MOORESVILLE, N.C. (April 19, 2017) – Fresh off the Easter break—one of those NASCAR traditions that managed to survive the evolution of the sport—Dale Earnhardt Jr. tackled a number of topics on his eponymous Dirty Mo Radio podcast, The Dale Jr. Download. Mostly, however, he talked about change.
During a recap of his Easter break in Bulverde, Texas with wife Amy and her family—which included a bit of pride in his cycling prowess—Earnhardt Jr. revealed that he and Amy took her sister’s family to Key West for the weekend. That brought up the topic of children.
“That was a wake-up call,” he said with a grin amid an answering chuckle from his bride. “I still want to have kids. It did not deter me.”
As the talk turned to topics of the day, Earnhardt Jr. opined on the change in format for the NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte next month. He is eligible to compete, having won the event in 2000.
“Don’t really have a problem with the new format,” he said. “Only 10 cars will advance to the final stages...it’s the stage winners plus the best average finish of the other three stages. It’s so freakin’ confusing and they change the freakin’ rules every year. Grr! I don’t mind the rules, it’s just so much change. Change, change, change, change. There’s something to be said for tradition, and I know that some traditions have to evolve and can’t stay the same all the time, but how does this race, much like the Clash, how does something become so great if it is continuously manipulated and adjusted?
“I do like the option of seeing what a softer tire compound does. That’s going to be fun to watch. I do like the idea of them putting them behind the others in the final stage.”
Amy asked where he would like to see the All-Star Race run should it ever move away from Charlotte, as has been talked about for several years.
“It’d definitely be Bristol or Martinsville,” he replied. “Short tracks. You’re going to get some fireworks.”
That led to a discussion of grassroots racing, spurred by a comment from Kyle Larson about Cup drivers needing to get back in touch with the grassroots fans at short tracks across the country. That was a topic Earnhardt Jr. dived into with gusto.
“I agree with Larson that it’s great for him, Kyle Busch and Kasey Kahne to go to local tracks,” he said. “The local fans love seeing the big Cup stars come to their track and duke it out with the track champion. They love that. I agree with that. It’s not common for the drivers to run, for several reasons. The money, time, safety concerns...there’s a million reasons and everyone has a different one. Time is the biggest problem.”
As a grassroots team owner—the JR Motorsports Late Model team is a force in the Southeast—Earnhardt Jr. saw a day when he might return to his own roots.
“I can see that happening,” he said. “I think if I still have Late Models when I’m done racing in the Cup Series. I don’t see myself really going and running anything while I’m still driving a Cup car, but yeah, I think I probably would piddle with it. That was something Dad and those guys did all the time back in the day, and that’s very comparable to what Kyle and Kasey and Kyle Busch do. They just love to race and duke it out with the local drivers. The local drivers probably love it when they come into town. It’s an opportunity to sort of measure yourself against somebody you see racing on Sunday. Every driver at every local track feels like they can go out and get it done.”
Speaking of getting it done, talk soon turned to this week’s events at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.
“It’s one of my favorite races back when I was a kid,” he said. “My favorite race was the Bristol night race. We would park our family vans on the grass in the corners and climb up on the back and watch the race. We were literally 20, 30 yards from the cars, and they might spin and wreck and slide down onto the apron and you could feel the heat and smell the smoke. It was such a great experience. You were up on the vans with your friends on those vans pointing at this, pointing at that. There’s action all the time.”
Given that the action and the legacy of tracks like BMS is extraordinary, Earnhardt Jr. weighed in on a topic that has bugged him for quite some time.
“It blows my mind that nobody has tried to recreate this track or anything like it,” he said. “We went through this period where everybody had to build a 1.5 mile cookie cutter dogleg track.”
That said, his memories of Thunder Valley are voluminous.
“We won there in 2004, swept the weekend and lapped all the way up to sixth place,” he recalled. “I remember that race because I had been burned in the Corvette that year. I had this big open wound on my leg, and I had to wrap it every day. I was trying to get my seatbelt tight and one of the crew members came in to help me, and he accidentally punched me right in that wound. It hurt so bad. It bled again, so I had to rewrap it.”
As if that weren’t enough, the champagne spraying in Victory Lane made it worse.
“Champagne got down inside there in Victory Lane, and it burned. I’m standing in Victory Lane for all those pictures and my leg is on fire. It was so bad.”
Being a student of racing history, and having witnessed it with his father for many years, he recalled that Dale Sr.’s first victory came at Bristol on April Fool’s Day in 1979. “I was only four at the time...I don’t think I was there,” he quipped.
One race in particular stood out for Dale Jr.
“Dad won there nine times, and one of the races I remember is 1985,” he said. “He ran the whole race without power steering. He ran 440 of the 500 laps with no power steering. He was wore slam out at the end of that race. He had a lot of moments in his career where he lived up to his reputation as an intimidator, a tough guy. That was one of the races where he checked that box pretty good.”
For more on Easter, cycling, #AskJr. and vacation antics, tune in to Dirty Mo Radio on www.dalejr.com or download it from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud or any of the other podcast portals.