Sunday Showcase:
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. finishes his final lap today, he ends his 19-year Cup career as a NASCAR driver with few regrets.
HOMESTEAD — Dale Earnhardt Jr. has run 179,165 laps on the NASCAR Cup circuit, none of them an easy ride. Each turn has been analyzed and dissected, many turned into sentimental, introspective journeys of father and son; others with a cautionary tale of what happens when self-preservation becomes a man’s priority.
NASCAR’s most cherished and popular driver is shutting it all down after he races in the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway this afternoon. He leaves with little regret. He is relieved in so many ways.
He’s made it to the finish line healthy and whole. A winless season? Does it matter? To review, he’s made it through the season healthy and whole.
Pop the bubbly. It’s time to celebrate.
“I want to finish the race in one piece,” he said during a media availability on Friday.
Traumatic events change a man’s priorities. For Earnhardt, it was multiple concussions that eventually forced him to miss half of the 2016 season. He returned to the track at Daytona at the start of this season a changed man.
“I’ve felt very good about that decision before the race in Daytona started in February that this was it,” he said. “And I was more thankful to be able to compete this year than I was to ever question whether I should go further.
“And when I started in Daytona, I didn’t know whether I would finish, you know, feeling delicate and feeling compromised and knowing how easily that could happen again. I confided in my friends and family and my wife that I was worried that I could get another concussion and how disappointing that would be.”
Now? No worries. He will retire from full-time Cup racing after 19 seasons, although he’s left some wiggle room to make a cameo here and there, including the Xfinity race in Homestead next year.
It is the perfect transition some ways.
Junior can do things on his terms and not because overbearing fans demand that you race — and expect you to be darn good at it — in because your
He was once a mechanic in his father's auto dealership at 18, with no particular focus. But the end game was inevitable: His daddy and grandfather were racers, bluecollar guys with dents and scratches on their cars from their tussles on dirt tracks before moving onto high-speed asphalt. The prodigal son would soon join the family business despite awkward silence from a dad who was never big on feelings or expressing emotions.
Dale Jr. sought acceptance in stock-car racing and found success in the old Busch (now Xfinity) Series, winning back-to-back titles in 1998-99. But the bump up to Cup racing in 2000 has been complicated last name is Earnhardt. and conflicting.
His father died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, forever changing the dynamics of Junior’s journey. Through all the tears, everyone who loved his daddy now cheered for him vicariously. He was an Earnhardt, and he was family. His daddy’s ghost became his constant passenger. Try processing that with a therapist.
“I think the world of him,” said Tony Stewart, a former rival on the circuit and a three-time Cup champ. “He’s been a kid who’s been through a lot; a lot of weight on his shoulders from the fans and the sport in general but he’s handled it great.”
But as the process evolved, there were times he just didn’t care. There was always a party in the mix. It usually went down in the basement of his home in Mooresville, N.C. He even had a name for it: Club E. Budweiser, his sponsor, sent him two cases a week. He took pictures with Playboy models. Belch, beer and babes.
“When I was racing for my family, I took advantage and didn’t take it seriously,” he said. “I was in the bus playing video games for as long as I could. I was up until 2 in the morning playing video games on Friday and Saturday nights. I just had no idea how to take advantage of the opportunity that I was given. I’m sure I could have accomplished so much more if I had been plugged in.”
Switching over to Hendrick Motorsports in 2008 changed his perspective. He learned how to be professional and prompt from teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon.
Now 43, Earnhardt has won 26 Cup races, though he will leave without a season title. It hasn’t affected adoration from the NASCAR Nation. He’s won the sport’s mostpopular-driver award 14 consecutive years, even as he has plodded along with two winless seasons.
There’s no shame in that, really. His life has changed drastically over the last few years, altering his trajectory personally and professionally.
He suffered a concussion after sliding up on the track in Michigan in June 2016 and ended up missing the final 18 races of the season. Everything literally was a blur and foggy. He couldn’t focus riding as a passenger in a car because he became dizzy. It’s understandable why there was all this apprehension before Daytona this season and his decision to retire. He is no longer his father’s son but his own man. He is married now. Dale Jr. and his wife, Amy, are expecting their first child, a girl.
Amy broke the party boy with love and kindness. The concussions — he estimates he’s had at least four others — broke the driver of the competitive rush to keep racing.
So he is done. It’s been a sentimental long goodbye on the #Appreci88tion tour, including a tear-jerking video from former sponsor Budweiser, to a shout-out from Shaquille O’Neal.
“You just don’t expect stuff like that,” Earnhardt said. “You don’t ever assume. They were all very emotional. Amy is the one who’s obviously the most emotional, with being pregnant and everything, so they’ve really been hitting her.”
There may be a few tears today with his family, including his mother. And then, goodbye, and thanks for the memories.
“I’m sitting here healthy,” he said. “And I’m going to run this last race. And I got all the way through the year, so I feel blessed. I feel really good with it.”