Get to know Dave Moody in this week’s Motor Racing Network announcer spotlight. Dave is the lead turn announcer for NASCAR Cup Series broadcasts and also co-anchors some Xfinity and Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series races.
Q: When did you first become interested in broadcasting?
Moody: When I was young, my uncle took me to a little short track in my hometown in Vermont and I never wanted to do anything else after that. The sights and smells, the noise and the color … I was captivated by it and I always have been.
Q: How did you get your start in broadcasting auto racing?
Moody: I started out working on race cars as I got a little older into my teenage years and started writing a column for one of the local trade papers. When Ken Squier, who owned our local short track (Thunder Road Speedbowl), started getting busy with CBS, he needed somebody to fill in for him on the public address system. I still don’t know – to this day – how he picked me. He may have read some of my columns and thought I had a workable vocabulary. More likely, I was just standing there with my finger in my nose and he figured, ‘This is a kid with time on his hands.’ He drafted me and I started filling in for him when he was on the road. I ended up being the announcer there for 30 years. He taught me everything I know about calling stock car races — both on the radio and on the public address system — and also turned me into the basketball and hockey play-by-play guy for his very successful group of radio stations in Vermont. Depending on how the local teams fared in the playoffs, I would call somewhere between 85 and 110 games every winter; six nights a week.
Q: How did you become involved with the Motor Racing Network?
Moody: Again, Ken Squier opened the door. Ken ultimately – in 1983, I guess it was – got me an audition with the network. I went down to Speedweeks and called a few laps of practice before spending the rest of the week spotting Turns 1 and 2 for Dave Despain. I’ve been working for the network full- or part-time, off and on, since then … and full-time from 1998.
Q: What do you remember about your first broadcast with MRN?
Moody: My first official broadcast was during Speedweeks and I wasn’t supposed to be part of the broadcast. I went out to the turn with Despain, did my audition and spotted for him in the Duel 125 qualifying races… or maybe it was the Busch (now Xfinity) race, at that point. They decided to put me on the air in some capacity, so they appointed me the garage reporter. I think it was one of (if not the only) Daytona 500s in history where nobody blew up, nobody crashed and nobody even spun. I sat down there all day long just praying for somebody to talk to. I think I did get a couple minutes of airtime, but that was about it.
Q: Along with Ken, who were some of your role models in broadcasting?
Moody: I always say that I went to “Ken Squier High School” and “Barney Hall University.” I worked with Ken for so many years – at his radio station doing play-by-play sports, all the stick-and-ball sports. I’ve probably done more basketball games than I have auto races. I learned so much from Ken, about the nuts and bolts of how to do this job. Once I started working for MRN, obviously it was just learning by example from Barney Hall. What a privilege it was just to work with both of those guys. Barney taught me an extremely valuable lesson about surviving in the Cup garage. After I had been with the network for two or three years, he pulled me aside and said, “Boy, I see you in the garage talking to people. You hear a lot of things about what’s going on, and you’re smart enough to keep those confidences to yourself. The trust of the garage is something that you only have once, and can never get back. If you’re ever unsure whether you should talk about something on the air or not, ask yourself two simple questions. Does this have to be said? And does this have to be said by me? If the answer to either of those questions is no, keep your mouth shut.” That advice has kept me out of a lot of trouble, over the years.
Q: Do you remember the first Cup race you attended as a fan?
Moody: I grew up in Vermont, so there wasn’t a lot of NASCAR Cup racing there. We could either haul all the way to Martinsville Speedway, Pocono or Dover. My first Cup race was at Martinsville, when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. About six or eight of us stayed in a pop-up camper. We got there after dark, set the camper up and probably drank a little beer. OK – definitely drank a lot of beer. About 6 o’clock the next morning, when that train came through about 15 feet from where we were sleeping, we thought the end of the world had come. But it was such a great experience, because it was vintage old Martinsville, with the manual scoreboard. Every 10 laps, a guy would climb a ladder and hang a few numbers on the scoreboard to tell you who was where. It was an awesome experience. My second race was at Dover. I clearly remember sitting on top of a friend’s camper watching the race and Harry Gant had lapped the field about four times by the halfway mark. I still thought it was cool. It was the worst race ever. Harry stunk up the show. But even then, I remember thinking, “This is just as cool as it could possibly be.”
Q: Can you believe it’s now been 17 years that you have hosted “Sirius XM Speedway?”
Moody: It really has flown by. Our first show was the day after Matt Kenseth won the championship. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to start a racing show. It was the end of the season. All of the drivers were either on an island or a boat somewhere. The race fans didn’t know we existed. We were brand new, and in the middle of a stick-and-ball sports channel. We would come on, do our three hours and lead into “World Soccer Daily.” There was zero listener transfer from our show to the next. Somehow, we made a go of it and soldiered on. It’s been 17 years, now, and it still doesn’t seem possible. The fact that so many people seem to consider us “appointment radio” at 3 p.m., Monday though Friday, completely blows my mind. I am beyond grateful, and I appreciate every single listener.
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