The legendary Tony Stewart joins hosts Brian Lohnes & David Freiburger on the HOT ROD Pod - LIVE from the 2023 PRI Show in Indianapolis! Tony discusses starting a family with wife Leah Pruett
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Welcome, everybody, to the Hot Rod Pod, Where It All Began.
00:10 Brian Lowens, lead broadcaster for the NHRA, and John McGann,
00:13 the editor-in-chief of Hot Rod Magazine.
00:15 We're at the PRI show, the Performance Racing Industry
00:18 Show.
00:18 We're going to talk to a racer, kind of unparalleled racer
00:21 in American motorsports.
00:22 Tony Stewart is our guest on this show.
00:24 That was crazy.
00:25 You guys, you and David, helped land that.
00:27 I was absolutely stunned.
00:29 But-- and also a little bit intimidated
00:31 to meet somebody like Tony's caliber.
00:35 I actually was off camera for this,
00:37 but I sat right there in the booth
00:38 and watched the whole episode.
00:39 It was a really great conversation.
00:41 Me and Fryburger in with Tony Stewart.
00:43 This is a guy who's a member of six racing halls of fame,
00:46 an IndyCar champion, a multi-time NASCAR champion,
00:48 a champion in sprint cars, go-karts,
00:51 a guy who ran the Indianapolis 500 and the Coke 600
00:53 on the same day twice over the course of his career.
00:56 He is the modern day AJ Foyt, and he
00:58 is the subject of this episode.
01:00 We're here at the PRI show 2023, joined by David Fryburger
01:04 and our guest on this episode, Mr. Tony Stewart.
01:06 How you doing, man?
01:07 I'm good, bud.
01:08 So this is going to be a fun exploration
01:10 of a lot of different things.
01:11 And you've been a mover, shaker, headline maker
01:14 guy in a lot of different ways in racing for a long time.
01:16 But I kind of want to talk about what was announced
01:19 at the PRI show.
01:20 And it is, as we say, this is December of 2023.
01:24 The big significant announcement that was made just yesterday
01:26 at the show involving you and your wife, Leah Pruitt.
01:29 Well, yeah, she made news.
01:30 I was just the byproduct of it.
01:31 But Leah had her best season ever in the sport,
01:36 finishing third in Top Fuel.
01:37 And literally last year, multiple times
01:41 during the season, the discussions
01:43 that she brought up about wanting to start a family.
01:45 And we had talked about it over a year ago.
01:48 And literally, I spent the first 30 seconds of the conversation
01:52 in husband mode and spent the next 9 and 1/2 minutes
01:56 in car owner mode.
01:57 At the end of the 10 minutes, I'm
01:58 like, if I don't stop talking, I'm
02:00 not going to have to worry about this.
02:01 I'll be divorced.
02:02 So the moral of the story with that
02:04 is we agreed that I wanted her to make the decision on when
02:08 she wanted to do this.
02:09 Because for us, I mean, we can start a family
02:11 and just go about our business and then
02:13 wait for the Easy Bake Oven to happen in 9 and 1/2 months.
02:16 For her as a professional female racer,
02:20 that messes your whole season up.
02:21 And depending on when that happens,
02:23 it can mess two seasons up.
02:25 So literally, that's why we decided
02:27 I wanted her to have the ability.
02:29 I knew that was a tough decision anyway.
02:31 It should be her decision on when she wants to do this.
02:33 So I just said, let me know when I need to start buying stuff.
02:38 And that's where I left it.
02:39 But that's what Leah's plan was and worked
02:42 through it during the summer.
02:44 I wasn't on the list initially.
02:45 I didn't want to be on the list initially.
02:47 - That was my next question, is I
02:48 think when we all saw you get in the A Fuel car,
02:50 the foregone conclusion is, oh, Tony's going to drive top fuel.
02:53 Were you the first choice for the seat
02:55 when you knew that Leah was stepping out?
02:57 - The first time it was brought up was in the spring.
03:00 And she asked me if I wanted to be on that list.
03:02 And we'd started the list already.
03:04 And she goes, do you want to be on that list?
03:06 I said, absolutely not.
03:07 I said, I haven't caught up to the alcohol car yet.
03:10 But this was never a plan.
03:12 This was never part of a master plan of, well,
03:14 we're going to run top alcohol so we can get into a top fuel
03:17 or funny car someday.
03:18 That was not the intention.
03:20 The whole intention to run the alcohol car was,
03:22 I get to race, and then I change,
03:24 I get to watch my cars race.
03:26 So it was the best of both worlds for me.
03:28 But having the season that we had with the A Fuel car,
03:33 honestly, the last third of the season was rough for us.
03:37 We got off track, couldn't figure out
03:39 what the problems were.
03:40 But the part of that that helped me as a driver
03:44 was it was shaking all the time.
03:46 I was having to pedal.
03:47 And because of that, I learned how to pedal the car.
03:50 So the more that I did it, the better I got at it.
03:52 And honestly, in the fall, when it came back up,
03:56 we had narrowed it down to Lyle Barnett.
03:58 And I was excited about it.
04:00 I love Lyle.
04:01 Leah loves Lyle.
04:03 And he's a bad-ass pro mod driver.
04:05 He's a hell of a racer.
04:06 If I was going to put anybody in it, that's the guy I would want.
04:08 And we've been friends ever since I met Leah.
04:11 So I was comfortable with that.
04:13 But Leah said, are you sure you don't want to be on this list?
04:16 I'm like, well, right now, yeah, I'm all right now.
04:19 I feel a little more confident.
04:21 But somebody asked me last night, they said, are you ready?
04:25 And I'm like, how do you know if you're ready?
04:27 I'm already running the third fastest class that NHRA has.
04:30 The only two that are faster than us are Funny Car and Top Fuel.
04:34 So it's like I feel like another year in the alcohol class
04:39 would have been more ideal to make this jump.
04:42 But when your wife says, hey, I want to start a family
04:45 and think you should be on the list, what do you tell her?
04:47 No.
04:48 Well, and for the edification of the audience,
04:50 I think we should explain.
04:51 You have your fuel license.
04:52 You've got 26 passes or something like that.
04:54 20.
04:55 20.
04:56 Yeah, so it's not your first barbecue.
04:57 But on the other hand, that's still intimidating, isn't it?
05:00 Yeah, and barbecue is what I feel like I'm getting into.
05:02 I feel like the rod's going through me
05:04 and they're just cranking me over the fire right now.
05:07 But like I say, you never know when it's time.
05:09 I don't know any driver that says, yes, this is the time.
05:12 You don't know what you don't know.
05:14 But I've ran the Top Fuel car enough
05:16 to know there's a lot of things that can go wrong.
05:18 And there's a lot of things that if you're not
05:20 on top of your game and you're not
05:21 doing your job as a driver, you can cost your team
05:23 a lot of money.
05:25 So when the guy that's going to drive the car
05:28 also has to pay the bills, it's a little more emphasis
05:31 on not sucking.
05:32 But look, and I think you've done this particular--
05:35 you've made this move several times in your career.
05:37 And I brought it up yesterday when we talked,
05:39 but I think it's worth discussing.
05:40 Like, you've always been overly cautious, in my opinion,
05:44 just looking back at your history, to make advancements.
05:46 Like, you've always taken the extra time.
05:48 And I think one of the things people respected about you
05:51 when you came into drag racing was
05:52 that it wasn't this immediate leap into a Top Fuel car
05:55 and look at me, I'm doing it.
05:57 It was the respect of what that car is.
05:59 And you still show it, the car, respect with, well,
06:01 how are you doing this?
06:02 But when you initially went from what is now the Xfinity
06:04 series into the Cup series, you took an extra season.
06:07 You had an offer to make the move one year before you made
06:09 it, and you decided on your own to stay down one more year.
06:12 Is that the type of situation that we're
06:14 in here with this car?
06:15 Now, the circumstance is different.
06:16 But in an ideal scenario, would you have rather
06:19 stayed the extra year?
06:21 Yeah, absolutely.
06:22 I mean, back in '96, when I ran my first season with IRL
06:27 and started in the Busch series in NASCAR,
06:30 at the end of that year, I got hurt at Las Vegas
06:33 in an IndyCar crash.
06:34 And I was literally recuperating at my mom's house.
06:36 And I got calls from Rick Hendrick to drive the 25 Cup
06:41 car, and I also got a call from Barry Green,
06:44 from Team Cool Green, to run the IndyCar in the IndyCar
06:48 series.
06:48 And I turned both of those down, because I'm
06:50 like, I'm not ready for that.
06:51 And my theory was, you work your whole life
06:55 to climb the ladder, and it's a step at a time.
06:57 Nobody's jumping steps.
06:58 It's a step at a time.
07:00 When you get to that second to last step,
07:02 you better make sure when you take that step
07:04 that you're ready for that step.
07:06 And I knew I wasn't ready.
07:09 I just didn't have enough time yet.
07:11 Would that have been the car that Paul Tracy drove,
07:13 that you got offered?
07:14 Who would have been in that car?
07:15 I'm not sure.
07:15 I honestly don't remember who they
07:17 had in the roster at the time.
07:18 But it would have been awesome being Paul's teammate.
07:21 Oh, god.
07:21 You two together would have been a wrecking machine.
07:24 Since we met in Havasu, he's fun to be around.
07:28 There's no dull moments with him.
07:30 But he's an awesome guy to hang out with.
07:32 Loved racing with him in SRX.
07:33 And yeah, I would love to have had that opportunity
07:37 in the past to race with him.
07:39 You mentioned the shoulder injury.
07:40 Is that related to the surgery you just recently had?
07:45 No.
07:45 What happened with the shoulder, we
07:47 were at the SRX race at Eldora and won both heat races.
07:51 And Leah was with us.
07:54 And she was on a photography stand in turn one.
07:56 And after the heat, she comes down.
07:58 And I said, man, my shoulder hurts.
08:01 And we're laughing about it.
08:02 I'm like, man, your husband's turned into a wimp.
08:04 He's not racing every week.
08:06 He's not race fit anymore.
08:07 And we just joked about it.
08:09 Then we go run a 75 lap main, win that.
08:12 And by the time we got to the airport,
08:15 took Leah and Ron Capps to Topeka,
08:17 I couldn't even pick my arm up.
08:19 And I just thought, man, these muscles are really mad.
08:21 So I played in a golf tournament the next day in Knoxville, Iowa.
08:25 Nice.
08:25 And I actually felt a lot better.
08:27 I probably felt 80% better in the morning.
08:29 By the time we got through 18 holes,
08:30 I literally could not lift my left arm up at all.
08:33 And I'm like, I don't think this is a muscle thing.
08:35 So Dr. Surface, who's the NHRA doctor, Dr. Heisel,
08:39 who we call him the NASCAR doctor,
08:42 goes to the NASCAR races.
08:43 Both of them, over the course of two weeks,
08:46 had given me a shot in there that just said, this will help.
08:49 It lasts less than a day.
08:51 And I'm like, something is wrong.
08:53 So Surface got us an MRI in Indianapolis.
08:56 And the results came back.
08:58 And he said, I think there's a small tear in your labrum.
09:01 So literally, the day before Thanksgiving, we go.
09:04 He picks me up at 7 in the morning at the hotel,
09:06 drives me to the hospital.
09:09 The last conversation we had while they were prepping me
09:11 to take me down the hall, I said, listen, you get in there.
09:14 And there's something else that's wrong.
09:16 Fix it.
09:17 Don't go, well, we haven't talked about it.
09:18 We'll consult on it.
09:20 This is a one and done, man.
09:21 Get in there.
09:22 You see anything wrong, fix it, and get out of there.
09:25 So I'm coming out of the anesthesia.
09:27 And he goes, well, the small labrum tear, we thought,
09:30 was 3/4 torn.
09:32 Had bone spurs, had a massive dent in my rotator cuff,
09:37 which we tracked back to 96 at the IRL race in Las Vegas.
09:41 Had 114 G hit left side.
09:43 So it was related to that same thing.
09:45 Yeah.
09:46 And then there was four things that were wrong.
09:49 And I don't remember what the fourth one was.
09:50 By that time, I was nauseous and wanted to throw up anyway,
09:52 thinking about it.
09:53 Basically just threw the rods out of the whole program,
09:55 it sounds like.
09:56 He goes, yeah, as soon as I got in there,
09:57 it was like a yard sale.
09:58 I'm like, yeah, that's pretty much what I expect
10:00 when somebody goes in there, too.
10:02 It's like, I'm an organ donor, and at the end of this,
10:03 everybody's going to look in there and go, yeah,
10:05 we can't use any of this.
10:06 Yeah.
10:06 Well, you've taken a beating over the years.
10:08 I have not been kind to my body.
10:10 I'm not very smart.
10:12 So let's kind of move back to that time frame
10:15 you talked about, where your career is
10:18 fascinating for so many reasons.
10:19 But this idea that you're in an IndyCar,
10:22 and you're basically in the Bush Series at the same time.
10:26 And how does one translate to the other?
10:28 Or it doesn't at all, right?
10:30 Opposite ends of the spectrum.
10:31 I was driving for Harry Raniere in the Bush Series at the time.
10:35 I was driving for Team Menard on the IndyCar side in the IRL.
10:39 And then you get a kart team that tries to hire you,
10:42 and a cup team that tries to hire you.
10:44 But I just felt like that was probably one of the biggest
10:49 keys in my career.
10:50 I mean, that was a significant moment,
10:52 even though most people didn't even know it happened.
10:54 But I'm in my early 20s, and I'm having
10:56 to make adult decisions about where my career is going to go.
11:00 And who turns down a ride at Hendrick Motorsports?
11:03 Oh, yeah.
11:04 There hasn't been very many.
11:05 As a 20-something-year-old kid, especially.
11:06 And that's why, if you think about later
11:08 in my career in NASCAR, I ran the HendrickCars.com car
11:12 at the Xfinity race at Daytona the day before the 500,
11:15 and we won.
11:16 And Rick told me, he goes, it shut our servers down.
11:19 It got so much attention.
11:20 That's why you see it on Kyle Larson's car now.
11:22 It was so successful.
11:25 So I was going to mention, I think the most heroic thing
11:29 I'm aware of that you've done, which is a lot,
11:31 is running Indy 500 and then flying to the Coca-Cola 600
11:34 on the same day.
11:35 You did that twice, right?
11:36 Yeah, the first time was an absolute disaster.
11:41 We finished ninth at the Indy 500.
11:43 We flew down to--
11:44 Indy 500 was hot that day.
11:46 Flew down to Charlotte.
11:47 It was really hot when I got to Charlotte.
11:50 Missed the driver's meeting because of the time.
11:52 So we had to start at the tail and worked our way up
11:55 to fourth that night.
11:56 But with like 50 laps to go, I mean, well,
12:00 I'll go back about 100 laps into the race.
12:04 It's 400 laps.
12:05 And we get to lap 100.
12:06 Caution comes out.
12:07 Somebody oils the track down.
12:09 I'm calling on the radio.
12:11 I'm like, hey, my teammate was Bobby Labonte,
12:13 and he had just started cycling and all this health stuff.
12:16 I'm the guy drinking Cokes and eating Oreos and the bus
12:19 and stuff.
12:19 I'm like, get that crap out of here.
12:23 I called on the radio and I said, hey, can you guys
12:25 go see if Bobby's got any of his energy bars or whatever
12:30 that crap is he's eating?
12:31 I said, I'm starving.
12:32 And I hadn't ate any--
12:33 I'd ate too many bagels is all I'd ate the whole day.
12:36 I didn't know anything about nutrition, obviously.
12:40 Well, we do, clearly.
12:41 Yeah.
12:43 So they go and they find a chocolate power bar
12:45 or something.
12:46 And then the drink bottles that we would switch out
12:49 every stop, they normally would take like Powerade
12:52 and dilute it half with water.
12:54 It was just straight Powerade.
12:55 They were like, he's struggling already.
12:57 And we'd already ran a 500 mile race.
12:59 So on the live pit stop, switch the bottles out,
13:03 get the bottle in my lap.
13:05 They hand in the power bar, got it in my left hand.
13:07 Drop the jack where I got it in first gear,
13:10 get out on the track.
13:11 So imagine going to the ice cream shop
13:14 and they make your soft serve cone and they go,
13:17 do you want sprinkles on that?
13:19 So I get on the racetrack, they've
13:20 got kitty litter out there to try to soak the oil up
13:23 on the racetrack.
13:24 And it's swirling around inside the car
13:26 and it is coated this chocolate bar.
13:29 But in the meantime, we're like a lap into being out there
13:33 and I'm trying to cut tires and this and that.
13:35 This thing has went from this to--
13:39 and I got a piece that goes over your nose to keep the air in.
13:43 And then there's a flap on the bottom.
13:45 So to get the thing in there, I had
13:46 to drive the car with my knee, push this flap out,
13:50 try to stick this bar up in there to eat it.
13:52 So the first time was an epic failure.
13:54 It's all bent over and rolled over.
13:55 I'm like, I can't even get my mouth over it now.
13:57 So I'm taking my glove and trying to straighten this out.
14:00 Well, again, it's hot.
14:01 So now it's just sticky.
14:02 And I'm like, this is one of those things
14:04 where the more I do, the worse this is getting.
14:07 I got it straightened out.
14:08 I got one massive giant bite at this thing.
14:11 And it was like watching a dog eating peanut butter.
14:13 It was like, nom, nom, nom.
14:16 But we get to--
14:18 and it did.
14:19 It fixed it.
14:19 It got me through that part of it.
14:20 We make it to 50 laps to go.
14:22 And I'm telling you, I did not need to be in a race
14:26 car at that point.
14:27 The yellow line's about six inches wide.
14:29 And it looked like it was three feet wide.
14:31 And a hot dog wrapper blew across the back stretch.
14:33 And I almost called on the radio,
14:34 there's an elephant with spots on the back stretch.
14:37 But the funny part about that when it was over
14:39 is Dale Senior, like I said, we finished fourth.
14:42 He finished third right in front of us.
14:44 And they pulled you to the Sunoco pumps after the race.
14:46 And I'm just sitting in there.
14:48 I mean, I'm exhausted.
14:49 And Dale gets out.
14:51 And I see him walking around.
14:52 He's got that [BLEEP] grin on his face.
14:54 I'm like, oh, this isn't going to be good.
14:57 And he takes the net down for me.
14:58 He goes, well, kid, you had enough for one day?
15:02 Yeah, he goes, let me help you out.
15:03 And he helped pull me out of the car.
15:05 But yeah, we learned a lot from that.
15:09 We did it again two years later.
15:10 We did the first one in '99, second one in '01.
15:15 Joe Gibbs made me hire a trainer.
15:17 So we had a guy for 3 and 1/2 weeks
15:19 from the Carolina Panthers.
15:20 And it was their off season.
15:22 And he literally monitored and gave me everything.
15:26 He wanted me to eat and drink for that 3 and 1/2 week
15:28 period.
15:29 I lost 6 and 1/2 pounds before we even
15:31 got to race day, just from the diet that he had us on.
15:34 But the night before the race, he goes,
15:36 you can have whatever you want.
15:37 And I ordered a large pizza and mowed through it.
15:40 Just housed it.
15:40 Housed the hole.
15:41 Looked like a Dixie chopper or a scag mower
15:44 just plowing through it.
15:46 There was nothing left.
15:48 It's like Wednesday for Brian.
15:50 It is.
15:50 That's how I prepare for these interviews.
15:52 I prepare for this podcast.
15:53 Yeah.
15:54 I was in way better shape, though, the second time around.
15:57 It's like we learned a little bit.
15:58 We did our homework.
15:59 We had somebody help us.
16:00 And it was a way better outcome.
16:02 We finished sixth at the 500.
16:04 Led the race.
16:05 Had a shot to win.
16:07 We had a red flag there and had to gamble on,
16:10 did we come in and take fuel?
16:13 And then we're going to have to stop one more time.
16:16 But then if we stopped after pitting,
16:18 we were only going to have to take half the fuel.
16:20 So it would save time in the pits.
16:22 Or we stay out in the lead and hope we catch a caution.
16:26 Well, we chose the let's come in.
16:28 We'll go for the shorter pit stop.
16:30 Just before the pit stops happen, caution comes out.
16:33 And screwed that whole strategy.
16:36 You never really got lured back by the 500.
16:39 So many guys, I think, over time,
16:41 you can look back and see how many racers,
16:42 like giving it one last shot or kind of trying
16:45 to get in some car, that's not something you would ever do.
16:48 But did that ever kind of linger in the back of your mind?
16:52 To me, once you got away from the IndyCar series,
16:55 the Indy 500 was not something that ever dragged you back.
16:59 I wanted it to drag me back.
17:00 The problem was early 2000s, I mean,
17:04 drivers weren't any heavier than 165 pounds.
17:07 I weighed almost 190.
17:10 I'm not going on a diet to lose 25 pounds just
17:12 to run the Indy 500.
17:14 Print that.
17:15 That's a headline.
17:16 So that literally was one of the deciding factors.
17:18 And honestly, I mean, I respect IndyCars so much.
17:22 And Marco Andretti's friends of mine, Dario Franchitti,
17:26 Tony Cannon, Helio, and listening
17:29 to how technical those cars were,
17:31 I was going to be at a disadvantage out of the gate
17:33 because it's just that technical in every form of motorsports
17:36 that if you're not doing it all the time,
17:38 you're going to be behind.
17:39 Which last night, Brian and I were talking.
17:41 It's like, he never touched F1.
17:43 It's kind of similar reasoning.
17:44 A little bit of touch.
17:45 I got four laps in Lewis Hamilton's car.
17:47 We did a seat swap with Mobil 1 at Watkins Glen.
17:51 And that was a blast.
17:52 Really enjoyed that.
17:54 The impressive thing wasn't the horsepower or the cornering.
17:58 It was the thing that impressed me the most
18:00 is how good the brakes were on it.
18:03 I always wondered, why do these guys go down
18:05 and they just plow into each other?
18:06 Or every time you try to pass, I'm
18:08 like, surely these guys know how to race each other.
18:11 And then when you get in one of those cars
18:12 and you realize how short the braking zone is
18:15 and how much further you have to go than the next guy
18:17 to get position, it all makes sense
18:20 why they crash into each other all the time.
18:23 It's that small of a braking zone
18:26 that you've got to make up a lot of distance in a short time.
18:30 Sprint car racing is obviously--
18:31 was and still is a big passion of yours.
18:34 Recently, you sold the All-Star Series to Kyle Larson.
18:38 And I think we're seeing an interesting scenario develop
18:41 in the sprint car racing world.
18:43 What's your take on what's happening there?
18:46 I like what Kyle and Brad Sweet, his brother-in-law, are doing.
18:52 I think they've got big goals.
18:54 They're trying to-- I think it all resonated when Kyle went
18:57 and started running some dirt late model races.
18:59 And he's like, man, these guys run for $25,000 a night.
19:02 And sprint cars on a good night are running for $10,000.
19:05 So him and Brad got together and tried
19:07 to figure out how can they keep raising the bar on that.
19:09 And that's how the High Limit Series started.
19:11 So my life's taking twists and turns.
19:14 And so I start writing everything
19:16 on a piece of paper of what you're doing.
19:18 It's like, well, four cup teams, two Xfinity teams,
19:20 World Outlaw team, Eldora Speedway,
19:22 the All-Star Circuit of Champions Sprint Car Series,
19:25 All-Star TQ Series.
19:27 I don't have any more room on my plate.
19:29 And two NHRA drag racing teams on top of that.
19:31 So at some point, you go, I've got
19:33 to start taking stress out of my life.
19:36 I don't have time for all of this.
19:38 So we have good people.
19:41 That's the key to all of it.
19:42 Everybody goes, how do you do all this?
19:44 Well, you have good people in place.
19:45 And I read something after our announcement yesterday.
19:48 Some know it all on the internet.
19:52 Said, well, that's it.
19:54 SHR is over.
19:55 It's shut the doors down now.
19:57 I don't make calls on the car anyway.
20:00 It's not going to change.
20:01 It's not changing one thing that we're doing in North Carolina.
20:04 No different than it's not changing what we're
20:06 doing with the sprint car.
20:07 It's not changing what I'm doing with Eldora Speedway.
20:09 So people that have that mindset are dumb.
20:12 They're idiots.
20:13 They don't know what they're talking about.
20:15 So it's literally about having the right people
20:18 in the right places.
20:19 And if you don't, you can't do that.
20:20 There's no way I could do all this.
20:22 And I'm not the smartest guy.
20:23 I'm smart enough to know that I need to hire smarter guys
20:26 than me to do this.
20:27 And you hire the right people to do the right jobs.
20:30 And if you get those people, you don't have to micromanage them.
20:34 I mean, there's a lot of racers that attempt
20:36 to go into the business of racing
20:37 that fail miserably at it on a lot of levels.
20:41 Typically speaking, racers are not good track operators.
20:44 No.
20:44 Typically speaking, racers are not good team owners.
20:48 So what separates you from that?
20:50 Because you are the anomaly in that respect as well.
20:52 The amount of stuff you're involved in is one thing.
20:55 But the amount of stuff you're involved in,
20:56 and it's successful.
20:57 That's the difference.
20:58 So other than hiring the right people,
21:00 there's something that you're doing that's
21:02 different than a lot of other racers.
21:03 But that's it.
21:05 I'm not doing anything different than that.
21:07 It's literally-- most of those guys
21:09 that you see get in those situations,
21:11 they think they know what they're doing.
21:13 And that's where it goes sideways,
21:15 because they won't let loose of the control,
21:17 because they're scared to let loose of the control.
21:20 But I knew going into every one of these ventures
21:23 that I couldn't do it alone.
21:24 And I needed somebody that was of reasonable, sound mind
21:28 to bounce ideas off of.
21:30 And I come up with the bad ideas.
21:31 They say, yeah, that won't work.
21:32 That won't work.
21:33 But that's a good one.
21:34 And then we execute it.
21:35 So it's literally surrounding yourself with good people.
21:39 And honestly, it's that way in life.
21:41 If people pay attention to that, don't
21:44 hang around people that don't add value to your life,
21:46 because you're wasting your life on those people.
21:48 You're wasting your time.
21:49 See, now this is the problem.
21:51 Yeah, and we both come to-- we immediately
21:53 come to the same conclusion about each other.
21:56 This sort of touches on something I'm curious about.
21:59 What's your relationship with the crew chief and the car
22:01 itself?
22:02 Like, getting into a top fuel car,
22:04 even getting into a stock car, do you
22:06 know every nut and bolt in the car?
22:08 I know--
22:08 God, no.
22:09 Absolutely not.
22:10 But you can definitely drive the car
22:12 and identify this thing needs more wedge
22:14 in it, more degree of castor in the right front.
22:16 I'll tell a story on him, because he'll
22:19 laugh about it at this point.
22:20 Kyle Larson had been in NASCAR for three years
22:23 already in the Cup Series.
22:25 And there was a race that the oil temp was really hot
22:29 in the car with the oil tanks right behind the seat.
22:32 And Kyle goes, man, I don't know what this is behind me,
22:34 but my seat is burning up.
22:37 Kyle, that's your oil tank behind the seat.
22:40 That's the oil tank.
22:41 You've been doing this for three years.
22:43 It's been there every race.
22:45 So we're not smart as drivers.
22:47 There's a lot of really smart drivers out there.
22:49 You go to a sprint car race, you go to a dirt late model race,
22:52 you go to modified races, you know,
22:54 Ryan Preece, for example.
22:56 These guys know every nut and bolt on those cars.
22:59 I jumped from car to car to car to car,
23:01 and I raced for multiple teams every year at the same time.
23:06 I didn't have time for that.
23:07 My job was to get in there, drive the car,
23:09 try to win races.
23:10 My job was not--
23:11 I learned that from Raleigh Hemling.
23:13 And that was the car, the Diet Pepsi car
23:15 that Jeff Gordon drove in the Midget Series in USAC.
23:18 I drove that car two years later.
23:19 And I'd been working on the TQs I was driving,
23:22 and then got to the full Midget.
23:24 And when I started with him, I grabbed a wrench one day,
23:26 and he goes, what are you doing?
23:27 I'm like, well, I'm going to help make this change.
23:29 He's like, no, your job's not to work on the race car.
23:32 He goes, go up and watch the racetrack
23:33 and let us know what the tracks--
23:35 especially on a dirt track, let us
23:37 know how the conditions are changing
23:38 and what we need to be planning for.
23:40 So it was like, wow, I'm not supposed to know all this.
23:43 I'm supposed to focus on this area of it.
23:45 And that's all I've ever done since
23:47 is my job's to drive the car, pay attention to the racetrack,
23:51 sit there and go, we're going to have to be way
23:53 tighter than we are right now.
23:54 Or I think what we got's good enough,
23:56 or whatever the deal is.
23:58 Everybody has that role.
23:59 And I learned my responsibility is from the firewall
24:02 to the back of the seat.
24:04 Nothing in front of that, nothing behind that.
24:06 This is my area.
24:07 This is my office.
24:07 This is my job.
24:09 Well, and that leads to--
24:11 there's some awesome video of your in-car communications
24:16 with the team at some of these races.
24:18 And to me, it's great.
24:20 I mean, it's very honest.
24:21 And it is as cutting as it gets.
24:24 So that's a special relationship you have to have as well,
24:26 right?
24:26 To be able to talk to those guys in that way,
24:29 and them not just fold up and take it personally
24:31 and walk off the job.
24:32 Yeah.
24:33 Pit crew guys are a special breed
24:35 because they pour their hearts and souls
24:37 into building those cars.
24:38 And then when you get somebody like me that
24:40 would get mad because of an etiquette deal on the racetrack
24:43 and then afterwards plow into them,
24:45 knock the right front off of it, and then you
24:47 got to go back and face that guy that just spent 12 hours
24:50 shaping that right front fender.
24:52 After a while, you sit there and go, man, that's maybe not
24:54 the right way to handle that.
24:56 Well, I learned a lot from that.
24:58 But yeah, those guys, you have a special relationship.
25:01 They're your family.
25:01 But when you start the race like that,
25:04 everybody's skin gets really thick.
25:07 You have to.
25:08 Everybody's pulling the rope the same direction.
25:10 Everybody wants the same outcome at the end of the day.
25:12 And when it's not going right and you can't get a handle on
25:15 it, it is frustrating.
25:16 Especially that compounds.
25:18 If you go through five or six weeks in a row
25:20 and the car is off, it just builds that frustration.
25:23 So as a driver, you're trying to--
25:25 you need them to fix the car so you can do what you need to do.
25:28 But it just doesn't always work that way.
25:30 And in drag racing, this situation
25:33 exacerbates itself because when you
25:35 have the bad car for five or six races in a row,
25:38 you don't have that much opportunity to fix it.
25:41 You don't necessarily have the testing schedule.
25:43 You don't have the number of laps.
25:44 If you lose four or five first rounds in a row,
25:47 it's this compounding.
25:49 I mean, I've been involved in the sport for half my life.
25:53 And it's like you watch that.
25:54 And some teams deal with it way better than others.
25:57 And so what is the difference between a team that
25:59 can take that five or six weeks of we suck
26:01 and turn it into success or progress
26:03 versus the five or six weeks of we suck
26:05 and you blow the whole thing up and just kind of come
26:07 to loggerheads on it?
26:09 Well, I think having good--
26:10 again, going back to good people.
26:11 If you have good people, there are those--
26:13 somebody at whatever position that is is going to sit there
26:16 and go, we have a problem.
26:17 It's there.
26:18 We just got to find it.
26:19 So the difference is the guy that's
26:21 willing to say--
26:23 McPhillips, for example, we were at Vegas second to last event.
26:26 We'd went out on Saturday.
26:28 Sunday, as soon as the finals went off, my phone rang.
26:31 It was Richie.
26:32 And Richie goes, hey, we found it.
26:35 And I'm jumping up and down in the hospitality trailer.
26:38 He goes, but you're going to want to cut your wrist
26:39 when I tell you.
26:40 And literally, it was a gram scale that wasn't--
26:44 it somehow got off calibration and was 30 grams heavy,
26:47 which doesn't sound like a lot to most people.
26:49 You're hanging weight on the dredge.
26:50 Yeah, in the drag race industry, 30 grams of weight
26:52 is a ton.
26:53 And it's like, oh my god.
26:55 Now, it didn't fix all of our problems,
26:57 but it fixed 75% of our problems when we recalibrated that.
27:01 But we went for four events, struggling,
27:03 and couldn't find it.
27:04 But that's what you have to have as somebody like Rich Senior
27:07 that literally went down to Goodyear the day after.
27:10 We're out of the event.
27:11 We're done for the weekend.
27:12 Sunday, he's going down to Goodyear
27:14 checking his air gauge, checking--
27:16 I mean, he dug through everything to find that.
27:20 It's like, man, thank god somebody's
27:21 willing to work that hard.
27:23 And where Richie thought I was going to be upside down
27:25 and want to cut my wrist about it,
27:27 I said, hey, this is way better than having to go,
27:29 we found it, but we're going to have to take the car all
27:32 the way back to Indy from Vegas, cut it, fix it,
27:34 and then try to get all the way back out to Pomona on time.
27:37 So knowing what the problem is is half of your solution.
27:43 So if you can get somebody that'll dig and get you
27:45 that first half, it makes the last half a lot easier.
27:48 I think it's interesting, in your first year at TSR Nitro,
27:51 there was a lot of talk made of the fact
27:53 that you had a turnkey team on Hagen's program,
27:56 and you had to put it all together from scratch
27:58 for Leah's program.
27:59 And Brian and I are both huge fans and friends
28:02 of Neil Strasbaugh.
28:03 And you look at what happened this last year,
28:05 you've now got a turnkey top fuel operation,
28:08 and you, as the driver, are the new thing.
28:11 So I think it ties in your stories about how
28:13 it can be the little things that add up,
28:15 and also how you put the right people in the right places,
28:18 and bam, you've got a solid team coming into next year.
28:20 And I think the key with all that is, literally,
28:22 after two years of being in the sport,
28:24 we have had one turnover in employees.
28:28 And NHRA, as I've learned since I've been around the last three
28:32 years, at the end of the year, it is like the shell game.
28:34 This guy packs his toolbox, goes two blocks down the street
28:38 to this guy's shop.
28:39 This guy got fired.
28:40 He's going over to this guy's shop.
28:41 This guy got fired.
28:43 It's not like you're firing people, and they're going out,
28:45 and new people are coming in.
28:47 This guy goes from here, to here, to here, to here, to here.
28:50 And you're like, wait a minute.
28:51 Wasn't he just there two years ago,
28:52 and got let go from there?
28:53 And now they've hired him back.
28:54 Right.
28:55 And the car sucked then.
28:56 It is probably going to suck again.
28:57 But for us to sit there and go through two years in the sport
29:00 and only have one turnover with an employee,
29:04 I'm really proud of that.
29:05 We did something that--
29:07 Don Schumacher told me I was absolutely nuts when I did this.
29:10 But I put my crew chiefs, the car chiefs,
29:14 I put them all under contract the first year.
29:16 This year, we put all of the employees under contract.
29:20 And I think the benefit to that is, A, whenever--
29:24 like we said, it's a shell game.
29:25 Guys go in here and there.
29:27 Well, this is the time of year where
29:29 Paul Lee's got three guys on his team right now.
29:31 Cruz Petragon has three guys on his team right now.
29:34 There's teams that aren't full right now.
29:36 So everybody's trying to hire people.
29:38 Well, they're coming after your people as well.
29:40 So you lock your people down.
29:42 And B, by locking them down, you show them that you value them,
29:45 and you value what they're doing.
29:46 So you raise and boost the morale of your organization
29:49 up right there.
29:50 So two years into this, one turnover.
29:52 We've got a championship and a runner up with Hagan.
29:56 Leah has her best career finish in the points with third.
30:00 It's proof that that's a system that works.
30:02 Yeah, and I was going to say, to your point,
30:03 and you mentioned it, but when you
30:04 hand that crew guy the contract, which no one's ever
30:07 handed him before, he goes, oh.
30:08 Like, that's a little piece of stability for those guys
30:11 that have none, typically.
30:13 And you've seen in other forms of racing, too,
30:15 where there are times when a team will
30:17 hit the skids in the middle of the year,
30:19 and guys are just left with their palms up trying
30:22 to figure out where they're going to work,
30:24 let alone the next season.
30:25 It's what am I going to do next week to feed my family?
30:27 So the contract thing, to me, I think, once again,
30:29 it's like the evolution.
30:30 I had this conversation with a guy about six months ago.
30:32 And he said, well, how does drag racing
30:34 change professionally?
30:36 I said, the main thing you're going
30:38 to see change in the next five years
30:39 is how people are dealt with in this sport,
30:42 and how that's-- whether it's contracting crew guys
30:44 and valuing them differently.
30:46 It's how the teams are physically set up
30:48 and operated.
30:49 It's how announcements and things are made.
30:52 It's how-- because right now, we have two very divergent paths
30:55 in the sport.
30:56 We have the path that you're on, which
30:57 is the good one, where you have a plan.
31:00 You have media around you.
31:01 You have people that are in supporting roles,
31:03 the people that, as you like to say,
31:04 are smarter than you at these things.
31:06 Then we have other situations where people are putting press
31:09 releases out, announcing the hiring of people
31:11 they haven't even spoken to yet.
31:14 That's not good.
31:15 Yeah.
31:15 That's a clown show.
31:17 That's-- see, that's like getting
31:20 a little small little toy pistol and pointing it down
31:22 your foot going, I don't remember if I put one
31:24 in this chamber or not.
31:25 Yeah.
31:26 But again, that's one of the things-- the hidden things
31:28 that you have brought into professional drag racing
31:30 is the idea of doing things at a higher level,
31:34 looking at yourself in a different way.
31:36 Because I-- and personally, I think
31:38 a lot of people in drag racing, at all levels,
31:41 don't value themselves enough.
31:42 They don't think we're a big enough deal.
31:44 We don't-- it's almost like we don't
31:45 feel like we deserve certain things, which we do.
31:47 I think at the same time, too, it's
31:50 a culture that has been doing the same thing for a long time.
31:55 And so having the ability to come from NASCAR,
31:59 come from IndyCar, come from USAC, World of Outlaws,
32:01 owning a racetrack, learning all these things about how
32:05 to deal and manage people, or deal with people
32:08 and manage people, you bring fresh ideas into a new sport
32:11 when you go there.
32:12 And then all of a sudden, you start
32:15 being a part of the evolution and changing
32:17 of how procedures are done, how things are done.
32:21 But it is-- you know, we gave those guys their contracts,
32:24 the crew guys, and they thought they were getting termination
32:26 papers.
32:27 It's like, no, I want you to stay here.
32:29 But you could tell they were confused because they've never
32:31 had that.
32:32 Nobody's ever said, hey, I really
32:34 like what you're doing.
32:35 I really want you to come back next year.
32:36 I want you to sign a contract knowing that you've
32:38 got a job all year.
32:39 You're going to get paid all year, no matter--
32:41 obviously, you go do something stupid.
32:43 We got to let you go.
32:44 We got to let you go.
32:45 But if you don't do that, you absolutely
32:49 can go home to your wife and go, I'm solid for the whole year.
32:53 It's right here.
32:54 It's big.
32:55 I think the first time I physically
32:56 saw you at an NHRA race, you were actually
32:59 yelling at another team owner, who I won't name.
33:02 And I asked Leah, what's he doing over there?
33:04 And she told me that that guy was trying
33:07 to snipe some of your people.
33:08 So that guy was a funny car driver/owner.
33:13 And his two crew chiefs bailed and went
33:17 to a different organization that was starting up.
33:19 And so again, that driver has to fill those roles.
33:24 Well, he's not going to go pick guys that--
33:26 he's not going to try to take a step backwards.
33:27 So what do you do?
33:28 You go after good people.
33:30 He came after our people.
33:31 We had him under contract.
33:33 But it ticked me off, because I'd
33:38 started doing some stuff around this guy and with this guy.
33:41 And I would have done it different.
33:44 I would have said, listen, I know
33:46 this isn't a great thing to do.
33:47 But this is a scenario I'm in.
33:49 I've got to find people.
33:51 I'm probably going to ask your people if they're interested.
33:54 And ultimately, on a normal deal,
33:56 if they're not on a contract, it's
33:58 up to them whether they want to do it or not.
33:59 But at least you're honest with somebody.
34:01 And you can look eye to eye, man to man, and say, yeah,
34:05 this is a scenario, man.
34:06 I have to try to hire good people.
34:08 I'm going to talk to your guys.
34:09 Instead, they went in there, and those guys said, hey,
34:12 we're under contract.
34:14 And he said, well, we can get you out of your contract.
34:18 So I don't really give two craps about this guy anymore.
34:21 He can kiss my ass.
34:22 Perfect.
34:23 OK.
34:23 Perfect segue to my next question,
34:25 which is you were talking about the cultural differences
34:27 between your other sanctioning bodies and the NHRA.
34:29 One of them is at NHRA, there's sort
34:32 of a love fest between teams.
34:33 You see the drivers at the top, and they always say,
34:36 oh, we really respect the other team,
34:37 and it's like a big family and everything.
34:39 When does smoke show up at NHRA Drag Racing?
34:43 Well, the smoke I'm thinking you're talking about,
34:47 I don't think it will happen.
34:49 I mean, I know because I spent time
34:51 when I started hanging around Lee.
34:53 I've known Cruz Petragon forever, and Antron, and Caps.
34:56 And I was sitting with Petragon one night,
35:00 and I'm like, why do you guys all get ticked off
35:04 at each other?
35:05 And normally, it's if somebody-- the biggest thing
35:07 and the biggest no-no is hanging somebody out.
35:10 And it's like, in the rule book, as soon
35:13 as both teams stage, pre-stage, as soon as that first driver
35:16 stages, it starts a seven-second clock.
35:18 Not a three, not a 12, it's a seven-second clock.
35:22 It's in the rule book.
35:23 You know that that's what it is.
35:25 You have every ability to take 6.9 seconds,
35:28 if you want, before you stage.
35:30 But that other driver on the other end
35:31 wants to rip you through your seat belts
35:33 and pull you out of the car.
35:34 And I'm like, why do y'all get mad about that?
35:37 And they said, well, it's not because it's a rule infraction.
35:39 It's an etiquette thing.
35:41 But it's like, well, be prepared for it.
35:43 You know they might go in and half a second after you,
35:47 or they might take 6.9 seconds, but it's not illegal.
35:50 So you better be prepared for it,
35:52 because if I'm a driver and I'm a competitor,
35:55 and it's coming down to nut crunching time,
35:57 I'm going to use every card in my deck
35:59 that I know is a trick that I think
36:00 is going to help me get where I need to be.
36:02 And that's how I've won national championships
36:05 my whole career, sitting there going, OK, restart zones.
36:08 Well, you can take off here.
36:09 You can take off here.
36:10 Well, nobody takes off in the same spot every time,
36:13 because then everybody else starts anticipating it.
36:15 So every restart, you pick a different spot
36:17 to try to make them guess on when
36:19 you're going to hit the gas.
36:20 So those are the things that you have to do as a driver.
36:23 But the things that always made me mad, and all the blow ups,
36:26 and everybody thought I was just off my rocker,
36:29 it wasn't about wanting to be mad.
36:31 It was about etiquette.
36:32 It was about what Dale Senior, Dale Jarrett, Mark Martin,
36:35 Bobby Labonte, Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon,
36:38 what all these veteran drivers taught me
36:40 when I came into NASCAR.
36:41 And then you got all these new guys come in,
36:43 and they don't care about etiquette.
36:45 They're simple minded.
36:46 They tunnel vision.
36:48 They don't give a crap about anybody but themselves.
36:50 And now you look at the racing.
36:51 Everybody gives an inch.
36:53 Well, look, and just agree or disagree,
36:56 but the way that the truck series finished this year
36:59 was a disaster.
36:59 Terrible.
37:00 I mean, to me, it's like--
37:01 and I like to follow that stuff.
37:03 I like to follow the young talent.
37:04 But that was just-- it was almost unwatchable at the end.
37:06 And it's the bicycle helmet theory a lot of people
37:09 like to throw out there with some of this stuff, which
37:11 is the better you make the bicycle helmet,
37:13 the more ridiculous risks people are willing to take.
37:15 And you got a lot of young kids, literal kids,
37:18 late teenagers, early 20s in those trucks.
37:20 And they just treat them like they're
37:22 at a demolition derby.
37:23 And they don't have a dime in it,
37:25 and they don't have a man hour in a car or a truck.
37:27 But it was embarrassing to watch the race.
37:30 It was even equally as embarrassing
37:32 to watch the champion do his media
37:33 interviews at the end of it.
37:35 And yeah, you want to celebrate with your team,
37:37 but have enough composure to get through your media interviews
37:40 and then go back to your team.
37:41 And if you want to get blitzed and do stupid stuff,
37:43 that's totally fine.
37:44 But I'm watching the kid do his post-race media session,
37:49 and I'm like, oh my god.
37:50 I mean, you hope his sponsors stay there for next year,
37:54 because the kid did a great job.
37:55 I mean, he earned a championship.
37:56 He deserved it.
37:57 But it just shows the mentality of some of these younger guys.
38:02 They don't think about everything,
38:04 or they don't care about it like they need to care about it,
38:06 because everybody's watching.
38:08 So it was always an etiquette thing with me.
38:12 And what I was taught and what I said,
38:14 what I was taught that this is acceptable,
38:16 this is not acceptable.
38:17 Well, as soon as we lost Dale Senior,
38:19 we started losing all of that.
38:21 As soon as he went away, all the etiquette started going away.
38:24 Jeff Burton was-- that's why he got the nickname the Mayor.
38:26 Jeff was the one that kind of kept control of everybody.
38:29 So the hard part is there is nobody in that role now.
38:33 All the veteran guys that race that way--
38:35 and part of that is not just these young drivers.
38:39 Part of that is a product of the evolution of the sport.
38:42 The cars are better.
38:43 The cars are closer.
38:45 Tires don't fall off like they used to.
38:47 That was a big part of the game.
38:48 I remember going to Rockingham, and Mark Martin
38:51 was awesome at Rockingham and Xfinity and Cup.
38:54 And you'd run him down and eight laps into a run,
38:57 and crew chiefs yelling on the radio, take care of the tires.
39:00 I'm like, I am, I am.
39:01 You'd get to Mark, Mark would just pull over,
39:03 lane to the inside, and let you drive right on by,
39:05 and he'd tuck back in.
39:06 You'd drive a half a straightaway away from him,
39:08 and you're like, man, I am doing it.
39:10 I am kicking his ass today.
39:12 And it'd be about 30 laps, 35 laps later,
39:15 and you look in your mirror, and Mark's car's getting bigger
39:17 and bigger.
39:19 And then the same thing.
39:20 He extended that courtesy, you do the same thing.
39:22 You let him go, and you're like, how did he do that?
39:26 And he just took care of his tires
39:27 better than what I was taking care of my tires,
39:29 but that's how you learn.
39:31 But that's not even in play now with the Cup cars.
39:34 It's track position's so important, aero's so important,
39:38 the tires don't fall off enough.
39:40 So it's created this, screw your etiquette,
39:44 I gotta take care of my position here
39:45 and get everything I can get.
39:47 - Okay. - Last question.
39:49 - Last question, oh man, I've got a couple quick ones.
39:52 First of all, I know the whole story
39:55 about how you connected with Leah and everything,
39:57 but the short version people hear is Don Perdomo
39:59 introduced you guys.
40:00 What I wanna know is, how did you know Don Perdomo and why?
40:02 And how were you out riding around the dunes with him?
40:05 - Well, I had met him before, but we were at Ron Pratt's
40:09 in Glamis, and Jeff Gordon, Ray Everham, Rusty Wallace,
40:12 myself, Greg Biffle, Snake was there obviously,
40:17 and I was engaged at the time, Leah was married at the time.
40:22 He goes, "Hey man," you know how Snake is.
40:25 - Oh, Snake's the coolest.
40:27 She's really cool, man.
40:28 - "You need to meet this girl, you guys get each other."
40:30 And I'm like, "Dude, I'm engaged, and she's married."
40:34 He's like, "No, no, man, I don't mean that way."
40:36 (laughing)
40:37 You guys just need to meet.
40:39 So I'm like, "Man, no, I don't have time for this."
40:43 So we go through the whole next season after that,
40:46 and we're watching, I'm sprint car racing
40:50 and all that still, and so every week we're watching
40:53 Proc, because he ran his midget out of our shop
40:55 in Brownsburg, and so we would always wanna see
40:57 how he qualified, and that's how I started watching Leah,
41:00 too, 'cause Snake goes, "Yeah, you gotta meet her."
41:02 So literally the next year, my engagement is off, big time.
41:07 Get out of here, pack your crap, and get out.
41:11 Leah's separated now, like legally separated.
41:14 And same thing, get your stuff and get out.
41:16 And so we're back at Pratt's at the Dunes again,
41:20 and he gets her on FaceTime, and literally Jeff Gordon
41:23 and Clint Boyer and I are there that year,
41:25 and we're fighting over an iPhone, and I'm like,
41:28 "We're gonna break this iPhone, but this one's married
41:31 "and wants to talk to her, this one's married.
41:32 "I'm single, I am committing, I'm maximum effort,
41:35 "I am diving in."
41:36 I about broke my hand grabbing the phone,
41:38 and we talked for about 40 minutes on FaceTime,
41:40 and then literally the first time we physically
41:43 met each other was at a manager's meeting
41:47 for one of the auto part retailers.
41:50 And I never get anywhere early, I'm always late,
41:53 damn near for everything.
41:55 I got there a half hour early, Leah got there
41:57 20 minutes early, and we were in the green room together,
41:59 and that's where it started.
42:02 And we went on our first date in Gainesville,
42:07 literally the Monday of the week that that Friday,
42:10 COVID shut everything down.
42:11 And then our second date, I went out to Havasu
42:15 to hang out a couple days, 'cause everything shut down.
42:17 - I know this story.
42:18 - So we went for-- - You were there four months.
42:19 - Went for four days and came back home
42:22 four and a half months later.
42:24 She got so tired of doing my laundry,
42:25 'cause I took five days of clothes with me.
42:27 - Yeah, you just had to keep cycling and stuff.
42:29 - Every three to four days, she's having to do laundry,
42:31 and she didn't like doing laundry.
42:32 Her ex-husband did the laundry in the family.
42:35 I haven't done laundry in my life.
42:36 I'm like, I am a survivor.
42:38 I have survived not getting in the laundry.
42:40 - Did you need the clothes?
42:42 - Yeah, I couldn't wear hers.
42:44 (laughing)
42:45 And I'm not that guy that's gonna turn my underwear inside
42:48 and go, yeah, we're good for today now.
42:51 - Well, man, thank you for taking the time to do this.
42:53 I know your schedule at these events is absolutely insane,
42:55 but appreciate the insight.
42:56 I think people certainly learned a little bit
42:58 about your past and--
42:59 - God, I hope they don't pass judgment on that.
43:01 - No, listen, dude, the impressive part to me
43:03 is obviously the accomplishments inside a race car,
43:06 one thing, but you've built something pretty incredible
43:09 with the rest of your life, whether it's Eldora,
43:11 the multiple race teams, the drag racing element of it,
43:13 it's a very impressive thing.
43:15 - And in 2024, you have an opportunity
43:17 to be Rookie of the Year once again.
43:18 - Yes.
43:19 - At the massive age of 53 by that time, so yeah.
43:23 The biggest thing I've learned in motorsports
43:27 in my entire life is never say never.
43:29 They're like, "Oh, you're gonna end up here one day."
43:31 I'm like, "No, I'm not."
43:32 Yeah, I am.
43:34 So at some point, every time they say something,
43:35 eventually I end up there in some capacity,
43:38 but I've always enjoyed doing that.
43:39 I've always been one of those guys that,
43:41 I didn't thrive on trying to find projects
43:44 that people said I couldn't do,
43:45 but every time you went to make a step,
43:47 you always get those people that are like,
43:49 "Well, he's not gonna figure this car out."
43:50 Yeah, he figured those out,
43:51 he's not gonna figure this one out.
43:53 And then that's just a little bit more motivation
43:55 to figure it out and do a good job in it.
43:57 So I've always liked that, but it's not been my motivation.
44:00 - Thanks everybody for watching this episode
44:03 of the Hot Rod Pod, where it all began.
44:05 Tony was great, Freiburger was fun hanging out as always,
44:07 and we're gonna crank out some more episodes
44:09 here at the PRI show.
44:10 We'll be back with more right here on the Hot Rod Pod soon.
44:13 (upbeat music)
44:16 (upbeat music continues)
44:19 (upbeat music continues)
44:22 (upbeat music continues)
44:26 (upbeat music continues)
44:29 (upbeat music continues)
44:33 (upbeat music continues)
44:36 (upbeat music continues)
44:40 (upbeat music continues)
44:43 (upbeat music continues)
44:46 (upbeat music continues)
44:50 (upbeat music continues)
44:53 (upbeat music continues)
44:57 (upbeat music continues)
45:00 (upbeat music continues)
45:03 (upbeat music continues)
45:07 (upbeat music continues)
45:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]