Driving Fast With Dale Jr. | I AM NASCAR w/Brandon Marshall, Chad Johnson & More

[Music] you obviously saw the bubba show yeah and uh this whole debate are you guys athletes or not yep [Music] when i heard that y'all wanted me to come on i was like well we've got to go around the racetrack first we got that's the first thing we got to do but i thought it'd be great to go out there this is a really really good car and you guys can feel the g's and feel the grip and feel the you know hear the sounds the smells and all the things and just at least walk away with a good experience all right well i'm gonna go first because you told me earlier that that's when you warm up the car and then we're not gonna hit 180 today each run i should get a little quicker all right i get a little braver each run yeah oh you got to climb in now open the door oh yeah and then sit on the door and then throw the next leg in and just slide down in there like you like your foot in the shoes he looks so nervous he's scared he's getting real i'm scared for real push through get in there man there he goes there you go here we go hell no i can't do it all right give me hold on there i'm sorry i'm embarrassed right now brandon it's gonna be all right you want some water huh you want water hold on give me 10 seconds oh no water don't pass it don't pacify him two laps dale okay all right it's all fun to the rabbit got the gun you are a grown man shut your ass up [Music] we started from the bottom but we made the top [Applause] [Laughter] oh my goodness that's insane i get it i get it now all right let me out i get it now how you feeling b it's like the snake when we had tarzan on and i overcame that fear i feel good about it just tackle it thanks dale your leg shaky no no i was once i got in i was good i used my little exercises how fred's next yeah freddie you up right that sounds good left foot in here i can help you hey dale how fast did we hit one uh 160 maybe 160 i'm sure [Music] we've been here before [Music] look at my head let's go damn no helmet [Music] is it bad huh is it bad no i didn't feel it until the second lap oh yeah scary one more left with the windows down let's go please ah yeah yo that was beautiful on my shoes on the on the back end i told her you got got it you got to chill [Laughter] he want to mess up his his forces he had the crispy forces on see that's a black thing if you don't know that right like you get brand new shoes you don't want to crease the top you familiar with it they still clean though this is something that i can't say that you're an athlete when i see that on espn which is a sports avenue i'm like uh i don't know if that's a sport dale 2016 martinsville get back in that mode with chan okay give it to him let's get it there we're men in here now that's right that's what he's doing right now gracious hey are they are they athletes now they're hella five drivers [Laughter] you're right that corner right there yeah your head you lose your head right i'll be leaning i'll be leaning i'm leaning over there by dale man you too close to this wall buddy you know we go so fast i couldn't even tell when we were passing you guys right yeah i don't know about athletics it's impressive almost happening oh i'm almost there [Music] [Music] is [Music] so we're here at charlotte motor speedway and um we got in the car we have bubba on and this full said that you guys aren't athletes i feel like you owe dale now and every driver in all of nascar and apology because what i experienced today was real yes i will say it is a hard skill set sure that's what i would say the athletic part the physical you know pulling it out of you i can't go all the way to athlete dale but i will say to drive that car as fast as you do into those turns and around this track was amazing to be a part of so i would i would take the i would take the respect level up a couple notches i i didn't think that i was going to change your mind with what we did today but i don't know that we're like full-fledged athletes like you see in in college nfl baseball like a stick and ball sport athlete is we definitely don't use our bodies the same way but i also look at the nfl and there's guys that are more athletic physically gifted right than than some guys and i kind of see it that way because there's some guys in our sport that take their health really seriously run triathlons and marathons and and do things that really probably are unnecessary but they're just competitive and then there's some guys that don't take their health serious at all so it is hard when you see those guys get out with the big bellies and stuff and say yeah we're athletes man look at all look at all of us because some of us don't look like athletes but by definition because these guys like to be black and white a lot of the time right so by definition you're an athlete we you you went and you defined it right you looked it up yes and you're proficient at your physical activity yeah which is racing so you are by definition an athlete now we have to question whether you're athletic sure there's there's a difference and i think that's what channing should have said when but in the bubba episode well you can question that like golfers they question all the time are golfers athletic i know some that are they're very athletic but also i know that they're athletes so you guys athlete in my opinion athletic i i don't know i have to see do something i think that's a great way i think that's a great way to put it someone is athletic there's a specific skill that they're really good at yeah there's a specific skill i think it's multiple skills they're multiple skills you have to be good at to be going 190 and all left like you say you know you got to be strategic you don't just go out and just drive you know there's a certain mental capacity it takes to be able to do what they do with other people out here driving with them for me when we hit that um first turn and i saw your hands you know because when we drive it's like we're here relax right you know so you would think okay they're just going left in here i saw your hands just on it going 180 miles per hour 160 for me 160 miles per hour probably and and just like feeling like any second this driver this car can go out it can be out of control and i was like wow that's amazing that's when it hit that's when it hit for me we'll go to some we'll go to atlanta for example and that's typically early in the season you're not in like racing shape or or your mind you because you got to relax you got to relax your hands and when we go to atlanta we'll go out on the track and it's super fast and there's a lot of grip and it's really scary and nerve-wracking and the first 10 laps of practice i'll grip the wheel so hard that your hands are cramping and hurting up hurting real bad and you have to remind yourself to relax because you can just expend so much energy unnecessarily in a short period of time and you have to race for four hours right you have to hold the wheel just really carefully and not not grab it as hard as you can and uh so aft after like a few weeks you sort of your body gets used to it and your mind you get used to the heat the heat's the worst thing you know bubba talked about it with you guys 150 degrees in some of the most worst case scenarios it's really about an average of 120 125 degrees and we sweat a lot and just lose a lot of water weight you don't have to physically be strong because the car's got power steering but your back has to be strong you're using back muscles to hold yourself up in the seat and doing things like that that have to kind of be be tough and and deal with all that but it's all about nutrition hydration a lot of guys will run ride bikes and stuff like that to get themselves sorted in that endurance mode because it is an endurance deal but physical strength i've never lifted i never was regular in the gym right i was i would either run or bike and just have try to put myself in conditions where heat was a problem to try to get used to that what made you the best a lot of things i think play into a guy being great there's a thing that you're born with it's a it factor raw speed is what i like to call it you got when you i can you can see it in these young guys you'll put them in anything with wheels and they figure out how to make it go fast and some guys learn that and acquire that ability over time and then there's some guys that just have it they just they just no it's a like when we're driving around a track you could feel i don't know if you could feel in the in the seat of your pants the grip of the car how much we had how much might have been left guys can sense that really fast some guys that have that gift and they're they're the magical ones they're the special ones that that you just know are going to be superstars and there's only a couple that come along every sort of generation that become the superstar that have the pull the whole package like the mental side off the track keep themselves out of trouble uh stay focused uh in in their personal life uh the professional life they can do it all right and they know how to market themselves too because this is such an important part of our sport everything we got it's got patches and associated to some corporate entity and so the marketing side of that you have to embrace it a lot of guys myself included when i came into the sport i was like i don't want to do that i don't care about that i just want race i hate doing the sponsor appearances i hate gripping and grinning and and making people happy i just want to race but that's such an important part even more so now because that spark when did it turn into a flame the the seniors say hey oh man let's go when i was 13 years old my dad was really focused on his own career he wasn't like gonna go out in the yard and and and play with me on a go-kart he wasn't going to do that kind of thing with me he'd come home he'd go to work on the he'd go to work at the shop in the morning and he'd come home at nine o'clock at night and sit down sit on his recliner pop that thing back and be asleep in 20 seconds and so i didn't have a lot of time to you know pick his ear and say hey what do i need to do what should i be helping you know how do i get where i want to go 13 years old i remember sitting on the couch uh and he's he pops in that recliner nine o'clock at night and i was like dad i'm 13 and i can't i can't wait anymore i don't it's driving me crazy i want to race so bad i can't stand it i don't know what to do and you don't seem to get it like you don't seem to understand how bad i want to do this and i was really i might not have outwardly exuded that energy to him right he probably looked at me and went i had no clue because i was i just didn't release i was short and and just quiet and shy in the 80s you know the feeling or the idea was you had to have a driver's license to race anything it's changed got kids doing it now but back when i was trying to get into it i thought i was going to have to wait till i was 16. i was freaking out because i couldn't wait i couldn't wait and one day i came into uh the shop and he threw a newspaper down on the table and there was a sports page from the charlotte observer that was talking about this new series and you could basically take a car off the street and put a roll cage in it and race it and he said you should figure out how to do this and so it took a couple hundred bucks i had me a car and we went we and my brother went and started racing and that's so he said you figure it out if you want it you figured yeah he wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna build the car the only thing he did literally the only thing he did with his hands was make sure it was safe right i wasn't going to get hurt the road cage was in it right the belts were mounted right and everything like that but he was like here's a series you and your brother can get in today so i needed a roll cage so i went to a race shop that had a car that was destroyed but the roll cage in the center part like where we set is good so we cut that off we cut the roof off of 79 monte carlo stuck the roll cage in it weld the roof back on it took the motor out we rebuilt the motor it wasn't it was like a 283 little small motor wasn't going to do nothing but we wanted to go out and learn we didn't need the fastest car right away we just needed to go out there and figure it out and so we went out there we blew that motor all the pieces in the first race broke the cam in three places and we had a blast me and my brother my brother i was 15 or 16 my brother was older than me and had kids and he had his boys on the weekend on every other weekend so i had i'd drive it when he had his boys and when he didn't have his boys he would drive it so we alternated in the car in and out until we finally built the second one halfway through the year but i had a go-kart i sold it for 500 bucks me and my brother carrie went to a junkyard and pulled that 79 monte carlo out there we went to a gas station and got 100 bucks we went to a hardy's and got 500 and put them on the hood we went to a junkyard i know a man in the junkyard was going to need parts was going to bend the front suspension and break things on the car so i went to the junkyard and got put that guy's name on the back of the car wow so i could go into his junkyard and get parts when i needed them so we really did like you made from this ourselves we say you built it from the mud from the mud yes you got it but that's the conversation we had a couple weeks ago on our show where you said look i'm not going to push my kids into anything they're they'll show you what they want and then that's when right you said they'll just do it yeah it's the passion sometimes when they already have that it factor you don't have to push and it's funny the first thing he says yes is that it factor right like sometimes your child already has it you don't have to push and chan to your case those that do push and try to live through their kids because they weren't able to make it in whatever they their dream of passion might have been forcing their what what are they the parents that do that losers if you try to live through your pet your kids you're a loser and i said the rest of my life i got two little girls and i don't know what they're going to want to do i'm a new dad i'm figuring this out every day but i i kind of feel like you said fred where you let them show you what they want to do what their interest is and because if my girls want to race that's going to be hard just the girls right it's a hard it it's difficult right um and so but if they want to do it i'm going to go go with them and try to make sure you say that too you expose them to is it is it still difficult even during these times now wouldn't it be even easier now for them it's certainly gotten easier um my you know my sister i used when i started racing my sister started racing it was hard she finally quit because of how difficult it was emotionally on her and i mean i've been at the track with her practicing and her breakdown because she's getting pushed around or she just was having a hard time feeling accepted feeling like she belonged there and so you know since there's a lot of time that's passed danica's came through changed a lot of people's perspective about it she showed she showed natural ability and and showed that in the proper situation she could do well and so i think you know my girls got a long time for for that opportunity ever would come but i'm sure it'll be even even easier then but it still won't be as easy as i'd like it to be you speak of danica when she came in um a lot of stigma around steel you know i didn't know your sister kelly um she actually was in the sport and in race um but because of that experience of what you saw your sister go through was there ever was there anything you did it was like i'm going to help danica did you ever go out your way to say you know what i support you i'm with you or was it always i'm gonna kick your ass cause you're now you're a driver just like i am so dana could race for us so she was our driver and i think that danica would say that some of her best years in a stock car were in races she ran for us she had really good performances she had a great relationship with her crew chief tony junior he was my cousin i feel like that we gave her a really great opportunity to succeed and and i feel like she did you know she eventually graduated into the cup series drove for somebody else right and so i think that she ran great in our cars as good as every other guy in our cars was running so was it you was it you or kelly that stood on the table for danica to join your team i was about it because i was a big i'd watched danica race before she got to indy and so i wanted her to succeed i wanted her to be a big deal and time out go back what's indy like we're learning i mean ocho he see he seemed like an expert so you got a lot of people watching this we don't know teach us educators you know so danica's racing origins were in open-wheel cars like the indy 500 she was creating a buzz you know before when she was working her way up through the ranks and so i'm i'm like man she's marketable she's she's good she's fast i hope i hope this continues she goes into the indie series the top open wheel series she won a race in japan she she ran really good at indy 500 a couple times and then she tried to come to nascar and then she so she came to drive for my team that's a hard change of from one to it's like it's like i guess maybe going from football to try to become a great at baseball right it takes a whole whole different you know skill level and so she a lot of guys almost all of them that tried to transfer from indy to nascar fail and they all do and and most the guys that go from stock cars to the open wheel cars typically fail that leading up to my next question i'm glad you just said that so just curious hypothetically speaking if you were to take lewis hamilton and put him in the right situation the right team do you still think the results would be the same in the the difference from f1 to nascar if lewis came to drive our car yeah just in general he's elite right he's like that he's that one percent one yeah he's that one of a kind guy what what what makes a driver elite he's my guy magic man he's got a magic magic so i would guess it's like uh you just see a gift like you know you know you guys see it on the field when you watch a guy play a running back like patrick mcholmes patrick mahomes you talked about it today playing chess five you're looking five steps ahead you know what's getting ready to happen before the next guy does and you you know how you got to apply yourself in the gym doing studying watching film drivers watch film we never watch film we draw each film now all of them watch watch themselves watch last year's race all the drivers want to know the strategy and what might come and what might not come and so he's the kind of guy that applies himself across the board plus he has the factor that raw speed so i think he would figure it out what i saw when i came on your campus today and i mean you have cars everywhere just you know offices all these people you know production company and i learned you have 14 companies and um you know even when you look at the car if i'm saying this the racing company got four drivers running the xfinity series how do you keep all that together and people like you you know you got people here that you trust to help you move this around right and go places and and it's going to be right it's going to be done first class your editor guys are going to kick butt you know you you put people in position like my sister now i should give her a ton of credit because she deserves it she's the brains she is the one that understands the budget like where we are financially as a race team she helps me understand what are good opportunities for me in the business world um and you put certain people in control of each you know entity and each objective you know and and allow them to be creative and and come up with amazing ideas and and try to steer this project in the right direction right and some of them fail some of them don't i used to say that when i was trying to get going and racing when i was trying when i just started racing i used to say i want to find my foreman grill you know george foreman had the grill and i'm like everybody wants that form and grill i want my farm and grill right and so i was going to go out there and if it sounded like a good deal or a good partnership to be in i was going to see if it stuck no matter what the business was if it made sense if it was connected to my brand and so we've we tried a lot of different things and had success in some areas and learn some hard mistakes and hard lessons in others and you just keep keep going back until you find something that works and and hopefully it's more than one thing right hopefully it's multiple things right and that's one of the things i've learned early on in my business career is people process and then the product does does polling really matter depending on the car you have the sitting on the pole bro you speaking like you a driver like you still i don't know what poland is can you placing where you start does it really matter depending on the car you have i don't you know i never put a lot of stock in where i qualified for a race every race uh since cove and things have changed a little bit but typically on a race weekend there's some practice then we're going to qualify that's going to set the lineup where you're going to start and you're going to go out and run the race i never really put a lot of stock in it because it's a 500 mile typically a 500 mile race a lot of time to figure out how to get yourself toward the front if you qualified in the back you just i sometimes i even like qualifying back there because i i love to move forward i never really loved qualifying on the fro on the front row because you got all those guys behind you the pressure right you can feel that energy they're chasing you man and and you've got to keep you start there so you got to keep them there the whole time you got to keep them behind you the whole time when you start in the back you you get the you get to enjoy sort of working your way toward the front and and climbing a mountain if you will and and i always enjoyed that with you coming behind your father being the michael jordan whatever name you want to put out there sports we call them haters yeah did anybody hate on you saying oh that's just dale's boy they didn't really believe in you absolutely i mean all the way to the very end even today yeah i mean i don't know if any of you guys had a father that excelled at something i mean he won seven championships and he won you know 80 80 races 70-some races when i started i wanted to pay my power bill my phone bill i wanted to i wanted to do this for a living right i didn't want to work i didn't set these like i'm going to be a champion i'm going to be i'm going to win 50 races i just wanted to make it and i kept on thinking about like if i ran a race i would go all right did i make it did that race prove that i belong here when when will i feel comfortable like i'm gonna be able to hold on to this position i have in the sport for as long as i want so i can make a living here and that was really all i wanted to do and my dad he was this massive thing to a lot of people and growing up watching that it was awesome right he was he my dad was a superhero in my eyes and i watched people adore him and and and want to want to want to make contact with him and want to be around him and i thought man that's awesome i it made me look at him like this incredible thing but then when i tried to compete i knew i wasn't going to do what he did i just knew i wasn't going to do it he was a once in a generational kind of guy and only richard petty had won seven titles and he come along and did it and since then only one other guy's ever done that jimmy johnson i just knew i wasn't gonna measure up as hard as i tried and he was an intimidator he was the man in black he was he was he he scared people he you know people said you don't want him on your bumper you don't want to see him in your mirror and he played up to that that was his personality he was the villain he was a little bit a little bit yeah but can i read something yeah to you yeah all right um since we're talking about pops daytona 2001. when i realized that dad was gone there was a noise coming out of me that i can't recreate it was just like a below of shock and sorrow and fear i went back in the bus in my room and i shut the door to my bedroom and just sat there and i thought to myself in that very moment i was like i'm going to have to do this by myself the rest of my life he was like having a dad like a cheat sheet having dad was like knowing all the answers to everything and i was like man i'm going to have to do this without him for the rest of my life yeah that's what it was like you would call him and be like i can't figure this out and he would just be like silly it's simple man fix this is how you do this this is how this is what you need to do this is how you he knew how to treat people he knew how to he just did everything right in my eyes and then and i thought we were going to do this together right and i was racing with for him i drove his car he owned my car i was racing for him and i was winning we were celebrating we become we got tight we weren't real tight for a long time and so when i lost him man it was like this i thought i was on this path that was going to be just this linear smooth ascension to something great and i thought now i'm not sure you know what i'm gonna do i could screw this up right i don't i don't know that i have the wisdom and and the ability to to do what he did so daytona 2001 got michael waltrip and you battling out pops is behind you was he pushing you he was just sitting back there just kind of watching me and michael so you guys take it and it's the last lap yeah when did it really hit you so we were step back to before the race dad says to me and michael michael's my teammate i drive uh i drive dad's car and michael's my teammate and those are dad's car he just started this business he just started this race team right this is his baby this is going it's gonna be his future he's got a couple more years and he's gonna retire and he told us before the razor said if we all work together and help each other one of us can win and i'm young and i'm like i don't know that's a silly idea i'm a win it's going to be because of something i did right nothing y'all did and so yeah but we're running all day long and and it's a it's a 500-mile race at daytona it takes forever it feels like it feels like it's six hours but we're sitting there running and it comes down to the last lap and i didn't have any there was nothing i was going to be able to do in that last lap to pass michael he was just too fast but i was and i was pretty comfortable that i was going to run second i didn't know where things were going to net out for dad he had a lot of guys nipping at his heels and and trying to get around him and uh i just looked in the mirror and saw him crash and him in another car and and we were driving away from that accident right and it's you know in the mirror just getting smaller and i thought i just had a sense that that just it what usually when we crash we just go get another car we bring two to every race so if we tear one up we'll just pull out that other car let's just get that other car out let's go and if we crash in a race we just get out and go home but i just thought in my head for a second i was like this is weird this don't feel right and so we come around after the race is over we got to drive back around the track one time to come down to pits and i seen his car sitting there in the grass and all the ambulances and the trucks around it and the steam and the smoke and and just the the picture didn't look good and so i was like i'm gonna get out of this car when i get to pit road i'm gonna climb out and i'm going to the infield care center because that's where they're gonna take him if he's you know they're gonna make him get an ambulance and they're gonna bring in the infield care center and i'm gonna go there and see him and so the other guy in this crash was uh kenny schroeder he's a good friend of our good friend of us so we i know kenny and so i'm walking into the infield care center trying to find which room they got daddy in these tiny little rooms and i walked by one and kenny's sitting in that room and they're looking at checking him out and he just looked at me and i just knew when he looked at me i was like because he looked in the car when they when he got out he went looking dad's car and he saw dad and he saw what dad was going through and and things weren't good for my dad in that moment and so when i locked eyes with kenny i was like he knows what's up and so i think i i think i jumped in a car they said they taken him straight to the hospital and i jumped in a car and i went to the hospital and i got out of high i got out of the car and i walked in to what you know the emergency entrance you know just a big but busy space and and i was just like trying to figure out where to go to get to him and i turned i mean the first room on the left is the emergency room and i turned in there and looked and they were there was 20 like a 20 people over the top of him working on him and it was not it was just i just exploded this noise just comes out of you all this pain and just sadness just it just and i returned and ran the other direction to the first person i recognized which was a guy named j.r rhodes who was a pr guy and i just grabbed him and i just screamed or whatever you know that noise is and i ain't never cried about my daddy since i just whatever come out of me in that moment you can't control it and me i went i went back to the track when we knew he was gone i went back to the track and i sat in my bus all the drivers said all the all the drivers traveled to the track and stay in these buses in this bus lot together it was like this tight community and that's when i realized i was like my daddy ain't here wow i was like i don't i don't know what i'm gonna do five months later you were back in daytona for the pepsi right 400. and you you won those emotions and then three years after that you won the big one yeah 500. can you explain daytona the whole the whole thing like my dad won 36 races at daytona and when he would he was good and he when he was there when he was there that was his place everybody knew it and he just would make people look silly and so i wanted to add to like i said before i wasn't gonna be who he was i didn't act like him i didn't have that personality i wasn't intimidating i had i had to strategize i had to be smooth and i had a different way of trying to succeed i knew i wasn't going to measure him i just wanted to add to that legacy i knew i could do that right so i go to daytona and i'm going to add to this win total they're going to that's for the haters yeah instead of dylan hart has 36 wins they're going to say the earnhardt's have 52 wins you know i'm gonna keep on i'm going to he'll match him but i'm going to add to it and they're going to remember my part right and what i'm going to do is going to make him proud you know what i'm saying so i would go there with with like i'm going to win one i'm i'm gonna get i'm gonna put another mark down this weekend you know and we do out he had the same sort of attitude about talladega they're very similar tracks daytona talladega two two and a half mile wide open drafting and all that and me and him just could get it done at them two places what at what point you know what i like about this because in all of our careers there's a moment when you realize you finally arrived oh i got it right you know fred i know you chan i know you had that i'm so once you made it it might have been your second year your third year your third year is really your cutthroat either you gotta you don't at what point in your career we know how to we know how it started yeah we know how it ended but at what moment what when in the middle of your career we like i finally arrived i think the daytona 500 win in 2004 you that's our super bowl i know it doesn't make any sense why we would feel that way about it because it's the first race of the year not the last race of the year but there's just so much this is a dog like it's just we start working on those cars months in advance every other race it's weeks to get a car ready to run here they'll put weeks into that car for daytona we put months into that one car and we take we massage on it and and and just try to make it as good as we can and you go there you you qualify you just want to win you go when you win you're gonna they're gonna celebrate you you're gonna do a week and a half two weeks of media everybody wants to win that race and so and dad tried to win it for 20 years and finally did right at the end of his career in 1998. he'd come so close so many times it was it was awful but i wanted an o4 it was my fifth full-time season and i was so relieved that i didn't have to chase that for 20 years because he he was miserable trying to fix figure that out because he had a he was leading in 1990 led every lap nobody could touch him and ran over a piece of metal and turned three on the last lap turn three over here right so the checkered flag's right here his dream chair wow and he runs out of gas over there or run over something and flatten his tire and lost wow and i mean he he had come that close to winning that race multiple times like that and had something weird happen at the end and finally he wins it and it's like his greatest accomplishment and so in his mind he's like out on top of the car like finally and so i wanted to win that race and and uh when i wanted to know ford i was like they can't i know it sounds so cliche but they can't take that from you like nobody can say they can say man you weren't good at this or you weren't great at this but they can't say you went you didn't win the daytona 500 they can't say you couldn't not once right twice yeah ten years later they definitely can't say it that's amazing wow you spoke to speak about the earnhardt legacy like my wife when i said i'm coming to ride with daryl he was like i know that name like it's just that legacy but racing took your father from you did like did that change any way you felt right were you fearful to get in the car after like what did that do you know mentally to you so my i talked about you know how dad loved daytona the the track you know and racing there when he died there i thought man i might hate this place i might never want to come here again i got to because if i want to race i got it's on the schedule no way around it we came back for that july race that we won there was a weekend off before the race i got i filled my suburban up with some buddies and we drove down there uh way ahead of the event and we drove to the track from charlotte about eight hour trip and pulled into the track and drove around it and i drove over to turn three where dad's car came to rest after the crash and stopped and got out and i stood there and i like had i was it was like a moment to see how i would react to being there and to make sure okay i didn't want to do this when it was time to practice right i didn't want to show up and have to get in my car and have a reaction that wasn't favorable or something i couldn't help i i went with my friends we got out i just we didn't talk i just stood there i made sure that this was going to be good i wasn't going to have no problem my beef wasn't with daytona my problem wasn't with daytona right yeah and in that moment we sort of shook hands and and then we came back that like couple days later and kicked us killed him but in a sense that's why in my mind by definition and by mindset and just that that mentality like you said that's your super bowl yeah you know and you went in there we go in games before big games we go in the stadium and we say all right yeah we look around it's time to it's time to get it yeah you know what i'm saying like nothing's gonna stop me yeah i've had those i've had those moments every every few times every once in a while you just and you don't i don't know when i didn't know when they were gonna happen right you just show up and and i don't you heading there you're heading to the track it don't feel different than any other weekend but for some reason you walk in you're like i feel good this is going to be a good one let me tell you what what what did what it did for me i would just start crying really i don't know where the tears come from but every time i cried before a game and i didn't do it on purpose i had 150 or better mm-hmm my coach said freddie gonna cry today i don't know it just happened we didn't have so many conversations on this show about crying and opening up and you ain't crying yet and you cried on the field i never i i can't make it happen yeah y'all cry because y'all just want to hug friends like you don't know dale you like food yeah i like food so you know you know when we home chef nancy take care of us and then we also have you know um our our substitute chef chef lo comes in he takes care of all of our athletes so we have some food i feel like you guys took care of us there so we got chef lo coming in with some oh okay you know chef lo i don't i'm gonna introduce you to chef lo this chef low what's up what's up what's up dad how are you i'm good i know y'all i'll get y'all check y'all in a minute get a little boy sweatin dude's gonna love it well i put my foot in it you know what i'm saying um it's so you know it's all about the food and the science with me that's i grew up in bermuda so we're big fans of you growing up yes sir we get a shot all right um hold on here i hold that we're in dale time we're gonna do it like we got a cookout ain't no fancy stuff i got some paper yeah paper plated paper plates don't i didn't need him bro my mom gonna be mad about this i took these from the floats why are you sweating chef in every show you sweat what's going on man you know it get hot in there and and but really if i should say it it's always been hot where i was from so um when i put my heart into the food the food give it to the to the heart no heart give it back okay so we got a little steaks right here my goodness you see that right yes everything's good and not only did i flip it i flipped it twice so uh don't sweat on the stakes like i said how many times you flip it i don't really know what to do with my hands i saw ricky bobby do this give him a plate or two and a napkin i don't know if you've seen me i'm going to have a new show it's going to be kicking it with chef lu yeah you can find it on netflix and hulu so you sweat thank you chef all right thank you tell us about chef lowe i'm sorry i'm sorry i'll just show you what it was that's lobster mac um steak i thought you was gonna figure it out but my fault no that's good i got it figured out lost the mag steak the forks are a little dull but you'll get through how i was in racing like how many race how many race car drivers are really like set for life basically he's asking you how many of the guys got that you money it's a good one at the end of the day no no like danny he has a team he has it you know yeah then he has that kind of money for sure he's had that for a long time or he's already had that attitude before he got the money though but uh to be honest he would agree our sport exploded in the 2000s and it was so much money souvenirs and drivers got paid souvenir you know for a hat getting sold driver got a good percentage of that money and that was the diecast like the car the cars that stuff was going flying off the shelves and i was right in the middle of that but it's not quite like that anymore the sails are good but the the drivers aren't thrilled about them it's hard for me to know what a driver is making today nascar has made changed the rules to where they don't tell anyone what a guy wins they used to talk you know they used to do hey that's a million dollar race it's gonna pay 200 000 if you win it they would use that to make it sound bigger right and get people excited well they don't publish that information anymore so a driver can either say i want a base uh pay me x amount of dollars oh wow and no matter what i win or lose i want to make this base or a driver can take a big percentage of the winnings and no base and that's the gamble i so i stay right there what type of driver are you yeah yeah what are you going to do and let's go around see what what everybody would do go ahead i tried both i like the bass you like the bass oh you conservative no so the bass well the bass was good gonna be there the first of every month i like it i'm gonna tell i'm gonna take i'm gonna take the bass too you gonna take the bass because sponsorship endorsements yeah i make up for the rest on the back end yeah that's true too i had i had good endorsements just thinking about it like that expect i already i know all your endorsements i'm not gonna go there but you was lit you was litty he was making money dad was making money he's being humble right now but i don't want to well i went to his city today oh my gosh so yeah that thing was an empire yeah i didn't get to see it you're taking the basic space what you doing freaky fred it all depends it depends on what the base is you can't just give me anything let me say say you're a top six driver you're going to get paid as much as you know those you're in that top six right so you know if i take the base i'm getting paid as much as this guy one of the best guys right that was where i was at so it was easy for me to take the base if i wasn't if if you if if the world didn't view me as a top guy i would probably take the gamble of making my money on the purse because i'm gonna go out there and i'm gonna win i'm gonna win that money right i'm gonna get it i tried that and i've i you know i came in low i missed it and i you know i've had it work for me taking the base to me is a safe bet right so that's like that's almost equivalent to the franchise tag for us yeah in nfl right you're going to get an average of you know the top guys at your position right right so for me i would have to say well for us though with the franchise tag you don't have a say in it they just slap it you're good you're gonna get whatever but it's it's a lie but isn't it pretty top three in at that position it's a lot of money but but after that you like your leverage is out the door because it's one to one year you don't have the opportunity to try to negotiate the deal even beyond that's pretty much the team that's going to come in and say look it it benefits us more to pay you as a franchise uh uh they'll slap the franchise tag on you then they tend to then to extend you long term but it's two ways though you know some sometimes to buy the team more time to negotiate yeah they'll slap the franchise tag on you yeah sometimes to me all they're saying is you know we don't think you're worth the money that you demand or worse because injuries it's not it's not guaranteed then you have the the injury part of it because it's football it is what it is and it's a young man's game so if you go out there you know you have you don't take it you get injured next man up you know but it all depends on if you said the top five or six i'll probably take the base see if i can find a way to work in some bonuses yes well i wonder i say switching gears that's my friend my friends that got that from brandon you didn't you brought up your daughters you have young daughters you didn't get married to what 40 something yeah 43. okay we had a few you are a good man well we've had a discussion on the show about relationships and focus and all the different ways were you partying and enjoying yes your life or were you wide open he said wide open on the back stretch like what type of what type of wild opinion i yeah you got to be you got to clarify because his freaky friend so our thing what what what was what our thing was was who was our my friend my friends my group your amigos name them name the friends ah man the squad just saved my squad my posse we would call ourselves the dirty mo posse that's where we were with dirty mo posse yeah so mooresville is the town that we are all from and that's what we called mooresville in high school everybody in high school called it dirty mode you know that was the nickname for it and that's what dirty mode media right that we do our podcast right that's where all that came from i even got a i've even got branded with a dmp no you didn't long time ago i love it no i gotta see that oh we ain't gonna see this that was like four in the morning about 12 hours of rebel vodkas and wow just bad decisions yes sir but i mean yeah we would we race you come off of that you come off of that adrenaline you get out of the car and you're not going to calm down and and relax you're going to run that adrenaline is going to run all night and so we'd go home and drink beer and listen to music and just stay up and and get out everything out your system and then i might go out tuesday i might go out wednesday and then i'd shut it off and i'd start you sure about that every time i can i i don't know i don't know how to prove it or convince you but i was i didn't like being foggy or hungover in a car right right cause i felt i i've i felt guilt with my team my crew chief because they can smell they can sense they know you and they'll be able to tell like yeah you're not you're not here a little banged up so yeah but i'd run as hard as i could run so tuesday wednesday like sunday night monday night tuesday night maybe wednesday so it's thursday practice no here's the back story he's not giving it to you straight what he's not you're not giving it to him straight come on i did my little research first kelly his c kelly is his sister is significant played a significant role in your life because pops was on the road okay pop's on the road and so can pretty much say she almost raised jewish yeah right sure yeah and she she really like runs the damn they have 14 companies but we'll talk about that next so anyways he goes to kelly and he says i want to build a treehouse so he wanted to he bought this property he wanted to build a treehouse so they can party and kelly looks at his ass cause you know she's the business right she's like you guys are gonna fall off the tree house that's not a good idea he's like okay so then he built this city in this city it's almost like i mean what would you call like a museum it's just it's amazing now but it started because you wanted to party yeah we wanted somewhere so my house didn't get toilet i like it so i was uh i was more focused on partying at times you know my sponsor was budweiser like my car was red with budweiser on it i was the budweiser guy so you lived the brand so they and they were like have fun right do do that we want you to drink our product people know that you love it and enjoy it and you know they they were involved in everything sports wise we go into boxing matches and and anything else you want to go to and and just live in it you know from like 2001 to 2006 it was just fun you see that you see the difference i told justin yeah just nately we talked about his diet and nutrition the discipline that he has and i told him you're alive but you're not living you live yes that's a little bit that's for sure that's what i mean yeah you literally i got no regrets we all play in the league we're just married guys now but back in our younger days yeah i'll say the league comes with perks are there nascar groupies like how's the women like do they look like the wife in talladega nights do they really look like her it's different it used to be that way it looks different to me today than it did than it did years ago from the sideline yeah everything looks different well most of the drivers are in relationships or married raising kids 10 years ago there's a lot of young single guys like myself yeah you know and we've we would run into each other at the bar and we were competitive there just like we were on the track and everybody had their little clicks that they ran in and everybody kind of you know use a little abrasive with each little click and these guys they they talk bad about me or i heard this guy talk bad about you and we were immature in the nightclub world just like we were on the racetrack like i said man our sport blew up in the 2000s and it was popular and in this area charlotte and in and around here where i mean 95 of the drivers live here wow you know most of the race teams are here all the industry is mainly here all the all the crew guys if there's a little network of bars nightclubs that most people are going to go to the patrons and the people that go to those places know they're going to see drivers there right and it just kind of becomes the same you all like to party together right and you kind of everybody's moving in the same circles a little bit so we always ask every time we sit with drivers and we're around the sport we always ask the drivers like who do you beef with so who was your beef who was a robbery kyle me and kyle rowdy yeah give him some story so a friendly friendly no or [Laughter] oh this was serious yes kyle raced for uh hendrick motorsports and i was leaving this leaving the bud team i was gonna leave that team leave that car and go drive for somebody else and so i was a free agent i was moving around talking to owners and seeing where the interest was for me and his owner and i were talking and kyle and rick hendrick the owner weren't on a good they weren't in a good place and kyle can explain that better than i can so they made a decision to split so i go into the team and i think to kyle it was me taking his car and so kyle was kind of pushed out into free agency not really willingly he ended up getting picked up by joe gibbs they had a insane season everything worked out perfect for kyle well when he was having this great season i was kind of right on his heels in my new deal that was his deal and so it was it immediately kind of pitted us against each other and he would use every opportunity he could in the media to dig and i think we went back and forth with that he wrecked me at richmond i'm leading the race denny was leading and had a flat tire so now i'm leading the race there's four laps to go kyle is on my inside i i feel like i'm a win i'm in the outside line that's where i wanted to be and i think that's where i should you know that's where that's what's going to win the race and he's down here on the bottom he got he got loose or something and slid into me and spun me out and i hit the wall fans man they went crazy that that's really what sent kyle into villain town that moment yeah i think so and so that and a lot of the things that he he did he didn't handle some of those situations like like i said like he would like in that moment instead of getting out of the car and saying yeah i made a mistake or i mean i did it on purpose he would just split like avoid the interview blow people off right and and fans were like you can't you can't blow people off you can't blow off those interviews and you got you're acting like a child right and uh so but he's matured and gotten way better since then so we go back to richmond the next time and i ran over him wrecked him you did it on purpose did you do it oh yeah and so i had to like even if i even if it wasn't it's crazy you're going 180 miles per hour it was it's not like in my mental character to go out there and do that but if i didn't do that i hear here i am i'm right behind him getting ready to go in this corner and everyone in the place knows that this is an opportunity for me to make that happen and 85 percent of them want me to do it what if you you can't you can you got to do it [Laughter] and so i wish i'd erect him harder than i did i hit him and i thought i hit him hard enough and he goes up there and back in the wall it hurt his day which was my intent and but i i wanted to wreck hard that's good for the sport though it is we got to have the good versus evil and so we we continue to bash each other and dog each other in the media and just dirty look at each other every time just hate hate each other like i can't stand to be around the guy physically uncomfortable to be in the same room with him and i started the podcast so i invited him on my podcast and we relived it all many podcasts a little shameless plug the dale jr download so i used to i used to just go on there and just talk about the race weekend and what i thought about it but that kind of turned into this this interview conversation like we're having and i said kyle it's time for you to come on the show let's talk about this let's stop stop this this you know it's so far in the past and we talked about it and he said some things that blew me away he came to the empire yeah he came to the room you were in today wow i need to go back and watch that we sat down and talked it out and it was great i was glad to like not have because i still was uncomfortable being around him didn't like it didn't want to be around him i don't like to use the word hate because i didn't really hate him i just didn't like him man it happened i wanted to fix that i can't live that way i don't like living like that and i'm glad we did and we communicate we text we text we we we give each other advice you mentioned joe gibbs yes i know you're a washington football team fan yeah but gibbs redskins right now watching the football team yeah what's up with the team man my mom and dad split up in 78 i was four she moved to chesapeake norfolk area and everything up there is is washington everything and uh i i lived in around charlotte there was no team here and so you were either a washington fan or a dallas fan or maybe an atlanta falcon fan i would go to my mom's uh twice a year once it's christmas and once at um in the middle of summer and she always had like a jersey art monk jersey very you know all all the guys i was a big art mun fan him and daryl green and so i just thought arc was he was if you needed a first down that's where you were going to go and he just he was just no controversy reliable healthy all the time just i like this style and sounds like an ex-receiver of me he broke the largest record i think for the most catches in the season to set that's since been broken but that was a big deal they traded him to the jets anyhow no that that's fine because what i wanted to get at is we talk about football and nowadays all you hear is concussion concussion concussion cte i know you're an advocate you know around concussion and you spoke about your career and being able to walk away from the sport talk to us about that you know well um i yeah i didn't it wasn't it wasn't a choice like my concussions put put made i had i had to face it i couldn't drive a car right i was hurt so bad that i couldn't do my job and so i had to fix it if i was gonna like i know you guys have dealt with injuries of all types and so when my concussions happened i was worried about like is this my new normal right all those symptoms that i was having i can't live like this right i don't wanna this ain't gonna be every day what was the symptom um balance issues just turn the corn you know get up to get up and walk that way would just you know you just get nauseous and uh bad vision problems um blurry vision and my eyes would were would i would try to like look at a target target something with my eyes and they would they would jump off that target i couldn't control them were you afraid yeah nfl they tell us that we might eventually uh uh succumb to cte right so a lot of us yeah that have had a concussion i am very much worried about what you know 20 years from now looks like for me you know we we hear the stories about other people that have dealt with cte and and and have some bad things happen to them right and they find themselves in places where they can't they can't escape right and they can't fix it and so you know i'm definitely nervous about just how sharp will i be am i going to have like this mental decline that's going to be a little accelerated right all of us are going to have a decline of some sort but will mine be accelerated i know that my eyes my eyesight used to be perfect and i know that it's it's gone down and it's going down and my doctor's like you know that's probably something that got that got kick-started sooner than normal because of your injuries and it's probably something that's accelerated because your injuries and i'm thinking well hope that's that's all that i got to worry about is is my eyesight going bad and getting a new prescription every night we're all with you we go through it yeah one of the things you said offline though was i was miserable driving yeah so so meaning like you're happy now yeah yeah well so that's a good thing i wanted to say i wanted to add to that uh what fred asked me um and we talked about it today i know that if i i know that if i want to have that long-term sharpness and and and the best uh possible outcome it's in my hands there's things i can do right and let's ride my bike that's that's that's my mental health my physical health all those things are gonna make all that if i if i don't take care of that i'm actually absolutely gonna have problems right and so i'm not going to be mentally sharp you know if i want to you know i still like to drink beer hang out with my friends and i want to go drink beer at a bar if i'm going to do those kind of things to my body i got to do something on the other side correct right to take care of and keep myself going and and i know that when i rehabbed all my rehab for my concussions was all simple exercise which i didn't i didn't i didn't understand how that was going to really fix my problems because i'm thinking well if my wiring's messed up how is messing with the sweet ball going to help that it does it did it fixed it i know it did i did it multiple times through multiple concussions and fixed it right and i know when i don't do those things and move away from exercise i decline in cognitive skill i decline in mental toughness and sharpness and to stay elite or to stay where i was i know what i need to do that really rolls into mental you know mental toughness meant like just mental issues right um for me when my anxiety is at is highest it's because i've taken multiple weeks of just not doing what i've been doing the past 20 years so you have to stay on it i think ultra says no coddling you know you can't cuddle these people you can't cuddle yourself you got to really get out there and be proactive try and make yourself better it's a challenge in the fight but it starts with you wanting to do better and want to be better you know and if you pay attention to yourself and body and you listen to that you're going to tell yourself man get your ass off the couch go do something you'll feel a little better and we all go through that but it comes back to your mental capacity i never knew how much exercise simple exercise mattered to your mental health and happiness until like the last two or three years of my career i was telling brandon today my buddy of mine got me into cycling and i rode my first year 2 400 miles on the highway it's a ton and dude i was as good as i'd ever been you know sharp happy feeling good it just could do anything right and now that i don't ride that much i can i know i know where i need i know what i need to do to get get that fixed you know you got a peloton at the crib no i ride on the street oh i mean just uh my wife wake up in general so my wife has a pelleting and that thing you've got your country don't don't let yourself remember listen you have to crank the tension on it i don't i ain't gonna do it it's a beast no what i'm trying to say is with that when you get on the bike and you gotta go up that hill they ain't one way there's one way up it and that's peddling heart that pelleting you can cheat pelleting it's peloton dale i like pelican but you don't look like the cheese and type so i don't trust myself right who do you think should sit in this seat next um and i stole this from all the smoke got jack in and you got matt barnes do a phenomenal job they have a podcast that's crushing it right now and they asked me that question when i was able to go on their show so you know i'm stealing that from those guys yeah jimmy johnson jimmy johnson yeah so jimmy johnson he's just retired from stock car racing and he's he's a rookie at 45 years old trying to go into indycar i talked about that transition from from one tr one type of racing to another and how hard it is he won seven championships in our sport him my dad and richard petty the only two people three people that have ever done that jimmy won five of those in a row no one's ever gonna touch that five championships in a row the record was three that stood since the mid 70s he's an athlete in every sense of the word uh so he belongs on this show and you know he's just i i just think the world of him so you know he's he he would be able to he would be able to speak on a lot of things i think you know the mind the body and and being an athlete a father being successful being a businessman and also trying to transition into something that's completely foreign to himself at 45 years old he's basically trying to recreate himself as a race car driver and try something that he's completely out to lunch in right right he's gonna he's gonna be floundering for a while until he figures it out so it's hard to put it down we're in charlotte yeah this is where you like the party i've never partied but we're in charlotte so we could take it off our bucket list tonight we party with dale can we go to the city yeah tony let's turn up hey y'all i'm going out where are we going we're part we're partying with dale we're gonna go to the we're gonna go to the city and go to the empire we're going to the empire with dale y'all manscaping huh hey dale do you manscape my job no no the three-way manscape the party style alicia can we get dale a manscape please you gotta clean up down there cause you're a little rough up here i'm 46. bro doesn't matter it doesn't matter hygiene itches [Laughter] i shaved my chest one time never again ever again ain't shaving nothing else well i love your beard yes keep that going my wife shave your balls no no [Music] never [Music] is and better

Channel: I AM ATHLETE

Views: 1,227,613

Rating: 4.951632 out of 5

Keywords: brandon marshall, brandon marshall highlights, brandon marshall podcast, i am athlete, i am athlete podcast, chad johnson, fred taylor, channing crowder, ochocinco, nfl, nfl 2021, nfl podcast, sports, sports podcast, superbowl, super bowl, football highlights, super bowl highlights, football

Id: SjVSfcfQUGQ

Length: 72min 10sec (4330 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GCM_Prothro18x]

Now I just want Fred Taylor to be my best friend.

[u/OGstanfrommaine]

Wow THIS WAS FUCKING PHENOMENAL YES IM SCREAMING IT! I laughed, I cried, I cringed, I laughed some more. This was so good. I cant wait till the next one. Dont change a damn thing. Amazing.

[u/[deleted]]

First time I've ever heard Dale Jr. talking about the 500 like that. Speaking about how he was watching the wreck in his rearview mirror and it just not feeling right. Man...

The ending had me laughing my ass off though - Ocho asking Dale about Manscapping, hahah.

"I love the beard... But shave your balls!"

Perfect ending Brandon, hahaha.

[u/jillg0515]

This was great. I’ve been waiting for it to be released since the DJD had Brandon on. I am NOT a football person but this is phenomenal I can see they are being genuine which is very cool. Do you all know if they are having other drivers aside from bubba and jr on?

[u/Restartzoned]

I was really hoping they could get Dale to open up about the monetary side of things a little more. Not necessarily to know how much he made but what’s the going rate for a Denny, Harvick, Kyle Busch, Brad K type driver.

[u/ColeTrickleC12]

“Shave your balls!”

[u/TheOrangeFutbol]

Haven't finished yet, but so far this is a really interesting follow up to the Bubba episode (where one guy was fully on the "they turn left, not a sport" take.)

It's pretty cool to see Dale Jr. shooting the breeze with the guys just as an athlete and sharing the commonalities/mindset that's universal no matter what sport it is. Pretty cool vid.

[u/Leuel48Fan]

This was super cool. Saw the Bubba Wallace one right after this. Great podcast / format and a great way to broaden NASCAR's exposure to other sports' fans.

[u/Naitoranna]

That chef bit was fucking hilarious.

I think this will make me go back and watch their Bubba episode. I avoided it this whole time solely on the stupid title.