans and
• 34:00
  doing all that. And that's, that's kind of where
• 34:02
  they're that's kind of where their attention is right now.
• 34:04
  And it it'll be good. I truly believe it's going to be
• 34:07
  real good. Yeah, I can't remember if if it
• 34:10
  was. It was some article I was
• 34:12
  reading, I think today about NASCAR.
• 34:15
  It might have been, gosh, I can't remember.
• 34:19
  I read a few different things today.
• 34:21
  It could have been there was one article that was well written
• 34:25
  about France family and there was some good quotes from Rick
• 34:28
  Hendrick in there. And then I read something else
• 34:32
  where Ben Kennedy was quoted in there.
• 34:34
  I don't know. I could be.
• 34:35
  It's hard to remember what was what and I don't have it in
• 34:37
  front of me. But what it was, there's a lot
• 34:40
  of it Were Rick Hendrick really taking up for Jim France feeling
• 34:44
  bad about mischaracterizations of the Francis through this
• 34:49
  lawsuit thing. A lot of things that were said,
• 34:51
  some things that didn't come out in the context was wrong, but
• 34:54
  well, the way it really was. And that kind of goes back to me
• 34:57
  a couple Mass casts ago talking about Jim France taking up for
• 35:00
  him being a good guy. And that was a lot of the
• 35:03
  article you're talking about. I know the one you're talking
• 35:05
  about. I read it and, you know, had
• 35:08
  Brian in there. He had him quoted.
• 35:09
  I don't know that dude was still around, but I guess he is.
• 35:12
  But anyhow, yeah, I know I was like, that's going to be the
• 35:15
  first time he's been quoted in in a minute.
• 35:17
  I I would think so One thing, one of one of the articles I
• 35:20
  read, and it could have been that one, but they were talking
• 35:23
  about. I like that the article
• 35:25
  specifically referenced one of the things they they referenced
• 35:27
  that they've been trying to do a better job of as involving
• 35:30
  alumni more, which I thought was a was a good organization
• 35:35
  because you, I mean, you've talked about it on here and you
• 35:37
  could speak to it over the last couple years.
• 35:39
  That's legit. I mean, they really, they've
• 35:41
  started an alumni program and a network and they are, yeah,
• 35:45
  they're putting their money where their mouth is on that and
• 35:47
  they're getting you all you guys involved again, which is great.
• 35:50
  And I've said it before, like with, I work with the Braves,
• 35:53
  like what Greg McMichael has cultivated with the Braves and
• 35:56
  the Braves alumni network. Is it just it, it does so much
• 36:00
  good for everybody involved. The team head of commerce.
• 36:03
  Is. Great.
• 36:04
  I had a conversation what's the day Friday, I guess, with the
• 36:09
  lady that actually hits alumni greep up and she, you know,
• 36:12
  pushing me again. Rick, get a hold to everybody
• 36:14
  get a hold of right. The guys you think of that want
• 36:18
  to be a part of it, call them for us, get a hold of them, put,
• 36:21
  put, connect them with us, you know, and so you know, they're
• 36:26
  really making the effort for that part.
• 36:27
  I think we just did one my buddy Rick Wilson everybody members
• 36:31
  Rick Wilson, my buddy from way back in the day drove the Kodak
• 36:34
  car and he just done in Bartow, FL now and anyhow, we just got
• 36:39
  him connected up right. He's he just joined the group.
• 36:41
  So he's in fact, he called me over the weekend wouldn't know
• 36:45
  if I was going to be at Daytona and I told him I couldn't make
• 36:47
  it. He said Darren because he was
• 36:48
  going to go to Daytona and he's going to make sure we got
• 36:51
  together down there. But you know the whole group,
• 36:54
  the big deal alumni group does it'll be in Darlington.
• 36:57
  That's when he put on the big deal for the alumni group.
• 37:00
  So we'll like I told him, man, this is a, this is a, this is,
• 37:04
  this is a marathon, not a Sprint race for the, for the alumni
• 37:07
  group to get that thing, get other guys, older guys, but
• 37:10
  evolved back with us, right, that have been kind of
• 37:13
  disassociated with us for a while.
• 37:15
  This sport, you know, take a little time to get them all back
• 37:18
  and, and they're doing it. They're they're putting the
• 37:20
  money and they're putting money in it and they're doing a lot of
• 37:22
  time, a lot of effort, some marketing stuff.
• 37:25
  So that's just a cool deal and it's it's going well.
• 37:28
  Yeah, that's great. That's really great.
• 37:31
  Well, we're coming up on the 25th.
• 37:36
  I'd call it anniversary, but Mark in 25 years since since we
• 37:40
  lost Dale Earnhardt and I wanted to maybe revisit that or just
• 37:46
  talk about Dale a little bit. You know, I thought about, I
• 37:51
  thought about the day of. I still, it's been 25 years and
• 37:54
  I still think about that day. It's amazing how it's just one
• 37:58
  of those days. I feel like in American history,
• 38:00
  it's just for a lot of people, you probably remember where you
• 38:04
  were and, and just how the, our world kind of just changed.
• 38:08
  And I started thinking about going into that and I was like,
• 38:10
  man, I don't know. I don't, I don't care to rehash
• 38:13
  that too much. I thought, why don't we share a
• 38:17
  couple memories or a couple stories of interactions that we
• 38:20
  had with Dale that are, that are more fond to look back on.
• 38:24
  So I'll, I'll give you this one. I don't know.
• 38:27
  I seriously doubt you remember this.
• 38:29
  I don't know that we've ever talked about it since it
• 38:31
  occurred. I don't know what year this was
• 38:34
  actually. It would have had to been, I'll
• 38:37
  get to it would have to have been either 1994 or 1995.
• 38:40
  It was one of those two years and I'll get to how I know that
• 38:43
  in a minute. So we're at Martinsville now.
• 38:47
  I've never met Dale Earnhardt before.
• 38:49
  You've been a full time Cup driver for a few years but never
• 38:52
  met him. We're in Martinsville, so a lot
• 38:55
  of people talked about the race after the race.
• 38:57
  So if you didn't win the race, then at least back then, the
• 39:00
  race after the race was drivers all trying to get out of the
• 39:03
  track as fast as they can to beat the traffic to get to the
• 39:05
  airport, get back home. Now for us in Martinsville,
• 39:08
  we're close enough to home in Virginia where we didn't fly,
• 39:11
  but you still have the race after the race, you're going to
• 39:13
  get out of there and beat traffic so you can get on the
• 39:14
  road and get going. That's right.
• 39:16
  So now I'm going to admit something here.
• 39:19
  I'd have to. It's just is what it is.
• 39:21
  I'm just telling the truth at this point in my life.
• 39:24
  I was in middle school about 6th or 7th grade and I was what they
• 39:27
  call a band geek. Meaning I played in the band at
• 39:30
  school, I played the trumpet. Not very good, but at this point
• 39:32
  in my life, I took it serious to where I I would take my trumpet
• 39:36
  home and I would practice and whatnot.
• 39:38
  And I would take my trumpet with me to the racetrack sometime
• 39:41
  saying I was going to practice somewhere.
• 39:42
  And I don't think I ever did because where was I going to
• 39:44
  practice from at a hotel or racetrack with a frigging
• 39:46
  trumpet? What are you going to do?
• 39:47
  But I was stubborn as we've, as we've established here before.
• 39:51
  So I took my trumpet with me to Martinsville.
• 39:54
  So race ends, you, me and mom and our our stuff, our bags and,
• 39:59
  and my trumpet, we get in. We had a minivan.
• 40:01
  We're driving in a in a minivan. We're driving out of the
• 40:06
  racetrack now, driving out of Martinsville.
• 40:08
  It's been a few years since I've been there, but it's like kind
• 40:11
  of the main road goes in and out of Martinsville, get you back
• 40:13
  out or the main access Rd. So of course race is over.
• 40:17
  All lanes of traffic are driving out of the track.
• 40:20
  So I don't know. I'm going to say is, I don't
• 40:22
  know if it's three lanes, maybe 4, maybe less, maybe 2, I don't
• 40:26
  know. But we're in that and we're not
• 40:27
  moving fast, but we are moving well, I'm sitting in the back
• 40:32
  seat now the in the minivan, it's got like the sliding door
• 40:35
  on the, on the passenger side. I'm sitting behind you, you're
• 40:38
  driving, I'm sitting behind you in that kind of, or in the
• 40:41
  center of that bench seat behind you.
• 40:43
  I got my trumpet case, which has a has a skull bandit sticker on
• 40:48
  the front of it because a bunch of at the school all had the
• 40:51
  same trumpet and the, it was easy to get mixed up who's with
• 40:54
  who's. And so I put a skull bandit
• 40:56
  sticker on mine to identify it. So I got my little trumpet case
• 40:59
  with me there and the and we're driving up driving out of the
• 41:02
  racetrack myths, all this traffic and I can't see who
• 41:06
  you're talking to, but you rolled down, you have mom rolled
• 41:08
  down the passenger window and you say something the effect of
• 41:10
  a want to ride something like that.
• 41:13
  I still don't see who it is you're talking to.
• 41:15
  And it was somebody was somebody that was kind of jogging up
• 41:19
  through the middle of the car is trying to get out.
• 41:21
  And we're driving not fast, but faster than he was jogging the
• 41:26
  swing. The sliding door in this minivan
• 41:28
  slams open or flies open. And this guy, whoever he is,
• 41:32
  jumps in the van. And when he jumps in, his leg
• 41:36
  hits my trumpet case, which is a hard shell case, right into my
• 41:40
  knee and shin, which hurts. And I just hear the guy who just
• 41:44
  knocked this trumpet into my leg.
• 41:45
  He goes whoa. And then I'm looking at it right
• 41:48
  here, right in my face. There was they Earnhardt in his
• 41:50
  mustache. It was him that just jumped in
• 41:52
  the van, knocked that trumpet case into my leg.
• 41:56
  And it did, it was it was you know, it's it's like that.
• 41:59
  It's like that. I wasn't hurt.
• 42:01
  But it's like when you get hit in the shin or the knee and you
• 42:03
  just go like, yeah, that kind of feeling.
• 42:05
  And that's what it was. And he was running to go his
• 42:08
  plan of of attack because he was big on the race.
• 42:10
  After the race, his plan of attack was Teresa.
• 42:13
  And then I think maybe Don Hawk, whoever, one of his main people
• 42:17
  had found him some little place up at the end of that road or
• 42:20
  had some place where they parked in somebody's yard or something
• 42:22
  where the plan was Dale would run up between all the traffic
• 42:25
  where fans wouldn't see him. And then he would run and jump
• 42:28
  into that car. And then they'd head off to the
• 42:30
  to the airport or his helicopter or whatever.
• 42:32
  But just so happened we're driving faster than him.
• 42:36
  And so you gave him a ride to wherever it was Teresa was
• 42:38
  parked and dropped him off. I don't remember what y'all
• 42:40
  talked about where he was only in the in the van for a couple
• 42:42
  of minutes. But that was my first time
• 42:45
  meeting him. And just just to pay the story
• 42:48
  off fully, there is there's a trumpet case.
• 42:54
  There's a trumpet case with what's left of the skull bandit
• 42:57
  sticker. And this thing, as you can see,
• 43:00
  it says pretty tough. It did not feel good on my on my
• 43:04
  knee. But that was that was my
• 43:06
  experience meeting Dale for the first time.
• 43:08
  He must not. He must not erect me that day.
• 43:10
  I wouldn't have picked his butt up.
• 43:12
  So what? So there's there's so many.
• 43:17
  What are when you think about? Dale and some of the happier
• 43:22
  stories or moments or you know what it don't make it don't even
• 43:25
  have to be. What do you what do you think
• 43:26
  about what comes to mind? Yeah, there's so many with that
• 43:28
  dude, right. He was such a different
• 43:33
  personalities, you might say, with different people, but I was
• 43:36
  I was one of the force ones Dale had that had that shield around
• 43:40
  and we called it the shield and you couldn't penetrate that
• 43:42
  shield. It'd be just you just it's hard
• 43:43
  to get close to Dale, but I was fortunate enough to be one of
• 43:47
  these buddies. I felt like for for a long time.
• 43:51
  But you know, he was an interesting fellow man, Smart as
• 43:56
  a Dick and spark. You wouldn't know how smart that
• 43:58
  guy was, but you know, you always say he he always had
• 44:02
  little angles or something going on.
• 44:05
  We used to do the Rick Bass Golf Classic in concert in every year
• 44:10
  we'd have, we did that thing for about 10 years.
• 44:13
  We have it right here at the Virginia Horse Center in
• 44:15
  Lexington, VA. And big charity event.
• 44:18
  Big charity event, man. And you know, I'd always have
• 44:20
  four or five drivers who come to the concert.
• 44:22
  Then for the golf tournament the next day, you know, and have
• 44:25
  another group of drivers, you know, we'd fly them up and do
• 44:27
  all this stuff. Very successful event for for a
• 44:30
  decade really. And one year I had never got my
• 44:33
  headliner. I had never figured out who my
• 44:35
  headliner was going to be. You know, because every year I'd
• 44:37
  always have a headliner. Like the very first year the
• 44:39
  King was a headliner, right? Richard Petty So we were at
• 44:42
  Michigan and I went up. I was sitting there thinking,
• 44:45
  man, we don't have another month to go.
• 44:47
  I've got to get some. So I went over to Earnhardt and
• 44:49
  I went up on his trailer and I was telling him what I did each
• 44:52
  year. And I said, Dale, sometime I
• 44:54
  want I want to get you to come up here.
• 44:56
  Do it. He says, when is it?
• 44:58
  And I told him it's a it's a Tuesday or Wednesday after the
• 45:01
  Darlington race, right before Richmond.
• 45:04
  And he said, well, who's coming this year?
• 45:06
  I said, well, I don't, I don't have anybody this year, just too
• 45:08
  short of notice. And I think Hoff was there, or
• 45:11
  maybe Jr. Rose, these other guy.
• 45:13
  And he said, Rose, look, see what we got going on with that
• 45:15
  day was open. He said, I'm coming, I'll come
• 45:17
  to that. You want me to come?
• 45:18
  I said, yeah, it'd be great if you want to do that.
• 45:20
  So we agreed to that and kind of worked out the details.
• 45:23
  So as time went on, every time I'd see him in the garage area,
• 45:27
  he'd say September 11th or whatever the date was and he'd
• 45:29
  say 2 hours, 2 hours, 2 hours. That meant he would give me two
• 45:33
  hours, 2 hour autograph session and that was it.
• 45:35
  That was a big deal in those days.
• 45:36
  All the autograph sessions we did, what were just tons and
• 45:39
  tons of them that we did, it was always two hours.
• 45:42
  That's what we always did. Never more than two hours.
• 45:45
  So we get to Darlington and I talked to him there on there on
• 45:50
  Saturday or something. We're talking about the deal and
• 45:53
  I have to give the, the, his helicopter pilot the
• 45:56
  coordinates, latitude and longitude of where he's going to
• 45:58
  be. He's going to fight his
• 45:59
  helicopter up, right? And so we do all that.
• 46:03
  He says 2 hours, right? Two hours.
• 46:05
  So we're going to, I told him we'd go on stage at, I believe
• 46:09
  we'd go on stage at 6:30, right? And we do it for two hours,
• 46:14
  which would be 8:30. And if you get there a few
• 46:16
  minutes early, we had a bunch of golf flags and stuff for him to
• 46:19
  sign soon. Had I had all that worked out
• 46:22
  he's all right, well, we'll be there 2 hours.
• 46:24
  I said OK, so then the race rolls along or Dale, they carry
• 46:27
  Dale out of there and ambulance. That was the race that Dale fell
• 46:30
  asleep going around in the before we even dropped the green
• 46:34
  flag, right. And that caused quite a stare
• 46:37
  with everybody be included or what the hell happened to Dale,
• 46:40
  right. So Bundy comes along, we're
• 46:44
  trying to keep up with what's going on with him.
• 46:46
  And I guess he's he's doing his medical testing and trying to
• 46:48
  figure all that out. And it's usually comes along,
• 46:51
  you know, and don't really hear anything going wrong.
• 46:55
  So I guess Wednesday about two 230 phone rings and I answered
• 47:01
  Rick. He's yeah, it's Dale.
• 47:02
  Hey, Dale, what's up? He said, what's up?
• 47:04
  He said, what are you doing? I said, I'm getting you to go up
• 47:06
  here at the horse over this thing tonight.
• 47:07
  And I said, what are you doing? He said, well, you know, I've
• 47:09
  had a little problem this week. I kind of thought you might
• 47:12
  check in on me. I said Earnhardt, I said I have
• 47:15
  been checking on you. You haven't died and you haven't
• 47:17
  called and said you weren't coming because all my committee
• 47:20
  that does our deal, they're all wigged out.
• 47:22
  The Dale wasn't coming, right? And I told everybody, I says,
• 47:25
  no, Earnhardt, after what he went through, if he's able
• 47:28
  medically, Earnhardt will have his ass here.
• 47:32
  He'll just, he want to show everybody in the world that he's
• 47:34
  OK, right? I said they all shouldn't worry
• 47:36
  about that unless he calls and his doctor won't let him.
• 47:39
  I'm pretty much sure he'll be here.
• 47:41
  So anyhow, when he calls me, I said, what are you doing?
• 47:43
  He says, well, around this priest in the Suburban, I just
• 47:45
  got out, got out of an MRI tube. I saw they figure out what's
• 47:48
  wrong. He said, no, they don't know
• 47:49
  what to do more about it than I do.
• 47:51
  He said, all right, I'm going home a little bit to hop in the
• 47:53
  helicopter to be there. I said, OK.
• 47:54
  He said two hours tonight. I said, OK, so sure enough,
• 47:59
  we're there at the horse center and you know, the crowd had
• 48:02
  started gathering early that morning.
• 48:04
  I mean crowds went all around the horse earn outside down the
• 48:07
  road, you know, typical Earnhardt deal, right?
• 48:10
  And although we always had a good attendance with with fans
• 48:13
  at that place at that deal. So now that he later on the
• 48:17
  helicopter lands, it's about 6 O clock and he comes down and I
• 48:21
  forget who all was there with us that race.
• 48:23
  I know Ward was with us, Schrader maybe baby Bob Labonte,
• 48:26
  I forget who all was in there that particular.
• 48:28
  Anyhow, we do all the autographs and it's about probably quarter
• 48:33
  after or 6:20 and Earnhardt says it's all you got.
• 48:37
  I said, yeah. He says, well, we go, what, you
• 48:41
  going to start at 6:30 autographs?
• 48:43
  And well, yeah, He said, well, let's go and start down, man.
• 48:46
  You got people standing out way down the road back there.
• 48:48
  What I saw in the helicopter when he tried to get many people
• 48:50
  from Canada in two hours, because two hours I'm out of
• 48:52
  here. I said, all right.
• 48:54
  He said, so we went out on stage a little early, maybe 10 minutes
• 48:57
  early. All of us went out on stage, set
• 48:59
  out and start doing the autographs.
• 49:00
  And he looked around and said all the people he looked and he
• 49:02
  said, Ricky, I'm sorry, babe, he's going to be upset people
• 49:05
  here because there's no way we will get through all these
• 49:07
  people in two hours. I said, well, it is what it is.
• 49:09
  So we started signing autograph. So it gets to be getting to be,
• 49:14
  he'll say 7:30. That's one hour.
• 49:15
  So it gets to be close to 830. And Earnhardt looks at he's
• 49:20
  let's see, 6373830. Yeah, so it gets closer to 830
• 49:24
  about 8:15. Twenty after 8, I said he looks
• 49:27
  at me and says, throws his watch.
• 49:29
  And I said yeah. He said, I'll tell you what,
• 49:31
  Rick, we supposed to be, we supposed to be here till 9.
• 49:33
  That's what it was. We're supposed to be 7 to 9,
• 49:36
  right? It started at 6:30.
• 49:38
  He says we we advertised to be here at 9:00.
• 49:41
  I said, yeah, he's well, let's just stay to 9.
• 49:43
  I said, OK, got another half hour to Earnhardt, right?
• 49:46
  So we're doing that. So about 10 minutes to 9, he
• 49:49
  looks at me, he does that. He said, Rick, it's time.
• 49:51
  I said OK, so I have my people. I said go back to there and try
• 49:55
  to, and they all knew what to do.
• 49:57
  We already talked about this with my group and they knew
• 50:00
  they, they watch the line and figure out about where 10
• 50:03
  minutes was in the line. So they went, I watch them, they
• 50:05
  went back there. Well, good ways back and figured
• 50:07
  out about where 10 minutes worth more of people could come,
• 50:11
  right. And that would be the shut off
• 50:12
  spot. So my folks, my folks are back
• 50:15
  are doing that. And you could, I was watching,
• 50:17
  you can see and the people are back there.
• 50:19
  And her heart kept watching that.
• 50:20
  And finally, you know, Dale, he stood up beside me and he looked
• 50:26
  down at me and he took his finger and pointed back to the
• 50:29
  back. He says, Rick, I said what?
• 50:31
  He's A and he hollered real loud.
• 50:32
  What are these people back are yours doing?
• 50:35
  I said, we talked about those people back in the line.
• 50:37
  What are they doing? Your people got them Rick mass
• 50:40
  shirts on. I said, well, they're shutting
• 50:42
  the line off those two hours. You know, that's about where
• 50:44
  it's going to be two and half hours.
• 50:47
  He looked around. He looked back at me and holler
• 50:48
  just as loud as he can. He said, Rick, you can go on
• 50:51
  home if you want to. He said these people been
• 50:53
  standing in line all day. We're going to say I'm going to
• 50:55
  stay here and sign everybody's autograph to they all get done,
• 50:58
  but you going home if you want to and he sat back down and I'm
• 51:02
  sitting there. I'm looking at him like you son
• 51:04
  of a but he did. He stayed just about we had
• 51:08
  every single I don't know what time we got out of that night,
• 51:11
  but it was late. But he had said the thing of it
• 51:14
  is he'd set me up for two months, even when I first went
• 51:18
  to him sitting in that frigging truck to ask him about coming,
• 51:22
  he said two hours. He already you right then what
• 51:24
  he was going to do because he knew that wherever he went, you
• 51:27
  know if you go do 2 hour session, you could do it for 10
• 51:29
  hours. That's just the kind of crowd he
• 51:31
  would draw and but he had set my butt up for two months for that
• 51:36
  thing. But that was typical frigginard
• 51:38
  Earnhardt, right? You know, And he ended up while
• 51:40
  I was sitting there and made a deal.
• 51:42
  Of course, our golf tournament was the next day we made a deal.
• 51:44
  You know, he said it's the weezy he's asked about the golf
• 51:46
  tournament, the sponsors. No, he end up sponsoring a
• 51:48
  whole, you know, and he bought some stuff and did some things
• 51:51
  right to help us out the next day for the golf tournament.
• 51:54
  So but that that was that was that was typical Dale.
• 51:59
  I mean, he was a lot of people know this.
• 52:01
  Lot of people don't know how big hearted he was charitable.
• 52:03
  He was, you know, he's very, very silent and private about
• 52:07
  all that. You know, the biggest thing
• 52:09
  about you know, Kyle Petty had a statement right after we lost
• 52:13
  Dale and I always thought, man, that was the most perfect
• 52:16
  statement about her and art and you can make.
• 52:19
  And I don't know that I've ever heard another statement that
• 52:24
  that that exemplified him or covered him as boats as much as
• 52:29
  that very simple few words. Kyle Petty says, you know, he
• 52:33
  says Earnhardt was our cowboy. Earnhardt was our cowboy and
• 52:38
  Cowboys do not die, right? And I'm like, Dang, that that
• 52:45
  that covers Earnhardt. That was him.
• 52:48
  So. That's that's it.
• 52:50
  Well, I'll take one little one more footnote on that.
• 52:52
  That deal, if I remember correctly, he came up, that was
• 52:56
  when Remington was your your primary sponsor.
• 52:58
  That was 1997 and I believe the CEO or the head of Remington at
• 53:05
  the time, I don't know if he wrote up with Dale in the
• 53:08
  helicopter or something. Anyways, they worked out another
• 53:10
  deal where then Earnhardt kind of picked up a little bit of an
• 53:13
  endorsement deal or got some sponsorship from Remington as
• 53:16
  well, which then led to you and me being in a Remington
• 53:21
  commercial with Dale and his daughter Taylor that we shot.
• 53:24
  I guess I don't know if it was during the season or whatever,
• 53:26
  but later on. And that was the only other time
• 53:28
  that commercial. She was the only other time I
• 53:30
  was ever around Dale for any extended amount of time.
• 53:33
  Well, it wasn't really, yeah, that wasn't really how that
• 53:36
  happened. I mean, it wasn't, you know, I,
• 53:38
  we kind of, we kind of did that deal when, when Remington asked
• 53:43
  me about it, if Earnhardt would do a commercial with us.
• 53:46
  So I went to Earnhardt about that.
• 53:47
  Anyhow, that all ended up happening.
• 53:49
  You know, I don't think was at the golf tournament where all
• 53:52
  that happened. But the neat part about that
• 53:54
  story was a 2 day shoot. We did it on, they called it the
• 53:56
  Allison Forum somewhere down in Statesville because a 2 day
• 53:59
  shoot, we had to be there 2 days and you were there.
• 54:02
  You're part of the commercial, of course, you know all that.
• 54:04
  But the neat part, when it was all over, I'll never forget, you
• 54:07
  know, Remington, the Remington folks says, OK, Dale, we need to
• 54:10
  settle up now. We didn't talk about money.
• 54:13
  So you know what, what you want. He says we all usually pay for
• 54:18
  something like this. Well, they didn't have, they
• 54:20
  didn't have somebody of Dale's stature say, what do you usually
• 54:22
  charge? Anyhow, They went back and forth
• 54:24
  a little bit. They come up to figure about
• 54:26
  what he would normally cost to do that.
• 54:28
  Earnhardt says, OK, just take that money, write that check and
• 54:31
  write it to the race team. I don't want it.
• 54:33
  I don't need it. Give it to the race team, Right?
• 54:35
  Interesting. Another typical Dale Earnhardt
• 54:38
  deal, right? But he also, he was also
• 54:41
  working, I know, to get him some free guns out of this deal.
• 54:43
  And he ended up, as time went on, he ended up with a personal
• 54:46
  services contract with Remington.
• 54:48
  He he got those guns that he wanted.
• 54:50
  So, you know, it all worked out. That's cool.
• 54:52
  It worked out for everybody. I'm glad I asked about that
• 54:55
  because I did not know that part of the story.
• 54:57
  That's really cool. I love that.
• 55:00
  You know what? I don't know why this stands out
• 55:02
  to me. It's just, I guess this is still
• 55:04
  something even as an adult that I, I, it means something to me
• 55:08
  or I take note of it. Like when, like if I, if I
• 55:13
  interview a, a baseball player, an athlete or a celebrity or
• 55:16
  whatever, if at the end of the day or later on, like if they or
• 55:21
  if I see them later, if they remember my name, just my first
• 55:24
  name. That's like, I appreciate that.
• 55:27
  They don't, they don't have to. I'm not going to hold it against
• 55:28
  anybody, but I very much appreciate when people are able
• 55:31
  to do that. When we first showed up at
• 55:35
  morning for the shoot and Earnhardt got there with Teresa
• 55:40
  and Taylor and Taylor wasn't, she couldn't have been more.
• 55:43
  And I'm nine years old probably at the time, but they walk in.
• 55:47
  So she was a kid and I was a teenager and I was 1415.
• 55:50
  So I was a kid too, but a little bit older than her.
• 55:53
  He walked in and Dale said, Taylor, that's Ricky, say hi to
• 55:56
  Ricky. And I didn't know he knew my
• 55:59
  name, which I mean, of course he did because, but, but I, it
• 56:04
  stuck out to me that he knew my name or who I was or whatever.
• 56:07
  And that that was like a neat little thing for me that I
• 56:12
  don't. I always got, I appreciated that
• 56:16
  as a kid. It was cool to me when the guys
• 56:18
  you raced against, I remember Dale Jarrett one day we were
• 56:21
  coming back in the OR come back in the motorhome lot from
• 56:24
  somewhere and Dale's a big golfer and I think I was playing
• 56:29
  on the golf team in high school at that point.
• 56:31
  Not very well, but I played. But we walked in, Dale saw us
• 56:34
  walking in and asked me something about my golf game or
• 56:36
  whatever. And I didn't even know he knew I
• 56:38
  played golf or anything like that.
• 56:40
  And it little things like that, that just, I, I always got, I
• 56:43
  appreciate that when one of your buddies or your fellow
• 56:45
  competitors or something like took an interest in your kid or
• 56:50
  at least took the time to say hi and the name or know something
• 56:52
  about you, like, I don't know, that kind of stuff always, I
• 56:55
  always appreciate that stuff. Yeah, most of the people in
• 56:57
  graduate, but then we were family man.
• 56:58
  Most people in graduate family you had I mean, like me, I knew,
• 57:02
  you know, a lot of most all the drivers would do the wives
• 57:04
  names, knew the kids name and never even spoke to them, right.
• 57:07
  But you knew because you were traveling circus every week
• 57:09
  you're with this this group and you ended up knowing these folks
• 57:12
  right by name, maybe never even speak to them.
• 57:14
  But yeah, that that was kind of part of kind of part of that
• 57:19
  circus or of that of that group or the family or whatever you
• 57:23
  want to call it. But on the Taylor thing, you
• 57:27
  know, later on in life, when she got older, she's doing the
• 57:30
  riding those horses. She and Teresa would show up at
• 57:34
  the horse center every now and then, right, Virginia Horse
• 57:37
  Center, well, where her dad had did that autograph session and
• 57:40
  they showed a couple times. I know, I know what twice for
• 57:43
  sure. I think they showed up there
• 57:44
  doing that and and so did Kyle, Kyle Pettiesdale, a little girl
• 57:48
  gummy in Montgomery. She ended up coming to Virginia
• 57:51
  Horse Center some which is. I remember if you remember.
• 57:55
  I don't know how it worked out this way, but but Kyle and his
• 57:59
  first, his first wife, Montgomery Lee's mom, Patty,
• 58:02
  they were in town for because Montgomery Lee had a show and I
• 58:06
  guess Kyle got a hold of you was like, hey, come, you know, come
• 58:09
  let's go eat dinner or something or have supper somewhere.
• 58:11
  So, and I guess mom, my sisters are Pretty Little then I'm, I
• 58:16
  guess mom stayed home with sisters.
• 58:17
  So you and I went up and went to Spanky's and Lexington, which
• 58:20
  doesn't exist anymore. Went Spanky's and had I had
• 58:24
  supper with Kyle and, and Patty had a had a good time with them.
• 58:27
  They were staying up there at the horse Center.
• 58:31
  And I remember, I mean, it's bittersweet, but I remember him
• 58:34
  like this was Adam was still with us.
• 58:35
  And I remember Kyle was, was talking a little bit about Adam
• 58:39
  and we were, he was all smiles And it was just, it was all
• 58:42
  good. Like it was it, you know,
• 58:44
  bittersweet now, But it, it was a it was a fun night.
• 58:47
  It was an enjoyable night and it was cool to do that.
• 58:49
  So yeah, it is funny. It's it's funny, not funny.
• 58:51
  It's it's, I don't know, fun it full circle.
• 58:54
  Sometimes we're just weird how all these things kind of
• 58:56
  interweave with each other sometimes.
• 58:59
  But yeah, fun, fond memories, fond memories.
• 59:02
  I'm sure they'll be more as we go on with mass cast.
• 59:04
  I know there'll be more and more stories, but I thought, well,
• 59:07
  for Mark, Mark in 25 years since we lost a let's not be sad about
• 59:10
  it. Let's just tell some some fond,
• 59:12
  light hearted memories of him. And yeah, my leg healed from my
• 59:16
  trump and injury, so we're good. What's so amazing, man?
• 59:19
  Well, when he died, you know, it was on national news, on 630
• 59:23
  nationalist, all the big networks picked up on his own
• 59:26
  Newsweek, Time magazine, all the stuff.
• 59:29
  But here we are 25 years later and I got that.
• 59:31
  They got that new, they got that new little deal they they've
• 59:34
  made on him, right? They're going to review
• 59:37
  premiered this week, I guess. Comes out, I think it comes out
• 59:40
  after the twin races on Thursday.
• 59:42
  I mean this. Five.
• 59:43
  I bet that's one, I think, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this dude's been
• 59:46
  gone for 25 years and it's still like, you know, with the meeting
• 59:49
  and fans and everybody's like, man, he was just here yesterday,
• 59:52
  right? So, you know, it's hard.
• 59:55
  It's hard that this kind of shows the impact that dude had,
• 59:57
  you know, to still be still be so relevant today, you know,
• 1:00:02
  even in souvenir, souvenir sales, you know, just the
• 1:00:05
  relevancy had. The statue of him.
• 1:00:08
  It's just, it's amazing to me that it's still out there and
• 1:00:11
  I'm tickled to death that it is. And it should be deservedly so.
• 1:00:14
  Oh man, it's it's so cool that he's still remembered like that.
• 1:00:19
  That's I guess. Yeah, I I liked how Cletus
• 1:00:24
  McFarlane went on Dale junior show last year and at the end
• 1:00:28
  Dale let Cletus like ask him some questions.
• 1:00:31
  He let thee flip the tables where Cletus could ask Dale some
• 1:00:34
  questions on his podcast. And he asked Cletus, I guess,
• 1:00:37
  signs off all of his videos with do it for Dale.
• 1:00:39
  And of course, now he's got like, be like Biff is going to
• 1:00:41
  be his other one. But Cletus asked him like, like,
• 1:00:44
  what do you honestly think of me saying or us saying, you know,
• 1:00:49
  do it for Dale? And I love Dale Junior's answer.
• 1:00:51
  He said I love it because, and I'm paraphrasing here a little
• 1:00:55
  bit, but he said something to the effect of you worry or you
• 1:00:59
  start to wonder, like, will Dad eventually be forgotten?
• 1:01:03
  Yeah, Yeah, whatever. He goes stuff like that, it
• 1:01:06
  means that he won't be like it keeps him out there and it's so
• 1:01:09
  true. I'll tell you the I'm looking
• 1:01:11
  forward to the seeing the show this week on on Fox or FS1.
• 1:01:16
  If if you're watching this and you haven't watched the Amazon
• 1:01:19
  prime documentary that came out here a few months ago, you've
• 1:01:23
  got to watch it. It is it's it's I'm a huge
• 1:01:27
  documentary person, period, especially sports documentaries,
• 1:01:30
  but any, any documentary and it's it's one of it's one of my
• 1:01:33
  favorites I've ever watched. And I kind of like coming back
• 1:01:36
  to that to when be getting on social media to see if other
• 1:01:40
  people agree with me on the hell yeah, like campaign spot.
• 1:01:44
  How I was kind of figuring like, all right, I think when I saw
• 1:01:47
  that Dale documentary this offseason, here's how I know
• 1:01:50
  this thing's good. I had buddies of mine that I
• 1:01:52
  work in baseball with who are not NASCAR fans.
• 1:01:55
  They don't, they just never got into it.
• 1:01:57
  It's not their sport, but they're like me.
• 1:01:59
  Anything sports relay like a good documentary or movie or
• 1:02:02
  something, they're going to watch it regardless if they like
• 1:02:04
  the sport or not. And I have one of them reach out
• 1:02:07
  to me and said, and he's I know for a fact he's not a NASCAR
• 1:02:09
  guy, but he watched that because he likes these kind of
• 1:02:12
  documentaries. And he said, I think that is the
• 1:02:14
  best sports documentary I've ever watched, or it's easily one
• 1:02:17
  of the best. And I went, well, OK, that
• 1:02:19
  validates how I felt about it. It's that good.
• 1:02:21
  So so it is, it's a it's a good thing.
• 1:02:25
  He's we still remembered all these 25 years later.
• 1:02:28
  That's a very good thing. So well that I'm excited for the
• 1:02:32
  500. I think we're going to record
• 1:02:34
  right after the 500 on Sunday and then this our next show will
• 1:02:38
  be out a couple days after that next week on Kenny Wallace
• 1:02:42
  Media. Follow us mass cast show on X
• 1:02:45
  Instagram, Tiktok, the mass cast on Facebook.
• 1:02:48
  He's at Rick mass 22 on Instagram and X and Twitter.
• 1:02:51
  I'm at Ricky mast on all the things except for Tiktok.
• 1:02:54
  I don't know, I got like a burner like I lurk on Tiktok.
• 1:02:57
  So you know, you can try to find me, but you ain't going to find
• 1:03:00
  anything worth seeing there. But I'm on there if you really
• 1:03:03
  care that much about it. But we're having a lot of fun
• 1:03:06
  with us and we're looking forward to Daytona and looking
• 1:03:08
  forward to talking about Daytona again next week on Mass Cast.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah, Dad, any any final thoughts before we part for the
• 1:03:14
  week? No, it's going to be, it's going
• 1:03:16
  to be the next few days watching all the storylines, man.
• 1:03:20
  There's stuff going to be happening going on that we right
• 1:03:23
  now have no idea we're going to be talking about in a few days,
• 1:03:26
  right? That's, that's the neat part.
• 1:03:28
  And that's going to be, it's going to be good.
• 1:03:30
  It's going to be good at Daytona.
• 1:03:31
  I just feel feel in there, man. It's going to be a good week
• 1:03:33
  down there. A lot of fun, enthusiasm, a lot
• 1:03:37
  of interest. It's just going to be cool.
• 1:03:39
  I agree. Well, I can't wait to see it.
• 1:03:41
  Well, he's Rick AKA Dad. I'm Ricky.
• 1:03:44
  We'll see you next week on Mass Cast.