Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / NASCAR's Clash at Bowman Gray Was Old School Awesome | Rick Mast Show

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NASCAR's Clash at Bowman Gray Was Old School Awesome | Rick Mast Show · Kenny Wallace Media

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All right, everybody, we are live.
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It is the Rick Mast Show. I'm Charlie Marlowe.
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That is the great Rick Mast. He's got his Atlanta Braves hat.
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He's sporting the beard as well. Is that a winter thing?
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Is that a new thing? Charlie I haven't done this.
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Maybe when I was 20 years of age, I had a beard one time and
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then for about 6 months when I drove for Remington in 97, I had
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a Fu Manchu thing going. And other than that and what
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happened, I went like 3 or 4 days showering and I didn't have
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a razor, right? I lost the razor.
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It got thrown away and I had this little gruff growing,
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right? And I'm like, maybe I just let
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it grow out a little bit. But I, you know, yeah, I don't
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know how much longer this is going to take.
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I'm, I'm not sure they'll like it.
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You know, man, if you talk, you get food hung and you get
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whiskers and you blow your nose and things.
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They're just not clean like I think they should be.
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But I don't know. We'll see how it goes.
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Well, it looks good. It usually comes down to what
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the missus thinks. For example, my wife loves the
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fact that I have this, whatever you want to call it.
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It's not really a beard, but it's something.
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But she likes it, so that's why I keep it.
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Well, so far, that's what's going on.
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I think my bride likes it. My children do not like it, but
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my bride likes it. So we'll hold it.
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We'll hang on to it here for a little bit.
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All right, let's get right to it, buddy, because NASCAR season
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is upon us. We had the Clash on Sunday,
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really all weekend long. Saturday you had the heat races
1:22
and all that. I thought it was fantastic.
1:25
I'll give my thoughts also, but it's your show, buddy.
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What'd you think of the clash at Bowman Gray Stadium?
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Man, oh man, you know when when they first announced that
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everybody liked it because being at Bowman Gate Gray.
1:37
But then everybody thought, well, it's going to be like the
1:39
Coliseum. Well, guess what?
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It wasn't like the Coliseum. It was like, it was like friggin
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madhouse, right? It was like the modified stuff
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that everybody's used to watching down there and it, you
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know, it just, it, it was just a, it's just, you think it's the
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same size, but it's really not. The guys had more, more room.
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I'm comparing it to the, to the Colosseum.
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They had more room to do stuff and maneuver.
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And you know, we actually saw a couple guys pass on the outside,
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which you just cannot do there. But it's same kind of deal on
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any short track you get under somebody, if you could just get
2:09
an inch under them in the center of the turn and squeeze a little
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bit and bump a little bit, you know, you can make a pass and
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make things happen. And that's what a lot of the
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guys did. The thing I tell you, Charlie,
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the thing that really got me about this whole deal was the
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excitement from the competitors, right?
2:26
And I want to dive into that a little bit because, you know, I
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want to give you a story. I I know A championship driver
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that's out there right now that had a conversation with one of
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my drivers not very long ago, OK?
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And he was asking him all kinds of questions about in our era,
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what it was like to go to Charlotte with 180,000 people,
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right? Or go to Bristol with 130,000
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people, go to Richmond with 110,000 people.
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He, he was genuinely interested in what it was like from a
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driver's perspective to be in the middle of that, right.
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And, and when, when I heard about all that conversation, I
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got to thinking, you know, when, when I was there, we came
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through all through the 90s and I watched the explosion.
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I watched all the grandstands being built.
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I watched you couldn't get in either.
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You couldn't get in the race tracks.
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You couldn't get out of the race tracks, right.
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I'm talking Friday and Saturdays.
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A lot of times we would do, you know, like a Friday night or
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Saturday night, the sponsors or whoever would have us going
3:30
somewhere and doing an autograph session that we would, you know,
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we'd go to it. Well, it got to be a lot of
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those places, even on Saturdays, we had to, they had to have a
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helicopter pick us up to take us to the event because there was
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just so many frigging people even there the day before the
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race. You couldn't get out, get in and
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out of the race tracks, you know, and, but, but the other
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part of it is and, and Chase Elliott brought it up.
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Chase brought it up. He's talking about it's a small
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venue, he said. But man, the excitement that was
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in here, right? What was it?
4:00
17,000 people? And the place was packed and it
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is a madhouse. And that, that fan base there is
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wide open anyhow, right? And we saw that when Stenhouse
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wrecked the dude, the buyer's guy or whoever was or whichever
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1 he wrecked, you know, and everybody in the stands was was
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given the finger, you know, which was typical at Bowman
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Green. But it was so cool.
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But the the drivers, man, what I'm saying is the drivers got
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to, I think they got a sense of what we dealt with or what we
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had every single week because when we race, man, I mean, when
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you went out there that the stands were sold out, you know,
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they couldn't build the stands quick enough.
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When they when they built the new grandstand, it was sold out,
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right? You couldn't get a ticket.
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And people were hoping and hollering and loud and just, you
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know, it was just, it was such a magical time that what those
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guys, what the drivers experienced at Bowman Gray was
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in a much, much, much smaller, smaller scale of what we were
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able to witness and be involved with for, you know, a better
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part of a decade. And it it was just and the only
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reason I say that is because this championship driver was
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really inquisitive and asking how it used to be, you know, and
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he was, he got to where like, you know, he was sad that he
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doesn't get to experience what we experienced with the
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enthusiasm and the just sheer volumes of friggin people, you
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know, that we had. And, you know, I feel bad that
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today's drivers don't get to witness that.
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But if everyone of you guys is listening to this broadcast, you
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drivers, if you look at the environment that you dealt with
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Sunday night at Bowman Gray, multiply that by 10, right, for
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numbers of people. That's what it used to be like
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with us. And, you know, times have
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changed and everything's worked around.
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We got TV now. We got all the different
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marketing and everything in the sports going along just great.
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But you know, I, I just, you know, it was really strange,
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Charlie, that a driver from today's era would would be so
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inquisitive about how it used to be and then be kind of sad that
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he wasn't, you know, he didn't get to experience that.
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Does that make sense? It does to me.
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Absolutely. And I was surprised, you know,
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I'd heard of Bowman Gray, but then as you start to research a
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little bit, you start to watch the coverage.
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For me, I was watching all the driver media availabilities on
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Saturday. I was surprised they hadn't
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raced there since 1971. I, I, I thought it was not as
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long ago that the Cup Series was there.
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So, I mean, we're talking about hell, what, over over 50 years
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had you ever raced at Bowman Gray coming up in any type of
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series in your career? No.
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No, never did I only I was only there one time, I think when I
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visited Richard Childress's compound a few years ago, I
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dropped by there and just looked at the place because I'd never
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attended event. And then when they, when they
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made the TV series of it, the Bad House, you know, that kind
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of got sparked my interest like, well, I need to go down and
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watch one of those races And I never did.
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But you could see, you could see from the Bad House series and
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you could see Saturday and Sunday's telecast when he showed
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the fans and the stands and what was going on.
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Hell, the people never sit down, Charlie.
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They stood up for the friggin we went to friggin Cole Swindell.
7:12
Yeah, but it was Cole Swindell concert three or three weeks ago
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and friggin people kept standing and standing and standing.
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I had good seats and I'm like, man, I'm old.
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Somebody sit down. It's fine.
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It was like halfway through the concert for the people start
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sitting down, right? I'm like, damn, don't do this.
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What They they stood up all night in Boeinger, 200 laps.
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Dude, the people are standing up.
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They never sit down, right? That's excitement that that's
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somebody's wanting to see what's happening.
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And then of course it pisses you off if you get tired and old,
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you want to sit down and you can't see the race.
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But yeah, what was your question?
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If you'd ever raced there, which you said you had, but you had
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been there the one time. So if you go for the whole
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weekend, it being the madhouse, so you had, you had a couple
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racks, couple spins here and there.
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But I thought it was the right amount, right?
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It wasn't a rack fest where it was an embarrassment.
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I thought it was just enough racy, you know, race ability you
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had on Saturday night. Ryan Priest did spin out John
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Hunter Nemechek because he wanted to get in the show.
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You had what, Hosovar also on Sunday.
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But it was pretty racy. And obviously Chase Elliott
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wins. But look, if if your complaint,
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let's say in the last several years about the Clash in the
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Coliseum was, oh, it's too small, you can't pass.
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I mean, Ryan Blaney went from dead last 23rd, 2 seconds and he
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had one of the better quotes on Sunday.
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He said, look, I, I probably could have just bulldogged,
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bulldozed Chase Elliott, but I don't want to leave this place
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with the pitchforks coming out knowing all the Chase Elliott
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fans are going to be mad at me. So I mean, look, he was
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respectful there, but he passed freaking what, 21 cars, whatever
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it was so you could pass. Yeah, and I think it was what, 6
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cautions Sunday night, 7 with a halfway break.
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I think I'm right about that number.
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Now, if we, if you start out Saturday night watching the heat
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races, you like the very first heat Rakes, I'm like, man, we're
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going to be 3 O clock in the American morning getting all
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these races over with. But they got all those wrecks
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out of the way. It seemed like in the first heat
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race. A lot of that stuff stopped
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then. And then by the time we got to
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Sunday's race, man, it was just, it's the perfect deal.
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I mean, there's a reason, Charlie.
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There's a reason the Bowman Gray Stadium packs those grandstands
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all through the spring and summer with the regional shows,
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the modified shows in the other series that runs there.
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There's a reason for that is, you know what I mean?
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And, and the reason is the competition.
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The guys trying to get by each other, they get mad and finally
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move somebody out of the way. Then they start fighting.
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Well, I don't think it's so much the fighting.
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I think it's the actual competition, you know, the
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track, you know, the track just lends itself to that type of
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that type of environment and that type of excitement.
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You know, it's kind of like the old South Side Speedway in
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Richmond, you know, real reminiscent of that race track,
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that race track, real reminiscent of Bowman Gray.
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And they're they're working hard try to get that track back open,
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you know, as we speak. But you know, there's, you know,
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it, it, yeah, it's 17,000 people, right?
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That's not a big number for for Cup.
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But you know, if you had a if, if that was a Coliseum seating,
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you're right. You know, if you had if you had
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80,000 seats, you would probably maybe not this time, but next
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year it would probably sell out. It would probably sell that
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thing out just because of the excitement that that that race
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produced for everybody watching it, you know, and if you just,
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you know, yeah, it's short. It's it's, what was it, 63 miles
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an hour, I think average lap speed, which means you're
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running 80 before you stop from the quarters.
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And it's not fast for Cup cars, but it's still racing.
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It's still the, it's the core being of what we do, man.
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Everybody that is racing at Daytona next week, all those
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guys started out somewhere on these little tiny bull rings.
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And that's where that's where you learn your trade as a
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driver. That's where you learn your
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craft, man and master yourself. And then when you go on out and
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make it big time, then when you come back to one of these deals,
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you know, your, your, your skill level is just improved so much.
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And it's just, it's just a fun deal for all the drivers.
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And thankfully, thankfully, thank God that it worked out for
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NASCAR and the fans that, that you know, 'cause you know, the
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whole, this whole deal is about the fans, man.
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You know what, Charlie, it's, it's about the fans.
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The drivers don't do anything any different.
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I mean, when, when the green flag drops, they're running just
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as hard as they can. You're running on that edge of
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that envelope without wrecking or spinning out or losing
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control. Whether you be at Bowman, Gray
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or Talladega, it's all the same. Yeah.
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And you talked about the 17,000 fans to me, it's not just about
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the total number, right? It presented well, I wasn't
11:52
there, but it looked good on TV. And I also think sometimes that
11:57
that more intimate atmosphere a a, a packed standing room crowd
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of 17,000 to me on TV especially looks better than half full
12:07
grandstands. If there's only let's say not
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only let's say there's 30,000 people at a race, but there's a
12:13
bunch of empty grandstand seats, right?
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It looked cool on TV. It looked throwback, retro,
12:20
classic, old school, whatever word you want to use.
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I also think just the fact that it was cold added to making it
12:27
look cool. You saw Noah Gregson with his
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camouflage. You saw Denny Hamlin there
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bundled up. It just, it just seemed like a
12:35
really cool throwback and a different, you know, I think
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NASCAR is going for different and sometimes different isn't
12:43
always better. But in this case, I think it
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was. It was, it was a unique look.
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I mean, the weather, the bands on the field before the game, it
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was just a cool, distinct event, which I think was NASCAR's goal.
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And it was. It was a great event.
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Yeah, I mean, we saw the shot of Denny Hammond and with some
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drivers sitting on the grass, you know, outside of the track
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watching the heat races and all that.
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And that's what we used to do, man.
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You said you'd be a racetrack, you'd be running heat races.
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You you'd go up to pit wall to the wall and stand there against
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the wall watching the race as a driver.
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And you know, if you go to a lot of these shows now, the dirt
13:19
tracks and all, they do the same thing.
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And you're sitting up there. If it's hot, maybe you drink a
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beer. If it's cold, you're struggled
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up. And it's just it makes for an
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exciting spirits for the drivers and it turns out for the for the
13:30
fans. I got a couple buddies of mine
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and went down there and they were telling me about the whole
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experience. And he said they they ended up
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leaving not too far past halfway of the race because he's buddy
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had nothing on but AT shirt And my this buddy, my buddy was
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telling him, man, it's go get cold.
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Not you did take a coat in there.
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No, I don't need no coat. Well, the poor guy sit there and
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shivered, shivered, shivered and shake and shook and he about
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froze and he said they finally had to leave halfway, halfway
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past the halfway point, like 3/4 of the way through the race,
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they had leave. And I said, well, did you ever
14:05
sit down? He said, sit down.
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I said, yeah, I said during the race, look like a lot of people
14:09
are standing. He fought for a minute and he
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says, no, we stood up the whole time.
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I said you didn't think about that sitting down.
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He said when he hit, he looked around a little bit.
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He said no, never thought about sitting down.
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Hell, everybody's standing up. Everybody's standing up.
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Hoot the dollar. You know you couldn't if you
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said hell, you couldn't see anything.
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But I never even once got tired. He said he he's, he's got gout
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in his foot, right? So his foot hurts a lot.
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He said down. Once I got to the car, it dawned
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on me, I really screwed up tonight because I've been
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standing for this whole frigging event, he said.
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But when we were in there, we never, never thought about
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sitting down, you know what I mean?
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And like with me at a concert, I think about sitting down when
14:47
ambassadors are in front of me, blocking my view, right.
14:49
So, you know, that's just one guy, his experience of what he
14:54
felt there. You know, you stood the whole
14:56
time and didn't know, you know, you didn't know, you weren't
15:00
studying down. And I think all those optics,
15:03
like you, to your point, all these optics came through on TV,
15:07
right? Place was packed.
15:09
People were, you know, hooping and hollering and tussing,
15:11
giving the finger. Dude, it's like that time I went
15:13
to Charlotte in the middle of all that deal when you hit
15:16
stands all the way around there and well, maybe they hadn't
15:20
built up there, but it was packed.
15:22
It was during the Beaudight Earnhardt few days, right?
15:24
And I rode a pace lap around. I rode a pace lap around
15:27
Charlotte on a convertible for the race, pre race with Jeff
15:31
Beaudine. I must have qualified beside
15:33
him. Let me tell you something.
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When I came back in, I went straight Dick, straight to Dick
15:36
Beatty. And I said, Dick, here's the
15:38
deal. Anytime in the future we have
15:41
pre race play the prey laps and I qualify beside Jeff Bodine.
15:45
You're going to start me in the rear.
15:47
He says why? I said I am not going to do that
15:49
again. He said we me.
15:50
I said, dude, I ended up down in the front seat, barreled down.
15:54
They were throwing stuff over the stands at Bodine, right?
15:57
I'm talking chicken bones and beer cans and bottles.
16:00
This stuff was coming out of the fragging grandstands at us,
16:03
right? And because they were all, of
16:06
course, Earnhardt fans, they had to go down at the time.
16:08
And it was, it was the craziest times, man.
16:11
You know, they did that at Talladega to on the back strips
16:14
after the race. But either Jeff Gordon or Jimmy
16:17
Johnson one time after the race littered the whole racetrack,
16:20
that stuff. And then, you know, when you see
16:22
a group of fans together and they're that excited and that
16:25
that into it and they're doing that stuff, you know, it's just,
16:28
it's just excited. And that's what I went this
16:30
Sunday night at Bowman Gray. The same type of excitement,
16:34
electricity and enthusiasm that we used to live every single
16:38
week, you know. So what do you think?
16:41
There's a lot of discussion now about the future of the Clash
16:44
and what what they should do. You already did LA.
16:48
You could go back to Daytona. I like the idea of just kind of
16:52
sprinkling around some of these old school, these old school
16:56
short tracks. And and if you have a different
16:58
track, they already did this with North Wilkesboro, obviously
17:00
with the All Star race. But let's say there's a, an
17:03
underperforming track that has some historical power within
17:07
racing. You, you bring the Clash there,
17:09
you help renovate the facilities, you get the safer
17:11
barriers. It's good for racing all around
17:14
at a grass roots level. I, I don't know, I, I think
17:16
that's kind of the way to go. Maybe you have 345 tracks,
17:21
shorter tracks like Bowman Gray and you kind of rotate them like
17:25
that. What do you think?
17:26
Yeah, but we we've heard that a lot of people have talked about
17:29
that this week, Charlie, and I've seen it written.
17:31
I've seen people talking about it.
17:32
I think it's a great idea, right?
17:33
It's a great idea. You know, Bowman Gray has made
17:36
its case to bring it back, right?
17:38
It's made its case. You need to bring it back here.
17:40
And I I totally understand if they go back and do that, the
17:44
other side of that and a lot of people putting this, voicing
17:46
this out there and, you know, you could go to attract the
17:49
struggle man. I mean, we golly any of them and
17:52
go in there and spend the money and spruce it up like it put
17:55
those lights in there right, get it all spruced up.
17:58
The downside Charlie, is we're talking 17,000 seating capacity
18:02
at Bowman Gray. Not very, very few of the tracks
18:06
that we talk about have that capability.
18:09
I mean, you're talking 789 maybe, maybe a couple of them
18:14
with a capability holding 10,000.
18:16
If you put thicker bleachers up, there's where the rub comes in,
18:20
right? That's the that's really
18:22
honestly, Charlie, that's the only negative to this thing that
18:25
I can see now. You know, the infrastructure and
18:28
all that. Well, it's already it's already
18:30
there for however many seats they got.
18:32
But if you could do that once a year, go to South Boston, go to
18:35
Hickory, go to go wherever, right, anywhere across the
18:38
country really. You know, that that a track
18:41
that's been there a long time has got longevity.
18:43
It's ruined properly. It's got good promoters, It's
18:45
got a little bit of a future. You know, you go in there and
18:48
you you spend the money and do this stuff to get for that one
18:51
race and then that'll carry that track for decades, right?
18:55
The stuff that's, I mean, they were talking about Bowman,
18:57
great. Now it's ready for the next 50
18:59
years. OK.
19:00
And I think it's a great idea. It's just, you know, that it's
19:05
just it comes down to the number of people in the stands.
19:08
You don't want to go to racetrack.
19:10
And they got one set of grandstands on the front
19:12
straightaway and they're packed for that race.
19:15
That's fine. But the TV catches 3/4 of the
19:18
racetrack or half the racetrack empty with no people.
19:21
You know, you didn't get that sense at Bowman Gray.
19:23
You got the sense of all the way around there, even though it
19:26
wasn't in three and four. But the rest of it was so full
19:29
and packed. That would be the only thing
19:31
that I would, you know. And then you could, you could go
19:34
in and do you spend the money, put up grandstands, man, do
19:37
temporary grandstands, put up a few thousand.
19:39
You could do that. But along with that comes
19:41
infrastructure. Have an infrastructure to be
19:43
able to handle the traffic flow and, and, and toilets like up a
19:47
wheel used to say 3 TS traffic tickets and toilets, right?
19:51
And you got to have all those. So there's there's you know,
19:53
when you add something to the equation that it adds something
19:56
else to the equation that has to be addressed and looked at.
19:58
But I think on its premise, I think it's I think it's a great
20:02
idea. You each year go some more
20:04
different. And in 10 years, man, you fixed
20:07
up 10 race tracks. Tracks.
20:09
Because listen, dude. They say what they want to say
20:12
and do what they want to do. But those people at Bowman Gray
20:14
that pack that thing every Saturday night, those are the
20:17
people that turn the race on on Sunday and watch the Cup Series,
20:20
right? It used, it was that way back in
20:22
my day. I got all kinds of proof of my
20:25
earplugs. I got all kinds of proof of
20:27
these things happening. You know, you, you excite the
20:30
Saturday night local racetrack fad with Worcester Cup presents
20:34
or I'm sorry, cut presents. I say wasn't cut because that's
20:37
what we used to do. We would excite the Saturday
20:40
night race fans with our presents, being there for
20:43
autographs or running the exhibition race or whatever.
20:46
Those people would then turn around and turn in on Sunday and
20:49
watch the race. You know, you take all those
20:52
race tracks away or a bunch of them away, which has been
20:54
happening. We've lost so many short tracks
20:56
in our country. You know, you lose that, you
20:59
lose that possible viewer that's going to watch your race on
21:02
Sunday, watch that commercial and buy that beer that's
21:04
advertising, right. So, you know, it's a, it's a
21:07
big, it's, it's a big gosh. It's a, it's a big, it's a big
21:13
deal. It's a giant, it's a giant
21:15
situation that that encompasses so many things that, you know,
21:19
we used to have that we don't have now.
21:22
And I think, you know, something like this could help that.
21:24
Yeah. And maybe I'm biased.
21:28
We're biased. You obviously made your career
21:30
in NASCAR. I now am essentially a full time
21:33
NASCAR content creator. So my living is is based on
21:38
NASCAR. So I think I'm more excited just
21:40
when the season starts. But it does feel like there's
21:43
more positivity this year coming off the Clash being very
21:48
successful. Everybody takes a a week off for
21:51
the Super Bowl. Of course you have the Daytona
21:53
500 after that. But I don't know, I'm just you
21:55
know, and and we'll get to a couple not so great storylines
21:59
in a second, but I don't know, I think things are pretty good for
22:02
NASCAR right now. You're in year 4 of the Next
22:04
Gen. car. They're figuring that out.
22:06
I feel like they tinker and get better with that every single
22:10
year. I know there's a lot of
22:11
discussion about the playoff format and they're not going to
22:14
change it this year, but it does draw interest in the sport, even
22:18
if some old school fans don't necessarily love it.
22:21
The the lawsuit thing, which I think was the big story of the
22:24
offseason, I don't really see that hanging over the season,
22:28
right? I think even Denny Hamlin,
22:30
everybody involved, I mean, there's a lot of storylines
22:32
around the NASCAR lawsuit during the winter, but I think they
22:36
even realize it. It's it's probably not great for
22:38
the sport during season to focus on that.
22:40
So I don't know, I'm seeing a lot of positivity.
22:43
What do you think? Yeah, you're exactly right.
22:45
The the and the, the lawsuit thing is a good example, right?
22:50
It, it came out, you know, right at the, at our championship week
22:53
or whatever's going on and kind of it kind of took away some of
22:57
the headlines from our championship week, I felt like.
22:59
And then we went through it there a little bit in December,
23:02
but now I think it's just one of those deals where, you know, you
23:06
know, all right, I got the lawsuit going on.
23:07
No big deal, right? It's just something over here on
23:09
the side going on. I I agree 100%.
23:12
I don't think it's going to bring any negativity to us right
23:15
now because it's just it's an older story, you know, and
23:18
everybody likes the 24 hour bait clip right now, Charlie and you
23:23
know everything else is going on.
23:26
We don't we you know, they they they started out they started
23:29
out social media started out early Saturday with the heat
23:33
races raising hell about probably running here right.
23:36
But time Sunday night, 95% of that negativity went away right
23:41
because the guys put on the heck of a show and everybody's
23:44
excited liked it. So that's kind of what we're
23:46
built. That's the momentum we're going
23:48
to be carrying in to Daytona next week and it it'll carry
23:51
food if we go down there and you know, we don't have any major
23:55
problems. We have a good exciting race,
23:57
which we always do at Daytona. I think they they've got,
24:00
they've got tons of momentum on their side right now.
24:02
I mean, you know, the so many of our storylines are gone and for
24:06
so long it's been about this race car, right, this new car.
24:08
Well, you can't, you can't keep beating the dead horse.
24:10
The guys keep keep dragging on that.
24:12
We it is what it is. We got it and everybody's happy
24:14
about it now, or maybe not happy, but they've got what
24:17
they've got. You know, and I'm going to tell
24:19
you something else. You people can like this or not
24:22
like it, but Chase Elliott dominating that race and winning
24:26
that race is big. It's big for this sport, right?
24:31
Chase Elliott needs to be a dominant winner this year,
24:34
right? It's just like, it's like when
24:37
we had Dale Junior still winning, running with us, right?
24:40
Dale Junior, we did. The sport needed him to be a
24:43
champion at some point, right? Be a dominant driver, be a just
24:47
because he's the most popular driver and, and, and, and, and
24:51
what he does, just like Chase today, what he does drives TV
24:56
ratings. I mean, people might not like it
24:58
or by degree or not agree, but I'm telling you, he drives TV
25:01
ratings. And for him to Don make that
25:03
race and win the way he did that, that that bodes well for
25:08
Beau Benham, for everything else that goes on.
25:11
Yeah, Kenny Wallace and I were talking about this on Sunday
25:14
night. We did a live stream right after
25:16
the race and we were discussing just the superstars or lack
25:20
thereof in NASCAR. And he said, I believe that, you
25:23
know, he thinks Denny Hamlin is, is the, is the only real
25:26
superstar. And I'm, I'm just thinking, if
25:30
you're thinking off the top of your head, the big names, Denny
25:32
Hamlin, Kyle Larson, you mentioned Chase Elliott.
25:37
I don't know though. And I mean, obviously Ryan
25:39
Blaney is a great driver. I, I just, I don't know if any
25:43
of the current crop of NASCAR drivers have that Q rating
25:47
beyond NASCAR racing fans, even even to the casual sports fans.
25:53
I think that's what NASCAR has to work on marketing wise.
25:55
And, and they obviously know that.
25:57
But I bring that up because it, it is kind of a big story that
26:00
Ross Chastain is going to be in a Super Bowl commercial, right?
26:03
And for a lot of people, whatever the number for the
26:05
Super Bowl, 100 million, however many people watch it, I mean, it
26:08
is important for some of the big NASCAR names to kind of be out
26:12
there more on a national stage. Like when I was growing up in
26:15
the 90s, you'd see Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon.
26:18
You would see Dale Earnhardt Junior later on when I was in my
26:21
teens. And I, I think, I think we need
26:24
more of that NASCAR. So it's it's a good, it's a good
26:27
step that Ross Chastain's going to be in a Super Bowl
26:29
commercial. Yeah, and I don't know that I
26:31
mean, this, this is a whole different area, Charlie, we're
26:33
talking about. But you know, it's been one of
26:35
my deals for a good while. And I've, I've spoken to NASCAR
26:38
over the years about this Is, is, is heroes, heroes.
26:42
You could call it whatever you want to call it, but to me, it's
26:44
called heroes, right, dude. And I keep, I hate keep going
26:49
back to my time. My time was my time.
26:51
A lot of it, a lot of it, a lot of my time wasn't that great,
26:54
but there were great periods in my time and great things that
26:57
happened. And one of the great things that
26:59
happened that was going on in my time, these guys I would race
27:03
against, they were frigging American heroes, right?
27:06
They're like they're like a part of American you average race
27:10
fan. They could they could identify
27:13
with Dale Earnhardt, right? They could identify with a Harry
27:16
get. They could identify with these
27:18
guys. And then somebody like Jeff
27:19
Gordon comes along, a different guy that a lot of our race fans
27:23
couldn't identify with, but he brought a whole contingent of,
27:27
of younger race fans that they could identify with.
27:30
Right. Then you had the good, the bad,
27:31
the, the ugly, evil and all that, right?
27:34
With with the, the fuse and the and the racing.
27:37
But rusty wall. I mean, so many of these guys,
27:39
hell, I was, they were my heroes, Charlie and I was trying
27:41
to kick your ass every week, right?
27:43
And I'm like, which was a pretty weird phenomenon, But, you know,
27:48
somehow or for some reason, you know, we're not, we're not
27:55
perceiving these guys as heroes, right?
27:58
The closest you're going to get these names, you just said
28:02
Chase, you know, and hell, who'd you just say?
28:05
Denny Hamlin. Larson.
28:06
Denny and Larson. Larson so much because he races
28:09
all over the country all the time.
28:11
He picks up, he picks up all these Saturday night boring race
28:14
fans all the time. These people love Kyle Larson.
28:17
And yeah, my wife is bitched the other day.
28:19
I really like Kyle Larson. Really.
28:22
Why he'd get anything and drive it.
28:23
That's it. Yeah.
28:24
And when she said yeah, I'm like, damn, that's a pretty.
28:27
You got to know my wife to know. That was a very, very bold
28:31
statement, Charlie. OK, because she doesn't isn't as
28:35
intense and nice car as she used to be, right?
28:38
She's a casual fan. Yeah, casual fan, you might say,
28:41
but man, it's just like, and I don't know what we do to, to get
28:46
the hero status back. I don't know.
28:48
I I know golly we go off on this stuff when you know the great
28:54
Ken Squire dude, when Ken Squire used to do TV when that race was
29:01
going on, you absolutely felt that those guys you're watching
29:05
in those race cars were modern day gladiators.
29:10
Just damn damn life, damn everything.
29:14
I'm going to win this race or die tried.
29:17
And Ken Squire made you feel like that, right?
29:21
Barney Hall did it on radio. He did the same thing on radio.
29:25
You know, I don't know if it's that.
29:29
Some of that we could add to it, maybe drivers, you know,
29:34
expressing their own personality.
29:36
Listen, dude, I know a lot of these guys or a lot of them, I
29:38
don't know. But some of them I do know.
29:39
And what you see on TV is maybe not exactly what they really
29:43
are, but they're still buttoned up.
29:45
You know, they're so buttoned up on TV because because that's
29:48
just the way the world is now. You can't, you know, you can't
29:51
express yourself and say things and do things the way you want
29:54
to because the sponsor might get bad that you did this wrong.
29:57
And, you know, I don't know, I don't know what the answer to
30:00
that is. But I do know this, Charlie, if
30:04
Americans, Americans fans, race fans, if they perceive somebody,
30:08
a driver to be a hero to them, it drives everything.
30:12
It drives everything for that sport.
30:14
It drives that fan to buy that product.
30:17
It drives that fan to no, I'm not going to record the race.
30:20
I got to watch it. I got to see it live, right?
30:22
It drives all that stuff. And you know, I'm not knocking
30:26
the guys don't listen. I'm not knocking the guy's
30:28
iteration. I'm just saying, you know, where
30:30
the sport is right now, what the guidelines and everything these
30:34
guys got to, you know, operate under.
30:37
I think it it takes away from that.
30:39
But you know, you still put a good product on the racetrack,
30:43
you back a good race out of the race.
30:44
And, and, and then it'll always, that part will always work.
30:48
That part will always be true. That part will always work.
30:50
But we can do other things to make it better.
30:53
Yeah, I know a lot of people have talked about the the
30:55
changing paint schemes and this being part of the issue.
30:58
I just wonder how you can combat that though, because another big
31:02
storyline of the weekend was the lack of sponsorship and, and
31:06
we'll talk about the Xfinity in a second here.
31:08
I'll bring up the the questioner, the the quote here.
31:11
Let's see our guy Ronnie McKee says who in the world is going
31:14
to replace Xfinity since they have announced their departure,
31:17
obviously from that series. But so and, and look for an
31:21
exhibition race. You're going to have some
31:23
different paint schemes and all that.
31:24
But you know, like I feel like Chase Elliott is usually one of
31:27
those cars. You can find his Napa car and he
31:29
had a white car. It looked cool.
31:31
Denny Hamlin had had the white Sport Clips and we know that the
31:35
FedEx, he was one of the cars you you could almost count on
31:39
with Logano for the last whatever. 10.
31:41
Years, the yellow Logano and then Denny Hammond with the
31:44
purple and the orange FedEx that's gone.
31:47
So he's got sport clips. Another big storyline.
31:50
Bob Pockrus asked Denny Hamlin, is it alarming to look at your
31:54
hauler and not see a lot of sponsors?
31:57
And Denny Hamlin talked about how tough it is basically out
32:00
there with inflation. And and so you say always like
32:04
to spin it back to to your day. I mean, back in your day, it
32:07
seemed like, and I've heard stories that these Fortune 500
32:10
companies couldn't even get on a car, right?
32:13
There were more companies than the 40 or 43 cars, whatever it
32:17
was in the field. And now you have some of the
32:20
best drivers and best teams in NASCAR having to string together
32:24
5610 sponsors to get through the season.
32:28
And I, I know this is a, a storyline we've talked about a
32:32
lot, but I do think that's something NASCAR has to figure
32:35
out. Maybe if you stick with certain
32:36
colors, but just matching the driver to the car easily on TV
32:42
and at the supermarket, if you're seeing these guys being
32:44
advertised, that was part of the reason that you guys
32:47
skyrocketed. Even when I was watching NASCAR,
32:50
you knew Earnhardt, you knew Jeff Gordon, you knew Dill
32:52
Earnhardt Junior, you knew at least like 5 cars.
32:56
And now I I feel like I watch every race and I have to spend
32:59
the 1st 10 minutes figuring out who's who.
33:02
Yeah, even as some, as people as like you and me, like me even I
33:06
do the same thing, Charlie. I cut the race on and I'll be
33:09
halfway through the race still trying to figure out where the
33:12
hell, who the hell where that car is, right.
33:14
And you can't do it. And I that's that.
33:17
I think that's just another, that's just another piece of,
33:21
you know, something that that we're missing that we used to
33:23
have. You know, there's so many
33:25
things, right? The heroes, I talked about the
33:27
cars being the same color all year long.
33:30
I mean, you like you say you knew when you went to race back
33:32
in the 90s. I don't care who you were, if I
33:34
was a fan, even casual fans, they already seen that car.
33:38
They knew who that car is, right?
33:40
The Kellogg's car, Terry Lebonne, it's it's all it was.
33:43
It's all like that. And it kind of goes back a
33:45
little bit to what my buddy Mark Martin fusses about.
33:48
He wants the numbers move back to the door, right Mobile Mark,
33:52
he hates those numbers move to the front and he expresses, he
33:55
expresses himself all the time about that.
33:57
And I, and I get it. There's my thing falling out
33:59
again. But anyhow, I think that's just
34:02
another little part of the equation that that that we're
34:06
missing. The problem is Charlie, what do
34:08
we do? You you sign a theme, a paint
34:11
scheme for the year and then you put on whatever sponsor you
34:14
want. That won't work.
34:15
It's the the car has got to represent totally the company.
34:18
So, you know, it's a trade off there.
34:20
I mean, and yeah, the money's not there like it was.
34:23
So we were there man, in the 90s, golly bum.
34:25
And that's what we had one other podcast.
34:28
That's what really the, all the sponsors we had is what created
34:31
today's charter system, right? It was preluded by the
34:35
provisionals and the, the prisoners come along because we
34:38
instead of having 30 corporate, 500 sponsored cars, we had 45
34:43
that were sponsored. That meant two or three were
34:45
going to go home each week. So the corporate sponsor, you
34:48
know, big sponsors, but miss the race and that wasn't good.
34:52
That wasn't good for a sport that's a whole different era,
34:54
you know, different era, different thing.
34:57
We're in a whole different deal right now.
34:59
And, you know, I don't know what they do about that.
35:03
You know, I'm glad that there's some parts of NASCAR that I
35:07
would love to work for and take a paycheck from him right now.
35:10
But there are other parts of NASCAR that I wouldn't I, you
35:14
know, they just couldn't pay me to do some of the things that
35:17
has to be done right. So like, like what are you
35:21
talking about? What what are the the big
35:22
challenges you think? The ones that you wouldn't want
35:24
to do? Trying to figure out how that
35:27
how to make a driver. How how can I make this driver a
35:31
hero? How can he or at least be
35:33
perceived as a hero to the average fan?
35:36
How do we do how can I do that and still keep the corporate
35:41
image that this sponsor what just got to project right?
35:45
How do you how the hell the hell do you do that?
35:47
I I don't know how you do that. I just don't know.
35:50
That's a thing that it's almost got to happen naturally in, in
35:54
which it did. It was very natural the way it
35:56
happened in our day. But you know, again, it's a
36:00
different time. It's a different, you know, it's
36:02
a different era. This world's different right
36:04
now. It's just a different deal.
36:05
All we can do really is is if it's from the competition side,
36:10
try to keep these cars as close as we can, keep them right, and
36:14
then let the chips fall where they make.
36:17
And then what do you think about the Xfinity Series and, and the
36:19
naming? I think it's kind of interesting
36:21
because and, and you mentioned earlier you said Winston Cup.
36:24
And when I was growing up, it was always Winston Cup.
36:27
And then it went through the cell phone era, whatever it was,
36:29
Nextel and Sprint Cup and all that.
36:32
And then you had the Bush series.
36:34
It became nationwide. Now Xfinity, I feel like trucks
36:38
is always just kind of called trucks.
36:40
It's the Craftsman Truck Series. But I, I do think it's kind of
36:43
funny because now NASCAR has kind of switched the
36:45
sponsorship. So they have those core
36:47
sponsors. So now it's just cup.
36:50
Everybody kind of calls trucks trucks.
36:53
Xfinity is the one that probably needs some branding.
36:56
And the, the one that comes to my head first is like, well,
37:00
Bush should should sponsor, We should bring it back.
37:02
It should be the Bush series because that's how everybody
37:04
calls it anyway. But I'm thinking if I'm if I'm
37:07
AB, why would you spend money? They call it Bush series anyway.
37:10
It's not the Bush series. It hasn't been the Bush series
37:13
in how many years, 20 years, whatever it is.
37:14
But people like they already have the branding from years
37:17
back because people still call it the Bush series.
37:19
Hell, I do. I still in my everyday life.
37:23
I said who run, who finished, who won the Bush Series race
37:26
yesterday, right. I do that.
37:27
I find myself saying Xfinity Series more and more, but it's
37:31
still the Bush Series. But you're losing that one.
37:34
You know, that's, that's just another, I don't know, man, I
37:39
Charlie dude, I remember being maybe I've talked about this
37:43
before, but maybe not. I was a teenager down in
37:47
Asheville, NC when I think I was in Bosco Lowe's shop.
37:53
Jack Ingham and Butch Linden were in there.
37:56
Jack Ingham and Butch Linden were the winning this late model
37:59
drivers going at that time. That was right before the Bush
38:02
series started. Those guys kicked everybody's
38:04
butt every every week. One of them had a full both of
38:07
them had full tire deals, right? They both had sponsors on the
38:10
car. And I remember they sitting
38:12
there talking, I mean, they were the elite of late model at that
38:15
time. And I remember them talking
38:17
about, you know, that they're having trouble sponsors.
38:20
They couldn't keep up. They couldn't get the money.
38:22
They couldn't get NASCAR to help them.
38:24
If they tried to help them, they DASCAR would take their sponsor
38:26
and just on and on and on and on and on.
38:28
And finally, I remember I never forget Butch Lindley said, you
38:31
know, it wasn't surprise me. We could go to Daytona two or
38:34
three years. That whole thing just be a big
38:35
marshland, right? And and I took it to heart
38:38
because I was just a teenager, wild eyed teenager, wanted to
38:41
race for a living, right? Or I wanted to race and I'm
38:43
like, damn, this racing could go away.
38:45
All right, Charlie, here we are 5060 years later.
38:49
It's the same frigging conversations, right?
38:52
We don't have bone enough to race.
38:54
We know we have trouble getting sponsors on and on and on and on
38:57
and on. The only thing I've ever seen
38:58
change. The numbers got bigger, right?
39:00
Just more zeros added on everything.
39:02
Now, we went through all that in the 90s and 2000s and you know,
39:06
now we're back to square 1, you might say in some, in some of
39:09
the areas about this money thing.
39:11
But you know, that was all the deal about the new car.
39:14
You know, the new car is going to be a lot cheaper in the way
39:16
we're doing things, a lot cheaper for the teams.
39:18
Well, everybody's still struggling.
39:20
The biggest thing that's happened is right now, and then
39:23
Mark talked about this, Mark Martin on the phone.
39:25
It's the driver's salaries. You know what I mean?
39:27
The driver's salaries, they do not make.
39:30
They just don't make what guys we used to make when we came
39:33
through right, because the money's not there now.
39:35
I'm sure somebody like Kyle Busch, then him or they're
39:37
locked in, right? Grandfather did.
39:39
But so many of the other younger guys come along.
39:41
They don't you know, and it's just a different, you know, if
39:45
you look at if you you can't compare us to other sports and
39:48
so many things apples to oranges that NFL athlete, MLBNBA
39:53
athletes, what they get paid, drivers don't get paid what
39:56
those dudes do right now. We were headed that way at one
39:59
time. You know, a decade 2 ago, but
40:01
it's not that way right now. And you know, everybody suffered
40:06
a little bit because of the money thing.
40:07
But you know, the show must go on and what what whatever series
40:11
we're going to call it, I'd just soon call it, hell, I call it
40:14
BGN. That's Bush Ground National.
40:16
Just call it BGN series sponsored by, you know,
40:19
sponsored by LongHorn Steakhouse.
40:21
I don't know, you know what I mean?
40:23
They'll, they'll, they'll have somebody, they'll, they'll,
40:26
they'll have somebody to, to replace Xfinity maybe in a
40:30
smaller value or different value or whatever.
40:32
But it'll be something that they'll come up with something.
40:35
So our guy Pulsar Lights here, Pulsar Lights says, let's see.
40:41
I still like the way it used to be the Clash at Daytona the
40:44
weekend before the Daytona 500. The fans and the team could
40:47
spend the entire first week at Daytona.
40:50
And we talked about this earlier.
40:51
But I do think that's interesting in terms of, of the
40:54
rotation. I would include Daytona in that
40:58
rotation of some of the other short tracks.
41:00
Also. I, I, I think Kevin Harvick has
41:04
talked about this for years. You need to make everything an
41:07
event. And if it's at Daytona every
41:10
single year, it does, in my opinion, Maybe other people
41:13
disagree, but it loses its luster a little bit.
41:16
But if you don't have it there for a long time, people start to
41:20
miss it. And to me, it's like the Super
41:22
Bowl, the Super Bowl. I, I know now, now it seems like
41:25
the NFL, they basically reward you if you build a new stadium,
41:29
they give you a Super Bowl. So we're seeing cold weather
41:32
cities getting Super Bowls. But for a while it was like New
41:35
Orleans, Miami, Phoenix, LA, whatever it is, there was four
41:40
or five markets where the Super Bowl was.
41:42
Was there a lot? And I think that's that's how
41:45
NASCAR should probably look at the Clash.
41:47
Have it at Daytona every five years and then people get it,
41:51
but then they miss it and they want to come back and it doesn't
41:53
become kind of like old hat. Yeah, Charlie, again, this goes
41:59
back to changing times, man, I know we keep reminiscing here
42:03
today on the show, but I it's hard to get away from it for me.
42:07
Daytona Speed weeks. Notice that we word weak.
42:11
It's not weak, it's weeks. Poor, plural.
42:13
It used to be called Daytona Speed Weeks.
42:16
We'd be down there for two weeks.
42:17
The teams would guess what the fans would, right, If they
42:23
weren't there for the whole 2 weeks they were there for the
42:26
last week, right? And the reason being we had the
42:30
Bush Clash on Sunday, we had the ARCA race on Sunday.
42:32
We had, we had practice right before that on that weekend,
42:36
going on practice and qualifying and all kinds of stuff for a few
42:40
days. Then the week between the Clash
42:42
and the 500, we saw the racetrack every day.
42:45
There were practices every single day until you run the
42:48
duels on Thursday, right? You run those races and then
42:53
they would have Goss, I forget what Ray always had to exfede
42:56
your Bush Grand National on Saturday.
42:58
Then you had a ARC or whatever it was again, or something else,
43:00
maybe the trucks then on Fridays.
43:04
So he was racing at the racetrack every day, right?
43:07
Then you had all the other race tracks.
43:10
You had Volusia County, all right.
43:12
You had New Samarita Beach. They had races going on all the
43:15
time. Heck, we had the World Outlaws
43:17
running up at New Samarita, you know, the the dirt track for a
43:20
number of years we had late models down there.
43:23
We had, I mean talk about late model dirts.
43:25
Then we had all the asphalt hot shoes from across the country.
43:28
They were all down there. The modifieds from up northeast,
43:31
they would be down there for a week and a half, two weeks
43:34
racing every night there's racing going on.
43:36
Then we had the trade show, the biggest trade show.
43:40
Well, not any longer, but not as big as SEMA is now, but large
43:43
trade show racing trade show that was there at the Convention
43:46
Center every year, right I mean there was just stuff to do and
43:51
if you got bored with all the racial crap, you know with the
43:54
wife or whoever let's take an iron right over here to Orlando
43:58
go to Disney World right They would you you could mix that in.
44:01
So it was two weeks of just pure excitement and fun for for the
44:07
competitors, for the fans, right?
44:09
And you know, with a lot of this stuff happened with COVID, we
44:14
cut out a lot of the practice and a lot of time at the race
44:16
tracks that got cut out with COVID caused a lot of that.
44:18
But you know, nowadays I'm not sure that we could support two
44:22
weeks of speed weeks any longer like we used to, mainly because
44:26
it cost 2 friends and bus to stay at a boat there that long,
44:28
right? And to eat out that, that long
44:30
and all that. But I mean, people, people don't
44:32
have discretionary funding is like they used to Charlie.
44:35
And I think, you know, maybe that doesn't get talked about
44:38
enough and all this stuff, right?
44:39
Maybe, you know, people, people just don't have dollars for
44:43
discretionary stuff like they used to have just because, as we
44:49
all know in our country, the pay scale is not matched with the
44:52
cost of living right now. It's kind of out of whack.
44:55
I think maybe that gets overlooked in some of these
44:58
conversations. Maybe the fans still love to go,
45:00
wants to go and I can't afford it, right.
45:03
And so they so they don't go. But yeah, you know, it's just to
45:10
run the class. I get to run it in a different
45:12
place. Maybe take it to Daytona once
45:13
every five years, unless you're going to bring back speed Wicks
45:16
the way it used to be. I I don't see the the class
45:19
being there every year. It does not make sense to me to
45:22
do that. It makes more sense to run them
45:24
at Bowman Gray or at South Boston or wherever each year.
45:30
Our Shane Larocque his suggestion is rotate the clash
45:34
between Daytona, the rock, North Wilkesboro and Bowman Gray.
45:38
How about this on on the old X we're calling it X now.
45:42
I used to call it Twitter slash X It's just X now.
45:45
But Rick Mask tweets I have my light, but you're talking about
45:51
days of Thunder and you have the car the days of Thunder Chevy
45:56
Lumina and you said last night had a lot of fun doing this
46:00
still got the helmet and suit paid good also huh that's.
46:05
Right, that's right. It did that was that was in 90.
46:08
That's when that was, let's see me, me, my father-in-law had AG
46:13
Dillard together 8889. And then in 90, I broke that
46:16
back out on my own and phones were phones were very scarce,
46:22
Charlie, right. I mean, you scrap for every
46:24
dollar you had and you race for every dollar you had, right?
46:27
And we went down there in 89, I guess, and LED to 500 with
46:31
Travis Carter and and did all that.
46:34
But, you know, evidently I was too young then.
46:37
I was too young getting a cup car.
46:38
It's what all the drafts, what they all told me I had to be 30
46:41
or whatever it was to get in a cup car.
46:43
So it went back. So the movie deal was 90.
46:46
So it went back in 91. At the end of 90, honest to God,
46:49
I had three cup cup offers, OK. But you know, it was weird this
46:54
thing, but that's a whole different story.
46:56
But so I go to Daytona in 90 and the Hendrix needed the driver
47:02
for the movie car. So, you know, I did the deal
47:04
down there and it was a it was a cool deal.
47:06
It's very it was a lot of fun, lot of fun.
47:08
But here's the deal. Who is what happened?
47:10
It was a Hendrix program, right? And the other cars, two other
47:14
cars, I think Greg Sacks drove 1 and I believe it's either Bobby
47:19
Hamill or Tommy Ellis. I think Tommy Ellis was a Bobby
47:22
drove some other places, but I think it was Tommy Ellis.
47:25
Well, these guys were all Hendrik crew guys, right?
47:28
Doing these movie cars along with the Hendrik doing his
47:31
regular thing. Well, we'd go out and practice.
47:34
I'd go out and practice. Man, my car was fast.
47:36
I ain't kidding. It was fast, right?
47:38
And we'd come in and they'd they'd work on it some more and
47:41
I'd talk to him and we'd do some stuff and help it.
47:44
And finally, I went out one time and I just mixed it up with
47:48
everybody. We were in a group of cars, man.
47:50
And I went through them and I kind of took the lead of the
47:52
draft, you know, just working with all the regular cars.
47:55
I came in and I was telling them on the radio what I thought they
47:59
said go and get out, Rick. I said, huh, just go and get
48:01
out. And I said, all right, I got
48:03
out. They just put the cover over.
48:05
I said, we done. Yeah, we're done.
48:07
Why? Well, everybody's starting to
48:09
get upset. We're we're supposed to be movie
48:12
cars, but we're we're acting like race cars right now.
48:16
So we got to stop this. What was going on?
48:20
The guy that was hitting my deal up, kind of a crew chief with
48:24
the organization, another guy hitting another deal up.
48:27
Well, these guys had competition within themselves, right about
48:31
the movie cars. Who the hell had the fastest
48:33
movie car, right? So that's kind of I've been
48:36
known to me at the time. That's why they were working so
48:38
hard, I think, to make a car so fast and and I'm like, man,
48:42
let's pull out of the move and run the 500.
48:44
This is a bad ass race car here, right?
48:46
And of course that didn't work out, didn't do that.
48:49
But I think it was funny with that, we went in to a meeting
48:54
with Bill France. It was me, Mr. Hendrick, Jimmy
48:59
Johnson that used to run Mr. Hendrick's organization and the
49:04
other two drivers. And Mr. France was telling us,
49:07
you know, listen, guys, y'all get start this race, talk about
49:12
the qualifying races. Y'all get start this race.
49:15
He says, you're going to start at the back.
49:17
He says, I forget the words he said.
49:22
But basically, if you screw up, you know, the Mafia's go, we go
49:26
call mafia, put a hit on you, right?
49:28
You don't mess up the race. You know, he was very concerned
49:32
that he was letting cars start the race without going through
49:35
the qualifying procedure right now, all the three of these cars
49:39
could have qualified and got into the qualified races easily
49:42
the speed they had. But you know, because they're
49:45
moving cars, you know, we didn't do all that.
49:47
So he it went against the grain of everything he'd ever done.
49:51
You just don't let a car start a race.
49:52
So he was kind of uptight about it to begin with her.
49:55
But he knew the significance of a Tom Cruise racing NASCAR
50:00
movie. He knew what that was all about.
50:02
But anyhow, when he got done with his spill, I was like, Mr.
50:06
France, Oh, excuse me. I said, let me ask you
50:09
something. So what?
50:10
I said, I hear what you're saying.
50:11
I understand. And I certainly won't do
50:13
anything like that. And I said, but what if on the
50:16
last lap of the race would come off of Turn 4 and I come off of
50:20
Turn 4 and there's a whole fragrant field done, wrecked,
50:24
right? And they're all spinning and
50:25
going through the grass and down Pit Rd. and I come through there
50:29
and take the checkered flag first.
50:31
What? What what about that scenario?
50:33
He said, Rick, I did, yeah. You want to be a part of my
50:36
sport? Yeah.
50:37
You want to be. I mean, you want to be a part of
50:39
my cut. You've been a part of my sport
50:40
and Bush grand Ashley. Yeah.
50:42
You want to be a part of my sport.
50:43
What's the cup, Don't you? Right.
50:45
I said yes, Sir. He said, well, I would suggest
50:48
if that scenario comes up that you find you a wall and you turn
50:51
your car in the wall and hit it as hard as you can and do not
50:55
dare, dare get anywhere near that start finish line because
50:58
if you do, you won't be part of my Western NASCAR western Cup
51:02
world. I said yes, Sir, Mr. France, not
51:04
a problem. You got it, baby.
51:06
I won't I won't win the race. So that was a funny.
51:11
I don't think Mr. Hendrick thought that was real funny.
51:13
I don't think any of them understood, but I don't think
51:16
any of at that point knew my drive humor well enough to
51:18
understand what's going with that.
51:20
So but anyhow. I love it.
51:23
All right, let's let's end on this.
51:25
We got 65 people watching, almost 800 have been watching
51:29
this whole last hour. Almost.
51:31
We got to get your your Super Bowl pick, your Super Bowl
51:35
preview. We got Chiefs versus Eagles.
51:39
For me, I live in Saint Louis. There's a lot of Saint Louis
51:42
fans. Since we don't have a team
51:43
anymore, our Rams went back to LAA lot of Saint Louis fans have
51:47
kind of jumped aboard the the the Kansas City Chiefs
51:51
bandwagon. You see a lot of Patrick Mahomes
51:53
jerseys at my kids schools and all that.
51:55
I have nothing against the Chiefs, but I'm kind of tired of
51:58
them winning. So I just like to see new teams
52:00
win. So I'm I'm picking the I don't
52:02
know if I'm picking. I want the Eagles to win just
52:05
because I feel like the Chiefs have have won a lot and I want
52:07
to see a new team. What about you?
52:10
You know the Chiefs, they've got the Jimmy Johnson effect going
52:13
on right now, Charlie, right? Tired of seeing them winning.
52:16
Here's my deal on this, on this thing.
52:18
I love Andy Reid. I, I hated when they booted him
52:23
out of Where was it? Philly, right?
52:26
Yeah, Philly. Philly years ago.
52:28
I love some of the stuff he had to go through with his kids in
52:32
the turmoil he went through. I love the way he conducts
52:36
himself, the way he coaches, the way he his, his humanitarianism
52:41
towards other people. I I love it.
52:44
I love Patrick Mahomes got tired of watching him win like Jimmy
52:47
Johnson tired a lot watching win.
52:49
But I love him. I like his family, his wife.
52:51
I love all that right? Philadelphia.
52:56
I like the quarterback, right? Hate the Fred Jalen Hurts, Jalen
53:02
Hurts, love Jalen Hurts. Hard, hard, hard to pull for
53:07
Philadelphia when every time you turn a YouTube on, there's a
53:10
Philadelphia Eagle fan beat the hell out of somebody in the
53:12
grandstands, right? And I guess that started with me
53:15
with with with time, the Eagles fans booed Santa Claus, right?
53:20
Just hard for me to pull for him.
53:23
But I will say this, when the Redskins this year did what they
53:28
did, I'm sorry, Commanders, which they announced this week
53:33
that it would not, the owner announced it would not go back
53:36
to Redskins. End of discussion.
53:38
But anyhow, so when the commanders watched and that
53:42
commanders are my team or Ritz commanders when they played the
53:47
Philadelphia Eagles, I'm like, damn, the Eagles are frigging
53:51
good. I mean, they they're just flat
53:54
ass good. My prediction is Eagles going to
53:57
win, right? You you don't want to win.
54:02
You know, it would be the Chiefs if it wasn't for the Jimmy
54:04
Johnson effect. So I wouldn't have a problem
54:06
with the Eagles winning even if they don't like Santa Claus.
54:10
So you're saying eagles and you want eagles, right?
54:15
Yeah. OK, see, I, I want Eagles, but I
54:19
just feel like, I mean, the, the Eagles as a team, they have a
54:23
really good team and, and now so does KC.
54:27
But I think at the end of the day to me with Patrick Mahomes,
54:30
because I I like to gamble every once in awhile and it's like I'm
54:34
just kind of done betting against Patrick Mahomes in big.
54:37
Games, right? Exactly.
54:39
And the regular season's a different story because their
54:41
spreads have gotten so big and this is going back like five
54:44
years that they didn't cover a lot in the regular season.
54:46
Because I mean, you're, you're looking at like 910 point
54:49
spreads in the NFL regular season, which is crazy.
54:52
But for me, if I was putting my own money on the line and I, I
54:56
know what Mahomes lost to the box and Tom Brady, right?
54:59
That was whatever it was 3-4 years ago.
55:02
But it's really hard for me to bet against Patrick Mahomes at
55:05
this point in his career. So even though I want the Eagles
55:07
to win, I'll give you a score. I think it's going to be another
55:10
great game. When they played a couple years
55:12
ago, it was 3835. I'm going to say, I'm going to
55:15
say 3128 Chiefs, unfortunately, even though I want the Eagles to
55:21
win. Well, he's probably right then.
55:23
Matalon was a good game, right? That's right.
55:26
Less, less, less. The commanders are in it where I
55:28
cheer for him, or the Cowboys in it where I can throw beer
55:31
bottles at them. You know, it doesn't excite me
55:36
as much. And who's doing the halftime
55:38
show? I think is it, is it Kendrick
55:42
Lamar, the rapper? I think somebody let me know.
55:44
I believe he just won a bunch of Grammys.
55:46
I think that's the case, but I'm not 100% sure on that one.
55:50
So. So Elvis.
55:51
Elvis will see. There, Elvis will not be in the
55:53
building from what I've heard, but we shall see.
55:57
All right, on that note, let's wrap her up.
56:00
Rick, thank you very much, Sir. Charlie Marlowe, Rick Mass, this
56:03
is the Rick Mass show. Please comment like subscribe.
56:07
We're going to have so much content, so many shows now that
56:10
NASCAR. Season is going to be a fun
56:11
year, going to be a fun year talking about stuff.
56:15
Yes, Sir. I might just come.
56:16
I might just start coming out of my shell, Charlie.
56:19
I love it, Mike. We need more.
56:20
We need. More dirty Mobius, Dirty Mobius
56:23
down on the hinge or whatever they're calling it.
56:25
I don't know what that means, but like when you filter out of
56:28
a shell a little unfiltered, I'll come out of the shell, see
56:30
what happens. Dr. Viewership Everybody have
56:33
fun. We'll see you, buddy.
56:35
Thank you everybody.