Dale Jr. Download: Darrell Waltrip Nearly Replaced by an Olympic Gold Medalist?!

[Music] i was going to drive for roger penske so i go what year were you planning on doing that 1980. so i was going to drive for roger penske so i go to fly to new york get on he's not in the sport like he's sold his car he rodriguez he had the the matador yeah but he sold his team and then he was he had a car yeah dave marcus drove it and then then right he sold all his cars and everything to austerlin so he was coming back in so yeah you might be right you know you're a better historian than i am about some of those things but i'm going to drive for roger penske and i'm pretty excited about that so i go to rogers house in outside of new york i don't know where it was and we have lunch we eat it's okay kind of made a deal so we get back home and the next day roger calls me and said hey tear that deal up he said the deal's off i said what happened what's wrong he said bill gardner called me and bill garner said if i sign you to a contract and you drive my car neither one of us will be in racing anymore he was unhappy he wasn't happy about that at all you had a contract with him i had a contract with him oh that's for those contracts come on they're messing up everything but anyway so i i finished out the year in 1980 with uh with with dye guard and then i then you went to junior johnson yeah well ko yar bro i love kiel he kind of reminds me of robert g really but kale came to me in 1980 middle of the year maybe somewhere along the way he put his arm around me he said d.w i'm gonna tell you something i'm leaving juniors i said what he said i hadn't told anybody else you're the first person i've told when i'm leaving juniors i said you got to be out of your mind he just won three championships win every week he said i'm tired of racing every week i just want to cut back and we'll drive for m.c anderson he said but here's what i want to tell you junior johnson wants you to drive his car junior johnson wants me to drive his car i mean that was like flattering because when i was a kid growing up i was i listened to junior johnson on my transistor radio he drove that number three car that white chevrolet and he was he'd been to prison he's a moonshiner he lived in north carolina he lived in wilkesboro and he had the best car he had the best car in the sport and he wanted me to drive it well i was i just that that floored me well but hold on a second before we get there you you seem to know it ended badly with bill gardner but you wouldn't have been privy to the information about the contract so what was there was there a was there animosity so it was very public or something yeah very public so very um this is you can you can tell us you can br you can feel the gaps here but by the middle of the year in 1980 um you and uh bill are not communicating not at all you're basically uh i'm around you know i can't get out of this contract so i'm going to finish my season with this 88 car and then i'm i'm moving on bill gardner he couldn't have been maybe he was serious but because you say he doesn't know much about racing or didn't well he learned fast though he brings bruce jenner and a guy and someone else yeah i can't remember who else it was but he brought um he built he brings bruce jenner and uh someone else to the charlotte race yeah in nepal in the fall and has them interview bill and bruce and another athlete yeah i can't remember his indycar driver i forget who he was he they interve they interview bill and bruce jenner and some other athlete about he's like a athlete in another sport yeah and about driving this car yeah me daryl's leaving but look bruce jenner yeah bruce was an uh you know uh olympia oh yeah yeah yeah um he might drive my car next year you know dw's old news no no dwe's gonna be sitting in the grandstand yeah that's right yeah that was the that's what he held over my head that i had this contract it was irrevocable and and and you couldn't put a value on it when i would try to find out what i got to do to get out of this contract you can't get out of this contract you are a rare commodity and there's no way to put a value on this contract and so it took some finagling to finally get around to what it took to get out of that contract and my attorney ed silva and peter pinser was bill gardner's attorney and they were talking on the phone one day and ed's pretty shrewd and he was taping the conversation and he asked peter he said just hypothetically uh what would it take for dw to get out of that contract he said well he's got three years left it'd take a hundred thousand dollars a year at least that's all we needed i mean that was that was all we needed was a number so it was three hundred thousand dollars for me to get out of that contract and that's what you gave them that's what we gave them oh so i thought i assumed that your contract was going to run out of years oh no it was a multi-year deal i had just signed a new deal why did you do that well i was dumb i was really dumb i i i was sitting in the car somewhere i don't remember where i don't want a daytona day somewhere and they bring the contract to the car before the race you must have just qualified on the poll or something really good i was feeling good about great dude i'm feeling good about myself but i did learn one thing if somebody says in lieu of you better be sure you know what that means right you didn't know i found out right quick in lieu of they had paid me 40 in my expenses well my new contract i wanted 50 and my expenses well i got to 50 percent but it said in lieu of your expenses so i go to the shop like monday or tuesday after one the race he said where's your credit card i said that guy right here let me have it what do you want it for well we don't we're not paying your expenses anymore you're not why not he said well you you agreed to that i did well i didn't know i did i didn't i didn't know what in lieu of meant yeah so i got 50 but i lost my expenses which was pretty large at the time you guys have a an answer by in the booth on who's that leah brought up a social thing you could re read it uh this is from nascar man in october 1980 darrell waltrip announced he was leaving diego racing to replace him the owner sent telegrams containing offers to drivers like mario andretti f1 champ allen jones paul newman and bruce jenner yeah wow wow mario andretti yeah right paul newman bruce jenner who else what's oj simpson doing at the time yeah so it seemed like things were gone so um matthew brings up a good point the whole team was kind of busting up yeah um robert stuck around though didn't he he ends up he was the big he so robert yates is working on that car for years yeah and becomes the head engine guy yeah did you know robert yates was what he was oh well i met robert at juniors uh when i was buying used parts from junior junior running 500 miles then i'd buy them and try to run them 500 more miles sometime it did and sometimes it didn't but anyway so he was robert yates was working at juniors and i lured him away from juniors to come to dyguard to fix the motor issues you were having when crossing mario rossi we'd put an engine a car we'd run 10 laps it'd blow up almost every week same problem donnie had driving that car yeah and i'll never forget so we bought all these radios at 30 000 radios which a lot back in the day and bill gardner had a radio or a big headset on we ran about 10 laps and said blew up come he come down when the ratio went through the helmet and threw the radios and said i could have heard that over the pa system he said i didn't need no damn radio so anyway but yeah robert robert was robert was cool robert was one of the coolest did you know he was as good of a motor builder oh no i just knew he i just knew what he could do at juniors yeah i mean i knew he built some incredibly good engines i got to tell you this so the first time i go to martinsville junior's car and i and we're getting ready for the race and i said so what gear do y'all run up here 567. what there's no way you can run a 567 gear at martinsville if you have a 454 you can so so that was in an era remember when bobby uh protested richard and at charlotte motor speedway and richard for having a big motor and big motors were like pretty easy to get by with at that time how i they they this whole guy mr hyder i loved him to death but they pumped the same cylinder every week i mean he prescribed things but and that you know so they just paraffin in the cylinders or you know that cylinder would be right and the rest won't be wrong just just all kind of yeah tricky things that you could do because they knew that mr hire you're gonna do the same one because it's only get two real easy with the headers and everything yeah so that's how they ran the big motors and they ran them a lot oh yeah and a matter of fact they tried to run one well they did win they won in 80 what was that 83 when richard had the big motor at charlotte yes 83 and they caught him yeah mr hyder wasn't on the uh no no no on the business that i think that he got away with it but they put left barry dodson was the crew chief i think and they put left side tires on the right soft tires so they had the left tires on the on the right they knew that in victory lane and then i'll never forget uh chief uh yeah he's going down pit lane saying i'm claiming 383 right now 383. he said you don't have to tear it down it's a 383 and uh i'll never forget that of course that was another whole story but uh humpy wheeler called me i'd gone junior mate the junior would matter in hell yeah he made he he made us load the car and go home and he left early because richard blew by me and won the race you know and he could not understand how that could happen but he did and so i'm at the hotel and humpy wheeler calls me he says stand by you won this race i said yes i said he said richard had a big motor left side of all he told me all about i said gee i knew he was cheating i knew he had to be he couldn't drive by me like if he wasn't doing something so anyway they come on and and bill gasway i think was a might have been dick baity but one of those guys and they said they were going to let the wind stand and they were going to find him 30 thousand dollars well that's the difference between first and second if i win i would have gotten 30 000 more but i didn't i finished second so they took my thousand dollars and paid his fine with it yeah so anyway yeah that's another story so um the uh the 88 gatorade teams kind of crumbling apart yeah they've got it back together and bobby drives for him did you not tell bobby when he goes to drive for dieguard what he was getting himself into what was funny was so it was not tell bobby got fired before so we go to to the bank on monday morning with i had the 300 000 dollars which is you they're talking 1980 yeah 300 000 a lot of money so we go in we sit down we we sign all the papers and we get ready to leave and bill garcia whoa whoa whoa whoa you owe me 25 more thousand dollars i said for what said are you in the bush shoot are you in a bud shootout are you in the bush clash i said yeah he said well you'll probably win it and i want my half now so i had to give me twenty five thousand more dollars three hundred twenty five thousand on the assumption that you were gonna win and that was gonna be the purse which i did but he was right but i've never heard that i passed benny on that i passed benny on the last lap on the apron i've been he was hot i won that race anyway but when i got ready to leave wait a second though yeah keep going no when i got ready to leave well ricky rudd followed me and ricky rudd was sitting in a in the outside office there when i walked out and i said buddy you won't last two years with that crowd i said that you good luck and that was who took the car yeah i think he drove it one year maybe two or maybe yeah and then bobby got in the car they won the championship and gary nelson was a crew chief and bobby and i became big rivals and it was a mess bobby had the same sort of uh bad ending on you know he got when they brought sacks in trying to run a second car and bobby's like uh no i don't this ain't what we're doing no and uh he ended up getting pissed and yeah he did take it off yeah uh i'll never forget um gardner was shrewd i mean he was he was a businessman he was shrewd uh and so robert yates is the engine guy and they're buying all this equipment for barbara to have for his engine room and robert's got a really nice equipment really nice engine room and it's all at dyeguard and uh so the deal uh falls apart and robert's going to send every the movers over to get his equipment because they've been taking money from him every month or every so ever how often it was to pay for the equipment so robert had bought the equipment he owned it but when they went to shut the deal down the bank wouldn't let robert have his equipment because it was under it was under some big umbrella uh loan policy and so robert ended up with nothing and and that's when robert went and started 2018 wow with uh davey and and uh he and his son and you know they did really well yeah so um talking about uh bobby allison getting upset or getting frustrated with the sax car so you were also and dad certainly no none of y'all liked the idea of a two-car team oh no or a teammate why no cause like all of us i'll just say this like and you may have become this way over time but me and a lot of the guys that i race with like a teammates are a necessity teammates are you know you you lean on your teams and and and try to make yourself better by watching them yeah um but back then in the 80s yeah uh uh junior johnson's going to have a second car basically uh yeah yeah neal's going to be but y'all were more competitive with that team yeah than you were anybody else on the track well junior was terrible the neil bonnett and tim brewer would be down there and he'd go down there and rall them up and he'd come up here and rile me and hammon up you know that rivalry but he would route the two teams yeah he loved that yeah and what would he say to him oh he'd say neal's gonna kick your ass how you figure that so anyway that's kind of how it went you know and brewer you know how brewer was he's cocky anyway i got a brand new rolex got a pocket full of hundred dollar bill got a pair of rock ports i'm doing good shag carpet on the wall anyway don't you that's how old does it listen i like shag carpet but i never put it on the wall oh no that we used to get in those hotel rooms like the pocono particularly get a honeymoon suite and that shag carpet on the damn wall you know with a heart-shaped bathtub but anyway it was just it was just a it's just so different and and the reason we didn't like teammates because we didn't have enough parts oh like you'd have one set of cylinder heads or you'd have one crankshaft or you'd have the carburetor yeah i mean you had a carburetor you don't want the other guy to have it and so it was it wasn't like it is today where everything you know you build engines you guess he gets out everybody gets the same thing there wasn't any such thing at back in the day as everybody gets the same thing you had something special had a qualifying motor that was special well were we going to get another one and that's why nobody liked teammates you just didn't like sharing you had all these ideas and setups and things that you did and you don't want to share that with anybody you don't want them to know what you were doing you don't want them to be equal to you if you if you had an advantage some way you wanted to keep it how would that get resolved well it usually didn't okay but but rick rick was a first guy probably that i remember when i went to drive for rick in uh in 86 and he set us down he set me down he said now look you're going to have teammates that's the way we operate around here if you can't deal with that then you need to do something else but were you were you having to fight for parts at hendrick motorsports it was well by then things were starting to there started to be multiple you know the pistons were more the parts became more and more available it wasn't a premium back junior in the 70s and 80s uh the early part of the 80s i mean you you had things that were exclusively yours that you didn't want to let go of to let somebody else have that advantage so now there were times that at hendrick early on where the teammate stuff yo it was a problem that or i'd say rick had to get him on the floor what what was the nature of you yeah how were you and neil bonnett as far as the relationship then i mean competitive yes i i understand the teammate dynamic but neil bonnett seemed like to me what i've seen is the most likable guy out there is that wrong the best teammate you could have is that right he he didn't have any he was not he wasn't he didn't have a big ego um he was just a he liked to race he was a racer i won i mean we ran i won nashville uh in 85 i guess it was i think it was or 84. and he passed me on the last lap of the race you can't do that once you take the white flag the field is frozen and neal passed me on the last lap and came back ahead of me and they said he won the race and and and and this one junior now one thing about junior you didn't you know rules are rules and you play by the rules and that he was pretty strict about that but so they said no you got passed so neil won the race you ran second i said no way we're going to protest and dick beatty was a competition director then had the caution come out that was yeah here's what happened yeah here's what happened we're coming off a turn four okay i didn't i stayed out because i never i've had a second place car neil had the best car but they pitted they got two tires oh so i stayed out and so i got by some cars and there was a little gap between me and neal but he was going to win that race if the caution didn't come out but we're coming off turn four and the caution comes out so the white flag and the caution come out together we're not in the last lap we're coming to go into the last lap but we're not in the last lap and that's what beatty couldn't get through his head is that the caution came out but he didn't think about the white flag came out with it and so i was already crossed the line when the caution phrase is over and the race is over but then it was a big mess yeah so i that night we protested and we went through the rule book and everything and baby said i don't care what you say bonnet won the race and and junior don't care because he got both cards first and second why does he care i leave that next morning to go to milwaukee to run a bush race and i get to the airport and there's a damn caravan waiting for me and this nascar people they said look because i thought i'd sue y'all i said i got proof and what helped me that night was channel five hope hines my friend there had a cameraman on the flagstand with harold kender so they're filming the last few laps of that race and so you see me coming off turn four and you see the yellow flag and the white flag come out together and that's what made them change their mind or change that i did win that race evidence yeah so we had we had them we knew we had them i said i'm gonna sue you well there's three wrecks that hold coming to the white flag the tower was was confused because there was literally three different wrecks bobby allison tires blowing out people running over crap you know and crews are getting into what they do so that next day they said we're going to change it you won the race but don't say anything derogatory or don't say anything uh i had them all the time i knew i had this one in the back let us let us handle it we got you i don't care what you did as long as i get the trophy that's all i care so you just watched that video and i'm sure you enjoyed it well you need to listen 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Channel: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

Views: 517,659

Keywords: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Darrell Waltrip, NASCAR, Dale Jr. Download, Dale Jr., Dale Jr. podcast, Roger Penske

Id: zzyFKxUBGuw

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020