Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Statement Win For Chase Elliott & Carson Hocevar Rides The Dente AGAIN | The Burnout

Transcript

Statement Win For Chase Elliott & Carson Hocevar Rides The Dente AGAIN | The Burnout · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  What's up everyone, welcome to the burnout.
• 0:03
  I am Ryan Larkin With me and some back lot parking lot is
• 0:07
  Matt Weaver. He has lost his phone already.
• 0:09
  This is going to be an experience.
• 0:14
  I'm preparing myself for Amity on my end and and hopefully we
• 0:19
  can put somewhat of a show together for you guys.
• 0:21
  But Matt flew home to Alabama right after the race, so he's
• 0:25
  going to get to sleep in his own bed tonight.
• 0:27
  But that has him doing the show and in the middle of a parking
• 0:30
  lot. So it's definitely going to be a
• 0:31
  fun experience. We may end up cutting this short
• 0:33
  if it gets too out of hand. But Matt, how's it going?
• 0:37
  But listen, I this is on me. This, this show is still new and
• 0:43
  as our day one OG supporters surely recognize, every single
• 0:49
  time that we record after a certain race track, it's a new
• 0:54
  experience. It's a question of do I need to
• 0:59
  stick around at the racetrack? There's limited space there.
• 1:03
  Jeff and Jordan are doing their show and I I can't book the same
• 1:07
  room that they're in. Some race tracks are closer to
• 1:11
  home than others. You know, Martinsville, I can
• 1:13
  just drive home and do it from my office.
• 1:17
  Some of my closest friends and long time followers know that I
• 1:22
  have a fishing camp back home in Alabama.
• 1:25
  I have my apartment in North Carolina and I've got my fishing
• 1:28
  house fishing camp in Alabama. And I love covering Texas races
• 1:36
  because I can book a direct flight, get me back home and
• 1:40
  mobile come Sunday night of the race.
• 1:43
  The race ended 3-4 hours ago. Whatever it's been now five
• 1:46
  hours ago and I was able to do post race and fly back home.
• 1:49
  And I did not consider the possibility that the airport
• 1:53
  staff would not allow me to sit in the lobby because it's a
• 1:56
  regional airport for an extra hour after they've already shut
• 1:59
  down all of the ticketing gates and all that stuff.
• 2:02
  And like, well, I got to do something else here.
• 2:05
  And so I guess I just, I decided to go to my car in the parking
• 2:09
  lot and prop my phone up here. And I've never done the show
• 2:13
  from my phone before. I don't know if the quality is
• 2:15
  good. Do I sound good?
• 2:16
  Does it look OK? You tell me.
• 2:17
  I don't know. But I, I think this is how we're
• 2:20
  going to try to do it. And the next time that I try to
• 2:22
  do a show from Texas, I don't know, I'll probably bite the
• 2:26
  bullet and just stay overnight. I like doing the show, but I'm
• 2:30
  very selfish. I get so few Sunday nights at
• 2:32
  home. I I saw an opportunity months
• 2:35
  ago when I booked this race before I really considered and
• 2:39
  conceived what this show would look like, what it would mean
• 2:43
  for the show if I went home that night after the Cup race because
• 2:47
  I get so few Sunday nights at home.
• 2:48
  So here we are. We have a race to talk about.
• 2:51
  We have a race that I covered and let's get after it.
• 2:54
  So personally I don't care about the parking lot.
• 2:59
  I think it's cool. So whatever it takes to get home
• 3:03
  and and enjoy it. Like you work hard enough but
• 3:05
  don't let this show be a Dick dictator of what you do.
• 3:10
  It is though, it is because I, I love talking racing with you
• 3:13
  every week sincerely. I'm not saying this just for the
• 3:16
  camera and just for the show. I love doing this.
• 3:19
  But also we've, you know, we had our best show ever last week in
• 3:22
  terms of audience and viewership.
• 3:24
  And we're starting to get tweets now asking us, Hey, where's the
• 3:27
  show? When's it going live?
• 3:29
  And I, I feel this. I feel this pressure and
• 3:32
  obligation standing here in this parking lot at the airport.
• 3:35
  It's like I got to talk to him. I really value the relationship
• 3:40
  that I have with you doing this show, the relationship that I
• 3:42
  have with race fans doing this show.
• 3:44
  And I really feel obligated not to let everyone down.
• 3:47
  So here I am from a parking lot at Mobile Regional Airport.
• 3:51
  Perfect Audio is probably the best it's ever been so.
• 3:54
  Maybe we should. Let's get into it.
• 3:57
  So a lot of good action this weekend.
• 4:00
  I thought racing was pretty good overall, but we're going to
• 4:03
  start with probably the the the thing that everyone's going to
• 4:05
  care about, which is Chase Elliott winning again.
• 4:07
  Second win for this year seemed like he hit a dry spell last
• 4:11
  couple years, but he's the Chase comes back and Chase comes back
• 4:15
  it it feels like a great start to the year for him.
• 4:17
  You've mentioned numerous times that this playoff format is
• 4:19
  going to really suit his style of racing and it seems like
• 4:22
  things are aligning. Talk about Chase's win and and
• 4:26
  the race, kind of the whole. Yeah, I, I, I thought and I, I
• 4:29
  said this pretty much from day one when we talked about the
• 4:33
  case for the championship that if you look at the way, and, and
• 4:36
  by the way, this goes back to Jeff Gordon and Alan Gustafson
• 4:40
  too, just the way that Alan Gustafson, Gustafson teams tend
• 4:45
  to succeed Chase and Jeff Gordon before him are certainly capable
• 4:52
  of putting up five win seasons. We've we've seen that before out
• 4:55
  of Chase, but one thing that Chase does really, really well
• 5:00
  is that he will nickel and dime you, right?
• 5:02
  Like he he is always in the mix. And I think sometimes Chase
• 5:07
  Elliott fans get frustrated with Alan because they see this car
• 5:12
  that is always in the top five. It's always in the top ten.
• 5:15
  They they just think that car should be winning more.
• 5:19
  It's a testament to Alan and his team and their engineers that
• 5:23
  and certainly the driver too, that they're always in the mix.
• 5:27
  And I just think that sometimes it's circumstantial why they
• 5:30
  don't win. Or I think Chase's style tends
• 5:33
  to lend itself more to being a little more conservative.
• 5:36
  And I don't think you see a lot of go for broke do or die from
• 5:39
  Chase. And I think winning Cup races
• 5:42
  require that sometimes, you know, throwing, you know, going
• 5:49
  for it, right, There's not a lot of just go for it from Chase and
• 5:52
  the previous championship format encouraged going for it that you
• 5:56
  don't have to do in this points format.
• 5:57
  And so it's no surprise to me that when everyone is probably
• 6:01
  scaling back their approach, there's not as much go for
• 6:06
  broke. It lends itself to the nine team
• 6:10
  winning more races too. And, and the thing that's
• 6:12
  really, really interesting to me and, and talking to Jason and
• 6:19
  Alan and Jeff Gordon after the race today is they all feel like
• 6:23
  they've got another level to unlock.
• 6:24
  This body is still new. And Hendrick has been very, very
• 6:28
  honest about it, that they think that this car is going to be
• 6:31
  beneficial come this summer, in this fall.
• 6:33
  They haven't unlocked it yet. So this is the first time Chase
• 6:37
  Elliott's won two races in the 1st 11.
• 6:39
  And yeah, as the saying goes, if you're a video gamer or or like
• 6:43
  an anime fan, this is not even their final form.
• 6:46
  The nine team has a final form to unlock their Frieza and
• 6:50
  Frieza's final form is yet to appear.
• 6:53
  That might be a little obscure. I don't know if if I've got the
• 6:57
  the weibos in our in our in our group group chat here, but Chase
• 7:00
  Elliott is Frieza. Probably not that many, but
• 7:04
  yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, this is obviously, I
• 7:06
  think what you mentioned there is is really kind of a great
• 7:11
  thought about this whole situation is when guys were just
• 7:14
  throwing everything at the wall, trying to win races and just
• 7:18
  doing ridiculous stuff. That's not Chase's style.
• 7:21
  And he's going to acquiesce to some guys that put him in
• 7:26
  positions and he'll take that 5th place finish sometimes.
• 7:29
  Right. Well, now that everyone, I mean
• 7:31
  going into today, I think it was the lowest caution count number
• 7:35
  for the next Shankar. You know through this point of
• 7:38
  the year, this was high caution race, but we had 16 cautions
• 7:42
  last year. So it was like half of what what
• 7:44
  it has been. There is a tone even within we
• 7:47
  got the late caution. They didn't just go wad
• 7:49
  everything up on the restarts. There is a different vibe within
• 7:54
  the series right now and it seems to just lend itself to a
• 7:57
  driver like him like you mentioned.
• 7:59
  So, you know, important when he is not third in points, which
• 8:02
  is, which is a big deal. He's going to slot in there
• 8:05
  probably 3rd, 4th. He's probably not going to catch
• 8:07
  Reddick, but he can finish his high second, by the way.
• 8:10
  I I, I don't want to lose this point.
• 8:12
  Sorry to cut you off, but this is a really easy Segway is Alan
• 8:17
  Guffs has sent in the press conference today.
• 8:20
  He and he and Pockrus were going back and forth talking about,
• 8:23
  you know, well, you know, are you, are you happy about being
• 8:27
  third in points given that, you know, the simulations all say
• 8:31
  you need to be top four, blah, blah, blah.
• 8:33
  And Alan said, and I think I understand the Ravado, but I
• 8:40
  don't I don't I don't think this is true, but it's an interesting
• 8:43
  talking point. He's like, we can win from the
• 8:45
  16th seed. And he's like, the reason why is
• 8:47
  like, look at what Tyler Reddick did at the start of the season.
• 8:51
  You know, he he cleared 100 points in the 1st 10.
• 8:55
  There's no reason why the the 10th or 11th seed couldn't go do
• 8:59
  that. I don't think that's realistic.
• 9:00
  Certainly the data doesn't project that.
• 9:03
  But it speaks volumes that Alan has that comfort and confidence
• 9:07
  in Chase and they're nine team that if they needed to do it
• 9:11
  from the 11th, 12th, 13th seed, they could.
• 9:15
  But the reason he feels that confidence and comfort is that
• 9:17
  they're not going to be the 11th or 12th seed.
• 9:19
  They're going to be a a top five seed for sure, having already
• 9:23
  won twice. But I like the swagger and for
• 9:28
  all the Allen Gustus and haters, and I know there's still some
• 9:31
  there that there might be less now because they're they're
• 9:33
  answering the the critics. Allen said that there's always
• 9:37
  going to be a lot of critics out there, but none of them can do
• 9:40
  what you do better than you do. I thought that was such a like
• 9:43
  AI, like the swagger. I love seeing top level
• 9:46
  competitors and athletes, you know, get in front of a camera
• 9:49
  or microphone and say, I, I hear it, just bring it on.
• 9:52
  But you, you can't do it better than I can do it.
• 9:54
  I I love the swagger. While we're on this kind of
• 9:58
  swagger, positive momentum for Chase Elliott in that team, I
• 10:03
  want to talk about Kyle Larson within the HMS fold, who hasn't
• 10:06
  won in a calendar year now. Who?
• 10:09
  Who, it's not the same guy regardless of leading some laps
• 10:13
  at Kansas or what not. He has not been a dominant force
• 10:16
  in a year really dating back to the Indy 500 weekend at things
• 10:20
  like that, that things got off the rail there and they haven't
• 10:23
  come back out to lunch today. I mean, he just was, he wasn't
• 10:28
  competitive. Elliott drove to the front.
• 10:29
  Byron had good speed, Byron Spawn drove back to the front,
• 10:33
  had plenty of speed, Larson didn't have it, and then Rex
• 10:36
  himself. What is it going to take for the
• 10:39
  five team to get back on track here?
• 10:40
  Because it just feels like they are behind the 8 ball for the
• 10:43
  guy that a year ago everyone was shouting, you know, into the
• 10:46
  clouds that he was the greatest driver in the world.
• 10:48
  Yeah. You know, this is this is one of
• 10:50
  those things where I I feel like in my role as someone who's in
• 10:54
  that garage, I'm supposed to have the answers and the, you
• 10:59
  know, you, you, you pose the question and I'm the guy that
• 11:02
  has the relationships, right? And I talked to to Kyle and I
• 11:05
  talked to Cliff Daniels and I didn't talk to Cliff after the
• 11:11
  race today. But you know, this is becoming a
• 11:14
  theme, a trend of the season, right?
• 11:15
  They're just not quite at the same level as the, the 24 is off
• 11:20
  a little bit from the 9. And some of that early on was,
• 11:25
  well, we're still learning the body.
• 11:27
  And when I have talked to Cliff about it, Cliff is like, I have
• 11:29
  all the confidence in the world of I have all the confidence in
• 11:32
  the world. And Kyle, we are still trying to
• 11:36
  figure out how to make this car be balanced in the way that, you
• 11:41
  know, the driver likes it to be. And it's not quite the same.
• 11:46
  I guess that's my roundabout way of saying that I feel fine about
• 11:49
  where they're going to be. But the only thing I would add
• 11:54
  is that this was way too early for me to bring it up.
• 11:58
  But I remember I I brought up points to to Larson after
• 12:02
  Atlanta because he had the badge finish at Daytona and Atlanta
• 12:07
  and Kyle kind of snapped him. He was like Race 2, dude.
• 12:10
  And I'm like, fair. Like, yeah, fair.
• 12:13
  But in this format now, you need to be top four.
• 12:16
  And every race you throw away, you don't get those back.
• 12:21
  And you can't just win your way out of it like you used to, too.
• 12:24
  And so I have confidence the five teams going to be
• 12:27
  competitive and fast, but throwing these races the way
• 12:30
  they are right now is something that you used to be able to get
• 12:33
  away with and you can't do it now.
• 12:34
  Yeah, he's he's sitting 8th and points.
• 12:36
  He's 91 points behind JC Elliott right now, so a significant
• 12:41
  number. Obviously he's going to show up
• 12:44
  in some tracks and and do well, but the the summer stretch is
• 12:46
  weird. You run Rd. courses, you have
• 12:48
  Atlanta, you have a lot of different tracks that might not
• 12:52
  suit what he's got going on that will maybe suit some other guys.
• 12:55
  And he can kind of end up 7th, 8th and points like you're
• 12:59
  mentioning. And that is a big detriment to
• 13:01
  him and a lot to overcome. But to Alan's point, if there's
• 13:04
  anyone that could come from that kind of deficit from, you know,
• 13:10
  6070 points back or what whatever that number is, I don't
• 13:13
  have that chart in front of me. Certainly, the five team could
• 13:17
  roll off four wins out of 10 and it would be a moot point.
• 13:20
  And. And we've seen to an extent,
• 13:23
  obviously the the numbers are a little bit, but we saw this with
• 13:25
  Tony Stewart in 2011, right? Like he was non existent in the
• 13:28
  regular season. They won five races, one title,
• 13:30
  right? So guys can turn it on Kyle.
• 13:32
  You don't expect that legendary generational run every year,
• 13:35
  though. No, no, but.
• 13:37
  But you expected of the greats, right?
• 13:39
  If someone is going to do it, you would expect Tony Stewart to
• 13:42
  be the guy that could take control of a team and go on a
• 13:46
  run like that. You do expect Kyle Larson to
• 13:48
  take control of a team and make a run like that every single
• 13:51
  year, yeah. All right, well, cool.
• 13:55
  I do want to talk about one more guy that's struggling bees it
• 13:57
  it's getting to where I think it's a big problem for them is
• 14:01
  Joey Logano. He's 17th of points and I think
• 14:05
  he's at very much a risk of missing the chase, which is he's
• 14:11
  a three time champion. Like he should be considered in
• 14:13
  that upper echelon, but the performance hasn't been there.
• 14:17
  This is even year Logano. So you would think this would be
• 14:19
  here that you should be showing up at least for for the the joke
• 14:23
  of it. But.
• 14:23
  Even year playoff Logano. So we don't have, we don't do
• 14:26
  that no more. Yeah, right.
• 14:28
  And So what one, what did they got to do?
• 14:31
  Turn around because they're they don't have speed.
• 14:33
  They were out to launch at Darlington.
• 14:34
  They weren't good at Kansas. They I mean, obviously today was
• 14:37
  a fluke thing, but when can they get the ball turned around?
• 14:41
  Because he's not great on road courses.
• 14:42
  He's not. I mean, he can't win his way in.
• 14:45
  So it is he in like do or die mode?
• 14:47
  Is it already there this early in season for some guys like
• 14:50
  Logano where he he's not at risk not making it?
• 14:52
  Did you see my my foot in mouth moment with Joey outside of
• 14:56
  infield care today? I did not, no.
• 14:59
  OK, so I would encourage everyone.
• 15:00
  I can't believe I'm advertising this because I, I should be
• 15:05
  embarrassed and I am a little embarrassed by it.
• 15:09
  The Texas Motor Speedway infield care center is right outside of
• 15:13
  turn 4. Like literally, I can take my
• 15:15
  shoe off and hit the catch fence.
• 15:18
  And yeah, there's no indoor area.
• 15:21
  And so Joey comes out, he does TV and he does, he does PRN.
• 15:28
  It was with, with Alan Cabana and on the 1st question, I, I, I
• 15:34
  always defer to Bob. Bob wasn't here for it.
• 15:36
  So I'm the most senior guy in the, the, the scrum.
• 15:40
  And so it's incumbent upon me to ask the question.
• 15:42
  But I, I asked him what happened.
• 15:44
  He's like, you know, couldn't slow up in time at, at the, at
• 15:50
  the 41. I'm like, OK, I'm like, OK,
• 15:52
  like, but it was such a short, abrupt answer.
• 15:55
  I didn't have like time to process my follow up.
• 15:57
  And the next Gen. cars are so loud and I don't really in a
• 16:04
  scrum, it's like you're always trying to make sure you don't
• 16:06
  step over someone else. And so I didn't have time to
• 16:09
  think through my question and this, this is embarrassing.
• 16:11
  I'm like, this is a dumb question.
• 16:13
  I said like, so you couldn't like not hit him?
• 16:16
  I was like, I was like, obviously not.
• 16:18
  I started to correct myself. He's like, obviously the fuck
• 16:21
  not. And it made for such a great
• 16:25
  clip. And I'm like, it was, and I even
• 16:27
  said it like I, I brought my mic to my face and I was like, yeah,
• 16:30
  that was a dumb question. I said, let me ask it this way.
• 16:33
  And I said, you know, what was the communication like to give
• 16:36
  you a any idea that that was going to happen?
• 16:38
  He's like, there's a lot going on, right?
• 16:40
  He's like people are trying to call you in Pit Rd. and it was
• 16:43
  just chaotic and I ran into the back of them.
• 16:46
  Stupid question on my behalf, but it was charming.
• 16:48
  And what what I thought was fun is no one said Weaver, you're an
• 16:52
  idiot. Most people are like, yeah, it's
• 16:53
  really loud. Next gen's are really loud.
• 16:55
  That was like, that was unfortunate.
• 16:57
  I deserve to be like to get that answer.
• 16:59
  Well, obviously the fuck not. Well, how often does something
• 17:03
  like that happen? Because you're asking, you know,
• 17:05
  throughout the course of a year, thousands of questions, right?
• 17:08
  Like you're bound to screw up once or twice or whatever.
• 17:11
  How often something like that happen?
• 17:13
  Or is that like one of the peak ones where it's like no, This is
• 17:15
  why I really made something stupid?
• 17:17
  No, no, I had two moments where I got dressed down or at least
• 17:21
  snapped at, and it was probably fair asking Larson about points
• 17:24
  after 2-2 DNFS to start the year and he's like, it's two races,
• 17:29
  dude. And like fair and tons of races
• 17:33
  in between and, and no one's kind of snapped at me until
• 17:35
  Joey, Joey today. But I even caught myself and I
• 17:38
  was like, obviously not. So it doesn't happen a lot.
• 17:43
  And I don't even think Joey was mad at me.
• 17:46
  He's mad that it happened to him.
• 17:48
  And he's like, of course I couldn't.
• 17:50
  If I could have, I would have. And two, to the to the to the
• 17:55
  broader point of this conversation, this is Murphy's
• 17:59
  Law. Like whatever can go wrong for
• 18:01
  the 22 team is going wrong. You know, today it was just they
• 18:05
  weren't running good again. And then they have the
• 18:08
  misfortune on pit row, but they're not running good any
• 18:11
  week. They're not unloading good.
• 18:13
  They're down on the practice charts.
• 18:14
  They're down on the 10 lap, 15 lap, 20 lap, 30 lap averages.
• 18:19
  If you run 30, they're just not fast.
• 18:22
  And it's it's weird because the 12 team is executing so good and
• 18:29
  they're so fast and they are carrying the banner for Ford.
• 18:35
  But even RFK like RFK is in the conversation like they have they
• 18:39
  have top five to top 10 speed and Buscher was top five and
• 18:43
  there were some strategy calls at the six and 16 maybe would
• 18:46
  want back, I don't know. But it's that, yeah, this is for
• 18:51
  Brad Priest. I'm OK with it, but Brad made no
• 18:53
  sense. You give up.
• 18:55
  Yeah, that was his call. He was greedy and he wanted he
• 18:57
  wanted to go for it. And you know what, if this was
• 19:00
  the old playoff format, I would agree with that, right?
• 19:02
  I think he was still driving like it was 2025.
• 19:06
  But the, the, the broader, we can get into that.
• 19:08
  But the broader point I wanted to make is, is that if you're
• 19:11
  looking at the Ford hierarchy, you know, you, you put Blaney at
• 19:14
  the top and you know, Fendrick is kind of always there, right?
• 19:19
  He's never really blowing you away, but he'll have races where
• 19:23
  he will. But the RFK cars are better than
• 19:26
  the 22. And that's the part that would
• 19:28
  be super concerning to me if I'm Paul Wolf in that company
• 19:31
  because like we're not matching our teammate and the other
• 19:34
  organization is better than us. Yeah, that's the weirdest part
• 19:37
  for me is like, you can go back to Paul Wolf when he was crew
• 19:40
  chief in the 11 car back in like 2009.
• 19:43
  He's always had fast cars, but Paul Wolf has never unloaded the
• 19:46
  car slow and right now he is and that's super unique.
• 19:51
  And it's weird to me because dude, he he went to the 11 car
• 19:54
  and it just picked up and this is a long time.
• 19:56
  This was Scott Lagasey and then eventually Mike Bliss, right?
• 19:58
  Mike Bliss started running top five every week in that car.
• 20:00
  Just weird. And then he jumps over to the
• 20:03
  Penske Xfinity program with or O'Reilly or Nationwide, whatever
• 20:07
  it's called, then with Brad and wins the championship, right?
• 20:09
  And then just jumps in the cup team after Jay Guy struggle
• 20:12
  takes over the cup deal, they win championship 2 years later
• 20:15
  he is really good. And he could find speed in
• 20:17
  anything but. Everyone's really good there.
• 20:19
  Like Joey's still good. I don't think Joey's lost a step
• 20:21
  either. I don't, I don't think that
• 20:22
  suddenly Joey forgot how to drive a race car.
• 20:25
  And I know, and I know like the last couple years have been kind
• 20:28
  of weird too, that, you know, they don't turn it on until
• 20:31
  later, but there's clearly some process procedural thing that's
• 20:37
  tripping them up. But I don't, I don't even begin
• 20:40
  to know. And I guess it'll be very
• 20:42
  interesting to hear now. So to me here, here's the thing,
• 20:46
  and I'm going to write about this later tonight when I get
• 20:49
  home. I think this is the first race
• 20:51
  where you can look at the standings now for sure.
• 20:55
  And most people say the Coke 600, but I feel like the sample,
• 20:58
  I've seen enough. The sample size is great enough
• 21:01
  that I I know what the stories are.
• 21:03
  I have a pretty good idea of who the top five are going to be,
• 21:06
  right? I have a pretty good idea of
• 21:07
  who's going to be in the bubble, and everyone else is just going
• 21:11
  to be jockeying for their position.
• 21:14
  And so, yeah, if you look at where Joey's at, it's like he's
• 21:17
  in that bubble spot. And that's going to be his lot
• 21:20
  in life. Because I don't see any scenario
• 21:22
  in which the the data is showing me they're going to just turn it
• 21:25
  around. You know, Briscoe and Bell, for
• 21:30
  example, they have really good speed.
• 21:32
  And I don't know if you wanted to get into that, too.
• 21:34
  But like, they're in trouble because of the things that keep
• 21:37
  happening to them. And I think their championship
• 21:40
  hopes are probably done too. And this is the race where it
• 21:44
  just became very clear to me. This is everyone's lot in life.
• 21:48
  Yeah, I think, you know, at least with Brisco and Bell, the
• 21:51
  speed is so significantly better that I can see them just
• 21:56
  clicking off top five runs, four races in a row and all of a
• 21:58
  sudden gapping to that range. Because you know that that cut
• 22:02
  line right now is like Suarez, Hendrick, Logano, Briscoe.
• 22:05
  That's where the cut line is right now.
• 22:07
  And Briscoe, you get you get him to Charlotte, you get him to,
• 22:11
  you know, some of these other tracks that K George has got so
• 22:14
  much better speed in the field. He's going to put up points.
• 22:16
  Whereas even if it's too good stages and then he crashes out,
• 22:20
  he's still getting some points throughout the day.
• 22:21
  Whereas Joe, he's not even in in touch of that.
• 22:23
  And I think that's the biggest thing is I'm not worried about
• 22:26
  Bell yet. I'm not worried about Briscoe
• 22:28
  yet because I they're still just carrying too much speed.
• 22:33
  You know why it's hard though, like even for them to get out of
• 22:36
  it is that I think people have a better understanding of this
• 22:40
  now. But I think, I don't know if the
• 22:42
  people in this chat fully appreciate it that when you have
• 22:45
  bad finishes and you're lower in the standings than where you
• 22:49
  expect to be, that starts to compound because it's no secret
• 22:54
  that you're qualifying metric has a tremendous factor in where
• 23:02
  you where you qualify because everything is so tight.
• 23:04
  So we're just talking about track conditions and rubber and
• 23:08
  temperature. And, and so if your bell and
• 23:11
  your Briscoe or, and even especially Logano, because
• 23:14
  they're not fast, it's even harder for them to get out of it
• 23:18
  because they're not qualifying in the top 10.
• 23:22
  And so then they start outside of the top 10 more often than
• 23:25
  not, maybe. And then you're back there and
• 23:28
  you, by the way, you're getting a bad pit draw.
• 23:31
  So that's why you end up in the messes that you end up in
• 23:35
  because you're not qualifying in a Primo pit stall.
• 23:37
  So these things compound and it's just, it doesn't matter how
• 23:41
  fast you are, you're having to overcompensate for the things
• 23:45
  that happened. 2 and three weeks ago.
• 23:47
  It takes a month to get out of it.
• 23:50
  Yeah, real quick, if you're not already, make sure to subscribe
• 23:54
  to the channel, like the video for us.
• 23:56
  Go follow us on Twitter, follow Matt, follow me.
• 23:58
  Maybe I can get Matt to follow me.
• 24:00
  We'll we'll get around to that, but I want.
• 24:07
  I'm so finicky about who I follow.
• 24:10
  Talk about the other guy who was struggling, who kind of
• 24:12
  unstruggled and then just lost his mind today.
• 24:16
  That's Kyle Busch. But.
• 24:17
  Let's start. Let's start with Jim Pullman
• 24:20
  getting canned. I told you 6 weeks ago I didn't
• 24:24
  understand that move. It didn't make any sense.
• 24:26
  I did not rate him as a crew chief.
• 24:27
  I did not think it was a good move to put him in charge of
• 24:30
  that team. That went S quick.
• 24:31
  We've made a change. I do not think them running good
• 24:35
  today was a reflection of that move.
• 24:37
  I think that's obviously those are setups built in from weeks
• 24:41
  ago, but it's an instantaneous turn on.
• 24:44
  We've changed crew chiefs. Now you're finally running good
• 24:47
  and then you rage quit at the end of the race.
• 24:50
  I don't understand it. Talk about it.
• 24:54
  Well, there's a lot to unpack there, right?
• 24:58
  Like so you. Do man.
• 25:01
  Yeah, so listen, I it's more fun when Kyle Busch feels like he's
• 25:08
  got a chip on his shoulder because I think sometimes he's
• 25:13
  in this kind of self defeated mode to where maybe he wouldn't
• 25:18
  even race John Hunter that way. It would just be like, F it,
• 25:22
  whatever. And like, I don't care.
• 25:24
  But God, he feels like he's got a chance to score a top ten
• 25:28
  races in the top ten and one objectively, I'm not entirely
• 25:32
  sure that's Kyle's fault. Now, when you find yourself in
• 25:37
  that position, you've got 2 choices, right?
• 25:40
  And this is hard for me because so be it for me to tell one of
• 25:46
  the greatest of all time how he should conduct himself on the
• 25:49
  racetrack, right? So not qualified.
• 25:51
  And so I'm not even going to sit here and pretend like I somehow
• 25:54
  AM. But just as a guy, yeah, as a
• 25:57
  guy who is invested in Kyle. And I think that the sport is
• 26:00
  better served by Kyle Busch being competitive and fast, you
• 26:05
  know? Yeah.
• 26:06
  What did he did he did he crowd you?
• 26:07
  And did he, was he encroaching upon your your line?
• 26:11
  Yeah. Do we have side drafts with
• 26:15
  these cars like I? Don't understand what we do, but
• 26:18
  but but here's something Kyle even recognized.
• 26:21
  Know who you're racing and he was a victim of in real time not
• 26:26
  knowing and and at some point maybe I'll text Derek Nealon.
• 26:29
  I've got a really good relationship with Derek and I
• 26:31
  know Derek will shoot me straight.
• 26:35
  I wonder if there was a way he he could have got out of that.
• 26:37
  And even if it means giving up some track position right now,
• 26:41
  you just need to finish right now.
• 26:42
  You need to build some positive, positive finishes and take your
• 26:47
  really good day, right? And so instead of here's the
• 26:49
  thing, I was prepared walking outside because I walk outside
• 26:52
  with 10 laps to go. Get ready to go out and find
• 26:55
  people. One of my stories I was going to
• 26:59
  so to focus on was Kyle. What a great day and the vibes
• 27:03
  would be this new partnership is off to a good start.
• 27:06
  And by the time I got out there, it happened.
• 27:09
  And Kyle, I don't want to say he stormed off, but he he he left
• 27:12
  Pit Rd. pretty quick and he wasn't in the chatting.
• 27:14
  But I don't know that anyone got Kyle.
• 27:16
  I didn't see any media member get Kyle, but now it's no, yeah,
• 27:22
  now it's the story is not man, what a really good rebound
• 27:26
  building block day. It it it is objectively still
• 27:30
  that. But that's not the story now.
• 27:31
  That's not going to be the story on Sirius all week.
• 27:34
  That's not going to be the story on the YouTube shows.
• 27:37
  It's not the the story on our show.
• 27:39
  And that part's unfortunate, even if I think objectively
• 27:43
  speaking, the 42 was more responsible objectively for that
• 27:48
  crash. I don't know if it's again,
• 27:51
  Derek, Kyle, the brain trust there.
• 27:54
  You got to get him out of that situation so they can take their
• 27:57
  their W and they didn't get a chance to take their W today.
• 28:00
  And that's unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, you listen to the
• 28:03
  radio all day. It is.
• 28:06
  It's bad. Like it.
• 28:08
  I know they. Still, they still chewing them
• 28:10
  out. You get your new guy and you're
• 28:12
  still chewing them out. Like it's all mental.
• 28:16
  It's always been mental with both Bush brothers, right?
• 28:19
  Like they have a a quirk about them.
• 28:24
  My biggest issue and we should probably get into the
• 28:27
  intentional wrecking part of this and we'll we'll have two
• 28:29
  different conversations about this is OK.
• 28:33
  He you you have this contact to get into the wall.
• 28:35
  Whatever he goes down in the three and four, intentionally
• 28:38
  wrecks the guy, but also cost himself 567 spots or whatever it
• 28:43
  was. It's like at some point you have
• 28:47
  to help yourself, right? You have.
• 28:49
  That's my point, yeah. Take your W.
• 28:52
  It's so frustrating because he could have still gotten a 12th
• 28:55
  place finish or whatever you know that that battle is for and
• 28:58
  instead he he wrecked now. So one we got to talk about is
• 29:01
  there going to be any punishment for this?
• 29:02
  Probably not but like what should be the punishment for
• 29:05
  this and and whether he's in the right or not?
• 29:08
  Like what what mental side do you makes you react that way and
• 29:12
  how Is there any way for this to change?
• 29:14
  Is this just going to be the end of his career?
• 29:16
  Is going to be doing dumb shit like this all the time.
• 29:18
  Well, so which conversation do you want to have?
• 29:21
  You want to have you want to continue to have the the Kabush
• 29:24
  conversation or do we want to have the intentional wrecking
• 29:27
  conversation because. Intentional wrecking because we
• 29:30
  got a new CEO we're. Let me just, I'll, I'll close
• 29:33
  the book on Kyle again. Derek and Andy probably needed
• 29:39
  to do a better job of getting him out of that.
• 29:41
  And that's the one unfortunate thing, because if it's a maybe a
• 29:46
  more level headed driver, whatever.
• 29:50
  But he's been chewing it, chewing your ass out all day and
• 29:53
  he's giving you a top ten car for the first time since, you
• 29:56
  know, fucking forever. That's that's unfortunate.
• 29:59
  So you're probably not going to tell Kyle to get out of that
• 30:02
  situation. So to your point, are we just
• 30:05
  going to do this for the rest of your your 10 year?
• 30:07
  And if so, that's unfortunate. But yes, let's talk about the
• 30:10
  intentional crash there. What is pretty obviously, I
• 30:14
  mean, priest said the right things that, you know, he said
• 30:18
  this the the thing after the race that I'm not going to cut
• 30:20
  you a break when I'm mad at you. But that doesn't line up with
• 30:24
  what he said on the radio either.
• 30:26
  Immediately before dumping tie where he's like, the next time I
• 30:31
  get to him, I'm going to the dump him.
• 30:34
  He did. And I will tell you I've covered
• 30:36
  Ryan Priest. So I'm a short track guy.
• 30:38
  I run short track singing. I've covered that version, that
• 30:42
  angry Ryan Priest and that when Ryan Priest says, when I get
• 30:46
  back to you, I've been wronged by you and I'm going to dump you
• 30:49
  100% of the time that he said that on the radio, in my
• 30:52
  experience, cover him, covering him dating back to 2012, he's
• 30:56
  done it. So I'm not surprised because he
• 31:00
  is, if nothing else, a man of his word.
• 31:03
  The question then becomes, what does NASCAR do about it?
• 31:06
  And I think this is interesting because I've been very, very
• 31:11
  blunt and honest that I think NASCAR moving forward needs to
• 31:16
  get out of the policing drivers business.
• 31:20
  I don't want to call it boys have addicts.
• 31:22
  That's so hokey. But I'm such a fan of the
• 31:24
  concept the boys have at it. You know, I, I, I've lived in so
• 31:29
  many short track worlds and versions of the NASCAR Cup
• 31:31
  Series where you let the garage police themselves.
• 31:34
  I still maintain this would not even be a conversation.
• 31:38
  This would not need to be a thing that we have to talk about
• 31:41
  if we just allowed Ryan Priest who's mad to walk up to a match
• 31:45
  the race and say hey, you, but we can't do that because it's a
• 31:49
  $75,000 fine. So instead he's like, well, to
• 31:53
  get my retribution, I've just got to not cut him a break.
• 31:57
  And so, so now NASCAR is in a box because I think NASCAR has
• 32:01
  to, I can't believe I'm saying this, but like on it's face,
• 32:05
  based on the precedent and the rules that they've previously
• 32:09
  established, they should suspend both Kyle Busch and Ryan Priest.
• 32:15
  That's stupid. I don't believe that.
• 32:17
  I don't want that. I don't think they.
• 32:19
  Should, yeah. Yeah, so these are the rules
• 32:24
  that they've made and I think that's so bad for the sport, but
• 32:27
  intentionally crashing people is bad for the sport too.
• 32:30
  So it just always comes back to me that you shouldn't have find
• 32:33
  Ricky Stenhouse Junior the same amount as modifying a greenhouse
• 32:37
  on a next Gen. for punching cow Bush.
• 32:39
  So this is all so fucking stupid.
• 32:42
  And there's people who hate my head bombs.
• 32:44
  I'm sorry. I'm a passionate racing guy.
• 32:45
  I try to alternate between driving my head bomb and saying
• 32:49
  and saying F. And I can't see the chat today
• 32:51
  because we're we're doing it this way.
• 32:52
  But I mean, this topic makes me so mad.
• 32:55
  This made me so mad since that All Star race because I said
• 32:59
  then this is going to create a series of unintended
• 33:03
  consequences that Ricky felt like Kyle intentionally wrecked
• 33:07
  him and that was the only recourse he had because he
• 33:11
  wasn't going to crack him right back.
• 33:14
  And so this is where it becomes a problem.
• 33:16
  I like, I I don't think that people should use race cars as
• 33:19
  weapons. I do think they should go bloody
• 33:22
  lips. We were at Texas Motor Speedway
• 33:24
  where we had two of the most famous bloodied lips, Brad and
• 33:27
  Jeff, 12 years ago. I can't believe I was there and
• 33:30
  it was 12 years ago. But I think they have to suspend
• 33:34
  them now. And it's they're not.
• 33:35
  I don't think they are because I think that would just be bad.
• 33:39
  There's enough possible deniability in the incidents, I
• 33:42
  think. Both of them you think?
• 33:44
  Yeah, I think both of them there's enough plausible
• 33:47
  deniability. They're not right rear hooks.
• 33:49
  They're not they're not certain what, but you're you're right.
• 33:52
  Like the the cow Bush on Stenhouse saying he wrecked the
• 33:55
  shit out of them. Sorry, we're cussing again.
• 33:57
  He wrecked them. We we bring it out of each
• 33:59
  other. I think he he wrecked them so
• 34:01
  blatantly and put him head on into a wall.
• 34:03
  Right. And Stenhouse gets fined for
• 34:05
  punching them, not for the wreck, Right.
• 34:07
  And then? Atrocious part of that.
• 34:10
  Yes, it makes no sense. I, you know, I personally didn't
• 34:14
  have a problem with what priest did today.
• 34:16
  Like I thought if you're going to wreck someone, that's how you
• 34:18
  do it. You, you know, you, you, that
• 34:20
  was the proper way to do it. If you're going to do it, I just
• 34:23
  don't know. He can't say he did it because
• 34:26
  Bo Wall said he wrecked someone and got a $50,000 fine.
• 34:28
  Right? Like they put so many rules in
• 34:31
  place arbitrarily after the fact of of other drivers doing things
• 34:35
  that we get in these situations that where priests won't admit
• 34:38
  it, right. Guys can't fight.
• 34:40
  And and I think we're in this awkward box where they almost
• 34:43
  need to make the statement like boys have at it.
• 34:45
  I hated it. But like the you're right, it's
• 34:48
  corny. Everything about the Fox
• 34:50
  broadcast is corny, right? Like just the way our sport
• 34:53
  sometimes is covered. And that's a phrase that just
• 34:55
  needs to go away. But that type of statement needs
• 34:57
  to be. Said Hurricane.
• 35:00
  But to the point like. We, we need to have clarity on
• 35:04
  what these guys can do and if it's going to be a more open
• 35:07
  season and we're going to let certain things go, then great.
• 35:10
  If not, then you, like you said, they're, they should be
• 35:12
  suspended because it was intentional wrecking on a mile
• 35:14
  and a half going 180 miles an hour.
• 35:16
  So I, I don't know it, I, I enjoy the drama aspect.
• 35:20
  I think the drama is what drives people to be passionate about
• 35:24
  it, right, like on Kyle's side or are you on John Hunter's
• 35:27
  side? Are you on pre's side or are you
• 35:29
  on Gibbs side? Right.
• 35:30
  Like these are the battles that make things matter, but if we
• 35:33
  can't have them then what's the point?
• 35:35
  Yeah, it's stock car racing, rightly.
• 35:37
  I, I I'm so happy that the the Jim France era of NASCAR is over
• 35:42
  for a lot of reasons, because I do think there's a lot of you
• 35:46
  know, you have a pinky out IMSA influence in my NASCAR Cup
• 35:51
  series down from the tar on. YouTube.
• 35:54
  What's that? IMSA just passed NASCAR on
• 35:57
  YouTube. They have more followers.
• 35:59
  No shit. No, I don't have a whole.
• 36:02
  Video on it. No, no, I, I get so insulated in
• 36:05
  my own world sometimes and I, I don't, I don't know what to make
• 36:10
  of that. Actually, I, I need to actually,
• 36:11
  this is news to me. This is breaking news to me.
• 36:13
  So I need to, to think about why that is.
• 36:16
  And it's probably the OEMs and the amount of influence they
• 36:19
  have, but? But there's an international
• 36:21
  aspect to. That.
• 36:22
  Yeah, yeah, but we're we're off topic here, right?
• 36:26
  But just I'll, I'll say this about the priest 1.
• 36:28
  You say plausible deniability. It's hard to deny.
• 36:31
  When I get back to him, I'm going to wreck him.
• 36:34
  And then you get back to him and you wreck him and then it's
• 36:37
  like, well, you know, I just didn't cut him a break.
• 36:40
  This is going to be very interesting from the sanctioning
• 36:43
  body come Tuesday or Wednesday. And I think there will be fine.
• 36:47
  I think priest will get fined. I think the God.
• 36:51
  I hope not. Yeah, I don't know.
• 36:54
  I'll say this though. I'll say this.
• 36:57
  Regardless of the outcome, I love it, right?
• 36:59
  I, I, I'm enough of a, of a, of a, of a redneck and a red ass
• 37:03
  and I'm from Alabama that I love this hillbilly racing.
• 37:07
  I love people be mad at each other and wanting to wreck each
• 37:09
  other and wanting to fight. To me that that's stock car
• 37:12
  racing, that's NASCAR short track scene.
• 37:14
  We cover Bowman Gray. We like Bowman Gray at short
• 37:17
  track scene. And I I like a little bit of
• 37:22
  hillbilly redneck in my NASCAR Cup series.
• 37:25
  Did you? Did you happen to catch Squirrel
• 37:27
  Mcnuggets fight whatever his name is?
• 37:31
  We've gone 37 minutes and 33 seconds I.
• 37:35
  Had not not. Talking about it.
• 37:36
  You hadn't said the word yet. This is the natural Segway.
• 37:41
  No, I did not. I did not watch the Indy 800.
• 37:44
  I assume this is Indy 800 content.
• 37:46
  Yes. I didn't.
• 37:48
  This is not not, not that I don't respect it.
• 37:51
  It just doesn't fall under my purview, right.
• 37:53
  Like I'm so busy with the NASCAR Cup stuff and short track stain
• 37:56
  covers late models and modifieds and Sprint cars and so I just
• 38:01
  don't have the bandwidth to pay attention to that.
• 38:04
  And and what happened? I don't know.
• 38:07
  It they're just, they're playing it up there.
• 38:09
  There's a wreck on track and and he was, I think there's playing
• 38:11
  it up with the with the fake fight it was.
• 38:14
  Yeah, but I was, I was invested in Landon because I, I, I, I
• 38:17
  really respect and admire Landon Huffman.
• 38:20
  And I think it's cool that Landon's personality was deemed
• 38:25
  worthy enough to kind of be a part of that show because I
• 38:27
  think Landon is such an underrated race car driver and
• 38:30
  personality. 100%, yeah. So I want to talk about one more
• 38:36
  thing and then we can move on to, to the truck race.
• 38:38
  But I had to stop when I was watching the the races this
• 38:42
  weekend about Texas Motor Speedway and what it's become.
• 38:46
  You know, you watch the truck race and, and a lot of crashes,
• 38:50
  a lot of spins, a lot of different things happening.
• 38:52
  And Xfinity, same thing. They're they're kind of all over
• 38:54
  the place that the track is starting to wear out.
• 38:56
  And when you look at the caution count in every single series,
• 38:58
  it's high. It's like double digits in every
• 39:00
  single race. And it kind of reminds me of how
• 39:03
  I felt as a kid growing up when it was Darlington was a track
• 39:07
  too tough to tame, right? And and Dover was the monster
• 39:10
  mile. And we had these kind of vibes
• 39:12
  with tracks where I was like, or at least as a kid, I was like,
• 39:14
  Oh shit, Darlington, just a badass track.
• 39:17
  Feels like it's at that point where it it went from a track
• 39:21
  that sucked for a while to where it's like, no, this is like a
• 39:24
  badass track which is really hard to drive.
• 39:27
  And that Xfinity or Riley race was like awesome.
• 39:30
  Like, the racing was fantastic. I'm like, is Texas a good track
• 39:34
  now and should be treating it as like this mythical, you know,
• 39:39
  race track like we used to with Darlington and Dover and those
• 39:41
  type tracks. No, listen, I I thought this
• 39:44
  last year I was like, I wasn't willing to pull the trigger yet
• 39:47
  on it. But I'm like, is Texas kind of
• 39:50
  back? But I thought the racing and
• 39:52
  maybe it was kind of like to me it's it's the in and out, the in
• 39:56
  and out scale is that everyone kept telling me all you'll love
• 39:59
  in and out, in and out is great. In and out is like the standard
• 40:02
  of fast food and you eat in and out and it's like.
• 40:05
  This is not that great, but it was blown up to me.
• 40:08
  Yeah, whatever. And the inverse is true, right?
• 40:12
  Someone tells you it sucks, it sucks.
• 40:14
  It sucks, it sucks. And I wasn't enjoying
• 40:16
  immediately repaid to reconfigure Texas either.
• 40:19
  But a couple of years of aging and last year, the Cup race
• 40:23
  there, I'm like, hey, I kind of like this race.
• 40:26
  This was OK. And maybe it's because my
• 40:28
  standard was so low. And so it's funny because like
• 40:31
  going into this year, I thought I kind of think Texas might be
• 40:34
  back, but I don't want to allow myself to be there yet.
• 40:37
  And through all three races today, I was like, yeah, it's
• 40:41
  kind of a good track. I'm not saying it's a great
• 40:42
  track. I'm not saying it's perfect.
• 40:46
  The, the, the arrow thing is still very much more problematic
• 40:49
  in Texas. The narrow, the lane is still
• 40:52
  narrow enough that you know, you can't just go RIP the wall,
• 40:55
  right. And, and to me, that's the
• 40:56
  biggest thing that Kansas has, is that if someone's air
• 41:00
  blocking you, well, then you just go up against the wall or
• 41:02
  you can find the bottom. You.
• 41:04
  Won't have that there. The bumped in three and four
• 41:06
  really limits things where if you're entering on the outside
• 41:09
  of someone, you almost have to lift right.
• 41:11
  And so, yeah, it doesn't have that that wide openness, even
• 41:15
  though it's a super wide track, it it doesn't have that multi
• 41:17
  year racing. There was a point in the middle
• 41:19
  of the race where no one inside the top 19 had moved positions
• 41:22
  for like 1520 laps, right? Like passing still somewhat of
• 41:25
  an issue, but I think there's enough kind of goodness within
• 41:29
  what we're seeing from the cut product.
• 41:31
  But then especially like the Truck and O'Reilly races were
• 41:34
  fantastic. Like I don't know how you can
• 41:35
  ask for better racing. I'm going to transition to
• 41:38
  Carson host far. We're finally getting there 40
• 41:40
  minutes into the race, but he wins the dead Talladega on
• 41:42
  Sunday. Friday shows up in in the
• 41:45
  Chili's ride the dente scheme again takes on the truck race.
• 41:48
  I mean, he he did not have the best draw, but he out drove.
• 41:51
  He drove his ass off and took that one.
• 41:54
  I thought it was the best truck and I think that circumstances
• 41:57
  kept costing him opportunities to go dominate.
• 42:02
  But I think, well, that's fair. 1A and 1B.
• 42:11
  And I think Honeycutt has more speed.
• 42:12
  But, and I want to ask you this because you've watched Honey and
• 42:15
  we'll get, yeah, talk about how far I'll get to Honeycutt in a
• 42:18
  second. Funny.
• 42:20
  Actually, hold on a second. It's funny.
• 42:23
  As soon as you said Kaden Honeycutt, he actually just
• 42:25
  texted me. That's a weird time.
• 42:28
  I got a text from Kaden. Kaden.
• 42:30
  I don't know if I should admit this or not.
• 42:31
  Kaden sent me that the picture of the of the John Hunter, you
• 42:37
  know, bloody face. And he just asked me.
• 42:39
  He's like, what happened? I don't.
• 42:43
  OK, I'll get back to him in a minute.
• 42:44
  But I think, I think we're all still trying to figure out what
• 42:47
  that was. But yeah, he texted me, so I
• 42:51
  lost my train of thought. What?
• 42:52
  What are we talking about? Host of our You thought he had
• 42:55
  the best drug I. Disagree with no, no, you're
• 42:57
  right about lane. You're right about lane and that
• 42:59
  it was 1A and 1B and they both had things that happened right
• 43:02
  lane and qualifying and then again with the the rear, the
• 43:07
  rear rear window bracing. That's so weird.
• 43:10
  That's so weird. What are y'all doing there?
• 43:14
  I don't what are, what are what are they doing there?
• 43:17
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 43:19
  What, what are they doing there? It reminded me and, and one of
• 43:21
  the things they probably they kind of talked about in the, in
• 43:24
  the, you know, when they were repairing it, like how they
• 43:26
  that, that, you know, back window could come out.
• 43:29
  The thing it reminded me of was Atlanta two years ago, I think
• 43:32
  it was 2025 when I think it was Matt Mills.
• 43:35
  The whole roof of the truck kind of came off when they were also
• 43:38
  kind of playing with the windows a little bit and the actual roof
• 43:40
  of the truck kind of popped off mid race.
• 43:43
  That's kind of what they're worried about at that point.
• 43:46
  Is. It, it, it's loosening up.
• 43:48
  So they had to fix it, not just for legality purposes, I'm sure
• 43:52
  NASCAR's like, you know, secure that, but also that that roof
• 43:58
  could literally just pop off at that point.
• 44:00
  So it it, but you're always going to wonder where are they
• 44:03
  trying to redirect air to or that's there or not.
• 44:07
  Those are the questions. Yeah, that's.
• 44:09
  Been going on forever trying to get the air to escape through
• 44:12
  the rear window and stuff but back to.
• 44:13
  Host And by the way, I love that.
• 44:15
  I love that. That's racing to me.
• 44:17
  Yep, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything to talk about with Host
• 44:21
  War? Or is it just like, man, this
• 44:22
  dude's a superstar and and oh. He's awesome and it's not even
• 44:25
  just the racing. Like did you see the clips of
• 44:27
  him at the high limit race? I did not, no.
• 44:30
  So Tony Laporta who is the excellent Pit Rd. reporter for
• 44:35
  High Limit Racing. Former USAC play by play guy
• 44:39
  too. Tony Laporta is just a salt of
• 44:41
  the earth human being and a super entertaining racing TV
• 44:45
  personality at a wedding to attend I believe.
• 44:48
  And so in the absence of TLP, let's just Dick Carson Hosavar
• 44:53
  as your pit Rd. reporter. And so there was 1 scene.
• 44:57
  So I would encourage everyone to look it up on Twitter or YouTube
• 45:01
  or Facebook. It's all over the place.
• 45:03
  Carson was interviewing Kyle Larson because Kyle Larson won
• 45:07
  his heat race on Saturday. And remember what it was.
• 45:13
  Maybe Kyle was like, you know, I'm trying to get my headlines
• 45:17
  back. You're stealing all the
• 45:17
  headlines from us. You know, people, people are
• 45:19
  forgotten about me. Everyone's Carson, Carson,
• 45:22
  Carson. And so to your point, right,
• 45:24
  it's just like this guy is winning races and he did the,
• 45:28
  the, the, the victory celebration again.
• 45:32
  It's so awesome. He did, he's he so did and he's
• 45:36
  on TV doing fun things. The cool thing that a lot of
• 45:42
  people might not have picked up on, because this was on my
• 45:45
  Twitter and I don't know, the TV got it after Carson won last
• 45:51
  week, I was interviewing Chase and Carson's coming down Pit Rd.
• 45:55
  and Chase is like, hold on a minute.
• 45:57
  And he wants to go congratulate him.
• 45:59
  And he came back to me and was like, sorry, I just, I, I know,
• 46:02
  I know that's a big deal. And he, he deserves that.
• 46:05
  And it was such a cool moment. And so then Chase is coming.
• 46:08
  I'm talking, it's funny. I'm done talking to Carsten.
• 46:10
  And Chase comes around and Carson's like, hold on.
• 46:14
  And so sportsmanship is cool too.
• 46:16
  And I say all of this is that you have a really compelling
• 46:19
  package here. People are starting to respect
• 46:22
  him. They're starting to like him.
• 46:25
  They're entertained by him. We're entertained by him.
• 46:28
  I just we need to have a conversation about that nickname
• 46:31
  and if it's really the best name for him because I hate it.
• 46:34
  Well, let's talk about Fox because you you posted on
• 46:38
  Twitter about or X where? Are we?
• 46:40
  That blew up. I'm so surprised that blew up.
• 46:43
  You, you brought it up, you know, essentially the same thing
• 46:46
  you just said there is, you know, is this actually a good
• 46:48
  nickname? And you know, for me personally,
• 46:51
  I think the nickname is good, but it's all about the delivery
• 46:53
  of it. It's all about who is saying it
• 46:55
  and how it's saying. And I made the comment that it's
• 46:57
  like, no, it's not cool when your great grandfather's saying
• 47:00
  it. It sounds ridiculous.
• 47:01
  I love Mike, by the way. What's that?
• 47:05
  I love Mike, but he is the great grandfather.
• 47:07
  He is the great grandfather. He is the uncool great
• 47:10
  grandfather that's, you know, still messaging you on Facebook
• 47:13
  even though you haven't been on Facebook for 10 years.
• 47:16
  It, you know, but Fox as a whole has this vibe that to me feels
• 47:21
  hokey. And you talk about hokey with
• 47:23
  the boys. Have at it.
• 47:26
  I don't Evan is trying so hard to to to keep that booth
• 47:31
  seriously. And he he's got the entire
• 47:33
  seriousness of Fox Sports on his shoulders, and he just can't do
• 47:37
  it alone. We're two, we got 2 races left,
• 47:41
  right. I'm super excited to see it
• 47:42
  gone, but is do we just rack this and do it again next year?
• 47:46
  Are they finally going to start making changes with that
• 47:48
  product? Because it is a big problem for
• 47:51
  me and I can't imagine what it's like for casual fans that are
• 47:54
  tuning in. You know, it's so frustrating
• 47:56
  because like, I'd like the booth.
• 48:01
  I like the booth. I I think that Mike Clinton,
• 48:04
  Kevin Work, I just think it's just the, the theme, It's the
• 48:10
  just the general direction. And this has always been the
• 48:13
  modern Fox Sports. I've always said, and this is
• 48:16
  the pro wrestling term, but funny doesn't make money in the
• 48:20
  sense that, you know, in pro wrestling you don't want comedy
• 48:25
  because comedy doesn't put butts in the sea.
• 48:27
  People want conflict and drama and they want rivalries and
• 48:30
  feuds. To me, that's NASCAR.
• 48:33
  And Fox far too often tries to make my NASCAR Cup Series A
• 48:37
  comedy. And I'm sure there's market data
• 48:40
  research that shows that people like the grid Walkins.
• 48:42
  I I admire Michael. I know some people don't like
• 48:45
  Michael. I like Michael.
• 48:46
  I respect Michael. I think he's awesome.
• 48:48
  Like I think Michael Waltrip is a genuinely awesome human.
• 48:53
  But I understand why the stick doesn't work for some people.
• 48:56
  I'm not a big fan of the grid walk either.
• 48:59
  The delivery is far too often. I'm trying to make you laugh as
• 49:03
  opposed to I'm trying to educate you or make you smarter or more
• 49:08
  engaged. I don't.
• 49:10
  I don't think their goal should be to make me laugh.
• 49:12
  And they are so frequently trying to make me laugh and I
• 49:15
  don't. I don't want to.
• 49:16
  I don't want to. I'm watching NASCAR, I'm
• 49:17
  watching a competition. I don't watch Chicago Cubs
• 49:20
  baseball, New Orleans Saints football, the NHL, Stanley Cup
• 49:25
  playoffs to watch my dogs. I'm not watching that to laugh.
• 49:28
  I I want Rama and intensity and Fox so often forgets that
• 49:32
  they're supposed to give me drama and intensity.
• 49:35
  Yeah, I mean, two things off of that.
• 49:37
  One, they do the same thing Terry Bradshaw, right?
• 49:40
  Like they shove Terry Bradshaw down our throat for 30 years.
• 49:43
  Like it, it's, it's, it is a fox in totality thing, right.
• 49:46
  They they love to kind of have that aspect to him.
• 49:49
  But even within that structure, they still have realistic, what
• 49:54
  I would say is like Kevin Harvick, professional to the
• 49:57
  point guys. And I don't feel like we have
• 49:59
  that with NASCAR. The gridlock is an F1 thing and
• 50:02
  it's fantastic in F1B is 1. What's that?
• 50:07
  It's more serious. It's super serious.
• 50:10
  He goes and asks the team principal serious questions
• 50:14
  about what's happening and then he goes and finds celebrities in
• 50:17
  the if the celebrities are assholes, he mocks them.
• 50:20
  He literally calls them out on their shit.
• 50:22
  He's like, listen, you're only here because they allow you and
• 50:25
  you agreed to do this interview when you showed up.
• 50:28
  Like he does that, right? My favorite part of the grid
• 50:31
  walk in F1 was he talked to Bernie Ecclestone.
• 50:33
  Like right after the week, after two weeks after Bernie
• 50:36
  Ecclestone had like half a billion dollars found, like
• 50:40
  through tax. It was tax evasion.
• 50:41
  He's fighting it and and he he's like, hey, man, I heard you just
• 50:45
  lost half half a billion dollars like on TV to this guy that used
• 50:50
  to run F1 and like he doesn't give a damn, right.
• 50:53
  That's what makes it special. Whereas Mikey, it's all these
• 50:55
  little silly inside jokes or like the context of what you
• 51:00
  need to produce that content to be isn't there.
• 51:02
  And you know something to say that about our podcast or you
• 51:05
  know, you're doing it from damn parking lot, right.
• 51:07
  But we aren't covering the biggest auto racing sport in the
• 51:12
  country, right, and making it a laughing stock.
• 51:15
  And I think it's really important at some point that Fox
• 51:18
  redirects their broadcast because we're going to go to
• 51:20
  Prime in two weeks and every single person to a TS going to
• 51:22
  be like, Oh my God, this is so much better.
• 51:24
  This is amazing. So it's so good, I'm thinking.
• 51:27
  Fresh here and they're going to stay an hour after the race with
• 51:30
  Carl Edwards and he's going to say really cool stuff I.
• 51:32
  Assume he is. Like the difference is night and
• 51:35
  day and I just. I get so mad.
• 51:37
  I love covering races. I love what I do for a living.
• 51:40
  I love being at the racetrack. But I'll tell you, last year I I
• 51:44
  so their races were the 600, I was at the 600.
• 51:48
  Mexico I don't, I only watched like 1 or maybe 2.
• 51:51
  Nashville, I only watched like one or two prime races from home
• 51:57
  and I was just like, I don't want to miss these races on TV.
• 52:00
  But I, I, me, a guy that gets to go to the races for a living and
• 52:04
  gets to go to the track and talk to people and ask my questions.
• 52:08
  And I feel like as a, as a racing fan, first and foremost,
• 52:13
  I get what I want to provide fans when I'm watching that
• 52:17
  broadcast. It is so damn good.
• 52:20
  And I'm, I, I wish we had more than just, you know, the, the
• 52:23
  five. And I want 36 but and and we all
• 52:29
  have our own personal preferences, right?
• 52:32
  Anita asks. And and I'll give this to you
• 52:34
  because you're going to be able to orate a little bit better.
• 52:36
  And the answer is probably her question was why can Adam
• 52:39
  Alexander, J Mack and Parker kind of go over the top and and
• 52:42
  have some fun? But then we criticize Fox for
• 52:46
  doing it and Mike Joy and I know from my personal standpoint is I
• 52:51
  think it's the way it's delivered and what you're
• 52:53
  delivering and what you're having fun with.
• 52:55
  You know, the the particular like the hurricane thing, right?
• 52:57
  When you say it a certain way, it just doesn't work.
• 53:00
  And when you're forcing things in or like at Martinsville, when
• 53:02
  you're having train talk for three minutes in the middle of
• 53:04
  practice instead of what's happening on the track, those
• 53:07
  are things that I have a problem with.
• 53:08
  Mike Joy consistently makes wrong calls during the race Last
• 53:14
  week, he said something about a battle for the lead and it was a
• 53:16
  lap car and some random other thing.
• 53:18
  It's like, what are you doing right?
• 53:20
  Those are the things I have a problem with.
• 53:22
  Not necessarily that Parker and Jamie are are having something.
• 53:26
  So, but anyway, do you talk about it?
• 53:28
  Because you're going to articulate this better than than
• 53:30
  I would. Well, one I would, I want to say
• 53:32
  to Anita, thank you for staying up with us.
• 53:34
  I, I saw the tweets and I know that you were on the fence about
• 53:37
  staying up. And I want everyone in this
• 53:39
  thread to know for the most part, I, I'm not, I'm not
• 53:42
  reading the chat today because I'm doing it on my phone, But I,
• 53:45
  I, I try to get to know each one of you.
• 53:47
  And I, I, I know a lot of you and we have a lot of exchanges
• 53:51
  back and forth on Twitter. And like, I want, I want you to
• 53:54
  know that when Anita tells me, I don't know that if I can stay up
• 53:57
  tonight and then I see that she did.
• 54:00
  I appreciate that. So I remember that you said
• 54:02
  that's a thank you. And to answer your question, to
• 54:06
  me the difference is authenticity, right?
• 54:10
  I I, I want to. I, I believe you got it.
• 54:14
  One word, yeah, I'm saying all these.
• 54:16
  One word. You said it.
• 54:17
  I'm. Like, yeah, but to me, when I,
• 54:19
  when I watched that booth with with, with AA and with Parker
• 54:23
  and Jamie on The CW, yeah, they there, there's, there's inside
• 54:29
  jokes or there's things that are funny that happen even within
• 54:33
  the context of a serious sport. There are things that happen
• 54:37
  that are worthy of humor. I'm not saying that I want to
• 54:41
  strip humor out of my super serious sport.
• 54:45
  I just wanted to be authentic to the moment.
• 54:48
  And I think sometimes the the Fox brand, the delivery is that
• 54:53
  the moment did not call for humor.
• 54:56
  This was not a funny moment. And we're trying to force the
• 55:00
  silliness in the in the comedy on to an otherwise serious
• 55:05
  moment. And that's to say nothing of,
• 55:08
  you know, production stuff or things that are just missed or
• 55:12
  whatever. And that that's whatever.
• 55:13
  I'm not I'm not. I've I've been in the booth
• 55:16
  before. People don't know this.
• 55:18
  The Car Store, the very first season of The Car Store in 2015,
• 55:23
  Tony Stevens, who is a really good play by play guy and
• 55:25
  director and producer, did play by play And he asked me, he's
• 55:30
  like, hey, I know late model stocks, but Matt, you know,
• 55:33
  super late models. Will you come in and do some
• 55:35
  color? And for like the first seven
• 55:38
  races of the first cars Tour season, I did color commentary
• 55:42
  and it was the hardest thing that I've ever done.
• 55:44
  And I find writing and writing well to be hard.
• 55:48
  And the relationships that's, that's hard.
• 55:50
  I very quickly realized that being in the broadcast booth is
• 55:53
  not for me. And so I want to make sure that
• 55:56
  I give broadcasters their their flowers because what they do is
• 56:00
  hard. And balancing the tone, the
• 56:05
  authenticity, the facts, being able to take care of your
• 56:09
  partners and ads and sponsors. I'm not qualified to tell them
• 56:13
  how to do their job, but I am qualified to be a race fan,
• 56:16
  right? And so I just, I feel like as a
• 56:18
  race fan, first and foremost, I find what we're about to get
• 56:24
  with Prime and what we get with The CW just to be a more and
• 56:27
  goes back to that word authenticity, a more authentic
• 56:30
  experience. The the product I'm watching and
• 56:33
  the way it's delivered are tonally matching up in a way
• 56:37
  that they just don't own Fox for some continuous reason.
• 56:41
  Yeah, and you know, I have the same thing with Lee Diffie
• 56:44
  personally. Like, I think Lee Diffie is
• 56:46
  probably the nicest guy in the world.
• 56:47
  Like literally might be the nicest guy in the world.
• 56:50
  There's. A reason why NBC wants him on
• 56:52
  every single thing they do that has a motor in it, right.
• 56:56
  But you know, I'm a big motocross fan.
• 56:58
  I watch every single race. It's it's supercross motocross.
• 57:02
  It's it's one of those weird passions that I have and I watch
• 57:05
  it midnight every Saturday night after I get my work done.
• 57:09
  And I love when Lee Diffie's not on the call.
• 57:12
  I don't like when he's doing commentary there.
• 57:14
  So when he came to NASCAR, I already had this feeling like,
• 57:17
  man, he just has these moments where he just talks too much,
• 57:20
  right? He says too much He does.
• 57:21
  So I don't enjoy his broadcast style, right.
• 57:24
  And we're all going to have these little quirks that like
• 57:27
  and don't like. My problem with the Fox booth is
• 57:29
  that or the Fox coverage as a whole.
• 57:31
  Is it? It feels unanimous, like it
• 57:33
  feels like I don't want to say 100%.
• 57:35
  A large majority of fans do not like what they're getting from
• 57:39
  this provider. It's 100% on Fridays, I'll tell
• 57:42
  you what. I didn't even want to get into
• 57:45
  it. But yes, that truck broadcast
• 57:47
  has been awful. If you want people to take it
• 57:49
  that seriously and TuneIn, you have to change it.
• 57:51
  I don't. Eric Brennan, 2027.
• 57:53
  Let's go. Why?
• 57:55
  Why don't they make that? Why?
• 57:56
  I don't know. I know those guys, right?
• 58:00
  And I have conversations with a lot of those people and there's
• 58:03
  a group of us within the short track community because that's
• 58:07
  where Eric is from, right? Voice of the Cars tour.
• 58:10
  They were like, why isn't this happening yet?
• 58:12
  And just, you know, they like them And everyone that I talked
• 58:15
  to who, who is Privy to that dynamic is like, well, they're
• 58:20
  loyal and they really believe in the product and they believe in
• 58:23
  what they're they're giving us on Friday.
• 58:26
  And I don't know, I don't know what to say beyond that.
• 58:33
  It ain't it. And by by the way, Jamie, I say
• 58:38
  I don't want to make this personal or we're getting into
• 58:40
  the weeds here and I don't want to come across as personal.
• 58:43
  I think Jamie is a tremendous hit Rd. reporter, right?
• 58:47
  So this is not a knock on Jane. Jamie's been doing this for a
• 58:49
  long time and she is tremendous. And so I just think that
• 58:53
  everyone has a role and everyone has a place that they can be
• 58:58
  best serving this audience and that that best role is not being
• 59:04
  provided on Friday. And there's a lot of people who
• 59:06
  are not serving in their best roles on Sunday either.
• 59:10
  And like Clint, I think Clint is actually a here's the thing,
• 59:15
  Clint, I want to again, make this not personal.
• 59:18
  Clint is with a smart, serious race car driver and racing
• 59:21
  personality. And when Clint was an active
• 59:24
  driver at the end of his career, I would lean on Clint a lot for
• 59:27
  like good quotes from a technical racecraft rules
• 59:32
  package. Like Clint was a really good
• 59:35
  sneaking under the radar quote that if I wanted to someone who
• 59:39
  could articulate things why they should be different or what
• 59:43
  they're doing, plant that guy. And I haven't, I haven't
• 59:47
  listened to that version of Clint Boyer since he retired.
• 59:51
  They're not utilizing his voice. I just can't help but think
• 59:55
  that's the direction, the direction in the ear because I
• 59:59
  know Clint Boyer and I've talked to.
• 1:00:00
  Clint Boyer, he doesn't TV in real life.
• 1:00:02
  He doesn't know act that way. There's a part of him that's
• 1:00:05
  that way. Like he is awesome and fun.
• 1:00:07
  He's a good time. I saw that when he was doing
• 1:00:11
  SRX, which track was Lucas Oil Raceway, and we got to hang out
• 1:00:18
  a little bit because I was doing SRX and that guy exists too.
• 1:00:21
  Like the duality of man, there's too much of this, not enough to
• 1:00:25
  this version of him. And I think that's just the
• 1:00:27
  direction pushing him that way. And so, yeah, just to tie this
• 1:00:31
  all in a bow box has a tonal authenticity issue that I wish
• 1:00:37
  that they would spend the rest of their offseason contemplating
• 1:00:43
  how they want that to look. At least they got rid of the
• 1:00:46
  cartoons. That was one, one small leap for
• 1:00:48
  NASCAR and one giant leap for for mankind.
• 1:00:52
  At least they got rid of the cartoons.
• 1:00:53
  Yeah, and, and it's a total issue.
• 1:00:55
  It's 100% what Fox wants. It's not that's he's being told
• 1:00:59
  to act this way like that. Plenty simple.
• 1:01:03
  Yeah, well, dude, he's got a big paycheck, so he'll say he'll do
• 1:01:06
  whatever you want. I think when you you know what
• 1:01:09
  you said about Jamie Little, So true.
• 1:01:10
  It's like she's so good at being a pit reporter and an
• 1:01:12
  interviewer. And do I watch her do X Games 30
• 1:01:16
  years ago? Whatever it was, right.
• 1:01:18
  Like, she's been around forever and seen everything, been a part
• 1:01:20
  of everything. She's well qualified.
• 1:01:23
  She's just so much better at something else than this.
• 1:01:26
  And it and it's the same thing with Clint where I'm like, dude,
• 1:01:29
  if he was and and I don't want the old Hollywood hotel come
• 1:01:32
  back or anything, but like that type of setup feels great for
• 1:01:36
  him in the booth. Doesn't feel good for me.
• 1:01:38
  Whereas I look at Jamie McMurray just walking around the infield
• 1:01:41
  getting 30 seconds every race. I'm like, he should be in the
• 1:01:44
  booth. And so it's just where guys
• 1:01:46
  should be placed, should be different.
• 1:01:47
  But let's move on. We're we're going too long on
• 1:01:49
  that. I want to introduce Cletus Watch
• 1:01:54
  to our show. Have you ever?
• 1:01:56
  One hour, one minute, 57 seconds.
• 1:01:59
  I don't think you said the C word until now.
• 1:02:02
  Here we are. Is is he in the graphic?
• 1:02:04
  Did you sneak him in the graphic?
• 1:02:05
  Is there a little tiny cletus somewhere in the graphic?
• 1:02:07
  No. No.
• 1:02:08
  No, we're we have low viewership tonight because Cletus wasn't
• 1:02:11
  mentioned yet. Have you watched Anchorman?
• 1:02:16
  No, OK, no, I'm not a I'm not a feral verse.
• 1:02:22
  I'm not a big Anchorman fan either, but within that movie
• 1:02:25
  there it Paul Rudd's in there and they have him at the zoo and
• 1:02:28
  they have this thing which like panda watch day five and he goes
• 1:02:32
  in there and he's like, where's the stupid bear?
• 1:02:35
  He's not coming out, you asshole.
• 1:02:36
  You're making me look stupid. And it's just kind of this bit,
• 1:02:39
  you know, as a reporter out there, we should do Cletus watch
• 1:02:42
  every week and figure out what is happening in the world of
• 1:02:45
  Cletus MacFarlane to keep people invested in our show.
• 1:02:48
  BC draws ratings, right? Like we absolutely have to get
• 1:02:51
  our numbers up. So one please McFarland, he's
• 1:02:54
  racing at the end of this month in Nashville and the O'Reilly
• 1:02:57
  Series. So we're going to get a little
• 1:02:58
  bit more of him there. I saw something on Twitter that
• 1:03:00
  I think was deleted that he maybe already have a deal
• 1:03:04
  together for truck race at Daga later this year.
• 1:03:07
  I don't know if you know anything about that.
• 1:03:10
  But more importantly, the world that you're in is Cletus is full
• 1:03:14
  force on the I'm getting a late model.
• 1:03:16
  I'm going racing. Stop it.
• 1:03:21
  You can stop it. I I started to check out.
• 1:03:23
  We started doing cletus when there was no cletus to Cletus.
• 1:03:26
  I just I can't Cletus anymore anymore.
• 1:03:30
  What? What's the deal with the light
• 1:03:31
  mall though? Is he?
• 1:03:31
  Is he running cars or what? People.
• 1:03:33
  Yeah, people. I saw a headline from another
• 1:03:36
  outlet. I appreciate their coverage and
• 1:03:40
  trying to talk about that world, but they got it wrong and they
• 1:03:43
  got all of it wrong. These are the facts about
• 1:03:46
  Cletus's late model 10 year 1. Cletus is not building a late
• 1:03:50
  model. Cletus is not qualified
• 1:03:53
  respectfully to build a straight rail late model.
• 1:03:57
  This is the geometry is a little beyond.
• 1:03:59
  He's a smart racer. Like I'm not dismissing Cletus's
• 1:04:03
  racing acumen. He's not going to go build a pro
• 1:04:06
  super late model. He races in ARCA for Terry Jones
• 1:04:12
  and Margaret Red Jones Racing. And earlier this year, Port City
• 1:04:19
  Race Cars, which is one of the premier builders of of straight
• 1:04:24
  rail style late models, was sold and was sold to a group that was
• 1:04:30
  owned by Margaret Terry Jones, Greg Zippideli and Noah Gregson,
• 1:04:36
  all combined forces to buy Port City race cars.
• 1:04:43
  And so because Cletus already has that relationship from the
• 1:04:47
  very beginning, Mark was like, we need to get you in a late
• 1:04:52
  model because we think that, you know, that's the best way for
• 1:04:55
  you to improve your race craft and especially on the short
• 1:04:58
  track stuff, rightly teach you to race side by side, wheel to
• 1:05:00
  wheel and that'll help you on mile and a halfs.
• 1:05:03
  And Mark is still super adamant that he would be approved for
• 1:05:07
  superspeedways right now if he had gotten in a late model
• 1:05:10
  sooner because he would've been better equipped to do the things
• 1:05:13
  he wanted to do in Rockingham. And they had a a chassis built
• 1:05:21
  already. It just needed to be powder
• 1:05:23
  coated. And when pleatus finally.
• 1:05:26
  So what happened was is he went on Dell junior download right?
• 1:05:29
  And Dale was like, hey, man, So that's what Dale said, hey, man,
• 1:05:35
  hey man, you need to run cars to race with you.
• 1:05:37
  Cletus was like, yeah, I would love to run a cars to race with
• 1:05:39
  you. And then suddenly he goes back
• 1:05:41
  to Mark Rhett and was like, hey, Mark, I want to get the late
• 1:05:44
  model now because Dale told him it was a good idea to do it.
• 1:05:48
  And he's like, well, I just so happen to have this chassis that
• 1:05:52
  needs to be powder coated and we need to change some things
• 1:05:55
  because we, we didn't build a, a chassis for a giraffe.
• 1:06:00
  They need to modify it so we can fit the giraffe in the, in the
• 1:06:03
  driver's seat. And so it took a little bit
• 1:06:05
  longer to get that car done. And I think it's close to done.
• 1:06:11
  I don't know how how much he's going to race it.
• 1:06:14
  I talked to him about, I wrote the story on short track scene
• 1:06:16
  about a month ago. He wants to, and this is
• 1:06:19
  actually kind of cool. He wants to take because he has
• 1:06:22
  his Crown Victoria stuff, right? He wants to then, since he's
• 1:06:25
  already going to all these track tracks for his Crown Victoria
• 1:06:29
  show, to also have a prolate model show alongside the Crown
• 1:06:33
  vacant. It'll just be an extra bit of
• 1:06:35
  content. He's the.
• 1:06:36
  Promoter of it. Right.
• 1:06:37
  And he's the promoter, it'll be his own thing and he also owns
• 1:06:41
  Freedom Factory in Bradenton, FL and they have some big super
• 1:06:44
  late model races there later in the year.
• 1:06:47
  So I think he wants to start promoting those pro races.
• 1:06:51
  A pro late model and a super is the same chassis, it's just a
• 1:06:53
  different motor. They drop in the we'll call it
• 1:06:58
  the sealed motor. It's not really an open motor
• 1:07:00
  anymore, but the pro late model is the crate engine and the
• 1:07:04
  Super late model is the sealed open engine.
• 1:07:08
  And he wants to start running some supers once he gets used to
• 1:07:11
  running the Pro. He he has a big end of the year
• 1:07:14
  race called the Bill Bigley Senior Memorial 128 in November.
• 1:07:19
  I think he wants to to make his super late model debut debut in
• 1:07:24
  that race after doing some pro races.
• 1:07:26
  So how quickly can he do a cars Tour race?
• 1:07:30
  That's a tough ask. His cars Tour pro races are very
• 1:07:34
  tough too, but he could do that by the end of the year too.
• 1:07:37
  And so it's just a matter of how much bandwidth he has.
• 1:07:41
  His busy schedule, the NASCAR stuff, he's very busy.
• 1:07:46
  He is super industrious because I, I joke about the Cletus
• 1:07:49
  thing. I actually really admire him.
• 1:07:52
  I, I don't, I don't, here's the thing, I don't want people to
• 1:07:55
  get burned out on Cletus. And I think that this industry,
• 1:07:59
  and I think you'll agree with me as a way of finding something
• 1:08:03
  that's really cool and interesting.
• 1:08:05
  And then they beat it to death and they don't let it just
• 1:08:08
  breathe. And so like, to me, this is a
• 1:08:10
  good Cletus free week. Not because I'm burned out on
• 1:08:13
  Cletus, not because I don't like Cletus, but I want Cletus to
• 1:08:16
  still be interesting when he comes back around for Nashville
• 1:08:19
  and not try to find some ways to, you know, pigeonhole Cletus
• 1:08:23
  and every single being in our our public discourse.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah, that definitely there. There's a certain element of
• 1:08:31
  when he shows up, they can be a special attraction and mean more
• 1:08:35
  if we're we're not being into death.
• 1:08:37
  I'm gonna bring it up as much as I can because I want to get our.
• 1:08:40
  Viewers, I want you to stick him somewhere in the graphic, even
• 1:08:42
  if it's a little tiny Cletus. OK, give me, give me.
• 1:08:45
  I'll. I'll work on that.
• 1:08:46
  Yeah. We need it for the page views
• 1:08:48
  too, right? Like we, we, we, we're, we're,
• 1:08:49
  we're click based click bait artist.
• 1:08:52
  I'm all about the click bait. I'm gonna just do his face but
• 1:08:55
  not talking to him at all on the show.
• 1:08:58
  No, no, that's a good idea. Stick just his, His, His, his,
• 1:09:01
  His, his, his. Bust.
• 1:09:03
  Somewhere in the corner there's a little a little cletus.
• 1:09:06
  All right, O'Reilly race. I want to quick run through this
• 1:09:11
  great race. I mean the race.
• 1:09:14
  Brett Cruz, man, God, Oh my, he he is so good.
• 1:09:17
  He is inserting himself with Larsen Alguer and his second
• 1:09:22
  ever intermediate race and you can say it's equipment.
• 1:09:24
  Brandon Jones ain't doing it. He is.
• 1:09:26
  He is so freaking good dude. Brent Cruz is that guy.
• 1:09:31
  And I listen, I've said it on the show repeatedly.
• 1:09:33
  I covered, I covered Brent and Carter's tour and I covered him
• 1:09:36
  in ARCA. And so I've, I've, I've been
• 1:09:38
  knowing Brent Cruz is that guy. And I had Connor Zillich, who,
• 1:09:42
  you know, Connor and Jesse are both super close with with
• 1:09:45
  Brent. They're part of that same, you
• 1:09:47
  know, everyone knows about Yeah, yeah, everyone knows about the,
• 1:09:54
  the Jesse and and Connor friendship.
• 1:09:57
  But but Brent is a part of that too.
• 1:09:59
  And they, they've been telling me for 2-3 years he's that guy.
• 1:10:06
  He was a AKHI. Is he still a KHI driver?
• 1:10:11
  I don't know, I don't pay attention to that stuff.
• 1:10:14
  Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't remember if he is or not.
• 1:10:16
  I think I think he is, yeah. I'm pretty sure he's a KHI
• 1:10:20
  driver. So.
• 1:10:20
  But anyway, he, he, Harvick has told me for a long time that
• 1:10:24
  he's the next guy, like he's really the next guy.
• 1:10:27
  And so I'm not surprised. And I know that there's a lot of
• 1:10:31
  surprise. Nothing that kid had ever done
• 1:10:34
  has surprised me because he is ready for the moment way sooner
• 1:10:40
  than he should be every step of the way.
• 1:10:42
  And so, yeah, you stick that kid in a JGR car and he's ahead of
• 1:10:47
  the moment. And by the way, he's like 18
• 1:10:51
  going on 35. He's so mature and so
• 1:10:55
  methodical. He's a kid like he's a kid in
• 1:10:58
  the sense that I'm a kid. Like, I'm 38 and I'm silly and,
• 1:11:02
  and I'm, I, I act way younger, I feel like than I am.
• 1:11:06
  But he's that version of a 35 year old.
• 1:11:08
  He is, he's he's a big kid, but he's so thoughtful and probably
• 1:11:13
  so kind. He's genuinely just the nicest
• 1:11:17
  kid I've ever met too. And so I think this NASCAR world
• 1:11:20
  is going to fall in love with Brent crude because how can you
• 1:11:23
  not? Yeah, Oh God, he yes, I'm
• 1:11:27
  already there. I'm there.
• 1:11:28
  I'm sold. I'm like, this is he is he is
• 1:11:31
  going to do second-half of this year.
• 1:11:33
  He's going to just light the world on fire.
• 1:11:34
  Like he's just going to be unstoppable.
• 1:11:36
  So I'll say it every week, I'll say it one more time.
• 1:11:38
  He's going to make noise in the chase.
• 1:11:40
  Yep, I mean he is already. To put this in perspective, he
• 1:11:43
  is already 14th in points. He's only 121 behind Brandon
• 1:11:47
  Jones and 5th and I think he gets there.
• 1:11:49
  If he gets to 5th, this is a different conversation.
• 1:11:52
  Now I think he gets to 5th. I mean, that's the thing I was
• 1:11:55
  looking at the points and we can talk about real quick because I
• 1:11:58
  I want to. I think it's important.
• 1:12:00
  Sammy Smith, Austin Hill and Carson Quabler are 6th, 7th and
• 1:12:04
  8th. Sammy Smith is 103 points ahead
• 1:12:10
  of them. Do you think he gets to Sammy
• 1:12:12
  Smith make up 103 points considering that Cruz is
• 1:12:15
  finishing top three in every stage and he's going to win
• 1:12:18
  races? I think he gets there and.
• 1:12:21
  And the best part about him is he's really damn good on road
• 1:12:23
  courses. He's he's not going to have a
• 1:12:26
  flaw there. He's going to be a top three guy
• 1:12:29
  there too. And it's like, where's his
• 1:12:31
  weakness? Where's his hole?
• 1:12:33
  Whereas Sammy Smith will have. I I would have, if you would
• 1:12:36
  have asked me that last week, I'd be like a mile and a half.
• 1:12:38
  There's no way he's immediately good on a mile and 1/2.
• 1:12:42
  I mean, goes to, he goes to Texas.
• 1:12:45
  Again, I'm not surprised. I'm surprised, but I'm not
• 1:12:48
  surprised, dude. Hatfield busting their ass lap
• 1:12:51
  one because it's that hard of a track, it's that treacherous and
• 1:12:55
  he's just like, this is easy. What are y'all doing you?
• 1:12:58
  Know he's so good. It's great.
• 1:13:00
  We're we're fan Boing Boing it a little bit here.
• 1:13:04
  I want to stick him in a cup car right now.
• 1:13:06
  Should be talking about a Corey Day.
• 1:13:09
  Stick him in the 48. He'll be in the 11 very soon.
• 1:13:13
  He will be. Larson versus Algar, this is
• 1:13:16
  something that I feel like over the course of the last year and
• 1:13:19
  a half now that Larson's driving Jerem stuff more and all that,
• 1:13:22
  that there's kind of a rivalry here where Algar does not want
• 1:13:27
  to lose. He's it's his turf, right?
• 1:13:29
  He's like, this is my turf and I'm going to defend it.
• 1:13:31
  And I love that last year at Texas, Algar did not like that
• 1:13:36
  Larson was beating him and then ended up running into the back
• 1:13:39
  of Chris Wright, right? Like he was overextending
• 1:13:41
  himself trying to catch back up with Larson.
• 1:13:44
  It showed his face again this weekend and it's super
• 1:13:47
  entertaining. But what do you make about this
• 1:13:49
  whole situation? Because it feels like there is a
• 1:13:51
  real dynamic here of like now Guy are defending the series
• 1:13:55
  versus Larson and and back and forth there.
• 1:13:57
  Yeah, I wish Larson raced more, was allowed to race more,
• 1:14:02
  because This is why. And it's so funny because like,
• 1:14:04
  I was walking down the pit Rd. on Friday before practice and
• 1:14:10
  Larson and all guy are were hamming it up and I'm like, huh.
• 1:14:14
  Not, not that I'm surprised because I, I know there's so
• 1:14:17
  much respect and I know they like each other like on a human
• 1:14:20
  level, but I'm like, they're going to be racing for the win
• 1:14:24
  and I know how they race each other.
• 1:14:26
  And I, I thought even then it's just like they're hamming it up
• 1:14:29
  now. But and lo and behold, it's so
• 1:14:33
  funny. So like obviously there was the
• 1:14:35
  restart lane games and the side by side thing and just Justin
• 1:14:41
  was obviously very mad climbing out of the car that he wasn't
• 1:14:44
  able to. I think he had the faster car,
• 1:14:46
  but just Kyle had track position and was a master aero blocker.
• 1:14:51
  It was so funny. It was like I talked to Justin
• 1:14:55
  and I asked him. I said what was all that about
• 1:14:59
  Kyle? Kyle said on the radio that
• 1:15:03
  you're the best restarter in the series so you don't have to do
• 1:15:07
  that. Justin was like, I am.
• 1:15:11
  And that's why I'm like, OK, OK, So then I go to the press
• 1:15:15
  conference and ask Kyle about it and Kyle says it was early and
• 1:15:21
  he's like, if you know me in Sprint cars, I hate restart
• 1:15:25
  games, which is true. Like Kyle very famously dirt
• 1:15:28
  lead model Sprint car, all three NASCAR national series.
• 1:15:32
  He hates it. He was like just race.
• 1:15:35
  Like he said, he said it that bluntly.
• 1:15:36
  He was like just go race. He hates restart stuff.
• 1:15:42
  And so that was it. I got my answer, my sound bite.
• 1:15:46
  But after his press conference, this, this is not on the record.
• 1:15:52
  So I don't know if I should tell the story, but it's harmless.
• 1:15:55
  Kyle comes over and he's got the ice cream, you know, the frozen
• 1:15:59
  custard. He's like Matt, what did, what
• 1:16:01
  did Justin say? He's like, because they eat ice
• 1:16:06
  cream, I'm like, well, that's what he told me, blah, blah,
• 1:16:08
  blah. That, you know, he he's like, he
• 1:16:11
  is the best. And This is why.
• 1:16:13
  And Kyle was like, OK. That's great.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah, I don't know. I'm not.
• 1:16:20
  I'm not telling the story. Well, you have to be there.
• 1:16:23
  But just the way Kyle, Kyle was just kind of like, OK, you could
• 1:16:27
  tell that there was just kind of some competitive gamesmanship
• 1:16:32
  that I appreciate. It's not, it's not ugly, it's
• 1:16:34
  not messy. They don't dislike each other.
• 1:16:37
  It's just really good healthy competition and competitiveness.
• 1:16:42
  And I just wish we could see Kyle racing that series in that
• 1:16:44
  car more because it's good for business and it's good for my
• 1:16:47
  business and it's good for the business of fans.
• 1:16:50
  Yeah, for sure. And hey, we're getting there.
• 1:16:53
  They've they've opened it up, they're racing, you know, guys
• 1:16:56
  are in there more. So you know, the Truck Series
• 1:16:59
  especially having a really big impact with this, like every
• 1:17:02
  week with the trucks, I'm just like, holy crap, look at this
• 1:17:04
  roster of drivers we got every week.
• 1:17:07
  The rule changed going into this year, allowing guys to run more
• 1:17:10
  races has been huge. It's been great.
• 1:17:12
  I want more of it. I want I I want open season
• 1:17:15
  personally, but I I think it's been a big deal.
• 1:17:17
  Last thing on the O'Reilly Series race, we have to talk
• 1:17:20
  about Parker Rutzlaf at this point.
• 1:17:21
  Like that was a legit tough. I've run in a Viking Motorsports
• 1:17:27
  car and I know there's RCR Alliance now and I know like
• 1:17:30
  they're they're doing things they've built up to this point.
• 1:17:34
  But he beat a lot of good cars on legit pace and he's been
• 1:17:38
  doing it all year. He's been top 10.
• 1:17:39
  Ever frustrated, if you go back and watch my video with him, he
• 1:17:42
  was like, I'm still making too many mistakes.
• 1:17:44
  And I'm he's like, I am definitely not maximizing the
• 1:17:47
  potential of our car. And I'm just like, yeah, you are
• 1:17:54
  actually, it's OK. And he's so, he's so polished
• 1:17:59
  because I'm like, you are maximizing the potential of the
• 1:18:02
  car. And he's like, you know, I've
• 1:18:03
  got pride in our team and what people are building for me.
• 1:18:07
  And that's the reason why there's all this attention
• 1:18:09
  around me because of them and what they're doing.
• 1:18:12
  I'm like, that's what a top guy says that like that's, that's a,
• 1:18:16
  that's a pro talking. And so yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm
• 1:18:19
  fanning out over him too, because I just think he is so.
• 1:18:22
  He's really good. He's so good and I think the
• 1:18:24
  world's finally starting to see it.
• 1:18:26
  And I hope the phone call comes. I don't know who's going to
• 1:18:30
  call, but it's it's coming to the point now to where it's like
• 1:18:34
  OEMs have to be looking at him and going we're stupid if we
• 1:18:37
  don't. Yes.
• 1:18:39
  Like like to me with, with the JGR cars, it's like, how do you
• 1:18:45
  when you have a star car, right? How do you not just call Parker
• 1:18:48
  next year? Like you know what?
• 1:18:50
  We, we, we want to try one year of this just to see what, who
• 1:18:53
  you really are. The Toyota just puts them in the
• 1:18:55
  car. How do you not?
• 1:18:58
  Yeah, absolutely. I feel like a lot of people
• 1:19:02
  heading into this year did not understand this move.
• 1:19:05
  And you know, they you look at his career path, it was, you
• 1:19:09
  know, running the the Siegs third car that did not have the
• 1:19:12
  funding to even have a good pit crew, right?
• 1:19:14
  Like they that was a very low key deal.
• 1:19:16
  And then Jordan Anderson racing or like our Motorsports, like
• 1:19:20
  all those type of cars. It seems like what he's going
• 1:19:22
  into and Viking had been that up to this point and the move felt
• 1:19:26
  like a very lateral move, but now it appears like it's giving
• 1:19:30
  him an opportunity to shine, to show like, no, no, no, you give
• 1:19:33
  me the car, I'm going to go out here and perform.
• 1:19:36
  And if you are, obviously there's funding aspects to this,
• 1:19:39
  but like you said, if you are a major manufacturer and you're
• 1:19:42
  looking for talent to fill a seat, why do you not do that?
• 1:19:46
  Why do you not make that call Bees?
• 1:19:48
  Like if you're Joe Gives racing, I know Brett Cruz is going to
• 1:19:50
  win races, but you're not winning enough races right now.
• 1:19:53
  You just aren't with that O'Reilly program.
• 1:19:55
  That's a dude that can deliver trophies for you, just like Eric
• 1:19:58
  Almarola delivered trophies for them.
• 1:20:00
  And I feel like even if it's for 18 races, that is such a
• 1:20:04
  situation where he can go out there, win 3 or 4 races, prove
• 1:20:07
  that he's that good and then it snowballs.
• 1:20:09
  But I'm just super happy for him.
• 1:20:11
  Like from day one, his first race at Richmond, he was fast.
• 1:20:14
  Like you just saw speed in him. And he's gone about it slowly
• 1:20:18
  but surely. And he's getting to a point
• 1:20:20
  where he should get the recognition and, and I'm glad
• 1:20:23
  that people are getting it, you know, giving it to him.
• 1:20:25
  Yeah, spot on. OK, hold on.
• 1:20:29
  Last thing, I we've been going a long time.
• 1:20:31
  Are you good to go a few more minutes.
• 1:20:33
  Let's go. All right, NASCART.
• 1:20:36
  So yeah, I, I love this story. I love my court story.
• 1:20:41
  So yeah, let's go. First off, Spire wins.
• 1:20:46
  Smart ass amendment to to the lawsuit or whatever.
• 1:20:50
  I'll let you cover all this, but you're going to have a lot more
• 1:20:52
  knowledge about everything but. Well, that wasn't even a real
• 1:20:55
  amendment. It's not, it's not it's it's a
• 1:20:57
  smart ass. Thing yeah it was just a tweet
• 1:21:00
  then he. Has an interview, Dickerson has
• 1:21:02
  an interview with Jeff Block and starts another firestorm.
• 1:21:05
  So talk about all that. Talk about everything.
• 1:21:09
  It went from being oh, this is a lawsuit and for me it kind of
• 1:21:12
  got boring is like semantics and then it just blew up this past
• 1:21:15
  week. So for me this very entertaining
• 1:21:17
  now what? What's going on?
• 1:21:19
  What's going? On to me, it's like it's just a
• 1:21:21
  reminder and I, I've gotten this impression anyway that both
• 1:21:27
  sides are super serious and they're dug in.
• 1:21:30
  And it's funny, like in the 2311 front row NASCAR lawsuit, we
• 1:21:34
  thought early on, it's like, well, they're going to settle
• 1:21:36
  this. There's no way this is going to
• 1:21:38
  go the distance. And there was just a moment at
• 1:21:40
  some point, I can't remember what the moment was, but there
• 1:21:43
  was a hearing somewhere a couple of summers ago now where it's
• 1:21:48
  like leaving the court. It's like, oh, they're both
• 1:21:51
  serious. They're they're going to go the,
• 1:21:52
  the distance here. And I think this week was the
• 1:21:56
  week where it's like, I think it's going to go the distance.
• 1:22:00
  Like, I think both sides feel like they have reasons to go to
• 1:22:05
  court and to prove their point. And if nothing else, I don't
• 1:22:10
  even think it's about winning anymore.
• 1:22:12
  I think they just want to go to court to go through the process
• 1:22:15
  and for both of them to have their PR moments, to have their
• 1:22:20
  things that they can, you know, beat their chest and say, see,
• 1:22:23
  This is why I was willing to take this to the mat.
• 1:22:28
  What? What?
• 1:22:29
  There's so much that happened this week, right?
• 1:22:30
  We haven't Denny. What Denny said yesterday, the
• 1:22:33
  head nod. I was there for that.
• 1:22:35
  Holy crap. I felt that like Denny.
• 1:22:40
  Denny just didn't say. I felt betrayed.
• 1:22:42
  He was just like. I I don't know if Denny Hamlin's
• 1:22:47
  the person that should worry about feeling betrayed
• 1:22:49
  considering his. I'm not going to.
• 1:22:52
  I'm I'm, I'm not. I'm not touching that.
• 1:22:54
  You don't have to touch that, but you can't be that guy and
• 1:22:57
  then also be hurt like I, I feel confident saying that.
• 1:23:00
  I'm not, I'm not in the room and all I know is that that
• 1:23:05
  relationship, what I am qualified to say and what I will
• 1:23:09
  touch is that that bond was so strong.
• 1:23:14
  Like it objectively, I do know, say what you will about any of
• 1:23:18
  the players, right? Denny trusted Dave Hart and was
• 1:23:25
  rewarded for that trust, by the way, with his whole career in
• 1:23:28
  his life and our friendship. And I'm not, I'm not imparting
• 1:23:34
  judgment here, but I'm just, I'm saying I understand why he
• 1:23:41
  expressed it that way. Now this is what I will say
• 1:23:45
  also, it's funny like I I listen to Denny stay what he said
• 1:23:51
  again, I encourage everyone. I wrote a story about it.
• 1:23:54
  Jeff has the video. I think Bob has the video I was
• 1:23:56
  audio recording. Go watch that right, because I
• 1:24:00
  think it's important context. But you see Denny say that and
• 1:24:04
  it's like it's like this every time we go to court, like I see
• 1:24:09
  where they're coming from. I I get it.
• 1:24:11
  I see why this is so important to protect and why they feel
• 1:24:15
  personally aggrieved. And then I talked to Dickerson a
• 1:24:22
  lot and I talked to Gabe Hart enough to a lot.
• 1:24:26
  And I know how they feel about it.
• 1:24:29
  And I know that there's been private things that we've had in
• 1:24:32
  conversation where when you talk to Jeff and you talk to Chris,
• 1:24:37
  you walk away from that conversation on the phone or in
• 1:24:39
  person. That's like, yeah, actually,
• 1:24:42
  yeah, but totally makes sense too.
• 1:24:46
  Yeah. And the problem is, is that both
• 1:24:52
  of those things both can't be true.
• 1:24:54
  And they're both very adamant and very convinced that they're
• 1:24:58
  justified. And to me, I think the, the
• 1:25:05
  discovery on the deleted text will probably do a lot of work
• 1:25:10
  for how we all feel about this. You know, we're the, I
• 1:25:15
  understand why Dickerson had the auto delete turned on because he
• 1:25:18
  was not auto deleting his texts and all of his texts were blown
• 1:25:23
  up on the 2311 front row NASCAR lawsuit.
• 1:25:25
  And we learned that Jeff Dickerson, if you didn't already
• 1:25:27
  know him, he's the realist guy in the room and he's very blunt
• 1:25:32
  and honest. And that was part of what
• 1:25:34
  Denny's tweet on Thursday was about to it's like, what did you
• 1:25:36
  say about Richard, right? He called him, he called him a
• 1:25:39
  cock. I can't believe he just said
• 1:25:41
  that on a live stream, but he called them that and so
• 1:25:46
  Dickerson auto deleted his text because he recognized that I'm
• 1:25:50
  not going to have my text deposed again at that gave
• 1:25:58
  hearts is more in the words of the judge concerning rightly.
• 1:26:02
  Why would you delete the text? So there's one of two reasons.
• 1:26:05
  One, because there there was proprietary there allegedly
• 1:26:10
  proprietary trade secreted stuff and that's the reason why you
• 1:26:13
  delete those texts or the reason is, is that there were questions
• 1:26:19
  about his non compete and they just wanted to be very careful
• 1:26:24
  that there weren't any texts about hey, we're going to offer
• 1:26:28
  you this job and this is the timeline that's what you're
• 1:26:31
  trying to protect. And so I think it's very
• 1:26:33
  important for me to illustrate both of those possibilities
• 1:26:38
  because if we learned that the deleted texts are purely I was
• 1:26:45
  talking to them before my not I agreed to work there before my
• 1:26:48
  non compete. That's bad, but it's not giving
• 1:26:52
  away trade secrets bad. And so we just don't know
• 1:26:56
  enough. I'm I'm rambling now because
• 1:26:59
  it's so nuanced and for me personally, like I have me and
• 1:27:04
  Chris Gay part talk short track racing all the time.
• 1:27:06
  He's a former super late model champion.
• 1:27:09
  We love that world and so we talked racing a lot.
• 1:27:12
  I appreciate Jeff Dickerson's candor, and I know that when I
• 1:27:17
  go to talk to Dickerson, he generally shoots me straight.
• 1:27:21
  I have all the admiration in the world for Coach Gibbs and what
• 1:27:25
  he's built and the what he's meant to NASCAR and him as a man
• 1:27:30
  and his faith are things that I do believe are genuinely
• 1:27:34
  mercuous. And so all this is just
• 1:27:39
  unfortunate because a lot of people that I have respect for
• 1:27:41
  that I, I believe and I trust are having their credibility,
• 1:27:46
  all of their credibility A malign and that's unfortunate.
• 1:27:50
  That's what lawsuits do, right? It's always, you know, even
• 1:27:53
  divorces, like it's like these could be two nice people and
• 1:27:56
  they're getting a divorce and all of a sudden becomes a shit
• 1:27:58
  show how everything's bad. It's like, no, 90% of what was
• 1:28:00
  happening is probably good. I want to touch on something
• 1:28:05
  that I thought kind of stood down.
• 1:28:06
  Correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm misreading this.
• 1:28:08
  I feel like Dickerson kind of mentioned that, you know,
• 1:28:11
  whatever this deleted information stuff is on Gabe
• 1:28:14
  Hart's side is his, not us. We're not part of that.
• 1:28:18
  It's a gay part thing. And he seemed to really deflect
• 1:28:21
  like why he should even be a part of this at all?
• 1:28:25
  Is that kind of, am I reading that right?
• 1:28:28
  So why are they in this? Just because JJR wants to make
• 1:28:31
  sure to send the message or. It's a fair question.
• 1:28:35
  So all the evidence we have to date, the judge has concluded as
• 1:28:42
  a matter of fact that that Chris Gay part actually is not
• 1:28:46
  allegedly factually misappropriated trade secreted
• 1:28:51
  data, proprietary data unquestionable.
• 1:28:55
  He stored the data, the setup sheets, the sponsorship amounts,
• 1:29:00
  the salaries, crew chief and driver performances off of the
• 1:29:06
  JGR server onto his personal device drive.
• 1:29:12
  That's misappropriation. He did that when he had no, he
• 1:29:16
  had no legal reason, no reason after telling Coach Gibbs or
• 1:29:20
  we're just going to part ways to continue accessing that
• 1:29:23
  information. He misappropriated data by
• 1:29:28
  taking pictures of his phone of I think it was 20 or 2121
• 1:29:33
  pictures of data information that he says it's all been
• 1:29:38
  deleted and turned over back to JGR.
• 1:29:41
  And through his attorney, a part says that he feels embarrassed
• 1:29:46
  and remorseful for doing it. He's sorry and he feels
• 1:29:51
  embarrassed. And I think the implication was
• 1:29:54
  is that from his standpoint, I was mad in the moment.
• 1:29:57
  They, they weren't giving me what I felt like I was Privy to.
• 1:30:01
  And so I'm going to show them I'm taking their stuff and or at
• 1:30:06
  least I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm accessing it from Spire
• 1:30:09
  standpoint. There's no evidence that once
• 1:30:12
  that that data was misappropriated, that it was
• 1:30:17
  turned over. And what this is the most
• 1:30:19
  important thing that Dickerson is saying, by the way, they want
• 1:30:24
  to get text messages from Rick Ware, from Tommy Baldwin, from
• 1:30:30
  Joe Custer. Who are they not going after?
• 1:30:34
  Rick Hendrick? Hendrick Motorsports.
• 1:30:36
  And so Dickerson's like, if you think that we we have your
• 1:30:40
  stuff, Hendrick would have it, but we don't want your stuff
• 1:30:44
  because we have Hendrick's stuff and their stuff is good.
• 1:30:48
  And by the way, I don't know if you know much about Chad Canals.
• 1:30:51
  Chad Canals is adamant he's the smartest guy in the room.
• 1:30:54
  And by the way, he frequently is he's up there.
• 1:30:57
  And so if you're if you're Chad Canals, Chad's like I don't need
• 1:31:01
  JGR shit because we just won Texas.
• 1:31:03
  We're we're really good and it's like.
• 1:31:06
  I've been kicked in your ass for 20 years.
• 1:31:07
  Yeah, the Dickerson Dickerson's point is, is that and he see,
• 1:31:13
  I'm not I'm not putting words in his mouth.
• 1:31:15
  He's like put up or shut up. He said this in his in his
• 1:31:18
  declarations, like if you, if you don't have anything, I
• 1:31:22
  shouldn't be sued here because you haven't proven that we have
• 1:31:26
  anything. And the one way that you could
• 1:31:29
  prove if we had something was to subpoena Hendrick Motorsports.
• 1:31:34
  Because whatever information we had, as per our agreement, it
• 1:31:37
  goes both ways. Therefore they would have it and
• 1:31:40
  they don't want it. We don't want it.
• 1:31:43
  And so that is why Dickerson feels like they shouldn't even
• 1:31:46
  be in this lawsuit because why aren't you going after Hendrick?
• 1:31:50
  If we have it, they have it too. Yeah, 100%.
• 1:31:54
  And and I think that gets lost sometimes.
• 1:31:57
  You know, a lot is made about 2311 JG Rs relationship, but
• 1:32:00
  that exact same relationship exists between Spire and HMS,
• 1:32:04
  right? Like that is a very tight knit
• 1:32:07
  technical alliance and that information is going to get
• 1:32:11
  paired between everyone if that exists within, you know, So I, I
• 1:32:15
  think I of course we'll see the lawsuit play out.
• 1:32:18
  I'm very much on the side of Dickerson, but I saw a lot of
• 1:32:21
  blowback for him even having those comments like coming out
• 1:32:25
  and talking about it. So.
• 1:32:26
  Here's the here's the thing I want to add to that.
• 1:32:30
  If you're going to talk that strongly and you're going to
• 1:32:33
  come out and by the way, those those that answer was pre
• 1:32:37
  approved, right? Like, I'm, I'm not saying that
• 1:32:40
  that that was that was an agreed upon thing, but like Luck asks,
• 1:32:45
  I'm charging my phone because it's starting to dial me.
• 1:32:48
  Luck is like, Hey, I want to talk about the lawsuit and this
• 1:32:52
  is what I need to ask. And then he goes back to his
• 1:32:55
  lawyers and says, this is the question.
• 1:32:57
  Can I answer it? So Dickerson did not say
• 1:33:00
  anything out of turn that would get him in trouble legally.
• 1:33:02
  But my only question would be, if you're going to tell Jeff in
• 1:33:06
  the world all of this, then your hands best be clean because
• 1:33:11
  otherwise it's just a really, really bad look.
• 1:33:16
  And so to me, that's probably evidence that they don't have
• 1:33:20
  it. I guess.
• 1:33:21
  I guess big picture is, is if the facts are as we as we know
• 1:33:26
  them now, which is that Dave Hart did misappropriate.
• 1:33:30
  Actually, he took them, he gave them back.
• 1:33:34
  Then this just turns into a breach of contract lawsuit.
• 1:33:39
  And that's not particularly that interesting.
• 1:33:41
  And I don't think that it's, I don't think there's any
• 1:33:44
  implications either. One other part about this too,
• 1:33:48
  and I don't know if I've brought this up in previous shows, this
• 1:33:50
  is about Cheddar Smith more than anything else.
• 1:33:55
  This is about Cheddar Smith because that's that's Cheddar
• 1:34:00
  Smith. Jazzy Jazzy Jeff Curtis.
• 1:34:06
  Sorry, I'm getting all my NASCAR crew member nicknames all mixed
• 1:34:10
  up. It's about Jazzy because Jazzy
• 1:34:14
  left JGR and went to RCR right? And right before Richmond and,
• 1:34:20
  and that whole thing and. That that's that if the garage
• 1:34:23
  is to be believed, that is JGR set up, that is 1 the RCR 32
• 1:34:28
  Richmond races in a row. And I've been told multiple
• 1:34:32
  times by a lot of people mobile on fire.
• 1:34:39
  It might be that, that this is really about Jazzy and that JGR
• 1:34:49
  did not go after Jazzy when they probably should have or could
• 1:34:53
  have, and that JGR was just not going to have it happen again.
• 1:34:57
  Because what you tolerate, you allow.
• 1:35:01
  And Jazzy leaves, Cape Hart leaves.
• 1:35:06
  And at a certain point you have to try to say enough is enough.
• 1:35:08
  And that we need to, we need to establish a standard of what is
• 1:35:13
  OK and what's not OK. What you can take, what you
• 1:35:15
  can't take, what is ours and what is yours.
• 1:35:18
  And I, I think that this lawsuit from JGR standpoint is purely
• 1:35:21
  just about, it's about protecting their data.
• 1:35:23
  There's also about, we just can't let people leave and leave
• 1:35:26
  and leave every single time they leave.
• 1:35:28
  Take something that we pay to develop with you because it's
• 1:35:35
  happened already. It happened with Jazzy.
• 1:35:37
  Right. All right, cool.
• 1:35:38
  Well, let's wrap this up, man. I don't think there's anything
• 1:35:42
  on the weekend to talk about. We go Watkins Glen next week,
• 1:35:44
  right? So Rd. course action in the
• 1:35:46
  middle of May, I think it's going to be like 50°.
• 1:35:48
  It literally snowed today in Watkins Glen.
• 1:35:51
  Yeah. Well, I will not be going to
• 1:35:55
  Watkins Glen. I, I've, I've already
• 1:35:57
  transitioned to summer and I will not be participating in in
• 1:36:00
  winter. I went back to my fishing camp
• 1:36:02
  in Alabama because I have now opted into summer.
• 1:36:05
  Yep, All right, cool man. Well, I appreciate you, you
• 1:36:08
  know, in the parking lot of the airport making.
• 1:36:12
  Sure, good quality did. Did this work?
• 1:36:15
  It was better than anything else we've done.
• 1:36:17
  OK, I like it. So you can find any parking lot
• 1:36:21
  and we'll we'll make it work. But I really do appreciate.
• 1:36:23
  I think it's really cool that that you're you're doing this
• 1:36:25
  week. You you stood there for an hour
• 1:36:27
  and 40 minutes and we had a great show.
• 1:36:30
  So thank you for that. Everyone that stuck with us and
• 1:36:33
  watched live. Thank you.
• 1:36:34
  If you're watching this after it's been live also thank you.
• 1:36:38
  Please leave a comment and like the video and everything and we
• 1:36:40
  will catch you next week. Thank you, guys.
• 1:36:42
  See you.