 Talladega might just be the wildest race of the year. She's over here, wow, and we're going to see some sparks fly. Maybe it's because it's just so darn fast. Some say this track is haunted. Maybe it's that curse the old timers talk about. It's like a fever! Or maybe it's when the big one hits. And you can expect that Talladega is the unexpected. The Gecko 500 from Talladega. Today at 2 Eastern on Fox and the Fox Sports app. Hello everyone and welcome to Talladega Super Speedway. We have a very special show for you guys today. You are watching the Fox Hot Pass Hangout presented by Coca-Cola Orange Vanilla. So great to have you guys with us on this Sunday afternoon. I'm Katelyn Vincie alongside two guys who both won races here at Talladega. Xfinity in 2013 for Regan Smith, 2003 in the Cup car for Michael Woltrupp. Guys, so good to have you here. I appreciate it. That day in 2003 was one of the best memories ever because Regan, I don't know about you, but growing up in Kentucky, I could not wait to come check out Talladega Super Speedway. When I was a kid, it's all you talked about. And it was scary. People got hurt. People got killed here. And my brother was racing here. And I'm like, wow, I don't know about all this. I got to go check it out. But I was scared. It was really scary. And then the first time I got on these banks was 1986. And I fell in love immediately. And for some reason, I knew how to draft. I had a knack for it. And that ability- Could you see the air? I felt it, I think. You felt it. Yeah, I didn't see it. But that ability, obviously, was something that I think I gained from just watching, watching so many laps here. This is the 100th race at Talladega. And I've been in 60 of them, Regan. And you know what that means? You're old? Yes. Oh, no. We already have an old joke. We just started. You're old, but you know what, Mikey? You still have better hair than me. Mine's falling out yours. He's like a fine wine. Gets better with age. Yes, absolutely. I'm just happy you didn't bring up 2008. In the cup race, when I thought I had what would have been my second Talladega win, or while at the time, first Talladega win. So thank you for not doing that. Hopefully, we keep all the cars above the L line today. And you know, much like Mikey, this place has always had this mystique about it that is completely different than a lot of the other race tracks that we go to. And I don't know why, but this weekend in particular, I don't remember coming down here with this feeling of just my stomach kind of turning a little bit and not knowing what's going to happen or what's going to be around the next turn. I don't know if you can hear it through our mics, but we have jets that are absolutely performing in a phenomenal air show around us right now. So come to a race, you get an air show, you get a race going on on the track, all kinds of cool stuff. But there's going to be a lot that goes in today with these drivers having to learn on the race track and understand a new set of rules, a set of rules that they've never raced with before. And I think you add all that stuff together. And it's really going to create what's going to be quite a spectacle when this day is all said and done. Yeah, and I was talking to a couple of the drivers just now when I was finishing up the gridwalk on Fox. And they certainly don't know what to expect. And the reason why they haven't been in this huge pack where they're going to be three wide middle. They haven't had four wide. It's just been a little, they've had it, but it's calmer when you got about half the cars in a pack. So they know it's going to be different today. They really don't know what to expect. Certainly the main word down there that I hear is uncertainty. And what's great for race car drivers isn't necessarily great for fans and vice versa. If you have uncertainty, drivers don't like it. Us fans are like, oh really? That makes for the best racing that we can see. And we saw an awesome Xfinity race yesterday. I mean, it was one of the best ones. I can remember it Talladega ever. And Tyler Reddick getting the victory lane was incredible. The job he did behind the wheel. That race car was used up. We talk so much about arrow and wind tunnels and everything like that when we come to these big super speedways. His race car was destroyed on the right side. They put panels on it. I had his pitch yesterday. They were taping panels and riveting panels to that race car. Here it is a car that probably spent 10 hours in a wind tunnel. All this money invested. And he wins with panels riveted to the side of the race car. It was an amazing race. A lot of people predicted something completely different for that race. And this just further goes to prove that a lot of times what we think we know, we don't know much like today. That car was a perfect chip and he hit the wall and cracked a part of it off. Well, Michael mentioned it about the fact that it's the 100th cup race that is run here at Talladega. So throughout the show, we want you guys to try and send us 100 fan questions. And we have a special person joining our broadcast for the day to help with the social media side of things. And I will send it now to CJ Wolliver. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. I'm CJ Wolliver, one of the social media producers for NASCAR on Fox. And I want you guys to send me questions. I'm watching. I paid attention. I promise. So get those in and I'll relay it to these guys. The first question I want to ask you guys. I want to ask our talent. Make a pick out of these three Chevy Ford Toyota. What do you guys think? Who gets the win today? Oh, all right. Manufacturer. Are we answering? I think we're going to have to answer. You have to say Ford. I mean, the numbers simply make it almost unarguable that you would say Ford. But I don't know. I think we're going to see an upset today. You said Ford, but you didn't pick a Ford driver. Your pick for the race one is beside you. Regan, here's yours. I said it's because it's Talladega. It's unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen. Why are you yelling at me? I'm not. I would never yell at you. Come on, but here's my pick. She's running a tight ship here already, Mikey. I know me and you can go down. We see a squirrel and we're like, squirrel, OK. But we're going to have to stay on track today here. OK. Well, here's my pick. So you're clearly saying Ford as well. Yeah, I know I'm really not going out on a limb because he has five wins here. But this is my guy for today. You can take a favorite. I think Ford is the favorite. And that guy is certainly one that will be a factor today, but I think this guy, my buddy, Kyle Larson, there you go. Finally puts the bad luck of 2019 behind him and goes to Victory Lane in his number 42 Chevy. Well, I like the theme of Ford. I like Ford because of the Yates engines and the Yates power. But I'm going to pick this Ford driver. Young Ryan Blaney. YRB gets his first super speedway win today. Not just a pretty face, ladies and gentlemen. He's going to be your winner this afternoon as well. But he is a pretty. Yeah, you picked that because he looks so much better when I'm dancing around. You wanted to look Hollywood, didn't you? But I'm going to tell you what, get your guy normal size. I'm going to be down here just gnawing at you. I'm going to be your worst enemy all day long, Kyle Larson. I just don't. I don't know that you've had the speed this year to be my worst enemy, Mike. Yeah, I think that when it's said and done, he's just going to blame. He's going to wink and pass the whole field. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. We want to know who you guys are going to pick. So make sure you send us your picks. But now brought to you by Coca Cola, Orange Vanilla. Let's go to our friends in Charlotte to see who has the right combination. I would have to say Joey Logano in his number 22 team, Penske, and especially considering, let's start with the fact that he drives a Ford. Ford has won the last seven races at Talladega. Joey went in three of those seven. So I would say Joey, Team Penske, and Ford, the Coke right combination for today. All right. So you heard it from Larry Mack. He thinks Penske and Ford are going to be the ones to beat. A lot of Ford predictions around here. Let me say this. The one thing that me personally I really like about the Fords is the fact that not only do they have the 8th horsepower, as I mentioned a moment ago, they've also got bumpers that line up very nicely with each other. Because of those bumpers, if we get to a scenario where we've got to push later on in the race, that's going to be a big deal. And I want to go back to what I said at the beginning. Uncertainty, unpredictability. That's what Talladega is famous for. So while we all think a Ford will win, and probably a Penske car would be favorite, you never know at Talladega. And we're going to see an interesting race. Some really strong cars. All the Gibbs cars going to the back early. Now, how will that strategy play out, Regan? I almost think talking about the fact that we don't know how these cars are going to handle, and they have 120 more horsepower, and they're not handling great. I wouldn't be surprised to see those Gibbs cars line up and run back there for a while, just to get their feel for the race and see how this thing paces itself out. I spoke to one of the Gibbs crew chiefs who told me this might actually play to our favor. It might keep us out of that wreck at the beginning of the race. That might be a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. So we've been talking a lot about Ford, and I know CJ's got more on another Ford driver. Cup series win. Now we can hear him. We couldn't hear him. Now, he's probably going to start all over, because if we could hear you, they probably could have. Thank you so much, Mikey. Mikey looking out for me. A driver that I'm going to be keeping an eye on today, and a driver that we know is looking for his first cup series win. A guy that has a pretty good time living life in the fast lane, Daniel Suarez. But his mom may not be quite as big a fan. Of going fast. My name is Daniel Suarez. I drive for the Stuart House Racing, the Ford Mustang 41. It has automation, Alex. You guys may think, after watching those videos, super fast, and she's getting crazy, but the reality is that I'm running 55 miles per hour. And the way that I'm going to 55 miles per hour, she's just getting crazy. It took me half a day to get the lovely mom back, but it was very funny. No, no, no, no, my mom. My mom never been in a race car with me. Actually, she has said to me that you can pay her enough to put her in a race car. The only time that she said, Daniel, I mean, I mean, you need to try it is when I told her that I lose like five pounds in the weekend driving in the race cars. And she said, Daniel, I mean, I may have to try it. And then she said, no, no, no. I think I can find a different way. You know, I'm very honored because I'm a Tony Suarez fan. When I moved to the U.S. the first time back in 2011, I was more a race fan than what I was actually driving race cars. So I spent a lot of time watching TV, the races, and trying to learn something, listening to the radio. And that was the last year that he won the title. He's an owner driver and he's become and become a three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion. Tony Stewart wins it. So for me to watch him win that title and the way that he did it, having some issues with the brie and the style and the grill and they had to change it. And then he went again. I remember exactly he had, he hit some debris. The grill of the car was bent and it wasn't working very well. He had to pit. They changed that. They fixed the whole car. He went again from the back to the front. He was passing cars like he was a video game and then he went all the way back to the front. But the comments that he said, when all that was going on, that was what impressed me the most. To win a race, that's something cool. But to win a race the way that he did it, that's something very special for me and I bet for him as well. It takes a lot of leadership to say something like that in the last race of the season, fighting for the championship. So after that I become a huge Tony Stewart fan and now to have him as a boss and as well as a friend that I know I can go ask a question anytime, any day, that's definitely very special. It's Tony. Honestly, I never had the opportunity to race against Tony. But like I said, I watched him race a lot. So for me it's been Tony Stewart forever and now I have a little more confidence in him. It's Tony, hey Tony, hey Tony this, hey Tony that. So I cannot call him bad names yet. Yeah, my new cruise ship, Billy Scott. Very smart guy with a lot of experience. Obviously I haven't had the opportunity to work with him in the racetrack, but so far outside of the racetrack it's been a lot of fun. He's a very straightforward guy and I feel like we're going to have a lot of potential to do great things together. You know, it's very hard to tell if I like his style because I'm getting to know him more and more. But so far there is no one thing I can tell you I don't like. He's a very straightforward guy. Everyone in the group have a lot of confidence with him. They talk very open, they have respect, but they have fun and I really like that a lot. They make fun of each other and I'm that kind of guy. I like to enjoy the time and everyone in the 41 group is just like that. So far I really love the group a lot and I'm really looking forward to find out more about the group and keep improving. Yeah, well that was an interesting little segment. His mom really was frightened in that car. I feel like I've had that same look out of my mom at time so I can understand and appreciate where she's coming from with that. You know, Daniel's one of the young guys of our sport. He's exciting, he's fun to watch. He's doing a nice job in that race car this year. I think he's been really getting his feet under him and picking up the pace and getting to where he needs to be on the racetrack. And I see a lot of his crew guys that he talks about having fun with. Some of which I've worked with in the past and one of them I know his nickname is Porky. He's probably not going to be happy that I say that, but one of the most fun people I've ever run around. Great attitude, much like Daniel's attitude there and somebody that we'll be talking about for a long time to come. Yeah, and his crew chief, Billy Scott, used to work for us over at Michael Waldrop Racing and a very talented, smart racer. And I've had the luxury, an opportunity a couple of times this season to talk to Billy about Daniel because I'm a huge Daniel Suarez fan. He's one of my favorite personalities. You just see him and he makes you happy. He lights up a room and so I really appreciate that and enjoy my time. I get to spend with Daniel, but I asked Billy, I said, what's he like on the job? In the meetings, his energy for getting better, he said he's the best he's ever met. He's going to work out harder in the gym than you. He's going to pay more attention in the meetings than you. He's going to do everything he can to win races behind the wheel of that 41 car. And I'm going to be the first one to victory lane that isn't a team member when he wins because I just want to give him a big hug. What a great... A big bear hug from you that might knock him right over. I know he works out and he's strong, but that could be a challenge. While we're at a speedway, I got a quick Daniel Suarez story. The one time in my career, I have been on my roof, it came off of the front bumper of Daniel Suarez. It was his first super speedway race. I know we're talking Talladega today. We got these cars getting ready to take the green flag in just a minute. Danger, excitement, that's the one thing none of these guys want to have happen today. Yeah, absolutely. Well, now let's check in quickly with CJ for more on a poll. CJ? All right, so thank you guys so much for commenting along, sharing, voting. I see all the numbers coming across you guys are the best. NASCAR fans are the best fans in the world. So if you want to know how you can vote all day long, when we ask a question that there are multiple choices, just hit the comment anywhere. Twitter, Facebook, wherever you're watching, comment with your pick, and we can get that information for you on screen. So the first question that we asked you guys among the picks of our talent, we had Larson Blaney-Keslowski. Who do you think goes to Victory Lane? It looks like they agree with our fearless leader here today, Caitlin Vincy. 60% of the fans picking Ryan Blaney out of the three to go to Victory Lane today. So, KV, I think you got a pretty good pick. I didn't pick Ryan Blaney. You didn't pick Ryan Blaney. No. OK, sorry about that. That's what I had to say. Say our other leader with this nice little face next to him right here. What's my percentage looking like, bro? Right now, so we have 60 on Ryan Blaney, Larson and Keslowski, both at 20%. NASCAR fans are quite possibly the smartest group of people in the world. And that's not just because they agree with me right now. I truly believe that. That is a wonderful number. 60%. Wow. You just picked him because he's cute. I did. He's a good-looking man. I'm not too afraid to say that. Look at it. I mean, this is the face of our sport right here. The future of our sport is in my arm sitting right next to me. You've got to be comfortable in your skin in order to make a pick based on that. And I respect that region. I'm perfectly fine with that. And his hair. I do have hair envy. Major hair envy. Major hair envy. What about these boys rolling toward the green flag? I want to tell you what I have after all these years and not being in a car for a couple. I got major envies, these guys behind the wheel. I don't care how unpredictable it is. I don't care how uncertain we are. I know that it's going to be crazy. I want to be right out in the middle of it. I am going to disagree. This might be the one day that I'm perfectly fine sitting here in the garage area right now watching this race, watching what's about to take place because it's going to be very exciting. It is. Again, you're watching the Fox Hot Pass Hangout presented by Coca-Cola, Orange Vanilla. We are racing here at Talladega, guys. Austin Dillon leading the charge, our poll sitter. Yeah, nothing unexpected right now in terms of how they fire off right here. I think when we get to the back straightaway of this race, that's when business is going to pick up. They'll have the runs that they need. They'll be up to speed quicker than they ever have been because of the horsepower difference. Right. I talked to crew chief Mike Wheeler down on the grid, Regan. And he said the cars have so much more front downforce this trip to Talladega. And when they put that wicker on the spoiler, it made it have even more front downforce, which tilts the car toward the front tires, which means they're going to be very responsive. The front tires are going to be very responsive. I'm nervous for this lap right now. Oh, my goodness. But the back end sometimes doesn't want to hang with an aggressive front end. And we heard a lot of that yesterday in practice. These guys were talking about it. Hear that roar behind it? I love that. I love it. The speedway when the whole pack comes flying by it just sounds like a thousand bumblebees flying by you all at one time. But when we talked about practice yesterday, and we saw cars get in the pack, a number of guys complained about how loose their race cars were because of that downforce that Michael talks about. And they've got a pan on the front of the cars, which is different. That helps suck the front of the car to the racetrack a little bit closer. So a lot of things. These guys are learning. They've never been in a scenario where they've had to learn as much as they are right now. Every set of rules that we've run up until this point over at least the past 20 years since I've been involved has been similar enough to another set to where it wasn't a drastic difference of how you drive the cars and how you learn it and how you draft with them. This set of rules is a drastic difference. I loved about my chance to race a few races as my career wound down. As you see Martin Truex in that orange car. Didn't he go to the back? Yeah, he's already cracked the top 10, I think. I can't wait to see the speeds these cars are going to run. This lap here over 200 miles an hour. I mean, the way they run down into the corners, I think it's going to be really impressive to see what kind of times they can crank out through the day. Look at Coriola Joy back in the field a little bit. 202 miles per hour. There you have it. Look at Bubba Wallace all the way up inside the top 10. We know what he did at Daytona that day. He wants to run up front so bad he can't stand it and this is a great opportunity for him to do just that. I'm curious what the fans think and what the people are listening to us right now. Would you rather be in the front of the pack, in the middle, or in the back of the pack? As a driver right now sitting here, I don't know what I would want to do. I think as I see three wide and all the unknowns that are going on, I would probably fall back off of the field just a little bit if I can't be one of the first three cars. I don't know what else to do right there. And if you're at home and you're watching this race, watch Martin Truex Jr. He's taken to the top and is driven almost to the front. The spotters on the roof, the driver's spotters that are ahead of him are saying, hey, man, Martin's making some good time up top. Get up top. So that's how this thing works. When you've got a guy doing something special back in the pack, the spotters notice it and they relay it to their driver and the driver is then ready to adjust his line and go to places where other drivers are having success. And you can see that's Blaney up top. The Kessler, excuse me, Logano up top. They're sort of taking that line away. There's Denny Hamlin racing up inside the top 10. Talk to him down on the gridwalk. But look at Truex from the back to the front. Look at the help. He's got also the Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Right behind him also went to the back of the field to start this race. Don't look past the fact that he's got a forward help and push him. And the Toyotas yesterday, they had what I would call is not a miserable day, but not a day that they're accustomed to. They all qualified 20th or worse. It was a major struggle for them. They all said the same thing. We're going to race very good tomorrow. We're happy about where our race cars are. Looks like their prediction was true so far. And their prediction is based on technology and science. They know what they have in single car and they know what they have in the draft and they were confident about that. Talk to David Wilson, the president of TRD, and he said, don't worry, Mike. Everything's going to be good tomorrow. And I'm not worried. I'm just an investigative reporter at times. I want to hear what people think and what they say. And what I was most excited about down on Pit Road was when I talked to Mike Wheeler, his passion and his energy for the guy behind the wheel of that 95 car. Has he picked up Kenny Say's name really good now? Not really. Or does he say Matt D in my car? Yeah, that's just easier, right? Okay. Let's check in with CJ real quick for some social media interaction. All right, guys. So the first thing about the interaction, they're 11 that Larson's just hanging out with this here kind of. I'm sorry today. I think that's great. But also we had a question come in that this one's for Michael and Regan. And we had a fan that wants to know how many races at Talladega did it take for you guys to get the confidence in the draft to make big moves, to make maneuvers, things that we see on TV that kind of takes our breath away? How many times did you have to run at Talladega before you felt confident enough to do that? I just had my breath taken away. I don't know what happened to young Ryan Blaney in the middle of the pack there. It looks like maybe a little bit of a bump draft from the 34 car. Michael Madal. He was sideways on the straightaway, three wide with cars on both sides. I jumped up in my seat just a little bit right there. For me, drafting was something that took some time. I'm going to say it took every bit of seven, eight races before I even remotely got, not only comfortable with it, but a true grasp and a true understanding as to what I was doing out there, how the air was flowing around the race cars, why certain moves worked, why they didn't work. We watched 1,000 races leading up to the first time we're on the track ourselves. And you just don't know until you get out there what the true feeling is going to be. You don't know that sensation of being three wide in the middle with cars literally an inch from the front of you, an inch from the back of you, and right down on your doors, close to the side of you as they can be. And my story is a lot different. I started back in the 80s, and the only way you could really keep up at a track like Daytona and Talladega was the draft. And I wasn't used to keeping up. You got to understand, I didn't have a really good car when I started. You know, we weren't fast. But when I'd come to Daytona and Talladega, I could run right on Richard Petty's bumper. I could race with Del Earnhardt. How cool is that? That was the best school. You are racing with the king. Yeah, that's my point. Like, and this air is affording me that opportunity. So I'm like, I'm all ears, eyes, no. Everything I can do to be in that draft and to run with my heroes, I did it. And so I think I picked it up almost immediately because of the circumstances back in the day. That's interesting. Yeah, because you have three wins also at Daytona, another super speedway. And that kind of reminds me of a guy like Brad Kizlasky, who's currently leading this race. He has figured out these type of race tracks it seems. Brad is very good here. I mean, five wins at Talladega is it is so difficult to win one of these races. Anybody that can win more than one of them, in particular, you know, Talladega is not as much of a handling racetrack as Daytona. Daytona, you have to be good at the draft, but you also have to be able to communicate with your crew chief how you want your race car to drive at different times of the day. If the sun's out, if the sun's not out, we see a little bit of debris right there on Brad's car. He's going to have to be a little bit cautious about that. But Brad, Brad has a communication with at the time, his spotter, Joey Meyer, we got to remember that's changed this year. Brad has a new spotter this year in Coleman Pressley. He's still adapting and learning from him a little bit. Right now it's working out good for him. Let's gloat a bit, boys and girls. We said the Pinsky cars would be the story. One, two, three right now. They've driven straight to the front. Love it when we're right. Look at that pack of Ford's in the front. We actually phoned it in before the race and told them, can you make sure you're up there and stay up there as long as possible? My favorite thing I'm seeing early in this race is Bubba Wallace. I just love Bubba's, to me, like Daniel. They just want to go. They're happy when they get this opportunity and they've got a great opportunity here today to run up front. And you'd see, if you're watching at home on TV, there's Bubba right up in the top five. Denny is as close to Bubba as he can possibly be right now. I know we're looking at the two-car of Brad Kozlowski pushing his teammate, Joey Logano. But Denny was, he was given a little bit of a ride around the front straightaway all the way through the corners to Bubba there. Denny, one of our best plate, or not plate. I can't say that anymore. I know we can't say that. Look at that. I messed that up once already. Put it further in the jar. That's, I'm going to be broke by the end of the show. This is going to be a costful show for me. We're going to, we're going to wait a second. We're going to call it a super speedway race. I like super speedway. I think that's the easiest way to go about this. But Denny is one of the best super speedway racers. No matter what the form is, he's going to go out there and learn. And I did ask Chris Gaphart right before this race. I said, what is your plan? Are you going to go out there and, and race on? We got a wreck already. Oh, and it's Bubba. And it's, wow. Oh, it's Harvick and Boyer. I don't know how, I don't know how hard the, well, they were being aggressive when they're three wide that early on, anything's possible. I almost think Caitlin that you're just, you're, he, Bubba was pushing Blaney. I saw that. Then it went away. I don't see Bubba. He's the third car in line. He runs to the bottom and he hooks Blaney and it sends him out of control. Oh, look at Denny Hamlin. He gets caught in it, but, but is able to escape. Oh, Michael McDowell, big damage as well. Yeah, that, that was just Bubba was being very aggressive. Remember that Camaro's got the pointy nose. He tries to sleep to the left, just barely caught. Blaney and causes a big crash. I gotta tell you, I'm surprised that wreck wasn't bigger than what it was when you have the third and fourth place cars get together at the start of a race. That is amazing that we didn't take out 20 cars right there. And we're lucky because we're seeing some awesome racing and we wouldn't want to, we wouldn't want to lose half the field right now. Oh, Denny's, that's the worst thing I like. But I'm telling you, that's repairable. With this set of rules, yes. With the way that the cars are punched in the hole. Tyler Redick was torn to shreds. How many times do we think he didn't have a shot, huh? I didn't know where you were headed. I'm glad you went with shreds. I've said that before and you didn't know where I was going with that. He was torn to shreds. I keep you on your toes, Michael. What a rough, rough. Now with these teams we're hoping to have this early on. Now, Clint Boyer, maybe a little bit more trouble for him to repair that car. I think it's going to be interesting. You know, we've got the damaged vehicle policy. Five minutes, we got to remember that. I think it's six here at Talladega. They bumped it up. Did it? Okay. Maybe, I might be wrong. But this is just that nose on the Camaro. It's hard to deal with. And look, Bubba's aggressive. He's going to pass his buddy Blaney. He doesn't get to do that very often. It was just strictly a missed time. You can see him catch that indention in the Ford bumper and hook it a little bit right there. He might also, he might have the opinion that was Blaney's fault. You know, I went to the bottom and he moved over. Drivers see things differently. It'll be interesting to hear his comments. I would be interested to hear that because I don't know how you can pin that one on Blaney. Not only because I have his fat head sitting right beside me, staring at me currently, but also because I'm not sure I don't think Blaney moved over to block him. I think he just, he got too close when he went to make the move. And this is what we're talking about with drivers having to learn the moves on the racetrack, understand these rules and how to get through these rules. Big hit for Harvard as well. If you're watching at home on your big screen in your living room, watch Matt Tift. Watch the job the 36 car does. He drives perfectly through this crash. And I don't think got any damage. We've heard what we think. Daniel Suarez puckered up a little bit right there too. CJ, what are the fans saying? I know we got a fan question from you. Yeah, so a lot of the fans interacting with how much they're enjoying being able to get kind of a different perspective of today's race here at Talladega. So we're going to make sure that we keep you guys updated. You can stay here with us. But one of the questions, and it actually ties into something that I wanted to make sure I told everybody, Justin has commented asking, can I have a free Coke hat please? Well, my answer to that question is maybe wherever you're watching, if you're watching on Facebook, if you're watching on Twitter, YouTube, the Fox Sports app, take the link, hit the share button. If you share it and you comment, we'll go through after the broadcast is over after the checkered. And I'm going to pick somebody. We're going to do it random. And then I'll go through and I will send someone a Coca Cola hat and bonus. It's signed by our boy Daniel Suarez and that orange vanilla Coca Cola car today. So get a chance to go to Charlotte, maybe for the 600 and Coke swag. It'll be a lot of fun. So we did have a question come through, though, as we're still working under caution. Joel sent in a question wanting to know when and where will we see Mikey back in a car? People want to see Michael Walter at back. Interstate 77, maybe that's the best spot. Well, I am actually going to race. So there you can see the car of Michael McDowell that was running in the top five, man. That's such a sad story. Clint Boyer spun around, but he looks like they've made some repairs, but I think we'll be out of this race. You can see the the record there. I am actually going to race a couple of races this year in the Midwest. It's called the VORS compact touring series. Is this breaking news? This is breaking news. Look at this. No, it hasn't. And and I'm just feeling real comfortable right now in my skin and and and I'm looking forward to that opportunity. But it's a four cylinder car. And the reason why this is cool, Regan, I started in a in a Mercury Capri back in Kentucky in 1981, a little four cylinder car. And the VORS compact touring series is four cylinder cars. So I got me a Toyota Celica and I painted it up just like my first car back in 1981. And we're going to go run two or three races. Very good. How loud are those cars relatively quiet? Yeah, they're real quiet. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Like to the point where you can like almost hear the crowd cheering for you when you take the lead in that. Yeah. And you can also talk to your kids, you know, explain to them what's happening out there. They've got a nice grunt to them. But how does that go again? Oh, I like that. But I think that that will it sounds like Kenny Wallace's Jake break that he does. That's that he does. Kenny Wallace does the best. Oh, he does. You are totally right. It's fantastic. So I'm going to I'm sorry. No, it's OK. I think I think I think you'll point this in a different direction. Oh, I'm going to go. I want to go to the garage. He's going to show us some of that. That's great. So business is about to pick up here. Business is definitely not best. Can I take Kyle with me? You don't mind. I think that should be a rule. We have to take our fat heads with us everywhere we go today. I'm down. What do we think? What about tattoo? It wasn't this. This wasn't that. If you want to, this was it's a rule. And tell you're out of the race. If you're out of the race, I'd like to put it down. When you're guys out of the race, you can put them. OK, fair enough. Well, oh, one thing to do. I wanted to make sure as Mikey gets ready to head out. One thing too. I wanted to make sure that I pointed out. We had a lot of fans checking in and asking if he could get a shout out because he's actually watching from Russia here this afternoon. Russia. I just wanted to say hi to him. We are all over the world with this hot pass hangout today. I'm going to tell you what. International, my friend. I love this. This is our second show, and we are fully international already. And Don wants to know if we think a young gun will win today because he thinks they will, they are the future of the sport. I know Regan does. I'm holding him in my arms currently. I know the camera's not showing this, but what's the cutoff for a young gun, though? I know. He's getting older now. I think anything 36 and below should be the cutoff for the young gun. Not because I'm 35, but I'm just saying 36 and below. That's still a young gun. I can get on board with that, I think. So thank you guys so much for continuing to interact. Don't forget to hit the share button. We're going to send you some fun stuff after we get done with the broadcast here today. Mikey heading out to get ready to maybe talk with some fans. Yeah, let's go to Michael. He is going to be hanging out. All right, guys. I want to go to the garage area. We saw that big accident on the racetrack. And these teams, if they come to the garage area, they're out of the race via the damaged vehicle policy. But what happens when they have a crash is a whole nother wave of work goes into motion. And that is trying to figure out how to get the car loaded on the truck. And particularly for this loves team, for Michael McDowell, that car was running so well. He didn't do anything wrong. And he was running right up in the top five. And that accident has taken this team out of competition. You have to understand, to have an opportunity like they had today to run in the top five, to know that they would be one of the cars that could win this race, it just got to be so challenging for them to accept that. That wreck was huge. It wrecked their fast race car. But more importantly, it took away a chance for them to win this race. And guys, that had to be just so hard for you to watch. I mean, you put a car on the track that's up in the top five. You know you can win the race. And Michael just didn't do anything wrong and got wiped out. Yeah, it's unfortunate. You know, it's lap 10 or 11 or 12 of a 500 mile race. And it's a long way to go to figure out if you could push somebody. And unfortunately, we were stuck on the outside. Yeah, and did you know coming into the day, but that you could win this race? Did y'all continue? You know, for a team like us to qualify in the top 12 and to have a chance of anywhere, this was one of our biggest chances. So yeah, it hurts pretty hard. Yeah. Well, thanks for your time. Appreciate it, Drew. You all right? Yeah, just heartbroken. Yeah, I know the work that goes into this. Okay, it's just a wreck, but this could change your whole year and you're in a position to change everything. It could have. We've had a few tough weekends last month. And this was a chance to turn around and get our ball rolling coming off the break and try to get moving forward. But try again next week. Yeah, that's right. He was doing a great job and y'all prepared a really fast car. See what else we got going on in the garage area. This is the teams have their toolboxes here, but you really can't work on your car back here anymore. All it is is about getting something that you can get loaded up on the trailer. You can see over here this beautiful plaid car for Kevin Harbick. They are they are out of the race. This this this machine obviously was was a race winning car. They had the bush promotion with with the with the bush guy here wearing wearing his plaid outfit. And now this this finely tuned pristine probably probably a $250,000 effort on just building that car and bringing it here is is torn up torn to pieces and cannot continue. Harbick got out of the car went into his trailer. Chase Elliott we see on the big screen there. They're making some adjustments on pit road. It's going to be interesting to me to see who's going to be able to survive this crash. Who can survive the crash? Who was in it that can overcome what happened and go out and contend for a victory. So this effort is simply about getting this race car on the trailer. See what kind of damage is over on the left side here. You can see that's that was what ended it the left. Well I mean everything's sort of torn up but a lot of damage to that left front corner of the race car. Good Harbick Harbick made his way to the trailer. Maybe try to get a word with one of the team guys and see see if Harbick had any comments. Nook did Kevin have any words? Did he say anything? Never heard nothing as usual as soon as something like that happens and we're going into the garage we'll just shut the radios off and load it on the hauler. That's what it's all about now just figuring out how to get on board the hauler to get back to North Carolina. That's pretty much it buddy. Good job you had a fast car. So I'm going to head back over toward toward the set guys. Caitlyn Regan disappointment obviously here down in the garage area. You know you look at Kevin Harbick we know he could win the race and now he's getting ready to getting ready to get in the the golf cart to head to the infield care center and it looks like he's able to manage a bit of a smile. Glad you're okay bud so they're having some some words there with the team and loading up and and heading them to the to the infield care center. So Caitlyn Regan you guys you could take it away. This this scene is what has been talked about all day long that we're going to see a lot of with a lot of action a lot of crashes and and a lot of a lot of carnage. So guys take it over. These teams are hoping to see already one of the toughest rides a driver can can make is the ride to the care center. But that ride is even worse when you're in the scenario like Kevin Harbick was right there I know Michael really wanted to talk to Kevin. NASCAR has rules implemented that don't allow that to happen. Basically when you drive a car to the garage it's out of the race. They require you to get on that medical car immediately without speaking to any media and to take that ride even if you drove the car back and you say I didn't take a big hit. We did see him take a relatively good sized hit but even if you didn't hit anything barely they still require you to hop on that medical car take a ride to the care center get out at the care center get checked in and get checked up and do everything that you have to do there for them to feel comfortable releasing you back to the garage area. So a disappointed day for Kevin Harbick and a lot of cars that we excited these guys they just went green flag again. Yes nobody learned anything because they are already beating and banging the bumpers of each other just as aggressive as before I am shocked to see this this early in the race as to why these guys are being this aggressive and I know you have to learn what's going on with the cars but I'm absolutely shocked. Let me get back to my last thought for just a minute. A number of cars taken out of that race that early on looked like we're going to be potential winners. A guy like Michael McDowell having a strong run. Kevin Harbick very good on the speedways. Well when that happens you know what we're going to see now is a whole another group of cars come up in the front of the pack and this is going to evolve as the day goes on. We're going to see different people up there. Eric Amarola won the last race for you at Talladega. That's right. I remember because I was in it and I had to follow him. Well that was an incredible race for Stuart House Racing as a whole. I don't know if we've ever seen that kind of dominance out of a four car team before what we saw on the fall here at Talladega with those cars. We're not likely to see that again anytime soon because the other teams picked up on what they were doing first off. Second off we do have a completely different set of rules that were running under now and different horsepower different spoilers. So many technical things as we talked about early on in the show but that's not going to allow those teams the big four car teams to do what they did and that was essentially design race cars that were specifically built to run in a certain order and kudos to Stuart House. That was so impressive what they were able to do what they were able to take care of there and I think now we're going to hand it back out to Michael Waltrip who is somewhere else in the garage. What are you doing Michael? Matt you did an awesome job buddy getting through that that crash. I thought you I thought you were perfect and then the story is a little bit deeper than that. It is uh unfortunately we got a splitter really deep in a radiator there and how about that you you miss a wreck at Talladega and still got a damn part through the front. Yeah but but what a great you had to just be perfectly patient wait and and the seas open you thought and then your radiator busted. Yeah I thought we were okay there I shifted down to third gear and just got on the brakes as hard as I could and missed it and sometimes it's just not your day. Yeah you did everything perfect. Appreciate it Matt. And I wanted to show you what he was talking about we got a splitter in the front nose and so the splitter that you see on the front of the car down low but look he's got an extra splitter and unfortunately it pierced the radiator so that that see the low splitter good upper splitter bad that's that's how simple that is. Got another car coming in this is the guy that took the brunt of the collision the most the hardest hit of anybody and it was the guy that I was so impressed with and happy for early in the going the guys we talked to earlier from the from the loves team that uh that they crew chief and the whole team just talking about what a what an opportunity lost it was. Hey Michael I uh I was so impressed with your early run you did everything perfect and now here you are in the garage area. Yeah you know that's just part of racing here at Talladega you know kind of innocent bystander but yeah it's unfortunate we had such a fast love travel stop Ford Mustang qualified good drove well really optimistic about today but you know some days it's not your day and today wasn't our day and move forward. And I was talking to Drew and those guys I mean this was a chant this was like one of those you got circled boldly and you were perfect you proved you had everything it was going to take so I'm sorry for you. Yeah but this one's nice about NASCAR race every week we'll go to Dover and try to do it. Yeah thank you buddy so you can tell the team's dejection and then also there with Michael McDowell the driver how challenging that was and part of the procedure Matt was able to drive his car back to the garage area and he's obviously not injured but NASCAR requires all the drivers to head to the infield care center just to be checked out make sure that there isn't anything that that he's overlooking because of his adrenaline and the energy that that he had behind the wheel so he's going to make that long slow ride to the infield care center and then get checked out and he will return most likely the same way that you saw Michael McDowell just walking back walking back toward his team to to download you can see him over there talking to there's Michael talking to crew chief and and about what he was feeling in the car and this is all notes they're in the background this is all notes that they will use the next time they come to Talladega or they run this car and so that car obviously is probably totaled out but they'll have another car just like that and they're going to make sure they understand everything that they need in order to be successful there's Bubba Wallace Bubby had a strong run early buddy I was really pulling for you I'm sorry for you yes sorry he's obviously rarely dejected so hard to so hard to process everything that you got to go through Bob I just uh I was talking to Michael McDowell about about the opportunity this was you know this was a race that could have changed his whole season and maybe career and it's taken away from him Bubba Bubba would just walk by he didn't have anything to say obviously it's just a tough situation when you're getting a big wreck yeah it is obviously look at what Michael McDowell did in the Daytona 500 right so he comes in here thinking he's got a shot and you know Bubba said he was trying to avoid getting in a wreck with the 12 and he ended up getting hooking himself almost right and uh yeah Kevin Harvick wasn't too pleased and said kind of something a little snippy and Bubba wasn't a lot of words but you could tell that there's some frustration there yeah well there goes Kevin and I I uh I thought maybe we get a word with him but he he uh he obviously he does not very much but I think he just talked to our our TV crew and uh you know I mean obviously unfortunate for him but he felt like you know 10 laps in the race uh you shouldn't be losing it on your own yeah yeah it was certainly a tough situation you know you can obviously lay the blame there on Bubba but there again you know just a decision he tried to go to the bottom and it didn't work and he crashed himself yeah look there have been plenty of plate races in the last three or four years where plenty of drivers have lost it on their own right so this isn't yeah I mean it is what it is you saw the video but seen it before with other people too yeah appreciate you if you hear any stories or you collect any information come share them with us and we'll share them with the folks at home sure will thanks Michael okay all right guys um that's the story from out here Jimmy Johnson coming to pit road I don't know what's going on there I'll tell you what is hot it's hot I need a coke orange vanilla double zero thank you Michael that was great insight from you in the garage area talking all those drivers obviously something happening to Jimmy Johnson there getting into the wall not what he would like to see but I was as I was listening to those drivers talking to Michael when you come here you kind of I guess you I have that mentality of hey this could go really well or I could be one of the ones there's an innocent bystander in an accident well and you have to have that mentality you have to go out there and understand that there are things that will be out of your control in this race there's things that are going to happen on that racetrack much like we just saw with Jimmy Johnson likely a flat right front tire would be my assumption probably cut down by a piece of debris rather that debris came during the accident that happened previously or when where that got picked up at that's part of speedway racing that is part of all racing as well but in particular super speedway racing has to change that mentality and what I love what we just saw right there you know Bubba Wallace walked right past Michael Michael was trying to ask a question Bubba is frustrated that's passion these guys are passionate about what they do they do not like losing they especially don't like racking early in the race Kevin Harvick we know that he said some snippy comments based on what Mr Bob Pocrus just told us and I don't know how Bob does this but he is all over the racetrack he is all over the garage area there's not a story that he is not the first one to and he's done it yet again for us he updated us on what took place there over at the care center and and how frustrated some of the drivers were as they left exit to the care center and rightfully so you know these guys this is their livelihood this is their career they want to go out there and win every time they want to do the best that they can for their team and then Michael we were just talking about the passion the emotion that everything that these guys are showing when they're coming into the garage area you did make a liar out of me because I didn't think the drivers were allowed to speak to any of us until after they went to the care center Matt tiffed actually we got a few words in there so that was nice we're kind of we're we're breaking barriers here on the hot pass around well that was new I didn't know he just was standing there so I said it was perfect it was great I just got done saying though I don't think he can talk to him I don't think he could oh there he goes I'm not a pit reporter so I didn't know the rules but Matt was really really I don't know the rules either and I am in the pits a lot of you know you talk about the passion and and what these drivers you want to see the faces on the loves crew guys you know when I talked to them just so they knew that this was a this was a perfect day for them and Reagan I don't know if you we've talked about access and interaction I think you should give it a try Bubba's cars down there they've got to do a lot of work on it to get it repaired enough to even load it yeah maybe you could see if there's a crew guy down there too that you know get his comments about about what happened and then the stage is getting ready to end I believe we're going to have some we can shoot out the pit road and maybe check out what's going on there stop at the 43 and head out the pit road and see what you can see and we'll hang with you I like that plan I think we need to do that here do we have a poll or do we have a fan question and then we'll do that we actually do have a fan question from Paul and Paul's been giving a lot of great comments today he's been on screen a couple times where is he from I do not know where Paul's from but he is an avid NASCAR fan and I like it so Paul wants to know what do you think of Matt de Benedetto's chances today he's been kind of back and forth he was in the top 10 there for a little while maybe the top five what do you think about Matt D in Talladega well here's the thing that I think we we sometimes lose track of David Reagan was probably the last big upset winner at Talladega prior to him it's been a while maybe Trevor Bain at Daytona it rarely happens so what Matt de Benedetto needs to needs to focus on he wants to win the race obviously but just if he can survive and be around at the end of this race and put in a run at the checker to finish in the top five that would be an awesome accomplishment for him and that team he and that team I just messed up my grammar but here's the deal on that be around at the end take advantage of this opportunity now when I say that what about darn Michael Mcdowell he was doing everything perfect top five can't get crashed right wiped out right there his chance taken away so Matt just needs to focus on not causing a wreck and if he sees one obviously be prepared to avoid it and I think he can be a contender at the end do I think he can win I'm going to put those eyes pretty pretty long a pretty long shot to do that but he can be in the he can be in the mix yeah I mean and absolutely yesterday you know seeing gray gaulding in the SS green light machine up there battling for the win at the end of that race that's that's a good sign for some of these guys for an upset well in Talladega if we could just quickly talk about that race yesterday that Xfinity race with the job that Tyler Redick did and gray gaulding I that that race gave me everything I wanted to see as is the cut boys today this is really intriguing great runs great battles great racing absolutely more of that I'm sure is going to come throughout the course of the day we have 24 to go in this stage so let's send it to Regan who is going to be roping around the garage right now Regan what are you seeing okay guys thank you guys for sending it back this way we are in route right now as we see we've still got the 34 Michael Mcdowell's car here to talk to these guys heavy damage with this much like Michael I am still carrying around young Ryan Blaney he is in the race still certainly one of the guys that I expect to contend bubble Wallace's car we haven't had an opportunity to see bubble Wallace's car yet some heavy contact to this race car and it is going to take a while to unload or to load this race car up crops rough day for you guys I know expecting the big things that car was very fast early on what happens from here on out now you guys just get this loaded up hop on the airplane and get out of here yeah heading to the house headed to the house what what was your expectation you saw the start of that race you saw how good this thing was running were you thinking when today this is going to be our day the car was very fast I was really surprised at how well we was able to pull out in a draft past lap you know so you know it's just one of those deals got a little bit loose but you know we can hold our heads up high because the car was fast we know how tough this is on the drivers right I'm a driver I hate crashing it's the worst thing in the world and I get so mad about it but what's it like for for the guys that are working on the team the pit crews the guys back in the shops what's that emotion like when you see your car get involved in a bigger act um you know it's bad you know but you know coming into this end of these races you know anything can happen you can you know so come out you know we also come out with positive because car was so fast love the attitude I love I love the fact that there are positives you can take from what's a tough day thank you for talking to us for a minute here guys I want to show you something on front of these race cars also and this is that we've talked all week long about what the difficulties with the Chevy nose are if you get right in close here you can see that the Chevrolet nose has a very very finely pointed section to that nose the other manufacturers don't have that the other manufacturers are flat across right here and because they're flat in that area it allows the cars to push and bump more easily the Chevy drivers knew that this was going to be a possible area of concern for them coming into the race this weekend unfortunately we've already seen that bite the 43 of bubble Wallace and a number of other cars that were involved in that wreck I don't personally think that's the last time we're going to see that happen I think we're going to likely see some more incidents that are involved involving the nose cone of the race cars we're turning this the side of the garage here and as we turn the side of the garage it's really cool you can see and here obviously as loud as it is you can see all the fans sitting down the front stretch through here this is the entrance to pit road this is the area where we can go and get access to the crew members to the guys that are going to go over the wall that have already gone over the wall today all the fans in the stands this is one of my favorite views at a racetrack is the view where you can take it all in and you can see all the passion that's going on not only in the crowd we've got race fans in here watching the big screen these folks are just here enjoying enjoying the race on the big screen they get to see the cars come back down through into the pits how's everybody doing over here today are you guys so I gotta ask the question I know some guys are out of the race already who's going to win today what who's your driver who's going to win this race today I thought I thought jimmy johnson well who's your second pick now jimmy johnson jimmy jimmy had a little bit of trouble there I'm not sure that it's quite going to be his day so if you had a second pick does anybody think I'm really selling Ryan Blaney pretty hard today anybody think Ryan Blaney's got this we like Ryan Blaney is everybody having fun that's the biggest key look at this everybody having fun they can't quite see the whole racetrack but they got a heck of a tv right in front of them here Fox Fox NASCAR coverage a wonderful job up here on this tv you guys have fun today we're going to continue out to pit road here and looking at the stage breaks we're still 19 laps away from a stage break so what that means with 19 laps till the stage break that means the teams will just now be starting to prepare unless there's a caution if we happen to have a caution we got one of our NASCAR on Fox camera guys over here Jake we're going to take a picture of him taking a picture of us Jake Jake with me a lot of times on pit road one of the best guys in the business he does a phenomenal job but these guys will be starting to get ready now for pit stops so they've got a few moments to sit here to watch the race themselves to watch what their drivers are doing already the pit box over here to the side this is Kevin Harvick's pit box this is how quick these teams can pack up and prepare to leave they just fell out of the race 10 minutes ago and this pit box is ready to get loaded on a hauler and sent home just look at look at the raw speed these cars are flying around this racetrack with this rules package you can see Kevin Harvick's pit box was very likely similar to the pit box that we're seeing of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. right here and they got that all packaged up that quickly to get ready to send home Alex Bowman's pit box let's let's walk up here and see if uh see what they've got going on on their uh on their car right now Jeff Andrews head of Hendrick Jeff how are you doing today having a good run so as these guys prepare Dustin well one of my four one of my four well I picked Ryan Blaney sorry guys I picked Ryan Blaney to win today so I'm just gonna get loud Michael these these race cars are loud we got about 40 seconds to talk now I picked Ryan Blaney to win today so I gotta carry his fat head around with me all day long evidently but what do you guys do right now as you're sitting here getting ready for this next pit stop how how soon do you have to jump into action we got about 20 laps you know 16 to go and then we're gonna come down Greg's got a strategy we know that we can't tell you guys that but and then we're gonna do our deal you know but we hang out and watch the race enjoy it do you stretch out is there a point where you guys have really got a warm up or have you already done all that type of stuff right now yeah we did we do that right before the race starts and as the race goes on these suits keep us pretty warm so I couldn't hear half of what you said because it is loud out here it is pit road and one of the greatest places to be what in terms of yet again you think these guys knew we were trying to do a web show but when we look at the tire right here describe to us what we've got going on so we've got the tire we've got the lug nuts glued up what's the whole key to those lug nuts to make sure they don't fall off there what keeps those on there well we prep them about three to four hours before the race and our changers they do a good job of checking the lug nuts at the shop before we bring them here to the racetrack they glue them up with like an adhesive weather stripping so it stretches on the stud so they don't pop off and then us tire carriers we tape it you know orange or green for rights and less and we go to town I love it you guys do an amazing job good luck today one of the best pit crews in the business we're seeing a little bit of behind the scene stuff right now tire pressure adjustments going on probably not as important here as some of the racetracks that we go to always cool when I get to see one of the guys that used to go over the wall for me I don't think I ever hit them so that's a good thing brand new race team here the iK9 team their first race they have a Joe Gibbs affiliation a lot of Joe Gibbs crew members on that race car a lot of longtime Joe Gibbs crew members and this is this is where where I want to be I want to see how many of these guys know whose face I'm holding up of course everybody looking at their phones probably checking out our digital coverage right now off the race hey guys this is my pick for today what do you guys think I have to carry this around until he wins the race so can you can you can you radio him and tell him to win the race so I can set this down finally all right these guys are serious right now doing a very nice job Nascar on Fox pit reporter Matt Yocum he's actually doing a hit right now I can tell because he's talking and he's watching what is called a a jerk cam that camera that he's watching that allows him to know what they're showing on the tv so that he can make sure he's talking about the right thing as he's talking and if something does happen he can get it back to the booth as quickly as possible I believe he just finished up his quick hit right there Matt intently watching this right here hey how's the race going for you so doing great I'd love to have uh order a pizza hang out with you over there get some sauce I'll bring one out to you later thanks Matt another one of the cars that's fallen out of the race the 34 car Michael McDowell pick crew member David Mayo David another one of my longtime pick crew members David rough day did you guys I mean you you thought you had this right where you wanted early on with a fast race yes sir of course it was oh yes sir me you're a sir now you're a father of two you are a sir okay well I appreciate that we did see Kenyatta at the top of the show Kenyatta we did you walk past our digital coverage this is live on millions of websites and people's computers right now so well you didn't get to make a pit stop today how frustrating is that when you don't get to go over the wall and do what you love going over the wall it's always frustrating when you don't get to do your job you know we come here to have the opportunity to win the race and to go out that early it's just your day's over and uh there's there's nothing left I mean that's what we're here for the big tall digger is to win and we had the car to definitely do it so yeah and then we talked to your driver he was equally as disappointed that you have a car that's capable of winning can't quite pull that off thank you guys for talking with us best of luck at Dover next week we're getting closer to pit stops I still think we're about 10 laps away 11 laps away roughly the 19 car of Martin Truex Jr our last winner at Richmond we're starting to see a little more commotion around these pit boxes the commotion is usually a sign that everybody's preparing and we could potentially see guys decide to come down pit road maybe with three laps to go in the stage if they think they need two tires if they want to get track position we could see some green flag stops at the end of that stage to create a scenario where they could pass some more of the some more of the cars that maybe decide to get stage points and stay out so we got to keep an eye on that happening at some point we'll keep walking a little further down here and show you guys the fueling systems I always I'm always intrigued by the fueling system so what we have here is the fuel can this is the dump can this is what the the crew members will use to put the fuel in the race car they've got to hold this can up it's roughly 80 pounds that they're holding on their shoulders very very heavy actually might be a little heavier than that but this brake is what essentially opens up and if we get a shot if we get a shot from this angle this brake actually pushes in opens up that allows that fuel to get into that race car extremely quick a lot of technology goes into these fuel dump cans making sure things flow right we've seen a number of races lost because maybe a problem on the venting system of one of those which can really frustrate just about anybody okay we talked about what's getting ready to happen right now we see guys communicating with each other let's watch this Wood Brothers pit stall of Paul Menard this is one of the cars that is about to come down pit road early they're going to come down pit road early and try to leapfrog some of the fuel we saw the communication from one of the gas guys right here this is the man who's going to hand the can over he's watching the big screen behind us he sees his car on the big screen pealing on the pit road we get to get the shot back out front here he's going to be coming in and watch how lightning fast this pit stop happens the 10 car of Eric Almerola all the fours this is a forward deal they're all pitting together right now there's Paul Menard it's gas only they had that hand signal very quick pit stop every forward so far that we see all the penskey forwards anyways not every forward but all the penskey forwards along with Eric Almerola that was a planned pit stop they wanted to have that happen so business is about to pick up down here a lot of cars will likely have to do if they're on this same sequence will likely be coming down pit road at a similar time as these guys just did and now hearing in the side right now Eric Almerola a penalty just a little bit too quick on entry after the pit stop this is always interesting so after the pit stop the crew guys actually come out here and look at all the dirt and rubber and debris on pit road on the pit stall that is built up Denny Hamlin coming down pit road right there they come down and actually blow that dirt rubber and debris we see it over my shoulder as well in the Geico pit they're getting ready to pit and they're cleaning off their pit stall after they pit they have to get all that stuff off of the stall because it makes it slippery for the driver if they don't makes it tougher to stop in their pit stall as well as the old lug nuts the old lug nuts have to get thrown off of off of there let's take a let's take a trip right now we're at the 95 Levine family racing I drove some races for these guys last year we're gonna climb up on the pit box so as we climb up on the pit box here you see a lot of a lot of stuff going on over our shoulders so we've got the crew chief the engineers the general manager everybody sitting down they're all working they're looking at different feeds of different things and we're not going to show exactly what they're looking at because there is a lot of technology involved with these systems but they have lap times they have fuel programs that allows them to say exactly what lap they have to pit on when they think they can make it till when they don't know if they can make it to our NASCAR and Fox race feed up here in the corner and these guys are all communicating amongst each other we've got fans on the pit box here with them how's everybody up here doing are you guys having fun up here what's the what's the best thing you've seen well wait till the cars go by what is the best thing you've seen so far today it blows me away how quick they're in and out of the pits so you guys have gotten to see a pit stop already today who's your favorite driver a bad debate a good answer that was a trick question i was making sure you were paying attention all right we hope you guys all have fun up here today thanks for letting us butt into the middle of your uh into your race here for just a second see if we can get down off of this pit box we'll get ready to wrap it up here from pit road in just a second seen a lot of cool things so far i didn't fall down the pit box so that's great that would have been bad michael i agree with you it is uh it is certainly warm out here today and we're going to have to assume that most of the cars right now that have not yet pitted they're going to wait till the end of the stage i can't see exactly how many laps away from the end of the stage we are but not a lot of action yet well the 32 team they've got their uh they've got their pit box or their pit sign set up take a look at this this is the pit sign with this being up in the air this pit sign over here would lead you to believe these guys are probably pretty close to pitting i got a crew member on the wall with the with the pit wrench in his hand usually means they're thinking about possibly coming soon not exactly sure what their strategy is right now the fords that pitted early on that we documented that pit stop they just went cruising by not any activity in denny hamlin's pit they've unfortunately had some damage a little bit of a problem for them daniel suarez his pit crew off to my right these guys are looking like they're pretty well uh mellowed out at the moment as we get towards the end of pit road see there's a lot of stuff going on up and down pit road fans everywhere we'll go ahead and get ready and uh guys i'm going to send it back to you because we've only got three stalls left and we can't go any further awesome reagan yeah that was great access wow he must be tired after he did that walk yeah and it was cool for like 10 minutes straight cool to see him go up on top the boxes and talk to some of the crew guys that's uh a lot of fun uh katelyn a couple of shout outs yes we he was on the vine family racing's box matt debanada that we're currently running six and ryan newman in a crash earlier with his acorns car is that how you say it is it acorns i think so yeah seventh right now for ryan newman and then what about right behind him justin hayley you said he's got a birthday huh yeah 20 20 years old making his cup debut in that 77 car and he's running in the top 10 that's gotta be i mean that's gotta be the best 20th birthday ever heck yeah i would think so and we know justin obviously from the truck series and covering the nascar gander outdoors truck series good guy yeah he's turned a lot of heads i feel like in the last two years and he's done such a great job transitioning to the extension how about a little four wide looks like maybe truex is off the pace is he out of gas oh we're he started at the back but he had made his way up to the front early now he's going backwards yeah maybe he had assigned a fuel pressure indicator that was off and he just decided to back off the gas to make sure he can run this final lap in stage one we're in the last lap of stage one ty dillon do you remember what happened at bristol yes ty dillon won a stage and you know how emotionally was yeah now here we are at talladega he's gonna have to drive his butt off for about a mile and a half here to get this stage victory because alex bowman brother austin dillon right there against the against his bumper these guys are going to be winning the stage win getting that playoff point a little bit of movement there from daniel suarez he's gone up top some push from david reagan but it looks like ty dillon's going to be able to win this stage yeah wow second stage win for him so far this year that's awesome those are the baby steps you look to make kaitlyn if you're a racer and you drive for a team uh like like the guyco team mm-hmm bob germane and the folks that own that group um that's just a that's just you want it's the guyco 500 darn it how perfect i mean you want to you want to make sure you do something special in the guyco 500 if you drive the guyco car and he's able to to do just that so that's pretty awesome and how fitting by the way come back here kyle yeah fitting by the way is it that guyco is the sponsor of this 500 yeah ty dillon stage winner alex bowman austin dillon chase sulliet daniel suarez all in the top five for the first stage where's your race pick i know he's in your hand right here but where did he end up he's top 10 right top 10 okay i think so there's some differing strategy there there is some guys pitted in order not to pit here at this stage break so i think it'd be interesting to see what kind of strategy indeed does play out and i'm wondering if that 19 car martin trex we saw him fall off the pace yeah with just a couple of laps to go i'm wondering if they've got enough gas to get to pit lane and remember katelyn you see that giant spoiler on the back of the 19 car that changes fuel mileage they have the big splitter on the front that means more downforce in the front that means it takes more power to push that car through the air because of that downforce that increases fuel mileage okay you uh you have i've ridden with you before you got a big old heavy foot i do you yeah yeah and you know how you like to gun it and when you gun it it's speeding tickets you you you lose gas mileage so these guys are right on the edge of making it to this stage break and we see a number of them obviously down on pit road i know we have a recap video kind of showing some of the big moments that have already happened so far in this race so let's kind of take a take a look at what happened so far and went down in this first stage here at talladega the 100th cup series race we are seeing here here we go michael this was obviously yeah one of the moments from earlier today we had a bubble just had a run he tried to to go to the inside and a lot of the racers i think we're saying is a little bit too early for that but man yeah i gotta tell you how good it feels to to be up front when when you haven't been up front and bubba bubba bubba just pushed a little bit there and unfortunately his mistake cost others and that's that's when you feel the worst if you make a mistake and you're you're able to admit to yourself i messed up and and you're the only one that it took out that's one thing but when you end the day of a guy like michael mcdowell matt tiff does a great job but unfortunately a splitter goes right into the front of his car kevin harvick hard into the wall just a lot of action there that that we saw and you got great access to those drivers just shortly after we saw that incident getting comments from them obviously all of them very disappointed uh but what's maybe your biggest surprise uh from the first stage of what we seem so far michael well stage one winner ty dylan you have to call that a surprise i talked earlier in the broadcast about how these underdog teams could run in the top five you know they could get up toward the front but it would be really difficult to think that you would pick a david reagan over brad keselowski joy legano ryan blaney right you know the the front row car over a pin ski car you wouldn't you wouldn't think that that would be possible but ty dylan just showed us all that at talladega anything is possible by getting this stage one that's a beauty of this place right speaking of beauty here's reagan smith back with us hey good job out there man that was legit did you take a breath ever i didn't get to i didn't get to breathe warm out there i gotta tell you what we talk about pit crew members being athletes and how squeeze right in there sorry we we talk about pit crew members being athletes and yeah you know how difficult their job is on a day like today mikey came back and he told us it was hot out there and i didn't really believe him i just saw you know mikey maybe you're just out of shape aren't another marathon maybe out of shape well i'm sweating now as well it's it is warm out there today and and honestly probably the warmest race of the year to this point that i can remember so a lot of fun a lot of cool stuff on pit road and we can only touch on bits and pieces of it these guys are busy they're doing a job and the fact that any of them can take take the time out to talk to us is wonderful and you just kind of get a little bit of a sense of what they're going through down there in the trenches as we call it michael and i were just talking about the surprise of seeing ty dylan capture the stage one victory what do you make of that for him unreal as i was walking back i actually looked up on the big screen and i'm like oh i wonder who's gonna win this stage and i you know i've i've made the comment earlier this week that i felt like ty dylan had probably won his only stage of the year at bristol a couple weeks ago when he did such an amazing job of driving that car and he just out willed him he wanted that car to be to the front more than anybody else and he did that a great job of it a couple weeks ago well i'm wrong already i predicted on tuesday i think it was that we were doing a podcast and i said i i don't think we see that happen again well he proved me wrong ty dylan doing a very nice job today and uh he's a determined driver geico car and the geico 500 that's right i wonder if he gets a bonus for that yeah he should and if these guys that we saw crashing and we talked to if they had geico they could save 15 percent in just 15 minutes i like that do these cars cj wolver would you dig into the internet do these cars have geico as sponsors can we get these things fixed in 15 minutes and save 15 percent we want to get them fixed in 15 minutes that's that's 10 more minutes than they're allowed to have to get these cars fixed so you might be able to fix them in 15 and ask cars going to throw you out of the race anyways yeah we can we can get it fixed i i think the internet absolutely agrees with us on that but i want to make sure everyone knows we are taking twitter questions during this stream as well if you would like to be a part of the show and you're watching us on periscope twitter just use hashtag hot pass and i'll scroll through them and we'll see what the guys think the first twitter question is from one of our media friends that's actually here at the race today calip whistler wanting to know what has intrigued you guys the most from the racing that we saw in the first stage what's the most surprising well for me it was definitely the the win by ty dylan that would have to be way up on the list of surprises during that first stage but also just just the competitiveness how these guys were able to really mix it up and how hard i guess maybe the biggest surprise rigan what do you think was how hard they went at it early i think the the racing early on caught me off guard and and i anticipated i made the comment earlier today that i felt like they would go ahead and and probably be pretty clean for the first 120 laps as they learned what was going on on the racetrack how they needed to handle these race cars what moves they can make but these guys came right out of the gate and they were three and four wide almost immediately didn't really seem to be that concerned about if the cars were going to jump sideways or or do something that they didn't want them to do when they were in a pack the other thing that i was intrigued by was the fact that uh when i was out on pit road just now we saw the the pensky cars all come down together of course the wood brothers 21 having a pensky affiliation as well as the 10 of eric el marola yeah some varying strategies there and would have thought and i couldn't quite gauge where they were running on the track at the time because i lost track of it for a second as i was walking out there but i don't know if they just said hey we have a plan we're sticking with our plan today and this is the best way for us to run our race perhaps we're running the race backward and by backward i mean doing whatever they have to do to make sure that they can pit and be out front with the most laps to go as possible for their drivers or where that strategy lays for those guys so even though we talk about being able to have these big drafts and and being able to catch up very quickly this weekend at the track they're still playing that track position game just a little bit and something i'm going to be following and watching throughout stage two and as we get toward the end of the race which one of these guys that was involved in that big crash uh early in the race lap 10 or so can get their car repaired and get back into contention redeem themselves we were watching on tv there they were doing a lot of work to the 14 car of clint boyer we know denny hamlin had some damage who can who can do what tyler reddick did yesterday and maybe not win the race like tyler did but but make repairs and get that car back into shape where they can go contend for the victory well i feel like denny sorry to step step on you there he's one of those guys we've seen a lot of time overcome adversity throughout his races when things go wrong it seems like he still manages to be there at the end even if he gets a penalty on pit road for speeding or what have you he's probably passed more cars than anyone this year we have this year maybe in his entire career he's had more penalties than most of them as well yeah but in 2019 we have these new cars and people are like it's hard to pass don't tell denny hamlin it's hard to pass he passes everybody what i like about that team is and they tona in the 500 i was in their pit stall i was working that particular pit stall they persevered more than any team yeah just about all year long from what i could tell they had a problem early on looked like the car to win and that was a track position race it was it was difficult to work your way a maneuver your way from the back to the front the way that race played out and uh they had their fueling issues they fixed the fueling issues they were able to and we talked about that with the vent dump cans or the dump cans and the venting problems they had a venting problem with their dump can in the 500 as we were just walking up down up and down pit road a second ago they fixed that issue and he still is able to get himself back forward in the packet out in the front and find a way to get it done this is all part of strategy they all had they were out of gas they were just trying to make it to the end of that stage so what we're having here katelyn you can see those uh pitting too soon that they they're that's fine they knew they were going to do that that was part of the plan but what we have here is a major reset i mean this stage ending and and the differing strategies and the caution we had earlier this is a huge reset for this race i'm gonna be really interested to see how stage two develops because you got some really fast cars now that are in the back of the field the other thing that resets also we got to point out we talked about the cars coming down pit road to fix their race cars that five minute clock resets every time we have another green flag for guys that have damage that are working on the damage on their race cars all right and stage two is underway from talladega super speedway again reminding you you are watching fox hot pass hangout presented by coca-cola orange vanilla there's nothing vanilla about this race not at all and that's why they put the orange in the coca-cola so it could accent the vanilla that was a perfect segue well done that's why mikey's a true pro with this i know i got a lot of weird stuff going on in my head i have a question for the two i don't think we'll argue with that either i would like to know from the two of you as guys who have both raced here and won here what is the sensation of speed like inside the cars racing at talladega well when you get packed up and especially on restarts when when you're really two and three wide like we're seeing these guys go right now i think for me the sensation was far greater i walked out to pit road on friday and i wanted to see as the cars came through the trial of what it looked like because sometimes we come here and it doesn't look as fast and it doesn't seem quite as quick as what it actually is and i'm going to tell you what the sensation of speed just on pit road was ridiculously fast this weekend with these rules and you could visibly tell that the cars just seemed like they had another gear to them than what they sometimes do when when we come to the super speedway races it's it's something about this track and being bunched up that makes it feel fast when you're by yourself it doesn't feel that fast it doesn't feel that difficult because it's all relative to the size of the racetrack when we go to dover next week when you're by yourself it feels extremely fast because it is such a tight technical racetrack but when you're in the pack that's when it feels fast and the other time it feels fast is when you hit something yeah it feels really fast i think for me it's more about the speed is one thing but but just how quickly things can happen yeah and that's evident when when something goes wrong you get swept into a crash that you might have been you know a quarter of a straightaway behind because you just can't make those moves that quickly and the other thing as i wound my career down and just ran one off races here is how these cars have changed over the years they are so precise you just move the wheel a little bit and that thing will go a different direction and i was glad i got to experience that and that's a great thing for speed you know that makes the car go faster because everything's more precise but it's really difficult when you get in a bind and you got to make a quick move with the steering wheel well and you talked about the added down force to the cars this weekend on the front of the cars in particular it up even more and i'm surprised we didn't see a lot of guys changing steering boxes to slow the steering boxes down maybe a little more old school with the way that the rules are set to allow them to not have to be quite as precise but as mikey mentioned the quick steering boxes the settings on the camber the caster the things they're doing with these race cars to make them go fast in a straight line they uh they dart around that's a common common complaint when you unload here my car is darting all over the racetrack and then the difficulty of the travel rigging you know this oh it's got a different banking yeah i mean it's crazy how your car will want to just spin out going through the travel so that's something these drivers are challenged with and a and a and a topic or something i want everybody to follow is remember what i asked earlier who would overcome being in that crash and look who's right up front chase elliot he had a piece of that earlier and then differing strategies ty dylan even though he he's had a different strategy he's back in the top five again so people overcoming adversity or just simply uh being able to adjust and adapt to differing strategies michael you talked about this briefly earlier uh the spotter communication between you and your spotter how important is that at a place like this oh it's crucial and i hope everybody watched the Xfinity race yesterday and heard derek nielen and and tyler reddick communicating he was saying he's got to run he's got to run half off get to the middle get to man when i was a racer i i liked my spotter but i would i think i would have been an information overload for me i don't wait you didn't tell me that you i i think we had a different story about maybe it was a different spotter we're talking about tolerated art by spotter but i just was really interested to hear all the information that drivers get these days that's uh the double zero of land is that landed castle landed castle backing out of the the garage area behind us getting back into the battle making a little bit of noise just we're right here in the element so as you can see just to make sure we know that we are in the garage area we are here i tell you it's in the element that was reagan that was cool buddy that was cool that there was a lot of fun out there on pit road and you know i get to see that every week on pit road and uh so much respect i didn't have a true appreciation for what those guys do until i got out of the car and i was able to start doing the pit reporting and walking up and down and and really talking to a lot more of them and understanding what happens when we were actually on the racetrack how much work is going into getting ready for the pit stop how much the crew guys are doing how much the the guys on top of the pit box the engineers whatever it might be to take us back for a second to the the spotter talk like michael pointed out that the key to a lot of these speedway races and michael is one of the best at it so i know he knows this is being extremely aggressive and i feel like the guys that are most aggressive they do one of two things they either crash or they win these races and i know it sounds bad to say it that way but ultimately you you are going to win this race somebody's going to win the race when it's all said and done today with a move that is super super aggressive and we're going to we're going to sit back and say oh id do that he almost crashed the field and then we're going to say wow he won the race good job and it's going to be because of one of those moves that's what it takes to get it done and because of that you have to have that very very good line of communication with your spotter we listened to it yesterday with derrick kneeland and reddick and i'm sure on the broadcast right now we're hearing a lot of spotter chatter as we watch they're cranking it up right now we're hearing a lot of spotter chatter and and that that is it is a relationship i wouldn't call it quite a husband wife relationship but it's not far from that and sometimes you fight just as much so it's a very very critical relationship fun to see brennan gone brennan had a communion for one of his children that's right yesterday and couldn't be here to qualify came into town and he's got that number 62 beard oil car up in that lead draft i i appreciate underdogs doing special things and i think brennan's being able to accomplish that hang around in that lead draft and avoid the big one you might do something special for your small team i talked to mark beard team owner and he reminded me that back in 1980 he made his first bush series start which is now the xfinity series he ran some races back in the early 80s he's uh owns an oil company lives up in michigan and they started a team and he wanted brennan to drive for him and they run the Daytona 500 in talladega these are the only races he runs but that's a that's fun to see he had him a camper here in talladega and was just enjoying the elements that's awesome how could you not enjoy the elements of the infield of this racetrack and brennan gone a fitness specialist he's really into into a lot of plays a lot of basketball things like that and now you're just making stuff up how are the elements for you cj i know we gotta get over to you oh i'm at the racetrack so i'm i'm fantastic right now but you're in your element and this is yeah this is cj's element so one thing i just want to make sure i touch on everyone still agrees with uh with reagan saying 50 percent of the fans right now think ryan blaney goes to victory lane today but as we know everything is bigger in talladega including and maybe especially the crashes let's look back in some of the biggest and wildest incidents here in alabama that's one reason that they'll learn hard went down there that's why he was so concerned because he touched rusty walls to start this situation it looks like and the car overturns about six or seven times pure letting on its nose in over and side over side comes to arrest on its wheels earnhardt on the inside and sterling marlin outside and already going with the earnhardt down on the inside that's gonna hit terrible crash under the field all torn up earnhardt's car destroyed a major crash you can see earnhardt is leading urney urban trying to pass the four car of sterling marlin touches him shoots the left front of marlin's car down into earnhardt earnhardt into the wall and then since they were at the front of the pack lots of other cars came along and got involved he's up he's up that's a good sign boys he's walking Joey Logano pushing brad keselowski Mcmurray trying to get in line he's gonna get turned which to this one it started with jayden Mcmurray trying to slam that car down across the nose of Clint Boyer he got turned and shot him up the racetrack and it was on from there and this end of the racetrack is littered with debris it's the double zero of cold custard the 41 of roads the second truck up there on the outside that's where it all started looks like well i'd have got a shove from the 17 of timothy peters well i talked about how he's able to push so well that means he's always up against the truck in front of him and there isn't any room for timothy to push him and push him ahead because he's already bottomed out against the truck in front of him caused him to go sideways look at all that sheet metal flying through the air and those trucks grinding to a stop focused on the elliott saddle car and here he comes out the window that's great and these guys are dicing go ahead bp and there he makes contact he comes down trying to get in front of kurt busch they make contact watch that thing fly that lands on that road you talked about and then when it gets on to the racetrack again takes another nasty flip watch this hit that's the hard one right here oh man the other drift i don't want to be in there in any of them like i said that car really held up well above the driver kyle busch's hopes reside with brad keselowski and his ability to push well he's getting a nice push from him oh trouble harvicks around oh got spun on the back by the 43 how many is it going to collapse oh what a vicious crash eric mcclore accident that began at the front of the pack jockeying for position to race for the win and with some heavily damaged cars so the red flag is out in the middle of the first attempt at a green white checker finish a multi-car accident over in turn number three at the end of the back stretch but the bulk of the concern remains focused around the eric mcclore car after the hard hard crash he took to that inside wall can keselowski try to win it i don't know i don't think he can step out until he waits till the last second and picks up he goes to the side as edwards goes down and he turns it make it to the flag oh carl did what he wanted to do he stayed at the back all day long he played it smart had this race possibly won ledwards he opened it up just a little bit i'm not sure i think this is a hard lick right into the fence i mean that car that looks like bobby allison did here in 1987 carl went up to block him a little bit now he's going to come down and try to block him again and you can get one shot at it but you don't get two what's his here comes that 98 and the 88 tandem in the middle of the track johnny solder he won a Daytona earlier this year can he do it again they wrecked behind it it's going to be johnny soldered that mccraffin has not got to the star finish line yet the 32 of miguel peluda was upside down it's on fire now a good look back at some of the crazy wild rides at talladega racing obviously still underway here as we just saw a lead change ryan blaney leading the charge with rikki senhouse junior right behind him uh what do you make of of what we've seen so far in stage two well i think that piece that we just watched with all the crazy wild rides we might be adding to that very scene because we are seeing some extremely aggressive race and i just i didn't anticipate it in the first stage i certainly didn't anticipate it in this stage right here and we're seeing out of some guys that we don't typically expect a guy like martin truex junior you don't always expect him to be the most aggressive at the speedway and he doesn't like the the speedway race yeah he's not a huge fan of it but he is out there and he is absolutely getting the job done today here we see a shot eric elmerola palmanard kind of ford teammates if you want to call it that the fords to me have been the one group today that have really committed to each other they've been working very closely together to try and keep their cars up front and what's taking place in this right now race right now is these guys are beginning to understand their cars kyle busch just made a very aggressive side draft on rikki senhouse junior they're starting to learn their cars they're starting to try and figure out how do we stall out that run if it gets down to the end of the race this is all calculated moves that they're making to try and understand where they've got to position themselves do we want to be fifth on that last lap do we want to be second what's my car capable of doing when i make the move if somebody doesn't go with me is that move going to stop they're building all this stuff into their memory bank right now and they're going to save this until they get down to the last 10 laps and then that's when you pull out all the stops and every trick that you've learned and again you've really got to load up a lot of stuff in a quick fashion here unlike other times that we go to these races the past 30 times we've been to these races a lot of the stuff you would do is similar this time it's completely different that we haven't the one thing we have not touched on this digital show today so far to this point our hot pass hangout here i like saying that's fun hot pass hangout yeah but the one thing we haven't touched on is the fact that they also have new aero scoops in the front of the race cars much like they do on the on the typical intermediate race tracks those change what the cars do in terms of a side draft and kyle busch made that side draft move about a lap and a half ago it didn't stall the car out next to him like he anticipated and then instead they went right by him and no surprise really right to see ricky stenhouse junior leading this race he's a past winner here two top five performances in the last two races he's been here he's pretty good at these kind of places he is he is very good and you know ricky stenhouse has taken a lot of criticism he has this season and i got to tell you something i happened to love what ricky stenhouse is doing this year and he's not hiding from the fact that i'm here for my team i'm here for me i'm not here for anybody else and i don't care who it affects i'm going to race the same every time i do and he's he's held himself true to that he's done the same thing it doesn't matter who's around him who's in front who's behind him he's going to do the same thing every time as we see him taking the lead and you know ricky is a good plate racer those roush fords have always got and behind us the uh this will go ahead and give you a sign of the times the uh 43 holler of bubble wallace is rolling out right now thankfully he didn't uh quite clip us or anything like that but he's leaving in years past that wouldn't have happened at taladega they added a new tunnel at taladega and that allows the teams that maybe fall out of the race to be able to leave before it's over to get out of here get get a head start on getting home so they can go back and work on next week's equipment unload the holler a little bit earlier tomorrow perhaps but that did affect one thing on the racetrack also the there's a new set of uh ride height rules for these cars that allows them to have less suspension to the race cars and uh big pit stops happening by the way right now this is obviously strategy play by the cars that are on pit road it looks like a lot of chevys i think from what i could see when they from when they jump down to pit road there so this may be we saw the chevys work together yesterday and or i'm sorry friday in practice on getting on pit road together we know that chevy did not work together as good at Daytona as they wanted to this chevy pendric chevy cars teamed up with the toyotas that was a very unique combination and and my understanding was chevy wanted their cars to work better together this year and we see right there that's almost all 10 of the Chevrolets in the field on pit road together so a very pointed effort by them but back to what i was about to touch on on the end of the back straightaway is where they put that tunnel in but in order to put the tunnel in on the entrance to turn three they had to dig the race track up so they dug they dug the surface of the track up and then they tried to put it back together as close as they could to what it was but it did create some bumps and turn three's always been a little bit rough anyways it created some bumps and we saw a few issues in practices guys would try to push each other over those bumps and that's the one thing we haven't seen a lot of yet today is guys getting together and and staying connected for an entire straightaway i think we're gonna see that as we wind this race down just a little bit but right about there's right there is where they patch that asphalt you can see the dark spot on the bottom they tore it all up and that creates a little bit of an issue for the engineers to work around there oh i'm sure there's a lot on all of their plates and i want to check in briefly now with our social media expert cj wallover what do you got cj thank you so much katelyn and so to everyone else that's sitting in comments questions uh trust me i'm sifting through and we're gonna get some of the best ones up on screen for us but this question actually comes from a guy that we all work with alan kavana sent us a question about kopa kavana we can always count on kavana absolutely he wants to know for reagan how tough is it to save gas while running almost wide open in a pack here at talladega question very good question and and it's something that's very difficult to do so the best way when you're saving gas with with a pack of race cars is to basically at least have one car in front of you you need one car if not more the easiest place is with about 10 to 15 cars in front of you what that allows you to do is is it creates a vacuum as the cars go through the air it allows you with a couple cars behind you and a couple cars in front of you to lift off of the gas pedal still run the same speed because the air bubble that's created from the car behind you pushes you forward the air bubble that is created from the cars in front of you takes that drag off of the front of your race car almost like the wake of a boat when you go through behind a boat it's a lot smoother than if you're off on the side or out you know outside of that wake so as these guys are lined up right now is for the people that are watching at home they can lift off the gas pedal be half throttle down the straightaway and still going the same speed as the car is in front it's really weird feeling it's it's kind of freaky and plus these these engines actually with the EFI systems that are in them what that is it's an electric fuel injection system they can computerize them to where if you back off 90% it might actually be saving more like 70% of fuel saving so if we're on let's say a mile and a half race track where we can't and we's a problem for Denny Hamlin that's uh that's likely going to finish him off finally I know they worked hard to get that car back out there but that he was involved in that incident in stage one if you recall unfortunate for our Daytona 500 champion this year absolutely but to finish the the thought on the fuel thing you can actually set them to where 90% is more like 60% throttle as much as in terms of how much fuel they're burning so if you're on a mile and a half race track you can roll back to 90% throttle on the on the straightaway and be saving a lot more than what you actually think you are it's just a way for the I guess for the engine tuners to trick the drivers I don't know how it all works they used to tell me back to 90% I don't know what 90% is well it's as educated as that can be for what I'm working with here and of course today being the 100 race here at Talladega we have quite a few questions too that I want to say does that mean it's the Centennial race the centi that it would yeah absolutely the Talladega Centennial we are breaking more barriers we just created a new name for this race I like it we'll get on that branding we're gonna have to call us and Brandon with the track real quick and let him know what he's gonna have to call us in victory lane now 50 years of racing 100 cup races here at Talladega and one question I want to send out to the fans and to you guys kind of a little trivia was uh this place opened in 1969 that's 50 years what makes Talladega so special oh wow I mean for for me personally I obviously have never raced here so I don't have the same experience as the two gentlemen on the show with me but when you come in here there's just something about the atmosphere and the vibe at this racetrack that just feels different than a lot of other places that we go and it's just a great party I mean anyone will tell you this is one of the best said I mean you had me at party it's a great race it's an awesome atmosphere the camping the the partying that takes place it's a great hangout for a weekend I think I agree with all those things the atmosphere about it you know this racetrack was built on an old runway basically essentially huge airport I have to believe it was a rough as an air force base or if it was an army base but it was built on a former military base and through the center of it for those who don't know there's a runway and that's what we call Talladega Boulevard and and this boulevard is it's it's beyond wild I as a young kid I think I got an education out there at times but but it's well I don't know for that type of a show or not I do know that we're web based but we're gonna leave it at that it was it was essentially is let's call it a hundred feet wide roughly I mean it's it's a pretty wide it's basically like an like an airstrip at a big airport everybody's flown in and out of the big airport and on either side of it they parked the campers up and down it and people just walk this this runway and it's called Talladega Boulevard and there's something about my first trip here I walk down that boulevard when it gets dark it gets crazy it's like it's like the wildest nightclub you've ever been to in your life mixed in with like steroids just yeah you take every just sort of person you could ever imagine and everybody just kind of it's like a melting pot of everybody coming together and just having a great time many of which are camping here at the racetrack summer stand you know maybe local hotels or something like that a huge camping racetrack when you crest the the basically the hill to come into this racetrack in the mornings there's this haze of fog above the track and you don't know what it is until you pull up on it and you start smelling it it's the campfire smoke because so many people just camp out here this this I think becomes the second largest or maybe third largest city in Alabama on race weekends it's some ridiculous stat like that because there's so many people here camping out they have they have a jail set up on the property I mean that that should tell you a lot right now if there's a jail set up on the property you know some good stuff must be or bad stuff but mostly mostly good stuff most of it involves alcohol at that point so you know all those things involved and then the racetrack and it just seems like we've had more incidents and we got guys coming to pit road again and for those that are watching on tv uh 20 to go in the stage one another strategy play here I'm gonna say that uh this will get them to the end of the stage I think the guys that already pitted should get them to the stage as well fuel only it looks like yeah fuel only and you know I'll be curious as to who needs to take tires um at the end of the stage uh Ryan Blaney my pick he's gotta be careful you can't roll out of the pit box with that fuel can attach to that race car that's a penalty if he does that fortunately he didn't so my fat head is still intact I do have him here he's not uh currently in my lap but he is still close by we're not gonna forget about young Ryan Blaney over here we're not gonna forget about you but back to the racetrack and uh oh well he's there for Boyer he's had enough issues today I think that's just another one to count upon the problem yeah he's uh Clint's Clint's dream of dreaming about his beer when he gets home already I can guarantee you that is he's just powering through this one is this pretty tricky coming on a pit road here it is it is and and it's tricky more so because of the cars around you and we see a lot of incidents happen and this is the Toyota cars pitting now so they're they're pitting together as well fuel only for them but when you get your wheel straight on the straightaway that's usually at this track your key that you can hit the brake pedal but then you got to hit the brake pedal you got to make sure your splitter doesn't hit the front of the racetrack because if it does it lifts your front tires off of the track which then slides those tires and if you flat spot the tire right which means you you slide it and it smokes just a little bit well that flat spots eventually going to blow out and it's going to cause you a problem and if you're doing fuel only you're not changing tires when you hit your pit stall so you got to communicate with your crew chief if the whole field is doing fuel only you don't want to lose the draft from those guys so a very difficult pit road um and to finish up one last time on my thought with the with the racetrack in general the partying is great everything is great but on the racetrack we have seen more wild stuff happen here than anywhere else that we go uh for me personally one of my first memories was davie allison getting his first win here and i'm a huge davie allison fan with larry mc ronalds with larry mc ronalds and he was an alabama guy and and he was a rookie came down here won that race uh that's when i knew i was in love with teledec right then yeah absolutely i mean there's really not anything about this place that's not a positive i feel like absolutely and you know the race and adds to that and adds to what we're seeing out there and uh curious as to what they're showing here with the air cap oh this was him and clint almost getting together and and that's us or i'm sorry that was swaras yeah in our uh coke orange manila race car right there so very very close call for swaras and you want to be careful teammates want to make sure that they communicate that and don't uh don't let that happen speaking of coke orange manila it uh time for one yeah it is time for one so you got anything to mix that with or you're just gonna drink it straight i just drink it straight it's good enough all by itself i mean i i don't mind rome in my drinks but uh not today we're we're busy here speaking of uh orange vanilla coca-cola and thank them once again for uh bringing us hop has hang out here at teledec one of the questions for the hundred that we're working on is who has the best paint scheme here today at teledec and i'm gonna give my pick first is daniel swarez that orange vanilla car looks sweet tough to argue against that pick uh you know i'm well let's send it to michael i know he's out in the infield having fun i think we should check in with him and see what he is up to as he is roving the infield here at teledec and there he is how are they good fun times how's it going pulling for chase elliot got his car fixed i think he's still in it yep so this is a lot of fun you're very welcome nice to see you so this is a lot of fun we're down in the infield right off turn four you can hear the car screaming bye everybody's having a good time a little beer chugging up on top all the campers come here you can see you can see not only they're having a good time up on the bus they got their smoker down here doing a lot of barbecuing you never know who's gonna come by i like to come down and visit the people how's it going i gotta get out of the way how you doing you having a good time brother yourself yeah having a great time thanks for coming out to nascar oh yeah i'm here my wife my mother laura is here watching the race let's go say hi to him hi wife michael walter donna shepherd nice to meet y'all appreciate you coming out to the race oh we enjoyed they they bring me with them have a good time thank you so there's so much going on down here the cars are loud but what i love about taladega they leave for about 40 seconds and then you can actually talk to people so how y'all doing michael i'm doing a little special on caffeine we're streaming all over the internet we're on facebook we're on twitter we're on instagram we're on fox sports go i just figured we have some monster guests that are here oh nice to meet your monster guests line up and we'll take a good picture together all right that's no problem smile you're on fox sports cheers thank you how's it going yeah you can get a picture but this is what happens it's a community that breaks out down here so much fun to see the fans enjoying themselves doing the racing thing i'm gonna come up uh i'm gonna come say i'm gonna come up on top and say hi to these folks if i can do it without falling down hey will you hold my microphone don't say anything bad though because i'm on tv nothing bad oh i made it up here such a great atmosphere i mean i love the camera view of not only the race cars going by but just how massive this place is look at all these people oh it's awesome this is our first time at dega we've been watching for 30 years and first time to come here awesome you're in at a camper came on out we own him that that's awesome how you doing buddy feel good denny hamlin was in that early crash he's got some damage but i think he's still oh he's out i missed that but uh he was still hanging in there yeah hopefully right on where y'all from uh 20 miles east of st louis louis illinois sank jacob illinois here in the house here they come here comes an ass car y'all let's crank it up how cool is this i love this view my first time here you go gotta smile move your finger my first time racing here guys 1986 my first win here came in 2003 and i never will forget coming through three and four battling with del jr jeff gordon on the high side was able to block them off and get back to the checker first and win and when i hear these cars come pounding through this corner knowing everything i know about what they're thinking what's going through their minds they're preparing for the end here they come so right now they're just trying things working out different moves lifting off the gas to get a run on other drivers just trying to figure out what it might be like who's everybody pulling for you like truex huh truex martin truex jr right on he's a good dude he used to drive for me i used to be his boss right on all the uh documentary about you on um uh tv about where you started the race apps and all that so right on for watching all those episodes lately cool well i know it's quite the commitment to leave illinois bring a couple campers and come to talladega and i just want to say thank you for being fans no bro thank you for being such a good you do i appreciate y'all thank you now i'm gonna try to get off this camper without busting my butt you and your brother are two of my favorites we're taking photos i'll be right down whoa go truex i got to shake your brother's hand friday night oh on the boulevard yep yeah right before you got on the truck how how many of y'all stayed on the boulevard a little longer than you wish you had of i did all of us got one in the back we always do love it enjoy talladega thanks for coming i'm gonna hop down guys katelyn reagan uh there's so much to see down here tell you what i'm gonna do katelyn start your watch start your watch and in 10 minutes i'm gonna give you another report from another part of this glorious wonderful beautiful infield shaking bake baby back to you katelyn shake it shake it bake you had to put the uh you know talladega night's quote in there at some point we had to only mikey would pull that off out there you know and look at look at the good time that they were having out there on the racetrack and you know that's the beauty of this place it's a it is a week-long party the whole time you're there another one of the hollers leaving it is matt tips behind us cruising out you know what our producers did a phenomenal job of setting us up right where all the action happens and we know when the guys are coming when they're going and uh on the racetrack it looks like there was a little problem there for paul minard just a moment ago as as we get down to the end of this stage yes tend to go i think in the stage maybe less tend to go and chase elliot chase elliot yeah what the race what do you make a his season so far this year i mean obviously last year was a breakout year for him well we see right now we see 300 cars first second third the fourth car jimmy johnson having trouble early on and i don't know if he's officially listed as out of the race i believe he is at this point uh or multiple laps down if he's not listed i can't quite see our monitor but yeah 10 laps down so he's basically out of the race but but hendrick needed a day like this they needed a day where they could get all their cars to the front of the pack where they could build some confidence for their young drivers uh you know you got William Byron and third you've got alex bowman and second these are guys that haven't had much good happen this year and the one thing i can say is is chase elliot has has been the guy that's kind of been carrying the banner for that company and he's been the one guy you can count on to go out and win a race which is surprising when you have jimmy johnson there it is and then jimmy in the slump that he's been in is uh it's been a challenge for that team a lot of changes some of us thought we'd never see the day when him and chad canals weren't together and that happens that takes place but but a day like today and i know it's a super speed way and i know they were fast at daytona as well but what a day like today does is it builds confidence and it's not going to change how fast or slow their cars might or might not be when they get to dover next week but it's going to build confidence in those drivers and and that confidence in that momentum carries over and you carry that with you to the next racetrack and just the way that you you walk into the garage the way that you carry yourself when you're at the racetrack the way you communicate with your team you wake up a little bit earlier to go into the garage you're a little more excited about going to the garage when you struggle like they've struggled this year it can really beat you down and and it can emotionally mess with what you've got going on so uh not to mention if chase ellie wins at talladega not far from dawsonville cool cool look out it will be a party that is for sure but yeah michael was talking about this earlier too just celebrating those small victories as they come getting a stage win leading a lot of laps in a particular event i mean i i've been over at that shop quite a few times this year talking to the crew chiefs and the drivers and things like that and i think they do feel like things have not been progressing necessarily the way they would have hoped but it's kind of been like that for a couple years now i would say yeah it's something exception of chase's success last season it's almost like something something just fundamentally changed over there you know what you can tell and let's face it they they lose jeff gordon that's a veteran that can really help build teams that can help develop race cars they'll earn her junior the most popular driver and a guy that that can bring a lot to the table in terms of uh you know partners and things like that so it you go through a tough tough couple years there as you're cycling through people and transitioning people in and out of things and that can make things difficult uh for the company and for the organization yeah absolutely but the good news is right now chase ellie is leading the race uh but let's check in with cj or social media expert what do you got going on cj all right so i just want to remind everyone wherever you're watching this no matter if you're watching it on caffeine if you're watching on youtube twitter facebook i want you to share this broadcast tweet the link hit the share button on facebook after the broadcast is over today before i hit the road and drive back to charlotte yeah a lot of this equipment came down in my car but before i head back to charlotte i'm gonna pick a winner and i one person is gonna get this really sweet coca-cola hat that i've been wearing the last couple of days signed by daniel suarez well no it's been it's been a part of the action here in talladega i've been a lot of fun places on the boulevard i've been in the garage so i'll send you my hat with daniel suarez's autograph on it all you gotta do is share hot pass hangout brought to you by coca-cola orange vanilla so we do have a question i like this one it came in from dylan and dylan wants to know how important are fresh tires at talladega reagan fresh tires i mean they're important everywhere usually right yeah who doesn't want fresh tires right i i think today's one of the few days though to where fresh tires are not gonna matter as much these race cars have a lot of downforce built into them right now and what that downforce does is it it masks a lot of problems that you might otherwise have this is a very smooth racetrack it hasn't weathered a ton it's gotten gray but it hasn't got a lot of bumps and it doesn't have a lot of uh like the graininess like sometimes we've seen at detona and other places like that in the surface so the surface is still very smooth which allows the tires to still look extremely fresh and and i know at some point uh we're going to make some more trips out to pit road we'll we'll check some of those old tires as they come off of the race cars and show you the new one compared to the old one and and not only the wear but the fact that they they have so much tread left on them that it doesn't make a huge deal other than getting that warm tire off of the car that maybe can slip inside a little bit more but you're only talking an advantage for maybe three four laps it's not a huge advantage for a long time in today's current rules and settings had this been last year's rules i would say a little more of an advantage because you can be more aggressive with the car you can make moves from the top to the bottom a little more aggressively but with this particular set of rules not quite as much of an advantage and now in that first stage we saw an early incident this one has been very calm and tame well until right now because we're on the last lap we're on the last lap here obviously chase elliot leading the charges teammate alex bowman behind him uh william byron as well anybody who happened to see who's coming up on the outside right there i don't want to point it out but kyle arson also is kind of in the mix there he's in the mix but he's not as far up as young ryan blaney is right now and my guys all the way down in 12th brad keselowski come on phone it in tell brad to step it up just a little bit step it up man man chase elliot looking like he's going to collect his first yes he does playoff points of the year a nice uh a nice little bonus for him nice bonus for chase elliot now you see hear the crowd you see and you see him reaching up on the broadcast he's reaching up to the dashboard of the race car what he's doing right now as soon as he crossed that line and knew the stage was over he shut the motor off he pushed the clutch in he put the race car in neutral he's going to coast as far as he can around that racetrack so if he could coast all the way to turn three he can radio back to his crew chief and the crew chief is watching they've got telemetry on the on the pitbox is that allows them to watch what's going on with his throttle and with his brake trace they'll watch precisely how far he's coasted for till he gets back on the throttle okay and then when he gets back on the throttle they know he saved us exactly one half of a lap of fuel in that window right there and they're calculating that every time that he lifts off that gas that he shuts that motor off they're calculating that on the pitbox that's going to be critical at the end of this race chat canals was on race hub with us last week yes that's all and Chad predicted that this would turn into a fuel mileage race Chad of course his car running in somewhere on the top he is pretty smart he's got a few of these wins over the years but his car running in third place right now he called this and and we see the drivers already doing what he anticipated would happen and they were they were prepping he wouldn't he wouldn't fully clue me in I kept prodding them a little bit like come on Chad this is I don't we're not going to break the news we're just going to talk about it at some point and he wouldn't fully clue me in and as to what what his thoughts were but I know they were working on stuff to make sure they got that good fuel mileage with those race cars very interesting insight there from all see canals but yeah so stage two is just complete one more stage to go what do you do you think that this I know we've been seeing a lot of aggressiveness out of these drivers from the get go but do you anticipate this is where things really start to ratchet up because it's it's go time right the gloves come off right here and this is where guys get wild so the green flag will drop for this next stage the brains will go out the window if they haven't already which you can argue with race car drivers that they weren't there in the first place uh and we're all I wasn't going to say that I'll say it I used to turn the motor on and I forget who I was you know it's Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde I I'd like to believe I was a relatively tame person till that race car fired up and all of a sudden I became this just vicious vulgar competitive spirit comes out a lot of things I didn't want my mom to hear on that radio I can assure you of that radio active radio active didn't exist when I was doing the majority of my cup racing I'm thankful for that I had a number of car owners threatened to uh to cut my radio off you're like the most even keel person it's hard for me to envision that but I know you have out of the race car I've changed I had to I had to chill out a little bit you know I had kids too you have children I had children that's right I don't you know I don't want to well I'm gonna leave it at that yeah yeah but it's uh but but the in terms of the racing it's it's gonna pick up it's gonna get crazier I know me coming into the day I felt like we'd see a relatively clean race until about lap 120 to 130 roughly then you start trying to position yourself for that final run of the race and and that's when it gets a little bit crazy a little bit wild and you have to worry about what the guys around you do how big the moves are that they make and how they're gonna make those moves that's gonna be exciting to watch but I feel like this race has been moving along pretty quickly you never know when you come here it could be six hours it could be four hours it has you know when we look at the speeds I know it's only a second a lap but but the speeds that we are turning that much quicker they they add up after you know after a good amount of time and 200 miles an hour plus still in a number of instances on the racetrack here yeah well I know we talked to Michael earlier obviously he was out roving the infield and he said that he wanted us to check back in with him when hey we found another spot in the infield I wanted to show y'all I really appreciate you guys giving tribute to my brother thanking him for the memories boogity boogity boogity's on the back straightaway here you guys saying saying hello giving my brother a shout out thank you so much for that how you been how long you've been coming to Talladega actually we started in 85 twice a year I started in 86 my first race was the 86 race in the spring qualified it 203 miles an hour some sort of stuff in an old Pontiac and it looked like I was riding on a paint can we didn't have much uh much of an interior in those things but you've been here ever since huh yes sir twice a year and uh you were telling me just now 20 some years ago we shared a moment together absolutely we was in the bathroom over on pit road and Michael now don't don't cut there they're they're they don't cut there keep there's a lot more to this story I promise Michael's tried to help me find my contact we were unsuccessful unsuccessful but I appreciate his help well I appreciate all y'all coming out to NASCAR I'm on Talladega Boulevard during the daytime and I'm not sure there's ever been a picture made on Talladega Boulevard during the daytime most all that stuff happens at night how are you sir I'm fine Michael how you doing I'm doing well yeah we we already took a picture of it and said thank you to you fellas thank you dad very much I've been coming for 44 years not give anything have your way well 44 years you've been wow 48 because this is the hundred this is features 50th year 100th race at Talladega and you've seen 96 I've seen them all that's awesome thank you thank you for being a NASCAR I'm a NASCAR fan all these friends all the people in Talladega Boulevard are my friends that's awesome boy let me sign your hat and we're gonna hey an old Ty Dillon he won stage one in the GEICO car it's the GEICO 500 maybe he gets the victory I might give you a hundred dollars I ain't got a hundred dollars I don't know if you know this or not but I spent all my money on race cars and women and then I and then I just wasted the rest yeah I got a ride down the Boulevard I'm gonna show everybody at home the Boulevard and I'll ride back by and collect my money yes sir yeah all right appreciate y'all where's your school bus well heck I'll sign us all shucks oyster bar I've been there let me run site let me give me a second here I'm gonna run sign his school bus and then I'm gonna take you on down the Boulevard and show you some of the unique campsites that we have here so guys over there Regan Caitlin stay with me let me have this for a bit I know we're at stage break so not a lot's happening on the track the teams are getting ready for the for the run to the checker so I'm gonna come over here and sign this school bus hey man how are y'all good to see you this school bus has been modified yeah it's got a camper got a place to sleep you got a pen what me you want me sign it inside yeah hey listen I'm gonna go in and sign and sign this bus if I don't come back out please come in and get me I really need really really need you hey look we got one rule in here and I think this is a solid rule you can't be drunk and get on this bus all right here I go I said it he said it's the only rule and ain't nobody paid any attention to it yet all right let me sign this I want to sign it right here above Austin Dillon I appreciate y'all coming out to the races this is awesome oh yes sir we're streaming live on caffeine it's a live stream and we're on Facebook and Twitter and so uh maybe your friends will see you appreciate you go Clint Boyer all right yeah is he drunk no no I can't drink it's not allowed no Dale Michael just as good as you are and I wish you come in and see you just like he did thank you very much Michael love your brother thank you for all you do that's awesome I really appreciate the fans thank you so much appreciate seeing you I tried to I stole this pen will you yeah give it back hey dear how are we all all right we're going to make our way on down to Boulevard Caitlin Regan uh hey who y'all pulling for I got Kyle Larson no I mean I really got Kyle Larson he's right here see y'all later come on Kyle I thought somebody took our keys so we're uh cruising the Boulevard some of the sponsor folk out here this is a nice bar hello sir I like I like your uh oh man smells great I like your bar let me have one of those I'm gonna have that later that looks so appetizing man where y'all from everywhere where how'd you tow all this stuff in here here yeah yeah well I think it's awesome y'all here thank you we're on Facebook on caffeine so if uh if any of you aren't supposed to be here please turn around because well please turn around somewhere else yeah all right thank y'all so much I'm gonna take this lobster with me oh it's kind of hard to steer with the lobster okay bye dear so uh you see a lot of cornhole games you just see this is a community I'm gonna use this as like our hood ornament there we go there we go look at that fella you see so many families uh friends what about the guy that has been here for 48 years that is incredible and just so thankful uh to to to be able to say hello to Daryl that meant a lot to me these people here have built a uh looks like a Christmas tree and uh there's old Denny Hamlin hey man how are y'all some of the some of the some of the experiences that are had here or talked about late at night you know craziness hello brother but what I love is seeing just good folk enjoying company of their friends hey how's it going where'd y'all get that pride at so so many people just enjoying a day at the races this is what it's all about if you haven't been an ass car you really need to come out and see it from the inside and out because it's quite the experience how you doing brother maybe uh maybe not too close oh wait a minute gotta get over this way that's the crapper the crapper trip I mean we we are digging all the way into the details you gotta have that stuff what do you think it's gonna do just go away it ain't gonna decompose in a weekend I can promise you that so uh I'm gonna throw it back over to the garage area and uh we're gonna get ready to race to the checkered flag stage two is over it's time to regroup and get ready to see who's gonna win the Geico 500 and uh Regan Caitlin I'll be there in about 15 minutes I hope perfect we will be timing him 15 minutes I hope Michael is nice enough to make sure whatever the beverages are that he was getting passed out at different times there and the lobster and everything else back for us break some back for your co-host come on Mikey don't leave us down I got a little nervous that the very first interview you did right there on that segment and then the very first fan he was talking about took it right to the bathroom almost immediately and any story of somebody in the bathroom with Mikey I yeah I'm like oh boy where's this going so I'm glad he cut that off immediately either I'm sure there's young ears but uh but fortunately for us he got this back to us right in time to start this second stage and these guys are getting ready to go green and as we've talked about this is the moment where business picks up and guys get a little bit wilder and all of our cars are still up there look at I see uh Kyle Larson now moving to the front so we've got some good picks today this is a professional broadcast right here look at us and we pretty much I did a lot of homework before I made my pick as did you and Michael evidently absolutely and I don't know if CJ did his homework but I know I'm supposed to be checking in with him our resident social media expert what's going on CJ oh absolutely so we uh didn't want to give a quick update about the Coca-Cola racing family of drivers how they're doing here in Talladega today and of course unfortunately two of them uh already headed home as right now we have Denny Hamlin and Bubba Wallace they are out of the race right now Joey Logano leading the charge he is currently third here at Talladega and then taking a look at yeah no he's not that my my leaderboard did not update sorry about that don't know don't know why my my my scoring is completely off now so I did do my homework let's check this out as we uh scroll through Larson right now leading the charge he is third out on track Austin Dillon right now running in seventh so we'll wait and see the leaderboard coming back here I'll defend my man CJ just a little bit uh the board's having a difficult time updating for us and it's actually cutting the positions are being cut off of it right now we can see the order they're running in but you gotta count up each of the cars so I know CJ doesn't have his shoes off and socks off so it's a tough time for him to get to 20 but we'll defend him a little bit all right so I think now I can see the board we can do this taking a look at your Coca-Cola racing family leaderboard right now Kyle Larson leading the charge he is in third and then we have Austin Dillon he is also running inside the top 10 right now nope it cut that off too so no positions I apologize guys I will get I will get an update Austin Dillon right now in sixth there we go Joey Logano in 12 all right and they're cutting them off fours again well the other thing you have to remember when we are at a speedway race the scoring monitor updates frequently and it's a non-stop adjustment every time they cross the start finish line the official scoring position changes but as well as on the race track the scoring position changes as they're running and I'm looking at the at the monitor in terms of our race broadcast on Fox we're seeing speeds right now today that we have not seen all day I just saw some 203 204 some big numbers popping up on the board right there as we go through all this and we mentioned that guys were really going to start to show their hand and see what they had right now that's exactly what's taking place in a big moment on that restart Kyle Bush and and I believe he's taken and then dropped to the back just a little bit since this happened he got a little bit of a shove from behind in the middle of turns three and four that car jumped sideways in the front of the field and and he had one of those moments where he's pitting for four tires and perhaps a new clean pair of underwear after that just took place well you were talking about the speeds we see Chase Elliott our leader running 202 right now I've done a driving experience at Charlotte Motor Speedway I did 125 and I thought that was fast and that's really pathetic how cool is that about our sport but how cool is that that you can go hop in the car for the driving and I remember when you did this this was on race up it was it was a proud moment for me did you I thought you won that you didn't win that oh gosh maybe you were a little bit off the pace well I was going to sell it that you want it we should have just gone with that and we were going to talk about your driving abilities Katelyn but but when you guys did that how cool is that about our sport and and I don't know that I can't ever go experience what it's like to jump off the ground and dunk a basketball I physically can't do it it's not going to happen right but the great part about NASCAR's is people can go hop in a race car with these driving experiences and they can experience what it's like to go 130 140 150 miles an hour sometimes even faster than that depending on where they are and that really allows you to relate to what a race car driver is doing and and I'll be honest when I'm when I'm sitting in traffic I live in Charlotte obviously right now and you sit in a lot of traffic but whether it's Charlotte or New York or LA we go to LA quite frequently when you're sitting there three and four wide in traffic on some of these big interstates and you look and you figure you know what I'm putting around at 10 miles an hour man the race car drivers are doing at this 200 miles an hour you can really associate what it feels like to be out in the pack like this and I don't know that there's any other sport that you can do that if I go get hit by a football player it's going to be lights out for me for at least six to eight months like I'm going to break every bone in my body but the race car you can go out and do that and a lot of fans have experienced that as you have and that was a very impressive piece that you guys did on the race up I know I thoroughly enjoyed that I was pulling for you by the way oh well thank you I'm glad someone was so we've been talking about the speeds of these cars and I know we mentioned it way earlier in the broadcast but in case people are just just now joining us there was a lot of anticipation going into this particular event because of the aero package the changes that we were seeing to these cars that they never had before walk us through what some of those changes were well I think that the biggest most obvious one is going to be on the spoiler the back spoiler the race car and then the spoilers essentially nine inches tall and when they made that spoiler as big as they did they had to cut a clear opening in it so they cut this big clear opening in the spoiler so it's it's nine inches all the way across the back of the car but in the center section and these guys are getting very dicey right now we're seeing a lot of movement on the straightaways out of the cars but when they cut that spoiler down it's it's basically across the center four inches to the outside two edges and then it goes back up and it's metal in those areas the center section is a clear strip of plastic that allows the drivers to be able to see out the rear mirrors we got down here for the race the cars were going too fast NASCAR said oh we're going to make an adjustment to what's on here and they put a wicker across the back now what a wicker is it's a piece of metal that's bent 90 degrees and they bolted onto that spoiler so if you've got a flat spoiler and then you have a 90 degree piece on the top of that spoiler it creates a bigger hole in the air it slows the cars down just a little bit more but by creating that hole in the air it allows the cars to draft up to each other to catch each other quicker we could see somebody a half a straightaway behind to actually catch the field because of the air that's being disrupted as they go through as they go through it and the hole that's being punched in it and this is it's unique from what we've had in past trips down here because it used to be a little bit more of a precise technique in terms of staying with the draft not losing the draft keeping up with it yes yes the other big part was what we did with the motors and what they did with what was used to be called the restrictor plates they took these they had these plates that sat across the top of the motor and it essentially restricted airflow into the motor and or for a motor to to work properly you've got to have airflow to create action to do all the other cool stuff way over my head i'm a driver i'm not that technical but i mean you're you're pretty dang sharp i gotta say you know just enough to to buffalo myself along here basically but but what they've done is they took that plate off and instead they put a spacer that slowly tapers down it's got more because of the big spoiler it's got more horsepower with that and it allows the drivers to do stuff in the car that they've never done before with the throttle they can lift off the throttle get back on it and it's still going to respond used to be if you lift it off the throttle at a restricted plate track you're going to lose 20 spots because you're just going to be basically out there waiting for your car to recover your car wouldn't recover so they've they've changed a lot of things it's just creating more passing and a lot of excitement for these race cars you've been out here all weekend obviously covering the racing action what has been some of the drivers reaction to this aero package do they like it have they been pleased with what they've experienced well i think it's a it's a mix back you know when we go to these big racetracks like this you always have a a lot of different opinions about what they think of this speedway racing some are more vocal than others some love it some hate it uh you know i think for the most part the drivers have enjoyed the the new challenge that comes with it that the main thing that i gathered from everybody i talked to was that that feeling of nervousness just because it's something that they hadn't done before yeah and and trying to see what was going to take place with that and again this is the the build up in the race that we've discussed all day that as they're learning that they are trying to slowly understand the cars and get to the point where they know exactly what to expect out of them now they're getting more comfortable now it's a more normal race for them now we get brave now all of a sudden uh you know you basically set them on the dashboard and go people become heroes someone was thanking you for the insight by the way on the engines we saw that comment coming up on social media well we appreciate that uh great work by you reagan and now a more speaking of great work let's check back in with our social media expert cj thank you and so i made some repairs on my leaderboard and we have rejoined the field thank goodness here today yeah no i know right so for the coca-cola racing family update we'll go through the leaderboard real quick cow larson leading the charge right now in third austin dillon he is six we've got jollo joey legano he's right now just outside the top 10 and 13 daniel suarez and the orange vanilla coca-cola car is 23rd we have ryan newman right behind him in 24th and then of course denny hamlin bubba wallis they're doing pretty good with an early flight home they're not in the race right now today but we've got call arson and third lead in the charge that's the coca-cola orange vanilla racing family of drivers here at talladega see i do all right when my leaderboards up see yeah one they're way to totally redeem yourself cj back on the lead lap my friend got my lap back i'm all i'm all good now speaking of the lead lap all of our picks are in the top 10 right now with mine just moving up one spot eighth keselowski ryan blaney reagan's choice seventh kyle arson was michael's pick he is currently running third and it has been a rough season for him i know mikey touched on it a little bit earlier just not the luck he had hoped for and the last race we were at richmond raceway you could hear the dejection on the radio when kyle arson just came on and said this is so fun obviously for those of us who know him he has a very dry sense of humor obviously sarcastic they're saying uh this is not the way we wanted this to go you know they they wanted him to come down pit road to get that car looked at and and didn't get clearance arson decided that i'm just going to go ahead and take it to the garage i've had enough of this today i am all done with this right now i'm completely over this speaking of uh kyle arson i see his his face that's or i'm sorry i took that a different way we weren't talking about arson were we we were oh we were i thought so oh my god why would you ever do that to me is this a lobster or a crawfish we're trying to not have me like say a profanity on here and that that was almost a close call mikey did you try any of this i wanted to try it but i didn't really know how to get into it here that's not a new york thing there's a claw for it let's try it with you we'll see kailin you want some i'm good thank you you can have the you want the tail i think the tail will be a hamster it does look it's a miniature new hamster version here i don't think i'm gonna do that trophy yeah how is that mikey you gotta be careful with seafood sometimes it was so fun i just think that people sometimes my hair is kind of a mess i think that people sometimes have a misconception of what the infield might be like you know really you hear a lot of crazy stories about what goes on at night but my favorite thing is every time i've ever gone out there i find families and friends that have been together ever and and i don't know if y'all heard that gentleman had been here for 48 years he only missed two races that's that's crazy that that he's been here that long and and just the fellowship just enjoying time together and yeah what are you all been doing you got any polls going how we've been well we've been here obviously watching the final stage chase ellie it's been leading the charge since you left yeah what we talked about earlier but your driver's third kyle arson you're back love it the chevvies have been surprisingly strong mikey since you left they really they had some business is picked up yeah they were able to put themselves in position with the pit stops the way they did it and you know we talked about datona how chevy the hendrick chevvies in the toyotas that teamed up at datona and that was very unique well this race was completely different all the chevvies pitted together and said you know what we're going to make an effort to keep our cars to the front as best as we can that's exactly what they did and when they did that all 10 chevrolet cars came down pit road at the same time they were able to leapfrog the field and most of them have remained up to the one thing we have yet to see though there's a lot of that pushing and bump drafting that we thought about that could be a problem for the chevies when it gets down to the end you know what that says reagan to me pull me once shame on me pull me twice shame on you that's right gomer powell made that statement popular back in the 70s and what he meant was if you don't learn from from what you did in the past and then you're not very smart and i think everybody saw uh-oh we got caution on it's awful quiet quiet all of a sudden yeah so i think everybody learned from from how well ford worked together and and toyotas plan and chevy obviously a lot of smart people work in the chevy camp and they came up with their own plan and looks like they've uh maybe one upped everybody a little bit what do you say i have to wonder if they didn't say we've got 10 cars on the racetrack here why don't they just work together that seems like a really good idea to me reasonable well things are going to heat up and and we know we saw it 10 laps into the race that the the the difficulty with the front bumper on the chevrolet is certainly going to be a challenge and they will start pushing and shoving what will happen then are the chevries going to be able to push i don't think very well a and then b can the fords do what we've seen them do so much in the past and that is with those really flat noses on the Mustang be able to shove each other forward and we haven't heard a lot out of the toyotas i know denny got crashed and and martin trex has been up front and had some issues but you know will will the toyotas come forward well and and literally as you were walking up here we saw the the 12 of ryan blaney and the two of brad keselowski they were doing some pretty serious bump draft and trying to help each other out they didn't they didn't really make it forward as much as i thought though they kind of lost the the pack to the outside just a little bit it didn't do as much as we might have anticipated for them so a lot of questions to be answered uh here very very soon the other thing that i thought was really cool when we all sat up and said hey there's a caution something must have just happened or or what's taking place that it got so quiet not only because the drivers lifted off of the gas puddle but as we mentioned earlier in the show they shut the motors off almost in sequence and when they shut the motors off almost in sequence the only noise you can hear is actually the wind coming out of the car so as they came through behind us you could hear the wind from the spoilers but that was all you could hear it was a it's always so very very unique to see that take place at bob bob bob we don't see that we hear that take place bob pakris our fox sports inside reporter has uh told me there he goes behind us hey bob look it was there goes bob there's debris on the racetrack debris on the racetrack you know bob one of the uh we mentioned earlier the best in the business and i think bob's gonna sit down and uh perhaps get ready to join us here in just a second and uh you know it'll be really uh really nice to hear bob's take on that it's always nice well what what he's been seeing as the day goes on bob can you hear is it bob can hear us now i can hear you all right hey a fun race so far and and really a lot going on a lot of different strategies they're getting ready to hit pit road uh i don't think this will be their last pit stop i think they're gonna have to make one more after this but what are you hearing and seeing as you've been moseying through the garage and through the infield right yeah they'll have to make one more pit stop if they pit now there were some guys like ty dillon that when he pitted between stages they were like we're packing it with fuel and start saving fuel it sounded like they were thinking if it went green the whole way they may end up just pitting once you know it's right 70 what 75 miles of green or 75 laps of green flag around would just be about what your fuel window is but uh when kyle bush you saw him get loose after getting tagged by bragg his last he put the parachute out and went to the back we talked about that on the show here how quick he went to the back and he said uh he said their adjustment didn't work and they said well we have two stops to work on it so they were definitely thinking two more stops before this debris which may have come from austin dillon's car you saw him drop to the back they think uh they had some bear bond i think in the back of the car uh from repairs and they think that might have come off and austin actually thought he had a flat for a moment oh wow so a good break for austin the debris that came off of his race car brought the caution out that perhaps allowed them to get that tire changed on his race car and earlier at the end of the first stage we had kind of talked about biggest surprises so far in this race michael mentioned obviously ty dillon getting the stage win what's stood out to you maybe so far as as one of the surprises well i i've been surprised on how the outside line hasn't every time they try to get a run it seems like they can't make it to the make it to the front and you saw ryan blaney he was about six or seventh in the last lap of the second stage goat pulls out and i thought that he might get a little you know as high as the second or third i want to say only finished fourth so it'll be interesting to see what moves are made come the end of the race and it certainly looks like that the chevys the chevys had a big meeting on saturday morning they got them all together they they tried to estimate tell me what meaning well they met in the driver's meeting room which if you know anything about how they get is right next to the media center oh so it's so it's not really hard to see them all going in and their crew chiefs going in them bunch of people with black shirts and boats and uh chevrolet logos going in to figure out what the world was going on well what was what was interesting during this uh round of pit stops bob is some of those chevys took four tires and lost some track position i saw that eric amarola took no tires there were several two tire stops so that's all positioning whatever they did did here has to do with what they're going to do later so when you get four here it leads me to believe just gas and go on that last stop and not not get tires and hopefully gain track position back by doing so so i think if i'm at home i'm going to really pay attention as to who got two who didn't get any who got four and then understand when that next pit stop comes that is going to tell you give you a hint as to what they'll do later in the race and i think they learned earlier in the race we saw a lot of two tires stops right and i think they learned what or even some gas and goes and i think you learn you know how really how important tires are or not important the fresh tires are here a lot of talk about what style of racing we would see today and and as the bottom has kind of been prevailing i talked to jeff gordon right before the race started they were down here getting ready to go do some of their their pre-race festivity things that they do on the racetrack and i said jeff this really to me if i was running in this race i feel like i would have studied a truck series race is that kind of what you're seeing right now is it looks very even before the race people are saying this is going to be the truck race on steroids because you have but the reason it's on steroids is because you have 35 good cars out there whereas in the truck series maybe a little more discrepancy between equipment and drivers and talent levels did truck series even got five to ten guys that are really good at the draft and out here you got 30 of them that are that are very good at it and in good cars we saw we saw guys like michael mcdowell who's maybe a smaller team lead this race early on or run up front in this race early on a guy like bubble wallace having a great day early on it it just opens up the field to that many more i mean you're talking the fastest laps have been guys like matt deban ditto cori la joy he just matt d just muscled that car to that lap that car was so scared it's like i better go fast with him sitting there talking a little bit i just want to say a little over 203 miles an hour on those laps so i think so many everybody you know we we always say cliches everybody can win with but with this package it it's even tighten tighten the pack more so i think what you're going to want to watch for now is what have people learned how much more will uh well what they learned will they remember and and how much does caution get thrown out the window over the last 20 30 laps but you know why a long shot is a long shot because they rarely come in so my brother always says man i gotta have me some of that hundred to one on brennan gone well that's just peeing away five dollars if you bet on generally so my race was the last end of lap 134 and brennan gone is our leader currently no he's not going to get back to the star finish line he's on pit road so my point is didn't see that what my point is a favorite will win you just watch you you can cheer for the underdogs you can you can preach hype and say they're gonna come through they're gonna get i guarantee you when it's over today a favorite will have won but it's going to be fun that's what makes upset so entertaining what if somebody does overcome those those deficits they're faced with who's coming in the rock speaking underdogs landing castle double zero making a trip back to the garage second time today for them i uh did you have a pic bob i picked helene oh you two are all the same bob you i said earlier in the show you're the best on the media center pit road all over the place i'm going to reconfirm the fact that you are the best because we are thinking the same way why why did you pick blaney out of curiosity well i thought the fords are going to be good and i have a feeling that he uh you know he hasn't gotten his win yet among the among the group and not that they were going to let him win but i thought you know he's he's had a strong car and he's obviously i don't know whether he's the strongest of the bunch today but he's certainly one who's willing to make moves he's aggressive he's going to make those bold moves what about this guy larry max talking about him right now on the broadcast he was talking about bragg keselowski why didn't you go with him five time winner yeah well i mean maybe it's just one enough i don't know or because i thought he might be hitting the back of kyle bush and they might be getting favored back in return i don't know maybe or no favors back in return so i don't know you know what one thing i'm going to look at the end of this race and this is very technical but you know they made this gear change because of rpms right and so are there going to be engine issues over the last 100 miles 100 miles and then also you're talking about the such a huge rear spoiler and a wickerbill that's more downforce that's ever been put on these decklids and they're carbon fiber decklids and how much have they been uh how much have they been flexing during the race and could there be any issues with those there's been some speculation there could be late in the race could be just crew chiefs being crew chiefs and worrying about everything but they want bob late in the race once my spoiler broke off and i i can't i worked out really well i couldn't believe i was able to hold on to that truck a lesser driver would have wiped out i would just somehow able to win the race i mean very rarely do you think though about you know parts and pieces breaking at the end of races anymore but this is i remember that was one of the unknowns going into this race is how these cars will handle for 500 miles we've shown as well on the fox on boards today that that rear bumper cam that that thing is shaking like crazy because of how disrupted the air is back there so to further prove your point we've seen actual camera shots as to how much is going on with the back of those race cars and how rough things are back there from well if you watch if you're watching our fox podcast blaney just got shuffled that was a very aggressive move to the bottom and the top and he finds himself in a real pickle and that's what's so cool about racing here at talladega how quickly things can change you think you've got everything under control you make one wrong move and you're running 20th and looking forward at a swarming beehive of activity that you've got to figure out somehow to make your way back through the good news for blaney right now though as he has found the 17 of stenhouse jr another ford right behind him that's a good sign for him earlier on in the race stenhouse was a good pusher he was able to help get some guys to the front of Eric jones up there none of us picked him you know we didn't and and and here's a guy right Eric jones has had a lot going on and look at this look if you're watching i told you look at the run i know look at this push they just keep making us look we look smarter and smarter than we actually are but and look who tagged onto the back of it matt de benedetto a guy that i think i think he's gonna finish top five i really would put money on it so you wouldn't put money on him winning because he's a long shot guy but you're gonna put money on the top five there's a big difference between first and fifth that i don't disagree with that there's big pay difference too as you know that as a driver but now look did you saw some guys pull out a line and did it just stall that that outside line it seems like every time you get about eight or ten to go to the middle lane then somebody says well hey let's try the top i'm gonna tell you what they're they're figuring something out right now though bob because we've seen it twice now down the back straightaway to where the 12 and the 17 can get the run and they can get the draft just right they've made up some pretty big ground two laps in a row as they come off a turn too i i and do you think they're just waiting for lap 180 or 182 or 184 or 180 i think the small part of the calculations of what do we need to do when do we need to do it and we're seeing the good cars start to make the moves the guys that we know are good at drafting start to make the moves that we we would anticipate well i guarantee you everything that's going on right now bob is calculated you're trying to figure out no matter what part of this pack you're in you're trying to figure out how you can make a move and you do it by letting off the gas a little bit possibly or maybe dragging the brake or just taking a different lane everything these drivers are doing right now joey legano so good at restricted playlation there's blaney up front eric jones who won down in Daytona last july they're thinking they're using their brains their feet their hands to make a plan for lap 188 and by the way mikey they're doing it 203 204 miles an hour as we see on the board right there on the on the left side of the fox and there and they're also they're also doing it reagan while dancing around moving from one lane to the other making blocks this this isn't easy stuff look at the moves these guys are able to make and that's why this race was predicted to be so entertaining as we go four wide and why it's turned out to be that way kyle bush too the guy that we just talked about falling to the back a little while ago all the way back up front again in the top and i'll i'll say one thing katelyn i'll let you get your point in no one's going to be more aggressive than ricky stenhouse he's that way on the golf course when we play he's that way if you race go-karts he is wide open if you if he's behind you i would say that you would expect to be hit well and we earlier today when you were heading out to the infield we touched on ricky and about how he doesn't care what guys think about and i love that yeah if we had 30 guys out there that didn't care what they thought about each other that is wonderful i wanted to ask you guys a point when you were talking about obviously driving at those speeds just the mental focus that is required of you all when you're driving when taladega when you get out of this race car this afternoon just drained you are not physically drained it's it's not it's hot in the race cars and it's it's a challenge in these cars physically but the mental aspect of detona and taladega and especially taladega you do a lot more three and four wide racing at taladega when you get out of it i used to get on the airplane the airport's really close by here i used to get on the airplane and almost immediately go to sleep because i was so mentally drained about what we had just done for that long focus for that long it it's unbelievable that the focus that these guys are putting in 140 degrees inside those race cars 200 miles an hour it takes every ounce of mental focus that you have to do that and and what is athleticism athleticism is doing something that's physically challenged while using your brain think about patent manning think about tom brady they're they're they're they're athletes they're obviously very fast and skilled and and and and strong but how much more important is their job to be mentally sharp yes to look at the defense to make split second decisions on going forward that's exactly what you're seeing this here today these athletes these race car drivers they're making decisions that could throw them into the wall at 200 miles an hour they're making them based on what they see what they hear from their spotter but you got to understand this is athleticism at its very best we talked a few minutes ago about what our favorite paint scheme in the field was today yeah and i know a lot of us like the uh the 41 of swaras but there's a pretty cool tribute car out there the 37 of chris busher i just saw him peek out going down the back straight away when he peeked out there don't don't count guys like that out either they just seem to find their way there and then he's hooked up with matt the benedetto right now as we speak and i think we agree chris busher is an awesome racer absolutely i mean it doesn't last a championship to him i was mad about it we know that that he is a talented young racer well we got 45 to go so it's a good time now to check in with our social media experts cj what do you got going on my friend all right so i want to ask you guys a question off the top of your head favorite talladega finish which one do you like the one i wanted absolutely they are let me let me get on past that one you go now reagan i'm going to tell you not 2008 definitely not 2008 uh you know i have to go back to when we had the tandem racing and they came across the line four wide eight wide well four wide four by four basically eight cars literally within what i think a tenth of a second of each other it was some ridiculous number like that i came off of turn four running in ninth place i was hooked up with jeff burton felt like we were going to be in a perfect position to perhaps win that race by the time it was all said none of our cars broke apart we end up finishing 15th and 16th and i literally felt like i was running on track positionally in fourth or fifth that's how close we were to the front of the pack so that was a a absolutely incredible race uh mine's got to be kevin harvick cutting his winless streak uh back in 2010 barely beating jayme mcmarie to the line but we've got some of them prepared for you let me go we get oh i thought what's your favorite finish i never spoke what's your favorite what's your favorite i guess maybe brad's first career win in the cup series that was a good win yeah i liked it so we have a package for you some of the best talladega finishes as we get ready right now we're less than 50 laps to go here at talladega here's what i want to tell you if mine isn't in here you and i got a problem reagan reagan with him david reagan july winter at daytona a couple of years ago gilligan with him edwards up top michael waltrip and here they come on turn four push boys push push hard edwards high reagan comes up think about david reagan david gilligan and their other teammates josh bice rent together early in the daytona five run what a celebration what a great win for this his dad ken reagan a long time independent driver on the sprint cup circuit and one of the nicest young man you'll ever meet in your life day plenty first to break from the traffic to drag this lowski here called ryan Anderson takes the game hold not a part of that this boy a long trying win does the pack have a chance to run a new one clamp boyer wanted to get jeff burton out there so they could get far enough that he might can make a move to have a chance to win this race that was a passing answer you know i was trying to figure out where to pass him and i was gonna you know i said i'm at least going to give him a shot at him i'm gonna try it early and it's gonna be a drag race cross the line head back off into turn number one and it will be jeff dorton and mark martin can they hang on to the league as he's looking for a check his dragon trying to make it three in a row here at talladega super speedway about to be decided into the trial till they come the challenge on down low jimmy johnson pulls out one but boyer looks like he held him off no they're saying jimmy johnson high fives all the way around chad canals the rest of this lowe's team absolutely stunned they are now trying to figure out to make sure everything's okay are they definitely going to victory lane and those league the two league groups started side drafting and slowed each other up i had a good run into three but nowhere to go with it and then by the time we got we had another big run going and those guys were worried about side drafting each other towards the top of the track and let that bottom wide open for us and we rallied our way through there how long will harvick stay there they're working back to the trial couple of daytime of 500 winners going to the victory today here at talladega super speedway the defending day to the 500 winner jimmy mccurry up front here comes kevin harvick diving to the inside and he's going to pick it off the 2007 winner of the day 2500 will win today in the errands 499 at talladega super speedway he pushed mcmurray all the way around the track and then when they came in the trial for barney he dove to the inside of the track and made the pass make sure that he and mcmurray got away from the field they accomplished that and when the coupler 300 yards remaining in the race he went on to job one jumped to the inside and beat mcmurray the 55 harvick regan smith the rookie paul minard is there tony steward has never won at talladega in a nascar sprint cup car left to a lot of blocking right here they've got a run on him got a run here they come i can't go down there and do that though i can't do that it's legal on the last lap i think it's legal on the last lap next door to see below the yellow line we still haven't got an indication but it looks like regan smith won this race why would it be legal on the last lap here's the replay again watch a zero one and he got forced down there i mean tony steward actually forced him down a little bit well yeah if he's gonna consider that he only yeah they are saying tony steward has won the race tony steward is the official winner here at talladega they would not allow that pass below the yellow line that's the only way that can be you can't go you can't race well in like 187 thank you man thank you guys last lap well i knew i was gonna get one shot at him and paul was back there pushing me i backed it up a little bit going into three and i knew i was gonna make my move at and i don't know i was got told that the rule is if you get forced down there then you're the winner of the race on the last lap anything goes that's one thing to get back to victory lane but to do it at talladega this is one of about four places i haven't won a cup race at and man talk about one to win i wanted to win here for so long i got so many friends down here and uh red farmer and donnie allison and all these fans man i mean there's so much orange up there and i know this hasn't been one of my favorite places on the fan side you know people haven't always liked me here but this was for those guys up in stains all right 35 to go here from talladega super speedway joey logano currently shown as the leader we just were looking back at some good moments from talladega good it depends on your perspective it depends on your perspective but i know mike he mentioned a moment ago when we had the twitter question on his favorite moment was the 2003 of course his victory here in the cup series we kind of want to relive this we want to relive that moment he referenced so i know we've got a little bit of a piece to kind of show that and take a look at michael's win from 2003 i have to tell you about my favorite talladega moment since we're going to head to that beautiful 2.66 miles super speedway in alabama it was 2003 and it's been on twitter this week it's pretty funny because my crew guys that were a part of that race that day have been talking about what i was saying on the radio about what a piece of crap car i was driving and how i couldn't pass anyone and i couldn't keep up with anyone and my crew chief slugger lappy he made a decision late in the race to try to stretch our fuel mileage and get our car up front i've been back in the traffic all day long couldn't make any moves and we got up front and that thing came to life and it was running and we had the lead with just a couple three laps to go and elliott saddler flips down the back straightaway goes tumbling into turn three nascar throws the red flag and we come to a stop i'm in first del juniors in second jeff gordon's right there battling with this as well and we're under a red flag so now it's going to be a sprint to the checker this was a green white checker before there was such thing as green white checker we didn't go into nascar overtime but we certainly had to finish it to the checker with a green flag white flag checkered finish come off turn two i got the lead coming down to get the white feel really happy about where i'm at jeff gordon gets a nice run on the outside of del jr goes to the top side i go up and block him dive to the bottom block off del jr was able to hold off jeff gordon and won at talladega supersedo and why that was important to me i grew up in kentucky and as a kid in kentucky one of the best trips of the whole summer for me was when we would go to alabama to watch daryl race at talladega i was so intimidated by that place it freaked me out because people got hurt there there were bad crashes and and my brother was out there racing but i always thought man if i could ever get a chance to race on those banks and i did i got my chance and i got a victory back in 2003 that's a special moment to me it's a trophy that i cherish and so i was talking to jeff gordon a couple of months ago and i said i just put that perfect block on you when i went up high and i was able to win the race he said that wasn't a perfect block i messed up i went up too high when you made that block i'm like damn jeff can't you give a brother some credit i thought i did a perfect job and by the way if it wasn't a perfect block then why didn't you win think about that jeff and for all those crew guys that i said that car was a piece of crap and i'm sorry we got to victory lane though and i got to pop out of my hatch we had a roof hatch and i won and my victory celebration was me hanging out the roof that was a pretty good day a NASCAR to me oh well very nice memory there shared from a wall trip unfiltered mickey's podcast i love listening to his podcast every week uh but we've had a crazy race happening while we were watching that segment on pit road guys what you making that with brad a good break for brad actually it as he came to the pits right there look like he probably wheel hopped his car just a little bit as he did that the car starts to spin out on him well what luck to spin perfectly into your own pit stall be able to do the pit stop backward and the best part about that over our shoulder we could hear the crowd and you can see the guys directly behind us but over our i guess it would be my left shoulder the stands are probably a hundred yards away from us right here right the entire crowd starts cheering and that's because brad whips a donor in his pit stall drives right back off pit road he likely lost the draft but could have been a lot worse for him in terms of how this race is going to play out we see that he's basically about turns three and four away from the pack right now so without a caution his days over he needs a caution badly right now but then the other thing that just took place right there was eric jones getting blocked by david reagan david reagan misses his pit stall instead of going around and saying you know what i miss the stall i gotta keep going he stops and eric jones's stall well eric jones is trying to get in and do a pit stop so david reagan they're they're bumper to bumper the pit crew guys can't get around to the right side of eric jones's race car cost him a ton of time a car that was leading the race a bunch right before that pit sequence now potentially might have taken him out of a shot to win this race so a little bit of a bummer for him mayhem mayhem absolutely you said the pit stops would be mayhem yeah and that's why i love that we have um in in car cameras and visor cams because you can't think at home if you're watching an aspar race oh they're gonna take a pit stop to get a break i mean it's it's more intense as intense as racing on the track because you know how crazy it can get and and you know the reason why brad will hop is because you've got to get all you can get you you've got to have every every inch of the road to to be successful and and he tried to get more than than was there and around he went that that half a second extra on the pit road could be worth two or three spots when you come off a pit road and that can very easily be the difference of being in position to win the race or position to finish second or third in the race and these guys know that well when you make the big mistake like you did that definitely makes it even worse yet for you we're seeing some great camera angles from our fox coverage of talladega which i love this place but three and four wide but but like you said earlier reagan that that i love that rear bumper cam we're shaking around because that reminds me of what my brain looked like when i was driving a holiday like when i'm driving around talladega it looked just like that to me and then when i see these perfectly positioned cameras where it looks like my grandma could drive down to the supermarket like that i'm like well that's not how it is it's not like that so i think what we should do is have looser camera mounts that it should be they should let it show what's really going on in the car oh i love nascar oh recap recap here a little bit earlier on i was talking about the cameras oh i thought you saw the wreck happen i was like michael michael that happened a while ago i don't i know you're in the infield for a while i don't know what they were serving you in the infield but that was early on in the race lobster it looked like lobster forum they were serving a nice blend of unsweet tea and lemonade they call it an arnie palmer arnie palmer but we are seeing on the fox broadcast now a recap of what's happened we saw that that accident early on in stage one kevin harvick denny hamlin boy was involved ty delin was this the stage perfect stop one winner chacelly he should get style points for that yeah i should put him ahead ben and exciting race and and here's the thing we're just getting started and i hate to keep preaching this but this is this is go time this is when it happens and we have just over to the left of us the care center i'm going to tell you folks something we haven't seen the last driver go in that care center today there will be others that enter into that care center and they are not going to be happy about it well let's check in with cj our social media expert cj what do you got for us all right so we found the replay and you guys were talking about the weird backwards pit stop but we do have a replay for you so what what happened here it just was wheel hop i think brad trying to get in as hard as he could get his car got away from a bit but then i mean see the bumps he hit the bumps and that may have played a factor in it as well there's some bumps in the lower you go right there he caught those bumps and that may have started the actual but sometimes it's it's so cool to be a badass and brad keselowski is a badass right here watch watch the car hop up and down right there that one hop up and down with the nose that was enough to set the rear of the car actually will happen but he didn't he didn't never quit driving it and he puts it right in the box perfectly in the box and then they they change the tires but then the best part is is after that's all done he just burns the doughnut right out of there how about the pit crew guys having to wear with all about them to know you know what we got to do the right side paul wolf on the top of that pit box saying right sides do it you're in the box you're good to go because there are rules your car can be backwards in the pit box but it's got to be completely in your pit box that was a very nice job from that entire team brad driving the pit crew paying attention and paul wolf communicating with them what to do right there if i was a pit crew guy i'd have been like ah darn uh the cars backwards where i i mean where do i go but that just shows you what athleticism there is on pit road if you're the rear guy and now you're the front guy how do you determine where to put that tire and if and if i and that's why i wanted so bad for reagan to go down there and see those guys because not only are they smart but they're freaking crazy athletes i mean they they they hoist those that jack around the car like it's a a feather and they grab those 70 pound tires and put them where they're supposed to be i just am so in awe of the job the pit crew guys do i've tried a couple times to bounce on the jack and actually put the car up in the air and it's how that takes a lot of force and a lot of there's a there's a like a technique to that not only having the size to do it but a severe technique to it to be able to get that car off of the ground with one pump the way those jacks are designed and i gotta tell you something it almost springboarded me from the from the jack post into the race car and i didn't make the car budget not even a single inch so it was rather embarrassing to me and to michael's point these these guys they're athletes it used to be that we had guys that worked on the race cars and and guys that were double duty kind of they would they would mechanics basically do the entire job and they travel and do everything all week and long and and now we've got guys that are basically they are strictly recruited college athletes i mean they do former hockey players a lot of a lot of division one athletes that maybe didn't get to go pro in their sport had an injury something like that these teams and i know hendrick motorsports is one of the ones that's very well known for doing this they go directly to those schools and they say hey if you're not going to go pro come try out for us and you can make very good money i mean these guys are making six figures oh yes very good six figure salaries hitting these race cars and and it's been a big change in what the years past one of the best pickers the driver obviously running right now in the top five kyle bush that team has risen to the occasion a lot this year they're a very strong picker the same crew as last year i think that's a big thing to point out when you talk kyle bush is true it's it's the same guys that he had the year before they didn't leave they had no turnover a lot of times you have serious turnover but not with that particular picker with that i actually had that conversation with adam stevens just two weeks ago actually the continuity of the whole team not just the pit crew but also the road crew he's had the same car chief mechanics the interior front end guys for a number of years a lot of them the same from when he won his championship so adam was saying that paid some pays big dividends for them having that familiarity with each other but i know michael as we saw he just kind of walked off but that's kind of how he is uh squirrel it gets back to we said that's where but he is uh hanging out right now i think uh perhaps can't quite see where michael's gotten up to right now michael likes to uh go check things out and uh and wander quite a bit so we'll uh we'll get we will get to michael here in just a second he's tracking down a hot story here in the garage area so as soon as he's here we're getting the camera to him so sometimes again one of those things you never know with mickey what might be possible so as he's doing that we're getting to 20 laps to go and uh a lot going on on the track and there's a lot going on in the garage area i think michael is ready for what's going on right now with him hey guys while the pack is uh screaming down the front straight away stanton barrett has been racing nascar for a long time he has a a one-off chance every now and then and it's a good looking husky chocolate car but unfortunately it went into the wall what happened yeah we had a bolt come off the time to the tie rod so i kind of felt in the trial so i slowed down a little bit hoping it wasn't a tie you know i thought man something's really wrong here so i went slower going to one just be safe and sure enough i heard a snap and it came out into the wall he went look at your non abrasive as possible look at your crew over here you got a good looking husky chocolate group group uh what is husky chocolate so husky chocolate uh it's a real hot chocolate with drilled syrup uh we make over in europe and it's a b2b right now it's ski resorts restaurants and cafes and all that so we serve as a food industry with amazing real hot chocolate and now with our organic uh cold chocolate beverage that's how you can raise some good awareness and get some distribution and get it out to the fans i don't know if people appreciate or understand your background your dad's stand was a crazy amazing snut racer he brought burt reynolds to nascar and paul newman yeah and uh you've i don't need him did you've followed in those footsteps and uh done some interesting things yeah thank you got to race with you a bunch so had a lot of fun and had a great career a long time so not not as great as you're but i still live out there well uh i hope to see you back again with your uh beautiful team all right thank you thanks for having me man always good so that's stan barrett and and this race guys on the track hey if you guys want to want a free hat just uh follow us on twitter instagram we'll get you a hat that's awesome thank you that's all i'm not real good at this so really all i got but uh hey appreciate y'all coming to nascar you having a good time oh yeah great time awesome awesome uh so anyway back to y'all because that was pretty bad at the end i don't know what i was doing it's um written a calm final stage thus far but as you predicted earlier you think there will still be some trips uh to the infill care center and the race is getting wilder we're seeing joey legano do what we would expect out of joey legano you can hear it on on the a little bit of the scanner frequency that we were actually airing for a split second there i think it was off of the actual fox feed but joey and his spotter tj majors and that's something we can't look past michael had said earlier that joey's one of the best he's ever seen at this but you can't look the past effect that he's paired up with tj majors in terms of spotters and i was fortunate enough right both of my super speedway wins came with tj majors on the we're actually one of the two wins came with tj majors on the roof wins as well with he is is something else when it comes to spotting the plate track or the uh the super speedway tracks that's twice today now 50 cents i'm up to he's something else when it comes to spotting that and he's got he's got this knack for seeing the runs and being able to talk the runs through his driver and uh you know we saw him and joey legano get together and have success immediately in terms of a driver spotter combination with that and they're continuing it on right now here today that the the moves he's calling the way that they're manipulating the pack i didn't think we would see a car manipulate the pack like he's been able to and he's doing that right now can y'all hear me there we go i was turned off couldn't hear you for a second now i'm turned on i don't know where to go with that yeah i'm just gonna tell you i'm just gonna scoot over closer to katelyn for a second you're a process he's processing the information yeah i don't i don't i don't it's hard to to to explain what a job that joey legano does behind the wheel moving that car back and forth making those moves because it's one thing to be told what to do but then to to be able to act that quickly because there's a delay and remember katelyn when they're going on the back straight away tj is a mile away and and joey's got a a lot of that he has to decide on his own he's using tj but he's also making decisions on his own hey you predicted this earlier mikey you said you had your money on matt di benedetto to get a top five right now he's running second yeah third and i i also said that he wouldn't win you did say that he would finish top five but he wouldn't win and i'll stand by that as well you you know you're going to have great stories of guys that charge to the front i mean look at daniel suarez he's going to get shucked shucked here because blaney went to the inside a tactical error for suarez right there but but you're going to have that it isn't too late to commit those you just have to make sure that that you learn from it and i saw a nice move by kurt busch he's shucked his brother and now what what what now calls in front and curves behind him so depended that was about to suffer the same fate is what just happened to suarez as well they shucked him out of the way and and this is where the wreck is going to come from is somebody getting shuffled out of line and then trying to get back in the line thinking that they know they're going to go all the way to the back all these drivers have just seen that take place as we're watching on the broadcast speed they've seen those cars go back 20 25 spots they're going to get more aggressive about getting in line and staying in line right there as we see stenhouse dive down in front of martin surex jr and this is exactly what we thought we'd see with about 15 to go it's nuts and they're going to and i'm just going to tell you i'm nervous i'm i'm sitting here like every time they're making these moves i'm just going to tell you they're they're gonna there's going to be a wreck somebody's going to miss time one of those moves but i think it's really interesting you see legano out front he's the guy that we feel like maybe be the best is the best i know it's hard for other drivers to hear that but probably the best at at manipulating the lines using all the air to his advantage you talked about his spotter tj majors but then as soon as you say that how you're going to be how you think you're going to tell kyle busch he isn't the best he thinks he's the best and so that's why this gets so fun well and kyle kyle highlighted this week he that's our report or a story where he basically said denny has been better at this than me because he's been more aggressive i've had the same cars as him and he's won more and run up front more because he's been more aggressive so i would anticipate seeing kyle bush with that in mind being very aggressive at the end of this race and we know when kyle wants to get aggressive he can do that we are about 12 to go here at taladega wanting to remind you and thank you for joining us here on the fox hophouse hangout presented by coca-cola orange vanilla it's been an eventful day thus far i think it's time maybe to check in with cj once again our social media expert cj what do you got yeah so the laps are winding down i want to say once again thank you to all the fans for joining in being a part of the show here today for sharing don't forget no matter where you're watching share the broadcast i'm going to go through before i drive home to charlotte pick one winner and i'm going to send you my daniel suarez autographed coca-cola hat that can be yours you can be a winner too here in taladega so our final fan question of the broadcast coming in from jacob and i like it he uh goes with the classic if you could start a race team question if you were going to have one day to start you're a one and done team and you can pick any driver from any era to put behind the wheel of your car who's it going to be well if michael could have had one day to start a one and done team that would have saved him a lot of money over the years i think he would have been okay with that but if i'm going to do one and done and man the racing is getting awful awful awful dicey blaney is almost wrecked three times in one corner basically right that was off the bumper of truex that was a hell of a save right there me personally if i can have one driver one race i got to tell you i'm it's hard for me to go against joey legano and what he's been able to accomplish what he's been able to do on the racetrack and and what he's done the past few races at these plate races he's been very very solid as of late i would take del earnhardt i want del earnhardt to come back and and understand these rules and i kind of left that one on a tee for you and watch this if you're watching i mean truex just basically almost wrecks that was weird that car caught the air all by itself yeah he caught the air off to 22 after that big push from truex just shows you what they're dealing with they're not just dealing with cars pushing them they're dealing with air still messing with the cars as well right oh and i saw kurt bush getting a bit of a bind there and he split up the hill and that look now truex needs help from blaney they just about wrecked him a second ago and they got to help each other that's how play or speedway racing that's three times now that's how speedway racing works is you're going to end up back by the guy that maybe you know had almost dumped you earlier in the race or you had had a close run in with and uh poof is anyone surprised that that legano late has taken control of this race i think no no three time winner yes i am disappointed my guy though bragg islowski obviously not going to get it done today well i think brad might be in a good spot still because we haven't seen that last caution that we keep talking about and he'll catch back up when that happens don't say anyone's not going to get it done today it's way too early i think if you're still on the lead lap you still have a shot and if you're in position to get the lucky dog you still have a shot right now i like stenhouse though we talked about how aggressive he has he's sitting there or he is he's sitting there running third he knows how talented the two racers ahead of him and the ones behind him are so he's just collecting information trying to see when his car makes a nice run you know reagan even though the rules are pretty much together for all the cars yours may be maybe based on how it's tuned it'll run a little bit better off the corner right or or to run a little bit better a little bit better at the end of the straightaway so you're processing all of what your car is doing and what it feels like you know the cars get run and the energy changes at different spots on the racetrack and that and there were two optional gears that these guys could run they had their choice of a couple different gear ratios this weekend and that could change where the runs come as well and i know that engine manufacturers were all concerned about the higher rpms that we saw in the engines in the draft when they were running those big speeds but i got a question for you michael and and you were very good at this type of racing we asked earlier in the race where you wanted to run earlier on where do you think you would want to be right now as we're getting down to the end of this a lot of guys thought you wanted to be the leader some guys thought you didn't want to lead because he was a sitting duck when it came down to the end of this so where do you want to be based on what you see today right now i want to be Joey Logano because not only is he leading and he's in control of the race he's taking charge he's led the last 10 10 laps or so but his ability to block he knows how to move it around so if if i were oh we got one in the outside wall oh big hit and that's to benedetto benedetto we got chris busier martin truex involved in this wreck uh it'll look like also justin hailey oh and there's that'd be true x i don't think truex actually hit anything i think he's just getting his car spun around debited it was in it right i thought it was definitely in it yeah he was the one that actually hit the 37 we see all the damage to the front of that race car that was a very hard impact and i curious to see what got the as glad to see him climb out of that car a little bit of a fire where the fuel connects into the engine justin hailey you know i i always i think my favorite part about when there is a wreck is seeing the drivers get out of the race car and and know that all of the things that nascar has implemented with the safety and that we've been fortunate to learn over the years and you know it's come at a big price for a lot of people but we've learned from the past and get out of wrecks that you just don't think they're going to walk away from and that's uh that's a great thing cj williver we've got another poll question that i'd like you to run for our friends at home and that is is that our last crash of the day i think not so cj will get on the twitter machine there we go we'll get on instagram fox sports app and we're gonna ask our fans and you know what we're gonna get one lucky fan a beautiful coca-cola hat you should sign that hat mickey i'll sign along with daniel sware i think that's i think that's perfect so ask our poll is that the last crash the last crash of the day so if you want to vote in on our poll fan poll do yes or no you'll be able to vote along and we'll make sure that we get the results up for you as uh dany who's been cranking on the graphics all day putting that together for us here i want to tell you i want to know from you guys do you do you think this is it do you think we have another big one before the end of the day fortunately do not think that that is going to be it and and i will say that was a huge impact by debited and and busher glad to see both those guys out of those race cars already look like it started off of the front bumper of eric almerola a little bit of a push gone wrong here in just a second i think he gets lined up just off of the corner a little bit and we're gonna see it just turns turns busher around i don't know what else to say about that other than it was just bump draft gone wrong and you're gonna have those and truex was unfortunately collected in it you could see call arson my guy was able to slip by on the bottom so he's still in contention we yeah i mean i guess i think from what i've seen and the way the the action has intensified i think for sure we're gonna see another crash yeah and so right now the fan number is coming in 93 percent of fans do not think that was our last big crash so far and which one of them are you going to give that beautiful cola hat to uh going through a pic with you got to share it too so we're going to go through we're going to pick one see who shares it yeah can we say that's uh almost a unit as unanimous as a poll as we can get i mean that's pretty close now it's in terms of twitter 95 percent that's like 120 percent in terms of twitter look at truex just coming into the camera and he did get some damage off of that i thought he got through with just spinning but unfortunately i think he made contact right here with the 95 of pretty good this place has not been good to him you know something i noticed in that wreck that i'm really pleased with though there's been a lot of changes made to these race cars to keep them on the ground and and we're running as fast as as we ever have and we see that impact that usually it's the impact that sends the cars into the air it stays on the ground right here and as we're watching the feed of the actual broadcast when busher gets hit by the 95 car of de benedetto that car goes in the air but it immediately goes right back down to the ground and that's been something that's car has worked extremely hard at and been very diligent about trying to make sure we keep these things on the ground and and i think that's why they had some confidence in the speeds that we were running this weekend that that they could do that and and still keep them from getting airborne which none of us want to see well that's a that's a cleanup right there yeah that's a real cleanup that is and wanted to say a quick for you we had a lot of shares a lot of votes nothing that wasn't good it was tied clean up get it i know that's i was with you it was a michael's point game was on point but it was close always but i want to say congratulations she shared she voted she waited she didn't think it was going to be the last crash of the day but patricia cole i'm going to be sending you a coca-cola hat signed by daniel suarez and also michael waltrip we're going to put his autograph on there for you too on it might be able to get might be able to get reagan smith to sign it for you we'll see cj if i can run into him before the end of the race i want to tell you the view of our crack staff from cj to neil down to alex and on down the line what i mean that's just beautiful it shows that we're not only here to show you pictures and tell stories we have folks that are working hard behind the scenes to make sure our nascar fans can participate today is all about interactivity and access and we're giving you that access and we're giving you this is all about baby that's that right and you mentioned the access michael we are going to be going to victory lane to interview the winner as well um once we have a winner and i want to know guys commenting you know it might take a little bit but who do you think katelyn is going to go visit in victory lane let's get those comments in i'm going to start pulling up some of the votes you'll see your name on screen and also thank you guys so much for playing along all day this has been a great one going what do you think with kyle larson you're still doing kyle larson i like it i like it i've been there all day and i'm not going away now karen is going she says that she likes it if ricky gets to victory lane ricky stenhouse junior what do you guys think about that one i like that pic i love ricky's personality i love how he acts so i'm good with that what happened to your big kyle larson face he fell down he fell oh but he's made it to the infield and the garage all kinds of places we've had a good time today colin i were buddies so it's good to partner right i have a daniel one so daniel's been hanging out the wind has not agreed with him a whole lot but where you're representing my coca-cola orange vanilla boy daniel suarez here today and uh again thank you coca-cola for uh bringing hot pass hang out for you here today let's see take a look at some more of the fans that have been voting and see who they think is going to go to victory lane here today we got a lot of fans devin we've got michael say in the 18 we've got maryland picking chase elia we've got denis saying ryan blaney so they're certainly weighing in here today as we're wrapping it up here just about it tell the day to make sure you watch the finish with us here on hot pass hangout micah have you had fun today michael i've had a great day and we're under red flag right now cj you know these cars are stopped coming back straight away with crash but uh that just gives the drivers more of an opportunity to to make a plan i remember you were talking earlier about my win here back in um as they pull chris busher's car behind us my win here back in 2003 we had a red flag light and you know i took in everything i'd felt seeing the moves the air the momentum and and you just sort of process it all and come up with a plan as to how you're going to attack those last couple of laps and that's everything that's going on in those cars right now drivers aren't just sitting there looking at their watches they're they're seriously thinking and contemplating about what might happen and how they might have the best chance to win this race so if you're on a pit box right now and you got a driver that's still in the hunt fighting for the swim while we're on a red flag what do you say into that driver trying to keep them calm trying to keep them focused what what's your best advice for the driver from a crew chief perspective i think the crew chief just says this uh they're going to have it cleaned up here in a couple minutes just stay focused make sure you think about all the things that you've been through today and then you also remind the spotter let's let's stay sharp let's make sure we don't lose our adrenaline not lose our energy and make sure we we stay on the same page so that we're able to to finish the deal they're they're almost home but it doesn't matter it isn't over till it's over and these racers know that and you know what also that is is so famous about talladega cj if you ain't first you're last that's right so you better you better shake and bathe i love that too in the music you can be second or third no you're first to last but our team back in LA clipping the replays for us they actually were able to get it to us really quick we've got the replay from the big crash that brought out this red flag and we're going to show you and uh break it down for you here during hot pass hangout oh it's just dirty looking i mean the the contact you you sometimes seem to forget that these cars are running 200 miles an hour but when matt de benedetto piled in to chris busher and then you were reminded yeah you you see how i mean these cars weigh 3400 pounds and look they just get thrown around like they're they're pieces of paper and those impacts while while they're they're it's safer than it used to be that hurts these guys tomorrow are going to feel all that energy and that impact i think maybe reagan went off to the infield care center to try and talk to some of those drivers uh who will be released from there shortly uh i see the lobster you brought back has found a new home oh nice yeah it's on the mic stand for cj's mic that's good i grew up i grew up where we uh caught these back behind the house so i'm cool with that they were quite that big at all but uh i think we got a more craw daddies that's a good look you get a craw daddy and a coke cola orange vanilla zero i like the ring to it i love it all we got a 77 car behind us justin haley i know we mentioned him earlier making his cup series debut it's 20th birthday not the present he was hoping for mickey yeah but down at uh at the infield care center i see reagan smith he's conversing with vince welch our uh fox nascar reporter and and the voice of the gander outdoors truck series vince is down there and everybody's waiting for the drivers to to come out so what's what's interesting about this is these guys are going to have the latest insight the latest info that we can share with our folks at home about what's going out on the what's going on out there on the racetrack so we talked about accessibility and and how we're able to to give folks at home the information that they want and they need well then that's why we're here to bring that to them so i like this question that came in from darlene how far back do you think is too far to be able to have won this race ah darlene darlene sit down i want to talk to you you ever heard that song i have i used to work on the radio so i my wife says i know the words to every song that comes on the radio darling that was t grand brown learned something new every day um i i just feel like right now i think seconds too far back because i think joey legano's got this race in hand but if it isn't if someone gets around joey gets beside joey that opens it up all the way back to the top 10 of guys that if they get two three wide up front can make some kind of amazing i remember when davin reig i remember when david reagan won here back in 13 or 14 i was a part of that push to the front i was probably running 10th when i came off the second turn and i got the right run and i got behind david and i wound up finishing third that day so you can make some huge moves and i like this question too from denis denis asked does does anybody dare pit from here no no no go reagan down here where the drivers are just coming out of the care center this is where the drivers are taken after an accident happens the first of which has come out is justin hayley we're going to step in justin we are live on nascar on fox's hot pets hang out we'll hold out for just a second here as he has another interview going on currently always fun the scrum down here it's a difficult thing the drivers come out of the scrum and and basically they talk to all the media tv a little bit everything we see my colleague vince vince welch over my shoulder right now chris busher coming out of the care center right here as we see him stepping up to do tv first we'll get in here and get a word with justin hayley real quick justin a rough rough finish to the day for you i know that was your first race in the nascar cup series how was it up until that right well it was fun obviously this package is super fun and you could be racy um we were a lap down right there and i was just kind of riding at about 10 carlings in front of me and these speedway cars don't have the best brakes you know that so um unfortunately i couldn't dodge it especially with a little bit of team like that so feel bad that i wrecked your car you're doing a nice job today enjoy that you only get one first start to look like it was a blast out there we'll step down here and uh mapadena da da benedetto matt d as they call him also walking out of the care center right now he's also going to do an m r n interview we can hear that over our shoulder and the grandstands at the moment a lot of disappointment for him this is a guy that many expected as michael has told us earlier in the day to have a shot for a good top five finish maybe even a win maybe that guy that could have been our big surprise story and it's always a challenge you come out and you're frustrated and all the media is right here to meet you and these guys have to put on a nice face and smile and they're not thinking smile at that particular moment i've made this walk many times i made this walk at this particular racetrack many times and it is a challenge to do that we'll step in and see if we can get a word with matt real quick matt real quick here we're on the hot pass hangout live a good day for you much like daytona we see the dirt look at the dirt and debris on your shoulders this tells you what these drivers go through in in these wrecks they get covered in dirt and debris as they go through the grass another a disappointing end to what looked like it was going to be another great super speedway race for you yeah gosh we can't catch a break on these things man that's just how these how these deals go but i'll tell you what i'm about tired of uh speedway racing at this point not because there's anything wrong with it just so frustrating getting bounced around like a pinball a two in a row now and when having a good run glad to see you're okay that was a hard hit most important part is is that obviously want these drivers to all be safe chris busher of course taking the largest impact in that wreck we'll go ahead and get a word with him in just one second as he finishes up with radio as well he's already talked to our friends on fox sports we guys have likely heard him once already but still something that he doesn't want to have to do as we mentioned earlier and it's uh it's obviously a frustrating moment for him he's putting on a good face though we saw his car come back through and i'll tell you what guys we're actually gonna go ahead and get ready to send that back to you guys over at the hop pass hangout because i believe we're getting ready to go green flag in just a second so back to you guys thank you reagan yeah five to go we're back underway racing here at talladega uh mikey what do you think what are your predictions here on what we're going to see in these closing laps well what people say is the best racer in nascar kyle busch was lined up versus this past season's champion and best plate racer joy legano and and wow give a big advantage to that inside lane i don't know what happened to kyle busch there he looked like he launched well maybe he's got low fuel maybe there's problems with fuel in that car because he has certainly fallen way back you could see the yellow car there of william byron making a big surge ricky stenhouse moves up to block there's so much blocking and so much pushing and shoving this thing is far from over kurt busch up to the back of joy legano one of the most aggressive racers and all of nascar is there but what happened was legano went up to block hurt and opened the door for chase and chase to the front you heard the crowd's reaction to that the crowd was very loud i was walking back here and i knew exactly who had taken the lead as i was walking back four wide back further in the pack there look at joey though he's got some help from that guy that was trying to pass him maybe cost him a lead kurt busch kurt slips down gives a little side draft on daniel hembrick what about daniel hembrick in the i did not see that coming at the end of this race i'll be honest with you let's take our picks real quick guys let's take our picks as to who we think now that we're down to two to go i know we've got our fat head picks still but based on what we see right now who's everybody taking oh they're not eric jones eric jones does that bring out the caution he's just sliding through the infield i think he's gonna keep going i think nascar will hope to keep this thing green we've got a barn burner going on they don't want to throw the caution i don't i'm gonna take chase elliott i'm gonna go ahead and say i don't think they get back by him same he got up front he's got a teammate there helping him out and another chevy behind the teammate this would be big for hennry motor sport we talked about that earlier what about a guy we haven't even mentioned today daniel hembrick saw him before the race i said what do you think buddy he said mike you know better i don't know what you think i'm just gonna give it i said this racing is as unpredictable as my golf game and he agreed wholeheartedly and he's a guy that'll be content with the top five after the way his year's gone high hopes for him coming into the season a lot of speed early on and just has not got the results that he's wanted out of this what about those chevys what about the chevys they're lined up i mean we've got chevys all in the bottom row they're gonna have a very difficult time getting to run somebody's gonna have to lock up and try to do the tandem i think to get a big enough run to get past them don't you think this is interesting rigging that the chevys that if they if they get the white flag right here this is it if there's a wreck there's the wreck and they took the white flag the chase elliott win at talladega a place that is how long we'll have to see how long they let them race for sometimes they let them go ways down the back straight away joey legano hoping they let them go for a while right here yeah joey stuck oh now we got another wreck and and this one's gonna bring out that'll do it we got one on the roof on the back straight yeah that was that was kyle arson who had a crazy crash and you could see everybody's backing it down cautions out your winner is going to be chase elliott we knew it would be crazy at the end that was crazy jeffrey urnhardt on the left side of the screen there a big impact for both of those guys will wait to see those window nets come down but chase elliott at talladega you said it's going to be a party tonight the boulevard is not going to shut down tonight like it typically does and you're also going to be able to hear the souring oh yes from from here listen to the crowd we can hear them through our headsets right now this is amazing how loud this place is the elation of all the crew it's been a bit of a rough go for hms this is a big momentum builder but nobody saw this coming katelyn because we talked about how that's a lot of this car a good thing that we're seeing on the uh broadcast right now his car went up in the air before he hit that wall it did it looked like it hit the wall in the air almost it was tough a little bit tough to tell we have yet they haven't seen the replay just quite yet but uh how about that chase elliott and uh all that talk about hendrick motor sports we can put that out the out the door now they've got to win chevy has a win holy smokes he's in the playoffs guys puts a plan together today and it works out for him as as there's the tumble that larson took uh what a shame for him this has been a rough season for him most people would freak out by that but he's been on his top more than anybody in the field four or five wow that's one of the his teammate jay mcburry our broadcast analyst or our uh teammate right now uh went through a similar ride like that well chip ganassi racing has lost a couple race cars down here the past couple trips david reagan damaged the front of that car didn't see him involved in that wreck but uh well it appears everybody that was involved with it is okay and that's the uh most important that's the most important part the caution comes out while chase is leading and then alex bowman kind of keeps in the gas which are not supposed to do which was kind of dumb because people upstairs get kind of confused but it was chase elliot that won the race yeah and i think in bowman's defense what i would say is a lot of times your spots spotters telling you just keep rolling uh because you got uh you got guys that are that are behind you that might not check up quite as quick as you do and you just try to play it safe right there knowing that you're going to let the the other car back in front of you i make sure you guys stay with us because we will be going to victory lane to interview the winner who we now know is chase elliot so we'll be bringing you guys access to victory lane and what that celebration is going to be like for uh young chase elliot i have to imagine this would be a very popular win uh very popular win in taladega and then quite honestly in the whole nascar uh nascar world uh chase elliot somebody a lot of fans like to cheer for well this this track is why bill elliot so famous i mean the fastest man ever he came here and took this place took took this place and and and made it his own and was able to win races here and set the world's fastest lap in a stock car 212 miles an hour this is bill elliot's this is a house that bill bit built and now chase is able to celebrate in it devin williams on facebook just said the biggest winners are watching in person at the racetrack right now i can't disagree with you devin uh you know obviously uh very cool to to be here and in person to see a win like this but if you can't we are very thankful that you joined us today on the hot pass hangout as well as nascar on fox and you gotta you gotta tell your friends about the access i mean that that we're able to uh uh afford you yeah i mean cj's over there working so hard reagan on pit road me out in the infield we're showing you what a nascar experience is all about and we're so thankful that you joined us and can see that fox sports cares about the nascar fans and we're going to do everything we can to bring them every angle of every uh moment of action on the racetrack and i'm thankful we got to show that stuff off a lot of times it's tough we we go through a broadcast and we have a lot of things that a lot of moving parts going on with the race and and that we have to get in and it's nice to be able to kind of take a step back and give a different viewpoint this is the stuff that all of us that have worked in the sport we get to see it sometimes we take for take it for granted how cool it actually is and how many neat things there are that happen around this racetrack so to be able to let you guys come down here and see the things that we see very cool i know chase elliot finishing up and uh you're probably gonna have to get into victory lane very soon katelyn thank you so much to both of you for joining today on the hot pass hang out it's been a blast i love working with you too of course i'm jealous of the walk to victory lane you get to make right now and you get to go uh find chase elliot and uh get to talk to the winner when he gets there thank you guys safe travels and leslie talking about coriola joy with a p11 finish here today better talk about brennan gone with a p10 yeah how about them wasn't even town yesterday and i i was able to cj hang out with the team owner there mark beard from uh beard oil and and he was just saying how much he's been a racer his whole life and to be able to fill the team and have brennan finish up in the top 10 that's pretty cool but you're talking about the siren going off in dawsonville georgia right now so i can't hear quite this far but we know they're celebrating for chase elliot going to victory lane here at talladega you guys keep sitting in the comments i'm going to throw them up on screen having all the fun so our crew continuing to work hard here today at talladega i hope you guys have enjoyed the show don't forget uh that uh we're going to be going through picking out some winners for the shares uh i've got a i've got a stack of hats that i'm going to be sending out so hit the share button we're going to send you guys some stuff that's going to be fun coca-cola hooking us up with that so uh guys final thoughts what are you thinking well i i got everything out of the race today that i wanted michael i we had the excitement we had some wrecks we had a little bit of everything we saw the pass and color saw cars going from the front to the back uh green flag pit stops you name it one of the most popular drivers in the series winning alex bowman in second place ryan priest the guy that needed a good run in third place my takeaway from this is two thumbs up to nascar there was a lot of hard work that went into putting these rules in place at this racetrack a lot of question marks coming into this race what we got out of it was a race that was very good and that was exactly the speed the pace everything that we wanted the cars being on the pass the way that we wanted i i don't see anything that i can complain about today well and as usual nascar got it right you know there was so much concern about the speed and the way the cars would handle this looked like a typical talladega race to me you saw some crashes you saw some domination at stages and then you you saw at the end a winner and and chevrolet's taken taken the first four spots i mean who saw that coming because of the fact that we've talked about those pointy front bumpers and when it came to push and shove how could they execute with those pointy front bumpers but obviously they got the job done big crashes you're going to have that at talladega that only goes back to about 1960 when i think they had the biggest crash ever in nascar here so don't think that today wasn't a fun race it was it was really really cool as far as we know at this moment nobody got hurt there was a lot of entertained race fans and golly i'm just so thankful for all the access that we were able to give the fans here on caffeine on facebook through our fox sports app uh and kudos to kudos to chevy for for getting their teams together getting their teams to work together going out there and saying hey we we learned from what happened to us at daytona we're going to do a much better job at talladega of as a group working together and they're rewarded because of that and i've been critical of chevy this year in the fact that they got to get their race cars faster and they've got to do things a little bit differently they they are taking that criticism and they're working with it that was very evident today to your point i'm surprised we did not see a tandem towards the end of this race or the bump draft play a bigger role but these drivers learned what they had to do when they were out there they figured it all out and this has been fun today we we got to do a lot of cool stuff we got to talk to a lot of fun people talk to some drivers talk to some crew members and take you behind the scenes i know the last thing we've got coming up here very very soon is going to be katelyn as you'll notice she's left us taking it away in victory lane and i like the question from jody she says do you think they make changes to the package as far as the aero package absolutely not and quit saying package tell your fans tell everybody lose the word package we're racing cars with rules we're not racing packages we're racing 2019 cars we saw a very entertaining race and besides that cj we're at talladega how fitting how fitting is it chase elliot is all hopped up on mountain dew and he's going to victory lane these uh these rules are here to stay we're not going to see nascar change these rules not this year anyways we got at least two more races like this and i'm all hopped up on one thing i'm hopped up on another it's going to be my coke orange vanilla i just got to throw that out there cheers buddy shannon saying awesome chase from the same place making a dosenville georgia reference i like it fans are excited that sound that sound when they came across the line i got to tell you guys how people love chase elliot fortunate that i'm going to do three straight days of race hub this week at six p.m on fs one for those who haven't seen it as as race cars are being delivered behind us this is the car of jeffrey urnhart they're cutting on it you can hear the saws in the background this team's got to get this car loaded up to go home but three straight days of race hub co-hosting and looking very much forward to all the chase elliot talk that's going to be coming along and i think we're getting close to going ahead and uh joining in with katelyn in victory lane here as well as we wait for chase elliot you guys this is awesome access we've got the car the man of the hour arriving as you can see this is an incredible look of our race winner here in talladega chase elliot rolling in the victory lane guys wow and i anticipate this is going to be a big party you see all of his road crew is cruchy val and gustus in there to greet him along with his mom as everyone gets situated to bring chase out of the race car you see lots of people here from hendrick winter sports obviously as well to celebrate this big win really an incredible moment for the entire organization as you see the driver waiting for the queue to come out of the race car and here he comes the winner at talladega his first win so far this year chase elliot as he soaks in that moment with his team raising the checkered flag confetti gatorade flying just an incredible incredible day for him and for this team now he's gonna go ahead and obviously do another interview with fox as we traditionally do on the broadcast the two-way interview you see jimmy johnson has made his way to to congratulate his teammate chase elliot jeff andrew is one of the key personnel at hendrick winter sports in front of me as well getting a hug from his wife but this is the place that everyone wants to be at the end of the race victory lane at talladega is so special you can see all the camera crews everyone gets lined up across from the team to take the traditional photos the sponsor photos for chase elliot as you can see all the road crew mechanics looking on that's a whole a bunch of them right there alon gustas and the crew chief since chase has been in the cup series his car chief behind him josh kirk these guys have been with chase since he started his career in the cup series greg ives crew chief also congratulating chase elliot as you can see the geico 500 trophy moving past us going into place people commenting the trophy how heavy it is but you see the trophy being placed in the front now as you guys are seeing in front of us trophy presentation about to take place for chase elliot he has a number of obviously media obligations that take place for the race winner here chase elliot now getting a chance to congratulate his teammates on the victory it's going to get set to add that wind sticker there to the car and now taking place is the big trophy presentation as representatives from talladega super speedway talk with chase elliot for the big geico 500 winner and chase elliot now posing with the trophy as they begin now their sponsor photos alex bowman is hindering motorsports teammate just coming into victory lane to congratulate him as well jack canals also crew chief coming to congratulate chase elliot all of his teammates have made their way over to congratulate him on this victory you guys are getting behind the scenes access to victory lane right now from talladega as chase begins his celebrations with his team first win of 2019 for them so you can see getting hugs from his teammates