Jeff Gordon & Ryan Blaney LIVE from Daytona

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. This is like super professional. You're kind of surprised, aren't you? No, but this is for real. Oh, we're live. All right. Who's supposed to take this thing? Yeah, we just walked up here. Does that mean you get as started as I'm on me? I popped on the headphones. I'm like, all right, somebody will tell us what's going on here. So much for you professional. We thought we were going to do a better job the second year, but it ain't looking like it. Dirty Mo Media and Sirius XM right now teaming up here for the stage and the fans on with Daytona. Hey, crowd. Good to see everybody. Got Jeff Gluck here, Freddie, and Jeff Gordon has joined us today. Jeff Gordon. Hey there. What is your title? You're a part owner. What other titles do you have? Vice Chairman. Vice Chairman. Yeah. All right. I don't know what that means. Well, it means you guys are fast this weekend, and I'm experiencing some of that with the car that we have, the 40 car with that hinge of horsepower underneath the hood. A lot of work's been done in all season. Congratulations, by the way. Yeah. But, you know, we get to be a part of this, and I can tell you the stress that all of us at HMS went through along with you last year. Yeah. You know, right up to the very last corner, last lap of the duels. And to get that thing locked in, had to feel good last night. I know it felt good for us. It really did. You know, last year was a struggle. And, you know, you've got to practice in the morning. And then you have all day to wait around to see what kind of lap you're going to run and qualify. And there's a lot of tech and everything that you've got to go through. It's super, super fun to be a part of it and very, very educational. I mean, I've been around this for a long time, but I learned so much being in that garage yesterday. going through that whole process with the team. And so, you know, you get the car out of the trailer and you put it out on the racetrack. The driver's going to get a couple of runs in the 50-minute practice session. Very brief. It's either good or it's not. There's not a whole lot you can do at that point. Everything that, you know, everything that the car's got has been done at the shop. There's really not a lot of speed and really fine at the racetrack. But fortunately, this year, the car come off the trailer fast. And we go out there last night, and the lap times that we started seeing, and our car was going to run about a 20, and that's what it ran. And I walked up down pit road asking other crew chiefs and drivers what they could run. And once I sort of understood after about three or four cars, I thought, man, we actually got a pretty good lap on the board. I wasn't really sure where that was going to nest out. And the funniest part, Jeff, we get going through qualifying pretty deep, and I'm thinking, damn, we're going to make the top 10 maybe and have to rerun and have to run again to try to beat Corey. But you thought that was a good thing. I wasn't really sure. So there we were toward the end of qualifying, hoping to get beat so we could get bumped out of the top ten. So we didn't have to run again. It was the weirdest thing. The same thing happened to us, by the way. Jeff Andrews came over, and he's like, man, that's a good enough lap. I think to be in the top ten, only 4,000 is faster than Corey LaJoy. Yeah. And you have to understand, folks, like, first of all, right, Mr. H, buddies with Dale Jr., used to be a teammate at Hendrick. uh mr h and his partnership with him at jrm and a great friend chris stapleton so this whole project came came to hms and all that does is add additional pressure to all of us in the engine shop and all of us at hms not just for our four cars but for that car to get in the daytona 500 is important too so yeah we find out you know you're four thousandths up on on cory and then you know looking like you might be in the top 10 and then somebody comes over and says hey that that means that they might have to rerun second round i was like not cory lajoy out please like or both yeah yeah that was pretty interesting i've never been in that scenario before but it's a lot of fun uh was anybody surprised to see noah be the only person to break the rule was anybody surprised about that at all yeah what's funny is an email went out from nascar a couple hours before practice that reiterated, here are the rules. I'm sure that was not in his inbox or he didn't look at his emails, but I saw it. I don't believe that he said that he forgot. I do not believe that he forgot. I believe that he said that. I know Noah. He's worked with us at Junior Motorsports before. We had a ton of fun. But he is that kind of guy. I put a tweet out today. He's the guy that if you say the stove is hot, don't touch it. He is going to touch the stove. And he is going to get burnt. and he's going to turn around. He's going to turn around and go, yep, yep, it's hot. I thought maybe he looked around the car and he's like, there's no cameras in here. There's no way they're going to know if I put my hand up there in the window. I noticed he'd run and then I'm looking on the app because I was standing on pit road with the app open and I was like, where the hell is Noah's time at? It was pretty interesting. Gluck, I mean, what was the reaction in the media center when y'all learned that he had made? Yeah, it was one of those, oh, of course, kind of things. But I'm kind of with you. Like, I think that's one of those things where you kind of try to get away with something. And then you got caught and you're like, oh, yeah, I just messed that up. Like, he knew. Come on. Like, he knew. You don't just be like, I'm going to put my hand up here. That's very conscious. You know what I mean? The thing about Noah is he's actually a lot smarter than he lets on, too. I think he kind of plays dumb. No, I really do. Part of it's an act. Part of it's an act. Part of it might be true, I'm saying. How much fun he has is not an act. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But I'm with Dale. I think he knew. Do you think he did not perfect? Yeah. Yeah. It's possible. Well, there's a lot of changes this year coming into the season. One of those that I think a lot of us are really excited about is the change in the points format. Call it what you want. The chase is back, or I'll be honest with you, the way that the numbers kind of line up and how this is all going to be added up throughout the season, it's as close to going back to full season points as you can get without actually doing that. And so I'm very excited about it. I know that Jeff talking to a lot of the drivers, Jeff Glick and Jeff Gordon, both of y'all, I've talked to your drivers, drivers in the media center. Freddie, you've heard from drivers as well that there's a lot of excitement, I think, in how they feel they can approach this season and go out there. They kind of know this path a little bit more, you know, because this is kind of the system or a similar system to what they've grown up doing over the years. So I'm seeing a lot of excitement in the drivers. Yeah, for sure. And it seems for me like, you know, obviously everybody wanted a 36 race. You know, that was the big outcry. this was the best compromise by far you know what i mean i feel like because you still have that 26 race playoff season where you can you're you can still have a couple hiccups and throughout the year but you make that playoff and now you've tightened the window i was talking about on dbc a couple weeks ago like you'd go the guy that was 10th and points of the color you know 16th points of the cutoff last year was 200 points out well now he's going to be 70 points out of the leader 100 points out of the lead whatever it was and then like i said the guy that's second in points is the one that almost gets a little bit burned because you have that tight gap you know usually we've come down, we've seen one or two point gaps at the end of the regular season. Now that gap grows to 25. So I think it's just a good balance of you got to perform during the regular season. It makes the regular season championship mean that much more. And you could also have a couple of hiccups along the way and not ruin your whole season. Yeah. I mean, here's where I weigh I always, even though I'm closer to the competition side of things, I always try to give NASCAR the benefit of the doubt of the decision making, right, that goes into it because you've got the fans that, that, you know, there's a lot of drama in what we've had, cut off and, you know, who's going to advance to the next round. But then I know fans feel the same way that all the competitors do. A one race, you know, win for, you know, you go into it even and one guy's going to come out as a championship. While it's exciting, there's drama. I don't know if that, you know, really set well with a lot of people. So now we give up a little bit of that drama in the rounds. But I think what we're going to do is crown a champion that people are going to look at and say, man, there's not just a bunch of luck involved with that. Not that there was. It's just sometimes there were, like with Denny Hamlin, that was a very unfortunate situation. If he built up a lead and had a points gap going into that final race, he had some margin there. That's what we're going to see now. And I do like that. I joked in our first team owner council meeting that we had with NASCAR because, you know, while I think it's a good move to go to the chase, I also got my butt kicked every year by Jimmy Johnson with that format when they went to it. But I do think it fits well. If I go back to Comptish, for Hendrick, we feel really good about it. You know, we just we pride ourselves on being consistent throughout the season. We think Homestead's a great track for us to end the season. And, you know, we look at those 10 tracks and, you know, even the regular season, what can we do to get, you know, maybe that advantage of winning the regular season? Our four guys, I think it plays out very well for them and for our race teams. And, yeah, I'm excited to see how it all unfolds this year. Yeah, I'm excited, too. So, Gluck, you might have some inside information on this, and I'm not, you know, I'm not sure what everybody might know. But when they started to talk about announcing this, and we were actually in the middle of the announcement itself, and I was talking to some of the guys, and I know personally the people that, and we all know personally the people that created this system, right? And adjusted on the old chase to deliver what we have today in terms of points and how much you get when you win a race and all those things. and what they were trying to do was maintain some semblance of a playoff format, but they wanted it to really come down to somebody who had done very well throughout the entire season or the regular season. And so they didn't want me to say this, but now that we're kind of far removed from that announcement, I think it's kind of okay. But, you know, they ran tons of models. They ran thousands and thousands of models. with this format to try to break it, to try to see if it would actually spit out some fluke winner. And it never would. And so, you know, while we do have in a lot of here, people ask us, you know, 16 too many, should it be 10, 12? It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. Because the guy who's in 10th, 11th, 12th, ain't got a shot in hell. He don't. I mean, they'll have to have an incredibly miraculous playoff to be able to outpoint and make up the difference on those guys that are sitting in first, second, third. And so in all of the models that they ran, it was really always coming down to that first, second, third, maybe the fourth, the fifth, every now and then. So being in that top five, being in that top six is critical. So that's why the good thing about that, I think, is that it really makes that regular season as important as the postseason. Yeah. And let's be honest, going even back to the format we just came out of the playoffs. If you were 10th to 16th, you really didn't have a chance either. I don't know when the last time Jeff could probably tell us when the last time that was done, if ever. But I don't think you ever came into it and won the championship that far back. Yeah. And I think the thing is, like, if somebody wins it in the miraculous way from seventh in a 10 week thing, you go, holy crap. That's unbelievable. You deserved it. Tony, all those guys. Yeah. You would have to have that kind of run. You'd have to win five out of 10 races. You know, otherwise, I don't think anybody wants to see that anyway. Like, that's the whole reason that everybody was complaining about this old format. Like the idea that somebody could come out of nowhere and it didn't reflect the rest of the season. People want to see something where they get to the end of the season and they go, all right, that is that was the driver of the year. Like that was what we that that went with what we saw the rest of the season. So, you know, I think there's going to be a great race, like you said, for those top four or five seats. And that's going to be as important as getting that number one seat in a way. Because if you're too far down, there's a 25-point gap between the first seat and the second seat. And then it kind of goes down five points or something like that. But there's 100 points between first and 16th. So you've got to be up somewhere in the top five, six to have a shot at it. And I think everybody's going to be fine with that. Yeah. Yeah. And not that I had a vote on it, but, you know, I just I felt like the whole season. I know Mark Martin was adamant, right? He's going to be a 36 race. And I got I was fortunate to be a part of those. And I can remember, you know, the championship being crowned to three races before the season was over, too. And I don't think that would work. I really don't. So this really prevents that from happening over those 10 races, I believe. Well, even in the old chase format, you know, nobody ever clinched it before Homestead anyway. That's right. And I don't think it'll happen. With the next-gen car, as close as everything is, I don't think it'll happen. Nobody's going to – and if they do, if somebody clinches it at Martinsville, people are going to be like, wow, that's unbelievable. So one of the things I wanted to talk about with Dirty Mo Media is this year – Jeff, I don't know if you heard about this yet. Oh, man. But we – I'm on the edge of my seat. I can't wait. Every year we do a replica hood in the studio. Oh, I'm aware of this one. All right. Yeah. And so every year we do this replica hood and it's life-size and it's a mock-up hood that we kind of have a lot of fun with and it's gonna have the Dirty Mo Media logo on it. We did different ones over the years like Bobby Allison's Miller High Life and different ones. Last year we did like a Budweiser hood and I said you know what this year I gonna I gonna let TJ my co pick the hood And I known TJ since 2000 I known him for a long long time And I said, TJ, you get to pick the hood, any hood you want. He goes, all right, I got it. My favorite driver. And I was like, favorite driver? He goes, yeah, Jeff Gordon. I was like, I didn't know Jeff Gordon was your favorite driver? I didn't know that either, by the way. You yelled at him too much. me because he thought maybe it would have he cut he moved down here from buffalo we helped him get a job over at mb2 and all that stuff maybe that might doesn't happen if he tells me he's a so i think that was what he was worried about so we got this beautiful hood in the studio and it's replica of your your your dupont scheme when you had the flames on it so i'm gonna have to get you to come on to the show as a guest so that you get your autograph on that thing man but you're going to be in that studio represented the entire season uh and it's you know fans had such fun reactions to it a lot of people thought it was awesome some people were like what the hell but a lot of people i was like you know we weren't teammates that that was one thing but some other people brought up some great things that i thought would be fun for you to talk about is even though you and dad were really really competitive and fierce competitors on the racetrack Y'all did a lot of things behind the scenes that I think people either don't know about or they tend to forget about. A lot of business deals y'all had together. Y'all owned properties together, business properties and literal property. Talk about how all that happened. I mean, I remember when we were at Wilkesboro in 94, I was there for a late-mile stock race, and he was taking you around the track in a pace car just talking about the track, and he walked you over and said, I want to introduce you to Jeff Gort. This guy is going to be a big deal. And so, I mean, y'all kind of had a friendship right out of the gate. But how did you become business partners? Yeah, I mean, first of all, who didn't respect your dad, right? I mean, you know, just absolute legend. And every time I was on the track, I felt like I was learning, you know, something, especially at this place from him. And he was so hard to beat at these places. But, you know, so I, of course, no matter what was happening on the racetrack, even when he was, you know, Dale had, your dad had a love-hate relationship with every competitor, by the way. You know, like he would put his arm around him. Hey, buddy, let's go hunting and fishing and let's do this. And then the next week spending them out wrecking them on the track. So, you know, you just kind of you became aware and familiar with that. That was the kind of relationship that you could potentially have if you got into that inner circle. And and I just always looked up to him, had the most respect. And then, you know, as my career started taking off, the business side started taking off. And, you know, back then we used to fly on planes together to tracks and you just you spent more time. You go up in the in the hauler, you know, the NASCAR hauler, and you just spent more time together as drivers than I feel like they do today. And you get to know one another, whether you like it or not. And so, you know, just created some conversations with, you know, him and myself about your I remember he's the first one told me, you got to own your rights to your likeness. he's like if you don't have that you got to go get that you know in your next uh driver contract you need to you know control the licensing and you know like he was the one that really led me down that path and then of course when action performance came along and the diecast market just blew up he was you know leading that charge and and riding and he knew that hey it's not just a a one-man show it was this thing's going to be bigger and the sport's going to be bigger and the fans are going to get more access to things if all of us come together. And so he came to me and he's like, now, of course, his way of coming together and throwing an idea, hey, here's what you're going to do. A contract's going to come to you. There's no email. Contract's going to come over. You're going to look it over. If you want to have a lawyer look at it, that's fine, but you're still going to sign it one way or another. That'll happen on Tuesday. And you just go, okay. And listen, every one of the deals worked out really well. I'm glad it happened the way it did. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I always enjoy knowing that how you guys were able to, like he and you and him and all these other guys like Schrader and Rick Mastin, they all have stories about runnings on the racetrack with that. But off the racetrack, y'all all figured out a way to put that aside until next Sunday and do business. and do things that were successful together. And then you'd get out on the racetrack and, you know, run into each other and flip each other off and be mad as you could be, you know. Yeah, there were two times that I don't think I've gotten over it yet. I can remember the first time. And I looked, this was such a huge life lesson for me as a driver. It was my rookie year in 93, and I think it was last or maybe second or third. No, it wasn't last race because it was in Phoenix. The last race back then was in Atlanta. So second or third to the end of the season. And he was, as he always was, in the hunt for the championship. He didn't win at 93, did he? I don't think he won at 93. I know he won at 94. Anyway, so I'm racing like I'm in seventh, something like that. And he and I are battling for that position. We had about equal cars. And somehow I got ahead of him maybe on a pit sequence or something. and he, you know, he's just right on me. And I gave him the inside and we raced side by side for about two laps. And that was one and a half too many. Oh, yeah. And we went down to turn three and I thought I gave him enough room and boom, around I go, pow, in the wall. And I was like, man, I didn't know I came down on the crowd like that. I realized later I didn't. Yeah. It was just his way of saying, hey, kid, yeah, that's not going to get done, especially with me. So I never, you know, I made sure that I was always understanding the situation. It was situational awareness was what the lesson was. And he had more on the line than I did that day. And I didn't even race him that hard. And then what was the other one? Oh, shoot. Gosh darn it. I'm going to think about it here in a second. It sounds like you're over it. Yeah. I'm definitely not. Oh, oh, no, no. We were at Michigan practice on a Saturday, okay? And we were about to take off pit road, and Ray Abraham comes over. He's like, listen, you got a good race car. We're just trying to get this thing for the later practice, right? Get a ride. Don't worry too much about right now. And he's like, just let Dale go. Because Dale, in practice, he would run a practice like it was a race. He wanted to race you as hard as he could in practice. So we always kind of knew just stay away from from racing anybody, really. And so so I remember I come off pit road and and let him he yarded, you know, he's way out there over straightaway ahead. And then I start running and my car is really good. And so I'm closing in on him. And then all of a sudden he starts really slowing down. And so I'm like, OK, he's going to let me go and he'll get in behind me. and I remember I come off of turn two yeah come off of two and I mean he's checked up on the outside I get a big run and all of a sudden he gets right to my quarter panel just enough where I can't clear him and we go down three and I'm just like surely he's gonna let me go so I'm just gonna drive in real deep no no he drove in deeper right on my door and sucked me right around I back that thing in the wall destroyed the car yeah and he was unscathed as usual and and so man i got and ray was pissed at me he wasn't mad at now he's like what did i tell you stay i said he was letting me go i thought he was letting me go so that was another life lesson has there been moments that you remember being on the other side of that where you were teaching a young driver on the racetracks how it's done oh yeah oh yeah definitely i mean i that's why later you know i realized especially the 90 the 93 thing like as a rookie every rookie that came in you had to teach them that lesson like it was it was your duty you it when they came if they thought they were too good or they they were running up front and and you're using up a little too much track or whatever you're like yep here comes that dale senior moment i might not wreck them but i definitely moved them oh i'm sure i learned a lot being around you on the racetrack and in the office as well it's been a lot of fun over the years and i appreciate you giving us some time today it's awesome to sit up here and just listen to some of these stories uh you know you you uh you're a great uh icon in the sport man it's awesome to see as involved as you are and and uh hope you hope you have a good weekend this weekend with your guys hopefully you run one two three four five uh with that 40 out front yeah yeah listen listen you say you got a better car this year you finished 10th last year so you know you you got some big shoes to fill now but uh no it's gonna be great we're excited we you know just excited about this year the daytona 500 and uh we got a great car great chance you know for all of our guys and can't wait to work with you and and and justin the the 40 team out there as well as like an extension of hindrance motorsports really cool to be a part of that and and thanks for not calling me a pioneer you call me an icon instead i i think i like you're not pioneered yet i think when you retire you're when you retire your gold carl edwards called me a pioneer one time yeah i laughed at that but i'm honored that my my hood is um at the studio that's amazing and i can't wait to get up there and see in person awesome thank you guys thank you thank you jeff gordon so we got a little bit of an announcement to make i don't jeff you want to do this your your your deal well i i've been jealous um you know i have this podcast the teardown that we do after the race yeah but i have to tell everybody a secret i guess because you know when you do a podcast right after the race you haven't heard what anybody else thinks so like i haven't heard actions at your mental or dbc or judging your download so sometimes you're just kind of like i'm like man this just happened we got off the pit road we come to do the podcast and i'm like talking about stuff i'm like yeah i think this is right this is what people are going to think about this i love it because i wanted i just got a buddy in here because you say what you say i I listen to what the fans say, and then I decide what I'm going to say. It worked out great for us. Right, Freddie? Yeah, it was perfect. I just disagree with anything Gluck says. I'm going to have a good show on Monday. Well, so then it gets to Monday, and I start listening to all the podcasts. You know how you guys follow the sport. You know how the discourse works on social media and the podcast world and all that stuff? You're like, man, I don't know. Maybe I was wrong about that. Or you have a different opinion. You have something else you want to say. Anyway, but my show is just after the race, so I don't have anything else to say. So I'm going to be doing a Thursday show now. It's going to be on the Teardown feed, and it's going to be on my YouTube channel. And I'm not. Is this the name of it? This is the name. The name of it is the Glutcast. Is it? The Glutcast. I love it. You picked that name yourself, didn't you? They said that I had to have a name. Because it's on the Teardown feed, it has to have my name in it. and I was like, I don't know about the Gluck cast. I don't think anybody's going to forget it. Well, that's a good thing. They said you have 24 hours to come up with a better name than the Gluck cast. I thought about it, and I couldn't. This sounds like cash card negotiations. Yeah. You better sign this right now. You got 24 hours. There's a lot of things that Gluck could be in that shouldn't be in. Was that too soon? I thought that thing worked out great. I thought that was amazing. Anyway, so, yeah. The things that I love about this. So what I love about this idea is obviously, so you and Jordan and many, many, many other people in that room, in that press room, no one has a better understanding of what's being talked about, what's being discussed, what's going on in the sport than the people in that room. And the fact that y'all come, the reason why you can do the teardown is because of that very fact. So y'all come right off the race and you react. And I think that's why it works so well. And what we do kind of lack in our little bubble is that preview of that race, right? The preview of that race from the same mindset. So I'm pretty excited about it. I love listening to y'all's content. I learned so much about things that are being discussed in the sport from y'all. I think you keep all of us sort of up to speed on really truthfully what the big conversations are in the garage and in the industry. and so i'm pretty i'm pretty excited about this show um and look forward to it i mean it'll be interesting to see kind of how what your perspective is going in then how you may change what you say and do on the teardown after the race right because you've got this this preview and this post reaction now yeah i mean it's it's so weird how like the conversation just weaves and flows throughout the week you we all follow it right like it's i think we're all in this community this NASCAR community, and you can see, okay, this is the topic of the week, and it kind of flares up, and everybody kind of hops on it, and every podcast is talking about it, and every writer's talking about it, and everybody's talking about social media, and then it kind of just goes another way, and then the next thing pops up, and it's not like one person or something. It's just like collectively, we all just said, all right, I guess we're going to be talking about this this week. Everybody's talking about it. So I'm happy to have a chance to weigh in again if people aren't tired of listening to me. So thank you. I'm looking forward to it. So Teardown, the Glutcast. All right. That's a weekly spinoff. I'm going to say it just like that. Yeah. So it's debuting February 19th. New episodes dropping every Thursday And there be an audio version as well as a YouTube version We all be checking that out Our next guest wasn going to be wasn supposed to be here until 345 but I seen He's very punctual. We should just bring him on up here. Brian Blaney, driving number 12 for Pisky. Mike Davis won't let him up here. Mike Davis, leave Brian alone. Come on up here. Mike, let our guest alone. Mike, can you leave Brian alone? Thank you, Mike. did you spot the mic had his the mustache mike had him hemmed up over trying to get him to do a podcast what he was doing with jeff gordon when i walked up mike's trying to sign them all up the blaney cast the blaney cast yeah there he is the mustache himself has arrived this guy ruined the playoff announcement for me by the way like no they're in a playoff announcement all i can look at is this guy's mustache he's in the back row and i'm like this is the only thing i focused on the mustache now no i can't i can't get rid of it unless my boss tells me to shave yeah which one's the which one is the boss again you know who it is the one one boss likes it the other boss i don't know um my wife likes it yep but my main boss who pays my bills i don't i don't know but he hasn't said anything about it yet so i was uh i was surprised that the the real boss liked it because because Amy's pretty opinionated about my facial hair. She'd prefer I don't have any. Yeah. But she likes me to keep it kind of short. I like to throw it really long in the wintertime. Right. Like a real man. Yeah. You know, like I'm going hot every day. But she's not a big fan of it. Yeah, I'm surprised my wife likes it as much as she does. But so I got lucky on that. But she told you to do it, right? She did tell me to do it. You know, so I do the big beard in the playoffs and then the winner. She just said, leave that. Well, and then I always like for a week straight, I play with it. So I'll do like mutton chops and then like a goatee. And then like, so I'm like a different person for like a week. And then I got to my mustache and I had big handlebars and she was like, I don't like that one. So I shortened it up a little bit and she was like, I actually like it. How, who have you been told you look like? I get Ned Flanders a lot. I get Kurt Russell from Tombstone. Yep. What about the dude from the Gangs of New York, the butcher? Yeah. Bill the Butcher. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't gotten that one yet. That's fine. But that's a pretty good one. That's for me. Yeah. Yep. That's better than Ned Flanders. Yeah. Yeah. Someone, Flanders is the, I got it for the first time down here. Someone just came up to me and showed me a picture of Ned Flanders. They're like, you look like this. I was like, man, that sucks. Like, that sucks. There's a lot of cooler people with mustaches and, you know, Flanders was always a weird guy, I thought. But yeah, that person thought I looked like Ned Flanders. Well, I also heard you got a llama. Yeah. Like a real life llama. Yeah. Yes, you did. Yeah, I got a llama. I got a lot of questions about him. The main reason we got him, we have three little goats. They're great like livestock guardians for small animals. Yeah, not a lot of people know that, but they like will destroy a coyote or a fox if they want to. I did not know that. So dad had a couple of llamas, and all I got told was they'll spit on you. Don't go over by them. They'll spit on you. So they do spit. mine doesn't uh their breath or their spits really rank their spit is actually they regurgitate throw up and then they spit it at you so it's not just like saliva it's like vomit that they spit at you but the only ones that spit are like ones that are in petting zoos and they get hand fed all the time but this one he was raised on like a llama farm with like 100 other llamas and they never like hand fed them or nothing so like he never spits but it does get a little weird if he like will get right in your face and i'm like please don't do it not today is he nice he's very nice yeah very nice um he hasn't done anything bad yet not to get your personal stuff but like you are you starting a farm what are we what are we gonna get a barn we build a barn i know you're next right yeah my uh i think that's my wife's project and i just say yeah yeah i mean what are you gonna say yeah so you know i got a fun story amy's gonna be mad but uh we we got a tiny barn It was on my property when I bought it, and it's got three stables in it, and it's real small. And we get into rescuing because Amy likes to do that kind of stuff. And so we've had some other – we've had all kinds of animals over the years. But right now we've got four donkey, one mule, and a horse and a mini horse. And so we've got two mini for our barn, right? And Amy's – we've got the Carolina Carports people on the Xfinity program, and they're like, hey, we're really having fun with you all. sponsoring your race cars we want to give you a free building i was like damn all right so i told amy i said they want to give us a free building uh you know you want to what do you think and she goes i will do it we'll make it a barn you know if we'll get more stalls and be able to have all these all these rescues will have room to get out of the rain and all that stuff and you know we got to thinking about how we wanted to build it and we were going to build this barn uh and she so she starts designing it out of wood and starts building this thing and it's going to have you know we're going to get some help from the carport folks before sort of cover it but it looks like an ark like i look out i look people are people are like hey i take pictures of it i send it my friends i'm like we're building an ark yeah uh because that's what it looks like it's crazy wow and uh i just kind of got to step out of the way I got two little girls and Amy, and it's like, it's what they want to do. I know what you should get next. A llama. Oh. You should get two llamas next. I might. Well, if you want to. Only, I think I'm a rescuer, so only if you're. All right. Well. If your llama needs rescuing. If your llama needs rescuing, I'm your guy. Okay. We'll just open the gate one time. He's out. He needs a rescue. He's rescuing. If he becomes a problem, you know, if he's harassing the goats. All right. If I tell you that me and him got in a fist fight, then you've got to come rescue me. He probably has to rescue me. He spits on you and you suck him away. Anyhow, yeah, I think that's in your future, the barn. Yeah. Go ahead and start snaking the ground, bud. That's next. Yeah. Yeah, really, it's – I'll tell you. I saw – so it's the Thunderbirds are flying overhead. And I saw a picture from Zillich. He took a ride with them boys today. Did he? Have you ever done anything like that? I did it my rookie year. Really? Did you fly with him? Well, it must be a rookie thing. I think it is a rookie thing. Mine was 10 years ago, and that was one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. Well, since he's the only rookie, he just must be getting multiple rides today. No, so the thing about Thunderbirds, you only get one. I know, but he's the only rookie, and there's still two. Yeah, one ever. You can't do it every year. It's a very strict process. Yeah, but it was the coolest thing ever. The guy made me throw up. I threw up everywhere. Yeah, I did. Did you black out? I didn't black out. I puked, though. I don't know which one's worse. You had a G suit on. I did, and I still puked. But I didn't pass out. I did the Blue Angels. They don't do as many Gs, but they don't do the suit either. I passed out. Yeah. This is what happens when you get Brian Blaney on the stage. America, baby. That is the coolest thing. What other place does this? Let me tell you something. When you're on that roof pre-race, it feels like they are going to hit you in the head. Like they are. You feel like you reach up and touch them. It's insane. Some of the videos we get. So we had Jeff Gordon up here and everybody, you know, we're going to talk to everybody about this. And we're going to talk about it all year long. I think by the end of the year, people will be sick of it. But the chase is back. The points. The way you guys will decide who the champion is. You were part of the announcement. You've had time to really kind of think about this and soak it all in. You've had time to sit in rooms with engineers and crew chiefs and your team organization to talk about how you'll approach the year based off of the new format. How's that all going, and what are your thoughts? I think it's a massive mental shift for a driver. I believe it is. I think it's a massive shift. I've always been a huge believer in don't overthink things. I think it will be easier for people to overthink this stuff. If you're just trying to figure out, oh, a strategy here and there. The goal of every week is to run the best you can every week. But I think with this thing, I feel like you have some people thinking twice about, you know, hey, I might make this low percentage move, you know, that I would probably make in the previous format that maybe I don't want to make in this one because bad days are going to really suck. And good days are going to be celebrated even more just because the way the points format is. So I don't know. I think just consistency is going to matter even more. and it's going to be a lot of pressure on these teams and drivers to have no mistakes because it's going to be someone really joey logano actually said this earlier today and it stuck with me is this points points new points format is an elevator down and a staircase back up like so it just it's it'll be really tough to limit your mistakes yes um and it'll be hard to claw your way out of it yes but i like it i think it's it's where the sport needed to go i remember I've said this before but I remember starting the year you know 20-25 years ago starting the season and thinking man these these first four or five races really have to go good because if I have four bad races I'm I'm gonna be 30th 28th 22nd points and and it's gonna be a hard staircase up to to try to even you know get close to where these guys are gonna be uh and and in the past format you know you you could you could eliminate that issue by going out and winning a few races right and uh you don't have that luxury i suppose or that opportunity this time so you know i think as a driver to your point you'll have to really you know start to season out even in daytona at the 500 going i gotta be smart i gotta be i gotta be correct in every every decision i make yeah and i feel like you know we would come down here for the 500 and it's a speedway you could get tore up you know easy and you know you wouldn't really think about it like oh you know i i have faith we're gonna win a race we're getting the playoffs and all that stuff but yeah like you said i mean starting your season off on the right foot starting the first month of the year off on the right foot is going to be really important because if you do find yourself in that hole let's say you have a terrible first month and you're 30th in points and then you're kind of getting stressed out like i gotta run good now and then you're like spiraling out of control so um it'll be it'll be crazy it'll be wild but um i love how they where they went and um i think it's going to make for an even better way to kind of crown our champion and better races in general i think yeah i mean you said at the announcement that it's going to get back to the beautiful art form that you grew up loving and i think there's a couple things of that right because like number one you had the guys that were so desperate to try to win their way in and you know of course they're going to make crazy moves but then you also have the guys that had already won and it didn't matter if they were going to finish fifth or second or whatever all that mattered if they won and got more playoff points they're going to do stupid stuff too and it really like yeah some of the end of these races was was kind of shit show and i and i hated that side of it like you know like you mentioned the the guys who needed to like win a race to get in whether that's speedway or maybe they have an opportunity you know to to win a certain race but they would make some moves that are just like it took a lot of the purity out of racing to me you know you saw a lot of stuff and they'd get out of the car and be like well i didn't want to do that but I had to. And I hated that excuse so bad, but the points format made it. You have to run that way. And I think now it's going to be a pure art form, which is what racing is and should be. So I think we're going to get a lot of that back, which is good. One of the things I'd love to talk to you about, you've had the experience and opportunity to race at Bowman Grade the last couple of years with the Clash. How much fun is it to go to that racetrack with these cars? It's an odd couple sort of thing, but it's also nostalgic and is vintage as throwback as you could possibly get uh what's the future of bowman gray i hope we go there for at least another year i mean i think you can move that clash around you know just kind of like the all-star race and stuff like that um i grew up the town over from winston-salem where bowman gray is so that was kind of a special place for me i went there a lot as a kid and ran there when i was nine or ten years old i raced a little bandolero there but um i have a blast i think it puts on a great race like you see comers and goers and tire fall off and stuff like that and take out of that second half of that race the other week it's just you know what it turned into it was really sloppy with the weather and there's nothing you can do about that but uh i think it's good the fans i think really enjoy it um so we'll see where it goes but i hope it gets another year at least and then rotate it and then maybe it'll work its way back it hasn't really been uh i don't think this rumor has been discussed by the people that truly make the decisions but could you imagine seeing an all-star race they're racing for a million dollars i can imagine i can see it we've gone to all these different types of places yeah we've gotten all these different they didn't have the afterburners on on that one that was a little quieter because that was that was five of them uh but yeah i mean i can definitely see the all-star race being there and that would be a big show did you did you think bubba was actually mad at you last week i didn't think he was but i know how he gets and i was like so so tell him it wasn't me so ryan dumps him right i mean typical ryan movie just runs in the back of us like he always does uh yeah so in the moment i tell i as it's actually happening i go that wasn't a 12 it was the one got shot into him and bubba comes we go to the pits fix the car we come out and bubba starts like door slamming ryan and flipping him off and i'm like you know it wasn't him right he's like yeah i know what him but don't tell him i know sorry dude i don't know what you want me to do yeah i secretly hate bubba yeah i really do oh me too yeah actually i i'd like to get you your guys reaction to something that denny threw out yesterday on uh during media day he said what if you took the clash to homestead and you gave everybody sort of like the pre-season test in a way and then the second day of it so you gave everybody a day to practice because everybody wants to be good at homestead now you're already kind of down in Florida anyway Then the end of the practice basically was the clash And then so everybody kind of got like data and then you kind of waited like 10 months all year come back there and be like man how this is this who's gonna be the champion this year you know like that kind of thing like i think any idea denny has is amazing honestly yeah you're not gonna get that bonus freddie you're not getting that bonus that's an interesting idea you know what i've always thought would be cool for a clash and all-star races um like if we brought the clash down here and you just open the rules up like that do it we'll do whatever you want we're on whatever spoiler you want to run like if you want to run a one-inch blade go at it and good luck to the guy holding on to it if you want to run like a four-inch blade go ahead like i thought that would always be that always be kind of cool do you think you could set up an x-gen car that could run at Daytona without a spoiler. Probably. I mean, it could run. Drivers would be pretty sketchy. Yeah. I mean, you'd be going so fast. You'd be hauling ass. Let's say we figured out how to make it run 95 to 200. How would you do that without it? You'd have to put like a 200 horsepower motor in it. I don't know. I mean, I would make it run that speed. Could you drive it? Could I fix it? Could I set it up? Yeah, you can fix up anything to drive. With no rear spoiler. At some regard, right? No rear spoiler. Yeah, you could drive it. It just wouldn't be comfortable. You'd have a lot of off-throttle time, for sure. But that'd be kind of cool. Yeah, because I know me and TJ were talking about this on the podcast this week. I know that... Incoming. That's pretty serious. That was the afterburners. I know in the 70s, Dave Markison and them guys were qualifying the Dodgers at Talladega with like a little one-eighth-inch wicker on the back. And, you know, they'd come down here in the 90s and had the spoilers laid down to 15, 20 degrees. And you're thinking, man, how much do we really need, you know? Yeah. Because it was – I remember racing, you know, in 04 here in the dual lifting, lifting all the way out of the gas. Yeah. Blowing into the corner. I would love that. Yeah. That'd be more fun to me as a driver than running around there wide open or next to wide open. Have you ever seen the spoiler on Bill Elliott's world record car in Talladega? The thing has got five degrees of spoiler angle on it. It's not even there. It's just there because the rule book said you had to have a spoiler on the car. I just think opening that up would be pretty neat. But back then it was super cool because there was no data or anything, no engineering. They just did it. That's why you needed eight hours of practice. Yeah. they were like well let's try this you know lay it back like good luck like you know i think that's so cool though that ingenuity back then it was was just something you can't even match yeah for sure um you know daytona has always been a special place to me uh i know every driver has their own you know their tracks that they love but how does it feel for you i suppose when you get ready to come to the daytona 500 first race of the year uh you'd love to be able to put your car victory lane and over to Daytona USA there for an entire season. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that would be the dream. I came down here watching my dad run this race for a long time. And as a kid, that was super neat to just see the whole week. And then Sunday morning was unlike anything else. And now to be able to compete in it for as long as I have. And my family is now coming to watch me. I think that would be the coolest thing for me if we're able to do it, is having the family that I grew up with and my dad, who I used to watch, Now they're watching me to share that and victory lane together for my family. And, and, you know, if my son's three months old, he wouldn't remember it if we did it, but it'd be a cool picture to show them in like 10 years. Like, Hey bud, remember, I know you don't remember this, but look at, look at you. So yeah, it'd be cool. And then, yeah, the staple of leaving your car in the museum for the whole year is, is really neat. So hopefully we can do it. Yeah. Were you, your dad almost won one of the most infamous 500s. Yeah. 2012. Were you here? No. So it's a quick story about that one. so that was actually when you and my dad kind of started talking a little bit yeah remember 2012 because you were all on the backstretch with that yeah Juan Pablo hit the jet dryer if y'all don't forget remember into three and dad was running for Tommy Baldwin and they stayed out like they have damage so they just stayed out Juan Pablo hits the jet dryer so they're leading the race and the track's on fire and so I was down here all the week with my dad for speed weeks like this is when we were here for like 10 days so I got out of school for enough days and that race was run on monday monday night so i had to go back home to school on monday because my mom was like you can't miss any school so i remember sitting at the house watching the tracks on fire dad's leading and i was so mad because i was like they're gonna call this race and i'm not gonna be there after i was there all week 10 days and i was like so it was weird because i was wanted him wanted him to call the race and dad win but i would have been so mad because i wouldn't have been here to do it but somehow they got the track cleaned up i didn't think it was ever ready i thought the track was dangerous i think they could have called it but uh but it's funny when my dad talks about that race and people ask him like do you wish you would have you know they would have called it you would have won it and he's like no he's like because that would have been the biggest asterisk motorsports you would never heard the end of it and my dad just to how he is he would have hated even though he won the 500 he would have been like it didn't matter yeah well ryan i appreciate you giving us some time today coming here uh uh you know giving the fans an opportunity to hear from you. A lot of work left to do before you get ready for Sunday, but I'm wishing you well, man. It's awesome to see you going out there and doing well and doing great things. Thank you guys for being here. Have a good one. Ryan Blaney, we're going to pivot a little bit to some things that one of the things that Mr. Gluck put together, and I wanted to debate some of the things that you You had a top 10 most anticipated races of 2026. Freddie, have you seen this list? I have not seen this list. All right, well, here's the list. Number one, San Diego. Yeah, listen, I heard you on the download last week. Oh. How'd that go? With TJ. You guys, you guys, you know, I get you don't think you said San Diego should be like number five or like way down. I mean, it's not I'm not saying it's the most prestigious or it's most anticipated. Like it's a new race. It's on a military base. We've never seen this before. Like, you know, that's how is it going to go? You know, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm curious. Most curious. We're at we're at the most anticipated race of the season. I agree with you. That's what he's. Yeah. I'm like, how could you stop putting the Daytona 500 at the top of that list? I don't think Daytona was number two. That's not right. I had Homestead above. You did. You got San Diego, Homestead, Chicagoland, and then Daytona. Is Daytona on the list? Has it made the list? It's fourth, sadly. I get it. It's just like I think that Daytona's got to get back to a series of clean finishes, a series of, you know, look, nothing against William Byron, But, you know, run 10th on the last lap and what's wrong with that? What if that happens in San Diego? Are you going to be disappointed? I don't think that will happen in San Diego, but we have no clue. We've never ran there. SVG is going to drive through the smoke at the end of, you know, it's just like when you guys, when we felt like, at least from speaking from my standpoint, we felt like I could see you. You were doing magical things at this racetrack. Denny when he won a couple of the 500 you're like wow I can't believe the move he just made the way he set that up the way he slowed down the back stretch let those guys catch up you know it was like oh my gosh like there's you know there was less of the lottery ball aspect it felt like and recently it's felt like oh my gosh you know they're all coming down these guys dominate the race they all wreck somebody that's running you know seventh tenth whatever ends up winning it you're like okay how do I how do I wrap my head around this you know what I'm saying compared to what we used to see. I went to San Diego a couple weeks ago for a completely unrelated function, but I stayed in a hotel and was able to look out over this area where they're going to have the racetrack. It is going to be incredible. That is going to be a lot of fun. I am looking forward to that race. Luckily, I'll be part of the broadcast team at that point of the year. I'm also excited about Wilkesboro's Point Race. yeah falling you know that place i think we all we all have such short-term memory and we've kind of forgotten like how unlikely that was that was at one time yeah uh you know even myself i thought there's no way this place is ever coming back well that's why i thought you were gonna get mad that i had it at number 11 i thought it was great you you had it at 11 it was like a uh it was like a uh you know kind of a you know one of the one of the few you mentioned that didn't make the list, but I thought that was a high ranking at 11. It's first race back, and it made the list, and it's actually in the top 15. I think that's pretty good. I thought you were going to be like, this needs to be number, like, three. You had me wrong, Jeff. I know. You had me wrong, Jeff. Well, you brought it back. You were the one that did the weed whackers, and, you know, like, you saved it. I'm thankful and grateful that it's even on your list. Okay. Right? And so, you know, there's a couple other ones here. Talladega 2, Charlotte 2, Martinsville 2. I agree with all those. You had the 600, the Coke 609. Yeah. That race arguably has been the best race of the year for two years. I know, but I'm so anticipating like the fall oval race, for instance. Now the Roval's gone. It's going to be that time of year again. That freshness is going to be back for the Charlotte oval race. Are you worried that you're overhyping? or over-anticipating? Do you often find yourself being a little bit let down by your own expectations? Yes. Every week I do that, yes. That's how I live my life, over-hyping myself. Yeah. Was the Brickyard on the list at all? It was like number 10, I think. Number 10. That was, I think that should have been a little lower, actually, I think. I like, I'm a big fan of it. You like that? I'm a big fan of that one these days. I don't know why. It's just one of my highlights. I like the Brickyard. I do. but i mean when it came back from the road course i had it way higher because it's like oh finally it's back but you know it's just like it's just like with bowman gray i think i had i mean no i think i have bowman gray number 38 or something i mean 38 how long was this list 38 races 38 races because i was like well i was i was also really cranky because i did that list when i was sitting snowed in my house i couldn't tell you were and i'm like i'm not anticipating this why am i still here on a tuesday waiting for a wednesday you know i was grumpy that's not fair to bowman gray you made the list after all the weather they went through yeah it's true chicago land at number three um i'm really excited about that one uh that's a very worn out racetrack i mean imagine it's extremely abrasive now that's been sitting there with no racing uh there's a massive bump in the middle of three and four that's probably gonna be bone rattling when these guys go over it we're gonna have cars all over that racetrack trying to find grip that is going to be must-see, can't-miss racing in the NASCAR season. Yeah, I mean, it's a sister track to Kansas, and we've seen what Kansas has put out there with this car. So, I mean, I'm so glad we're going back there. Actually, I started to enjoy the Chicago street course and like that area, but I'm glad we're going back to Oval Racing over there. I thought the street course was fun for a couple years, and I'm fine with, like, going around and doing things like that, like the San Diego deal. I'm cool with, like, trying out some things like that And to know that there'll be probably two, three-year deals, that it's not going to be something that we're stuck with forever, is good. I'm good with that. And we heard Ben Kennedy say recently there are some ideas or conversations around some new venues. Is there any rumor to where we might be going next beyond San Diego? I was kind of surprised because, I mean, you heard the Brazil thing for a while for the clash, and I don't know if that kind of petered out. But I haven't really heard recently. I, I, that's why I was kind of putting up, you know, for a while we were doing, you know, really outside the box stuff. You know, we had the Mexico thing. We had the Cali Coliseum. Now we have the San Diego thing. That's why I put Chicago up high on the list. Cause I was like, man, the next gen car there. I mean, you thought the slide job thing was great with like, you don't even, you don't like that kind of racing. Don't even watch. Like that was pre next gen car. Yeah. Right. So now we're going to see the next gen there. Like, that's awesome. So I think that's – you can actually make some of these North Wilkesboro type decisions where you bring back these old tracks. And I'm pretty stoked about that. I don't even think you have to like create – like if they can – I wish they could bring Fontana back. Now it's warehouses. But if they had magically brought Fontana back, like can they bring Kentucky back? I don't know. Why would you want to bring Kentucky back? I don't know. The next gens never race there. The guy that wants to go to San Diego. We tried to put good races on there. It was hard. It's tough. Give the next gen a chance. That's all I'm saying. All right. We got one minute left. We're going back to Homestead at the end of the year. Where do we take that race next? They talked about it moving around. What are the other options outside of Homestead? I mean, Homestead seems to be a race favorite. I mean, okay, here's the thing. We talked about it moving around when it was the one race championship. Now that it's just the end of the chase, do we have to? Can we just keep it there? That was such a great championship venue for all those years. We all got used to it. And then it moves to Phoenix and you're like, all right, you know, okay. And, you know, now they finally agreed to move it around because it was the one race. But now it's not. So just keep it there. It's fine. Everybody liked that, I think. Have you gotten our Key West show approved yet? No, not yet. We'll talk about that. We've had a lot of fun sitting up here talking with you guys. It's been a lot of fun. We've got a crossover show coming up next, Dirty Mode Media, Sirius XM. All right, after that, we're going to have Sirius XM Speedway with Dave Booty. Stick around. Thank you all. thank you guys thank you check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok