Dale Jr. Download - Restrictor plate rehash with Tony Stewart

A lot of people would say that in the early days, I guess, when he was driving, but a car where you and I were great writing partners, we worked together quite a bit, why does he think that, why do you think people said well, the statistics show in First, I want to say it's the easiest part, but you know, I was telling someone yesterday while we were at Daytona that I had Bobby Labonte as a teammate at the time and you know what we're seeing in the air in NASCAR now, where the manufacturer all. The teams under the umbrella of one manufacturer are starting to work together, so all the Ford teams are working together and then in fact yesterday we started to see a new era where there are such a small number of Chevy and Toyota teams who do not have the physical capacity.

The Ford team numbers got together so Hendrick and Gibbs got together yesterday and that just shows how sports evolve because it's no secret that Chevrolet absolutely hates Toyota, but here you have the Chevy and Toyota teams working together because they do. they know. This is the direction they need to go after what we saw at Talladega last year so it's just the evolution of the sport so yesterday I told someone about it and you know my teammate was Bobby Labonte and you know they tried to get it. work together, but the problem was that Bobby was the one I sort of looked at him funny when he said and I took it personally, but he said, you know our ideas are different about how to do this and he had an idea how to execute the research

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stuff and I had a different idea, well your idea of ​​how to do it and my idea was exactly in line and I mean literally it was a race that we got together and he knew it and And it worked a couple times, but we were always much more aggressive than everyone else with what we thought and where to go and when to go and why to go, but once he went and he knew that when he went, I was going to go. with him that in that pattern I mean that this is how we were in the whole race and it didn't matter what it didn't matter if we went if we went three wide it didn't matter if he went to the damn food stand that was there or whatever he order, I was behind him and that's how we ran that whole race and then every time we were together and it didn't matter what the order was, we knew that if we got together, we had someone who was going to go with us and we knew that when We did something, why we were doing it, we were on the same page and then we got in sync that way and that's something that Bobbie and I couldn't. you got hooked that way and you couldn't have the same mindset, but you know everyone is doing well, why would you do so well?

We're still racing for points and you still want to win, but there are so many variables that can keep you from winning a

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race and for me my mindset was I have a guy I know who races and races these types of races the way I like them. do it, so even if I follow him and push him into the wind, I still get Points for second place. I still get money for second place. I'm giving myself the best chance to be in the top two, even if it's not victory. I'm still getting the best result I can achieve and that's what I mean. what we did and I mean it got to the point where they tried everything they could to separate us, the guys intentionally tried to separate us, teammates, the actual teammates, I mean it was always fun because we had Jeff Gordon here and we asked .

He like you knew that you and L didn't really drive together much. Now I really didn't like them when it came to plate racing and it was a completely different philosophy. He understood her too. A philosophy. Just two different game plans. and none of you really strike me as the kind of people who want to be told what the rules of racing are before the race actually happens. I think you want to write them yourself, yes, and do it your way, and I don't. I think the teammate thing was always playing with any of you, right, yeah, he hated teammates on the court.

He just hated having the responsibility of finding one and there are people and Tony was one of them. I can't even count them on one hand. You go out on the track at a plate race and you see them do something, you say, that's exactly what I would have done and that's exactly what I want to do and that and everything he did, I say, yeah, I am. I was there with you in the train of thought and it seemed like it was so natural when we were in talat at Daytona it's like oh hell here we go because they won't be able to stop this and it worked really well for a while I really enjoyed it yeah that race 2004, when you won your first Daytona 500 drive, I just want to say it was a race between two people, I felt like yeah and I have a question about that, yeah, go ahead.

I always wanted to ask this question, so we immediately passed you by and you didn't select me. I don't even remember it. I would have to see it. I'll be honest. I would have to see. to remember, I've always wondered, so yeah, we were going back immediately and I sighed and I selected you and I had this impulse, but it was slow, you know? and it's a slow process, like going for you to try of course, and I was It's like waiting for you to see what's behind me Kurt was four or five cars behind us, yeah, someone otherwise, I was, no , you know, it was just you two, yeah, looking at me.

I mean, look, that's a good question, but I have to look at it. That is, if I run first or second or if, you know, in a race like that, I could never forget it like I would. It's interesting that I can't lose those memories or especially the ones I have. I'll lose basically, there are two Daytona 500s that absolutely stand out in my mind and I know I made a mistake or at least I felt like I made a mistake and this is a rookie mistake and I wasn't even a rookie and I don't remember what year it was. but I know I was leading the race, Jeff Gordon was second, that's when we still had the leading cars in the outside lane and we passed the cars on the inside, but right now there's no one left a lap behind, everyone's in the lead . turn around and I remember sticking my hand out the window and when I hit the gas I waved him off and he just sat there and waited for about a second and at that point I was about eight car lengths long and I was like, man, I just did the dumbest thing and you know, I already knew a hundred meters after the start/finish line what was going to happen and me and you have to sit there for about five to ten more seconds and wait for your fate to be sealed.

Here and I saw it, I was like man, I was very nervous because I was like I was in a place where I could win this race and I didn't even think about what I prepared for, which was an absolute disaster there and the other one was when Ryan Newman passed next to me when he and Kurt Busch were lined up together, his teammates with Penske, myself and Kyle Busch were lined up and I remember seeing them coming and I said, don't do it. leave your teammate don't leave your teammate don't leave your teammate don't leave your teammate and I thought if I got there at the speed they were running I thought if I tried to get there I was probably going to go It's going to ruin me anyway, but I sit there and think that when it doesn't work for you, I'd rather they try as little as possible and destroy me.

Nobody, I wasn't going to win it otherwise. I don't know and I wasn't going to win down here, at least I had tried up there, but those are two things I can't get out of my head, even today, any other race like that, anything else in racing or Any regrets like that bother you a little today, that depends on what day the events are and where we are. I mean, you know there are dirt races where I lost two races last year in the sprint car in the last corner on the last lap and this was on the same track and the guy who beat me was the same guy both times. nights and it was two different sets of circumstances and I, and the second time it happened, I'm like I'm Garden against this, this is what happened to me on the last lap and he just did something totally different, but they both went laps in the cars that got involved and broke our momentum, which is like I said in a wing speed car, it's a big deal at that air speed and momentum and you sit there and you go back there and your crew chief doesn't even tell you. look and it's like you feel like a failure when you do that when someone says we're all talents, what is that?

What does that mean for you? I think there are guys who have raw talent and I'll come back to that, then there's taught talent. I mean, you can sit there and you can watch videos, you can study, you can talk to people with raw talent, these are guys who don't have to think about what they do, they just go in and do it, they're not taught, it's just that. It's what they do, they go in and do it. We talked about some hosts last week on the show that I thought had raw talent, what is the host?

Which driver do you think has the most ability in the Cup Series right now? For me it's still Kyle Larson, yeah, I think Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell, and I'm not going to pick them because they're dirt track guys by no means, but you. Look at you, look what Kyle does in a car. He overdrives everything he does, but he can still make it work. I mean, there are times when he has that thing on his side and he puts it away and it's like there aren't many guys who can save it. and try so hard for so long and not make that mistake and he still makes a mistake from time to time, but I've watched him when he was open wheel cars before he got there and it's like playing video games and he just puts his phone down he gets on a car and goes and runs, he doesn't, he doesn't think about what he's doing, he just gets in and does it, yeah, you know, and there's just not a handful of guys that fit into that kind of category, there's just not a lot. guys you know.

Robby Gordon was one that you and I could compete with. Robby had a lot of raw talent, yeah it was tough now, raw talent, you could put Robby in anything and he could get it. get ninety-nine percent of the way like that and there's just not a lot of guys that can do that and I think they all have an amount of raw talent, but there's only a handful of guys that I think really are. Pure, talented drivers Hi Tony, I have a quick question for you when you get back to Daytona. I mean, you got the results.

Even though I'm speaking more generally, I have a theory that Dale Jr. As an owner, he doesn't particularly like watching racing with

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plates because it's just the weight of the wallet. Just by looking, you hear the cash register seem to roll in and in Junior Motorsports, that's pretty cool. A race. Do you like watching races with restrictor plates? house as an owner I didn't even like it no matter how bad it is, I mean as many races as we want at Daytona. I didn't even like even being in it let alone watching it because like you said and as we were starting that question I'm sitting there I'm going to change change change change oh yeah and then I saw a statistic last night we were watching the basketball game the basketball game stars last night and there was a thing at the bottom that said three drivers in the entire race were not involved in an accident at any time during yesterday's race. 37 of 40 cars were involved in an accident at some point in the Daytona 500.

That's crazy, it's like you sit there and just shake your head. It's hard to wait for it, I imagine if I have this investment and you take basically half your fleet to a regatta for a week and then you go and then it's like you know they're coming and you just hope that's not a way to live, okay , they are on the red flag on the microphone, Ravich, who is the crew chief of the number 14 car, we are sitting there and he was talking about when we won with Kurt, this is during the red. I mean, I don't know how many laps left and Zippy is sitting to my left and he's like, yeah, he says, you know he crashed three cars, but he made up for it when Kurt won and I started laughing.

I think you obviously don't work upstairs where the finances are with those three cars. What we want in the Daytona 500 didn't even pay for those three cars, so it's a losing proposition when you go to Daytona. Aren't you going to earn a cent? You're going to spend a lot of money to go down there and up. Did I assume incorrectly or am I right. My theory is that you don't particularly enjoy watching those races. What position are you referring to? Actually, I don't know what's up with him. In fact, I enjoy watching them. I didn't when I first went when I became an owner.

I didn't do it and we did it. We broke all our cars there one year and it was like a tenth of our budget spent on a race, you know, but every time I don't know, I relaxed over time, you don't seem like it, yeah, I mean, we have we. You've pulled the pin off a grenade, yeah, that's what it feels like as soon as they drop the green flag, the first time you feel like you've pulled the pin off a grenade and you're waiting for it to go off at some point. period, I think I would be a bad person if I asked how we did it when we won, so you wouldn't recognize the specific details of your physical altercations.

Would you recognizeHave you ever cheated on your car? cheating and competing, everyone in racing is Do you have any cheating stories like that? For example, I'll give you one of mine, so I put some gas in my car and went to Myrtle Beach and burned it up. With the engine running, it looks like it will crank for four hours tomorrow. It hit and burned the number one piston and I drove home because I didn't mix the fuel, yeah that's awesome. Yeah, I'll tell my dad because he didn't even know. This was a kid, but you know, when I raced karts, the carburetor was a one inch carburetor, so I used restrictor plates in the class I had to race and it was a six hundred thousand seeker plate, well, they had them there.

There was a spacer block between that and the actual engine, so what my dad had done was had someone drill a six-hundred-thousand hole in that plastic block, but he put a taper on it like a cone, yeah, and one week he made it. made it work. on one side of the plate and the other week he ran on the other side of the plate and I mean it obviously helped him a little bit but we did it two weeks in a row and he took it off and I never ran it again but I like to tell my dad because my dad is 80 years old and it's like a role reversal now I'm the father, he's the child now, but yes, there were times when things were like that.

The job of all of us in racing, I mean, that's been the history of racing, is to take the rules that the sanctioning body gives you and try to read between the lines and whenever there's an opportunity for interpretation, yeah, always. You are going to take advantage of that opportunity. As a track owner, you can see this in some of the late model races I ran at Myrtle Beach. I told the chief inspector that he didn't have much speed, so he brought me a plate to use with my carburetor and it was so gnarly that I was afraid to put it on my car.

It looks like a chewed beaver. I have one of your favorites. What is it? I won't say what race track it was. It could have been a restrictor plate, but I remember Tony Junior came in. Do you want to win this race, I mean, do you really want to win this race, how badly do you want to win this race? And it was this similar code. I don't know if you remember, but you're like, yeah, I'm going to win. I want to win it like you, no matter what happens in the week, you want to win it, I want to win it, okay, then let's win it, yeah, let's have a good time.