Speaker 1: Campsite media in there. As I've always said, there are
Speaker 1: two noble professions left. There are two honorable professions left
Speaker 1: in this country. Number one is podcasting. Number two is
Speaker 1: race car driving. And right now I'm about to attempt
Speaker 1: to do both. Well, technically, not driving the race car.
Speaker 1: I'll be riding along in the passenger seat. But that's
Speaker 1: a blurry distinction that you should not focus on. What's
Speaker 1: really important is that I'm about to fulfill a childhood
Speaker 1: dream by getting to drive in a race car at
Speaker 1: full speed around Charlotte Motor Speedway. This is going to
Speaker 1: be a very very big day for me. Uh and
Speaker 1: you're coming along for it, Thank you very much. We'll
Speaker 1: see how this goes. Yeah, there it is. Hm. I
Speaker 1: made it two laps, and I've been sitting in the
Speaker 1: car for the last twenty minutes in the parking lot
Speaker 1: with my eyes closed, trying not to throw up. Ever since,
Speaker 1: that was one of the most violent experiences I've ever
Speaker 1: had in my life. As soon as you get into
Speaker 1: the turn, that wall of Asphalle just looks up at
Speaker 1: you and you're just pinned into your seat and just like,
Speaker 1: oh God, horrible. I felt like my brain was just
Speaker 1: being squished, um that I could not imagine doing that
Speaker 1: for a two hours, three hours just I will never
Speaker 1: tolerate someone ship talking Nascar again. All right, let gonna
Speaker 1: see if I get back to this hotel. So it
Speaker 1: looks like I'm not cut out for race car driving,
Speaker 1: But embarrassing myself on Mike wasn't the only reason I'd
Speaker 1: come down to Charlotte. Because not only is North Carolina
Speaker 1: the biggest tobacco producer in the US and where Derek's
Speaker 1: tobacco came from, it's also the heartland of NASCAR. There's
Speaker 1: twelve major tracks within a day's drive, and dozens more
Speaker 1: smaller asphalt and dirt ovals. It's also where almost every
Speaker 1: NASCAR team is based, including a small outfit called Motorsports
Speaker 1: Business Management, owned and operated by veteran driver Carl Long.
Speaker 1: Are you doing good? Ye? A long time? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: just get back from Canada. Yeah. I was on there
Speaker 1: for a month. And then Carl longs an old hand
Speaker 1: in the world of NASCAR. He's been in the sport
Speaker 1: for more than thirty years as a driver, crew chief
Speaker 1: and now as a team owner. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: work to keep up with the NASCAR season circus. But
Speaker 1: today is a Monday and the closest thing he'll have
Speaker 1: to a weekend for a while, so he's got some
Speaker 1: time to talk. What you got, what you want to do?
Speaker 1: Four time? Miss, we can sit down. I got yes,
Speaker 1: it's word. Yeah. Let me check with the guys out
Speaker 1: from Yeah, no quicktion, make sure they're all good. He's
Speaker 1: doing a story on Derek. Really yeah. Carl and Derek
Speaker 1: are actually old friends. They go back more than ten
Speaker 1: years when they met in the parking lot before race
Speaker 1: in Virginia. Derek and I just was parked beside each
Speaker 1: other at the Richmond Speedway and got to talking and
Speaker 1: found out we had a lot of things. I grew
Speaker 1: up on a tobacco farm, and so I worked on
Speaker 1: a on a farm every year. There wasn't any harvesting machines.
Speaker 1: It was just all manual labor. And my uncle would
Speaker 1: always tell me, is early in the morning, all he
Speaker 1: wanted to see was assholes and elbows, just to go
Speaker 1: up the road and hang buy the ground, leave you say.
Speaker 1: You know, so you can probably see how Derek and
Speaker 1: Carl became fast friends. And then when we were part
Speaker 1: beside each other, like I said, we just laughed and
Speaker 1: had had a good time talk on each other. From
Speaker 1: what Carl could tell, Derek was the real deal, not
Speaker 1: just some rich guy playing dress up on the weekend.
Speaker 1: I felt like that as a driver, and him going
Speaker 1: from the petty driving experience too to his truck to
Speaker 1: he's racing on his other stuff on ice and just
Speaker 1: he just had a passionate race he wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: At the time, Derek was working with another race team
Speaker 1: and according to Carl, it wasn't a great situation, but
Speaker 1: the guy that was kind of managing his team really
Speaker 1: uh I guess head champagne tastes would a beer budget
Speaker 1: and it was spending a lot. So the people that
Speaker 1: he had helped him and didn't have the experience to
Speaker 1: coach him. All they were worried about is could he
Speaker 1: write the check for him so they could go and
Speaker 1: go race. It was clear that Derek han ambition and
Speaker 1: Carl had the experienced help him on his skills, so
Speaker 1: they shook hands and decided to create their on team,
Speaker 1: Motorsports Business Management or MBM for short, the team that
Speaker 1: Carl still runs today. There's a million little things you
Speaker 1: have to do in order to get a brand new
Speaker 1: team off the ground, but Carl was glad to have
Speaker 1: Derek as a partner. Derek was just one of the
Speaker 1: best overall people that you could be around, uh to
Speaker 1: help do everything. He wasn't lazy, wasn't selfish. He enjoyed racing,
Speaker 1: He enjoyed drinking. Sometimes. I think he was a professional
Speaker 1: head at some races. He would go he takes some
Speaker 1: of my guys out at night. He'd be spring chicken,
Speaker 1: ready to go to next day. My guys would be, oh, man,
Speaker 1: We've tried to go out with Derek. Oh God, I
Speaker 1: don't know how you could drink that much and still function.
Speaker 1: You know, he was buying drinks for everybody in the bar,
Speaker 1: you know, just having a good time. Within a few
Speaker 1: short months, MBM was making a name for itself. Their
Speaker 1: crowning achievement came in when Derek raced in New Hampshire
Speaker 1: and became the first indigenous driver in the NASCAR Cup
Speaker 1: Series Hoist the Lobster at the end of three hundred
Speaker 1: and one lapse from the Hampshire Motor Speed one. But
Speaker 1: less than a year after that race, it all came
Speaker 1: to a screeching hult when Derek was arrested and Carl
Speaker 1: got a phone call from NASCAR. No matter what, Derek
Speaker 1: was gonna get banned, and we dissolved Derek's partnership where
Speaker 1: he was no longer an owner of NBA Motorsports from
Speaker 1: Campside Media and Dan Patrick Productions. This is running Smoke.
Speaker 1: I'm Roger Gola and this is episode four White Lightning.
Speaker 1: Whenever a driver is accused of misconduct, NASCAR acts quickly.
Speaker 1: Officials told Carl that he had seventy two hours to
Speaker 1: completely remove any trace of Derek from MBM Motorsports or
Speaker 1: the entire team's eligibility would be in jeopardy. On top
Speaker 1: of that, NASCAR and definitely suspended Derek from racing in
Speaker 1: the series. They didn't call me. They didn't. I just
Speaker 1: I read it on Basically somebody sent me to link
Speaker 1: saying that they suspended me. Not even I didn't even
Speaker 1: go to court yet, you're already banning me and I'll
Speaker 1: like it made my uh my debut or in the
Speaker 1: in the top tier the Cup Series and then next
Speaker 1: Dar all the year after Boom, I'm fucking suspended. We
Speaker 1: reached out to NASCAR for comments several times, but they
Speaker 1: never responded to our requests. In any case, NASCAR was
Speaker 1: not going to stand up in defense of Derek. That
Speaker 1: was an issue for the courts to deal with. Usually
Speaker 1: you're you're innocent until you're proven guilty, right, But right
Speaker 1: off the bat they fucking banned me. But being suspended
Speaker 1: from NASCAR, of all sports because of smuggling and tax
Speaker 1: of Asian charges, well there's a articular irony there. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at NASCAR, I mean it was it was built
Speaker 1: off bootlegging, you know, with the moonshiners and all that,
Speaker 1: and basically it is the same thing going on over here.
Speaker 1: We'll get into all that right after the break. It's
Speaker 1: no overstatement to say that without moonshining, there would be
Speaker 1: no Nascar. The sport was the product of a unique
Speaker 1: combination of V eight engines and high proof liquor that
Speaker 1: could have only come together in the American South. And
Speaker 1: this week we're gonna take a trip through history to
Speaker 1: tell you all about how that cocktail came together. For
Speaker 1: our non Southern listeners, for whom I have nothing but pity,
Speaker 1: let me give you a quick lesson on moonshine, white lightning,
Speaker 1: clear corn, mountain dew, whatever you wanna call it. It's
Speaker 1: a crystal clear, unaged whiskey made from corn rye, barley,
Speaker 1: or whatever else you have on hand. It's made in
Speaker 1: small batches by mountain men in bibs and beards who
Speaker 1: work by the light of the moon and backwood shacks.
Speaker 1: But what really separates moon shine from any other liquor
Speaker 1: is the fact that it's untaxed, unregulated, and therefore illegal.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen thirties, when the US government banned alcohol,
Speaker 1: moonshine was the only way a lot of people in
Speaker 1: America could wet their whistle, which made it a very
Speaker 1: lucrative business. Government agents fight hopelessly against illegal liquor. These
Speaker 1: homemade stills are about a few of thousands seas than destroyed.
Speaker 1: Other thousands produced millions of gallons, and countless hundreds prosper
Speaker 1: in business of bootlegging. But moonshining represents so much more
Speaker 1: than some folks making money on the side. For the
Speaker 1: people who made shine, it's a symbol of pride and
Speaker 1: self reliance, and in that way, it's a lot like
Speaker 1: tobacco on Mohawk territories. For communities that have often been
Speaker 1: on the short end of the stick, liquor and cigarettes
Speaker 1: offered away for them to stand on their own feet,
Speaker 1: even if it meant you were a criminal in the
Speaker 1: eyes of the law making, moonshine was a god given right.
Speaker 1: It was it was tradition, It was family bis this
Speaker 1: Neil Thompson as a journalist and the author of Driving
Speaker 1: with the Devil about the early days of American racing,
Speaker 1: and and the moonshine was was used for many things.
Speaker 1: It was medicine in some cases it was currency. It
Speaker 1: was a homemade craft, and in their view, the government
Speaker 1: had no rights to that. It was their product um
Speaker 1: and there was their right to deliver it wherever they
Speaker 1: saw fit. This is where the story of American stock
Speaker 1: car racing begins. But delivery is a very polite way
Speaker 1: of saying contraband smuggling. And where there's contraband, there's cops.
Speaker 1: So moonshiners took their four V eight coops and stiffened
Speaker 1: up the rear springs so when they filled the trunk
Speaker 1: with liquor, it with the squat and look suspicious. They
Speaker 1: knew that cops liked to shoot out radiators, so they
Speaker 1: put sheet metal and their grills to protect their motors.
Speaker 1: Some moonshiners even had James Bond type gadgets that dropped
Speaker 1: nails or spilled oil behind you. Even though there was
Speaker 1: an intense captain mouse aspect to this, this chase, this game, UM,
Speaker 1: there was also a sense of mutual respect. One of
Speaker 1: the guys I talked to UM there was a story
Speaker 1: about him once delivering flowers to the hospital bed of
Speaker 1: a revenue agent who he'd out run and left it
Speaker 1: a ditch on the side of the road, but knew
Speaker 1: he knew the agent had gotten hurt, left him some
Speaker 1: flowers and just signed it the coup, meaning his Ford
Speaker 1: V eight coup. Henry Ford famously said that auto racing
Speaker 1: began five minutes after the second car came off the
Speaker 1: production line. I'd be surprised if it took that long
Speaker 1: for whiskey runners to get the same idea. They were
Speaker 1: running moonshine, trying to get away from revenue agents, UM,
Speaker 1: trying to stay alive and stay out of jail. And
Speaker 1: along the way they learned to drive fast, fix up
Speaker 1: their cars to go faster than the revenue agents, and
Speaker 1: then on weekends for fun, they started racing each other.
Speaker 1: Moonshiners would hire young kids to drive for the young,
Speaker 1: fearless kids to drive for him. Tom Jensen is the
Speaker 1: Curatorial Affairs director of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and
Speaker 1: a longtime motorsports journalist. And the people who own these
Speaker 1: businesses tended to know each other, and one guy would
Speaker 1: say to another, you know, my driver's got the fastest
Speaker 1: car in the county, and the other guy would say, no,
Speaker 1: my drivers the fastest car in the county. So they
Speaker 1: decided to have a race with just the two of them. Well,
Speaker 1: word would get out and some neighbors would show up,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe the next week there would be
Speaker 1: three or four guys from the next county over with
Speaker 1: their race cars. Stock car racing was radically different than
Speaker 1: the sort of racing that Americans have known up until then,
Speaker 1: which was something reserved for the ultra wealthy. It was
Speaker 1: sports cars. It was sort of the open wheel cars
Speaker 1: that that you see in Lamands and Formula one and
Speaker 1: indie cars, the types of cars that poor southern boy
Speaker 1: could never dream of affording. Um And most of those
Speaker 1: earlier car races happen on tracks that were built specifically
Speaker 1: for those races, and most of those races happened up
Speaker 1: North or in the Midwest, stock car racing offered something
Speaker 1: totally different. It brought motorsports to the everyman. Teenagers scraped
Speaker 1: money together and fixed up junkyard cars. Main street mechanics
Speaker 1: would sponsor buddies to turn a few laps down at
Speaker 1: the local track down South, where you didn't have any
Speaker 1: real professional sports until like the nineteen sixties. Um this
Speaker 1: sort of sports starved part of the country adopted stock
Speaker 1: car racing as as its own. You know, it was
Speaker 1: truly a home grown sport throughout the South, um modest
Speaker 1: in the beginning. For years, stock car racing was just
Speaker 1: a ragtag affair. There were dozens of different race leagues
Speaker 1: in competition series, full of shady promoters and hobbist drivers.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until Bill France, an aspiring race or in
Speaker 1: Daytona Beach, brought together all the biggest promoters under one
Speaker 1: banner that racing really became profess Chinel. France gave it
Speaker 1: a name to the National Association for Stock Car Auto
Speaker 1: Racing or NASCAR for short and right away, Big Bill
Speaker 1: had a big problem moonshiners. He was trying to build
Speaker 1: an above board, legit racing league that was family friendly
Speaker 1: and amenable to corporate sponsors. Bootwiggers aren't exactly the crowd
Speaker 1: to put on a suit and tie and talk nice
Speaker 1: in front of a microphone. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: the moonshiners were the ones winning the races because this
Speaker 1: Hall of Famer Junior Johnson once said, nobody ever loves
Speaker 1: a car more than a moonshiner does, because if you
Speaker 1: go to a race and lose, you go home. If
Speaker 1: you go on a moonshine run and lose, you go
Speaker 1: to jail. Folks like that weren't going to play by
Speaker 1: the rules, and Bill France found that out right away.
Speaker 1: The winner of the very first NASCAR race ever was
Speaker 1: disqualified for using modified heavy duty rear suspension, a trick
Speaker 1: straight out of the bootleggers handbook. You know, I've talked
Speaker 1: to one x moonshiner who who told me, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the best way to get a hillbilly to do something
Speaker 1: is to tell him not to do it. It was
Speaker 1: how they were raised to view the government with distrust
Speaker 1: and to avoid paying taxes at all costs. Um. So
Speaker 1: this this attitude, uh, that was there from the start
Speaker 1: of stock car racing. Uh, this sort of nonconformity it
Speaker 1: was in the blood of both the moonshiners and in
Speaker 1: turn the NASCAR racers. One of my favorite stories is
Speaker 1: there was a track in Georgia, I believe it was
Speaker 1: called Middle Georgia Raceway that opened the late sixties, and
Speaker 1: shortly after it opened, the FEDS rated it. And underneath
Speaker 1: the track there was a entire moonshine operation. There's a
Speaker 1: gallon distillery and they made an illegal liquor down there,
Speaker 1: and um, they arrested the track general manager. They introduced
Speaker 1: his evidence, the fact that he had bought three thousand
Speaker 1: pounds a yeast some absurd amount, and he said, now
Speaker 1: that was for our concession stands, and a jury of
Speaker 1: his peers acquitted him in like a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: There's an old joke in the racing world that sums
Speaker 1: it all up. A race car driver reads a rule
Speaker 1: book twice, first to see what it says, and then
Speaker 1: again to see what it doesn't say. They would interpret
Speaker 1: it like people interpret the Bible. They see what they
Speaker 1: want to see. Give you a good example, and again
Speaker 1: we'll go back to Junior Johnson. Rule book says car
Speaker 1: got away thirty four hundred pounds at the start of
Speaker 1: the race. Don't say nothing, Matt would have got away.
Speaker 1: After the race, he would weld hundred pounds a lead
Speaker 1: to the inside of each of the four rims on
Speaker 1: his car to make minimum weight, and at the first
Speaker 1: pit stop it would take forever to change the tires
Speaker 1: because they weighed a hundred and sixty pounds each, but
Speaker 1: from then on his card before hundred pounds lighter than
Speaker 1: anyone else's, which technically was not against the rules. By
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, NASCAR was flourishing under Bill France's leadership.
Speaker 1: The racing was more intense, the fans were more committed,
Speaker 1: and the racers were more professional. But France still had
Speaker 1: a problem. NASCAR was just a Southern sport, a side
Speaker 1: show to the MLB and NFL. Bill wanted the main stage,
Speaker 1: and it took a blizzard and a fist fight to
Speaker 1: get him there. Coming up after the break, you're listening
Speaker 1: to Running Smoke. It's February ninety nine and the NASCAR
Speaker 1: season is kicking off in Daytona Beach. Usually it's a
Speaker 1: race that only Southerners would pay an they attention to,
Speaker 1: but this time it was going nationwide. A freak blizzard
Speaker 1: had canceled every sporting event in the Northeast, forcing NBC
Speaker 1: to put NASCAR in its prime time slot. A sports
Speaker 1: starved country tuned into its first stock car race and
Speaker 1: the action was intense. Fans in the stands were on
Speaker 1: their feet cheering as drivers came around the front stretch.
Speaker 1: It's the last lap and a side by side battle
Speaker 1: heats up between Donnie Allison and Kaylee Yarborough. Kale's crew
Speaker 1: chief is none other than the bootleggers patron st Junior Johnson.
Speaker 1: On the last lap, coming around turn two on the
Speaker 1: back stretch, Kale makes a move on Donnie and now
Speaker 1: their neck and neck. Their doors are inches away from
Speaker 1: each other as they reached speeds upwards of a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty miles per hour. Folks back home how their
Speaker 1: noses pressed up against the TV and silence falls over
Speaker 1: wrapped bus terminals and airport bars across the country, and
Speaker 1: then they slide down into the enfields as Richard Petty
Speaker 1: comes from behind and takes the checker flag, winning the
Speaker 1: Dayton of five hundred. But while Petty is taking his
Speaker 1: victory lap, the two drivers on the infield grass climb
Speaker 1: out of their cars, fight and Donnie Alie, you couldn't
Speaker 1: write a better finish, the most amazing astoonishing. For the
Speaker 1: first time in its history, NASCAR was now on the
Speaker 1: national map. Sponsors wanted in, and NASCAR provided an incredible
Speaker 1: opportunity for any company that wanted eyeballs on their brand.
Speaker 1: What's better than a billboard moving at a hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Money flowed into the sport and the race winnings went
Speaker 1: even higher. So competition got tougher, drivers got better, and
Speaker 1: mechanics got more creative. Instead of dumpster diving in junkyards,
Speaker 1: engineers developed new exotic, purpose built hearts for their engines
Speaker 1: and suspension systems. They took the sport out of the
Speaker 1: hands of back Aird Mechanics and brought it into the
Speaker 1: space age innovation and rule ending was getting to be
Speaker 1: an expensive necessity for anyone that wanted to remain competitive.
Speaker 1: I think where the real escalation took place was in
Speaker 1: the early to mid nine nineties when it it kind
Speaker 1: of became an arms race of who could outspend the
Speaker 1: other to try to gain an advantage. Because what had
Speaker 1: happened is there were fewer and fewer places to get
Speaker 1: an advantage, and there were smaller advantages to get. NASCAR's
Speaker 1: job as a governing body was to level the playing
Speaker 1: field and keep it as fair as possible, no matter
Speaker 1: how much money teams were putting into their cars. But
Speaker 1: racers will still look for every advantage they can get.
Speaker 1: For instance, when I first got into the sport in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, was the first time they started hiring
Speaker 1: quote unquote professional pit crew NASCAR teams. The top teams
Speaker 1: went from having fat, middle aged guys who were mechanics
Speaker 1: also double doing the pit stops, to creating recruiting programs
Speaker 1: where they go to college campuses and recruit athletes who
Speaker 1: played on football and basketball teams. And so they replaced
Speaker 1: the forty year old guy with a beer belly with
Speaker 1: a twenty two year old kid who was who was
Speaker 1: cut and fit and athletic, and they were paying these
Speaker 1: guys a lot of money, and things like that just
Speaker 1: just drove the costs way up. At that time, Spending
Speaker 1: money doesn't guarantee you will be successful. Not spending money
Speaker 1: guarantees you will not be successful. As the sport got
Speaker 1: more expensive, it became more exclusive, It became harder and
Speaker 1: harder for blue collar guys to find success. And it
Speaker 1: became easier for well funded teams to outmuscle smaller outfits
Speaker 1: on the track. A few people understand how difficult it
Speaker 1: is to compete in the sport better than Carl Long,
Speaker 1: Derek's old business partner. He knows just how much every
Speaker 1: dollar counts when you're racing at the back of the pack.
Speaker 1: It's ass and I and on the dollar amounts just
Speaker 1: and I haven't even started adding up for this weekend.
Speaker 1: I might even actually have two sheets I do. I
Speaker 1: was just figuring it. So so here's here's something for you.
Speaker 1: This is just to tell you what I spent at
Speaker 1: Atlanta in exfinity. The rap on the car was fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred bucks, and that's cheap. We spent thirteen thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred times spent in hotels for one night, bands four
Speaker 1: hundred nstry fee was two hundred Fuel just to put
Speaker 1: in my tractor to get down there was fifteen hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: And back food and drinks and our coolers two hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Sixty for box of lug nuts that you just used
Speaker 1: once to throw away to rent the engines was thirty
Speaker 1: thou dollars pit bonuses that was labor just for the weekend,
Speaker 1: it was twenty thousand, five hundred. I have to rent.
Speaker 1: I picked guns, that was seven hundred, was three hundred
Speaker 1: bucks transmit ation with six all At all, Carl spent
Speaker 1: more than eighty thousand dollars to run a single race
Speaker 1: that weekend. And that's not even counting truck payments, insurance
Speaker 1: and rent. So I'm I'm in a hole on a
Speaker 1: good weekend, finishing eleventh with no damage. I'm in a
Speaker 1: whole fifty bucks as it is. It's like the old
Speaker 1: timers say, how do you make a small fortune, Well,
Speaker 1: you take a large fortune and you go racing. For me.
Speaker 1: At my my level, the most important talent a driver
Speaker 1: can have is somebody to write a check to put
Speaker 1: him in a seat. The most important talent is to
Speaker 1: be able to write a check. In less than fifty years,
Speaker 1: NASCAR went from a blue collar sport where shade tree
Speaker 1: mechanics could raise their sedans on Sundays to a multi
Speaker 1: billion dollar enterprise with tracks across the country, race cars
Speaker 1: worth half a million dollars, and drivers who were trained
Speaker 1: to race as soon as they can walk. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, pit lane would have been full of pot
Speaker 1: bellied mechanics, tuning carburetors with their pocket knives. Now it's
Speaker 1: full of movie star celebrity owners and more computers than
Speaker 1: mission control. For a team like MBM that was barely
Speaker 1: scraping by on its best weekends, Derek was a godsend.
Speaker 1: It's tough not to imagine how far they would have
Speaker 1: come over the last ten years. If Derek hadn't been arrested,
Speaker 1: we would be further up the uh probably further food chain.
Speaker 1: We would have definitely ran. I guess if if we
Speaker 1: had all of the money he spent, all lawyers and
Speaker 1: stuff like right now, it was invested in racing. Hell,
Speaker 1: Hendrick might needed a barrow something from us. Do you
Speaker 1: think you would have kept racing cup if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for this? Probably? Oh yeah, we um, I probably uh.
Speaker 1: I probably have a couple of top twenties. As soon
Speaker 1: as I am free from all this stuff, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look for a goddamn good lawyer in the States and
Speaker 1: sue NASCAR too, because now it's it's gonna be six
Speaker 1: years in April that they banned me, and you figure
Speaker 1: all the races that I'm missing. You even put it
Speaker 1: at forty place and say well, I'm losing all that money.
Speaker 1: I told Carl about it. He goes, goddamn, he goes,
Speaker 1: we're into twenties now, so suit him for the place.
Speaker 1: The difference between a forty place finish and the twentieth
Speaker 1: place finish could be tens of thousands of dollars winnings.
Speaker 1: But it also means being closer to the front of
Speaker 1: the pack where the action and the attention is. It
Speaker 1: means a chance at moving up in the sport. But
Speaker 1: now if Derek is allowed to race again, he may
Speaker 1: have to start all over. You can't. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you've got if you've got billions of dollars, You
Speaker 1: got to start at the bottom. Like anything else. You
Speaker 1: can't just jump in a cup car and go racing.
Speaker 1: You have to work your way up. Now, I haven't
Speaker 1: raced in the car and over five years, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna have to start back again
Speaker 1: in the bottom. Basically, go to do the trucks, do
Speaker 1: short track, then go to a mile and a half
Speaker 1: and then a superspeedway and start over in the Exfinity.
Speaker 1: Do a few races in there and then you know,
Speaker 1: then finally it will give me my license to run
Speaker 1: in a cup, to go to Daytone or wherever. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it sucks. Uh, we're fighting it and
Speaker 1: they put a ban on me. You know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: aren't you supposed to be like proven, You gotta be
Speaker 1: guilty before they do something. Right now, it's you're guilty,
Speaker 1: and then you gotta prove yourself innocent, which is not right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm innocent right from the start. So Carl
Speaker 1: had a lot of back and forth with NASCAR officials
Speaker 1: to see what it would take for Derek to get
Speaker 1: back in the car, and the answer they gave him
Speaker 1: was unequivocal. When Derek is free of criminal charges, then
Speaker 1: he's free to race for NASCAR. For Derek to get
Speaker 1: back on the track, he had no option but to
Speaker 1: face a jury next time on running smoke. They just
Speaker 1: want to just round up as many people as they
Speaker 1: can and charge everybody and try to get as much
Speaker 1: money as they can out of everybody. I'm just helping
Speaker 1: a friend that's gangster something. They think we're criminals. They
Speaker 1: want to make us look like criminals, and their eyes
Speaker 1: were doing something wrong. And remember Derek's lawyer getting all
Speaker 1: excited and pumping his fists and it was really happy,
Speaker 1: So I'm like, Wow, that's gotta be a good thing.
Speaker 1: Running Smoke is a production of camp Site Media, Dan
Speaker 1: Patrick Productions, and Workhouse Media. The series was written and
Speaker 1: reported by me Roger Gola. Our producers are Lea Pape's,
Speaker 1: Laine Gerbig and Julie Dennischet. Our editors are Michelle Lands
Speaker 1: and Emily Martinez. Sound designed and original music by Mark McAdam.
Speaker 1: Additional sounded mixing by ewen Ly from You, with additional
Speaker 1: reporting by Susie McCarthy. Our executive producers are Dan Patrick,
Speaker 1: Josh Dean of camp Side Media, Paul Anderson, Nick Pinella,
Speaker 1: and Andrew Greenwood for Workhouse Media. Fact checking by Mary Mathis,
Speaker 1: artwork by Polly Adams, and additional thanks to Greg Horne,
Speaker 1: Johnny Kapman, Sierra Franco, Elizabeth van Brocklin, and Sean Flynn.