Dale Jr. Takes issue with 23XI Racing. Do you agree?

On the latest episode of Jr.’s online podcast – the Dale Jr. Download – the racing legend expressed his disappointment and displeasure at 23XI’s “Scooter Gang” as he calls it. “If you follow Tyler Reddick on social media, you are guaranteed to get a scooter-shoe combo post every week!” Dale expressed. “Cale, David, none of those guys were out there riding scooters” Jr. continued, “all the 23XI guys man, it’s a scooter gang.” He went on to state, “I’m careful to use any descriptions such as disappointed… but I don’t know. These are gladiators going out to do battle and they’re gonna – they’re doing something incredibly hard and unique and they’re the best in the world and no one else can do it; Denny says it in the Netflix show!”

Now it is worth noting, his complaint is valid. Even as a Reddick fan myself, seeing this menace tear up every track with his superior scooter syndrome is a danger to the elite prestige that’s held by the Cup drivers in our beloved sport. F1 fans will look on, snickering to themselves that ‘those NASCAR guys are just what we thought – scooter using losers.’ The evidence is hard to hide, below I’ve included some of the more egregious evidence that’s been so proudly plastered all over 23XI’s social media feeds.

“I don’t want to see them on scooters man, I don’t know, I don’t wanna see ‘em on scooters. I don’t know how to say it and not be an asshole.” Jr.’s angry rant continued on for nearly 10 minutes of his broadcast. “Every week man, it’s the shoe-scooter combo post, and it’s on both Instagram and Twitter [X].” One of Dale’s co-hosts continued to add fuel to Dale’s rage by adding “Did you see the group picture of all of them together? It looks like the first day that their parents let ‘em go to school by themselves. They were all very proud of the scooters.” In response to this, Jr. flew off the handle (pun intended) and began seeing red so much he could hardly get his words together, “Yup, that right. That’s like yeah, it looked like they were like going – they were like graduating from middle school to high school to ‘My first day of Jr. High!’” he said in a mocking tone with over the top hand gestures. His rage is understandable as the post in question got nearly 100,000 views on X alone! The picture in question is seen here. 

Now, real quick before someone takes me too seriously on this article. I’m writing this in good humor. Though the Dale Jr. quotes are 100% accurate to what he said, I’m adding a ‘negative media bias-spin angle’ to this story for entertainment’s sake and to poke fun at the “situation”. In reality, we all know most news outlets do this sort of thing all the time to create unnecessary drama in an effort to get views and clicks. I’m a fan of Dirty Mo Media, I’m a huge fan of Tyler Reddick and 23XI Racing, and at the end of the day I thought these comments from Jr. would make for an entertaining and entirely unnecessary article. I don’t think Dale has any REAL issues with 23XI or any of their guys. At most I can see him thinking the scooter method of transportation is a bit of a dorky choice for professional athletes. I’m of the opinion that scootering around the track is a fun niche to not take too seriously.

Reddick picked up on these comments today by posting a clip from this podcast to his Instagram story with the caption “open invite to tag along @ dalejr” with a Scooter emoji and a laughing emoji. Dale Jr. and his co-hosts went on to talk about the ‘why’ of the whole thing. NASCAR doesn’t permit any motorized vehicles on the track when the drivers are doing their track walks; it’s a safety rule, which I understand. Out of apparent respect, Dale even commented “Reddick does it quite a bit. He likes to get out, look at the race track, just sorta get familiar – see anything new or whatever, which I get. I think that’s really smart.” They continued to talk about how various other drivers have used scooters to scope out the tracks and get around the pits. They debated whether or not a bike would be a better option to get around, before agreeing that a skateboard or Onewheel would be a neat alternative to scooters. 

If you’re a PR person for a skateboard company, now may be your chance to hop on this artificial “drama” and gift a driver a custom skateboard. Better yet, I’ve actually been seeing a fair amount of Onewheel ads lately; it seems like they’re doing a marketing push before spring hits. If you’re from Onewheel, don’t waste this opportunity to get your products into the NASCAR pits! The podcast hilariously ended up doing a 180° on itself with Dale Jr. admitting that in a hypothetical scenario “If somebody pulls up on me, on my electric scooter – some official, and says ‘you can’t take that out there – it’s motorized.’ I’m going to tell him to kick rocks. I’m going to tell him to kick rocks and I’mma mash the trigger and I’m rolling on! Gonna burn some rubber on my little electric scooter hahaha. Now I’m part of the scooter gang! What the hell happened here?!” With his co-hosts laughing along with him, they mentioned that somehow in the course of this discussion, he’d become ‘pro-scooter’. 

This was just one of many topics the podcast hit on and I enjoyed listening to it as always. Don’t take life too seriously y’all. Have some fun, poke some fun, and enjoy the ride. I’ll resume my regularly scheduled weekly articles with a Richmond Race Preview coming out tomorrow morning. Thanks for reading!