Denny Hamlin: "You Have to Let Drivers Self-Police"

it's it's a self-policing sport if you let the driver self-police you'll have less of it you'll have less of you know these guys doing this that's why like you can't promote the brad and the carson thing and then you know in any way penalize brad if he ends up wrecking him like you gotta just take it on the chin and carson is appears he's willing to to to just go ahead and take it and so but also as he should the following is a production of dirty mo media i believe that i've been a competitive for 20 years opinions from tonight's podcast strictly biased you're gonna hear from my point of view i'm a fighter no you are not this spoils a victory for jared allen he's got better luck and drink don't win i know you do two trophies missing from your collection a championship and the most popular driver someone told me that their drinking game is when i say for sure yeah and i've already said hey guys welcome to actions detrimental after gateway race number two of the chase uh we um had quite the race on sunday lots of uh caution flags lots was that a record no 22 i believe is the record wow and that was when i believe that was levigation charlotte uh 2005 i was actually in that race levigation charlotte what's levigation charlotte mean they ground the track they called it levigating so essentially they were trying to smooth the racetrack uh-huh and they so by doing that they imagine like a claw they just clawed the track and it chewed up the tires and there was a caution like lots and lots 2005 though yeah i think i finished eighth that race well i was in fifth grade wow probably maybe fourth man i was a junior in high school wow i'm old apparently um count larson breaks his winless streak 51 51 races um i don't know that it was a huge surprise um i thought he's been one of the better cars there for the last two three years he's been really good um but uh big win for them obviously close the gap move up to second and points um yeah you would think too that there was a time uh where he pitted i don't know which caution there was a million of them but never really got a bunch of long runs i think maybe that 18 lap run it was right after you guys battled for the lead on that restart the caution following that well he stayed out he pitted right i pitted he stayed out along with before that before what before there there was that there was that sequence where you guys battled for the lead yep he pit before that no or after that after that well after that yeah yeah that's when i went back to seventh or so um then there was a okay shoot we're inside the fuel window i guess we got to come pit and the five and there was another car i don't know who it was i just sent you bozey has a graphic with larson's pit strategy and so they stayed out and then finally i think they just they pitted they they bit the bullet because they weren't going to make it on fuel which come to find out they probably would have made it on fuel with all the cautions and then they um so i saw him one other that was up front and then some cars in the back pit so he had to come back from quite a ways but um i think there was only that 18 lap run that he had to make up for it bulk of the positions which i think he did yeah yeah good day for for larson it eats a huge chunk out of the the chase standings i think that's his yeah big points day uh 73 points i think that's same as what c bell had last week correct yeah larson entered uh sunday 49 back i mean frankly that's just going to be the result of winning a race right because you're going to take out you get 55 no matter what yeah and then the rest of stage points but he was up front both stages as well and i feel like that's kind of going to be the trend is like whoever wins is not going to be someone that finishes 12th and one stage and eighth and the i feel like the winner is going to be up at the front the entire race yeah yeah and i think this chase is going to come down to just winning races if you win three races four races oh i mean come on jared you went through four races yes you're going to win right well something well bell and larson already have one like if they win two more is that is that it you're saying well it depends on who else wins the other ones yeah yeah um so um yeah i don't even know where y'all want to start on this thing i mean it was a why so many cautions i think that track really lends itself to mistakes because anywhere you have a high straightaway speed with a low corner speed that creates breaking opportunities an opportunity to break hard into the corner so we see it at let's say coda first turn of coda you got a long straightaway and then you got a tight corner well the front group has to slow down the back group is still not quite got their breaking zone they jam it in there three four wide and that's when we get the wreck in the turn one at coda that we always get right it's the same thing here martin's martinsville is not like this because of a couple of reasons one the straightaways aren't conducive to three wide so and you don't have long straightaways to build up speed to then slow down so it's it's that combination it's that ratio of corner speed to straightaway speed that i believe allows guys to jam it in on whoever's kind of in front of them but you can run high here in the corner and you don't want to jam it in the corner and you don't want to jam it in the corner you want to jam it in the corner you don't want to jam it in the corner you don't want to jam it in the corner well the top guy's not willingly going to run the fourth lane up and a lot of times what happens is um if you have a car dive late on the inside of turn one like like when i did with barry and larson it forces them to make a late move so that you know it's probably a late move like on my part but it's like man it's any opportunity to get a clean air and and i you know one thing i was making sure of was i was making sure of the bottom lane and i was making sure of the bottom lane hold your line no matter what you can't make the move and slide up the racetrack you and what i saw a lot of is that guys did actually a pretty decent job of holding their line for the first three quarters of the corner it's the exit the exit at that track i'm telling if you look at it from an aerial view it's the same width as the straightaways but it's just that bottom line is on a little bit flatter racetrack and the angle is really bad so it it it doesn't force you you have to let off if you're inside three wide on the bottom but they don't because they're trying to get the good run off it pushes them into the second second and the third and then that's where the re a lot of the wrecks i saw happen was from the exit of turn two everyone coming together and not being able to hold the line yeah do we have a tally travis on how many of these cautions were caused by breaks versus how many were just aggressive driving i don't there were five rotors five rotors yep before we get to the rotors is it just me or does it seem like people drivers are more aggressive now than last year in the old format well i just think you couldn't you couldn't you really couldn't pass very much after it gets strung out here exactly yep yeah that's it is it's a characteristic of the racetrack where you know once it gets two three laps it's man you were you're almost stuck you're almost stuck kind of where you're at which is why the restarts were just so important everyone knew that and so they try to get as much as they can in those first two corners there's also an opportunity to gain quite a few spots on restarts here if you had a good restart you'd gain four to five positions yeah you could you could and then there's another restart five laps later so you could really well i i think that that that was really what larson did well after the 18 lap run that he gained most of the spots i think the rest of them were just two three corners at a time you know what i mean so and next thing you know you're you've got yourself up there there's a few of us then that pitted after and so um yeah he was he was really good on restarts which allowed him to continue to chip away at what that setback of pitting was have you seen all the The cautions are what have caused the majority of them. No way. that's just i mean i i i lots of them were right in front of me so i mean i saw lots of them is there any that stood out to you is any that you want to pick out and and highlight individually let's ty gibbs eric jones i think is one that is worth talking about yeah that one uh it seemed like ty got to the inside of the 43 of eric inside turns three and four but he was bare like he was barely inside and then the 43 like didn't give him a lot of room but the 54 also like said i'm here and you know if you look off of turn four the 54 ran pretty hard over the rumble strip so he was really really low really low but i didn't think that was a i didn't think eric jones did anything wrong by any means he he's got cars the other way around he's got cars that are not going to be able to do anything wrong outside of him um it was a situation where i think ty came in there you know to try to just get get position on them all you're trying to do is get your nose in there in the middle of turns three and four and then now you've got side you got the side draft you got all kinds of things that can help you finish that pass into turn one so he jammed it in there and then didn't want to get out and the 43 didn't want him to get in there because he's got someone on the outside and so he saw all the way through three and four they're i mean they're just fender to quarter panel um the 54 gets on the rumble strips off of turn four and then the uh so he gets a really bad runoff so at that point the 43 is still beside um it's irrelevant who he's beside but he's beside somebody and um the 54 just went in there really deep and ran right in the back of the 40 i don't know how else to put it but it um perhaps he thought eric was going to run up the racetrack uh because again that the very bottom line was not great through one and two um maybe he's thinking that they run lanes two and three but regardless that the 43 ended up getting spun there off the nose of the 54 so usually when you have a car accident it's the guy's behind responsibility i mean the broadcast was called it but right before it happened like he's gonna he's gonna move him here and boom just sent him off yeah it's it was barry that was going around um was on the outside it was going around uh jones barry was he was quite aggressive i don't know what's gotten into him lately but he's um a new deal yeah maybe we can make that official this week right yeah jared here's your news jared there you go there you go i i noticed it on races that like he's got a top five to top 10 car he's the aggression level is far more um but yeah it just i don't know that there was never really a hole for the for the 54 to get into i thought that it was just uh yeah that was a misjudgment or a just went in there way too aggressively and got the 43 speaking of barry what what happened on that restart with you him larson i i need to i need to see it but the five was door slamming me and i'm like i the 12 the 21 shoved me up the racetrack is that not true i believe so i mean the 21 got inside both of you he he did but i i there was plenty of room between me and the five like i don't know why the five was upset at me i don't know why the five was upset at me when were you getting door slammed in all the way down the straightaway and then after that he was side drafting i mean grinding down the side of my car um later in the race and i'm like what what are you doing just get off my car yeah i mean i feel like that was i need to see it so i i i don't know i'm saying it before i see it which is not right so yeah there's not any videos but i'm trying to find i i'll pull i tried to and i couldn't either so all i know is i got a text from somebody else during the race not in the bros chat dick moved by the 21 after i he probably was upset that i went three wide for the lead yeah about the restart but i held my line and again he made a late he he had to then make a late move i don't know if he got into the five or not evidently not because the five came off the corner with the lead but i was beside him then the 21 jams it in on me in a turn three which is all fair and so i'm up the racetrack maybe the five thought that hey you're clear to the bottom aren't why are you running up here like i gave you plenty of room on the bottom but the 21 was inside of me um and then the 21 after going into turn three then on the exit just i mean just came right up into us and puts me right into the five and the five just hangs left what lap like it's gonna cut both of our tires i don't it's just i don't understand that approximately what lap would that have been i no idea eighth caution from the end something like that uh i don't know it would have been um it would have been after around 5 40 if that helps you i found it i found it but i'm getting an insane amount of advertisements for roy cooper so on youtube oh yeah those two guys are i'll send those advertisements man um uh so i mean that's that's my side of that without seeing it of course i felt as though i just sent it to you both okay yeah i go three wide 21 gets into the five 21 is probably mad at that mad at you or mad that mad that i went there three wide but does that really affect his his line here going he gets way up there doesn't he well i mean now that i look at it i i got close to the five on exit before the 21 got to me let me just look one more time i'm up 21's there i get tight i and and the five didn't get in the side of me on the straightaway as bad as i thought either so i i think i think overall it's just one of those things i mean i ended i definitely got the end of it um barry the next highlight is barry getting to the side of the six i mean between barry and svg they were probably the two most aggressive drivers riley had a bad day riley had a real bad day every time i looked up it was a caution it was a 35 something going on with the 35 um but i didn't see what all happened there so where it is um so yeah i i mean after looking at it it my my summary is that i probably had a decent hand and in all the in all the contact off of turn four um so yeah i i don't i don't necessarily um thinking either one of those other two guys were much at fault there so you just get tight here yeah so once that once the 21 gets to my left rear he's now dumping air on my spoiler and i'm getting tight the five's out there now again we i don't i didn't think that like i was egregious getting into the five uh but but definitely made contact and so um it definitely looks different than i thought it played out in the car but you had mentioned to to lambert afterwards that you needed to protect yes we yes when we were side by side with the five you got to cover the bottom there you can't let the 21 get to the inside now you're in the middle like we just we didn't do a good job of covering the bottom there that was important yeah because i mean this restart really affects your day potentially right if you hang on to first or second here then who knows how the rest of the afternoon shapes out our speed was okay after five laps yeah but it was just restart restart restart restart restart if you're bad on restarts and you're gonna have these um runs that are two one five one three nine three four four four like yeah you're gonna have a tough day gonna have a tough day it's not just frustrating as a driver forget like where you're at just like you're not really racing like it's just like 100 yeah we're all just who can be the biggest clown in turn one you know what i mean that's and that's just but the thing is like when i watch these wrecks like not a lot of them were like straight up all this guy just I'm gonna wreck this one. Most of the wrecks I'm telling you that I saw at the end of the race were cars coming together, coming in together on the exit of the corner. And that's just a that's a merge problem. It wasn't like, you know, the ones there was a couple with bubble where he was. I mean, he dove it in there low on the 19, maybe others. They're bouncing off of each other. There's just there's just not the tracks, not super wide off the corner. And so someone has to give in that scenario. So it's just and when they don't. And that's what happened with all these wrecks. No one gave. It's you're going to have cars. They ricochet off each other. Got one's monster truck and others because they want to get through the wreck as quick as possible. That's just the way it is. And when you can't make up much ground in the long run, you got it. Yeah. But if this race is if you look last year, had tons of cautions. I'm telling you, this is a race. This track thing where high speed double downshift into the corner. That gives an opportunity for someone in the back to say, well, I don't want to slow down yet for the corner. Let me let me go down here and or go through the middle. That's what they were doing late. So I just I didn't see much egregious stuff happening. It just was wrecks, you know, tight. No one wants to give wrecks. Well, fortunately for you, you avoided all of these. Very fortunate. Your onboard camera was pretty fascinating because a lot of them were right there. Yeah. What do you make of your day? All in all, ninth place finish. I mean, I didn't like our day. Obviously, I just thought that it was super frustrating because I felt like we were actually a good car. And really, the only time we were up front, we were at actually a tire disadvantage. Do you know what I mean? So it was like I felt like my speed was still top five capable, even though I was on older lefts than like the 22 and the five. I mean, those were those were they were better than I was. But it's if you can't go on the restart, I just you know, I was just holding up traffic, you know. And so that part is really, really frustrating because because there's a. Driver, what you have to do and and I was fighting a tight condition is that, well, I can't run behind the car in front of me. All right. So now I have to go get clean air. Well, now I've got to go a longer distance around the racetrack. And then here comes all the cars that are running. Well, just roll around on the bottom on you. And so it just puts you in a really, really tough spot. And and again, if the race just goes green at some point, we're OK. But. Yeah, it's just not. Not very good. You know, I thought that actually our overnight adjustments were good. It was good for the racing part of it, but not the restarts part of it. Right. So you your car was set up. To race to go many, many, many laps. When you see the way the race is trending like this with caution, caution, caution, caution, caution. Is there a point in time where you're like, we just need to shift the way this car drives? Yeah, I tried to relay that to the team. I tried to relay that to the team really before our last pit stop. I think I was on the radio quite a bit talking about this. This is killing me. Like, we got to we got to make a decent change. And I don't know what they did, but it didn't didn't change anything. Certainly did not change anything for for the last part for my last set of tires. Yeah. Brake failures. What do you would cause this? Heat, man. We talked about before the race that, you know, the braking energy that the brakes were going to take at this track was going to be anywhere from 20 to 35 percent more energy, which energy is that that's those pads clamping down on the rotors. Right. The rotors are now going a faster rate of speed. When you try to slow those things down, that's a certain amount of energy. But we all knew that the lower downforce package, the higher horsepower was going to test the brakes. And so you certainly could not come back to this racetrack with the same cooling package that you did last year. They were going to run entirely too hot. And we saw it during practice that temperatures were up, which is to be expected. But but really, it what I think hurt was the cautions. I believe if the races. Just stay green. I don't know that you have as many. I mean, you probably do, because some of those brake rotor failures happen during. I think Zane's was an extended green flag period. But when the reason that cautions or red flags are bad for the brakes, when it comes to heat, you would think, oh, it's going to cool down. It actually soaks. It gets hotter. You have no airflow. You have no airflow coming in. So, I mean, I could just feel when we were sitting there, stopped down the back straightaway. I mean, I could just feel the whole interior of the car just getting way hotter, way hotter than what it was when we were actually under underway. So I think that's some of it. And then the other is just not enough cooling. That is that is the general problem. If every you know, if if NASCAR says that no one can no one can run tape. You probably don't have as much of an issue, but everyone's trying to get the best performance out of the race car and putting tape on your front nose gives it more downforce hurts the cooling of the brakes. So there's been talk on social media after the race that does NASCAR need to do something about the brake issues because of safety. Yeah, I don't think so. I think it's it's, you know, everyone's trying to get all the performance they can out of their car. They put they put tape on the front. You know, because there's a fine line between brake fade. Brake fade is where your pedal goes super long. You hear your driver talking about, man, I got a lot of fade. That means they're hot. The other is brake shake. Brake shake is you press the pedal. It's pretty hard. Sometimes it gets spongy, but then it is pulsating. That's typically because the brakes are too cold. So we try to find the strike the balance of the too cold, too hot. You want to be right in the middle. But the. Conditions are always different. The traffic that you're in is different. When you're 20th in line, your brakes are going to run hotter than the guy out there leading the race. So I think it's more of a team decisions that lead to the brake failures. And and all that is decided by how much tape you put on the. Well, there is a certain amount of openings that are built into the design of the car. Right. Let me use this. This is this is not the Toyota. We have our brakes right here. Yeah. So you see that grill right there? It's it's the nose is designed to where it's all the way open. Like they had the teams have the option to have it all the way open, but they never keep it all the way open. They tape it down to create more heat. So the brakes won't shake really, really bad. So and you usually see it right right underneath the headlights of each car. Correct me if I'm wrong. You'll see sometimes someone come out there and slap a piece of tape. No, you're not allowed to do that. OK. Used to. On the brakes. I don't I don't believe you're ever allowed to put tape on the nose of a next gen car anymore. OK. They used to try. They used to. So you're just trying to find the balance. So each car is opening for the brakes. Is is different. You're saying a little bit. It's a team decision. How you design the airflow from the nose is more of an OEM decision of like, all right, here's how we want our cars to look. Hey, teams, how much braking? How much opening do you want? Chevy's to build in to the nose. And then the teams then cut it down from there. Yeah. Interesting. I didn't know that. Speaking of the heat, you don't wear a cool suit. And you rarely, I think, complain about the heat. But yesterday you're asking for an ice pack. Your voice is still kind of rough. Like, how are you just feeling? I'm I'm actually still eight pounds down right now from what I was yesterday. This time yesterday. And think about all the waters I've taken in. Yeah. So do you mean I get my guess? Rough guess is I probably lost. 15, 13. So you weigh yourself beforehand? How does that? Yeah. I mean, I just have a general knowledge of where I'm at. I mean, I have a scale that same scale. Yeah. And this morning it read 8.1 low. So if I'm 8.1 low now, I mean, my guess is I'm more than likely lost well, well over 15 to 16 pounds of sweat. So how? - Yeah, and I base that off of, when espn did the sports science thing you know i lost 13 pounds of sweat during the coke 600 that year um but my weight was not nearly as low as what it is today so i just think that i and i i told you on the plane right like i couldn't move without whatever part of my body i moved cramped instantly that's how i fell out of richmond calf foot if i moved my arm up my my shoulder would cramp like i must have just been severely dehydrated i didn't feel bad in the car i truthfully did not feel bad at all even when i got out i was i mean i'm wet but i'm not and that's one thing too is that humidity humidity is the one thing that gets me more than temperature it's not the temp it's humidity because the humidity makes me sweat far more than what i'm accustomed to sweating because you'll see me after some races right i'm perfectly dry no sweat not yesterday not yesterday i like bumped into you accidentally and was like oh gross do i need to come by jgr and so i i i you know goal by the end of the day is get this thing down to like down four pounds down five yeah so like how does that how does that affect your your next day i mean i could see it in my face or look like i had holes in my cheeks my mom was concerned about you she sent a text about really how you sounded and she's like he looks really skinny in the face too yeah i was like a skeletor i didn't i admit i didn't look well for sure don't let it still i mean like i was like kind of sick to my stomach as well just like and my guess is that was just the loading of the electrolytes on a empty stomach and just i mean i emptied my camelback system on the car they had to give me another water bottle you know for more water so i i asked for the ice pack because we were under caution for so much i'm like if we're gonna sit here i'm at least try to cool my core a little bit do i need to come teach them how to put an ice bag together no that i i should have just it was so big i couldn't fit it you know i'm trying to stuff it inside of my suit but that thing would have i don't know if i would have fit it between my stomach and my my suit so they got it right the second time for sure um you called for changes to pit road after the race what was that about you know i just think that when there's an opportunity to to make it safer for the competitors not just the drivers but the competitors as in the pit crew members we should do that and i was looking at the infrastructure of the track when i was walking down pit lane there's i don't believe that there's any legit reason that that the pit wall itself that concrete wall can't move in 10 feet 12 feet it is so dangerous i'm telling you these these pit crew members that have their legs out changing tires as cars are trying to merge into each other leaving the pit stalls i i'd rather them just do something before someone gets hurt versus after would and this is one where i think we should have a standards of pit lane like surely other series have minimum standards of wits and links and things like that and i just feel as though you can't let money get in the way of safety so i have a screenshot here so yeah so if you're too wide right and someone's changing their tires there's just not a lot of room and it looks far wider on that than it does i mean this doesn't look very wide this is why i'm pointing it out i mean well i know look at the guys that are running out yeah look at look at logano's crew yeah so if chase elliott is if you see him he's on the yeah if he keeps driving he's gonna be right i mean right on him so you want to take this inside wall and go back with it to create a wider yeah now hold on let me look is that light post or something i mean i would rather them if it's easier for them to move the outside wall closer to the track i'd be in favor of that as well but we need we need another 10 feet because we saw the o'reilly race and how scary that was holy smokes i'm telling you that it's not it is a close call every time we come to pit on pit lane at gateway now indy is the other comp of like it's it's very comparable to indy as far as width is concerned indy's a scary pit road too we saw i think bubba got turned by somebody on pit lane running into crew members like there's got to be there i feel like there just should be some sort of standards of like you should easily be able to run too wide and not roll over someone's ankles as you're merging out of your way is that a is that like a major change or that's like pretty easy to move a wall back i i can't answer that i mean i'm looking at now i'm like well they could easily move that pit wall in um the one where the pit crew jump off of but now i'm looking i'm like oh i think there's light poles there yeah so you might have to i mean the front stretch is plenty wide anyway so it would not be a good idea to move that wall back so i'm looking at now i'm like well they could not be much of a task i don't think to move the the front stretch wall out um do you want we do we want to touch on this xfinity race real quick or do you want to go to the chase standings yeah i mean um we can go chase standings talk about that um you're nine ahead thank you travis for that um um i don't think much changed inside the top eight right only three drivers lagano changed because he was do you have the old sheet i have it over here yeah he was remember we were saying last week it's the top seven he was eighth yep it was the top seven because then there was a gap to eighth right uh no him and elliot were both 72 back and then bub was 81 back but lagano now put himself now in the 50s right so i i would argue now that yeah that the top eight feels i think the top eight still feels pretty good about oh i see what you're saying yes larson was ahead of lagano at 49 back that's what you're asking right there was a jump there yeah yep so i think that this was a good race for lagano in the sense of that he put himself back in the in the picture of this conversation and and so he was one of three drivers that made up ground on you and that was it was him larson and then host of our made up one point gotcha um yeah i mean what they do they do we just we just have to get better you know what i mean uh we we gotta have mistake free races uh i gotta do a better job on the restarts um just gotta execute a day you know we're it's just been tough going back where we've been for a long time and i think that's what we've gone back at that time of the race and not having you know enough enough time to really claw it back and um so it's you know i i feel very fortunate i said that i felt blessed to still have the lead i i believe that um but i feel like our notebook is very solid from here on out it's all tracks that um we ran mostly in the spring uh got that information take it learn from it should be should be better if you had 10 races if you had to like rank them on like you know confidence where would you have put these first two races at and that not not super high because darlington i told you we we've struggled the last couple years at darlington i think we answered we we were better we were definitely better at darlington than what we'd been over the last two years um and then here obviously not as good as last year but we also kept our track position last year you know when you keep your track position and the races seem a lot a lot easier and with all those cautions i mean i think the cautions is really what kind of screwed legano and not winning this race right is that eventually got caught by the guy that took tires four cautions ago yeah so so it sounds like you're not you're not all that concerned with the car that's being brought to the racetrack every weekend it's just an execution thing like where well i think execution is far what's hindering us the most on not having better days um i i really truly believe that we would have contended for the win at darlington um but obviously that we were not we were not a contending car here however after five laps we were actually pretty good i know it probably didn't look like it we probably looked like an absolute non-factor trust me that's how it felt in the car so but but if you if you look at the lap times we're actually we were okay it's not like we were you know horrible we just things just it was execution it was restarts those two things we fix those two things we'll be okay so we're not panicking because one fan in this room no you know how lucky we are to be in this position right but that's not necessarily a good thing right yeah it is if you have if you use if you have your He races early and you're still leading and you haven't even hit your stride yet. Basically, I had two mulligans. Yeah, I think you feel good about that. I feel good about that. Okay. There's a reason I was celebrating so much. It wasn't because we were able to avoid some massive. Trapped. What? It's a little much. If you want to think it in your head, that's fine. That's aggressive, dude. That's aggressive. Listen. I hear you, but I mean, listen, if people followed you and saw all of your Ohio State play-by-play tweets, they would understand. Like, they would understand. But that one. So not capitalized, maybe? What do you mean? Maybe just like delete one of the words and uncapitalize. Yeah. Yeah. And then maybe delete the second word and then just the whole tweet. We don't. We don't want to. We don't. Yeah. We don't want to be those guys. And I agree. And I agreed with Charlie as well. Like, let's let's stop rooting against other people and just root for us. That's what we should do is focus on us running better. Well, I do, but not everyone else's fault that we are not at our peak right in the moment. But if you can't have. I know. I know that it's the same, right? The point. The plus minus. Yeah. Is the same regardless. Yeah. But just just give a just give a yourself a fist pump or something. I mean, that's that's truly what it's going to come down to in this chase. So is it, you know, going forward doesn't need to be said, but winning races is very important. Yeah. You know, we've had a 35 point day, a 33 point day. We've had a wreck and horrible. Horrible execution and horrible restarts and still 33 and 35. I think I think we we take this and say onward. Yes. Someone pointed out on Twitter, I take credit to 11 team because these last two weeks should have been a DNF and a 25th place finish. But instead, without question, but instead, it's a make something out of it. Yeah. You want to go through the rest of these chase standings? Just talk about each drive. Yeah. OK. Larson, obviously, big jump there. Man, they got to be feeling really good because even even though the mile and a half and I'm going to try to be short, I'll just get the top eight because I just feel like that's there's a little gap there. Back to host for a night. Larson, I think they're they're feeling themselves right now. They're probably ultra confident as they should be. They're running well. Darlington, they were contenders. Darlington, I bet they're feeling good. Bell, I think he feels pretty good. They mentioned him looking at the standings after the race was like, oh, it's not as bad as I thought. Oddly enough, that's been my reaction the last two weeks. Stage points. Yeah. Yeah. So he's running up front one last week. I think Bell's feeling pretty good as well. Blaney, I thought it was interesting. Darlington, I thought. I thought, man, at the beginning of the race, he was super strong when the track is super slick, super sunny. Blaney is a ball of fire. It seems like when the track cools off, they weren't quite as good at Darlington and then obviously had a mechanical here, but they were they were strong. The 12 car was a top three car. No questions about it. How do they feel? Thirty three out. Missed opportunities, but could be worse is what I think. Reddick, man, I'm not really sure. You could probably replay this from race 15 of the year and you're like, I'm not really sure. As you said, when's the last time that he just erased that you're like, they haven't been like up up front a lot. And then I see him on restarts. He's really making moves to to try to get there. I just have a I don't know what Tyler Reddick on and what's what what's going on there. Just not clean races is the and I don't know if it's execution or what you know what exactly it is, but just they have not had a clean race and what it feels like has been three months. Ty Gibbs. Not so good. I mean, they got to feel good leaving Darlington. They were not the strongest Toyota Darlington, but yet finished second. Like they just kind of plugged away, got on the right strategy there at the end. I feel like. So they probably left Darlington like that. This is a good day. We didn't have the best car, but we came away with a P2. That's pretty strong. And then you come here. He probably wasn't that good. And they had a mistake. What was the mistake? They didn't pit. They I think they got code words messed up or something. And he stayed out when they want him to come in, I believe. Yeah. Drop 10, 15. And then had, you know, a couple of incidences and one where I saw him down the turn to the infield. But it was, you know, he's he's he's fine on speed. But it's just the wreck got him in minus 51. I don't know what he was. What was he last week? Uh, 39. I think he's feeling OK with that, then. I said this before. We're going to say the same thing about everyone. I think everyone in the top eight feels OK about their chances. Lugano, double edged sword. He's closed the gap to the lead. It's we're going to maybe not his best tracks, but there's still some strong, really strong ones at the end. So I think he's thinking if we can just keep the the wheels on the on the bus here. I think he feels better. If you would ask him two months ago, he his honest heart to heart. There's no way he's thinking he's got a shot. He was out of the playoff conversation. So I think he's feeling pretty good. Very much in it. Yeah, he's in it. He's in the top eight that that has that big cutoff. Briscoe. I don't think yesterday was that great for him. Right. I mean, well, he got he got taken out in the Chase Elliott. But even before that, he wasn't super strong. Probably doesn't love the fact that he's almost 60 down. Had a wreck. Not of his doing. I think if you're chased, you're probably feeling pretty down. Like, man, we're better than what our points position is. Which I would agree. But again, sometimes you get caught up and you're the unlucky guy, you know. So and he looked like he was going to make something of his day where it looked like his car wasn't all that great. Yeah. All right, Trav, before we move on to the Xfinity race, do you want to do the honors? It's an O'Reilly race. O'Reilly race. O'Reilly race. Do you want to do the honors? Oh, yeah. How'd your conversation go with Carson? It was fine. Did you guys say anything? Did you say hi? That's it? No, I didn't say hi. But I don't know. We just had a conversation. I think he listened. And yeah, I got nothing bad to say, nothing negative to say. I just wanted to put a few things out there. And, you know, I think we've raced pretty well together. You know, around each other all year. And my goal was to try to keep it that way. By the way, Brad Kozlowski was having a great day yesterday. Great day. Yeah, great day. I didn't see how he lost the lead, but yeah, they made something of their day. And again, a lot of it is the track position, man. If you could just keep it. I mean, I don't know. But if you put Brad in 20th yesterday. You think he charged to the front? No. Probably not. Right? It's just they executed a really, really good day until the very, very end. He was on the oldest tires, got shuffled a few times on the restart, and finished 12th. A lot of cautions, a lot of opportunities to lose track position. Yep. Or gain it if you were good. Yep. Xfinity race. Jesse Love is your winner. O'Reilly's race. O'Reilly race. Just bleep that. Great performance by Jesse. First. win since Phoenix of last year mm-hmm Looked like this one meant a lot to him and just a great performance. He was strong all day. Looked like, you know, the windless drought for him, he was feeling it. And so that was a great, great job by Danny, giving him a fast car and Jesse driving the wheels off of it. Just did a great job. Executed really well in the restarts and had the speed really when it mattered. And your points leader right now is Sheldon Creed. You know, I meant to say something about Sheldon because I think that, I mean, he's started the first two races off the strongest. You know, he's been contending. It seems like his performance has stepped up slightly or the team's performance has stepped up slightly from where they were in the regular season. They were always kind of a fringe top five running car throughout the race to now he's top three. Three, right? And so that's how you're going to get the point lead, especially after a reset. William Sawalich and Corey Day. NASCAR needs to let this one go. And my opinion on this is pretty strong that this has been a self-policing garage for a long time. You have to let drivers police. And when you look at penalties, penalties and things like that, you can't look at the result. You have to look at the action. He doored him down the straightaway. He very easily could have just doored him and moved on. He would end up had a tire rub and the 17 would have had nothing. But I just don't understand. And all the clips that you're going to see on social media is once they get to turn two, you'll see the 17, the 18 banging doors. What is the 17? The 17 thinking, knowing the guy is mad at you. You run into him into turn one. You then run into him in the middle of turns one and two. And then you can't get off of him off of turn two because the 17's right on your bumper. He addressed in his interview. Oh, the 17 had me or the seven had me all jacked up. What about the first two times you hit him? Like I text Kyle and was like, just no. No awareness whatsoever. And it says nothing to do with you. I've never spoken 10 words to William Swalge. Like I got no bias. I do not care. But that is. That is the 17 is lacking awareness in a big way of like what his role is in all this. And if you look at all the highlights from who's wrecking who earlier in the year, it's all the 17 and in a drivers can only take so much. They need to send a message back. And just because he knows, he knows it in on the lower wall down the backstretch. Well, at what, what are you doing? That's just to me, total lack of awareness on Corey day's part. Understanding you got to give the guy that's pissed at you some more room, not less like he got himself wrecked for being an idiot. Yeah. And I mean, I would consider that this is now done. Like there's Corey day is not going to retaliate again. Next week. He's already, he dropped three spots in that. If that, the, the front stretch doesn't register in the middle of the corner. Don't register. I wouldn't put it past them to not nothing register. Well, one of these two drivers in the chase and the other isn't. So one has a lot more to lose than the other. Yeah. And I heard someone talking about, well, the penalties for non, I think it was Jordan and Jeff talking about oil. NASCAR really frowns upon non chasers, wrecking chasers. Oh, who gives a shit about that? Like it's, it's, it's a self-policing sport. If you let the driver self-police, you'll have less of it. You'll have less of, you know, these guys doing this. It's why like you can't promote the Brad and the Carson thing. And then, you know, and any way penalize Brad, if he ends up wrecking them, like you got to just take it on the chin. And, and Carson is, it appears he's willing to, to, to just go ahead and take it. And so, but also as he should credit to Carson, he gave Brad room. It appeared when, but that, that's, that's the awareness that I don't understand what Corey day whatsoever is entertaining. Yeah. Um, we had a Bristol next week. Um, I'm looking forward to it. Uh, I feel like we were, uh, average there in the spring and I'm confident we can make the proper adjustments to make it good when we come back. So do you think, do you think this is a race that you could see someone dominating for 400 laps? Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know who they are? Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, throw Ty Gibbs in there. Cause his, his results have been really, really good. And the 11 car or I know I'm just saying, of course, of course I never think that I can't win. He needs to clarify sometimes. Yeah. So like, that's the best, the race at that racetrack. It's just, there was top three, four, five guys are all like really good at that track. And don't be surprised to see him one through five. Um, Trav, you got Bristol practice qualifying schedule there on you. Let me see if Pockers has put it out yet. Yeah. So we can let the viewers know where to watch. Yeah, sure. Uh, let's see here. Whoa. Does Bob not have it out yet? Some better check. Anyway, it's, we know it's going to be on USA race a Saturday night. Yep. Saturday night. Um, you want to do the review? Yeah. I got a review here from Vinicius. Hey, Zeus, three, four, one, three, Danny, tough luck last weekend. Hoping for a good finish this week. Best of luck. Love the attitude about the position on the chase standings. Stage points are crazily important. That is true. Yep. That and winning two very important things that you need. So appreciate that. Um, yeah, well, let's, uh, let's circle the wagons here and, uh, have ourselves a, have ourselves a day next Saturday night. First stage here at Bristol is 125 laps. Okay. How do you know that? Well, it's just 125, 125, 250, 500 laps. I was just, I just noticed that this last week at gateway, the first stage was 35 laps, which is pretty 45, 45, which feels like where you qualified is where you're finishing. It is. Is there more room to move up and down here? We're still in 125 laps. Uh, yeah, I think so. I think so. Qualifying is still important though. Yeah. You know, so we'll at least have a decent draw. Um, our draw was decent last week. It, it was not, I mean, we were pole at the time, but did you, let me tell you, that was the worst, that was the worst qualifying lap I've had in quite some time. Really? Yeah. You were mad getting out of the car. I mean, it was horrible, Jared, really bad, but still 10th. So like, what do you still have to do? Half a second off. What was the, what was the ceiling then? Uh, I thought I should have, or could have ran a teen, which puts us right around that, that, that, that puts you right in the top five. Um, but, uh, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll, uh, try to get everything going this weekend. Try to execute a good race. It's going to be lots of pit stops, 500 laps. Um, starts on qualifying. Got to get this thing right in practice. Um, lots of keys to it, but I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a heavy, heavy, heavyweight battle for the race win at that track. I think it's a good way to end it. All right. See you next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.