386 - Dale Earnhardt Jr & Friends.: It Ain't Cheatin' If...

What do you remember about qualifying that day? I can't tell at all. Why not? This is a production of dirty mode media. What is fair play? Special. Is innovation different? It would be fun to do experiments like that. Experiments like that. Well, we were not rule breakers. Things that's fair to make a rule and follow it. They make rules for everybody. We were rule makers. And perhaps we'll learn some things about fair play. Did you ever have any nitro in your car? As you see this story, we want you to think about questions. I'm going to get a hot rod in the cop once it's packed. Get away from me, man. Questions such as. When they said you can't do that, say why not. Do you think that's fair? What about it? What do you think? What is fair play? Fair play. It's not cheating till you get caught. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again at the Bojangle studio here for the Dale Jr. download episode 386. If it ain't cheating, Mike, how's it going? It's going good. We're ready to talk about some tall tales of creativity, innovation, and cheating. I've never been more ready. Alright, let's get to it. We've had a lot of people come on this podcast over the years. And so we're going to get to that down the road. But first off, Hannah, Matthew, you guys are here. Let's do some dirty air. Dirty air is not great for everyone. [Music] Yeah, you know, you set this up. We always say that it's not cheating. It's creativity. That's the coin line for this episode. So we were all tasked with the homework of coming up with our own. What is the time that you maybe played in the gray area a little bit here? And I don't know. Am I supposed to go first here? Ladies first? We had a ProTruck series where the whole goal was to be cost effective, right? And they didn't want anyone to do custom shocks. And the rule was written no, like, Rebuildable shocks. They had to be non-rebuildable. So we went and had a custom tie-down shock built for the left front and sealed it. So it was non-rebuildable. And we got kicked out. We got kicked out after about four races. And I mean, it was in the rules, right? Like it was non-rebuildable shock. We just had it built and sealed. And we got a new Rebuildable. And yeah, that didn't go over well. Did you argue it? Did you protest? Well, see, here's the other fun part of it. My dad was also on the truck series board. So he just kind of went, "Okay. I'm good. We got caught. We got caught." So we got finishing points that night. And I don't think we got pay. But Neal's to say that shock did not come to the race track. I think I actually got gifted that left front shock at the banquet that year. Matt, you-- I only cheated once when I was racing. Yeah, no, seriously. And I sucked anyway, so it didn't even work. But my favorite cheat would probably be my dad and uncle's race car, which I have hanging up here. The tech guys would always give them crap, especially when they first started. And they weren't going to let him go out on the track. I think it was the second week because the injector was sticking up out of the hood. And they said there was a rule. It can't be. It's got to be flush. So my uncle's kind of a wise ass. So he went back and he found as many washers as he could. And he collected as many from the next pit and the next pit over. And he said he stacked washers about this high. And he said the hood was sticking up about this high above the rest of the defenders. But then he went to go back on the track. They're like, "You can't bring this piece of shit on the race track." He's like, "Hey, it's by the rules." You said it couldn't be sticking out the top. So there you go. I think David's gonna have better. Is that count? No. That does not count as lousy. Yeah, no. It's a lousy. Listen, dude. Okay, I'll give you one. School. Does that work? Well, that's the only place I'd do my cheating. Mr. Von Hake, eighth grade, he was kind of oblivious. So we all knew what the answers, the questions were going to be for the test. So before he got in there, I went on the sideboard and I wrote all the answers down to the test for the whole class. And Mr. Von Hake never saw it. And everybody in the class got 100. Boom. There you go. That was cheating. That's cheating. It's better than you're stacking your coins into hoods. Now Mike, I'm curious on yours here. Oh, yeah. Again, I don't have- I used first story. I didn't even involve him in it. Right. And this is your idea. He's like, "I got it. We're all gonna come with our best cheating stories." He's like, "I'm gonna come with homework for you guys." Well, my best cheating stories- Hey, Dale, Jr. cheated one time and I'll tell you about him right now. Well, hold up here. We were in here earlier talking about what our cheating stories were gonna be. And you told me you cheated on a legend car with a packer in the left front or something like that. Yeah, it was illegal. Yeah, and it was illegal. But I sucked. So it's not like there was an advantage. I went from sucking to sucking less. He tried to cheat. It didn't work. That's a special branded cheater. When you cheat and you steal something. Those are NASCAR. They suck so bad they don't even get taxed. They got the most illegal stuff in their car. But there's too slow for anybody to care. Dale, if you ever saw me in a legend car- I've never seen a legend car. If you ever saw me in a legend car, I look like a sausage coming out of its casing on the grill. It was a lot good. There's a lot of guys that cheat and run and don't run well intentionally just so they don't get caught. I'll never forget they confiscated a bunch of bodies of like when they were still doing the steal bodies in K&N. We had the combo race at Iowa. We showed up and they confiscated four guys' bodies. Like, took them and said, "Cut those things off. We are taking them now because they were so yawed." But it was guys that were like 27th, 29th, and 35th. And they're like, "We clearly did not do this right correctly anyway. So you might as well just let us run it because we sucked." And they made them cut it off and he's like, "Yeah, you suck. You cheated, but you just sucked cheating. Like you just didn't do it right. You were yawed out." Mike, we still need George. I'm going to get to it, but I'm curious about something real quick. Do you remember the conversation? I don't even know if I'm supposed to bring this up. Do you remember the conversation when you ran a black number eight at Talladega because all of the DEI cars were all black as a tribute to your dad? And I want to know if I remember this story right. Did Tony Jr. not say to you in the motor home before the race? Hey, do you want to run? I think it was the week before. And he's like, "Do you want to run that race?" And you're like, "Yeah, you're like, "No questions asked. You want to win, right? Yep, I want to win." And even if there's something that comes on the back end in terms of penalties or whatever, and you're like, "I want to win that damn thing. Let's win it." And he's like, "All right, well, if you win, back it into the wall on your burnouts." Or something like that. Do I remember that right? I was a motor before we ever got a chance to do burnouts. I think we, the engine expired at some point. But I just remembered that as, and I didn't know if that was just a fun story and I've embellished it. Or if it really, Tony Jr. said, "Hey, back it into the wall if you do burnouts." To ruin the evidence. All right, so there's that one. I don't know what he did to the car. Do you? Probably not. Right. Yeah, he didn't. Some was spoiler, I imagine. Probably. Yeah, he did that at Darlington, too, didn't he? There you go. That's six weeks off. Oh, that's so annoying. Are you gonna tell your story? I mean, listen, I'm not a race car driver. I don't have good racing cheating stories. I have college three times, got busted every time. Algebra, astrology, and astronomy. Astrology. Yeah. I have cheating stories in all of them. I'm not proud of them. I'm a bad cheater because I did get busted every time. I got busted. The astrology course had 500 people in it. And I still got caught cheating. Like, that's hard to do. How do you cheat astrology? Copy someone's answers. That's pretty simple. And you know, when you turn in the test and all the answers are, you know, but neck it's same. It's pretty obvious. And astronomy, that was an astronomy. And astrology, a buddy of mine, we're sitting there trying to, you know, we're sitting in a hallway trying to, you know, do last minute work that we had not done. And he's giving me his work. And I'm sitting there writing the answers down with his piece of paper. And the professor comes and stands right over me. You know, busted just before class even started. I got busted on that. And I was right. I took it so many times and I think that the professors were just glad that I was cheating. Just trying. Nothing was effort. Like, God, get him out of here. There's classes at the beginning with A. Like, you could, you could bet I wasn't going to get one, but that's a help. If it began with A, I was going to struggle. That's me. I had a bunch with my late model stock car. We were supposed to have steel interior and I put a bunch of aluminum interior in mind. Just to try to save some weight. Ran, cheater fuel from time to time. Had a ram air. Had the duck work on the front end, the top would hinge up. So when air went through it, it would hinge up and air would go over the radiator and into the air cleaner. So we could run bigger jets and get more fuel. We soaked tires every once in a while, but they weren't really policing that too much. I did a lot of stuff to my late model stock car. I tried to buy nitrous ones, but dad called me on the phone talking to Amanda. If I saw, if I heard a story about cheating, I immediately tried to figure out, how could I equate that idea to my late model stock car? How could I? And you just needed a little bit more. We were pretty good. We'd run top five, but we'd easily run second or third or fourth, and I wasn't very good at tire management back then. So we worked hard at it trying to cheat a little bit without getting caught. Hey, you know, Mayfield brought up Soak and Tires in his interview last week. And I was wondering, I didn't want to bring it up in the moment there, but like for people that are listening that don't know exactly what that is, what is Soak and Tires? Basically, you could treat the tire comes at a certain hardness. The compound is hard and has a certain, you can measure it with this tool. And a softer compound tire will go faster. Now it won't last quite as long because it wears out quicker. But if depending on the asphalt or the texture and how much abrasive the asphalt is, you can soften the tire up quite a bit and still have enough tire life to run well in the race. And so now the good year tires that we run are bricks at some race track. So softening that tire up is going to absolutely make you faster. But also it's hard enough even to that point that you'll not have any tire issue in where. So I absolutely think soft, you know, putting softener, it's a chemical and you roll it on or you take the tire and put it in a pan of that chemical and rotate it. And it just sits there rotates and you just, or you apply it with a roller over and over and over. And then you can wrap the tire in a plastic wrap so it'll maintain the chemical and soak into the tire without evaporating. And or they have some that you can put inside the tire, right? And you put it into the valve stem and then you put, you know, you put the tire on a roller and have it rotating. So that chemical was getting displaced throughout the entire tire and it works its way from the inside out and softens up the material. But yeah, it's very common to be used at, you know, short track racing, I mean, some places it's legal. Some race tracks allow it. They don't police it. But some do. Some have a gauge and you better read a certain hardness and if you're tired and read that, you throw it out. Hey, you know, this was something that I had been thinking about, you know, a few weeks ago we were talking about ways to make the All Star Race better. Why could you not do an All Star Race where there were no rules? Like you could just let people be as creative with their cars. Soak tires, do whatever it is. Like really go see who could be the best team at making a cargo fast without rules. So I don't, I know. I don't know. - So good idea. - Dude, I helped my friend Soak tires once and I'll never do it again. It ate through my brown jersey gloves, holes and I'm not messing with that stuff. - I had a funny story where a buddy of mine and I were Soak and tires. And we had, we were pouring it into, and we were pouring it into the valve stem or getting it, pouring it into the inside of the interior of the tire. And I had this stuff and I had a dixie cup full of water. As we're doing this process, I'm telling, I knew this, I was gonna get my buddy. And this was my plan. So as we're doing this process, I'm telling him like, we gotta be careful. Can't get none of this on our skin. We gotta be careful not, you know, this could hurt us real bad if it got us, got in my contact with our skin. And I was just going on and on about that. And finally, he leaves the room and he comes back and I've got a dixie cup full of that stuff, but it's actually water. And I stumble over a tire and spill it on his pants and then I start to scream and like, you gotta get him pants off, oh my God. And he takes off running out the room, pants down around his ankles, heading to the wash pit and washes his leg off. - That's awful. - That was so fun. I mean, that put this, if that ain't happening at your race shop every day, some kind of hooligans or shenanigans like that, then you're not doing it right. - That's fun, that's fun. But all right, so forget so contours, but I'm saying is that if you did that, if you just let, hey, this is a no rules race, where you just go do things to your car, let it be a competition between engineers. You're shaking your head, but I'm saying is that if the race stinks then you can appreciate that somebody made their car so fast that nobody could keep up with it. - Get out of hand. - But it's an all-star race. - Well, so Devil's Advocate here, we have a series out west that I raced in. It was the Super Late Model series, but it was called the Big Five series. We had five races, it was five big paying races, and they essentially had five rules. So you had a tire rule, you had a carburetor rule, you had a shock rule, a weight rule, and I can't remember what the fan hood was. But realistically, it honestly came down to ingenuity. We all kind of were in the same ballpark. It was a quarter mile racetrack, so it's not like you were being overpowered, honestly, you kind of wanted to have the crate motor, because otherwise you'd wear your stuff out. And people showed up with wings. Like I'm talking plexiglass wings off the side of these Super Late models, and it just became a spectacle. Like you were, and it was short track racing, so it's not like what you're doing, super speedway, you know, shenanigans. But it was like who could outsmart the other person on an engineer level, on a quarter mile, and it would get frustrating, 'cause some guy would show up with a wedge body, and you're like, that's what it is. He's beating me 'cause it's a wedge body, so then we'd put a wedge body on, and we'd still run fifth. - You wouldn't do it at Daytona. You wouldn't do it at Talladega, but you could do it at Wilkesboro. You could do it at one of these short tracks, where yeah, let's see who comes. It's almost like, you know, let's make an all-star race for it. It's almost like a soapbox derby. When you know that one person that shows up with the block of wood, but then all of a sudden, it's flying. - It's fast. - And he's like, whoa, what have they gotten that thing? Right? - I mean-- - It passes tech, but there's no rules. You're not gonna go look, you know, in places that you would for a points-paying race. There you go. I just fixed your all-star race problem. Nice car. You're welcome. (laughing) (upbeat music) - All right, Ally is going to bring us our guest segment this week, and we're gonna hear some great stories from a lot of the guests we've had here on the show in the past about innovation, cheating, and just being creative, scurting around the rulebook, and thank you, Ally, for all you do for us here at the Del Junior Download. It's great to have allies in your corner, whether professionally or personally, and we've got some allies that are gonna tell you some great stories. Look, this isn't your ordinary best of episode. We've got a lot of new things in this episode. You gotta ask, "Junior coming up, so listen." We've got some incredible cheating stories that are coming up, so let's just get into it right now. - Well, see, we were not rule-breaking. We were rule-makers. (upbeat music) - NASCAR Hall of Fame driver, Darryl Waldtrop, from episode 325 of the Del Junior Download. - Were you still concerned about whether your car was legal or not at that time, or had you come to grips with it? - I wasn't my car. - Now you're fine. - You've learned to cope with it. - Well, Junior was a pretty big fanatic about a lot of things. One thing about you could not run the big motor. I mean, that was, no, no, you could not do that. And we had a qualifying motor, and I think the limit was three, what is it? 358. And we wanna pull somewhere, and they tore us motor, we won pole, like in '81, '82, won a pole every week. They tear the motor down about every other week. So finally, about second year, we'd same motor over and over again. They tore it down. It was 358.0001. And they were gonna disqualify us. - Because of that. - And Junior talked them out of it. I mean, Junior had a lot of clout. But that was the only time that I drove that car that I ever heard or knew of us being anywhere near over the limit. - That was it. - Now there were other things that we may have - Like what? - Done that were not necessarily. - Well, like what? - Well, we were not rule breakers. We were rule makers. Junior had a roller cam. They were not legal. But he had figured out a way to take a flat tapet and put a ball in the bottom of that flat tapet and turned it into a roller cam. And so all these things were okay until I came along. When I came, I said, hey, hey, can't do that anymore. We had a spacer. It's really beautiful piece of work. I don't know who did it. Tapered spacer. Now I can't run that anymore. Gotta put that away. Everything that had made them special, different, creative, innovative, one by one, they took away. - Yeah. - Because of you or because of me. I was, look, I had a tough time. And I did it. Look, I did it to myself. I was a smart ass. You brought heat in. - And so when they said, you can't do that, I said why not? Or when they said, well, that's a rule. That's a dumb rule. I never get, I call Bill France one, that's it, Bill. There's some rule change that made us, Bill, I'd like to know who the dumb ass is that made that rule. He said, you're talking to him. (laughing) So anyway, I, (laughing) but you know what I love and deal with those this. And a lot of times those rules don't, necessarily fit what you're doing or your situation. But they try to make rules that fits the entire field, not just one little guy, not one guy. - One of the things that I heard that junior and his guys were doing in the due car was a lead shot in the frame real. - Yeah, it's possible. (laughing) - That's possible. - Well, and then look, everything-- I wanna explain to Mike what that would mean. So, you know, they put lead blocks in the cars to bolt that in, right? And the car makes weight. And so, in some cars, and this is not exclusive to junior, but back in the early '80s, maybe a lot in the '70s, they would feel the frame with lead shot. And then they would keep the lead shot in there with a putty or a soap or anything that might could get hot and melt. - Oh yeah. - And once it came up to temp or maybe there was a trap door to open or something like that, the lead shot could pour out at the frame and then the car, then the car's hundreds of pounds lighter. - Well, and here was the deal. And everything that the lead shot had been-- - They somewhere. - Yeah, they would create situation for it. They never thought about unintended consequences. So, the car, let's just say the car had to weigh 3700 pounds when it went through tech. So, you made sure your car weight 3700 pounds when it went through tech. They wouldn't weigh 'em after the race. I was at Mark's, I said, "Third going through this guy." Well, I said, "Hey, everything about weighing these cars after the race?" And Bill Gazzway was his, in fact, he said, "Ball up me too, you something." When that car goes on the line, it's legal. That's all I care about. - Why would you plant that idea into their head to weigh the cars after the race, being that you were-- - Well, if they did-- - The beneficiary. - If they weighed everybody, I'm okay with that. - Yeah, I got it. - To top five or whatever, but they wouldn't weigh anybody. And we always knew. We had the lead shot in the frame, real, this is what we did. If they put, they didn't have scales like they got today. They had grain scales. So, you had four of them. And they had a place where you drive the car up on, they weigh all four wheels, then push you off. So, if they put those scales in the truck, we knew they weren't going to weigh the cars when the race told us, 'cause they'd not loaded up ready to ever hit the road for the next race. So, that was an invitation to be created. - In the car. - Be creative. (laughing) - When I was working on it. - Where did all the lead shot go? Could you see it? - I'll never get, so one-- - It's still out. - At a place like Martin's wheeling. - You know everything, you know this, so Dick Bady, he liked to walk, to race tracks every day, 'cause that was his exercise. So, I'm walking to race track at Martin's wheel with him one, they just were fun. We're walking around and trying to say, "You know what, David, it's something I don't understand." Every week I walk, he's down, race tracks. I see all these little BBs laying everywhere. (laughing) He said, "I have not figured out where in the hell this comes from." (laughing) So, you got, I ain't got a clue, Dick. I don't know, that's, gosh, that's weird. Wow, you need to look into that. (laughing) - How long would y'all run that until, like, when was the lead shot come out? - Yeah, lap one? - Well, he had to be, he had to be here. He had to be, here's, look. Okay, so we dropped a little lead every now and then. But everybody did. I mean, you know, when you go to Martin's wheel, Martin, I think the Spartans wheel sticks out in my mind. Wayne Thornberry, he worked for Richard. They would take a wagon down to Richard's car. They would take the car cover off of it. They would change out the radio and the helmet and everything else. And that wagon would come back down through there. He could barely pull it. It was so loaded up with, with lead and everything else. And so the tires would be, you know, squished down. And so, it wouldn't like you the only guy that was smart enough to do it. I mean, there was other ways of heavy helmets, heavy radios, heavy whatever. But this is, this is pretty cool. So you have a jack stop in the frame rail, where you jack the car up. So that's where we let the lead shot out at. And so I had a little wrench, not this little T-handle, I don't do that. I'm back that, that center of that jack stop out, all the lead shot would go out that hole. You were the one that, he had to engage the, you were the one in the car. You're like the wizard behind the curtain, sitting there at the controls of the lead shot. We didn't do it every week, we just did it every now and then. But anyway, so we're at, we're at Bristol. And it's under caution, I didn't do it right. So under caution, I back that screw out. And all of a sudden, all that, guess that lead had gotten wet or something, and it didn't come out. Oh. And so I didn't know if it didn't come out or not. I just do what I was supposed to. So we're going into race. All of a sudden the dam lead all comes out at one time. And I, I mean, I'm in third turn. I'm just, I'm about to spin out. And I, and I finally catch it and I just shoot down pit road. What day Marcus was on pit road. So I come down pit road out of control. And they thought day Marcus was the one that was dropping the shot. So they're, they're wearing his car out, trying to figure out where it came from. You ain't going to find it. So they're looking at all the cars. They're going to look at, I'm going to race, they look at the car. They take the jack. So here's the jack stop. So they put the jack and they jack the car up. So the jack is sitting on the hole. Yeah, on the on the track. They can look for a day. They can look forever. They're never going to find it. The jack is got the hole covered. They covered the hole. That's awesome. So it was a lot of that was, I mean, I know what sounds kind of. It's no, it's great. That's what I always believe that if you're a crew chief is it trying? If that car is illegal, then he ain't trying hard enough. I agree. And that our job as drivers and crew chiefs and all the mechanics and crafted guys back here, engineers, especially these days, it's their job to find holes in that rule book. Like you say, not break the rules, make new ones. And it's their job as an industry, as an organization to go from it. Yeah. Well, there were not a lot of inspectors. I mean, you know, there were, well, like five or six maybe at the most and they had to look after all the cars and so some of them were your buddies. They had to look the other way about certain things. But we literally the things you've heard, and maybe you haven't heard these. But if we had something on the front of the car that we were trying to get away with, maybe we had cocked the nose or moved the nose or whatever, we would go to the rear of the car and we would do something so blatantly obvious that the inspector would walk by and say, you got to fix that. We talked about this last week on the show. We talked about this very thing. We fixed that. Okay, okay. We'll fix it. Yeah, no problem. We just like the boxer and the ring that spins one arm and punches you again like me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm interested because you just said sometimes they'd look the other way. So, you know, certainly I'm not speaking of the way NASCAR would govern the league today. But Junior had a lot of sway. Yeah. So, it was very creative and innovative and stuff. And so, there were things that he could get away with I would assume because, you know, the story that I was privy to was because I worked with Jimmy Spencer. Yeah. And he was telling about that 1994 season when Jimmy won his only two races in that car. And I believe he said something like that Junior came up to him and said, you know, you do a way better junior impersonation than I could have been. Boy, if you can't win in this car, you need to be back in groceries or something like that, right? Yeah. And I believe if I heard the story right that NASCAR kind of was on to what they did. But then they said, don't bring it back. Yeah. And they brought it back. Yeah. And they won again. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know Junior told me I said 94 years when Spencer, you know, I love Spencer, but when say he was the greatest driver I ever saw, but I did pretty pretty, he could be, he could be now. He could be rough enough. So they won a couple races at Daytona and Talladega. I think I know Daytona and Talladega. And I went up to Junior, I said, you know, what the hell are y'all doing anyway? He said, boy, we'll win every damn race till they catch us. That's awesome. Yeah. I love doing this because you know, he kind of brings back memories, some good, some bad. But the sport today, if people just have no idea what it was like when we started to the way it is today, if a guy walked into the shop with a briefcase, we don't even come in here, go somewhere else because you know, he had a briefcase and had a computer laptop. Yeah. We're going to keep laps and tires. Nothing. No, no, no, no. We got this handle. You go do something else. We're fine. Yeah. And that was, that was really my, it's probably my downfall. Once. Really? Yeah. One time. Well, when I went to drive for dieguard in the first year, Donnie, and Mario Rossi, they've been running every week. Nitro? Yeah. And that's how they qualify pretty good. But who was it that set up? It was it JD McNeilfey set on the pole and rent his car and the nitrous fell out of the frame. Yes. It exposed it. It exposed it in the side of the car. That's possible. It wasn't that, it wasn't all that unheard of really to have a little assistance when you qualified. And normally just when you qualified. But though I only got that one time, a qualified, like me and AJ for it. He was, I think I was going to pull. He was outside or vice versa. I don't remember which. And neither one of us had run toward the damn all day. they long, you know, like we're 25th in practice, but we end up qualifying on the front row. And so it's kind of like, what did y'all do? I'll never forget, we take that car in there, and Rossi was a crew chief, and he had put the nitrous bottle in the Petty bar. So it's about that long, and it's-- - And it's-- - And it's managed and covered up in the road cage. And all I had to do was stick a little wrench in there and open that baby up, that thing had taken off. I mean, I've never done it before. So I was excited about wonder what this is gonna do. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Wait, got baby up. I'm feeling-- - What did it feel like? - Oh, it took off like a rocket. - So you're back in the seat? - Oh, I don't know that, you know, Daytona, you didn't necessarily feel it, but you could tell it was going, 'cause you like, you've been turning 7,000, now you're turning 7,500, I'm a good friend. - When would you do-- Walk me through the process then. When exactly would you do this? - On the straightaway. I mean, you know-- - Yeah. - While you're running? - Oh yeah. - While you're in-- - I like you, dude. - You'd go out of the pitch. - I can get up on the bank and get done starting on the back. You had this little wrench, you had a twin, you can take that little wrench, reaching up and slotting that thing up. Wow, I'm gonna take off, I mean. - That's awesome. - Go crazy. - You're doing that while you're driving at speed. - Up to speed you close. - I mean, in quite-- - Right, still. I mean, can you imagine how many people watered up just about what were you doing? Well, I mean, I had to-- - I mean, I had to rinse that thing. I mean, you gotta open it up. - I was pretty busy in my race car for a lot of it. You know, when we go through tech, your right side had to weigh so much. So we'd have a block of Mallory that was bolted to the frame on the right side to make the right side weight be right. So when we get ready to put me in the car, they'd undo that. They'd give me a piece of just tube and they'd put the tube for the Mallory was. And I'd take the Mallory and put it over on the left side to get the left side weight up. So it's just-- - I bet the worst thing. - But listen, this sounds really bad. I know, but it's not because-- - There wasn't a lot of people around to watch. I had a helmet, I weighed 50 pounds. I never wore it. (laughing) But I hung in the car. I had a radio. I'll never forget this. We're at Charlotte and Dick Brady. And he comes me and Rusty and Dale and I was sitting there talking one day and he walks up. He's got this radio right here. And I said, Dick, is there something wrong with your radio? And he goes, "Wam!" He throws that damn piece of Mallory down his way to about 50 pounds. And he said, "It ain't my damn radio." He said, "You want to know where we got it?" And I said, "I think I know." (laughing) - I was just having the worst day of your life was when they introduced in car cameras. - Whoa. - That would have changed the game for a lot of people. - Yeah, you just hard to get away with stuff like that. (laughing) The playing field has been leveled. (upbeat music) - Here's a quick admission from Daytona 500 Champion Ward Burton from episode 343. - But so when I got to go back and look at Daytona's, in '01 we had the baddest hot rod there. We led the most laps. It would have been a different outcome if you and Michael's all I could say. - Oh, if you were been up there. - I mean, yeah, because I would pass and turn his two by myself on the outside and they would have the next two. - Yeah. - So I'm not saying Michael wouldn't have won the, you know, all I can say, I was going to be a player. - You don't mean the middle of it. - My car was bad. It was handling and it was cheated up. I'm not going to go tell you where. It won't under the hood, but I mean that thing was hauling the front. - Yeah, well I say it. This is a safe space. You didn't know that. This is where people come to talk about all their cheeseless choices. - I didn't know there was any safe space. (laughing) It was cheated up. - You guys said that. - We just did a podcast with any featuring man. He unloaded. He told us everything. - I did. - It was awesome. Remember that car that Harry got one for in a row? It had all kinds of things going on. He told us about it. - Well, we had, we had, uh, so the floor fire while I go hell, I'm going to say this. (laughing) The floor board on the car. We had welded an extra layer of floor board. And the only way you're going to tell it if it somehow, no, that it flipped up and got into an old heck. And anyway, and we went to Talladega. I don't know why, but every single thing we touched made it car better. Even if I got a penny, if I'm walking and I'm acting like I'm pushing the car and I stuck a penny up under the left top windshield and put that penny in there. It was a half a 10. Every, every down, every time it was a half a 10 per day. Now here's one of the great crew chiefs in NASCAR history. That's right. Todd Erick from episode 330. - What was some of the things that y'all did to the cars back then to find speed out of them? We like to share some of those secrets on the show. - Well, you do? - Yeah. - So, you know, back then we had a long template. What many templates back then? - Yeah, one template. - You have one template. And the Chevrolet's had pretty good hot rod. Had some friends that worked with RCR and new couple of things they were doing. But Barry was really smart. Barry was, I mean, because he worked with MC Anderson, Kelle Yarborough in those days before he came to Blue Max. Harold Kinder was the truck driver for NASCAR. - All right. - And they came. - Yeah, they came. - And they kept the truck down in Charlotte and it's so garage. And that's where the template, all templates, everything stayed in there. They're like, "Hound dogs." I mean, they're guard dogs down there. Barry said, "I need you in red dog to get down and check the template." I'm like, "What do you mean?" Well, I want y'all to go down there and fix the template. And he showed us what he wanted us to do. We go to Charlotte. Hey, Harold, you know Harold, how you having me? He's lucky. He's just happy to go lucky. We need to look at this long template. We get this long template out, pulls it in that building. And red dog, 'cause red dog was truck driver. And he and Harold, you know, Harold's got all these fancy chrome things on his truck. So while red dog had Harold Kinder out looking at the truck, he fixed the template. Yeah, I had snips in my pocket. And so the Pontiac Cato, the long template had a little thing on the end of it, to kept the nose intact. So I went down there and cut the end of it off so we could extend our nose about an inch and a half. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Did they figure it out? No, no. Of course. No, how can you do that? So I cut the template. And when I cut it, it snapped. I'm like, "Oh, I'm looking around. It's Cato. I'm a good chill. I'm going to be around anymore." But back then, it was like, "That's fun." Yeah. And that's pretty damn bad ass. So then I took the template and I drug it on the ground. You know, 'cause I took edge templates out of truck and he just drove it to my loaded place. Yeah, so I, you scuffed up the place and they could look like it'd been at work. Exactly. That's awesome. Look, for those, for anybody that knows red dog, do you know red dog? Red dog, red dog, red dog, red dog. Yeah. Okay. Like, I can only imagine the conversations he's using to get people away from that template. Like, I can hear him right now. I mean, I wish he saw full of s***. Exactly. Sorry. No, no, he is. It's in a very endearing kind of way, right? Like everybody loves him. But he, God, that is hilarious that that was all part of us. Oh, yeah. So he took him to the, you know, to the other side of the trailer to talk to him about it. Yeah. inside the buildings. Close Harold brought that template out, put it in that building. - That's awesome. - And when he brought it in the building, the dogs were all outside. - This is good. What else did you do? - Footage. - So the other thing, 1988, 89, we won tons of races. With that, the new Pontiac. It wasn't the first the squared off back window. I think it saw a car in here. Like that one over there. The three car. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And we got the new car. So the long template on the, when they built it, it didn't have that little thing on the end of it because they went off the template that they had, which had been-- - Cut by you. - No. (laughing) Had been fixed. - Yeah. - And so we added two inches. So back then, it didn't have a hook on the back of deck with like they do now. So now they got that long template and it went over the back. Well, before then, it just went right there on the deck lid. Stopped and stopped. So we added two inches to the back of the deck lid. So we took and moved this whole corner of the deck lid, the whole deck lid by two inches. - Wow. - And it laid, and it laid, laid it's full. - What would that do? - More downforce. - Okay. - But that would still be obvious, wouldn't it? I mean, even though the template ends, now the sudden the car's growing, I mean like-- - They didn't pay much attention to it. - They really didn't. - Wow. - No. - That's where the open season started. - I learned a lot of stuff in my early days that I was able to transfer. - Yeah. - Was your dad that way? - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Is that what makes the great, great? - Yeah. - It's not cheating to get caught. - That's right. - It's innovation. - Yeah, exactly. - It's taking that rulebook and interpreting it. - The way you want to interpret it. - Who's the greatest innovator? - Who? - Of all time. - Of all time. - The greatest thing. - That's a Ray. - Ray was pretty good. - He was. - Yeah, Ray was really, really good. - He told us a few. - And I learned a lot in my day. working with yates. - Racing. - Being next to him, racing next to the 24 car. I used to wear those guys out 'cause I'd sit there and spend more time staring at their cars and I'd go home next week and come back the next week and break. The car looks like mine. (laughing) That's what it's supposed to do. But yeah, he probably was. I mean, he learned a lot. Really smart. - Very smart. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Now here's one of the most intriguing episodes that we've ever had. It was episode 264 with a racer, one of the best ever. A convicted drug smuggler and just one of the all-time greats in creativity. That is Gary Bolloon. (dramatic music) - You say air is free and I try to tell my light model guys the same thing. How can you explain to us what you mean by that? - I got off in the ERO 'cause I knew I knew nothing about ERO with a cup of cars. So I said, "I'll never get there." I don't understand none of this. And I got around Pete Hampton and Ray Stalkis. Pete was in the ERO with a light model car. And of course they were, he drove from Petty and so forth. He told me I called him and I said, "This ain't still tight getting in." He said, "Put some more in the nose." "Put some more in the nose and be loose getting in." I said, "No, it's loose." He said, "Put some more in the back." "Okay, put some more in the front, put some more in the back." And we kept on, we kept on until we got a real good bounce. And then I got to where I started painting the nose and stuff and I actually put like two inch holes in the nose with a little plate over top of it that I could move around. I got so balanced. Underneath, you know, it turned up underneath. But it was oddly behind somebody else at a loose year. So then I started moving the nose to the right and up front, the fender wave, we were late. That's how it's supposed to be. It closed in the hole up and I worked on closing the hole up, closing the hole and pulling away from the bottom. So I just got off into the air and then I got moving the carburetor box around and air box around and cheating the back with a rear spoiler and I had some mechanical advantage back there. Sometimes the back would hop up to three more inches and worked on the roof and there were the roof up and worked on the B-post and the B-turned to the A's. Oh yeah, but the B-manage I had was that I did get to go race for the cup cars and see a lot of that. Then I was around R&B to also with the drag cars. Well, I think one great example we've got a lot from the book. But 1973, at the shape of 100, you basically bolted two fuel cells in the car. So you went ahead and pulled it. Well, there was a mandatory fuel stop and he bolted so they would think around the rulebook. You went to the bottom, cut the bottle and one bolted together. Right. We ran 45 gallons. I'll call them things for the run concept line directors. So what, nothing the way? I mean, we worked on that. So I think in Gary's, Gary was an amazing driver. To the one. But for what? Yeah. From what I take away from that is he could get in anybody's car and be awesome. But if he could actually work on it a little bit beforehand, he could make it-- I think him. He could make it even better because he worked around the rulebook. He didn't break the rules. They didn't say he could run too. It looks like he might work. Let's not go. Thank you, now. I mean, what are some of the craziest things this site? I mean, that's a great example. Putting two fuel cells together in the car to be able to help more fuel. So you didn't have to take so much fuel in that mandatory stop. They helped us in the pitch. But what are some of the-- They helped him in the pits because this fuel guy didn't-- They didn't put them up. He didn't do a good enough job to win a Grammy. I like to fuel into the car. What's some of the craziest things you ever done to trick your cars up and even break the rulebook? Well, Arrow was real big. I mean, we had the back of the car to where-- You're talking about the car, hiking up three inches. I get some more. The cell was-- the record was hiking up. So you put like four inches, five inches, three inches, more of a spoiler card to get off the corner deeper. You know all that. So how did you do that? Mechanically. Wondercranks and then probably the most outlanding thing we ever did was run Mercury. What is that? So how would you run Mercury? Left side. My car was 60% left side without the driver. Pumps. Stainless cans. The frame rail to frame rail. And it pumped Mercury from one side to the other. Yeah. Why you're on the racetrack or why you're in the pits? Half of you went to Tech. Right. Incredible. It's amazing. So Daryl Waltrow-- Yeah, it was nothing in the movie because you couldn't do it at the time. But you got the word you-- EPA and all that stuff, boy. Woo-hoo. Yeah. I imagine how many rules have been created because of you, like because of your stunts. I mean, I bet there's a bunch. Now you guys slid-- I've heard things about you guys being able to slide around weight during races. That's what he's talking about. I mean, the Mercury pumping from one side of the car to the other. During the race. Well, in the pits to get across the scales. I'll tell you a good story. I had a final bottle that I'd moved from the upside to the right side. It was like 41 pounds of full mercury. So it was pretty hard to get that under the steering wheel and get it from the right side to the low side. But one concord. And you got caught. The steering wheel got a car. It's a lot cooler than that. I won it. Yeah. I couldn't get it over. [LAUGHTER] I was in trouble in the mean so. I thought, why not go to do? I rolled up off the form. I passed out. I was exhausted. I pulled off, but down in the infield, and just pulled off the inside garb on bump a little bit. And they all come running. I said, right, move it, move it, get it over there. Right, get it over there. Then we got to the scale. But the fuel and everything. I think we were about three pounds light. And then back and forth, back and forth, we stuffed it, we shook it, we'd everything. And I'd be like, no, no, no, no. They got quick change gears. They come up, it's quick change gears, and I put them on pockets. Well, I got to get a hot rod and the cop points are patting me down. So get away from me, man. What's wrong with you? Do you nod or what? I got to call him, finally made way, you know what? Dang. I'm cop with patting you down. Patting me down, man. Get in the race car. It's a good way for me. Look, you think you are. That is amazing. Well, they do that stuff at the snowball derby now. I mean, uh, you know, you know. Ricky Brooks, Ricky Brooks is the best, best inspector I've ever seen anywhere, any place. I can tell you. He's better than DEA drug dog. Well, you know that, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Now let's get to Tommy Russell. Now Tommy was one of Dale Earnhardt's first car owners. And the interview was a rare peek into the formidable years before the seven NASCAR titles. When Dale was just trying to make a name for himself on the clay ovals of the Carolina dirt track scene. An old Tommy, he shared a story that had never been told before. It was on Episode 364. [MUSIC PLAYING] I told you, Daddy, one day I said, Dale, I said, come on, take a ride with him. We're going to go over to Denke Winehouse's shop. He said, what were we going to wear for? I said, I'm hunting a carburetor. The rule books said, two barrel carburetor. Well, I always ate me for a win and races. I want to try to be a little bit better, because you can get behind in a hurry. And I told Dale, I said, well, you know, there's nothing else we can do for the engine, but we could do something with the carburetor. So we went over there to Denke's and Denke said, yeah, look out there all you want. These are trucks. I found a carburetor, so it helped me. It was this high. It had a flat plate on the front there. It was a bolt hole. And I took my measuring stuff. It was a lot bigger than the Ventura than what we'd been running. We had tried, you know, a holly-two barrel. Even the day Daddy did one and some other guys, they were cutting up a holly race carburetor apart and running off just the front two barrels on it because they were bigger than the other. So we got that measured it quite a bit bigger than what we had. And they take it back to the shop. Denke gave me two of them and gave me the car very gifts that take all you need. So we got back to the shop and Daddy's looking at it and he said, I mean, I think this is a work. Well, we went over to speedway a little bit. Shaw and motor speedway and Daddy kept up the vehicles over. So we just took it out there on the racetrack. I said, "Dale, I'm driving." Well, we were running down an intern around, come back, pit road. Dales over and hanging onto the road bar. He's scared, you know? I'm whining at that thing. I'm here. So I told Dales that it feels good here, but we're going to take it to the fairgrounds Friday night. We'll warm up with it. We'll take it off and we'll put our other car back on there. And we'll try it back and forth like that. So he went out there and he run the qualifying race. He said, Tommy, this thing is flying. I'm serious. Let me drive it in the future. All right, we can't do that, but learn to motor every now and then. I didn't want to raise the hood. I didn't want nobody to see it. Well, I was looking under the hood and see if we had any leaks or anything. Well, Ralph come over and he got down looked at it and he said, what the hell is that? He said, it looks like a fuel injector. I said, no, it's a two barrel carburetor to get him from across the street. Well, we ran into feature one. And we started running every cent put one on both cars. And then we went to a four-barrel. We put two of them on an engine. And they finally they protested. Well, I couldn't hardly breathe. There's so many people around the car. I had to take the carburetor off. I didn't read the whole rule book, but the rule book said two barrel carburetors still in production. I knew it was a two barrel carburetor, but I ain't sure about that production. Well, they had to put up $70 or something. There's ads and I mean papers in here about it. And so they promoted hell up to money to the carburetor. He called, I think it was a holly carburetor, truck carburetor. He called them and they said, "How many you want?" We still get in production. We'll say, "Y'all you want." So we were clear. We got our money. Plus the money they put up for tearing it down. But guys were crying around me there. That one guy said, "Oh God, that's the biggest thing I ever seen. It looks like a big old blower on top of that engine. That's just going nuts with it. That's the part I loved about racing. Trying something different, stir up some stuff. We just had a good time back in the day. So you're around dad and his first cup start in 1975 in Charlotte in World 600. I can't tell at all. Why not? Just won't. I'll tell you later. All right. Yeah. They all had a way with my daddy. He could talk with daddy or anything. He called daddy and said, "James, we really need Tommy over here for a couple of days because you wouldn't nobody but Norman being a mechanic and you know, Dale was in the car and everything. So Dale let me off work when I was there and help him get the car ready to race and everything. I mean, Norman was going to change the tires and everything. That's a big deal with us. You never heard of a Grand Estron car. Massive. I thought I was somebody there for a while. But how'd qualifying go? We made a race. Yeah. Made a race. I'm curious on what he's not saying. Yeah, me too. I guess there is a cheating. Your buddies are back there talking about it too. And I want to put a mic on them because they're sitting there doing their hand gestures. It's not your limitations. Look at it. Everybody. I feel like everybody in the room knows what's going on except us, Dale. Should I give you a tell? Yeah. They're saying, yeah, you should tell them. What's going on? What happened? We had to have a bottle. A nitrous? Dad had nitrous. Oh boy. And I said, Dale, where is the bottle? He said, Emmett told me I'm sitting on the bottle. And he said, you see that, Paul Brewer and Aaron Felder, that's where it's coming out of him. Damn. As soon as qualifying is over, we got it to hell out there. Yeah. I was big mistake. I wish I had known that. I don't know what the watchers is showing now. Well, I mean everybody, I mean, you know, there's a lot of nitrous back then in race cars, you know. But that's funny. It is funny. So, well, the funny part is, is because around 1995 or '06, I was working on my late monocard, and I'm out in this, I'm kind of in this, I'm working on my car in a warehouse. Dad put all his parts and stuff in from his Xfinity team. I think Jeff Green was a driver at the time. But I'm out there working on my car, and I'm right next to the paint booth. There's a phone. And I don't know how in the hill, I figured this out, but I got to hold a somebody that sold nitrous. And I was on the phone with this guy asking him about it. And dad walked up on me. I didn't know he was standing there, and I'm on the phone talking to this guy. And I got off the phone and I turned and there's Daddy. And he's like, if you ever put nitrous on, or if you ever put nitrous on when you're late monocard, you won't be going on the racetrack with it. He's like, that's my race car, and you ain't putting nitrous on it. That was his way of saying that you're not going to do that. And he talked, so he talked like a guy who had never used nitrous. If I had known, the day of many, he'd use nitrous regular days. Right. Andy Petrie worked with many racetrack, Terry Gantt, Phil Parsons, Dale Earnhardt, to name a few. He was, listen, Andy Petrie, one of the best innovators, rule benders, whatever you want to call it, innovators of the rule book. Andy Petrie was on episode 339, and he had some stories. That feel feels great. I won my first race as a crew chief with Phil in the Cup Series. That's a good memory. About that race. What year? That was 88. Yeah. What about that race? How did he win that? Like to go to the car? Yeah, the fastest car, right? Yeah, I know, but what was in that car? Okay, it's actually the limitation that ran out on that one. No, it's run out. No, thanks. It's run out. No, because listen, I'm going to tell you something. We had a few tricks back then. It wasn't so much. If you built a car by the rule book, you're going to know where they went. So the way you race is how you race to the enforcement. Whatever the enforcement level was, you were always snuggling right up and next to it. And that's the good crew chiefs were the ones that knew where that was. Like you couldn't, like no new guy could come in there and figure it out. You have to just keep working on it. You don't have to explain it to us. We're all about it. We love this. We love this. We had a little advantage. We love the innovation. That's what we call it. We love innovation, right? We had the chag and now pulling out all his tricks and we have everything. Oh, I'm doing it. I'm pulling out loud. I even have to be an area in some of his, because he's, you know, I heard that thing about the lead dropping out of the shot. You know, prideful he is. He won everything fair and square. Oh, yeah. Right. You were a genius on the, on the pit box and said that where did this come from? I mean, seriously, because you, you, you are telling us that you didn't even know you, didn't know what wedge was. And now you're winning a race with Phil Parsons. You are, let's say, applying some, some imagination to, maybe not imagine. You're applying some of your, you know, things that you can, you know, set yourself apart on this car. Where does this come from? Well, a lot of, most of it's want to, right? I wanted to do this. I wanted to be successful. So bad that I was willing to do whatever it took. And I didn't like that. I didn't have an engineering degree. I didn't like that. Back then, none of the crutches did. But, you know, I was at least smart enough to know what I didn't know. And I would, I would always seek out people that I knew that had, that had more, you know, either experience or knowledge or, and I was never afraid to do that. I mean, I did that through my whole career. You know, like I told you about John Settlemar and Tommy Houston. I mean, I aggravated to, to, to know in. I mean, they just got tired of seeing me comment. Because I just have a list of questions in my long, you know, about everything. And I just, I wanted to, I wanted it so bad that I was willing to do this, use every resource that I could to get me there. Do you tell drivers? I honestly, this could be a question for you. How much does a crew chief tell the driver what things they're doing or trying or, or, or the stuff that you don't want? Okay. So he knows a lot of things that were happening with this car. I was, I'll go ahead and tell you that right now. He might not admit it, but he knew about everything that was happening. You don't, you know, one reason you tell the driver is you got what, one reason you tell him a little bit though. And you want him to know is, you want him to think he's got an advantage. That's good. But calls that, that is usually worth more. He's just him thinking he's got an advantage. It's usually worth more than the actual advantage. I used to race late models with Gary Hargett, and I told him, I said, what, I said, whatever you're going to tell me lie to me. So that, just like you said, I think that man, this thing's going to fly, right? And you know, if you're going to, if you're going to take a little wedge out, you're going to change the right wrist spring. Don't tell me that. Don't even tell me. Just don't even tell me. Let me go out there and tell you how it drives. I don't want to predetermine my head what it's going to drive like, right? Because I'm already, I'm already going to screw it up. But if, but if you want to tell me you put rocket fuel in there, by all means, tell me you put rocket fuel in this thing. Some people reacted to that different. Like your dad, it wouldn't really matter to him much. Really? Because he was getting 105 to 10% of that car every lap all the time. So you could, if you tell him that, doesn't help any, right? He's already giving you more than 10, you should be getting. But the other drivers would, this is a good story with Harry. So we built this car and it up being one, the car that we won the four in a row with in 91. We built it and it built it super, super light. So we had a lot of ballast in the right hand side that you make the minimum weight, I think was 16 pounds at the time. And so we made this little deal and, you know, exploiting some of the rules where Harry had a little ratchet. We would take in the right side battery box, we didn't put a battery in it. We just put some lead pieces over there. And then on the line where putting him in the car, the interior guy get in the car and helping right? So they would swap us over. Harry would stick it over in the seat besides, so you'd make total weight, right? But they never really looked at the right side weight. And so we put these pieces over there and make it less. I'd hit, well, shoot man, Harry, we tell him, he's doing, he knows he's got this advantage. He's not going to let anybody be. Well by the time that four in a row deal comes around, this car's been run, you know, quite a few times and you know what happens, they get heavier as you run them. Well by the time we did the thing was already 16 hundred pounds on the right with no weight, you know, so we didn't even have any ballast in the right side of this thing. And so the interior guy Scott Robinette says, you know, we still need to be swapping that lead just so Harry did not lose that advantage. Right. So we were going like 40 pounds or 50 pounds over on the right with that thing and they're just swiping, swiping it over. What even illegal? Harry's like, I got more or less outweighed. - I'm gonna beat you. - That's pretty awesome. - Yep. - Wow. - I don't even know if Harry knows that, but he does now. - Dude, these guys are playing mind game. - Yep, yep. - That was the advantage. - And then he had to, in his mind, at one certain car was better than the other, and so we just changed the stickers on the dash sometimes, so he didn't know which one it was. - Yeah. - That really happened? - Yeah, how are you? - He was always usually smart enough to figure out that. - Yeah, this is not the car, because pedals are, you know, y'all know. - You're sort of confirming what I've always suspected. Drivers are sort of mental, right? - They're headcases. - They're headcases, right? - They're all arquents. - And you have to just, just to get them, sometimes just to shut them up, just drive the car, and you have to trick them into, like, jet our mind tricks. - Yeah. - We used to have, we used to party all the time down in the saloon. Everybody that came in there, it wanted vodka, wanted, - Greygoose. - Got to have Greygoose. - So you were poor at no one in there. - So we, when the Greygoose bottle was empty, we just started taking the brudettes and pouring that in there. - That's what I was talking about. - Greygoose, you knew. (laughing) - Man, you guys may career as a line to people, as well, y'all have to, I'd tell you. - You have to trick people. - Yeah, what's real anymore? So wow, okay, do we wanna talk about it? Here we get 91, 'cause that's, that was an amazing stretch right there. - It was. - It was something special, I mean. - I still think we just try to pry out what was so good about that 1988 tell date. - Okay, good, good, all right, listen. - I was like, go, listen. (laughing) - Your statute of limitations may not be at ours past one time ago. So it is assumed, you don't have to say-- - I can't believe I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you what it is. - All right, let's hear it. - Okay, so we run the Daytona 588. - Very good. - And we did, well what happened was, we were, we were pitted around the 12, I think it was the 12 car, Bobby Alson was driving and anyway, I suspected they were sucking air under the restrictor plate. Back then, there was-- - Bobby wanted the Daytona 500 that year, I think. - Yeah, yeah, they were dead. - And I was suspecting this. I could hear the weight was idling, I could hear all these things. And then he obviously goes out there and wins the 500. We ended up finishing third with Phil. And we just, even though we finished third, we couldn't even compete with them. I mean, they were like in another league. And so I went to Leo Jackson, he's gonna be really mad when he hears it. But I went and talked to Leo about, if we want to compete, then we gotta do what they're doing. I said, we gotta figure out a way. They're finding a way to get air under, around that restrictor plate, we have got to figure it out. And so he said, all right. And he was very lucky. He didn't want to do it. But I said, in my favor, we got an argument. I said, okay, if you just want to go to the race and just show up, we'll do that too. So he got mad, went to work, fixed to manifold. It's one of the most amazing pieces of art you've ever seen. I mean, could it, in pieces, made it, put these holes in it, and it was, I still got it. - You still have it? - Oh yeah, yeah, I got it. - Damn, yeah, I got it on. - Like where do you keep-- - I keep it in my shop at the top. - That's so awesome. - And I guess I feel like it's too, but. (laughing) So we put that thing on there, and Leo did it right. I mean, it was worth a pretty good advantage. - Yeah. - And we didn't sit on the pole though. I apparently, everybody else is doing it too. And so the last lap of the race, Bobby finished second. And we ended up winning. - I was wondering how Bobby was making that, that front end on that Buick run so good on plate track. 'Cause it was-- - It was what's underneath the front end was making it run. - The grill on the Buick at that time was back. - It's like running the wrong way. - Right, it's like the opposite of what you want. - He was, he was pretty good too. - He was. - But that was after the race was over, we were tearing the engine down, and I look around, and there was no Leo Jackson. - He wasn't only nowhere real. But we got it through, he did a really good job with it. But I tell you what he did do, this was the best thing. He goes back to the shop, and he makes this thing that will actually bolt on the engine, pull it back, you want to, and check for that. And takes it the next week to the garage, and gives it to the serious director, and he says, if I can't cheat, nobody can. This is what we need to be doing, so he showed him how to use it. That thing is still being used in the garage today. - Wow. - That similar thing, yep. That's why they tech 'em now. - I know that I've never heard that about the Bobby's car. I know that I thought that that was the big rumor on the four car when it was winning all the plate races. - I think it's probably more than a rumor. - Yeah. - They had drilled the-- - It had gotten so hard by that time though. That's why you gotta give, I guess this front pitman was building the engine, Tony Glover, you gotta give him a lot of credit because it was hard to get by with that back then. - I heard that they were drilling the studs for the carburetor. The carburetor studs, they were drilling holes and those down in there, and then routing into the-- - You need to get Glover in here, put him on a hot seat, make him come clean. - Oh yeah, it's fun. - He's already got me. - All right, so we satisfied with the field Parsons explanation. - I am. - Okay, so then we go move on to the next generation car. - I took, so I tried that. So I heard, I heard that y'all were doing that kind of stuff. And when I ran my late model at Mertle Beach, the Allen plugs in the intakes. - Yeah. - Yeah, I would drill a hole in the side of that Allen plug and then valley it into the intake, but then you could turn that Allen plug of a quarter of a turn. - It would seal it. - So nobody, you know, it wouldn't leak. And when you get ready to go run, you click that plug that thing back a little bit and open it up. It was good for, it was big on two-broad car, right? But it didn't help me win, but still had to go through the corner better. - Hairy Gantt, so you talked about Hairy setting up that car in his shop, and so you've been around Hairy for a while since the early '80s, right? - Actually, I've been exposed to Hairy Gantt back in the '70s. I first started going to Hickory, he was racing there, and he actually, he rode mine. I mean, it was like, just doesn't get much better than what he was doing. He was, you know, as cool as guy on the track, and winter races, and, you know. - So, you know, Cambert Housens, Toad Housens, all that stuff is so common, and everybody's doing everything they can to max, max, max, even thousands of the degree, right? What was the, again, I might kind of tap into what my thought is here is to, how's the conversation start? - Okay, so here's what happened with that. So that was in the real early days of the radial tire, right? It was in 1990. - Is that the first time you ever thought in your mind, I would love to have a little more camera. - Yes, that was the first time, but here's what drove us to that, because that radial tire, we were running kind of the same, we just put the tires on, go run the same setups, and we don't have any tire data like they have now. There's so much data that the crew chief engineers have, and it's generated, you know, exactly where to put the toes into the cameras, we didn't have any of that. And so we're just kind of going from history, which was we're on three and a half over here, three and a half over here, on the front. - On the front, this is front cameras. Well, then the engineers, the tire engineers were trying to give us a little bit of, you know, hey man, you ought to try a little more camera in those front tires. So it's their fault, everybody started running more camera. They're the first ones to say something. (laughing) And so we tried, and gosh, it really reacted to it. I mean, it really reacted to camera, it was crazy. 'Cause the bi-spot tire was kind of numb to it, you know. You could put a little more camera, it might be a little bit, but this thing, you could put a little bit, boom, it was good. You know, you knew it, it was there. And so we go to Richmond. We finally got the front cameras kind of figured out, but we come back from the Richmond race, and we used to have to dismount all of our tires that we ran in the race, unlike today, where they just throw them in a hauler and somebody else does it all. But I'd always go out there on Mondays, and look at all the tires that came off the car, to just see, you know, make sure we're trying to get the maximum out of the car, you know. If you're wearing the right rear's too much over the, you know, you're trying to look at all that, while I start looking, we're killing outside edge at the right rear tire. And I guess we're in place as much as the inside, and it's kind of the same thing on the left. And so I'm like, dang, you know, that camber deal would work. If we could get some camber in this rear end. And so I go to Leo, and I said, Leo Jackson, and I said, "Look, what do you think about this?" I said, "Oh, I don't know how you get that axle to work, you know, there's all this stuff designed to run straight." (laughing) I said, "Well, I got an idea." I said, "If you'll help me with it." I said, "I'm gonna crown this, I'm gonna put that axle in the lathe, then I'm gonna put a little ball on it." And then, no, I said, "Why don't you do that, 'cause I was gonna do it myself, but I didn't have the right tooling." Didn't really know. He said, "Let me do that part." So he goes and does that, brings it back to me. But it still won't go in the, it still won't go in the drive plate because the root of the spline needed to be the same way. So I put it in the lathe, and I just took a, I literally took a zis wheel on an air hose, and I went down in that root all the way around those splines to that axle, and made it kind of ball-shaped, stuck and got it where it would actually fit into car after. Now, this is after we cambered, we actually bent the housing, like a half a degree, maybe the first time. No more than that, no more than about one anyway. 'Cause that's all it really wanted to give up. You're trying to bend this housing. And then we try to make these axles fit, we finally make them fit, and we take it to a couple of races. The, the, didn't just start off, we didn't start winning right when we did it. It was kind of an evolution. Then we ended up putting a little more, and trying to get a little more, get a little better at it, and, you know, we put grease, make sure they could live, and we just kept sneaking up on it until the, the 91, four in a row, by that time we had gotten it pretty mature. So the, the problem initially with trying to camber the housing, you can torch the housing or cut it, or do whatever you want to do to make the actual housing flange have camber, but then you have a drive plate, and an axle on all those things, like you say, that are made to run straight. You had to shape the axle, but then the valleys of the teeth, right in the axle itself. - That's what I had to take that Zeus wheel and go down in there. - That was the key. - Mike Clarence. I wouldn't even thought about that. I'd have been like, oh, ain't gonna work. - What's the key? - Let's see what you've got. - Who's got another idea? - Nobody normal thinks about that, right? This is what makes them good. - So is it? - But the combination of that, the front end, and a few other things, really gave that car the biggest thing. - A competitive advantage. - The biggest thing is the engine. - What about the load? - Really, not much about the engine. At that time, like I said, we'd worked all these cambers out. We'd already gotten, made a lot of headway on some things. And then we found out that we were behind on our engine stuff. There was a loophole in the rules. There was a 22 degree angle or 23 degree angle rule for the cylinder heads. Well, they had a teams that were welding up the heads and then just basically rolling them. And it was kind of a loophole. And we were way behind the curve. We didn't realize it 'cause we're up in Ashley and we're not kind of in the mainstream, but somehow it gets to us that we're behind on it. Well, our guys go to work and like I said, Leo Jackson is one of the best. And they do, I mean, they do it right. It took 200 hours of welding that almost has to make them. And then you remachine them, reshot paint them, reheat treat, all this stuff. Well, that engine, that race at Darlington was the first race we showed up with that motor. So to me, that's what sent us over the edge. It was the engine, along with all the other things. Sure, incredible. I'm trying to process 200 hours of welding. One guy, it took him weeks and weeks. It took forever to weld these things. I mean, you were talking about welding three quarters of an inch or more on one side of the head, like on the base of the head. When did you start to see around the garage everybody tuning in to the camber? I don't know how that got out so easily. It shouldn't have. I guess we just weren't tight-lipped enough about it. And then all of a sudden, then we're playing catch-up. Because everybody else is going instead of one degree or one and a half, I think is where we wound up. They're going three and a half. Till they're breaking in their breaking axles. And we never did a breaking axle or a strip of spine doing that. That's amazing. But a lot of teams did. That's like the perfect example of how the garage works. You know, the teams observe in each other. I'd go to, and I know you're well in the throws of this and deep into what's happening. But my favorite part of the competition meeting was the part when Alan Gusserson would open up his laptop and connect to the whiteboard on the wall and show us all of the photos that they took all weekend of everybody else's stuff. Yep. Oh man, look at how they've got that made. Look at how they've shaped this. And that was my favorite part. Crazy howl. I need the engine to do it. Detail these photos are that they get from the roof. You see a lot. It's hard to hide stuff on the outside of the car. Be sure is. And the garage is, while you're in there working on your own car, especially back when we had practice, which we hopefully get back at some point, some shape or form, you're not only working on your own car, but you are looking at every opportunity when a wheel comes off of that car next to you and you get a shot of it. You get to look in there and see what they're doing. Every opportunity to be able to see a different vantage point from your competitor's car, because usually, you only see it on the racetrack or sitting on the grass. Yeah, everybody's pretty protective of that stuff. I know when I was at ESPN and working with Fox, I could walk through the garage. I wasn't a threat. Right? I could look on people's hoods. I've talked to it. Man, since I walked in with this shirt on, you kind of forget-- You forget? You've kind of forgets. I walk in there. I'm looking. I think it was Joy the Gunn is car. And I'm sitting there looking at it and I got-- What are you doing? I'm like, oh, oh, OK. Yeah. Listen, I know we're supposed to talk about all your days with Dale Earnhardt and Rad and everything, but I still got one more I want to ask you about, OK? Because this stuff is fascinating. And I'm impressed. I was watching an interview that Ray Evernham gave and where he was talking about this deck lid at Daytona. He's one giving that up? Well, I guess. I mean, it's on YouTube. Really. All right. What did he say about it? Well, the deck pin, the pins, like somehow-- Was it his? No, yours. OK. He said there's his yours. Yeah. Where Earnhardt could lower-- No. What Earnhardt, it was not Earnhardt. It was not Earnhardt. It was Harry Gant. Yeah. I've still got it. I've still got the deck lid. Is this on the same shelf as the-- It's close to it. He's got a trophy case of all his-- When it comes to selling your stuff, I want all those things. I want you to get parts of it. So listen, if Ray Earnhardt is out there talking-- he's on a PR tour to talk about all the stuff. That's what the Hall of Fame needs is. Yeah. Oh my God. That's right. They need it. They do. They do. Yeah. So what can you tell us about this deck lid? OK. So we go to Daytona. They came up with a spoiler angle rule. I guess it was '89 or '90. I can't remember what year it was. And we had always been good. Like I said, we won an '88 at Talda. If you're third, 500. So we were always good at speedways. And exploiting all the rules were-- some of that spoiler angle was some of it. Some of it was height. A lot of things that we-- but Gary Nelson came along and really tightened up every-- this is his first season as a series director. And so we got to clean it all up now. We can't be cheating. They're going to check heights and say, now we can't do our little things we were doing. And we weren't very fast. We were at testing and we were really slow. Motors were off at that time. And I've never been on a plane coming back. I'm just kind of in my mind thinking, what are we going to do? And I thought if I could figure out a way to get that spoiler to lay down and get it back up because they're going to check it post-race. And so in my mind, before I even landed, I had in my mind how we could make the hinge and conceal it and how all that would work. I didn't have what it didn't have as an actuator for it. And so I go-- I mean, I go to work on it. As soon as we get back, me and a guy named Dean Jones worked in our shop in a little locked up room on this thing. Nobody knew. And we get to sing all-- working the spoiler hinges perfect. Everything's good. I've got the back plate of the spoiler. I do this little deal with silicone where it looks like it's welded, but it still has flexible. And it's all good. But I don't have a way to move it. And I'm looking back then, no internet, right? So you don't have a way to go to search this thing. And I've looked in catalogs. So one night, I took a car that we drove as a Osmoville Delta 88 that gave us to drive. So I'm driving it to the store. And I get to the store and get some groceries. And I pop the deck lid. And then the boot pops up. I shut the deck lid. And if you remember these cars, they would click. And then they would have to sing it. Just pull them down tight. And so soon as that happened, like as soon as they went, click and went, yeah. I was walking to the driver's store. And I went, whoa, wait a minute. I popped that deck lid up. I said, where is that thing? What's doing that? And so I take that thing right straight from the grocery store over to the shop. And I pop that thing out. And I find that little motor. And it is dead perfect. It's got this little thing going up and down. I'm thinking, man, this is perfect. And so I take it. I go in there and fab up. This is like eight o'clock at night. I fab up this little thing to hold the deck lid down this car and take that thing. And then I had to buy another one, right? Because I needed one on each side of the spoiler. So we started making all the linkages and everything. It's perfect. It had a little limit switch. And we could set it. And we got it. And it was nice. Again, Leo Jackson not one that wants to cheat. And so how did you engage it? So that's the key to it. So we get it on the car. I totally-- look, here's what I'm going to do with that tailing. He said he didn't want to do it. I said, let me put it on the car. If you can find it, if you can find it, we won't run it. And you know it's on there before. OK. I said, if you can find it, we won't run it. I'll give you all the time you want. I feel like we've had that same exact story. It was DW. It was the shot that would come out of the frame rails. But he could find the door. They were saying the same thing. Like if you can find it, we won't do it. Yeah. Somebody else is uncomfortable. That's a pretty good way. So we put that-- right. I mean, because he knows it's in the car. You inspect it and see if you can find it. So we roll the car. It's ready to go day time. Roll it in there. Where was it? Huh? OK. So we had a radio box. But back then, we had a different kind of radio system. It was an analog thing. And we put it in a box. Everybody had it. There were aluminum boxes that would keep out the interference. And it's set on the tunnel. The way we had ours right beside the driver. And it had some switches on it and dials to turn the radio up and turn it on and off. So we just put it a little extra switch in there, a little three way, like middle and up and down on the radio box. And so I wired all the stuff through the roll bars. I mean, the key to cheat is you've got to do it right. I mean, you've got to really do the work. And so we spent hours and hours doing this. And concealed it up in the hinged part, and all the stuff in the car. Everything's ready. Put it on there. Checked. So Leo checks the angle. It's 45 or whatever the number was. And he goes in there, starts looking at switches. And he's raising the deck lid. And he's looking at this. And he's looking at that. And he's all over this thing. Can I find it? He said, I don't think it's on this car. I reached in there through the radio box. The spoiler goes, yeah. [LAUGHTER] Oh, that's cool. That would have been so good. I would be-- did you have people in-- so I would be-- I'd be [BLEEP] my pants if I was you, because-- I was. I was. The whole time I tried. And you're like, oh god. I just knew they were going to catch us. I mean, I was-- I guarantee I look so guilty. I couldn't stand it. They were all over that thing. I'm like, good Lord. And we get ready to qualify. Rolls out there. Gary Nelson is checking the spoiler. The first day on the job. Headed director. He is supposed to be stopping all cheating. He is doing it himself. And I said, I have somebody. He's at the right before you go on the track. He's one putting it on your car. So I had it up a degree or so. Just so I didn't have to mess with it. Safety, yeah. Well, he says knock it down. I said, no, that's good. I almost were on the road. He said, no. He said, knock it down. I'm like, oh god. My heart's going, you can see it beating through my shirt. I guarantee you. So I'm trying to get it down. It won't move, man. It won't move. No. It won't. Bend. I mean, I've got linkages and everything. Finally, it goes down to 10th or something. and he finally says go. And I was like, "Oh, you." So he takes off and at the end of Pit Road at Daytona, he was right close to the track. And I'm standing there with my stopwatch, gonna clock air when it comes by. And Gary standing right there in front of me, checking the next gas roller. I look at that car coming by and I think, "Goo!" And I'm like, "Gaw!" (laughing) Visually. Oh yeah, oh. Oh. And Gary didn't even look over there. (laughing) He had a seat, I mean it was obvious. (laughing) Damn. So after that, I said, "Guess, "we gotta get that deck lid off of car. "I can't stand it anymore. "I just can't do it." This is no way to live. (laughing) Back then, they used to let you put the cars in the hauler. And so we had another deck lid and I had them get in there and chop in wire and put the stock deck lid on it. And that way I could breathe for, you know, speak me, I can do it for two weeks. Right, you only did it for qualifying. Oh my gosh. You didn't know what was bad with qualifying third. Yeah. I find out years later, Jenner's cars were on front road. They were cheating more than we were. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure. And what a legal car in the line up. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I think it's somewhat of a coincidence that I find that from Ray Averinham because who did it? Yeah, I don't know how even told him. How did he know that? Well, that's what you got to sort it out. (upbeat music) You know, Mike, whether I've been in the garage, right, as a driver or in the studio as a member of the media, the biggest lesson I've learned over the years is that we are all better off with an ally, a friend, a partner. My favorite part of the download has always been the opportunity it gives me to connect with such a wide range of people. They love racing as much as I do and it means so much to me that when we leave, the guest segment, I leave it with a feeling that I can call each and every guest on the download a true ally. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the show and the entire 30-mo media team. Yeah, I got a surprise for you. Oh, Jesus. He loves surprises so much. He's always doing some sh--. (laughing) You know about this. I knew he was gonna do something. Okay. I wouldn't be as worried about it as you think you should be. Oh, it's a person. What in the world? A little chie-- A little chimp, jippy. Wow, what is this? (laughing) How you doing? I'm great, how are you? Doing good. I think I should flip this over, right, Ian? Yep. Declids aren't supposed to have wires in them. Yeah, oh boy, look at their-- See? Oh, that's the deck lid. That's the hairy gant neck lid. Correct. Put on those headphones. Well, thank you, sir. This is what we're totally surprised about this and we've had somebody come-- Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us-- Tell us who you are, what you brought? Yeah. So back when you had Andy on, my name got used in vain about-- (laughing) Did that-- Did Andy Petri-- But he was on it, right. Yeah, yeah, right. So he used my name in vain. And so, Andy and I, I basically was locked in a room at Skull Bandit Racing at Leo Jackson Motorsports for about a month building deck lids. What's your name? Dean Jones. Dean Jones. Remember him telling us about you. And so he puts you back in a room and said, come up with something. No. Nope. How it started was that, you know, Andy got part of the story right about the test. We went to test at Daytona, came back and the motors-- he said the motors were not like they. It should be. And so he said, we started bringing the storm as on a Monday morning when they got back from the test. I can remember it well because it was rainy out. And so, so he says, I want to be able to drop this car down and put air to the shocks and make the shocks go up and down. That's how we're going to get faster. That's what we're going to do. And I was a shop form in there and I said, Andy, that's just way too much work. Hiding all the airlines through the roll bars and all that stuff is just like, that's not easy. So I had this idea about the actuator to be able to move this boiler up, blades up and down. And so, I said, your wife Sherry, and these first wife Sherry, I said she's got one on her Dell 88 because she had a French manufacturer's car at the time that she was driving through Osmobile because we had the Osmobile deal. And so, he, you know, there's no cell phones in. He calls home and leaves a message because Sherry's at the grocery store on a Monday morning in this rain and outside. I said, so he calls her, she gets home and comes to the shop. He tells her to come to the shop. So we pull Sherry's Osmobile Dell 88 in the body shop and we dismantle the deck lid, the pull the actuator down out of the trunk that when you set the deck lid down, the actuator pulls the trunk down and latches them. Right? So, like, Andy's flipping out about that. I said, this is what we need. This is what we got to have. So we ended up calling local Chevrolet dealership, Anton Chevrolet was in Canton, North Carolina. The guy named Ted was the parts manager. I said, I need two actuators for, I don't care what it's off of, it's a deli 88 be fine. He was, they were several AOsmobile dealership. So we get that. And so then the wheels start turning about how we gonna make this thing work. So, the first thing we do is we get a deck lid back in this back room and this back room has got two keys. I've got a key and he's got a key. None of the other guys in the shop could get in this. This is the area where we did the bondo work on the cars. And then we move it over one stall to the paint area. And so, this is 1992. We've already won the four races in a row with what I call the X1 cars, the special, you know, that cars. More special than just the camber to rent, everybody thinks there's a lot more to that car than that. So, we're brainstorming how we're gonna make this happen. So the first thing is the blades. So, because the way this thing is built, you know, the long spoiler went down the center of the car back then. So you can make, you have two blades. So you gotta make both of them, you gotta make both of them work. Both of them move. So we end up building blades with flaps and we cut slots in the back of the deck lid and we're sliding it inside to the trunk, right? And we're gonna figure out the mechanism. And he where he came in really, he figured out the quarter inch Himes joints and rods to be able to hook it to the actuator. And like he said in the interview with you, he had to make a stop on it because the actuator was moved too much, right? And so we're figuring all that out and we end up have to mill areas in each blade for a piano hinge that we're gonna pop rivet to the face of the blade. They're in there, right? Because the blades are actually attached to the top of the deck lid, not the back of the deck lid, right? So we figure all that out, we get the actuators going in there. And so the next big challenge for us was the back of the spoiler because what do you do? Because the back of the spoiler, you're actually welding it to the blades and then bolting it to the deck lid. So, you know, Andy's, he's sweating a lot. We're gonna get busted with this thing. - It's a big deal. - I kept telling him, kept reassuring, they're just not that smart, Andy. (laughing) - They're just not that smart. I know, before I work for school, I work for Dave Marcus. I spent six years at Dave Marcus's from '82 until '88 and then '88 to '94 in here retired, I worked at Skull Bandit. And so we get this, I mean, we get the thing all built and we figured out the wiring, you can see the wiring hanging out of it. And so we got our hinges hidden on the car back then because it's a Speedway car. This car that came off of it was the same car that Phil won the Teledegger race in '88. - Yeah, that's the same car. - So one of those cars were the crowned Skull cars that were black and white without the decals on and so they gave them whale names. - Shamu and Orca. - Those were the cars that we got when Leo got the Skull Bandit team. We inherited those cars, right? So our very first car that we built there was a car we named Alf and that was the car that won the first race at Darlington in 1989. The Trans-O-500 and that were Harry through the monkey office back and you know, he got back in Winter Circle. You know, our fifth race as a team. But we had such an innovative group there. I mean, Charlie Presley was there and he'd ran a whole lot of short track stuff with Bob and he'd worked for Morgan Shepard. We had a guy in Scott Romanev that had worked and he came over and he was down in Denver. We were just other people that just came on. But Leo Jackson does not give enough credit for how wise he is and how genius like he is. There's other things about our other cars I can tell you about. So the big thing at the end of this thing was how are we gonna figure out this back plate to make it look like these back plates are attached to the front blades. And so I said, "That's no problem, Andy." I will use a silicone gun and I'll stitch this silicone beads on here just like a weld. It's like a weld and you can feel it right now. It's rubber and so the blade can move back and up and down. But there's three hinges on each one of these that are pop riveted to here, pop riveted to the blade. And so how do you hide those? Because Bondo doesn't stick to aluminum. So I took, first of all, JB weld and put JB weld over those to be able to, because it would stick to a limit. be well with and then I bottled the bondo would stick to the JV well right to get that to get it so you can't see it. So in the process we actually started out with one deck lid and we had the slots cut in it ready to put the blades in it and I mentioned a mat about buster ought to just show up at your shop sometimes and say okay boys this is what we're doing this year right. So at that time the year before that you were able to slide your spoiler around the radius on the deck lid and the number was like 22 inches. Well we were building that first deck lid at the 22-inch number buster ought to show up and says well the new number is now 21. So we got to come up so that first deck lid? Scrowed. So we got start all over again. So we get that all put in there but the best thing and the best time of all of this was Andy and I are locked in the room the very first time that we run it. We hook a battery up to it. We hook the wires up to it and we're sitting down. We got it on a trash can or saw horses or something you know we got it and we hook it up and goes *sounds of a dog* We look at each other and we just horse laughed ourselves right down to the floor. I mean we knew we had we had something right here right we really had something. How many degrees did it move? 15. If you look at this one right here I ran this thing I don't know a couple years ago but it looks like one of the actuators is not working so the blade on the left hand side is down and the one on the right side right now that's how far it would go down. And the whole purpose of this thing was Leo Jackson wanted to win a pull at Daytona. He wanted to win a pull and he's a very proud guy about his horse power and so the Skull Bandit engine department before the race team actually came there was already in place. Leo was already building engines for Benny Parsons in the 55 Copenhagen car and Richard his brother was building fill stuff for him and so those cars were still getting prepared down in Denver and you know we started up Johnny Hayes allowed us to start the team up with Leo there at airport road and actual North Carolina. Most of the guys that worked there were from around there and they were live there and I mean racers from that area you know. Kerry Boatheimers we hired a couple of guys that had worked for Kerry in the Pasademi penland was there and he's still involved with NASCAR. Dwayne Falco was another guy we hired that worked at Kerry's and he was just great and he passed away recently he was working at Penske at Accident on the road and he passed on as a big deal when that happened but there was guys that just came in that we had a guy named Mark Parks that showed up he just he wanted to be part of the team he worked for snap on and Elizabeth and Tennessee that their plant there and he wanted to be a part of this team you know and so we hired him he could be. Did you go to the track when the Spolder went to the track? Yep and so my job when the car goes to the track I'm the only one to touch the deck lid because when you go to the racetrack and Daytona the first thing you do you're up on Jackson you got to pull the fuel cells out they want to check them fuel cells right so if an NASCAR official starts to hinge that thing and feels the weight of it it's all over right then. You can tell. Oh this is heavy it's heavy with those actuators and the stuff that's in it and the bondo that's on it. Yeah it's heavy. So so I had to touch I mean I had to I was the only one to touch it so one of the things Andy didn't tell you about that day with the deck lid and Gary Nelson the first day on the job was we did get busted. We got busted so Leo created these things we called them fuzz balls they were a copper ball cupped out and they went between the jack screw plate and the so it could basically compress the frame of the car. Yep and so so now just the plate and the spring. Okay and so we put those on and I'm all talking to Andy why do we need those things we just need to know how long we need to have the spoiler down to run fast enough to win the pull because we run the spoiler all the way down along the racetrack we're we're gonna be a second and a half faster than you then you're then you are they're going to be all over it then right so so he's bound in term and he's gonna run the fuzz balls and it falls under the the category of we'll do this and if they catch that we'll be okay with them catching that yeah that you know there's that mindset right so we have the fuzz balls on there and we're too low when we come back through for inspection because they're it's with Gary Nelson in place this first time they're checking heights after you qualify yeah right and so we're low and so they're over there off in the corner and there Gary's examining how did they get this car low you know the whole thing with the shock thing that we we threw that out the window that first day there's about four or five is around their brainstorm and how are we gonna go faster with you know and the engine got better anyway but that we are in some were off long if we were off we were not off long we figured out we get we'd get better so I I just remember that the day Gary's over there with ending he's they're sitting on two tires could to tire soft the cars and sitting on the two tires and they're in the wheel well looking they're trying to figure out why is that car low right and they then he finally sees the copper things that are smashed right yeah right yeah I honestly I can't tell you if if Andy got fined or I don't know we we qualified fourth fastest so so I mean that the whole day there was was kind of fun for me until after we qualified and after they found the fuzz balls what we call the fuzz balls flattened out we got to put the cars back in the trailers because I was an error when we could put the cars and so Andy was Andy said there's one deck lid there's two the bud shootout car or the bush clash car had a power spoiler on it he's got it this is the one off the actual five hundred the five hundred car so we built two more I had to build two more stock decklets because if we did get caught we got to have we had to have backups so after that fiasco was was over with Gary Nelson and the fuzz balls we Hoss Berry was our truck driver and his best truck driver and ask our in my opinion he drives for an ask car now anyway he's he's we get the cars in there and I'm up there the only one swapping it swapping them yeah and it happened to just be a Sunday I would qualify it on Sundays back then Sunday afternoon it's 85 degrees in that taller and I'm up there sweating I'm in and I'm the own I'm the littleest guy there I can't only guy can fit so we change him out and he says we got to get him off there we got to get him off there I can't take it no I can't take him off he didn't even want him own the cars in the haulers no after after he got busted with the fuzz balls they got where did you put the where did you put them up in the cab the the other decklets yeah the one you took off the power deck lids oh yeah stick them in the cab of the truck or something yeah yeah yeah I mean that's why that's why I'm able to bring this to it's soon when you interviewed Andy and you said I want to have that stuff to him in that area if I said I got I got to call I got to get a hold of Matt Dillner yeah I got to give him you got it you got the one I got the one and Andy's got one too and so Andy you know he cut his apart and I would occasionally go out and see Andy after I left the NASCAR world he'd have me I have a graphics business and so we would do stuff for him and and so he cut his apart when Jerry Punch was instrumental in getting Andy his job with ESPN right I think he cut his apart to show the executives from ESPN oh here's the decklid because the decklids were a thing I mean Ray knew Ray knew about it because we were so close to Ray I had known Ray from Iraq days because when I worked for Dave Marcus Dave would test I wrote cars before there was any testing limitations we would test Dave's cars with the I wrote cars at Daytona and Dalegat when they were in Tessa yeah so I just got to know Ray pretty well but you know you just Andy and Ray were really really close at the race track every week so what do you do Dave you just go around showing off this piece of art this thing is like like your art art exhibit that you go around no no no people I've mentioned this to people and they say it needs to be in the hall of fame I said I mean I know Winston Kelly you know and so pick up the phone call Winston hey Winston you know can we do this I it's not my point I'd rather Andy do that right yeah but it's been in a it's been a loft in my at my building at my home ever since 1992 it's cool piece for sure yeah but I wanted you to have it oh we're gonna keep it yeah really yeah oh man you said you wanted it well hang it up in here yes we'll hang it up but it's yours we're not taking it listen there's things in here that don't belong to us but we'll proudly display it but give you all the credit sure it was I had after that interview I had people texting me like I can't believe Andy mentioned your name about that yeah it's well we'll gladly showcase it in here yeah I mean it's like the greatest example of of ingenuity and creativity yeah I I think because it didn't get it didn't get confiscated yeah right because it didn't get in there there may be hard to have it there may there there may be other ingenuity examples but they all got busted right you you got this one because of your fuzz balls then you got you got this one this one clear yeah the attention but I Andy was really sweating and I and I I must have told him 25 to 50 times Andy we're not gonna get caught with this they're not that smart I that's just what I would say don't you know there's a lot of people that have said that that also got caught I mean don't you think that well I well I know that Travis Carter with Jimmy Spencer was driving the car for him they tried something like that with springs on the on the blade somehow yeah and they got caught they got caught a day time I mean well yeah but they they won the race right they are you talking about no no no they won both of them that was a different car different car that was a different time that you cheated (laughing) Travis Carter has been nervous that guy, right? How many come on? Travis is very innovative too. I mean, he's been around the block a few times and he's just great. We just had a really, that when I look at that era, because I walked away from race and win Harry retired on a team basis, right? And I look at the people that we had there in that era and I say, "Man, we had some of the best innovations." And so the lugs that were in the stirring arms and the drag links and had to change the bumpster, that was a little Jackson idea. - Really? - Yeah. - I remember Alan Quicken, I didn't go to the race track a lot, but I remember the times I did go to the race track. Alan Quicken was always, when we were running really good in '91, Alan Quicken was all over that car. - Yeah. - So I remember, I remember bumping a car and using the bumpster gauge that had the tire audience that were clamped, so you could just clamp where you wanted to piece. You would clamp onto the drag link wherever you, wherever you got your bump number, then you would take the drag link off and drill where the clamp located the hole, right? So you'd have to weld up the original hole on the drag link, steel drag link, and then you drill where the clamp was, and now you have your bumpster the way it is. And so they said, "You know what, be easier is to actually have slugs with different holes positioned." So you could just change it out, instead of welding and drilling and all that. - Well, we started building our own front sections with banjo Matthews, really was really upset about that one, because we, his rear steer car, so we, Terry Satchel, who was an engineer that had worked at Penske's, and he'd been at Chevrolet, he'd been at Ford, whatever, he was helping us with something. So we got the opportunity to take our cars to the Detroit shaker, and this is a rear steer car, and the weakest part of those cars was the strut rods, and the flat area in the strut rods where it went into the lower AR, right? And so, this is Leo Jackson innovation right now. So we end up, he's end up machining his own strut rods for this thing, and we put a sleeve in the lower AR, to slide the, this, I don't remember what number the steel was, but what hardness the steel was. So it had a monoball out in the front section, and then it had this sleeve in there with a big nut on the back side of it. And you were able to shim it, also to get the lower ARs in the right positions. And so that was all about that time. We started building our front section, we made a front steer strut rod car. - Damn. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Pretty impressive. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Well, man, we appreciate you coming. - Yeah. - You did some good stuff. - I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to hang out a little bit. - Thanks for the, thanks for the deck lid. We're gonna be proudly displaying that on our show, what else you got there? - So this is the car that Ken Schrader ran for Andy Petrie in 1997. This is the first year that it changed from the bush clash to the bud shootout. And so I had done some graphic work. I have a graphics business. And so Brian Buccar was like the Motorsports representative for US Tobacco at that time. And I said, he asked me if I'd design a car for this for Schrader for running this. So this car was supposed to run only in the bud shootout. The very first bud shootout with Ken Schrader driving the car. And Ken he wrecked a primary car in the 125. So he had to run this with a broken sternum. He broke his sternum in that wreck. And in the 125, he drove this car in the 500. So I think they ran this car at Talladega as well. So I just kind of proud because I got to design it. And one of the things you know about designing cars, and I follow you, you like to design your own. So convincing them to change the door number to a different color so you could read the word goal better and put the shadow on the skull like that. I don't know how I was able to convince Brian Buccar or that. But he was able to influence the people above him that say, hey, it does make a difference. Little things, man. We appreciate you, bud. Yeah, man. Thanks for coming home. Good to try. It's Matthew. We've been talking about this ever since the Andy interview. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We've been back and forth texting each other ever since then. All right, everybody, it's time for Ask Junior here on the Dale Junior download. We are thankful for its affinity for supporting this part of our show. They've been a great partner of ours on the podcast for a long time and doing so many great things in the sport. And I am a customer as well at one of my houses. So they are, it's secure. It is always online. I never have any drops. And yeah, and I've got multiple devices fired up to this thing and everything works flawlessly. So thank you, extend it. Let's get started. Hannah. Well, this first one, we're just going to go ahead and get after it right off the jump here. From Ryan Goodman, he said, Dale, you and Amy are going out on a date night. Who do you trust more with your children? Matthew or Mike? Matthew or Mike? Who do I trust with my children? Yes. You're going on a date. We got to call the-- We all know the answer. We got to call up the babysitter and your options of babysitting are Mike or Matthew. Well, I would have to say Mike and only because I've seen him around my kids. So I know what they would-- he's-- I've seen him around them. I haven't experienced what babysitter Matthew would be. But I'm sure they would be fine. But they would be-- by the time I picked him up, they'd be full of water burger, cheeseburgers. And just coming back from Bowman Great. Yeah. Yeah. Were they learned to flip off the competition? Right. They would have ice cream and cotton candy all over their face and clothes and steak biscuits. Matthew's the funcule. That's what my niece has called me, the funcule. There you go. I believe that. All right. This one comes from Ryan Johnson. He says, it's almost time for you to get back in the booth. What are your favorite and least favorite track broadcast booths to call races for? That's tough to say, because I don't really remember exactly what each booth is like until I go back up there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this place. I've never been to this place. Yeah. Talonega used to be the worst one, but they got a new one now. But it used to be tight and small and old. I know you had struggle with Pocono the one time. Pocono-- remember you're saying that. The Pocono booths, OK. We kind of use room right next to the suites. I almost trip down the stairs because you're right. Pocono sucks. Yeah, the Pocono booths kind of tough, but I almost blew and meant money out one time in that booth, trying to get around. So it's so cramped in there where we had this real little alley of small little narrow alley of stairs. But there's also lights that are tripods and stuff that are on those stairs. And you got to kind of weave your way down. And I stepped wrong and hurt my knee hurt for like a couple of weeks because it was like I twisted something in there. But it was close. There's just-- there's some booths that are just older than others. But it doesn't really bother you the size. Some of them are way too big. There's some suites that are just gigantic. But they're all fun. I don't really have-- I don't know which one's the best. I mean, the newer ones. I think it's kind of really the track you're at. You're like, hey, man, I love this track. I'm more happy to be there because of the location or the race I'm about to see. And the Charlotte booths kind of tight, like I said. And they're all kind of-- the Charlotte booths tight as far as height as low ceilings. And some of them will freeze you out. And some of them don't have any air conditioning at all. There's all types of booths out there. Freeze and out and be too hot. That would put them at the bottom of the list right there. You've got to have the temperature control. Or I mean, seriously. Can we get temperature control back here? Yeah. I was thinking-- It's so cold. It sucks everywhere. There you go. That's kind of what it's like. So the booth, for some reason, whatever's happening in-- Because the lights-- In the larger-- They have so many lights that produce heat in the-- in your guys' booths, that they have to crank the AC. Yeah. Otherwise, you'll just sweat. Yeah. What's the excuse in there, though? I wonder-- is it just because there's a vent? I don't know. I think there's a vent. There's two vents. I think there's two vents in this over. It's too much circulation. There are too much coming in there. Too much cold air coming in there. You need to just seal off one of those vents. I feel like a goon when I walk out of my house at 8 o'clock in the morning on a summer day. And I've got jeans and a sweatshirt. You're like-- You're back-- You're like, man, did I bring my hoodie? I'm going to need that. I have a dirty mo hoodie in my truck, specifically, to record on Tuesday morning. I got you. Maybe that's what we're doing. We're just freezing you out, so you wear the brand. Yeah. It's working. It's working. This next one comes from Jeremy the bottle rocket. He said, you get to take one vehicle, any vehicle, or race car in history up the Goodwood Hill climb. What car are you slinging up the hill? That's very specific. Yeah. I guess I'd take the Nova. I don't know. You know, I don't-- Interrep? That is the one I'm probably most proud of in terms of old cars that I own or have collected. So I'd probably take the Nova up there. I think it's been up the hill once already. And it's previous life when it was before we restored it. Because it had all the stickers and decals all over it from Goodwood. Oh, wow. Yeah. this last one here comes from Jared. He said, "Do you have any tracks that are still on your bucket list that you just somehow haven't been able to make it to?" "Northwest, bro." You mean you're like to drive on? "Sure, or visit as a spectator?" "Well, I want to go to Knoxville. Have it never been to a race there?" "You got to go for nationals." "Sure. So I want to go to Knoxville and want to go to Chilli Bowl. So there's a couple there. I want to go to all the things that are going to happen at North Wales, Berlin, the future. So that's a pretty decent list." "And we actually do have one more. And this one comes from Slide Job. He says, "Has Dale Jr. ever been to a swigo and would he ever be interested in taking some laps and is super modified?" "Yeah, I went up there for an autograph session one time, I think. I feel like I've been to that race track, but I would not want to raise a modified around there. They fly. Mike, have you ever seen this place? It's flat, super fast, boilerplate walls all the way around. I got the book of the history of the classic and just some incredible stories in there. It's how I learned about Bentley Warren and Noah Swift and all those guys. And they just read that book, man. They jumped off the pages, became heroes of mine and a pretty incredible historic race track. I've tried to get them to let I racing come scan, but they are not sure what that means. They don't know what I racing is, I guess. So we got to get off swigo to jump on. I'm going to say, "I've only been there when it's a dirt." "Oh yeah." "Because I go for super dirt week, and I'm going for good old eight days at a swigo this year, but I've never been when it's pavement, so that would be cool." "Wow." "They put dirt all in every year." "Yeah, in October for eight days." "Inciting." "Eight days are recent at a swigo dirt." "The footage of our rundle episode of Law Speedways has Bentley Warren and other drivers racing around Oswigo, and it is absolutely stupid." "They're crazy." "Oh god." "Those super modified guys just in general have a different level perspective mind because it is like drag cars that turn left. Like it is wild." "It's truly run what you run to the extreme, and I don't know of any other series like that in the world where basically you can just build whatever you want and put as much down force on it as you want, big smothered you want, and good luck." "There's really been a resurgence too of super modified stuff recently. The star classic was really good this last year, but that's it. That's all we have for Ask Junior this week. All right, y'all, appreciate it. Great questions, man. Y'all got me wanting to go to some race tracks. And yeah, so let's take a road trip. Thank you, Exfinity, for everything you do for us here at Dail Junior Download, and also for everything you do at NASCAR. There are Exfinity X5. It's more than fast, man. It's reliable, secure. Everybody gets to do all the things they love on all of their devices with Exfinity X5. "That's right. Thanks everybody for asking your questions. Remember to keep them coming at @ExfinityRacing on Twitter. Thank you, Exfinity. They continue to give us the Wi-Fi coverage at all of our devices need." Exfinity, proud from your partner of NASCAR. All right, man. That was pretty good. Great hearing all those stories about innovation and outright cheating. Some of those just outright cheating, Michael. Let's be honest. But there's some innovation creativity. Every race car that is on a race track today has some innovation and creativity built into it. There you go. It might not be illegal, but they are absolutely java-through some hoops in that rulebook. Well, if you don't have innovation, then what do you need engineers for? In that what their job is to basically come up with some ingenuity and put it in a race car to give yourself an advantage, that's what we have. I can tell you, if you build a Bones.car by reading the rulebook, you will run last. Yes, I have done that. We built a street.car. We never went to the race track. All right, this is how stupid we were. We're going to build a street.car and race it at Concord. And we never went to the race track to look at the races and the cars that were running there. We literally bought it, got a rulebook and built the car by the rulebook. And when we showed up, we were thinking, what in the hill and we got our butts kicked. That's when you realize that having that conscience and being able to look at yourself in the mirror really ain't all it's cracked up to be. You'd rather actually run better. We went to work. Yeah, good stuff. Well, thanks everybody. And yeah, good show. All right, have a good week. We'll see. Here's another question to think about. What is Fair Play? What do you think? Well, Fair Play. Check out dirtymomedia. Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.