Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Ryan Blaney Wins, Ty Gibbs Runs Good, & The Great Cleetus McFarland Debate | The Burnout With Matt Weaver

Transcript

Ryan Blaney Wins, Ty Gibbs Runs Good, & The Great Cleetus McFarland Debate | The Burnout With Matt Weaver · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  What's up everyone, welcome back to the Burnout.
• 0:02
  We are back again after a wonderful Phoenix race weekend.
• 0:05
  Super excited to get into everything.
• 0:08
  Matt was, I believe, at home again.
• 0:10
  He did not travel all the way to Phoenix, which means it was nice
• 0:13
  and relaxing for him, which is awesome.
• 0:15
  That's also why we're probably able to get on here about an
• 0:17
  hour earlier than normal. I don't know about you guys.
• 0:20
  I got absolutely obliterated by daylight savings time.
• 0:24
  It literally snuck up on me. I had no clue it was coming so
• 0:27
  I'm running on like 4 hours sleep.
• 0:28
  I'm ready to get this show rolling though with Matt.
• 0:31
  So Matt how you doing buddy? What do you what What do you
• 0:35
  think of the race weekend? Yeah, You know, it's one of
• 0:37
  those things where it's funny. I'm I'm doing the thing I always
• 0:40
  do at the start of every episode where I'm trying to send out our
• 0:42
  live link kit. There's probably a better way to
• 0:45
  do this. You should have like a longer
• 0:47
  intro because you have to kind of build in at all times that
• 0:50
  I'm that I'm doing this. But it's funny because like
• 0:55
  anytime I don't go to a race, I'm always super wary.
• 0:59
  Like, man, I got FOMO. What if it's a really good race,
• 1:03
  which it was? What if it's a really dramatic
• 1:06
  thing that I'm not fair? But I, I always try to stagger
• 1:09
  most of my races at the end. Like this year I plan to get to
• 1:12
  around 25 Cup races and I'm even debating not going to Vegas.
• 1:17
  I I haven't made my mind up for three days away just because I
• 1:21
  want to do all 10 of the Chase and I want to stagger of a lot
• 1:26
  of races in the summer too. And but where I'm getting at
• 1:31
  though, is as it turns out, it was probably a good idea that I
• 1:35
  was home for this because one, I got to fully kind of immerse
• 1:39
  myself in this race and it was very good.
• 1:42
  I know there's some debate about it, some people who are never
• 1:44
  happy with anything by the Phoenix scale.
• 1:49
  That was a really good Cup race at Phoenix and I got to just
• 1:52
  enjoy a race. But also on early Saturday
• 1:56
  morning, those those documents that I got to 1st the the JGR
• 2:01
  private investigator following Chris Gay part in the
• 2:04
  declarations, which included Denny Hamlin and Joe Gibbs and
• 2:08
  Bob Jenkins and Andy Graves. If if I was at the racetrack, I
• 2:13
  don't know that I would have been able to fully digest 12
• 2:18
  different legal documents. And so I did that on Saturday
• 2:21
  while I was watching the IndyCar race.
• 2:23
  And it, it, it works out. I, I, I had the FOMO.
• 2:26
  I wish I could have covered that race.
• 2:27
  There's a lot of good storylines that I wish I could have added
• 2:30
  on top of all the good reporters who are there.
• 2:33
  Kind of put my own flair on it. But I I enjoyed watching from
• 2:36
  home because this was a lot of fun.
• 2:39
  Yeah, I thought it was a fantastic race.
• 2:40
  I mean, it's, it's eerily similar to the New Hampshire
• 2:44
  race for me last year where it's you got this track hit that
• 2:47
  historically wasn't good racing. And I feel like this car and the
• 2:51
  tire wear that they're starting to get out of it.
• 2:53
  It's turning, they're turning into good race tracks for us.
• 2:56
  And I thought the action on track was great.
• 2:59
  You, I mean, Ryan Blaney went through the field like 3 or 4
• 3:01
  times I felt like. So obviously passing was an
• 3:04
  issue for fast cars. The restarts were fun.
• 3:06
  We had some some chaos and carnage.
• 3:08
  We had attrition, we had brake failures.
• 3:11
  We had all different types of things that happened in this
• 3:13
  race. And if you're a racing fan that
• 3:14
  likes some chaos, some events happening throughout the the
• 3:20
  race, you got that. On top of that, the passing was
• 3:23
  good, the tire fall off was good.
• 3:24
  It seemed like a good old fashioned NASCAR race to me and
• 3:28
  so I really enjoyed it. I I feel like I don't want to
• 3:33
  overstep here and make everyone mad.
• 3:34
  I feel like we're getting to a point where the next Gen. is
• 3:37
  good at most tracks. Yeah, no, no, I'm with you.
• 3:41
  I, I, to me, the, the litmus test for short track racing is
• 3:46
  always Martinsville because of the long straightaway and the
• 3:50
  flat nature of it, the sharp turns.
• 3:53
  If we still have a, a dirty air tire fall off issue, we're going
• 3:59
  to see it at Martinsville. We've been trending really good.
• 4:02
  What we saw today tonight is indicative of a lot of good
• 4:07
  things. You know, I, I was able to read
• 4:09
  all the transcripts and, and see some of the video interviews and
• 4:12
  everyone said more power was good, more fall off was good.
• 4:16
  We could still use a little bit more.
• 4:17
  And so I, I know some of that is just drivers being drivers.
• 4:21
  Race car drivers are always want going to want more power and
• 4:24
  less grip and they want to be dirt tracking it out there.
• 4:29
  Yes, the car is is pretty good everywhere.
• 4:32
  Certainly the mile and a half package is very, very good.
• 4:35
  We got to figure out some things on the superspeedways, your Rd.
• 4:38
  courses and short tracks. I still think there's a little
• 4:40
  bit more left to be desired. I think we're going to get to
• 4:42
  Martinsville and we're still going to go if we can just get
• 4:45
  these kind of flat, short tracks working.
• 4:50
  Richmond is still a super scientific race and I enjoy
• 4:53
  that, but it's not the old Richmond action track that we
• 4:56
  all yearn for. But I'll put it this way.
• 5:01
  The first three races are weird kind of aberrations.
• 5:05
  But I, I, I, I clocked out of this race and I was like NASCAR.
• 5:11
  I love me some NASCAR. That was that.
• 5:13
  That was NASCAR. Circuit of the Americas, Yeah,
• 5:16
  Circuit of the Americas is not NASCAR. the Super Intermediate,
• 5:22
  which is Atlanta, is not really NASCAR.
• 5:24
  And this Daytona, it's whatever, Just some people.
• 5:27
  That is NASCAR. But this was NASCAR, and I love
• 5:29
  that race. I want to touch on that for a
• 5:32
  second because Brad kind of got some heat for talking about how
• 5:35
  Rd. courses don't draw viewership, doesn't draw money,
• 5:37
  doesn't draw sponsorship money. It's not the best places for
• 5:40
  NASCAR to be, he said. That, you know, on a road course
• 5:43
  race weekend. What'd you make of those
• 5:44
  comments from, from Brad? Because I, I tend to agree with
• 5:47
  him and obviously as a owner, he's going to see a lot of
• 5:49
  information that backs that up that no one else sees.
• 5:53
  What would you think of what he said on on road courses?
• 5:55
  Yeah, I'm torn because like I, I inherently agree.
• 5:59
  Like, like to me, I think 3 to 4 is probably our sweet spot just
• 6:04
  because there's there's that then leaves 3-4 dates, 2 to
• 6:11
  three dates that we could do some other things with that I
• 6:14
  would like to see done. But I would also say we have 38
• 6:20
  race weekends and over the course of 38 race weekends, you
• 6:24
  can do a lot of different things.
• 6:26
  And I've always said, are Rd. courses entirely my cup of tea?
• 6:31
  No, I always say emphasis is over there.
• 6:33
  Like we're we're NASCAR, emphasis is over there.
• 6:36
  I don't want the sports car car we have now.
• 6:40
  I'm not, I'm not keen on having a ton of Rd. courses, but I like
• 6:43
  some. I like having a handful of Rd.
• 6:45
  courses. I love St. course racing.
• 6:46
  To me, street course racing is a better version of than short
• 6:51
  tracks right now because they have to raise the ride height
• 6:54
  up. And it just seems like even with
• 6:56
  the next Gen. those cars slide around a lot more at Chicago and
• 7:00
  they're going to it at San Diego.
• 7:03
  Yeah, totally. They got to bounce over the
• 7:05
  curbs and but I just think with 38 race weekends, you can do a
• 7:09
  lot of different things. And if you don't like this kind
• 7:11
  of racetrack or this kind of racetrack, well, good news next
• 7:15
  week and the week after that is something different and
• 7:17
  something different. But yeah, I I agree that I would
• 7:20
  like maybe 2 less because then we can go to Nashville
• 7:23
  Fairgrounds. We can go to go back to Kentucky
• 7:27
  with the next Gen. I can't believe I'm saying I
• 7:28
  want to see the next Gen. at Kentucky.
• 7:31
  There's a lot of different things that I would love to see
• 7:33
  us do. South Boston, Whatever NASCAR is
• 7:38
  Oval racing. I, I feel like every time you
• 7:41
  open your mouth to bring it up, something else I'm curious about
• 7:44
  Nashville's approved. Is that correct?
• 7:46
  Like they can now go in and do the improvements and host race
• 7:49
  if they want to like they're. Good.
• 7:51
  That's still a work in progress. I think there's AI.
• 7:56
  Think it's this Tuesday or is next Tuesday.
• 7:58
  I don't have it. Right in front of me is another.
• 8:01
  Every Tuesday for five years. It is and I don't think we're
• 8:04
  going to be any closer to a resolution.
• 8:07
  If, if you're super interested in following the Nashville
• 8:10
  Fairgrounds thing, Cars Tour is going there in April.
• 8:13
  It's the same weekend as the Bristol race.
• 8:15
  I will be there that Saturday for the Cars Tour race and then
• 8:18
  I'll drive up to Bristol on Sunday.
• 8:20
  But I, I think when Dale is there, because Dale Junior is
• 8:23
  racing, he owns part of the Cars Tour.
• 8:26
  He's going to go there and he's going to meet city officials and
• 8:29
  the movers and the Shakers and Dale's going to bring a lot of
• 8:32
  fans to Nashville Fairgrounds. I know their weekly show doesn't
• 8:36
  have the greatest of attendance numbers.
• 8:38
  It's local racing. SRX did really well.
• 8:41
  I think it's going to look very similar to SRX, and it's going
• 8:44
  to be Dale's way of saying, listen, this is what we can do.
• 8:47
  Look at all the people here. We can make this facility look
• 8:50
  like a crown jewel next to that beautiful soccer facility, even
• 8:53
  though soccer might not be for me or you.
• 8:56
  We can make this racetrack look like it belongs.
• 8:59
  And this could be a place where we can host events and we can do
• 9:01
  a lot of different things. And I think Dale is going to
• 9:05
  kick things into motion about what the next step could be.
• 9:08
  But most of that is still kind of deadlocked in the political
• 9:12
  apparatus. OK, fair enough.
• 9:14
  We got to get back to Phoenix. But you you brought things up
• 9:16
  and I was I was curious about it and I knew you probably had to
• 9:18
  answer. So before we get too far, please
• 9:23
  like the video, tell a friend, leave a comment.
• 9:26
  I'll try to throw it up there. If it if it dies with where
• 9:28
  we're at in the conversation, Blaney wins.
• 9:31
  Not not exactly surprising. Blaney was and has been the got
• 9:36
  to beat at Phoenix for four or five years now with Next Gen.
• 9:39
  car, whatever it's been, and the only true contender he's
• 9:43
  probably had during that stretch is Christopher Bell and Bell was
• 9:45
  the other guy to beat. It felt like there was a 2 horse
• 9:47
  race in terms of pure speed. Not exactly a surprise as I
• 9:50
  said, but that didn't mean it was easy.
• 9:53
  Ryan Blaney had quite the race. It was very, very difficult
• 9:57
  through multiple pit, pit lane issues and and everything.
• 10:01
  Obviously Ryan getting a win this early in season puts him
• 10:04
  second in points, which is fantastic.
• 10:06
  That's a big boost for him. What do you make of Ryan's race?
• 10:10
  Blaine's race, and I know we touch on the race as a whole,
• 10:12
  but also Christopher Bell because I felt like he had a
• 10:14
  slow start to the year, showed speed last week, show speed this
• 10:18
  week. It seems like now that we're
• 10:19
  getting back to standard racing, our prime stars are are showing
• 10:23
  up like they should. Yeah.
• 10:25
  I mean, it's just one, one real race, right?
• 10:27
  I mean, there's still a lot more sample size to be acquired, but
• 10:33
  this is the race where it's like, OK, let me see who the
• 10:35
  players are this year. And it's kind of what I
• 10:40
  expected, right? I mean, you expect when you go
• 10:43
  to Phoenix, the Penske cars to be good and they were and they
• 10:47
  were fast and Joy was on the pole till his crash and Blaney
• 10:50
  was the class of the field. I know Bell's got a real good
• 10:53
  feel for that place right now to the Chevrolets were a little off
• 10:57
  and I don't know if that's just the new body or them working
• 10:59
  through some things. I don't I don't know about that.
• 11:02
  And so I, I still think the the sample size is too small, But I,
• 11:08
  I will say and I, I wrote this in my my feature just a little
• 11:11
  bit ago. Is that the way that Blaney did
• 11:15
  this was a victory for everyone, right?
• 11:18
  I mean, this goes back to the the racing quality, but he had
• 11:21
  two issues on pit Rd. And if you go back and you watch
• 11:25
  Phoenix Next Gen. race from 2022-2023, that is a death
• 11:29
  knell. You are stuck back there.
• 11:31
  It is so hard to take the fastest car and pass for 20th
• 11:36
  and because you're sliding around, it's warm.
• 11:39
  A good car can make up for that. That's good, but it's also
• 11:42
  entertaining. I mean, if you're a Blaney fan,
• 11:45
  you don't want to win it that way.
• 11:47
  But if you're a racing fan, you do want to see action and you
• 11:50
  want to see people come through the field and go back through
• 11:53
  the field. And the fact that they were able
• 11:57
  to that Ryan was able to pick up his pit crew and that that that
• 12:02
  hassler was able to make a really gutsy call that I don't
• 12:06
  even know that it was the right call.
• 12:07
  I think that Larson raced Bell really, really hard.
• 12:11
  And I'm not saying he was wrong to do that, but if, if Bill
• 12:14
  could have got Larson one lap sooner and he he kind of used Ty
• 12:20
  as a as a pick to finally get 2 for one, maybe it turns out a a
• 12:25
  different way. But the fact that you got to the
• 12:28
  end of that race and you can make a case that six or seven
• 12:31
  different teams could have skinned the cat, figuratively
• 12:35
  speaking, I'm a cat guy. The right way to win that race
• 12:39
  was just super compelling. And I I thought that it was a
• 12:43
  race that showed who were the best teams, the best drivers,
• 12:47
  the smartest engineers and crew chiefs and ultimately the the
• 12:52
  best car and a really good driver at Phoenix and always has
• 12:55
  been won the race. And that was just, it was
• 12:58
  fulfilling to see as a, as a kind of racing purist.
• 13:02
  Yeah, for sure. And I, I felt like two things
• 13:07
  that stood out, guys that stood stayed out on old tires got
• 13:10
  absolutely eaten up. I love that.
• 13:12
  I thought that was good. I, I agree with everything you
• 13:15
  said. I thought the, the higher
• 13:16
  horsepower was good. I, I wanted to ask the question
• 13:18
  because it, it was brought up pre race that the track was
• 13:22
  wider. Definitely one and two.
• 13:24
  And they, they kind of were wondering about 3:00 and 4:00.
• 13:26
  Do you think the IndyCar race played played a major factor in
• 13:30
  that and do we need them to be a part of every race weekend at
• 13:34
  Phoenix to kind of help the racing because it seemed like
• 13:36
  having it a little bit wider made it easier for the passing
• 13:39
  as well. It feels like it was a
• 13:40
  combination of everything. Yeah, I I didn't hear that
• 13:44
  discourse, but it's funny hearing you say that made me go,
• 13:47
  yeah, I'm not crazy because I had that thought when I was
• 13:50
  watching. I had the thought watching the
• 13:52
  IndyCar race on Saturday and I had it again on Sunday.
• 13:56
  And I just think that going all through all the different
• 13:59
  transitions, the the ARCA rubber, that that General Tire
• 14:02
  rubber, the various NASCAR compounds, the O'Reilly and Cup
• 14:08
  and IndyCar and IndyCar running the high side session, that
• 14:11
  track never had a chance to settle and be one specific
• 14:14
  thing. And I think that everyone's
• 14:16
  notebook kind of went for a a loop.
• 14:19
  And listen, I watch enough IndyCar racing.
• 14:22
  Those last run of IndyCar races at Phoenix were brutal to watch.
• 14:27
  They were horribly boring, just candidly speaking.
• 14:31
  And that was not what I saw on Saturday.
• 14:33
  And it's not like the regulations have changed that
• 14:35
  drastically. It's not like it's a
• 14:36
  fundamentally different platform.
• 14:39
  The track is aged a little bit more and they've had to deal
• 14:42
  with all these different rubbers.
• 14:43
  And I just think that it challenged everyone who is at
• 14:47
  the at the racetrack over the weekend.
• 14:50
  And so I think hearing the reading, the tea leaves, it
• 14:54
  seems like everyone wants to come back and do this next year.
• 14:56
  And please, because that was just a tremendous value from a
• 14:59
  racing content standpoint. But also, I mean, listen, if you
• 15:02
  bought a ticket to the Cup race on Sunday, yeah.
• 15:06
  But if you even bought a ticket just on Sunday, the really cool
• 15:08
  thing that happened and we saw the visuals on the broadcast is
• 15:12
  that if you had like a hot pass, you're watching from the
• 15:14
  grandstands, the IndyCar teams were still there.
• 15:17
  And so you can walk through their paddock and they were
• 15:19
  actually putting their Yeah, they were, they were they were
• 15:21
  swapping everything over to Arlington because they're not
• 15:23
  going back to Indianapolis. That makes sense in North
• 15:26
  Carolina. They're going to Texas.
• 15:28
  So they actually converted everything over to St. course
• 15:31
  spec in the Phoenix infield while the Cup race was going on
• 15:35
  before the Cup race. So there were various points of
• 15:37
  the the broadcast where they would zoom in and say here's all
• 15:40
  the IndyCar teams working on their cars to go to Texas next
• 15:43
  week. And that was happening on
• 15:44
  Sunday. And then fans who were there for
• 15:46
  Cup also got a chance to experience a a taste of the
• 15:50
  IndyCar paddock. And so there was just so many
• 15:52
  cool things from a racing standpoint and just from a
• 15:56
  ambiance standpoint that made that awesome.
• 15:59
  Yeah, that's cool. I I completely missed that, but
• 16:01
  I was probably half zoned out half, half thinking about sleep
• 16:04
  the whole time. Cool.
• 16:07
  Well, Indycars, great. Where?
• 16:08
  Where do I need to go? Ty Gibbs, NASCAR and private
• 16:13
  investigator. First off, I give great run.
• 16:16
  He looked like a legit race winning threat.
• 16:19
  That's what everyone wants out of him.
• 16:20
  He looked good last week too. Really good on long runs.
• 16:23
  That's back-to-back weeks where Ty Gibbs looked like a legit top
• 16:25
  five guy. That's what you want from him.
• 16:28
  That's what you're expecting the evolution to be.
• 16:30
  He wasn't, I don't want to say he was harsh with his worst post
• 16:33
  race, but he was kind of in in indicating like, hey, I got good
• 16:38
  guys around me now throwing a little shade.
• 16:40
  Towards guys. Towards Gabe Hart.
• 16:43
  So what do you make of Ty Gibbs? Of course.
• 16:44
  But give us the the background information on the private
• 16:48
  investigator and everything going on with NASCAR.
• 16:52
  Yeah, so I saw the TV interview and I'm like, OK, well, if I'm
• 16:55
  really, really reaching there is is he is he trying to send a
• 16:58
  message that these are the right people?
• 17:00
  And before I did. And I'm like, you know what?
• 17:03
  I'm I, I try not to to lean sensationalist.
• 17:06
  And I know some people won't agree with that.
• 17:09
  And you know, if you call, if you call, if you call, I was
• 17:13
  going to go there. If you call Dell Earnhardt
• 17:15
  seniors grandson, Dell Earnhardt seniors grandson, that's
• 17:19
  sensationalizing it. But I, I don't immediately hear
• 17:22
  a quote like that and go, let me, let me do something with
• 17:25
  that. But then I was because I'm, I'm,
• 17:27
  I'm working from home this weekend, I drove to Starbucks to
• 17:29
  write, which is something I tend to do is I go to a coffee shop
• 17:32
  or a Starbucks and I'll turn on the the SiriusXM post post race
• 17:36
  show. And Lee Spencer, who does that
• 17:39
  most weekends, had Ty Gibbs on her show.
• 17:41
  And he said the same thing. And he said it like in a more
• 17:44
  convincing way that it was. It became clear that he was
• 17:47
  trying to send a message. But listen, good for him.
• 17:50
  People right now are questioning his commitment because of what
• 17:53
  happened in the in the gay park declaration and the results have
• 17:57
  not been commiserate to the expectations of a Joe Gibbs
• 18:01
  Racing team. That's no, no doubt.
• 18:03
  And so for him to have, and he's always been a really good Rd.
• 18:06
  racer. He loves Rd. course racing.
• 18:08
  He should be good at Phoenix. JGR has a good package there.
• 18:11
  And so for him to validate himself and his team there,
• 18:15
  that's what you want to see. Let's get into the NASCART.
• 18:21
  There's so much ground to cover, right?
• 18:23
  So woke up on Saturday morning and was perusing the new files.
• 18:27
  And the first thing that I saw was this declaration from a
• 18:34
  private investigator. And Joe Gibbs Racing had this
• 18:39
  PIA licensed professional legal Pi follow gay part around as he
• 18:47
  as he and Dickerson drove to this restaurant, drove to Spire.
• 18:51
  And the timeline matters. And again, I want to say that
• 18:54
  we've we've yet to see the official legal response from gay
• 18:58
  part side that's going to come out this Wednesday or it's due
• 19:00
  by this Wednesday. And so right now, this is
• 19:03
  painting one side of it, and they're painting really hard.
• 19:06
  But around the same time that according to a declaration in
• 19:10
  this recent filing from Dave Alpern, the JGR president, the
• 19:15
  gay part says, I'm not tall talking to them about a job.
• 19:23
  We're just friend on the the Spire plane to the Phoenix
• 19:26
  championship race. Chris.
• 19:27
  That's something else we learned in this filing is that Jennifer
• 19:30
  Gaypart rode on Spires plane to the Phoenix championship race
• 19:34
  and Chris was like, oh, we're all just friends.
• 19:37
  And so the Pi was hired and and they're trying to catch him
• 19:41
  being more than just friends with Dickerson talking racing,
• 19:45
  which we have pictures and a timeline.
• 19:48
  And so I don't know what it means or what they're really
• 19:49
  discussing, but JGR is trying to convince the court with these
• 19:55
  deliberations that are set to happen next Monday that we want
• 19:59
  expedited discovery. We have all this logical reasons
• 20:04
  to believe that Gay part might have taken this data that we
• 20:08
  know he accessed even after he told Coach Gibbs.
• 20:11
  I think it's best that we part ways.
• 20:15
  That even after he said that he was accessing these files and
• 20:18
  storing it on his personal phone and he says he later deleted
• 20:21
  them, but they're trying to convince the court.
• 20:23
  We have reasons to believe that we need to know if he gave them
• 20:28
  this bar. We want to access to gay parts
• 20:30
  files. Jeff Dickerson's files, Dan
• 20:34
  Taurus, the owner of TWG Motorsports.
• 20:39
  And typically you get you get discovery further along into the
• 20:44
  legal process. You have this, I think it's 32F
• 20:47
  or 2626-F, which is where you sit at a table and you negotiate
• 20:52
  what gets discovered. We saw that in the NASCAR 2311
• 20:55
  front row trial. But they want it now.
• 20:59
  And they're like, we do not have time to lose.
• 21:01
  We need to know right now if Gay part gave away our secret
• 21:06
  competition data. And oh, by the way, Gay part
• 21:08
  also access sponsorship data, which is important because
• 21:13
  another file that was in this filing is they had written
• 21:16
  declarations from two of their sponsors that Spire reached out
• 21:21
  to them in January and February of this year saying, Hey, do you
• 21:25
  want to talk? We, we, we, we want to share
• 21:27
  some ideas and we, we want to see if there's some synergy.
• 21:30
  And So what they're saying this is allegedly is that gay part
• 21:34
  access these files that contained all of their
• 21:36
  sponsorship data and then two of their sponsors get inquired by
• 21:43
  Spire. And so there's just a lot to
• 21:45
  kind of unpack there, right? They had Denny Hamlin write a a
• 21:49
  declaration, which is pretty powerful stuff, right?
• 21:52
  And I'm this is not saying that Denny's taking the side, but
• 21:55
  what he said in the the declaration is, is that Chris as
• 22:00
  my crew chief and then as my competition director had the
• 22:03
  quote crown jewels. So those are his words.
• 22:06
  Denny said that gay part had the crown jewels to our
• 22:10
  organization. And if that if those crown
• 22:12
  jewels were to end up in anyone else's hands, the damage to our
• 22:16
  organization would be unmeasurable.
• 22:19
  Those are Denny's words. They had a declaration from Andy
• 22:23
  Graves, a long time engine builder turned executive for
• 22:27
  Toyota, who said the same thing, that Dave Hart had access to our
• 22:32
  most vital Toyota information and if that information ended up
• 22:37
  in any other team's hands, that would be damaging to us as
• 22:40
  Toyota. Joe Gibbs got Bob Jenkins from
• 22:44
  front row, who's never met a lawsuit that I guess that he
• 22:46
  doesn't want to get get involved in.
• 22:48
  Bob Jenkins wrote a declaration that says that as a rival team
• 22:52
  that information would be hugely important to us.
• 22:56
  And that also as a rival team, we feel that having employees
• 23:00
  take data in this way without a non disclosure agreement,
• 23:04
  without a non compete would be extremely damaging if it were
• 23:08
  us. And so I think the JGR has
• 23:12
  really put their best case forward and trying to convince
• 23:15
  the judge that we need that discovery immediately.
• 23:17
  And we'll see what Spire and Gay part have to say back and then
• 23:21
  what they say in court next Monday.
• 23:23
  But that is the Reader's Digest version.
• 23:25
  I wrote the story, encourage everyone to check it out.
• 23:28
  But really powerful pictures and images and words coming from
• 23:32
  those 12 documents. Yeah, how long till Front Row's
• 23:37
  the Toyota team? At this point, they really seem
• 23:39
  to be just. They keep flirting right?
• 23:41
  Like they were literally at the the altar and it just didn't
• 23:46
  quite work out. But they they continue to flirt.
• 23:51
  Love the flirt Gabe Hart and he was flirting and everyone's
• 23:54
  flirting. It feels like there's a lot of
• 23:55
  flirting going on since we're talking about Graves and Toyota
• 24:00
  and Toyota as a whole. Seems like the Toyota power
• 24:02
  units are pretty strong power units.
• 24:04
  I'm watching too much F1. Engines.
• 24:06
  Are pretty strong I I you know Blaney mentioned it on the
• 24:10
  straights today. We also heard some comments
• 24:12
  about Reddick on the straights at at coda last week.
• 24:17
  Obviously you're not the track this week you're not going to
• 24:19
  hear those rumbles rumblings, but I feel like that's kind of
• 24:21
  kind of be brought up here over the next few weeks.
• 24:24
  I'm curious kind of to find out more, see if there is an
• 24:27
  advantage there, see what what that plays out because you
• 24:29
  mentioned Chevy, seen the struggle Toyotas as a whole, I
• 24:33
  mean JGR 2311, they were they were killing it.
• 24:36
  Even Eric Jones got up there for top 10 after a slow start.
• 24:39
  How good is that Toyota engine package right now?
• 24:42
  What kind of advantage do they have and and what does that play
• 24:45
  out for the rest of the year if if they do have a big advantage?
• 24:47
  Yeah. You know, one of the one of the
• 24:49
  things that's always interesting to me in the first third of the
• 24:54
  season is that first dyno test. You know, it's coming, you just
• 24:57
  don't know when it's coming. Do they do it at Darlington?
• 25:00
  Because that is a a place that has a lot of torque and so it's
• 25:04
  a good place to measure engines. So they wait till Kansas maybe,
• 25:08
  you know, with the, you know, for a version of that with the
• 25:12
  670 package with NASCAR always early in the season, they do
• 25:16
  that that engine dyno where they take a handful of engines back
• 25:21
  to R&D and typically there's nothing to penalize there.
• 25:24
  But they want to know how much power and torque and performance
• 25:29
  each of those engines have. And then we see if they try to
• 25:33
  do some things to rebalance the the BOP talking about sports car
• 25:38
  racing. But but listen, yeah, I mean it,
• 25:41
  it seems like they have an advantage there, but also
• 25:44
  there's just some some balance things that the Chevrolet is
• 25:47
  working through. I, I saw, I believe it was
• 25:50
  Larson's post race video where he's like, we weren't that much
• 25:54
  further off than we're used to. He's like, I still had my feel.
• 25:57
  He's like there's just some little nuances that were
• 26:00
  different than what we had before.
• 26:02
  And then then so there's so many different factors that go into
• 26:05
  this, right? I mean, it's not purely a, a
• 26:07
  power game, but it's certainly part of it.
• 26:09
  It's a power and balance and, and grip and all these different
• 26:14
  things that go into the performance.
• 26:16
  But the sample size is still pretty small and I don't want
• 26:20
  to. I don't know.
• 26:21
  Here's something I don't want to make any like sweeping
• 26:23
  declarations about the 1st 50 race at a one mile track just
• 26:29
  because the sample size is so small.
• 26:31
  Yeah, I think it's something to pay attention to.
• 26:33
  That's. Kind of Ford.
• 26:35
  Ford looked like they were better than Toyota in the first
• 26:37
  half of the race. It could be a completely
• 26:40
  different narrative, you know, And obviously when the race
• 26:44
  devolves into two tires versus 4, that's no longer a straight
• 26:48
  up performance game then either. It's kind of a a competitive
• 26:52
  chess match. Listen, I I have more faith than
• 26:57
  anything else in the sport the NASCAR will do the best job to
• 27:01
  ensure competitive parity. Like that's one thing I think
• 27:04
  they do very. Yeah.
• 27:08
  So like, I, I, I think that, that, you know, there's little
• 27:11
  things are going to tweak throughout the year.
• 27:13
  I, I, I get the rule book updates, I get an e-mail and I
• 27:16
  have an, I have access to the rule book.
• 27:18
  And so I see them in real time when they make those little
• 27:21
  tweaks, but you never really hear teams really complain that
• 27:26
  NASCAR is giving the Toyota guys this.
• 27:28
  So they're giving the Ford or Chevy guys this.
• 27:30
  Everyone, No, they seem pretty content that everyone plays by a
• 27:35
  pretty fair rule book. And everyone's got a chance to
• 27:38
  go out there and compete. And that's really hard to do in
• 27:41
  Motorsports, right? Like if you watch IndyCar and F1
• 27:43
  and Supercars or anything like NASCAR is the least amount of
• 27:47
  like BOP problems. Definitely.
• 27:51
  So let's put a bow on Phoenix. I thought it was a really good
• 27:55
  Cup race. I thought it was exactly what we
• 27:56
  could hope for from from that event.
• 27:59
  Not really much more take away. I feel like it was pretty
• 28:01
  straightforward. You know, of course, it's a
• 28:03
  track that rewards the same guys time and time again.
• 28:06
  If you go back and look at the last four years, Larson's a ton
• 28:08
  of top fives. Bell, Beth Blaney, it's all the
• 28:11
  same guys. But let's let's transition some
• 28:14
  off the off track stuff. Alex Bowman was ruled out with
• 28:19
  Vertigo obviously got out of the car last week.
• 28:23
  I am very unfamiliar with Vertigo.
• 28:25
  I don't really know what what is, you know, what the impact is
• 28:29
  to obviously it's something to do with your equilibrium and,
• 28:33
  and of that nature. I don't know what the recovery
• 28:35
  time frame is, how long he's going to be out.
• 28:37
  I feel like this is a very interesting dynamic where one of
• 28:40
  your top seats is now being filled with Anthony Alfredo for
• 28:44
  how long is it going to be Alfredo next week?
• 28:46
  So I'm very curious where that goes if you don't have anything
• 28:51
  that any any idea what vertical is or what what the recovery
• 28:54
  time is. It doesn't feel like he's going
• 28:56
  to be back soon though. So what do you think of the 48
• 28:59
  moving forward? What?
• 29:00
  What can they do? Yeah, I, I just did what
• 29:03
  everyone probably has done this week and I just did a quick
• 29:06
  Google search and it's like could be days, it could be
• 29:09
  weeks. And so that's not very, it's not
• 29:12
  very helpful, right. I mean, and certainly to any
• 29:17
  time that something like this happens, people don't tend to be
• 29:21
  super talkative. And I'll give you a great
• 29:22
  example. And I I respect this.
• 29:25
  This is not me complaining about the process.
• 29:28
  Last week, whenever Maya Snyder got in the car, I did send him a
• 29:31
  text and I'm like, hey, man, 1 super cool to see you in a in a
• 29:35
  cup car when you get a chance. People want to hear from you
• 29:38
  because you didn't talk to media.
• 29:39
  And I would love to to grab an interview and in Maya it says,
• 29:44
  you know, thanks buddy. We'll give you a shout as soon
• 29:47
  as I get the all clear. Basically the implication being
• 29:50
  is like, we don't want to, I don't want to talk until
• 29:54
  Hendrick can go out there and say more.
• 29:56
  And and Jeff Andrews was on Sirius and he told SiriusXM that
• 30:01
  we don't have a timeline. He did say it's not related to
• 30:05
  his previous concussions. And so that's that's additive,
• 30:09
  but no timeline. And yeah, it's it's, it's, it's
• 30:13
  got to be super demoralizing because obviously the narrative
• 30:19
  surrounding Bowman and his place in the sport is never ending.
• 30:24
  And this certainly doesn't help. And he wanted to go put his best
• 30:28
  foot forward this year. And it just sucks.
• 30:30
  It sucks for Alex, who was one of our best characters and
• 30:33
  personalities and NASCAR racing is better when Alex Bowman is
• 30:38
  competitive and having fun and and he he hates the nickname
• 30:41
  when he's being the showman. Cup Series racing is better off
• 30:45
  for that. And so it just sucks for for
• 30:48
  NASCAR to not have one of his better personality showcase.
• 30:51
  It sucks for him as a human being to be sick and it didn't
• 30:55
  naturally leads into all these other underlying conversations
• 31:00
  about what does this mean for the future of the 48?
• 31:02
  Do we start talking about some future free agents?
• 31:05
  Tyler Reddick is a free agent. Do we open that door?
• 31:08
  He's he's making himself super wealthy based on his performance
• 31:13
  to open this year. And so there's just a lot of
• 31:15
  things that happened because of this.
• 31:17
  And I, I wish from a human standpoint, we weren't forced to
• 31:21
  have those conversations now, because in a perfect world, we,
• 31:24
  we would be talking about Alex Bowman trying to go out there
• 31:29
  and, and do his job. And it has not been a great
• 31:32
  start to his season even before this.
• 31:34
  And so it's just, I hate to use this work just like the it's one
• 31:37
  of the two most overused words in Motorsports at the start of
• 31:40
  the year. Everyone's excited.
• 31:41
  Oh, I'm excited, excited to get going.
• 31:42
  And then when things don't go well, everyone says, oh, it's
• 31:45
  unfortunate, it's unfortunate, this is unfortunate.
• 31:48
  Yeah, absolutely. Bear with me real quick.
• 31:51
  I am. I can keep going.
• 31:54
  I'm the longest winded son of a gun, as you know, I, I, I just
• 31:58
  keep going like I'm like the Energizer Bunny.
• 32:00
  No, no, no. So I, you know, I'm still
• 32:03
  getting used to this deal with, with, with YouTube and kind of
• 32:07
  run the channel and everything. And, and I saw a couple people
• 32:10
  mentioning ads in the middle of the the show.
• 32:12
  So I want to see if I can turn those off during the live show
• 32:15
  because I don't want you guys getting kicked out for for ads
• 32:17
  during. I'll add it back afterwards.
• 32:20
  You know, obviously Kenny is running a business here, so he
• 32:22
  needs to get some ad revenue, but I'll try to make sure it's
• 32:25
  not on for the live show and then then add it afterwards.
• 32:28
  I didn't know it did it live. I, I clicked the button, but I
• 32:30
  thought it just did it post it, you know everything.
• 32:33
  So apologize for that. Regardless, I'll try to get
• 32:36
  sorted for next week so it doesn't keep bumping in for us.
• 32:39
  That's my work for us too. We're, we're, we're trying to
• 32:42
  get into the rhythm of the season and and work out our
• 32:44
  mechanical bugs. We we also need to go to YouTube
• 32:48
  Dino R&D. No shit yeah, so sorry.
• 32:53
  Hopefully got those done for you guys and they don't they don't
• 32:55
  do it there. I I don't want you to have to
• 32:58
  watch ABS right ABS right out the gate while we're doing live.
• 33:00
  So you're not going to. See any ABS here?
• 33:04
  I promise you I'm a I'm I'm too Chipotle Chipotle burritos in
• 33:10
  I'm not AI don't have any ABS here.
• 33:14
  I just watched the full speed documentary on Amazon and and I
• 33:20
  just got through the I've had to watch it in parts.
• 33:23
  So I just got through Noah Gregson's part and that boy is
• 33:25
  chunky. But anyways, let's move on.
• 33:29
  Let's get on to the topic we really want to talk about,
• 33:31
  Cletus McFarland. So what?
• 33:35
  What the hell are we doing? Just tell me, Matt, what, what
• 33:38
  the hell are we doing? Yeah, I don't like it.
• 33:40
  I mean, listen, I, I said on this show after Daytona that I,
• 33:45
  I appreciate him being here. And I, I, I said that I saw him
• 33:51
  change a little bit after the crash on Friday and how
• 33:55
  seriously he treated Saturday in the ARCA race even.
• 33:59
  And I, I thought that he was going to treat this with a
• 34:02
  little bit more diligence. And I just don't know how going
• 34:06
  to, hey, I love ARCA and I want to make a home here.
• 34:09
  And I think this is probably the best place for me, immediately
• 34:12
  translates one month later into I'm going to race at the second
• 34:15
  highest level of NASCAR with four superspeedway starts under
• 34:21
  my belt. That's this is when you say it
• 34:24
  out loud. If I've got a rule, say it out
• 34:26
  loud and if it sounds like a good idea, do it.
• 34:28
  And if it doesn't sound like a good idea, don't do it.
• 34:31
  I almost feel more comfortable him running at a bigger track, a
• 34:34
  faster track than than than the Rocky.
• 34:36
  Rocky, it's Rocky, it's the rock.
• 34:40
  I think that place is tough. And I even told, I even told
• 34:44
  Cletus at Daytona, I said, hey man, you've got great access to
• 34:48
  Ricky Brooks, the UARA National Super Late Model Tour promoter
• 34:53
  that you do events with the Freedom Factory to to put you in
• 34:56
  a late model and get used to racing door to door at much
• 35:00
  slower speeds and tougher confines.
• 35:02
  And you could do that really affordably with with Ricky's
• 35:05
  package. And he's like, yeah, I should
• 35:08
  think about that. And apparently he is buying one.
• 35:11
  I've heard some rumors that he is talking to, I believe Port
• 35:14
  City Race Cars about getting a late model.
• 35:16
  So it's not like he blew that idea off.
• 35:18
  He recognizes that would be a good platform for him to do.
• 35:23
  On the other hand, I mean, maybe the SIM time helps.
• 35:27
  And I'm going to reach out to RCR tomorrow because I, I'm
• 35:31
  going to admit to them, I'm rolling my eyes that RCR is
• 35:35
  going to work to make him a, a better race car driver.
• 35:38
  Because to me, I read that press release and I'm like, at RCR,
• 35:41
  we're going to cash the check. That's really what that means,
• 35:45
  right? We're going to take the the the
• 35:46
  million YouTube followers and we're going to take sponsorship
• 35:49
  dollars and we're going to, you know, make him a better race car
• 35:53
  driver. But I want to give them the
• 35:55
  benefit of the doubt. I want to send them an e-mail
• 35:56
  and say, listen, if there really is a plan using the simulator
• 36:01
  and using whatever resources you guys have a relationship with
• 36:04
  Anthony Campy racing on the Super late model side and Lee
• 36:07
  Pulliam performance on the late model stock side.
• 36:10
  There is an Ave. in which RCR has some really smart people.
• 36:15
  I mean, goodness, one of their spotters, Derek Nealon is going
• 36:17
  to run in the ARC at East Race at Hickory because he is a
• 36:20
  capable late model driver. Derek Nealon could be a great
• 36:24
  resource and benefit to Cletus. And so I'm not oblivious to the
• 36:29
  fact that there is a model in which Cletus is made better for
• 36:33
  being at RCR. But again, going back to my
• 36:37
  rule, when you say it out loud, it doesn't sound like a good
• 36:40
  idea. We're we're going to make our
• 36:42
  O'Reilly series debut at Rockingham Speedway.
• 36:47
  Oh, we, we have the saying in Alabama.
• 36:49
  Bless your heart. Bless your heart.
• 36:52
  Yeah, and, and just to clarify, we're not saying Cletis
• 36:54
  Mcfarlane's a bad guy. No, like I, I know some people
• 36:59
  can't separate that for some reason.
• 37:02
  Cletis is a fine guy. He's great.
• 37:03
  He's entertaining. Sure, you can like his videos.
• 37:06
  You can like him as a person. I'm not saying he's a bad
• 37:08
  person. He has no business on that
• 37:10
  racetrack when, when that race takes place Easter Sunday or
• 37:13
  Easter weekend, he does not belong in that race.
• 37:16
  And like front clip or rear clip, Matt, you pick which one
• 37:20
  do you think it's going to be? Because either that or he's
• 37:23
  going to be 4 seconds off the pace and just in the way
• 37:25
  Rockingham, especially after the repave, is not a place where to
• 37:28
  be. It's, it's just wrong.
• 37:30
  And no. One gets taken out because of
• 37:32
  it. Right.
• 37:33
  And and that's the other part of it is like there's a lot of
• 37:37
  money, a lot involved in the O'Reilly series.
• 37:39
  There are 1,000,000 different places like the Arca series.
• 37:42
  Even the Truck Series is less lesser version but the Arca
• 37:45
  series late models. There's so many places cars tour
• 37:47
  UARA like you mentioned. You can go race.
• 37:50
  Anywhere the idea that you have to go to the second highest form
• 37:53
  of auto racing in this country and be thrust into a situation
• 37:57
  you're not ready for, it's just it's just asinine enemy so but.
• 38:02
  It's sanctuary body that continues to allow Natalie
• 38:07
  Decker to race at that level to and I know Natalie has way more
• 38:11
  experience. I mean, listen, I I ultimately
• 38:12
  defer to Kyle Busch here. Kyle Busch had some great
• 38:16
  weekend quote saying that, you know, I would prefer him to have
• 38:19
  a lot more starts. First, Braxton has more, you
• 38:22
  know, competitive racing starts than Cletus does.
• 38:25
  Listen, I did, I, I did a show after the Daytona 500 with you
• 38:30
  where I said that I embrace Cletus this year more than I
• 38:34
  ever did before because I, I, I see the vision and I started to
• 38:38
  see, see him take it seriously in a way he did in the first
• 38:43
  year. I believe him when he says that
• 38:46
  he wants to be an additive, you know, part of the formula that
• 38:50
  he wants to treat this seriously.
• 38:54
  I just think of all the things that could go wrong when every
• 38:56
  race matters. And, you know, the things that
• 39:00
  you could you could really derail someone seasoned with one
• 39:02
  bad race now. And I just, I just really hope
• 39:05
  that doesn't become a storyline. And I will give him some credit,
• 39:08
  by the way, one other piece of credit I'll give him.
• 39:10
  I was terrified when he made his ARCA non superspeedway debut at
• 39:16
  Bristol last year. I was so terrified because we've
• 39:20
  seen some years and that that race, because it's also the the
• 39:23
  ARCA E finale in that someone who has no business racing at
• 39:28
  Bristol would end up crashing A championship contender.
• 39:32
  And they've decided the ARCA E championship a couple of times.
• 39:36
  And I said, Oh my God, the YouTube is going to crash one of
• 39:38
  the ARCA E championship finalists and it's going to be a
• 39:41
  big hoopla. And he finished like he was on
• 39:45
  the lead lap for most of the race, finished 13th or something
• 39:48
  in that area. And I know it's tons of throttle
• 39:50
  time there and it's not super technical, but he impressed me
• 39:55
  and I, I hope this is me being super optimistic that he can go
• 40:00
  to Rockingham. In a much higher class, but do
• 40:03
  the same thing he did at Bristol last year and just stay out of
• 40:07
  the way, log laps and learn because he kind of impressed me
• 40:10
  there too. Yeah, he was P17 in that race.
• 40:14
  It's not bad. It's out of the way.
• 40:15
  I mean, to the point though, like I've seen people show up in
• 40:19
  the O'Reilly Series race at Bristol and Bristol is different
• 40:22
  than Rockham, but not get cleared because they're so bad
• 40:24
  in practice. Like NASCAR said, Nope, you're
• 40:26
  not running this race. I just, I just, and like you
• 40:31
  said, after Daytona, we're like, OK, if you do this right, you
• 40:33
  run some market, you get more experience, more experience.
• 40:35
  We're fine. You can be here.
• 40:36
  What? Are you saying there's someone
• 40:37
  in the comments section saying that you know, Cletus earned it
• 40:40
  because of what he did in North Carolina?
• 40:41
  This is not a charity. Yeah, you don't.
• 40:43
  You don't. You don't get to race at NASCAR
• 40:45
  second highest level because of your charitable.
• 40:49
  You know, he did great things in the state.
• 40:52
  You're making me mad. It makes me so mad.
• 40:54
  This is not you spend enough money to do things for people
• 40:57
  and you get rewarded by racing out one of the highest levels of
• 41:00
  a motorsport. And you know, you don't get to,
• 41:03
  you know, do charitable donations and you're playing AAA
• 41:05
  baseball against, you know, Major League prospects.
• 41:08
  That's not that's not how sports work.
• 41:10
  You don't earn it through charitable or humanitarian.
• 41:15
  It's a professional sport. Yeah.
• 41:16
  But the people here are treating this like a business and you're
• 41:20
  you're affecting their business. So just just whatever happens,
• 41:22
  don't affect someone's business. Sure, all right, we can move on.
• 41:26
  We can YouTube. I'm sure he'll have have us
• 41:31
  talking that race and and hey, maybe he'll go out there and get
• 41:33
  a top. 20 and be fine. I want him to succeed here
• 41:36
  because I said this again in Daytona.
• 41:39
  He he did good business for me. His stories did very well.
• 41:44
  I recognize the same basis there.
• 41:46
  I like him. I like him on a human level.
• 41:49
  This is not like, you know, he sucks and I, I don't want him
• 41:51
  here. I want him to go through the
• 41:54
  process and I I've seen so many people work their way up the
• 41:58
  right way that it would be doing him a disservice for him to not
• 42:03
  come up the right way. And I hope there is truly a plan
• 42:07
  from RCR to to cultivate him because he could be great for
• 42:11
  the sport. I don't want people to think
• 42:13
  that I'm knocking him. There's just a process.
• 42:16
  Sure. This is why you should read the
• 42:19
  comments people told me from day one in this business, Matt,
• 42:22
  don't ever read the comments. Don't read the comments to your
• 42:24
  stories. Don't read the comments to your
• 42:26
  social post. Don't read the comments to your
• 42:29
  post race podcast. People are just going to make
• 42:31
  you mad and I just keep falling for it because I'm a sucker.
• 42:35
  I, I will say I like what it brought out of you.
• 42:38
  So if if we can have more people say stuff that you don't like,
• 42:41
  I'd appreciate that. But yeah, we'll we'll move on.
• 42:46
  Any before we get to O'Reilly, we'll wrap up with the
• 42:49
  O'reilly's race. You made the the Dale
• 42:51
  Earnhardt's grandson comment that that had me chuckling.
• 42:54
  I love that. I love that I got people fired
• 42:56
  up. One, it's true.
• 42:57
  He is Dale Earnhardt's grandson. I don't know if you know how how
• 43:00
  that works people, but short track stuff.
• 43:03
  What's going on? Obviously that was a big moment,
• 43:05
  but is there any other big news or do you want to touch on the
• 43:07
  the Dale Earnhardt grandson message that you got out there?
• 43:11
  No, I mean, I don't think this was that big of a deal, I think.
• 43:15
  You got people talking. I just want people talking.
• 43:16
  That's it. Yeah, so like, listen, Earnhardt
• 43:19
  fans are super, super passionate.
• 43:20
  And obviously Kelly Kelly's response to me was not mean
• 43:25
  spirited. She wasn't even mad.
• 43:28
  We we at short track scene wrote a story that that Wyatt Miller,
• 43:31
  her her son Dale Senior's grandson was involved in a a
• 43:36
  wicked crash. It was a monster truck crash.
• 43:38
  He he ramped over Matthew Laprade and within the context
• 43:43
  of our headline, our story, our social media post, we wrote
• 43:48
  Wyatt Miller and Matthew Laprade, Wyatt Miller.
• 43:50
  There was nothing even in the body of the story that reference
• 43:53
  Dale Senior. I made a business decision
• 43:56
  because you have to be like a super hardcore, not an Earnhardt
• 44:00
  hardcore fan to know that Wyatt Miller is, you know, the heir to
• 44:04
  the Earnhardt legacy. And listen, short track scene is
• 44:07
  a money losing business. Like I love short track racing
• 44:11
  and I want people to know that you know that I run this
• 44:13
  website, it loses money. I am 10 grand in debt and in
• 44:17
  running short track scene because I I love that industry
• 44:19
  and I want people to know what's going on in short track racing
• 44:23
  and I get very few wins to where the website can make money.
• 44:28
  And I'll give you a great example.
• 44:30
  Last year he won in his limited late model debut for a second
• 44:35
  start at Hickory Motor Speedway. And I, I was way more aggressive
• 44:39
  there. I, I put it in the headline.
• 44:41
  Next generation Earnhardt wins first late models start or late
• 44:46
  model win or something like that.
• 44:48
  Nobody was mad that I referenced Dale seniors name there because
• 44:51
  he had a good day. He had this great interview when
• 44:54
  he won a golden driller in the Tulsa shootout.
• 44:58
  He had this interview during the red flag race sounded like Dale
• 45:01
  and I'm not just saying this to to to Papa a headline.
• 45:05
  He genuinely came across like an Earnhardt, like a little bit of
• 45:09
  Dale senior, a little bit of Dale junior, a little bit of
• 45:11
  Kelly. All all of that that lineage
• 45:14
  came across in the interview. You know, there was a fight in
• 45:16
  the grandstands in this red flag and he has his visor flipped up
• 45:20
  and he's doing this interview and he was just like, they're
• 45:23
  fighting some more completely like ignoring the interview.
• 45:26
  Just one track mind, right, Like you've ever known Dale,
• 45:28
  especially Dale can get even at this stage of his life.
• 45:31
  Dale can be like what's interesting and just he's like a
• 45:34
  squirrel, right? He came across like an Earnhardt
• 45:37
  and they're like, well, what are you going to do on this restart?
• 45:41
  He's like, are you go to the high side, low side?
• 45:42
  And he's like, I don't know, maybe I will, maybe that, maybe
• 45:45
  I won't. I just came across like such an
• 45:47
  Earnhardt. And so I, I, I, I, I, I clipped
• 45:51
  the video and I, I tweeted it and I said, what an Earnhardt.
• 45:55
  That's all I said. I said, what an Earnhardt, Wyatt
• 45:57
  Miller. And one of the first quote
• 45:59
  retweets I had was Kelly. She was like, true.
• 46:03
  So it's just so funny to me, like when Wyatt has good days
• 46:07
  and he has a lot of good days, he's going to be a lot of fun to
• 46:09
  watch. No one minds the comparison to
• 46:12
  his grandfather. He had a bad day and I
• 46:14
  referenced it because I knew that by referencing his lineage
• 46:19
  more people would click the story.
• 46:21
  And it did. Well it had 4000 page views
• 46:24
  which means. Which means I can pay the writer
• 46:28
  who is there covering speed week and typically I lose money
• 46:31
  sending someone there to cover that event.
• 46:33
  Does that make me click baby? Sure.
• 46:35
  I mean, I want people to click my.
• 46:36
  Story even click you quote tweeted a tweet that said his
• 46:40
  name like. What do we do with that one?
• 46:42
  Yeah, I want people to click my stories for the same reason that
• 46:46
  McDonald's wants you to eat their hamburgers.
• 46:48
  I, I, I am selling page views and they're selling hamburgers.
• 46:53
  And so if that makes me a clickbait artist, we're fine.
• 46:55
  Me and Kelly are fine. Kelly was like, I respect what
• 46:57
  you do. They're friends.
• 46:58
  I I, I consider myself friends with that family.
• 47:01
  That family has done so much for me.
• 47:03
  And like really subtle ways that a lot of people don't know
• 47:05
  because we have this love for short track racing and the
• 47:09
  access that family gives me, I, I, I never get a, a text message
• 47:14
  ignored or a phone call. That family's so great to me.
• 47:17
  So I'm not disrespecting the Earnhardt's, but I just knew
• 47:20
  that by letting people know, if you don't know who Wyatt Miller
• 47:22
  is, this is the, the heir to the Earnhardt legacy.
• 47:25
  And I knew people would care more about that story because
• 47:28
  that and I had to do that as the owner of the small business.
• 47:32
  Cool. All right, O'reilly's action
• 47:34
  Justin Algar wins. We we had pretty much the the
• 47:37
  favorites. Blaney and Algar took took the
• 47:39
  race wins. Nothing too crazy there.
• 47:41
  What a great race too. It was a good race.
• 47:43
  I, you know, nothing. No crazy storylines really came
• 47:46
  out of there. There.
• 47:47
  It was pretty straightforward. I think the biggest thing was,
• 47:50
  you know, JRM looked dominant as always.
• 47:53
  JGR looked really off for a Phoenix race.
• 47:56
  They did not really seem to have anything in the bag there during
• 47:59
  the race. And then Carson Quapple showed
• 48:02
  up. He looked like he was going to,
• 48:04
  you know, Rodney Childers on the box.
• 48:07
  This is kind of what we expected.
• 48:08
  But it was good to see the first real race of the year like we've
• 48:11
  been talking about. And, and he was able to go out
• 48:13
  and kind of make a statement that he's going to go up there
• 48:15
  and run for for the wins and stuff.
• 48:17
  What'd you make of the O'Reilly Race?
• 48:19
  Well, that's, that's Rodney Childers on your pit box at
• 48:22
  Phoenix, right. We saw Rodney and Kevin do a lot
• 48:25
  of great things at at Phoenix Raceway over the year.
• 48:28
  And I, I think that Carson and not a winning effort showed a
• 48:33
  couple of things that one, Rodney knows this style of car,
• 48:36
  this style of racetrack, and they're going to win some races
• 48:39
  together and you and Connor are going to win some race together.
• 48:43
  You know, the thing that stood out the most to me is just that
• 48:47
  at the end of the day, there's a lot of really good drivers and
• 48:53
  prospects and good teams in the O'Reilly Auto Parts series.
• 48:58
  But just an all guyer is this era's version of kind of an arc
• 49:02
  of Frank Kimmel. That experience and just knowing
• 49:05
  what to do, especially at that racetrack means a hell of a lot.
• 49:09
  And I, I am so grateful as a storyteller and as a fan that we
• 49:14
  have just an all guyer to kind of school the kids.
• 49:17
  And, and we saw mistakes made by Sheldon Creed on restarts.
• 49:21
  We saw a mistake made by Carson and by Sam Mayer.
• 49:25
  And I'm not saying that Justin's a perfect race car driver, but
• 49:28
  he knows everything. Yeah.
• 49:31
  When the pay window opens, he's going to show you how it's done.
• 49:33
  And so I I just think that that race was everything that's good
• 49:37
  right now about the O'Reilly series.
• 49:39
  It's characters as personalities, as crew chiefs,
• 49:41
  the car. And it's just this this season
• 49:46
  is going to be super compelling. You know, Carson splitting time
• 49:49
  with three different teams and Raja, too, and seeing, you know,
• 49:54
  seven took over the points lead and then seeing, you know, how
• 49:56
  can Jesse and Austin maximize their best tracks?
• 49:59
  And I just thought it was a it was a compelling show from
• 50:02
  NASCAR's most compelling series. Absolutely.
• 50:06
  I agree. There is one more thing I want
• 50:08
  to touch on. Like I said, there wasn't a lot
• 50:09
  going on in that race, but the big thing I want to touch on is
• 50:13
  the what I would say midfield teams kind of showed up and and
• 50:17
  were contending it. It was Jeremy Clement's shine.
• 50:20
  I mean, he looked fantastic. He ran top 10 speeds the entire
• 50:23
  time. That's a Hoss car though.
• 50:25
  People need to know that's a Hoss car and Hoss has a good
• 50:27
  package here. Well, that.
• 50:29
  That's what I want to get to. I want to figure out what the
• 50:32
  story is there because this is his best run in three, 4-5
• 50:35
  years. Like he hasn't looked this good
• 50:36
  in a long time. I want to know the back story of
• 50:39
  that affiliation. How much more of this do we
• 50:42
  expect to see the rest of the year and everything else.
• 50:43
  But also, Anthony Alfredo got a top ten.
• 50:46
  He looked really good. Jeb Burton ran top 10 pretty
• 50:49
  much all day minus a few laps they like.
• 50:51
  Those are teams that run 17th, 18th, 22nd, and they were legit
• 50:56
  top 10 contenders. So obviously Haas switched to
• 50:59
  Chevy. That brought the Sieg family
• 51:01
  with them. It seems like Jordan Anderson
• 51:03
  Racing has a little bit better alliance with RCR this year.
• 51:07
  Seems like a lot of movement within that midfield, so to
• 51:10
  speak. Tell me more about Jeremy
• 51:12
  Clements, but then also kind of what we can expect from these
• 51:15
  midfield teams that make and maybe can start challenging for
• 51:17
  top 10s more frequently. Yeah, I would love to.
• 51:20
  And I wasn't at the racetrack, so it's hard for me.
• 51:22
  But if I was there, I would want to know are there certain race
• 51:26
  is kind of like would seek, right?
• 51:27
  Like, you know, there are certain races that that Ryan has
• 51:32
  a feel for and they buy the premium package, they get the
• 51:35
  refreshed engine, they get the good stuff, they buy everything
• 51:38
  fresh. And you and they're they're
• 51:39
  they're running basically cost cars.
• 51:42
  And then you see that in his performance.
• 51:44
  You can tell when they're running that A tier package.
• 51:47
  And I don't think they're doing it every single week.
• 51:49
  And that's the way this this series works, right?
• 51:51
  Like sometimes you're running the the beats the B stuff and
• 51:53
  sometimes you're running the A stuff.
• 51:55
  And I would not be surprised if this was a a racetrack where
• 51:58
  Jeremy was like, I love this place.
• 52:00
  And if you give me the A tier stuff, yeah, I'm going to show
• 52:03
  out. So that that is my guess.
• 52:06
  But the other thing too is, you know, God bless this series and
• 52:11
  this platform. It's old like these, these cars
• 52:14
  even look old sometimes, right? Like you can just tell that this
• 52:17
  is a relic, almost like trucks too, right?
• 52:20
  This is a relic of a bygone era. This is not the top of the line,
• 52:24
  fresh, technologically advanced, but everyone, everyone
• 52:28
  understands it. There's no secret about this
• 52:31
  platform. Everyone knows how to make it go
• 52:32
  fast. It's just a matter of are you
• 52:34
  spending to refresh those parts and to have the best tier motor.
• 52:39
  And so I, I think it's the best version of parity in the sense
• 52:44
  that you and the cup series is forced parody.
• 52:47
  Everyone literally has the same car and we're talking about how
• 52:50
  far do you go on air pressure and camber and stagger and, you
• 52:54
  know, ride heights, all these little things, right.
• 52:58
  In the, the no app series, it's more about everyone understands
• 53:03
  the rules and everyone knows, like even the lower tier teams
• 53:07
  know what the fast teams are doing.
• 53:08
  It's just a matter of can we spend to do it?
• 53:11
  And so I, I think that it just makes the competition really,
• 53:15
  really solid because people are going to fluctuate.
• 53:20
  People are going to run their A package versus their B package.
• 53:22
  And I don't know if I'm articulating this really well.
• 53:26
  I just think that it's just the best version of that style of
• 53:29
  racing and because it's such a known commodity.
• 53:32
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean trucks, same thing.
• 53:34
  I mean, very, very little has changed about the trucks.
• 53:36
  Like you mentioned it, it is kind of, and I think that's why
• 53:40
  they're racing so good almost, you know, they, they have
• 53:43
  platforms that a lot of guys can compete.
• 53:45
  It is still somewhat equipment based.
• 53:47
  It is still somewhat about who has the most money and can
• 53:51
  spend. But there are moments where a
• 53:54
  lot of drivers can shine. A lot of teams can shine if if
• 53:57
  they put forth. And I was just really excited to
• 54:00
  see him up there because I, you know, for my website, I wrote up
• 54:03
  about Jeremy Clements last three years and how bad he's been.
• 54:06
  And you know, he's the guy that's been in the The O'Reilly
• 54:09
  series for 15 years or something at this point.
• 54:11
  The first couple were, were not great, but decent.
• 54:14
  And then he kind of clicked off. He got to win at Rd.
• 54:16
  America. He had a bunch of top 10s.
• 54:18
  He was a competitive guy. In the last 2-3 years, it felt
• 54:21
  like that just went away. And so it was really cool for me
• 54:24
  as a fan of the series, it's a fan of watching these guys to
• 54:26
  see him be competitive. They build their own motor and I
• 54:29
  don't know what motor they had in their car, but he said it.
• 54:32
  Was a Hendrick one on on the broadcast?
• 54:35
  Well, then there we go. That explains I was I was
• 54:37
  working on my stories there. But you know, they typically
• 54:40
  historically build their own motors are one of the few
• 54:42
  independent O'Reilly Series teams that build their own
• 54:46
  motors as their way of, you know, cutting cost.
• 54:49
  And they're very good, like Clements engines across short
• 54:53
  track racing, drag racing, They are masters of the craft.
• 54:57
  So they know what they're doing. But again, going back to my
• 55:00
  point about the natural parody is that there are certain races
• 55:03
  then where you know, you want to run the A package.
• 55:05
  And I, I, I suspect they were not running their own when they
• 55:07
  went to Rd. America or Daytona.
• 55:10
  They are going to pick races where it's like, we want the
• 55:12
  good stuff because this is not a race that we're coming just to
• 55:18
  have a good day. We're we're coming to have a
• 55:20
  great day. And that's an example of a way
• 55:22
  you can do it. Perfect.
• 55:24
  All right, Well, let's wrap this thing up unless you want to talk
• 55:26
  Formula One. Do you have any energy for this?
• 55:29
  I watched approximately 0 seconds of Formula One and
• 55:33
  listen, I, I say this every week and I don't want people to clip
• 55:35
  this and be like, what a hater. I just don't have a bandwidth.
• 55:38
  I, I watch supercars this weekend.
• 55:40
  I love supercars, So it's not like I, I hate international
• 55:43
  racing. I I run short track scene,
• 55:49
  wanted to take off the most famous family in NASCAR history.
• 55:54
  I had seven different races to cover as a when a World of
• 56:00
  Outlaws race to Talladega. I think that's the coolest
• 56:05
  story. And Donnie Schott's demise has
• 56:12
  been drastically overstated. Did I go away?
• 56:20
  Did you go away? What happened?
• 56:21
  Yeah, you're, you're cutting out for me.
• 56:24
  That's good. OK, are we back?
• 56:26
  We'll wrap it up. Donny Shots is awesome.
• 56:30
  Donny Shots ain't dead. There we go yeah, we we should
• 56:34
  talk some more about law sometime too.
• 56:35
  All right, so Vegas is coming out weekend standard Oval
• 56:39
  racing, intermediate package. Excited to see if we have the
• 56:42
  normal good show with that. I think we will.
• 56:44
  I appreciate everyone for checking out the show.
• 56:46
  Appreciate Matt, of course, for being here with us again, check
• 56:49
  out short track scene. Make sure you're clicking on
• 56:51
  those articles so he can get paid without having to click
• 56:55
  bait. He'll click bait for you.
• 56:58
  We'll see you next week. Thank you, Matt.
• 57:00
  See you guys. Thank you.
• 57:01
  Thank you once again. See you guys.