Dale is a race car driver and bow hunter. He grew up near Talladega, GA in Newton Newton, NC. He has been in the sport of racing since he was a kid and has always been a fan of the sport. Dale talks about how he got into the sport and what it takes to be successful in a sport that is considered to be one of the most physically demanding and physically demanding jobs in the world. He also talks about what it's like to be a professional bow and arrow hunter and how he tries to get out in the woods to hunt as much as he can to keep up with his hunting and archery goals. He talks about his love for the sport, what it s like being in the stands at the races and how it has changed his life and how much he loves the attention he gets from the fans and the support from the other racers. He also shares some of his favorite memories from growing up and growing up in the racing community and how his father inspired him to chase his dreams of becoming a driver and chasing his dream of being a professional racer. Thank you Dale for being a part of this podcast and I appreciate you for coming on the pod! I can t wait to do more with you guys! -Dale and I hope you enjoy this episode. XOXOXO xoxo -J.J. -P.S. -PJ -Sue -R.M. -D.Sue -S.A.R.E. -M.V. -BJ.B. -C.C.V -A.P. -K.PJ. -LJ.P -B.S -L.A -T.J .S. & K.P .A. -TJ.R -E.M -G.J & A.M.. -N.A.. XO -H.S.. . .D. -SORRY -MORROW -V.A . .J.O. -AJ. & R.SORRY -O.S., R.H. & KA. .P. & J.J.. ? -KU. & M.M . . & P.R.. & S.A.?
00:01:06.000I don't have the time and the patience to really block that whole day off to go play outdoors, but to go over there and just hit the driver for 30 minutes on the simulator is so fun.
00:01:16.000Well, I would imagine with what you do for a living, I think what you do is one of the craziest, wildest, most demanding things a person could do for an occupation.
00:02:10.000I know a lot of those guys, and our paths have crossed several times, and every time you're around them, you're like, are we going to end up in jail tonight?
00:02:19.000You know, just that's a real possibility.
00:02:26.000Yeah, I mean, but driving a race car, I mean, you have a giant engine, you're strapped into a seat, you're hurling down the road at extreme speeds, right next to other cars doing the same thing.
00:02:39.000Just the intensity and just everything being on nine at all times, like, that is a wild way to make a living, sir.
00:02:50.000When I was little, thinking about what the hell am I going to grow up and be, my father was really successful in the sport, so I would go to the races and I would watch him race and see him win and watch him go through victory lane and celebrate and all those things.
00:03:07.000I thought, man, this is what I've got to do.
00:03:12.000People are in awe of the drivers, the race, my father, the personalities.
00:03:20.000And I just wanted to do it real badly.
00:03:24.000But I knew that the odds of making it are tough.
00:03:27.000So there's only 40 guys in the field every weekend.
00:03:30.000So there's 40 guys in the whole country that are going to get the shot to do it.
00:03:36.000The odds of me, even with my dad being as successful as he was, I'd have a lot of doors open to me, but the odds of me actually getting there and being able to stay had the staying power and the success and talent.
00:03:46.000I just knew it were tough, so I didn't know if I'd ever get that chance.
00:03:54.000I remember the first time I went to a two-and-a-half-mile track.
00:03:59.000It's Talladega, and you hold it wide open.
00:04:02.000I was working at my dad's dealership, Changing Oil.
00:04:05.000He owned this Chevy store in Newton, North Carolina.
00:04:09.000And the phone rang and he said my dad was on there then.
00:04:12.000And he was in Talladega for a test and he said, get your helmet and your suit and meet me at the racetrack.
00:04:18.000The next day you're going to fly in the King Air to the track.
00:05:05.000He was saying that and I thought to myself, is he just telling me that just to make sure I hold it wide open because he thought I would be a pussy and not do it?
00:05:13.000And so I was like, man, I'm a little nervous to hold it wide open, but I pulled out on the track and I mashed the gas full throttle and I'm going down the back straightaway and I was like, I'm looking down the back straightaway into the next corner, this long corner,
00:06:17.000The tires in the car hold of the track so tough and tight that nothing's going to make it.
00:06:23.000It just goes around there like it's the craziest thing.
00:06:26.000And so now, today, when I tell people, when we've got this two-seater car and we take people for rides and they get in there and I'm like, man, what am I going to do?
00:06:35.000What are you going to do to explain to somebody what this is going to feel like?
00:06:37.000I'm going to tell you things to pay attention to.
00:07:36.000And I mean, flipping, and when I flip for the first time, and the car's tumbling and flying, parts flying off the air, I thought to myself that I wasn't scared or I never was scared of flipping.
00:07:52.000My thought was I just did something a lot of people are never going to experience.
00:09:09.000When I was on my side and I could see the ground, I felt like I was right side up because as you're flipping, the force pushes you down in the seat.
00:09:17.000So you feel eternally, you feel gravity.
00:09:44.000You feel like, you know, nothing's going to harm me.
00:09:49.000One of the things they always talk about is get your hands onto something because the spinning makes your arms just go like this.
00:10:00.000And if you watch a lot of old wrecks from the 60s and 70s, you'll see the guy's arms come flying out the window and they're just kind of flopping around.
00:10:07.000It's spinning so fast you can't pull it in.
00:10:11.000So as soon as you know you're going upside down, you grab the bottom of the steering wheel and just kind of, you know, watch.
00:10:17.000But I flipped my pickup truck one time on Christmas Day, and I wasn't holding on the steering wheel, and my arm went out the window.
00:10:26.000You know, for like a split second, it banged around in the window sill.
00:10:31.000And I was like, man, you know, I got it back in and grabbed ahold of the steering wheel with both my hands.
00:10:37.000And so ever since then, I've like, you know, now I know, like anytime I'm in a crash, you got to have your hands ahold of something because that's the one thing that you can't control.
00:10:47.000You're strapped in with your seatbelt and everything, but your arms are, you know, can go anywhere.
00:10:52.000And in that moment when the car is rolling or barrel rolling or flipping, It's so fast.
00:11:53.000And I got to messing with that Walkman, and I drove off into the ditch, and I hit a driveway culvert, a pipe, drainage pipe in a driveway, and went like seven flips and destroyed this truck.
00:12:04.000And in the middle of the flipping, I remember that happening.
00:12:07.000And everything, all my change, jacket, anything that was loose in the car ended up down in the one corner, like floorboard.
00:12:15.000Everything sort of collects into that one corner as it's spinning.
00:13:09.000And, of course, there's this line of cars behind me stopped on the road, and this one lady pulls up, and I was like, I need to borrow your cell phone to call my dad.
00:13:52.000I called dad and I'm like, man, he's going to be mad.
00:13:55.000Can't be too mad because I'm paying for the truck, but he's going to be mad at me because I'm screwing up family reunion and Christmas stuff.
00:14:05.000I'd flipped this truck real close to where our farm was, so he ran over to the farm and got this flatbed truck, and he pulls out there with the flatbed truck.
00:14:13.000And he pulls up, and as soon as he pulls up, a state trooper pulls up.
00:14:17.000And the state trooper guy and dad talked for a minute.
00:14:20.000And the state trooper's like, you know, one single car accident, you okay?
00:14:33.000He did us a solid there and didn't give me any kind of traffic ticket.
00:14:38.000And so me and dad put the truck on the flatbed and we're driving back and he started laughing.
00:14:44.000And I was like, man, I expected you to be really mad because he was a fiery kind of dad, you know, and pull the belt out and go to town, you know.
00:14:53.000He was a rough, strict, tough, tough dude.
00:14:56.000And so I thought I was going to get a good cussing at least, but he started laughing.
00:20:16.000I got an 88 S10. That was the first pickup truck I owned or had.
00:20:20.000That was like the car I got when I was 16 years old.
00:20:23.000And I got one and restored it, which was a terrible investment.
00:20:27.000But it makes sense for me because it was my first truck.
00:20:33.000And I didn't think anybody would give a shit about it, right?
00:20:35.000Because it's an S10. It's like the bottom of the barrel in pickup trucks for Chevrolet in 1988. But I drive that thing around and people are like, Wow, that's the cleanest S10 I've seen in 15, 20 years.
00:24:31.000And so we got, I wanted to hunt, but not, you know, I'm not going to be going every week.
00:24:37.000But I knew he was probably interested in probably buying some land and us managing it together and learning how that process goes.
00:24:44.000So we bought this land and we've put the crop, we've put the, you know, we put the food plots in, not ourselves, but we've managed the land on how we want to change it.
00:24:56.000It's been a really educational experience.
00:25:00.000I think a lot of people who don't hunt don't even understand what we're talking about, the whole process.
00:25:05.000If you buy a nice piece of land, people who, especially if you look at, there's a bunch of organizations that teach classes in how to manage a giant piece of property, but laying out food plots.
00:25:19.000People buy these big chunks of property specifically for whitetail hunting.
00:25:23.000Yeah, so we have about a thousand acres.
00:25:43.000Yeah, when you can eat it and it doesn't ever touch the freezer, never goes in the refrigerator, just straight from the harvest right to the grill.
00:26:10.000I mean, if I wanted to, I could fly up there, but I like the road trip.
00:26:15.000The whole thing for me really is everything before the shot that you take on the deer.
00:26:20.000It's the drive up there with your buddies talking about what you're going to do, what you can't wait to do, what's been going on with everybody.
00:26:28.000Getting up there and getting everything laid out.
00:27:01.000You're going to go do that for two days.
00:27:04.000You're going to make time to be with each other and enjoy it.
00:27:07.000I like taking my buddies and taking friends of mine that don't hunt or haven't ever hunted and letting them understand what that experience is like.
00:28:02.000Well, I would imagine, again, with what you do for a living, having something that's peaceful and quiet and out in nature would be very important to kind of balance out just the wild, hectic nature of race car driving.
00:28:15.000I mean, for me, when I get in the stand and I sit down and I look out across the field and look at the land and everything, man, you ain't got to worry about...
00:28:30.000You know, answering no email or getting back to this guy or setting up this appointment or answering this question or, you know, it's just, it's even better.
00:29:20.000And you don't realize you have that requirement until you're out there.
00:29:23.000Yeah, you wouldn't know it until you go sit in a stand and you're like, wow, I needed a little bit of this.
00:29:27.000I think even a park, you know, even people that go to Central Park in New York City, they go to that park and sit down by a tree and they just feel better.
00:29:55.000You sit in that car and do it long enough, you forget.
00:29:57.000Do you have apprehension about the horsepower wars with just modern consumer cars?
00:30:04.000Because I look at some of these cars that they're putting out that are amazing, like the new Corvette ZR1s.
00:30:10.000700 plus horsepower right from the factory.
00:30:13.000The Dodge Demon's like 800 horsepower.
00:30:16.000They're putting out these insane race cars right from the factory that any dummy like me, I could just go to, if I have the cash, I go to a Corvette dealership and pick one up and all of a sudden I'm on the highway.
00:30:30.000I don't have a problem with it now until it becomes a common occurrence where people don't know how to control it, you know, or don't know how to manage what they're doing behind the wheel or something like that.
00:30:40.000But until that's like a common issue, I don't know that it'll need regulation.
00:31:22.000I think you should have a gun for protection.
00:31:24.000I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
00:31:26.000But I don't think it would be a bad idea to have some sort of course that you have to go through so you understand all the aspects of safety and precautions that you should take and how to correctly load a gun and clean a gun.
00:31:49.000I feel like if you're going to go out and buy a Corvette ZR1, the kind of body-mashing acceleration, the G-forces you can get from something like that right from the factory, zero to 60 in under three seconds, that's an insane automobile.
00:32:04.000Maybe someone should take you around a track a little bit.
00:32:09.000If you were going to buy something like that or get in a car like that, you would need some kind of a trainer course that you would have to pass.
00:32:16.000If you have to have a particular license to drive 18-wheelers down the interstate, there should be a style or type of license that you need to achieve to have a certain type of license.
00:32:28.000You want to go buy a Viper ACR and take it on the road?
00:32:31.000Those crazy race car Vipers that you could just drive?
00:32:34.000You should probably know how to drive that thing.
00:32:57.000Do you, so, do you drive, like, fast cars on the road ever, or do you mostly, are you just, like, just mostly driving normal, relaxed on the road?
00:33:09.000So, I, um, I got a lot of speeding tickets when I was younger.
00:33:16.000And I... And it seemed like it just never failed.
00:33:21.000Anytime I got behind the wheel of a Corvette or anything like that, I would get pulled over for, you know, rolling through lights or rolling through a stop sign or reckless driving or whatever.
00:35:36.000We put these seats in it and we got an old ammo box for a console and shit like that.
00:35:42.000Do you just enjoy it because it's something that's sort of related to what you do for a living but then again not and kind of just a project.
00:36:49.000When I finish that Nova wagon, I'll probably never sell it, even though it's probably nothing special if someone else were to look at it, but it's what I put into it.
00:37:03.000And the more you work on these cars, the more confidence you get in trying to do more, getting into the jobs that you didn't think you were capable of doing.
00:37:11.000Have you ever thought about a build-up straight from scratch?
00:37:14.000That's probably what this little Nova wagon is going to be.
00:39:00.000I'd like to get, um, there was this one nomad, this guy chopped up and narrowed up, and he made, uh, one of those things, um, it's like a rat rod.
00:39:13.000That was an idea for this Nova wagon, but I don't think I'm going to chop it up.
00:39:17.000I think I'm going to keep it as it is.
00:39:18.000When I was in high school, there was a man in the neighborhood when I was a kid that had a 55 Chevy, and it was the greatest thing anybody had ever seen in their lives.
00:39:27.000And we would all wait while this guy drove by in his 50s.
00:40:53.000In that flip I was talking about in 1998 at Daytona, I got a concussion from that crash.
00:40:58.000I'd had concussions throughout my career at many different points and didn't think anything of them.
00:41:05.000I thought when you got a concussion, you joked about it with your buddies, about how it made you feel, and you just rested until it was gone.
00:41:13.000And you raced through it and eventually it'd go away and you were fine.
00:41:18.000You know, it was just something that would go away and you never thought anything about, you never thought about seeing a doctor.
00:41:25.000You never thought about getting treatment.
00:41:26.000You didn't know there was even treatment available for a concussion.
00:41:29.000You just thought it was something like a bruise, you know.
00:41:31.000So this is going on throughout my whole career.
00:41:34.000I was racing at, I was testing at Kansas Motor Speedway in 2012, blew a right front tire, hit the wall at 185 miles an hour, and it screwed me up.
00:41:47.000And so that was a really not, you know, That wasn't a typical crash, not something that drivers deal with usually in their career.
00:41:57.000This was something that was unique to me and it was just a terrible impact at a bad angle at a very, very fast rate of speed.
00:42:07.000And I got out of the car and I knew something was wrong with me and I couldn't, you know, I couldn't I felt, you know, just like I'd been hitting the head with a bat, shocked and shell-shocked in a way, or just couldn't...
00:42:27.000You just kind of wanted to shake your head and get it out, whatever it was, and you couldn't.
00:42:33.000That's the way I failed immediately after that crash.
00:42:36.000Our test was done because the car was killed.
00:42:39.000So we went over to this place to get some lunch, and we're sitting there, and I started getting sick, nauseous, before we ever, you know, I wasn't eating.
00:42:47.000We just ordered, we just sat down, and I started, I'm sitting with my team, all my guys, and I'm starting to, I feel like I'm going to throw up right there in front of them, and I'm getting nervous, and I don't, I haven't said to them that I feel this way, you know, so I don't want to tell them I feel this way.
00:43:05.000But my crew chief, Steve LaTarte, is like a brother.
00:43:10.000I was like, Steve, I am getting sick and something's wrong with me.
00:43:14.000I don't know what's wrong with me, but I got to get out of this room.
00:46:59.000I crashed in this race and I feel sick again.
00:47:01.000And he was like, well, these are two different injuries, two different parts of your brain.
00:47:05.000The first injury, you bruised this right front edge of your brain when you hit the wall.
00:47:11.000He said this second crash, you twisted the base of your brain and injured some things in the back of your brain, and that's why you're having the emotional and different things like that.
00:48:45.000The ocular stuff, I mean, you can have injury to that part of your brain or you can have an injury to the vestibular part of your brain that may, like if you have bad balance, then your eyes and your balance work together.
00:49:00.000And so if you have vestibular issues, that can create ocular issues.
00:49:07.000That can affect your anxiety and depression and things like that.
00:49:14.000You can have an injury to one part of your brain that affects four other areas.
00:49:24.000Mickey comes into the book and I'll say, this is what I was feeling, this is what I did, and Mickey will come in behind me and say, this is the medical science behind that and this is how we treated it and why.
00:49:36.000I would have an injury to one singular area of my brain, but I would have four different symptoms affecting four different parts of my brain, four different senses.
00:49:44.000And, you know, he would have to hone in on the one that was broken and then know to fix it.
00:49:51.000And when he started fixing it, all the other ones would start communicating together.
00:49:56.000The brain would start working again, balance and visual and all those things would start to work again and anxiety and all those things would, you know, begin to come back in tune.
00:50:05.000No, when you said he fixed it, what is he doing?
00:50:09.000Well, so he gave me physical exercises to do.
00:50:35.000I felt fine then, but if I moved an inch, it would make your stomach nauseous.
00:50:43.000I did a lot of exercises that created a ton of motion with my head, lifting heavy balls up.
00:50:50.000And passing them over my shoulder this way or that way, taking a ball and turning around and hitting it this way, taking the ball, turning around and hitting it, just doing that for hours and hours and hours.
00:51:02.000And so I would train, basically, I was training myself to balance again.
00:51:09.000Training my body to balance itself again.
00:51:15.000If I couldn't see a horizon or a flat surface, I couldn't tell which way was up.
00:51:29.000The visual stuff, there was these, I had a string with these balls on it, and I would hold the string on my nose and hold it out here, and I had to look at all those balls, and it would, my eyes are focusing, just, all it's doing is really just making my eyes change focus,
00:51:46.000from one to the next to the next, and back, one to the next, next, and back.
00:51:50.000And there was this I-chart on the wall, and it had all these letters and all these numbers on it.
00:51:55.000And I had to look at that I-chart and turn my head back and forth this way, but look at that I-chart and count from A to Z, but backwards.
00:53:04.000And what they believe today is that exposure is what helps.
00:53:09.000Pushing yourself into these complex environments and doing things that are really challenging for yourself.
00:53:13.000Even doing that, if I put you in front of that eye chart and made you turn your head back and forth and walking two steps forward, two steps back, it would be difficult for you.
00:53:24.000But for an injured person, it's super difficult.
01:00:44.000I mean, I don't know if it affected me right away or, but I know I was, by the time we had, I take an impact test, which is basically kind of measures memory and things like that, all kinds of different stuff, and And my measurements had come back to my norm,
01:01:00.000you know, my basic You know, they kind of make you take the impact test beforehand, so that gets your blueprint of how you are.
01:01:10.000And then whenever you get injured, you take it again, and they'll line that up against that and say, okay, yeah, you're deficient here.
01:01:19.000Maybe it's not diagnosing a concussion, but it's asking us to look in this area.
01:01:25.000And so you have a baseline, and then you have whatever your injury or post-crash baseline is.
01:01:33.000So I was matching all my normals on that impact test, and that was kind of the trigger for them to go, man, if you feel good, you look good here, all the things are saying that you're back.
01:01:45.000And I wanted to go race, so I felt pretty good.
01:01:49.000Is it a strange feeling knowing that you can't see what the damage is?
01:01:56.000Like a brain injury is a strange one, right?
01:01:59.000Because it's affecting everything in your body, but you don't see it.
01:02:03.000Like if you have a broken arm, you're looking at it, you know it's in a cast, it gets fixed.
01:02:20.000That's why, so in the book I talk about these notes I started taking.
01:02:23.000After that crash in 2012, when I would wreck after that, I would get sick and I wouldn't tell anybody.
01:02:29.000And so I started writing these notes in a journal in my phone.
01:02:33.000And from 2013 all the way to 2016, I had this long journal of crashes and how I felt.
01:02:39.000And I would crash on Sunday and I'd write in the journal on Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday at lunch, Monday at night, you know, three times a day every day until whenever I felt good, which was usually either Wednesday or Thursday of that week.
01:02:55.000And I was writing these notes because I couldn't tell if I was getting better.
01:03:00.000The brain injury or any type of head injury, I mean, if you said, how's it feel Monday, and then you asked me again Tuesday, I'd be like, I really don't fucking know, man.
01:03:13.000And so I would try to write as detailed as I could on a Monday and then try to write as detailed as I could on Tuesday and reread Monday and see, hmm, is it better?
01:03:23.000I can see in the comments or, you know, I can't really remember exactly what I was feeling Monday, but in the comments it seems better and I would write these notes, right?
01:03:31.000And so I kept doing this and I thought I was treating myself.
01:03:51.000And my balance is so bad that I can't get up off the couch without holding on to something and walking across the room without grabbing stuff as I go.
01:04:33.000And that time, they put me on medication that would drop my anxiety levels, so the anxiety levels would stay down so that I could concentrate on the injury.
01:05:53.000We'd go through more physical exercises.
01:05:55.000Kept doing that process over and over and over.
01:05:57.000I took the medication for about a year and a half.
01:06:05.000They gave me this computer program for my eyes and I would wear these 3D glasses and this computer program would try to take these 3D objects and go to 2D and back to 3D and my eyes would literally try, it felt like it was trying to rip my eyes apart.
01:06:23.000It hurt, like physically hurt when this object would try to go from 3D to 2D and it was going very very slowly and it felt like it was trying to rip my eyes apart.
01:06:34.000And imagine your eyes are tethered together.
01:06:36.000So when you look left, they both go there, right?
01:07:35.000It would make it to where when I walk, if I'm walking or bouncing across the room, I can still look at you in the eyes like a normal person.
01:07:44.000And when I was at my worst, I couldn't do that.
01:07:52.000The book basically is me admitting making those mistakes.
01:07:57.000I should have went to him as soon as I got sick again the first time instead of trying to document it myself and hide it and manage it myself and trying to get to whatever the end of my career was, whenever that moment was, and retire thinking I was going to walk away without anybody ever knowing.
01:08:52.000I told my doctor, though, you'll like this, since now we know each other so well.
01:08:57.000When I was ill in the hospital, or when I was with Mickey in Pittsburgh, my wedding was on New Year's, and this was probably around October.
01:11:09.000I don't know whether he was a hockey player or a football player, but the guy was making millions of dollars, and he was in his mid-20s, and Mickey had to say, you can't play anymore.
01:12:19.000I'm sitting there on them days at home with them, and I'm thinking to myself, what if I'm sitting here worried about CTE or my mind, you know...
01:12:35.000You know, am I going to sit here and worry about that at 44 all the way through my 50s and my 60s and 70s and then one day wake up at 80 and go, damn, I lived a pretty good life.
01:13:01.000The conversation about concussions has really just skyrocketed into warp speed over the last five or six years.
01:13:14.000And the way they treated me in 2012 to the way they treated me in 2016 was completely 180 degrees because they know so much more and they understand so much more about treating the injury.
01:13:26.000And so if I do have any problems, whenever that is, I'm confident that there'll be something there for me, that there'll be something there to give me a good quality of life.
01:13:59.000All I want to be able to do is just be a good father and be a good husband.
01:14:04.000And I think I'm going to have that opportunity.
01:14:08.000But if anything does happen to me, I think that there will be some technology, some information, some medicine, something that would give me a good enough quality of life that I would be able to enjoy those things.
01:14:18.000I think you made the wise choice in retiring.
01:14:21.000And I think that, look, I'm very familiar with head injuries.
01:14:26.000I'm around people that have had them all the time.
01:14:29.000And I think it's something that we're understanding now more than ever before.
01:14:34.000But someone like you, writing a book about this and your experience with it, I think is really important for people.
01:14:40.000I think it's going to help a lot of people.
01:14:41.000It's going to help a lot of people understand it.
01:14:43.000And the more we talk about this, the more this gets out there in the public, the more it helps just regular folks that have had concussions understand what a significant thing this is.
01:17:48.000But for the guys that have, I've had veterans, retired guys call me, say, man, I've given my doctor's number to so many damn people ever since I've spoken up about this in 2012 to now in this book.
01:18:01.000Mickey says there's at least three people a week that come in his office talking about me, and that's why they're there.
01:18:09.000Because Mickey gave me my life back twice.
01:18:11.000I'm telling you, man, in 16, I was in bad shape.
01:18:14.000And without my wife and without Mickey, I don't know that I would have made it out there then.
01:18:21.000This book or anything else, this podcast, any opportunity to talk about this is only to push more people to Mickey so that he can do the same thing for them he did for me.
01:18:35.000There's a guy named Dr. Mark Gordon that's also been on this podcast before that does a lot of work with TBI and soldiers and football players and stuff like that.
01:18:44.000So there's a lot of other doctors out there that are specializing in this and realizing this is a significant issue.
01:18:50.000Just so happy that those people are out there.
01:18:53.000Well, they're getting some good, you know, they're getting some opportunities to actually, you know, get up there and speak up about it and make it known.
01:19:17.000There's some people that just don't know where to go, you know, or don't think that they can afford it or don't think that they're going to get that...
01:19:25.000You know, like, when I first went to Mickey, I thought I was going to go in there and see just Steelers and NHL players.
01:21:22.000If I would go back, it would take me six months just to get up to speed, not even really even get competitive, just to get up to speed physically and mentally.
01:21:53.000Well, so our sport, I was talking about this with a friend today, and he made a good point.
01:21:57.000He said, there was a guy, he says, our sport is the only one where the ball is governed, and the ball is inspected, like the race car, the car, right?
01:22:30.000And somebody next door, the guy next to you and the guy next to him and the guy next to him is always constantly trying to build a better mousetrap.
01:22:47.000They're constantly, so the teams are constantly working, and if you're not in those cars and current and in that flow, in that changing, in that cycle, in that wheel, then you can't, you're behind.
01:23:03.000Like, when you get in the car and you get around the team, like, you're behind on what's in the car, what's happening with the car, and I don't know, it's just not something you just jump in and out of, because you're not really the The key component.
01:23:19.000Like, your body as a fighter, you know your body, and your body is the tool.
01:23:32.000And so, if you're not in it and around it every day, you will be behind on technology, understanding what's happening, what teams are doing, what you need to be doing.
01:23:43.000The damn dash is full of switches with all kinds of shit going on, and this needs to be on, and this needs to be off, and this needs to be back on and off and on.
01:23:50.000And there's, you know, levers, there's brake levers.
01:23:54.000Some drivers have four fucking brake levers.
01:24:26.000I mean you can have as many as you want or as little as you want.
01:24:29.000Some guys really think that that stuff's a good tool for them to be able to adjust the brakes and change how the brakes work on all four corners of the car.
01:25:02.000I would get in the car and forget about those tools and forget that I have those adjustments and knowledge and getting beat by guys that are using it every day.
01:25:13.000Now, how much time are you in a car in a race?
01:25:18.000Three hours, probably three and a half hours.
01:25:19.000Do you do anything or do you take anything to keep you concentrating at your full potential during that time?
01:26:15.000We can see during the in-car camera, it'll be pointed at that temperature gauge, and all of the guys' cars were 150 degrees inside, all the drivers, and it was miserable.
01:27:37.000They're a miserable, miserable, miserable car.
01:27:40.000When I watch races and I'm like, you know, I'd love to get out there and do that for a few minutes, but damn, running three hours in a 150 degree race car.
01:28:04.000The caution comes out because it gets hotter.
01:28:07.000When the caution comes out and you have to come in and change tires and you're sitting there and you go about 8 or 10 pace laps at 50 miles an hour, that's when you get to think about it.
01:28:17.000That's when you're sitting there going, damn, this is hot!
01:28:21.000While you're racing, you're almost so hyper-focused on what you're doing, it kind of doesn't bother you as bad.
01:28:33.000There's these new vests that we wear that has a gel in it, and you plug into a little machine that pumps it, and so you unplug it to get out of the car.
01:29:18.000Now, when you think back on doing all that stuff that you did do, and think about those kind of races, and think about all the endurance and all the different aspects of it, does it ever seem kind of crazy that you did it?
01:31:04.000Do you think you had such great success, not just because, obviously, your dad is one of the greatest of all time, but also because your love for it was what propelled you?
01:31:15.000It wasn't trying to seek fame or fortune.
01:31:19.000You just truly loved racing, and that's why you became so great at it.
01:31:24.000The link to my father opened up a shit ton of doors for me, opened up so many opportunities for me.
01:31:31.000Even today, it made my path much easier than some other fellows that I know.
01:31:38.000But I think that my passion for it and my love for its history, my wanting for it to be healthy...
01:31:50.000The sport, all those things is what probably made me make good decisions as I went along.
01:31:56.000And when I would talk or get in a position to make a comment or say something, I always tried to think about how that would represent the sport.
01:32:05.000I didn't understand what building a brand meant until way too late in my career.
01:32:17.000I mean, I wish I'd have known a little bit about trying to build my brand, and I wouldn't have been such a hard-ass and hard to work with a lot of times.
01:32:23.000There were some sponsors I loved, and I did everything they wanted, and there were some that I just wasn't as good as I should have been.
01:34:39.000He was always, don't, you know, finish...
01:34:46.000He was so worried that me and Kelly wouldn't finish school, that we would give up on school.
01:34:51.000He gave up on school as an 8th grader at 16 years old.
01:34:54.000He was 16 in the 8th grade and quit and never finished high school, never got no GED, nothing.
01:35:01.000And people would come up to him and say, or people would talk about him, even while he was alive and ever since, and say, look what this guy made of himself, having quit the 8th grade.
01:35:24.000He knew how bad it disappointed his own father.
01:35:27.000So he was always worried about where I was, who I was hanging out with, whether I was doing my homework.
01:35:35.000And then even when I started racing, it was who I was hanging out with, what I was doing with my free time, what I was focusing on, whether I was thinking about what I was Whether I was on time for sponsor appearances and never, this is how you drive this corner.
01:35:52.000This is how you get around this racetrack.
01:35:56.000It was always the personality, being a man, being right, being good to people, being on time, being ready to work, looking your best, general, you know,
01:36:14.000We never sat down and talked about racing, like, I'm going to show you how to get around this corner and this is how you shift and shit like that.
01:36:21.000Well, in that respect, it was probably brilliant of him.
01:36:36.000I always felt like that when I was younger, I kind of let my father down because there was this one time, I was probably 12 years old, and there was this, me and my buddy, we were gonna play.
01:36:48.000Man, we're here, we're outside, we're gonna play outside.
01:36:51.000My dad's standing over there and there was a bucket full of shit.
01:37:35.000You know, I don't know what he's going to mount to.
01:37:37.000I don't know what this kid's going to do.
01:37:39.000I don't know what skills he has or whether he's going to ever get his act together or whether he's ever going to figure himself out, you know?
01:37:48.000And I probably didn't give him much reason to think different.
01:40:09.0001997. He was sitting down talking to...
01:40:14.000He had a car that races in the Xfinity series that I told you about.
01:40:20.000On Saturdays, and his driver was leaving to go to a cup car, and he was talking to his best friend, Tony Sr., is the guy's name that actually crew chiefs that car, and he's like, who are we going to get to drive this thing?
01:46:42.000I thought about whether I should quit or not.
01:46:49.000If it hadn't paid a lot of money and I didn't have partners and people that were depending on me or counting on me, I probably could have easily walked away from it.
01:47:02.000But we had a great partner in Budweiser that was incredibly supportive.
01:47:10.000I had a lucrative opportunity in front of me personally to be a race car driver for as long as I wanted to, which I wanted.
01:47:19.000And I just had to go through missing him really bad for a few months.
01:47:23.000I had to go to the racetrack, and everywhere I looked, there's Dad.
01:48:07.000It took me a while to calm down and get to work.
01:48:13.000For a while there it was just sort of going through the motions.
01:48:19.000I mean, you must have always known, I mean, everyone knows there's dangers involved in racing cars, but when it hit someone so close as your own father, that had to change what racing felt like to you.
01:48:37.000Yeah, I'm sure it would have completely been a different experience emotionally had that not happened.
01:48:46.000Racing for me would have meant something completely different.
01:49:47.000We just huddled together, me and my team, me and our company.
01:49:51.000I raced for my dad's company, so that whole company just kind of held itself together and everybody kind of pulled together and worked our way through it.
01:49:59.000That first year in 01, just that year that he was killed, that was just kind of a tough year.
01:50:04.000I don't even really remember anything much about what happened that year.
01:50:10.000Won a couple races, but it was otherwise, you know, the races where we didn't win, I can't even, I don't even remember much about them, you know, just retaining too much from it.
01:50:57.000He knew that he carried a big, massive fan base, and he knew that people listened when he spoke and all those things.
01:51:06.000And so when he was gone, I think some people kind of looked at me to try to carry that same load and even be that same person, and I just wasn't going to do it.