Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Ty Gibbs WINS & Cleetus McFarland Denied Dega | The Burnout With Matt Weaver & Ryan Larkin

Transcript

Ty Gibbs WINS & Cleetus McFarland Denied Dega | The Burnout With Matt Weaver & Ryan Larkin · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  What's up everyone, welcome back to the Burnout.
• 0:02
  I'm Ryan Larkin. With me, as always, is Matt
• 0:04
  Weaver. We had a really good Bristol
• 0:07
  race weekend. It felt good to get the Cup
• 0:08
  Series back on track. Matt Weaver has been able to get
• 0:12
  to his hotel. He was able to get set up with
• 0:15
  his audio and his video. Well, he's getting his ass
• 0:18
  kicked by a light right now. And that's what's got us
• 0:20
  giggling a little bit. He he doesn't want to come
• 0:23
  across like a, a grim Reaper of sorts with, with being too
• 0:26
  flush. So we've been messing.
• 0:28
  Around with stuff who are the the OG day one.
• 0:32
  Well, not day one because we started last year, but to those
• 0:36
  who were here for the Daytona 500 episode, I was in the the
• 0:42
  media room there and we had this like bright light in the the
• 0:47
  contrast was just awful. And I look like I look like I
• 0:50
  don't know fester or you know, I look like Casper the the
• 0:56
  unfriendly ghost. And so this hotel room has a
• 0:59
  very, very white light and see what it's doing to me right now.
• 1:03
  I look like he who shall not be named.
• 1:05
  I'm Lord Voldemort and I found AT shirt the T-shirt gives me
• 1:12
  the appropriate color color scheme that I'm looking for.
• 1:17
  I think Kenny needs to send us something, you know, for better
• 1:19
  video quality. I think that's on.
• 1:23
  So I'm I'm a little under the weather weather.
• 1:25
  So at points I might check out or meet myself or something.
• 1:29
  So just bear with me on that. But hopefully Matt can talk away
• 1:34
  and and make this entertaining for you guys.
• 1:36
  Obviously a lot to get to with the off week with the the Cletus
• 1:41
  McFarlane stuff. It, you know, I'm, I'm starting
• 1:43
  to buy, I thought. We were going to go a week
• 1:45
  without invoking his name. Nope, Nope.
• 1:48
  I I want to almost start there, but let's let's cover it because
• 1:51
  we got such a a big time race win for for the Cup series at
• 1:55
  Bristol. I want I want to start with the
• 1:56
  Cup series, but I had planned all week to start with Cletus
• 1:59
  McFarlane just because why the hell not?
• 2:02
  But Ty Gibbs gets his first win. Very, very good bristle race.
• 2:05
  I went into this race thinking it was going to suck.
• 2:07
  Like I had no expectations of a good race and I thought it
• 2:10
  widened out fine. There was passing guys could
• 2:12
  move through the field. Obviously if you didn't have a
• 2:15
  good car, you're kind of screwed.
• 2:16
  There was the element of, you know, no tire wear so you could
• 2:19
  stay out and and utilize some strategy.
• 2:21
  But I thought overall the race was was fairly entertaining.
• 2:24
  It was kind of a three car show, Blaney Larson and and then Ty
• 2:27
  Gibbs. What do you make of the race
• 2:31
  itself? But then of course, Ty Gibbs
• 2:32
  getting his first win, a big win off of a big start to the year.
• 2:35
  He's been fantastic all year. And then, you know, kind of
• 2:38
  parlay that into some some gay part talk it if you want.
• 2:42
  You know, I don't, I don't know how I feel about the racing
• 2:46
  product. And then, then the reason why is
• 2:50
  I don't even know what Bristol is supposed to look like anymore
• 2:53
  because like, I'm, I'm getting so old now.
• 2:58
  Not really. I'm 38, but I, I feel so old
• 3:02
  that I've, I've now crossed the threshold to where the memories
• 3:06
  that I have of 1990s Bristol are starting to fade.
• 3:11
  And you know, in your, in your mind, you only remember your
• 3:15
  favorite parts. And so is that really Bristol,
• 3:18
  the, the things that I remember the most?
• 3:21
  Or is it, you know, that period of time where they first did the
• 3:25
  reconfiguration or the time where they grounded the top and
• 3:29
  then we threw dirt on it for a while and we had extreme tire
• 3:33
  degradation races and we've had something a little bit more
• 3:36
  predictable. I just, I don't, I don't know, I
• 3:40
  don't know what I want Bristol to be.
• 3:42
  I don't know what I think Bristol should be.
• 3:45
  And I will be honest with you. I mean, it's no secret the crowd
• 3:49
  today was not great. In fact, because I had to drive
• 3:52
  all the way back from Nashville this morning after the Cars Tore
• 3:55
  race of the fairgrounds, I got to the track 20 minutes before
• 4:00
  green flag. I'm here to tell you, having
• 4:03
  done that a time or two over my 15 years going to Bristol, you
• 4:08
  show up to Bristol 20 minutes before green flag and they're
• 4:12
  still a line. And even if you get to the main
• 4:15
  parking lot, you you're going to be super lucky to find a spot.
• 4:19
  And I showed up again 20 minutes before the race and I was like
• 4:24
  in the middle of the parking lot, not the back.
• 4:26
  It was just, it was empty. And I just think that some of
• 4:30
  that is also part of Bristol's identity crisis.
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  I don't think anyone knows what they want Bristol to be.
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  The, the product has changed so much that I don't, I don't, I
• 4:40
  don't know that people even know what they're buying a ticket
• 4:43
  for. And so I thought the race was
• 4:45
  fine, right? Like I, I didn't think the
• 4:48
  racing quality sucked. And you know, the race last
• 4:50
  spring was awful. A year ago, that race was
• 4:54
  terrible. And this was not that.
• 4:56
  It laid down rubber, but it was so hot and slick that guys were
• 5:01
  still sliding around. You know, if if Ryan Blaney's
• 5:06
  pit crew were any better, he might have stunk up the show.
• 5:11
  But you know he's going to give up four to five spots every
• 5:13
  single time he comes into pit Rd. from the lead.
• 5:16
  So that adds a degree of race quality too.
• 5:20
  But you know, dirty air is rough.
• 5:22
  It still is. And there's no secret, this car,
• 5:25
  all the aero changes, I'm throwing a lot at you, but the
• 5:29
  racing was fine. But I don't think that's enough
• 5:32
  because I think that this spring race has become the weekend
• 5:36
  where people just get something interesting or different and it
• 5:40
  was just a race. Yeah, and you know, from a
• 5:43
  general population standpoint, it's Masters weekend, right?
• 5:47
  Baseball just kicked off. There's a lot going on.
• 5:50
  There chat on. Yeah, chat's on.
• 5:54
  I was told that to ask you when when I got on to make sure the
• 5:57
  chat was on. No, yeah, I'm, I'm looking at.
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  I could throw stuff up at some point.
• 6:02
  Hello I've got a blank screen so I'm trying to troubleshoot in
• 6:05
  real time. Yeah, for sure.
• 6:10
  I got pulled up on my side. Yeah.
• 6:11
  It just feels like there's a lot going on and NASCAR slash
• 6:14
  Bristol does nothing to make you interested in it, you know, if
• 6:18
  that makes sense. You know, it for for me, it's I
• 6:23
  watch Ibiza as part of my job, as part of what I do, but I
• 6:26
  could totally have checked out this week and it really doesn't
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  mean anything there. The action on track isn't at
• 6:32
  least subconsciously making me think like when the late 90s
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  when we thought it was going to be a show and every, you know,
• 6:39
  all the different races back then were so good or
• 6:43
  perceptually good that you wanted to tune in and there's
• 6:47
  excitement. Well, that's just not there at
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  all. It was a spectacle.
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  And say what you will about last fall in the, the, the previous
• 6:55
  spring race before that, those were spectacles and I, it
• 7:01
  probably wouldn't have happened this race no matter what because
• 7:04
  the temperatures were so high. But I think that for people to
• 7:08
  be enthusiastic about Bristol, there has to be an element of,
• 7:13
  of spectacle. And you know what?
• 7:15
  I I do have pretty good memories of when they first did the the
• 7:18
  first reconfiguration back in that was that O 7.
• 7:22
  O seven O 8 range. Somewhere in there, the year
• 7:27
  where, you know, Cowboys got out and said the cot, you know,
• 7:31
  sucked or whatever Cowboys said about it, right?
• 7:34
  When's the 1st? It's funny because like in
• 7:36
  hindsight, that race was a pretty compelling race, you
• 7:42
  know, with the multiple grooves and people changing lanes, but
• 7:46
  it's not what people wanted. And I think once again, I think
• 7:50
  this is a similar thing when you come off that fall race and you
• 7:55
  start to think that maybe Bristol's got an element of, of
• 7:58
  spectacle to it. And then you just come back and
• 8:01
  you have just a just a fine race that's no longer good for
• 8:05
  Bristol. And I don't know, I don't, I
• 8:09
  don't, I don't, I don't know what to make of this race.
• 8:11
  I enjoyed the racing, but I'll tell you, I didn't walk out like
• 8:14
  I did last fall going. I saw some shit and that was
• 8:19
  fun. It was just like, that was a
• 8:20
  good race. Good for Ty.
• 8:22
  Yeah, I think the spring race has had that identity issue for
• 8:26
  as long as I can remember. Like it just it, it's never
• 8:28
  lived up to what the night race was.
• 8:30
  Night race was always the the the big attraction and over
• 8:34
  time, as the popularity is for dwindled and as the cars changed
• 8:38
  and just the action changed on track.
• 8:40
  And that's a huge part of what it used to be in the 90s or
• 8:43
  early 2000s. So what the cars have changed
• 8:46
  dramatically. So you're not getting the same
• 8:47
  racing product regardless. Anita posted something and this
• 8:52
  was on my my list of stuff to talk about.
• 8:55
  But what do you think of having just one bristle race?
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  I'm a big proponent of there should only be about two or
• 9:03
  three tracks in total that have two dates.
• 9:05
  I really don't want any to have two dates or like Daytona gets
• 9:08
  an automatic to a degree. I would give Atlanta two dates,
• 9:13
  1 as a points race and then one as I think the All Star race
• 9:17
  should be at Atlanta. I think, you know, having the
• 9:19
  All Star race where everyone has a shot, but aside from like
• 9:23
  maybe Charlotte, just for the locality of the teams, I can't
• 9:26
  make an argument for us to go in the Phoenix twice, Martinsville
• 9:29
  twice, Bristol twice. I I just don't get it.
• 9:31
  I think structurally if you're trying to create excitement, I'm
• 9:34
  going to go see Bristol again in five months.
• 9:36
  I'm going to go see Darlington again in four months.
• 9:39
  Why does this matter right now? And especially because we reset
• 9:42
  the championship with the chase and all say like, I feel like
• 9:46
  you should have one Bristol race.
• 9:47
  It should be the one time to win a sword.
• 9:49
  It should be the one time to see that event, to go to the event
• 9:52
  and make it special. And right now there's no
• 9:54
  specialness to what we see. So I'm curious your thoughts on
• 9:56
  that and and kind of if there are tracks that should get two
• 10:00
  days, what what do you what, which ones do you like?
• 10:03
  Well, you so those are two different questions right.
• 10:05
  I'll tell you that the solution for the the spring Bristol race
• 10:12
  could be found full circle my weekend.
• 10:16
  The other racetrack I went to this weekend, I was at Bristol
• 10:18
  on Friday, I was at Bristol to today on Sunday and I went to
• 10:23
  Fairgrounds Speedway on, on Saturday.
• 10:25
  And you know, if Speedway Motorsports, who owns Bristol,
• 10:30
  gets the the lease, Marcus Smith wants a 30 year lease to operate
• 10:37
  the fairgrounds to renovate it. He wants to put his own money
• 10:40
  into the renovation of that facility.
• 10:42
  And there's a lot of work to do because it's owned by the city
• 10:45
  and there's kind of a a disagreement with the individual
• 10:49
  that owns the soccer stadium or owns the soccer team that's also
• 10:53
  now on the fairgrounds. So that's a different
• 10:55
  conversation we can get into later.
• 10:58
  But if he renovates that place, it's to have a NASCAR Cup Series
• 11:02
  event. And the, the contract, as it was
• 11:07
  proposed most recently called for a Cup race every other year,
• 11:13
  alternating maybe with the superspeedway or maybe, you
• 11:18
  know, it becomes, you know, part of a Wilkesboro rotation or a
• 11:22
  Bristol rotation. I could very well see if, you
• 11:25
  know, you can't create enthusiasm or spectacle for
• 11:30
  Bristol and you're trying to figure out how to, you know, get
• 11:33
  Nashville Fairgrounds a date without taking away from a race
• 11:37
  that I think is doing pretty well in Lebanon and that that's
• 11:40
  a superspeedway, Maybe that's the way you do it.
• 11:43
  As much as I love Darlington, you know we can have a
• 11:46
  conversation about Rockingham, right?
• 11:48
  Like it's not cup ready yet, neither is Nashville
• 11:50
  Fairgrounds. I love Darlington, but I don't
• 11:53
  know that we need 2 Darlington races if it means that we can
• 11:57
  diversify our schedule further by having Rockingham back.
• 12:02
  The the counter argument would be, well, what made that weekend
• 12:07
  last weekend feel really unique and special as it felt like the
• 12:10
  marquee event for O'Reilly and Trucks.
• 12:13
  And I hear you, but I I also feel like I want as much I want
• 12:19
  as much schedule diversity as possible.
• 12:21
  But let me tell you something. I just recently restored my old
• 12:24
  PlayStation 3 so I could play some of the old PlayStation two
• 12:27
  NASCAR games. My favorite thing to do on the
• 12:31
  EA Sports NASCAR games, if any of you have ever played them, is
• 12:35
  you could create your own, your own racer, but then you could
• 12:38
  create your own schedule. And I had so much fun racing out
• 12:43
  a season and a schedule that I would create with all these like
• 12:46
  fantasy tracks they would include.
• 12:48
  They would have like the Daytona Beach course.
• 12:51
  They would have before this was a real life thing.
• 12:54
  The Charlotte Rd. course, the the Daytona Rd. course night.
• 12:58
  Talladega, which is still not a thing.
• 13:01
  The track that was like Bowman Gray.
• 13:03
  What was it like? Levi.
• 13:05
  Levi Stadium. Yeah.
• 13:08
  Levi Stadium, Whatever. I loved that.
• 13:12
  I like in my personal version of NASCAR, when I played these
• 13:17
  games, it wasn't you go to every single place twice.
• 13:19
  I had 36 races and it was 36 different tracks and I thought
• 13:23
  that was so cool. And so there's a part of me
• 13:26
  that's still that 12 year old playing those games who wants to
• 13:31
  create 36 different races across 36 different events.
• 13:35
  That's not realistic, but I'm still wired that way.
• 13:39
  So you, you know, piggybacking on on what you started that that
• 13:43
  topic with, which was, you know, SMI owns the date anytime there
• 13:48
  is a date switch. And I think this is kind of
• 13:51
  something that's getting lost a lot the last couple years when
• 13:54
  it comes to North Wilkesboro getting a points paying race and
• 13:57
  Dover getting the All Star race. These are all tracks owned by
• 14:00
  SMI. When Nashville Superspeedway
• 14:03
  takes a date from Dover couple years ago, that's because SMI
• 14:07
  got the rights to those tracks. They own them now and thus
• 14:10
  they're diversifying where they run those races.
• 14:13
  They took a date from Texas and they run at CODA, right?
• 14:16
  They operate on those certain whatever it is 1618 days a year
• 14:21
  at their tracks and and they can run it where they want to a
• 14:23
  degree. So it's up to them to decide if
• 14:26
  there's going to be 2 Bristol dates or one.
• 14:28
  Obviously there's financial aspects of that, that stadium
• 14:31
  sitting silent for a, a weekend in March or April, right?
• 14:35
  Like they don't want it to sit empty.
• 14:38
  So it has to make financial sense to find another place to
• 14:40
  put enough asses and seats to then make the money.
• 14:43
  So I Yep, true. I don't want to add Bristol
• 14:48
  anymore. I don't think there needs to be
• 14:50
  a spring race. I think there's a lot that you
• 14:52
  learn over time is like, OK, why are things dwindling in terms of
• 14:56
  viewership? And, and this is one of the
• 14:57
  things where it's just slapping you in the face.
• 14:59
  This is not working. And so obviously he said he got
• 15:02
  in there, but Ty Gibbs, we we did not get to Ty Gibbs yet.
• 15:06
  I thought that was a very, very strong performance to clutch
• 15:09
  performance. He's been great all all year.
• 15:11
  I mean, he really has been. His last six races, I know
• 15:14
  they've been good, but when I sat down to write my post race
• 15:18
  story after talking to Ty and Tyler and and coach, I actually
• 15:22
  wanted to kind of figure out how to articulate it.
• 15:24
  So I pulled up the racing reference and I know they've
• 15:27
  been top five pretty much every week, but I didn't realize that,
• 15:30
  you know, throwaway Daytona, it's a superspeedway crash fest
• 15:34
  throwaway Atlanta, it's a super intermediate crash fest.
• 15:39
  And ever since then, six races in a row, they finished no worse
• 15:43
  than 6th. It is 6th, 4th, 4th, fifths
• 15:47
  second first. This is a it's crazy to say this
• 15:52
  out loud given what they've been right now.
• 15:55
  This looks like a championship caliber team from a guy that's
• 15:58
  won a a O'Reilly Series championship.
• 16:01
  But man, they flipped the switch in a hurry.
• 16:04
  I mean, that team looks put together right now in a big way.
• 16:08
  Yeah. I mean, they, I don't know how
• 16:10
  it, it's early, but they're fourth in points.
• 16:13
  He's. Performed just as well as Danny
• 16:14
  Hamlin has this year. I mean, he really has.
• 16:17
  So we have to consider until we see more where maybe that starts
• 16:21
  dwindling over the summer months.
• 16:22
  But you know, we talked about a couple weeks ago how I thought
• 16:25
  the Toyotas had an advantage with this newer package.
• 16:28
  I think they're just a little ahead of the ball game or, or
• 16:31
  they just found something in general and it it's obviously
• 16:36
  working for Ty Gibbs, whatever it is.
• 16:38
  I don't know exactly what's going on with Matt right now.
• 16:41
  So hopefully he can reappear that there he is.
• 16:45
  But I I just feel like everything we've seen from Ty
• 16:48
  Gibbs has been as good as anyone else in this in the sport right
• 16:51
  now. I don't think he'll have his
• 16:53
  consistent race winning outside of someone like Hamlin just
• 16:56
  because Hamlin has that 20 years of experience and knowledge to
• 16:59
  closeout races and kind of get the job done.
• 17:02
  You know, that that perfectionist that you get with
• 17:05
  someone with that much experience.
• 17:06
  But I think Gibbs is he's top five every week.
• 17:09
  I mean, it's it's not even like a one or two race situation.
• 17:12
  This is a big sample now and this is every track type, every
• 17:16
  situation and and he closed it off with a win here.
• 17:18
  I, I am interested to see what they do on a traditional
• 17:22
  intermediate Kansas. I think that's the last Test.
• 17:24
  But I I think Tyga has been fantastic, one of the best
• 17:28
  storylines and I don't know if we're even given enough credit
• 17:31
  so far for his his competition so far this year.
• 17:35
  No, So listen, I, I think that they're going to be found on
• 17:39
  intermediates too. I mean, I, I don't think that
• 17:41
  Ty, the driver I'm not talking about.
• 17:45
  Then he finished. Top five in Vegas?
• 17:48
  I guess that's a traditional intermediate.
• 17:50
  Yeah, I mean, so like, I just think that it's more about just
• 17:53
  the entire team, right? Like it's communication
• 17:59
  chemistry and I don't know why it took so long, right.
• 18:03
  Like if it's crazy, then I I wrote about this tonight.
• 18:06
  It's like they believe in in Tyler is the crew chief and
• 18:10
  Tyler believes in Ty and and obviously coach made a decision
• 18:15
  last year and this this bleeds into the lawsuit.
• 18:18
  And I don't know if you want to get into that later, but like
• 18:21
  made the decision to put gay part on the pit box for a little
• 18:23
  bit and and wanted him to take over full time.
• 18:26
  If if you know, gay part is to be believed.
• 18:29
  Gay part argued in court that he believes that the promotion to
• 18:34
  competition director was a a ploy to get him off the 11 pit
• 18:39
  box to then eventually put him on the 54 pit box.
• 18:44
  But I even asked coach about that.
• 18:46
  I asked coach, I said when you replace Tyler Allen with Chris
• 18:50
  Capehart for that stretch during the summer, what did you want
• 18:54
  him to get out of it? And Coach said that, listen,
• 18:57
  when I was a coach, I worked under 4 head coaches before I
• 19:02
  was able to become a head coach. And he's a three time Super Bowl
• 19:06
  winning head coach. And he says that it was
• 19:08
  important for me to learn from those head coaches how to do the
• 19:12
  job in that. He says the decision last year
• 19:16
  was just another, you know, a coordinator situation for him to
• 19:21
  to do what he's doing now that he's always believed in Tyler
• 19:25
  Allen. But sometimes the coordinators
• 19:27
  just not ready yet. And so, you know, I don't I
• 19:30
  don't know if last year was a kick in the pants and it was
• 19:35
  like, we are replaceable. And you know, as, as, as a crew
• 19:40
  chief, he would rather have gay part or, or even for, for Tie,
• 19:45
  not that Tie's ever going to be fired, but Tie's like, I'm
• 19:49
  getting people fired possibly. And I, I, I can't help but think
• 19:53
  that as much as he glowingly talks about Tyler Allen and says
• 19:57
  that I want to go go to battle with this guy, he's responsible
• 20:02
  as the driver for not getting him fired.
• 20:05
  Yeah. And I just think that's been a
• 20:07
  really interesting subplot to the start of this season.
• 20:11
  They were reminded last year of, you know, you all collectively
• 20:15
  do not perform. We're going to make changes.
• 20:18
  And I know that you guys like each other.
• 20:19
  So if you want to keep working together, figure it out.
• 20:23
  Yeah. And, and it's, it's interesting.
• 20:25
  And I feel like the public perception with Ty has been
• 20:27
  negative, you know, pretty damn negative and some of it
• 20:31
  warranted. 100%. You know, wrecking your teammate
• 20:35
  Martinsville was just asinine, right?
• 20:38
  And it's indefensible, but. What he did in New Hampshire
• 20:41
  last year was should not have happened.
• 20:44
  Right, and so there are those moments where it's like, dude,
• 20:47
  is he going to get it? But then it it's also feels like
• 20:51
  maybe that situation was just so bad last year regardless, and a
• 20:55
  lot of it shouldn't be on him and and they're almost coming
• 20:59
  out the other side better for it.
• 21:00
  Like this whole situation has unified them even more, the
• 21:04
  performances in the cars and and it's just like, OK, now it's no
• 21:07
  time in we talked about this. I feel like with every single
• 21:09
  driver, it takes three years. It doesn't matter how good you
• 21:12
  are. It takes three years at the cup
• 21:13
  level to get to this point because of how damn good
• 21:16
  everyone is. And if you look at Byron Elliot,
• 21:19
  you name the driver, it took three years and this is your 4,
• 21:22
  right? If I'm not mistaken, this is the
• 21:24
  start of your 4 SO. Yeah, I said this last show too.
• 21:28
  I think you you almost have to shave off 23 starts off that
• 21:33
  number because he was not prepared to be the full time
• 21:37
  driver of the 231123/45 car. So in many ways like this is
• 21:43
  full time start 100 in that ballpark range.
• 21:47
  And you know he was, he's 23 now.
• 21:50
  And this is around the same time, too, that if you look at a
• 21:53
  Chase Elliott and a William Byron, he is not far off the,
• 21:58
  the, the standard. I just think that when you're
• 22:00
  surrounded by Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Junior and you're
• 22:04
  the successor to Kyle Busch and Christopher Bell is in that
• 22:08
  building and you know, they sign, you know, Chase Preston,
• 22:12
  he immediately, he wins three races, 4 races.
• 22:17
  It, it puts the pressure cooker on man.
• 22:19
  And God, there's so many different directions.
• 22:22
  I want to go with Ty. I Ty has at times I've known Ty
• 22:27
  for a long time and I've got a lot of there's a lot of nice
• 22:30
  things you can say about Ty that people will not see.
• 22:33
  His passion for racing, his his kind, gentle demeanor, like he's
• 22:39
  a genuinely nice kid that is sometimes a brat.
• 22:45
  Both things can be true and I know that sometimes fans
• 22:49
  struggle with the nuance there. It's like you're saying he's
• 22:54
  kind. I think he's a brat.
• 22:55
  Well, he's, he's both. He's also a he's, he's a kid.
• 22:59
  He's 22. He's 23 and, and I, I think I
• 23:05
  asked Ty about this. I said, now that you've won and
• 23:09
  in theory you've got a little bit more confidence and you
• 23:12
  know, you can, you can start applying some swagger, Will you
• 23:16
  start to open up more like? So Ty always makes time for me
• 23:20
  and I want to say publicly that I appreciate him for that.
• 23:24
  He's not always accessible to people in my profession, and I
• 23:28
  don't take for granted that he always makes time for me.
• 23:31
  And I think a lot of that is I've covered him since Late
• 23:34
  Models and I cover his dirt stuff.
• 23:36
  And I try to be fair to Ty. And I've written about the
• 23:40
  things that he did not do well, you know, fighting teammates,
• 23:43
  crashing teammates, holding up teammates in New Hampshire.
• 23:47
  I wrote that. So it's not like I I've let him
• 23:49
  off the hook. But I've always made a point to
• 23:52
  when he's there to have fun at Chili Bowl and in a Sprint car.
• 23:56
  And I talked to him. It's not about the dramatic
• 23:58
  sensational media thing, right? And so I think sometimes when it
• 24:03
  comes to interacting with us in the media, the media is tough on
• 24:07
  him. You know, he's the grandson of
• 24:09
  the team owner and everything he does has to be run through that
• 24:13
  filter of, well, he's only in the 54 because he's Joe's
• 24:17
  grandkid and there's some degree of merit to it, but he's also
• 24:20
  supported it with success and wins.
• 24:23
  And I just think all of us is, is about nuance, right?
• 24:27
  But now that he's won and now that he's, you know, on the
• 24:31
  string of top 6 finishes and he's super successful and nobody
• 24:35
  can say I've got the same number of wins as Ty Gibbs.
• 24:39
  It is my hope. And I asked him to consider
• 24:42
  this, you know, will you open up to the public and to the media?
• 24:46
  Because yes, he's a brat. He's he's he's he's that's the
• 24:52
  only way. But he can be bratty.
• 24:54
  He can be bratty, but he's also a super passionate race car guy.
• 24:58
  He loves stock cars, short tracks, dirt racing, sports
• 25:02
  cars, F1. And I think that if you could,
• 25:06
  if you could drop Ty Gibbs at a tweet up, he should do a tweet
• 25:10
  up and just let people see, you know, how how just warm hearted
• 25:15
  and passionate he is about racing.
• 25:17
  It would be good for him. It would be good for fans.
• 25:19
  But I don't think he's interested in doing it.
• 25:21
  I think he's been beat up too many times by the media, by the
• 25:24
  fans. And that's a shame because as
• 25:26
  Coach Gibbs told me tonight, there's a side of him that you
• 25:28
  don't see. That's a lot of fun.
• 25:31
  And I've seen a little bit of it.
• 25:32
  And I just wish I'm trying to sell fans a little bit.
• 25:34
  He deserves his victory lap. He deserves his flowers.
• 25:37
  And there's a lot of people that still don't want to give it to
• 25:39
  him because of what gay part said, what Ty himself is said
• 25:43
  and done and he's responsible for it.
• 25:45
  But I just want fans to recognize there's more to Ty
• 25:47
  Gibbs and what you know is is shown in the public or in the
• 25:51
  legal proceedings. Yeah, for sure.
• 25:54
  And you know, there, there's this, there's always an issue
• 25:56
  with nepotism. Some of it's, oh, it's gracing
• 25:59
  the world. Dale Junior.
• 26:00
  By the way, someone said what about Dylan?
• 26:02
  Same thing. I think Austin Dylan's like
• 26:03
  really fine, really awesome. And like Dylan, the Daytona 500
• 26:07
  winner, Coke 600 winner has had like a really good career.
• 26:11
  You know, all things considered about the state of RCR.
• 26:13
  I just wanted to address that in the chat.
• 26:15
  Like I'll say the same thing about Austin Dylan.
• 26:17
  Two people go meet Austin Dylan. He's awesome.
• 26:19
  Yeah, yeah, I I one of my favorite moments to the entire
• 26:23
  season last year is when he pulled William Byron aside to go
• 26:26
  talk to Sidney Sweeney. I'm like the best wing man ever.
• 26:29
  Like that's one. 100%. When have we ever like, we don't
• 26:33
  get to see that side of these drivers sometimes, right?
• 26:35
  And it's like Austin's awesome. Like that's exactly what you
• 26:38
  want. You know, a guy that you're
• 26:39
  hanging out with. You know, you mentioned there's
• 26:42
  a nepotism side. If your dad's a used car
• 26:44
  salesman, you're more likely to be a used car salesman, right?
• 26:47
  Like these guys grew up in an environment, they're most likely
• 26:50
  going to work in that environment.
• 26:51
  Like Ty's family is on his pit crew for goodness sakes, right?
• 26:54
  Like the entire families, that's their team.
• 26:56
  And so he just happened to be a driver and not a pit crew
• 26:59
  member, but he's been successful every single level and very,
• 27:02
  very. Quickly, my dad's a racer.
• 27:04
  I'm I went into racing. You work in.
• 27:06
  Racing. I raced dirt and now I cover
• 27:09
  NASCAR. It's crazy how that works.
• 27:12
  Yeah, so and, and I think obviously he's earned it.
• 27:16
  He's deserved it and like, I think this is a great step for
• 27:19
  him. I expect him to be a face of the
• 27:22
  sport for 15 years or so, you know, like 20 years.
• 27:24
  Like I think he's going to be good enough to win
• 27:26
  championships. And I'm I'm excited personally
• 27:29
  because I've I've never been too negative on them.
• 27:31
  I've been very high on his his prospects as a talent and I I
• 27:35
  think it's going to be good. I want to fire off a few
• 27:38
  different random cup topics, get get through the race real quick
• 27:41
  and then we can move on to Cletus.
• 27:42
  But Blandy's pit crew, I mean, Blandy's pit crew has just been
• 27:50
  horrible, just horrible. And it's getting to the point
• 27:53
  where he's still almost winning races.
• 27:55
  He's still closing in on the regular season points lead.
• 27:58
  Like he is chopping in the Reddicks lead week after week.
• 28:00
  Now it's only 62 points, I think.
• 28:03
  But they have other pickers like Penske developmental teams are
• 28:08
  are doing front row cars on Sundays, right?
• 28:12
  Like at what point do they pull the plug that because it's
• 28:15
  getting too far into the season and it's getting worse.
• 28:18
  This isn't all we had a loose wheel.
• 28:19
  This is we can't get the left rear off and back on in a timely
• 28:23
  manner. So what does this need to
• 28:26
  change? Yeah, I don't, I don't know so.
• 28:29
  I lost Matt. I think it needs to change.
• 28:34
  So until Matt comes back to us, I'll I'll just talk on it.
• 28:38
  You know, I think Blaney's too damn good this year.
• 28:40
  He is obviously a championship contender and you can't, you
• 28:44
  can't give away the points that you can get from finishing first
• 28:47
  or second in the regular season points because your picker is
• 28:50
  not getting the job done. And they have plenty of other
• 28:55
  teams to pull from within that organization and replace those
• 28:59
  members on the on the picker. And, and, and unless they're
• 29:02
  going to do that, they're probably just going to struggle
• 29:05
  throughout this summer months and continue to give up
• 29:07
  opportunities for wins and, and, and big finishes.
• 29:10
  So I, I, I really want to hear what Matt had to say and I feel
• 29:14
  like my voice is giving out more, more by the 2nd.
• 29:17
  So hopefully you can get back in here.
• 29:18
  But part of doing a podcast in a hotel is that the Wi-Fi probably
• 29:24
  sucks. And so he'll jump on real quick
• 29:28
  again, the other thing I want to touch on from the Cup race and I
• 29:32
  really want to get Matt's perspective on this because I
• 29:35
  have we've talked about this already, but the Matt dropped,
• 29:40
  Matt got dropped hard. Yeah, Matt did get dropped hard.
• 29:44
  I don't, I don't like doing this by myself.
• 29:45
  So Kyle Bush is down downward spiral.
• 29:49
  I mean, it, it's been it's horrifically bad right now for
• 29:53
  Kyle Bush and the a car. And I don't know, I don't know
• 29:59
  the fix. I don't think there's a fix.
• 30:00
  It seems like the crew chief's already done with them.
• 30:03
  It seems it seems like the entire situation is just
• 30:06
  untenable to a degree. And I do wonder if there's going
• 30:11
  to come a point in the season where they're just riding around
• 30:17
  30th every week and that's where they already are.
• 30:19
  So I, I don't know what the point of Kyle Busch staying
• 30:21
  there is. I, I mentioned this a couple
• 30:23
  weeks ago. I was like, man, do you just
• 30:24
  replace him with Jesse Love at some point and just see what,
• 30:27
  you know, make a change to a different direction?
• 30:29
  I know that feels really weird. I know people believe Kyle Busch
• 30:32
  is the greatest thing ever still and and they believe this is an
• 30:35
  RCR issue, but I think there's more to it than just that.
• 30:39
  I think Kyle is obviously way, I don't want to say out of his
• 30:45
  depth with this car, but like this car is not suiting him.
• 30:49
  There's just been a career drop off that's not been great.
• 30:52
  And I I kind of wonder where we're going with Kyle Busch in
• 30:56
  the future. I'm going to send Matt a text if
• 30:59
  he's ever coming back. If not, then I I don't know what
• 31:05
  to talk about with Cletus. He's the Cletus master.
• 31:07
  So let's see, let's see how he's doing, see if he's getting it
• 31:14
  fixed up. But that's pretty much all I had
• 31:17
  for the Cup race. I I thought the race was was
• 31:18
  decent. I thought, you know, Kyle Busch
• 31:23
  is wrecking someone with three laps to go was unnecessary.
• 31:28
  Like that's just not the time to do that.
• 31:30
  Obviously it didn't impact The Who won the race.
• 31:33
  Tigers was still over the win. I just thought that was pretty.
• 31:36
  I don't know better way to say it shitty.
• 31:39
  So hey, there's there's Matt. Looks like he's back in on his
• 31:43
  phone. Is this a all right?
• 31:49
  I don't have you on your mic. Isn't connected.
• 31:57
  Oh, man, it's wonderful. So, yeah, I, I thought that was
• 32:01
  pretty bad. I actually forgot about that
• 32:03
  and, and wanted to ask Matt what he thought about Bush's crashing
• 32:07
  out. But you think I could do better
• 32:12
  than Kyle Bush? Or do you mean I couldn't do
• 32:13
  better than Kyle Bush? Because honestly, at this point,
• 32:15
  I don't know if Kyle Bush is better than me.
• 32:16
  And that's only half sarcasm. He is.
• 32:19
  He is really struggling, struggling bad as as much as
• 32:25
  Matt is right now. Other things that happened cup
• 32:29
  series wise, Talladega stage lengths that that was, that was
• 32:34
  a interesting change. I'm not sure that's really going
• 32:38
  to impact anything too much. The final stage will run green
• 32:43
  or will they'll be able to run the final stage without saving
• 32:46
  fuel? I guess that's good.
• 32:48
  All that means is that there's there's not going to be a 3rd
• 32:51
  lane and there won't be passing. There'll just be two lanes of
• 32:53
  bumper cars. So I don't I don't know if
• 32:54
  they're racing necessarily going to be better.
• 32:56
  It just eliminates the the, the fuel saving.
• 33:01
  I guess in the final stage. You'll still be saving fuel on
• 33:03
  stage 2. They'll still be saving fuel on
• 33:05
  stage 1. The only thing that maybe it
• 33:08
  impacts is the final stage. They don't have to save.
• 33:10
  But then again, what there's an overtime and maybe these guys
• 33:13
  need to save fuel for an overtime.
• 33:16
  Hey, you back. I'm back.
• 33:18
  Good, because my voice is about to give up.
• 33:22
  I signed on to do the the pre show and Ryan's like, you know,
• 33:26
  I'm struggling. I'm not going to be able to talk
• 33:28
  a lot. And so like, if you, if you, you
• 33:30
  can pick me up basically, please do.
• 33:33
  And so I just crap out for 10 minutes.
• 33:36
  Meet you alone, y'all. I am so technologically
• 33:40
  challenged here. Like it's always something
• 33:42
  literally every week. I feel so, so bad for Ryan, for
• 33:46
  this audience. I've got to figure out a better
• 33:48
  situation. I'm going to work on it.
• 33:50
  I really value doing this show, and I recognize that I've got
• 33:54
  some deficiencies here that I need to address.
• 33:56
  So just bear with me. I will get better
• 33:58
  technologically situated. All right, real quick touch on
• 34:02
  Kyle Bush. Kyle Bush is stalking.
• 34:05
  He doesn't know what he's doing anymore it appears.
• 34:08
  Talk on that. I'm more interested in your
• 34:10
  thoughts on him wrecking someone with three to go while running
• 34:13
  multiple laps down and not even being part of race because I
• 34:15
  feel like that is the bigger issue I have.
• 34:17
  But again, what's that? The tax had to be paid right
• 34:25
  there, there, there. There was something that was
• 34:27
  unsettled from earlier in the race, and that's pretty
• 34:29
  standard. It looks worse because Cal Bush
• 34:32
  is running P last, and he's running P last on a weekly
• 34:35
  basis. Him and Hertz are going to be
• 34:38
  running for 30th every week anyways.
• 34:40
  Can he just do it next week? Yeah, probably better to do it
• 34:46
  at Bristol than at an intermediate.
• 34:49
  Fair, I guess, but man, it's just three laps to go, you're
• 34:56
  impacting a race win. That's that's my issue and
• 34:58
  luckily Gibbs so got it. But I'm just like, that felt
• 35:01
  like a temper tantrum for a guy that's just full of them lately.
• 35:06
  Yeah, and keep in mind it was not a great weekend either.
• 35:09
  I mean, felt like himself a little bit in the Truck Series.
• 35:13
  And that's like it's one place where he can go and and kind of
• 35:16
  like go be rowdy for a little bit.
• 35:17
  And then the the fuel situation didn't work out because he had
• 35:21
  to shut off the engine and stalled it.
• 35:25
  So I think some of that was lingering resentment over just
• 35:28
  his weekend in general, too. But this is not the time to
• 35:32
  cross Cal Bush. And so just know that if you you
• 35:36
  extract a toll from him, he's going to collect the tax with
• 35:40
  interest. This had me giggling.
• 35:44
  The 10s of people in the stands didn't care.
• 35:46
  Yeah. I mean, we, we talked about it.
• 35:47
  It's, it's, I don't, I don't want to be redundant.
• 35:49
  We, we got a problem here. And I, I think they're aware
• 35:52
  that there's a problem, although I will tell you this is just
• 35:56
  track PR talk. But when I was leaving the
• 35:58
  racetrack talking to the communications staff, some of
• 36:02
  this, you know, you have to filter it.
• 36:05
  Some of this is just, you know, PR talk and some of it's real.
• 36:08
  They said that their, their ticket data for this race was
• 36:12
  actually, there were, there were some bright signs in it.
• 36:16
  They're like, there are people, you know, out of state, people
• 36:20
  who have never bought tickets to a Bristol show before, and you
• 36:23
  can convince them to come back to join those who have routinely
• 36:27
  come back, you know, I don't know that they said they're
• 36:32
  putting a release together, so I'll see.
• 36:34
  It's like there are some. It's not all doom and gloom.
• 36:36
  It's basically a response to. We know this doesn't look good,
• 36:40
  but there's some some wins there I guess.
• 36:44
  I don't know. Stop doing that.
• 36:46
  Take your losses, learn from them and do better.
• 36:48
  Stop making excuses that sounds like.
• 36:50
  No, listen, we open the show talking about how I, I want this
• 36:54
  race to go somewhere else. But I also, I'm, I'm very data
• 36:58
  and analytical driven in a way that I used to not be, I think
• 37:01
  running my own website and, you know, doing this show and I'm
• 37:05
  always looking at stats and numbers and when I have a bad
• 37:08
  day from a page view standpoint, people just aren't reading my
• 37:13
  story. You look for the silver lining.
• 37:16
  What? What?
• 37:17
  Yeah. Well, I just try to, I try to
• 37:18
  figure out what are the things that I could latch onto to
• 37:23
  benefit me in the future. What are the things that I can
• 37:26
  like, build upon. And if they don't do that well,
• 37:29
  then they just might as well shut the place down.
• 37:31
  I mean, there, there's always trends that are your friend and
• 37:36
  there's trends that are your enemy.
• 37:38
  The larger issue is people just don't like the show.
• 37:40
  And so we can talk about their marketing efforts and where
• 37:44
  they're getting people to, to come from.
• 37:46
  And I, I don't care. I mean, there's a larger issue
• 37:49
  here that just people don't, people don't see Bristol as
• 37:52
  being a thing that they want to do right now.
• 37:54
  And I want to see the data on that.
• 37:56
  I want to, I want to hear what the fan feedback is.
• 37:59
  I want to read the NASCAR fan council stuff.
• 38:01
  So this is not me covering for Bristol, but I always like to be
• 38:05
  nuanced and like, hey, if we're going to talk about how we don't
• 38:08
  think the show is resonating, I also want to talk about how they
• 38:11
  think there's some things to be proud of too.
• 38:13
  We can do both. Yeah, quick comment on
• 38:17
  Talladega, Talladega stage links.
• 38:20
  I don't think it really changes much, but what?
• 38:22
  What do you think? It just it just reverses the way
• 38:26
  the show is right? Like I, I, I think we're looking
• 38:29
  at this the wrong way and I think some of this is NASCAR
• 38:33
  just trying to appease the fan base to say, hey, listen, we're
• 38:36
  doing something. But if we know when the end of
• 38:39
  the race is and this car struggles to pass anyhow, other
• 38:46
  than spending less time on pit Rd., it doesn't matter when the
• 38:50
  stage links are by the way, it doesn't matter if you remove the
• 38:54
  stages because that's not the issue.
• 38:56
  And I know so many people are like well, just if we just stay
• 38:59
  green all the way through that that would solve it.
• 39:00
  No, because. There's still an.
• 39:02
  Endpoint and you still have to pit for fuel at some point, and
• 39:05
  if you can't pass on the track, the only place you're going to
• 39:09
  try to pass is on pit Rd. So regardless of even if there
• 39:13
  was a stage break, you're going to try to to consume less fuel
• 39:17
  to spend less time on pit Rd. The real issue is the inability
• 39:22
  to pass. Now, fortunately, NASCAR
• 39:26
  signaled an awareness finally that we're done putting band
• 39:30
  aids over these cars and trying different fins and different
• 39:35
  arrow stuff. We're going to go back in
• 39:37
  January or early February or whenever pre season Thunder is.
• 39:40
  We're going back to pre season Thunder and they are going to
• 39:43
  try every single rule package under the sun.
• 39:46
  I think part of contemplating bringing the Clash back to
• 39:50
  Daytona is let's try a different experimental rules package for
• 39:53
  the Clash if they choose to do that.
• 39:56
  But in the short term, NASCAR has to do something to say let's
• 40:00
  just try this. We hear you and we we.
• 40:04
  They they screwed up in February when I think it was, it was
• 40:07
  either Brad Moran or Elton Sawyer, but both of them were
• 40:10
  part of the conversation. It's like, what are we trying to
• 40:13
  fix? Cars are three wide and it
• 40:15
  doesn't matter if they're saving because that was not a great
• 40:19
  message. So I think it's a horrible
• 40:22
  message. And so I think it's a much
• 40:23
  better message to say, hey, we hear you.
• 40:26
  We don't have the answer yet. We're really going to take a big
• 40:29
  swing in January. We can't do that during the
• 40:32
  season, but in the short term, let's try this fix next.
• 40:36
  If nothing else, it'll give you a slightly different looking
• 40:38
  race just to give us the data point.
• 40:41
  That's the right answer. Yeah.
• 40:44
  All right. So Cletus McFarland, I I don't
• 40:47
  know if. I was hoping I, I intentionally
• 40:49
  crashed my feet, hoping you would just go on a rant about
• 40:51
  Cletus and, and I I could just miss it.
• 40:54
  Why don't you want to talk about it?
• 40:56
  It's the best thing. It's so I had a realization.
• 41:01
  I had a realization. It wasn't really, I've known
• 41:04
  this. So I have a big issue with Fox
• 41:06
  Sports and their inability to talk about anyone other than
• 41:09
  Dale on her. Like they just, it's their go
• 41:11
  to. It's a rain delay.
• 41:12
  We're going to talk about this guy that died 25 years ago,
• 41:14
  right? They just can't make a new *
• 41:18
  during the week. I'll say that's a problem in
• 41:20
  cars tour. I'm I'm, I'm watching, I'm, I'm
• 41:22
  listening to the cars tour broadcast in my ear while I'm
• 41:25
  watching the race in person and I'm watching this three car
• 41:28
  battle for the lead. And it's like, and listen, I
• 41:30
  appreciate Dale. I, I, I, Dale Junior means the
• 41:34
  the world to be on a human level.
• 41:35
  He's helped me in a lot of different ways.
• 41:37
  He's made connections for me. He's he's got me into
• 41:40
  conversations that I otherwise would not have been in for the
• 41:44
  sake of clarity, like he's never given me a dime, but he has
• 41:48
  helped me in terms of here, talk to this person or here I will
• 41:52
  advocate for you publicly. And so like this is not a
• 41:55
  criticism of Dale, but Dales running P 19th in the cars to
• 41:59
  race and he's saving tires. I he's not P19-ON speed, but so
• 42:04
  much of that broadcast I heard in my ear was let's go back to
• 42:06
  Dale. He's now P-19.
• 42:08
  He's now P 18. And I'm, I'm watching in person
• 42:11
  this great three car battle. And apparently people brought it
• 42:15
  up during the, during the race on flow to it's like, hey man,
• 42:18
  there's someone other than Dale Junior in the race.
• 42:21
  And so this is not exclusive to Dale senior and Fox Sports.
• 42:26
  It's just Dale and TV partners. Well, the, and that's where I
• 42:30
  was getting to is our top three biggest stars in Africa right
• 42:33
  now are Dale Earnhardt senior, who died a core century ago,
• 42:38
  Dale Earnhardt junior, who retired almost a decade ago,
• 42:42
  includes McFarland, who's not a real racer and isn't going to be
• 42:46
  on the damn racetrack again. We go back to the why don't
• 42:49
  people want to go to Bristol? They don't give a shit about
• 42:52
  what's on the track. They only care about Dale
• 42:55
  Earnhardt Senior includes McFarland.
• 42:57
  And it's just this whole thing. I'm I'm warming up the Cletus,
• 43:03
  but not necessarily because I think he should be on the race
• 43:05
  track and warming up to him because it's a gimmick and it's
• 43:08
  all NASCAR's going to it. These people actually care.
• 43:10
  And it's like, you know what, yeah, if we're just going to
• 43:12
  make a mockery of things, why not?
• 43:14
  I like that they're gatekeeping this.
• 43:16
  They're they're gatekeeping him out that they are 100%.
• 43:20
  No, this is not gatekeeping. Listen.
• 43:23
  So after the race, and I don't know if you saw the story, but
• 43:27
  after the race on Saturday at Rockingham, one of the first
• 43:31
  people I talked to was Danny Lawrence at RCR.
• 43:34
  And I said my logic was I, I thought they were just going to
• 43:38
  fast track him and if he finished the race without
• 43:41
  tearing up someone's car, they would approve them.
• 43:44
  I, I seriously thought that was the logic.
• 43:47
  And I was expecting Danny to say, yeah, you know, we, we just
• 43:50
  want him to be prepared for a superspeedway.
• 43:52
  And this was just a checklist and Danny said I don't think
• 43:55
  NASCAR is going to approve him. And I, I wrote the story, the
• 43:57
  quotes are in the story. He's like NASCAR told us before
• 44:01
  the race. They wanted to see him do a live
• 44:04
  pit stop. Didn't happen.
• 44:06
  They want to see him race like they want to see him try to mix
• 44:10
  it up. And the one time he tried to mix
• 44:13
  it up was on lat 3 and he nearly wadded it up.
• 44:17
  And Danny said that he went for it.
• 44:21
  And from the moment that that didn't work out, we went into
• 44:24
  like hardcore conservation mode. And that's not what NASCAR
• 44:29
  wanted to see. And so he's like, I don't think
• 44:30
  they're going to approve us, to be totally honest with you.
• 44:33
  And as it turns out, they didn't.
• 44:35
  And they gave, they gave the public the same reason that
• 44:38
  Danny Lawrence gave me. What's the difference between
• 44:42
  approving them for Daytona Trucks and O'Reilly Talladega?
• 44:46
  Like functionally what is the big difference between doing so?
• 44:50
  Because I feel like rock Rockingham's way harder in
• 44:53
  Talladega or other race. Like I I just feel like the my.
• 44:56
  Rebuttal is lap seven of the truck race.
• 44:59
  Yeah. That's how Rebuttal.
• 45:02
  Yeah, I I don't think he should be in any of them, but like you,
• 45:06
  at some point Rockingham was the hardest possible track he can go
• 45:10
  to. He spun out 3 1/2 times and he
• 45:13
  nearly arca braked into the side of someone like it.
• 45:16
  It was bad but if the argument was like you need to do a life
• 45:20
  piss off and just run this race to get I, I just don't
• 45:24
  understand the process at all. Maybe no I.
• 45:26
  I do, I I really do. And so listen, I mean, Cletus
• 45:30
  has talked about it himself. Arca is a safe place for him
• 45:36
  because those cars are so in the track, even even within the
• 45:41
  context of superspeedway racing, those cars are super stable,
• 45:45
  tons of downforce. The the, the big, the big
• 45:48
  spoiler on the back, right? They're stable and they are safe
• 45:53
  for a guy with his skill set. Because you're getting beat up
• 45:57
  in the chat. I, I want to defend you a little
• 45:59
  bit. I don't think you think he's not
• 46:00
  a racer in the sense that you know, he he competes, he's a
• 46:04
  competitor. He's not a professional NASCAR
• 46:07
  driver. He's not he's not even an
• 46:10
  amateur NASCAR driver. He's he's a passer buyer until
• 46:14
  otherwise reflective. I actually have a lot of respect
• 46:19
  for some of the things that he does that that impresses me.
• 46:23
  Like he reads data really well. And I didn't realize that still
• 46:27
  talking to Mark Rhett, but apparently the same sort of
• 46:34
  technology that goes into his, his drag racing stuff, you know,
• 46:39
  launch point, speed shifting data, all that stuff, it's based
• 46:44
  on the same software that they've used at Red Jones Racing
• 46:49
  in ARCA. And so like he goes to sit down
• 46:52
  to do his his debriefs and same thing with RCR.
• 46:56
  And they did not have to teach him how to read data.
• 46:58
  And so like there's some things that he does that that is really
• 47:01
  impressive, but his race craft is non existent.
• 47:05
  Actually speaking, has he has no race craft at this level.
• 47:08
  He has no aerodynamic race craft.
• 47:10
  A Crown Vic does not teach you how to to arrow race.
• 47:14
  And one of the reasons why it was so important for Mark Rhett
• 47:18
  and Terry Jones to convince him to buy the late model is their
• 47:21
  arrow racing in late models. And he's going to Arrow race in
• 47:25
  the ARCA series and he goes to places like Rockingham and he
• 47:28
  did it at Charlotte. But you saw what happened in the
• 47:33
  truck race at Daytona. The moment that he got, you
• 47:36
  know, in a place where you you lose some stability in turn 4
• 47:40
  and you know, you get the air or the balance shift.
• 47:43
  He's not prepared for that. And as bad as that is, it's it's
• 47:47
  worse than trucks than it is in ARCA and it's considerably worse
• 47:52
  in the O'Reilly series compared to the Truck Series.
• 47:55
  And so if he could not be trusted right now to to run in
• 47:59
  the pack, it's a truck level, he's not ready to do it at the
• 48:05
  is. He approved for Talladega trucks
• 48:07
  in the fall. Like theoretically.
• 48:10
  He's not approved right now for anything other than short
• 48:12
  tracks. Until he proves otherwise,
• 48:15
  NASCAR wants to see him race like NASCAR wants to see him not
• 48:18
  finish a race. That's no longer the standard.
• 48:21
  They want to see him when he runs.
• 48:25
  I don't know where where he would go next.
• 48:27
  If it's a place like a Dover or a New Hampshire.
• 48:33
  Please not Dover. No, Dover, That's probably not a
• 48:36
  good idea either. They want to see him race.
• 48:38
  They want to see him to. Continue to run.
• 48:39
  I mean, there's nothing, there's nothing on the schedule that
• 48:42
  really lines up at all. And so this is going to impede
• 48:45
  his ability to to be able to make it to the the Daytona
• 48:50
  summer race. And that's fine.
• 48:53
  I'm not of the the gatekeep mentality.
• 48:56
  I think there's a place for him. It's not different.
• 49:01
  No, listen, it's no different than Travis Pastrana.
• 49:03
  Travis Pastrana went through kind of a similar skepticism and
• 49:06
  he eventually built himself into being trustworthy.
• 49:11
  He was never a guy that was going to go out there and truly
• 49:14
  compete for wins. Although he had a couple of
• 49:16
  races, like one in Kentucky I was at that year he ran that 60
• 49:20
  car. I remember I was like mad.
• 49:22
  Travis is putting it together. I think he could have a Travis
• 49:25
  Pastrana type of career. I really do if he wanted to
• 49:29
  commit to it. But he's got to go through the
• 49:31
  process. He needs a late model, he needs
• 49:33
  to run, he needs to run full time ARCA.
• 49:37
  He just needs to go race and he needs to prove that the next
• 49:40
  time he's three wide in a super arrow sensitive O'reilly's car,
• 49:44
  he's not going to get sideways the way that he did.
• 49:46
  Even like his approval process ended right there.
• 49:49
  He just didn't realize it yet. He's got to be trusted to do
• 49:52
  that. And and, you know, part of why
• 49:54
  I'm so harsh is just to get, get something out of you.
• 50:00
  I, I, I'm you. You said what I wanted to say,
• 50:04
  which is he should run ARCA full time.
• 50:07
  I feel like NASCAR should really aid in that happening.
• 50:10
  You know, he is gold for that series in terms of viewership,
• 50:15
  attention. Nobody watches dark series
• 50:18
  anymore. If you get some of his stature
• 50:20
  in there, you can move the needle some, right?
• 50:24
  And he can learn a lot more at that level and then start
• 50:27
  sprinkling in the Truck Series again.
• 50:29
  Like I feel like we've gone 2 steps too far and the Ark
• 50:33
  stuff's where he should be. I know a lot of people love him
• 50:36
  regardless and and stuff and I don't dislike him.
• 50:43
  I just don't think we're going down the right street right now.
• 50:46
  Here's the thing, this this to me is really important.
• 50:48
  So when I talked to Justin Allgire after that race at
• 50:51
  Rockingham, I I said, how, how did he do?
• 50:54
  Like when you went to go laugh him because that was really the
• 50:57
  only only thing to talk about. Did you trust him to respect
• 51:02
  that y'all were racing for the win and not be a problem?
• 51:06
  And he said, yes, that's good. That's a good man.
• 51:08
  That sounds like a small victory.
• 51:10
  That's the next step, right, Is like, you know, be trusted to
• 51:13
  hold a straight will when you're around the leaders.
• 51:16
  That's a good thing. But then the next question was,
• 51:19
  OK, well, his goal is not to be good at Rockingham ever.
• 51:24
  His goal is to be able to run all the Super Speedway races and
• 51:27
  that becomes his his lot in life, right.
• 51:29
  So I said, would you then feel comfortable right now trusting
• 51:33
  him in the pack, pushing him, pushing you?
• 51:36
  And he's like, there's people that I race with every week that
• 51:40
  I don't feel comfortable pushing or, or pushing me.
• 51:44
  And so like, I don't know how to even answer that question, which
• 51:47
  I think was kind of the answer to the question.
• 51:51
  That goes to show you how hard this is what he wants to do too,
• 51:53
  right? Like he wants to race at that
• 51:56
  level with those guys and people who do this all the time are not
• 51:59
  necessarily trustworthy. Which for him might be a a check
• 52:03
  in his his argument. Well, if you let Natalie Decker
• 52:06
  arc a break into a crash 7 business days later, shit, I can
• 52:10
  do that too. Yeah, well, I there's plenty
• 52:14
  there's I don't know how Adam at.
• 52:15
  Chris Wright. Is on the racetrack right now
• 52:18
  like Adam and race should not be in at a Rockingham race but that
• 52:21
  you know obviously. Rockingham is where you have to
• 52:23
  race. That's where you have to go to
• 52:25
  figure this out. It, it just feels like the steps
• 52:29
  are so like we have when you look at supercar races like 24
• 52:36
  Hours, a Daytona and things like that where you have the.
• 52:38
  Super License gold Silver medallion, right?
• 52:42
  And you have amateurs like you have amateurs that they buy
• 52:45
  their way in, but you can't race unless you have one of them.
• 52:47
  Like that's an entire series in a.
• 52:49
  Gentleman drivers. Gentleman drivers, that's what
• 52:52
  this feels like. And you know, Adam Andres is
• 52:56
  showing up after running F3 America in 2007.
• 52:59
  Like that's what it takes to be at this level.
• 53:03
  I just feel like the whole system is broken and so it's not
• 53:05
  necessarily just the quickest thing, even though he's the
• 53:07
  talking point. BC's the popularity guy, right?
• 53:09
  But there's a lot of drivers. Decker shouldn't be on the
• 53:11
  racetrack, Andres shouldn't be on the racetrack.
• 53:13
  They're not going through the process properly.
• 53:14
  They're not learning how to run ovals properly and and I think
• 53:17
  they're just underlying issue that NASCAR won't address
• 53:20
  anyways. Probably, but.
• 53:22
  I will say, I think they're being consistent here.
• 53:25
  I mean, a lot of people bring up Mike Wallace and Mike Wallace
• 53:28
  was asked to do the same thing that Cletus is doing.
• 53:31
  The difference is Cletus is just doing it.
• 53:34
  And so there is a standard. It's not, it's not meticulously
• 53:39
  defined. It's very narrowly defined, but
• 53:42
  there is a ballpark of a standard and I will credit them
• 53:46
  for saying we didn't see enough. I know you're not here to be
• 53:49
  good at Rockingham, but there's some things that we still need
• 53:52
  you to do at Rockingham that you didn't do and that to me at
• 53:55
  least, tells me there is a standard that is being applied.
• 54:01
  No clue if anyone likes what I've said but the chats got a
• 54:03
  lot of activity and that's why I started this whole thing as
• 54:06
  because I want people engaged and God he brings it out.
• 54:10
  You should have stuck him on the the graphic instead of tie.
• 54:14
  I did. I put his car in the graphic
• 54:15
  sideways we. Sure.
• 54:18
  Did I just look at OK? Yeah, you son of a bitch.
• 54:23
  William Sawallis gets his first win at Rockingham.
• 54:25
  That was pretty cool to see. I mean, he's run 64 now, 65
• 54:31
  races at the Truck or O'Reilly Series level, and he has two
• 54:35
  total top fives, one of them a win on an Oval.
• 54:39
  So there's a big deal. It kind of came out of nowhere.
• 54:43
  Do you think this this is a launching pad for him, something
• 54:45
  where he's going to be able to build on this?
• 54:47
  Or do you think it was kind of a fluke because Joe Gives Racing
• 54:50
  was just so dominant on that day?
• 54:52
  No, I, I've got to remind myself of how young he is.
• 54:55
  It actually blows my mind because I've been covering
• 54:58
  William now for it's not, it's not a decade.
• 55:03
  It feels like a decade sometimes, but he's 19 now.
• 55:07
  I started covering him at like 13.
• 55:10
  He was in a late model super early.
• 55:12
  He was in a ARCA car as early as he could be.
• 55:15
  He was in late model stock super early trucks as soon as he
• 55:19
  could, O'Reilly literally as soon as he could.
• 55:22
  And while the expectation and pressure was there for him to
• 55:26
  win sooner because of the car that he drives, it didn't.
• 55:31
  It didn't really hit me until I was riding my post race from
• 55:34
  Rockingham. It's like he's really not behind
• 55:37
  and we live in this world to where everything moves so fast.
• 55:42
  You've got and he's responsible for it.
• 55:44
  He and his family and his ilk, I say respectfully, are
• 55:48
  responsible for it because we just, we're moving everything up
• 55:51
  so fast and that if you're not in, you know, the Truck Series
• 55:55
  by 16 years old, you're behind. And it's like you're not
• 55:59
  supposed to be winning O'Reilly Series races at 19.
• 56:02
  It's actually OK that's it's taking him a while.
• 56:06
  There's been some other setbacks, right?
• 56:08
  There's been, he's had a concussion before, he's had some
• 56:10
  other injuries and he hasn't been able to stay healthy and
• 56:14
  able to work on his craft. But he's a developing race car
• 56:17
  driver. I still think the the ceiling
• 56:19
  there is quite high. He worked really hard.
• 56:22
  He he's, he's got a good mind for what he needs to be doing.
• 56:29
  I want to see him open up more, you know, just from a character
• 56:32
  standpoint, because I just, you know, you've got to sell
• 56:34
  yourself to fans and sell yourself to the media and stuff
• 56:37
  like that. I think he's going to win a
• 56:41
  couple more this year. I think he's going to win a good
• 56:43
  bit and I think that he's got the means to go Cup racing
• 56:47
  someday. I don't know that he's got Cup
• 56:49
  talent yet. I mean, right until listen,
• 56:51
  until shown otherwise, he's Riley Erps.
• 56:55
  And I don't mean that derogatively either, like Riley
• 56:58
  works. Hard.
• 57:00
  It took Riley, it took Riley a while.
• 57:01
  But Riley actually the difference between Riley and
• 57:04
  William is right. Riley started a little later
• 57:08
  driving even stock cars and late models.
• 57:11
  And so it's it's kind of a similar trajectory, but you have
• 57:15
  to change the scale up a little bit.
• 57:18
  But to me, he's Riley Herbst until he proves he's not.
• 57:22
  Yeah, that makes sense. I, I think there's a lot of
• 57:25
  drivers like that, at least for me mentally, and I hate to lump
• 57:29
  them all together. It feels like Brandon Jones.
• 57:31
  It feels like Riley Herbs. It feels like this, like he
• 57:35
  will. Fall in a weird career.
• 57:37
  Yeah, it it, it feels like he will fall into or eventually get
• 57:41
  to the point where he can win races regardless.
• 57:45
  I thought that was, you know, more races, more than just.
• 57:47
  Take for you Brandon Jones in 10 to 13 years is going to be his
• 57:53
  generations just an all guyer. He's going to have a second-half
• 57:56
  of his career where he wins like 6-7 races a year in his winning
• 58:00
  championships and he's the guy because he's never going to be a
• 58:03
  Cup champion or he's never going to be a Cup driver consistently
• 58:07
  full time if ever. And he's going to be be just an
• 58:10
  all guyer of the next decade. I mean, he'll certainly hang
• 58:15
  around long enough. I don't know if he'll actually
• 58:17
  win. I I.
• 58:18
  Wins enough now that he's like he he he comes across like a
• 58:21
  younger Justin Allgire. He's not a bad race car driver,
• 58:25
  he's just not a great race car driver.
• 58:27
  And eventually he's going to be a good race car driver with a
• 58:31
  great amount of experience. And I kind of think that's what.
• 58:35
  Justin Allgire is at the level like he has a ton of experience
• 58:37
  now. Like it's wild to think that he
• 58:40
  is literally a decade into this. But no you're right.
• 58:43
  I mean, very, very true. Brandon Jones is probably the
• 58:46
  next Justin Aggar because there's not going to be many
• 58:47
  people that stay in the series like him, right?
• 58:52
  Like I, I feel like that's, yeah, there is so much with the
• 58:57
  series. I'm, I'm curious about.
• 58:58
  I looked at the Truck Series and a friend of mine was talking
• 59:01
  about how it was so cool having the cup guys because, you know,
• 59:04
  we don't have truck regulars. And, and I'm looking at it right
• 59:07
  now and I feel like the Truck Series is really getting to the
• 59:09
  point where there's going to be a lot of lifers or a lot of guys
• 59:12
  that could be lifers. Justin feels like a lifer, but
• 59:16
  Justin Haley feels like that he might have migrated back down
• 59:19
  there and that might be where he stays.
• 59:20
  Corey Lajoie, is this a future for him?
• 59:23
  I guess, you know, like. I think this is Cole Butcher's
• 59:25
  lot in life. I mean, Cole Butcher
• 59:27
  accomplished everything in Late Models there is to accomplish.
• 59:30
  Short of Snowball Derby, that could be his lot in life, too.
• 59:32
  Yeah, and, and I feel like we're I, I wonder what comes of the
• 59:38
  O'Reilly series because we don't have, I grew up on, you know,
• 59:42
  going to all those races and it was Jason Keller, it was the
• 59:45
  Green brothers, it was all these constant guys.
• 59:48
  And we don't have that in the O'Reilly series between besides
• 59:50
  like Al Geyer and Jones. And so I'm interested to see if
• 59:53
  guys start carving out that craft or if it just continues to
• 59:56
  be a feeder series for 19 year old Williams Walsh type drivers.
• 1:00:01
  Well, it's. Been it's been cyclical, right?
• 1:00:03
  Like we've seen the series kind of go through multiple
• 1:00:05
  transitions like that. Yep, Yep.
• 1:00:10
  Zilich won the the the O'Reilly race at Bristol kind of non
• 1:00:13
  eventfold. Larson led the first half of it
• 1:00:15
  and then Zilich didn't take tires and won it.
• 1:00:19
  The biggest thing I want to take away from that is Brent Cruz is
• 1:00:23
  continuing to look fantastic. He looked really strong at
• 1:00:27
  Rockingham before an issue. Probably was going to win that
• 1:00:30
  race over his wallet. I don't know.
• 1:00:30
  They were going to have a good battle.
• 1:00:32
  And then looking at this one, he went pretty much toe to toe with
• 1:00:34
  Larson and and Zilich there at the end and held his own.
• 1:00:38
  Didn't get the win but like the pace is there for someone with
• 1:00:42
  so little experience at that level.
• 1:00:44
  So I didn't see the race because I was covering cars tour on
• 1:00:47
  Saturday, but I, I, I can speak very broadly to to Brent because
• 1:00:52
  I I've covered Brent going back to his late model days, his full
• 1:00:55
  time late model stock car season for KHI, his ARCA stuff.
• 1:01:00
  He's polished. I will tell you like he's smart
• 1:01:03
  too. You go back and you watch the
• 1:01:05
  video where, you know, Daniel Dye said the thing that got him
• 1:01:08
  fired eventually and how quickly he moved out of that shot.
• 1:01:12
  He's like, I'm not going to be a part of this.
• 1:01:14
  This is not a good place to be in.
• 1:01:16
  And to me, that goes to show you his IQ.
• 1:01:18
  Like he read that situation so fast.
• 1:01:21
  And his racing IQ is very similar to just his his life IQ.
• 1:01:27
  I've always said that, you know, Brent is a teenager who has like
• 1:01:33
  the analytical mind of like a 30 year old.
• 1:01:36
  He's so smart and I think he's like the next big prospect.
• 1:01:41
  And there's a lot of there's a lot of young race car drivers
• 1:01:44
  that I I'm impressed by for different reasons, because I
• 1:01:46
  think they do certain things really well.
• 1:01:50
  And I just think that Brent has everything but experience at the
• 1:01:54
  highest levels. You know, he doesn't have a ton
• 1:01:56
  of truck starts, but once you get him used to running in dirty
• 1:01:59
  air and running arrow racing, oh boy, Brent's going to be really
• 1:02:03
  hard to beat. He's he's got the support, the
• 1:02:06
  backers, he's got the the the the pedigree.
• 1:02:11
  He's going to be good. Like he's super close with with
• 1:02:15
  both Jesse Love and Connor Zillich.
• 1:02:17
  They're in that same Fran group. And I bring that up only because
• 1:02:20
  I think Jesse and Connor are super smart and the three of
• 1:02:25
  them are a byproduct of iron sharpens iron.
• 1:02:30
  And I think that if you're a racer who associates yourself
• 1:02:32
  with other smart, really talented race car drivers, it
• 1:02:35
  makes you smart. And I just, I think that that
• 1:02:38
  trio of friends are so impressive for the same reasons.
• 1:02:42
  And so if you believe that Connor Zilich is going to be a
• 1:02:45
  superstar and he's a Cup driver now, he is a star.
• 1:02:49
  If you believe that Jesse Love has the ceiling to be a
• 1:02:51
  superstar, he's a champion, he should be, then you also then
• 1:02:55
  believe that Brent Cruz is of that same ilk because he's
• 1:02:58
  literally from the same friends circle.
• 1:03:01
  They have the same philosophy. They race each other the same
• 1:03:04
  way. Yeah, I, I think he's absolutely
• 1:03:08
  deserving to be in that group. I think when you talk about the
• 1:03:11
  mental makeup of drivers, I think that's the biggest aspect
• 1:03:14
  is it, you know, racing's a skill.
• 1:03:16
  You know, it's you, you're not more athletic than the the other
• 1:03:19
  person. You have to learn a skill and
• 1:03:21
  you have to be smart enough in real time to identify how to
• 1:03:25
  drive a car. And, and that's really
• 1:03:27
  challenging. So when you look at the sharpest
• 1:03:29
  drivers, the smartest drivers, you know, really analytical guys
• 1:03:33
  and typically being the best and you instantly saw it with
• 1:03:38
  Zillich like he has Zillich still has so little time in
• 1:03:42
  these cars, right and this. Year too, man.
• 1:03:46
  But that was always going to be the case.
• 1:03:48
  That was always going to be the case, right?
• 1:03:50
  And any that happened to Ty Gibbs, because he was 19 and
• 1:03:52
  they threw him up there, it's going to happen to the, you
• 1:03:54
  know, the next every single time they throw someone at the couple
• 1:03:57
  of about 19, they're going to get their ass kicked.
• 1:03:58
  But Brent Cruz feels like one of those guys that has tough Winter
• 1:04:05
  Cup champion level potential, and I think we're already seeing
• 1:04:09
  it. I think he's going to make a a,
• 1:04:12
  He's not going to go actually chase a championship this year,
• 1:04:15
  but he's going to make the the playoffs, the chase for the
• 1:04:18
  championship. And I think that there's going
• 1:04:21
  to be a moment where he is going to have such a hot start to the
• 1:04:26
  chase. Or I think one of our early
• 1:04:28
  stories is going to be, is he going to to do this?
• 1:04:30
  Like is, is he really this good that he could go challenge the
• 1:04:34
  guys who are automatically higher in points and they have
• 1:04:37
  that big points gap. I think that Brent's going to be
• 1:04:39
  that guy to make you go, what what is happening here?
• 1:04:43
  He's not going to finish the deal, but he's going to be one
• 1:04:47
  of the early headlines I think. Yeah, I completely agree.
• 1:04:50
  He's already 18th in points. He'll get there.
• 1:04:54
  Yeah, I mean, he's for reference, he's only 40 points
• 1:04:58
  behind Sam Mayer right now. Like he, he's going to close in
• 1:05:02
  on these guys. Sam Mayer in the no good, very
• 1:05:04
  bad, horrible season. Yeah, and road course guy,
• 1:05:08
  right? Like he has good Rd. course
• 1:05:10
  background. So when they start going to
• 1:05:11
  those tracks, he's going to do well.
• 1:05:13
  So yeah, he's going to be fantastic when you wrap this up,
• 1:05:16
  because my voice is going to just die here a second.
• 1:05:19
  The the pollen situation, I'm not we all we're all dealing
• 1:05:23
  with it across the country, right, but especially here in in
• 1:05:27
  the Mid-Atlantic, North Carolina.
• 1:05:29
  I don't know, I just feel like this one's been the worst.
• 1:05:32
  I don't know what's happening this year.
• 1:05:34
  I have never pollen like I've pollen this year.
• 1:05:37
  I feel like there is a a tree literally growing inside of me
• 1:05:40
  right now. I I could just like.
• 1:05:43
  I think it's, I think it's the lack of rain really.
• 1:05:46
  Is it like? Yeah, so dry.
• 1:05:48
  You're right. It's so dry, it's not washing
• 1:05:50
  away and all that. So we have a.
• 1:05:51
  Severe drought in the state right now.
• 1:05:54
  Yeah, Truck Series, we got to talk about it.
• 1:05:57
  I don't want to get off here without talking about Heim
• 1:05:59
  versus Eckis. That was a big, big moment.
• 1:06:02
  Fantastic racing like that. That was going to be so good
• 1:06:04
  with Heim and Honeycutt and rigs and they're all up there.
• 1:06:07
  It, it looked like Eckis in the, the context you needed, that is
• 1:06:12
  Christopher Bell moved Eckis like just flat out moved them
• 1:06:15
  out of the way. Then Corey Heim did it.
• 1:06:19
  Caution flies, Eckis is back in front of Heim and and Heim moves
• 1:06:24
  them again. So within about 6 or 7° flag
• 1:06:26
  laps, Eckis have been moved three times.
• 1:06:30
  So that leads into this wreck, which I'm going to get, leave it
• 1:06:34
  up to you whether you think it was intentional or not.
• 1:06:37
  I know both drivers said it wasn't.
• 1:06:39
  Probably, you know, Heim was like, no, I don't think you'd do
• 1:06:41
  that. But that was a big wreck.
• 1:06:43
  It took out some big guys. It it was a huge talking point.
• 1:06:48
  What do you make of that whole situation?
• 1:06:50
  You know, knowing Christian and how he races, listen, he's a
• 1:06:55
  he's a aggressive, hard racer. I have never in my life known
• 1:07:00
  Christian Eckus to be the guy to right hook someone that way.
• 1:07:06
  And keep in mind, but wasn't he the one that got right hooked at
• 1:07:09
  Texas by Ben Rhodes a couple years back?
• 1:07:13
  I know this is like probably five years ago, so it might.
• 1:07:16
  Be that one doesn't immediately come to mind.
• 1:07:18
  But I mean, that's the thing, Riley, every racer that you
• 1:07:21
  could say, oh, he doesn't race that way.
• 1:07:23
  They all have a moment. And so the only one who really
• 1:07:26
  knows in his heart what happened there is Christian.
• 1:07:29
  But I really do believe that. I do believe he was angry and he
• 1:07:34
  had he had reason to be mad. He was being pushed around, but
• 1:07:39
  you had to that the bottom was so thick with the will force
• 1:07:44
  test rubber and then they they sprayed a little too hard and
• 1:07:48
  you had to race that way. So I don't begrudge anyone for
• 1:07:51
  doing it. I don't begrudge Christopher
• 1:07:53
  Christian Corey for when he when he had to do it.
• 1:07:59
  You want old school Bristol back.
• 1:08:00
  If I just take the bottom with the with the the glue, right?
• 1:08:06
  I think that he very quickly wanted to get behind him as soon
• 1:08:09
  as possible because he was going to punt him.
• 1:08:12
  He was going to move him the same way that he felt like he
• 1:08:14
  was moved. And so like, I don't think he
• 1:08:16
  was just going to innocently follow him.
• 1:08:18
  I just I can't I can't walk down the bridge that says his his his
• 1:08:23
  goal was to to right hook him. I just that doesn't logically
• 1:08:27
  track to me. It's just super unfortunate that
• 1:08:30
  it did because it was a really compelling story that was
• 1:08:34
  playing out there and I didn't want to see the the story end
• 1:08:38
  that way. I wanted to see them keep doing
• 1:08:40
  it. But the problem is you just keep
• 1:08:42
  escalating bump and runs and eventually this is what happens.
• 1:08:45
  We saw that in the CARS Tour race 2 weeks ago at Wake County
• 1:08:48
  that I went to what starts off as just kind of relatively
• 1:08:51
  innocent bump and runs. Eventually someone gets fed up
• 1:08:55
  with it and it's the last time, whether intentional or not, it
• 1:09:00
  was the last time it was going to happen to to Christian.
• 1:09:03
  He handled it. It was the way he wanted Truck
• 1:09:07
  Series shaping up, kind of figured how we how we all
• 1:09:09
  figured it would be to a degree. It's Honeycutt, it's Riggs, it's
• 1:09:13
  Chandler Smith up at the top. Corey Heim, not eligible to run
• 1:09:17
  from championship, but still third in points only for now.
• 1:09:21
  I meant do I it? Would never say never.
• 1:09:24
  Serious question though, could he not just say he had some sort
• 1:09:28
  of medical issue? Get a note from his doctor, Go
• 1:09:30
  to NASCAR last night? I missed these races because of
• 1:09:32
  medical issues. He raced other races that we
• 1:09:34
  can't. Try.
• 1:09:36
  I'm trying. But I will say that I think this
• 1:09:39
  waiver is so stupid. The, the waiver is a byproduct
• 1:09:42
  of an, of an era that we no longer live in.
• 1:09:46
  And as proof of that, you know, in the previous version of the
• 1:09:50
  Chase for the championship, that was never a consideration.
• 1:09:52
  If you, you missed a race under the old Chase format and you
• 1:09:55
  made it on points, you just made it on point.
• 1:09:58
  It's self penalizing. Like if you choose to miss 2
• 1:10:01
  races, the penalty is, is that you gave up two races to get
• 1:10:06
  points in. And so I don't, I don't
• 1:10:08
  understand why NASCAR would take the position of that.
• 1:10:12
  You have to commit to run with us.
• 1:10:13
  And I'll tell you a great story. It didn't ultimately happen, but
• 1:10:18
  the year that Ryan Priest really blew up in the national scene,
• 1:10:22
  it was 2017 or 18, the year that he ran the races for JG over 17,
• 1:10:29
  because he had those races at JGR.
• 1:10:32
  He was running full time in the Modified Tour, but the races he
• 1:10:35
  scheduled for JGR, he finished second at New Hampshire.
• 1:10:39
  Then he won Iowa and he had another race too, caused him to
• 1:10:44
  miss 3 modified tour races and at one point missing 3 races.
• 1:10:50
  He was winning every single race that he entered to finish 2nd.
• 1:10:53
  And despite missing 3 races, he was the modified tour points
• 1:10:57
  leader early in the fall and he spun at Bristol and that cost
• 1:11:02
  him the points lead. And another crash happened at
• 1:11:06
  Thompson. But to me, I thought it was such
• 1:11:10
  a super compelling story that this guy made his NASCAR future
• 1:11:14
  by winning with Chris Gay part at Iowa after finishing second
• 1:11:18
  to Cow Bush in New Hampshire. Giving up a full season at JD
• 1:11:21
  Motorsports to put that money towards 3 races at JGR while
• 1:11:26
  also racing for the Modified Tour Championship despite
• 1:11:28
  missing 3 races. So we could go run those Xfinity
• 1:11:32
  races back then. Was a super compelling story.
• 1:11:34
  If Corey Heim can go be the points leader despite missing
• 1:11:37
  2-3 races, godsend. Great, what a cool story.
• 1:11:42
  Yeah. I want him to win the regular
• 1:11:44
  season championship despite missing two more races, and
• 1:11:47
  NASCAR have to acknowledge him as the regular season champion
• 1:11:50
  while also saying, yeah, but you're not going to run for the
• 1:11:53
  championship too. And the guy that finished second
• 1:11:55
  in regular season points doesn't even get the maximum bonus
• 1:11:59
  because he only gets 2nd place points.
• 1:12:01
  I want that. I want.
• 1:12:02
  I want full full nonsense. Piggyback up on the hind thing,
• 1:12:08
  because he did win Rockingham in dominant fashion.
• 1:12:11
  We didn't really even, you know, because we missed the week, we
• 1:12:14
  didn't get to talk about it. He, he is still that guy at this
• 1:12:17
  level. So yeah, that that'll be, it'll
• 1:12:19
  be really interesting to see if he can keep it up and if this at
• 1:12:22
  least gets a conversation started to where maybe they they
• 1:12:25
  make a real change on this. Because it shouldn't matter.
• 1:12:27
  It really shouldn't. Given the point system, it
• 1:12:29
  shouldn't have any impact. I do want to touch on Stewart
• 1:12:33
  Friesen and. No, Eckus was not instructed to
• 1:12:37
  to was the line dump them. I'm reading the comments.
• 1:12:40
  I should never read the comments.
• 1:12:42
  He he was told he was told to go get them back.
• 1:12:45
  There's. Not that every time.
• 1:12:46
  But I'm here to tell you I listen to radio chatter
• 1:12:49
  literally every week and every single time someone's wronged by
• 1:12:53
  someone, spotter knee jerk reacts and goes go get them
• 1:12:56
  back. And to me, that's just not
• 1:12:58
  enough. That's normal.
• 1:13:01
  So Stuart Friesen had a wreck at Rockingham last year and he got
• 1:13:04
  out of the truck and said, I don't know if I'm doing this
• 1:13:06
  anymore. Someone read my?
• 1:13:08
  Story. Oh, you have a story on it.
• 1:13:11
  You didn't see that so so. I don't read.
• 1:13:14
  Oh, I literally wrote the story on Friday.
• 1:13:18
  Did you OK? Well, that's cool.
• 1:13:19
  I'll. I'll go check it out.
• 1:13:20
  I did not. I've been laying in bed for
• 1:13:22
  three days. I'm.
• 1:13:22
  I apologize, but yeah, I mean, recent basically was just it.
• 1:13:28
  It felt like he was getting to the point where he was just
• 1:13:30
  mentally done. Then he has a really big wreck,
• 1:13:32
  which I'm sure you talked about in your article.
• 1:13:37
  This win. Nice.
• 1:13:41
  There we go. Nobody can read that, but go
• 1:13:43
  read the story. I did see, I did see you tweeted
• 1:13:46
  that that's my fault. I I typically click through so
• 1:13:49
  you at least get one click. But he was fourth at Rockingham.
• 1:13:55
  That was a really good, you know, finish for him coming a
• 1:13:57
  year full circle and then for bell to go and win this race for
• 1:14:00
  the team. Big, big moment.
• 1:14:04
  Obviously you gave your thoughts in the article, so you don't
• 1:14:06
  spend too much time on it here, but.
• 1:14:08
  Well, I do want to say one thing.
• 1:14:09
  Stewart called Christopher. This is his words, my favorite
• 1:14:13
  race car driver. And he says that like in all
• 1:14:17
  earnestly, he says that I traveled with him to the Turkey
• 1:14:20
  Night Grand Prix, the USAC Midget race out at Ventura
• 1:14:24
  Speedway in California. He said he took a trip to to
• 1:14:27
  Turkey night with Christopher like back in 2017 and just watch
• 1:14:32
  that race from the grandstands and Christopher won and he was
• 1:14:35
  like, I'm convinced this is the best race car driver in the
• 1:14:38
  world. Like Christopher Bell is
• 1:14:39
  awesome. This is like my favorite race
• 1:14:42
  car drivers favorite race car driver is is how like he he
• 1:14:45
  viewed it. And so because of the Toyota
• 1:14:48
  relationship, they got even closer.
• 1:14:50
  And when he got hurt last year and they hadn't figured out the
• 1:14:56
  the cadence situation yet, they needed someone immediately for
• 1:14:59
  that next week at Watkins Glen. He's like, I want you to put my
• 1:15:02
  favorite race car driver in in my truck.
• 1:15:04
  Christopher and Christopher, I don't know if TV caught this.
• 1:15:09
  Christopher was like kind of emotional.
• 1:15:12
  And I'm thinking to myself, why is Christopher Bell emotional
• 1:15:15
  over winning a Truck Series race?
• 1:15:16
  It's not that big of a deal to him.
• 1:15:18
  And he was asked about it in the Media Center.
• 1:15:20
  And he's like, I've gotten to know these guys last year and
• 1:15:23
  this year and he's like, I've seen Stewart and then Chris
• 1:15:28
  Larson is his business partner. Put this team together from
• 1:15:34
  scratch and he says when I first started truck racing, that was
• 1:15:37
  around the time they first started Halmar Freeze and
• 1:15:40
  racing. And he's like, these guys are
• 1:15:45
  still blue collar, salt of the earth dirt racers who just
• 1:15:49
  happened to have a NASCAR team. They're still the big block
• 1:15:52
  modified team that that that still goes and dominates New
• 1:15:55
  England and the Maritimes with. And they just happen to have a
• 1:15:58
  Truck Series team. They're just missing that last
• 1:16:01
  little bed. And because Christopher's so
• 1:16:03
  elite, I don't think Christopher won that race on his drive.
• 1:16:07
  You know, he he just got track position and can hold it.
• 1:16:09
  But it meant so much for Christopher to see what he was
• 1:16:13
  able to provide Stu and Jimmy Villeneuve and, and they're a
• 1:16:18
  whole group of guys because it meant a lot to them.
• 1:16:22
  And therefore it meant a lot to Christopher.
• 1:16:23
  And I just thought that was such a cool like, racer Bond moment
• 1:16:27
  that Stu thinks Christopher is the best race car driver and
• 1:16:30
  that Christopher thinks so much of what Stewart and and Chris
• 1:16:33
  have built. That was such a darn cool story.
• 1:16:36
  Yeah, for sure. I didn't know there was that
• 1:16:39
  type of connection. But you know, during the race, I
• 1:16:41
  think they commented how or maybe as practice, how Bell had
• 1:16:45
  spent the off week with them and prepared for this race.
• 1:16:48
  And it seems like there's a little bit more to that
• 1:16:52
  relationship than a typical just Cup driver showing up and
• 1:16:55
  running for them, which you obviously just alluded to.
• 1:16:58
  So that is really cool. See, it's a really big win for
• 1:17:01
  them. You know, there are very few
• 1:17:04
  teams like that, you know, that aren't affiliated with the
• 1:17:07
  manufacturers or aren't, you know, it's it's an independent
• 1:17:11
  and, and you don't see a lot of teams like that that are able to
• 1:17:14
  have success at that level really.
• 1:17:16
  And so it's really cool to see. Obviously a few years ago, 2019
• 1:17:21
  range, I feel like Stewart was climbing into championship
• 1:17:23
  contention for a little bit and then it has kind of held off,
• 1:17:28
  but he looks sharper this year. Obviously getting the win for
• 1:17:32
  the team is good overall. So I thought that was really
• 1:17:35
  cool to see. Sorry, I'm, I'm, I'm ready to
• 1:17:39
  get out of here. I don't know if I can go
• 1:17:41
  anymore. I appreciate everyone for
• 1:17:44
  checking out the show. I know it's probably between me
• 1:17:48
  being sick and Matt glitching out for 5:00 or so minutes and,
• 1:17:53
  and all the other stuff. It it, it was maybe a little
• 1:17:56
  clunky, but good weekend racing, a lot of stuff.
• 1:17:59
  I'm looking forward to Kansas next week and go check out
• 1:18:02
  Matt's articles. Matt, I don't know what you got
• 1:18:05
  up after the Cup race and all that, but you know, maybe real
• 1:18:08
  quick shout out what you what you got up and and I.
• 1:18:10
  Should take a nap is what I should do after going from from
• 1:18:14
  Nashville to Bristol to Nashville back to Bristol.
• 1:18:17
  I'm struggling right now too. This is worse than it was after
• 1:18:21
  we did our Darlington show and I was, I was tapping out.
• 1:18:24
  I'm I'm tapping out here too. I'm probably not going to be on
• 1:18:27
  the road this coming weekend. So I'll probably be able to do
• 1:18:30
  the show for my office where those shows are always the best
• 1:18:33
  shows. Like, we don't tend to have a
• 1:18:35
  lot of technical issues when I do the show for my office, so
• 1:18:37
  I'm looking forward to doing that.
• 1:18:39
  I'm not going to go to Kansas, so hopefully I can recover a
• 1:18:43
  little bit and get ready for a home race for me.
• 1:18:46
  Talladega. Awesome, man.
• 1:18:48
  Well, thank you guys for checking out the show.
• 1:18:50
  We'll catch you next week. See you guys.