Legend’s son to most popular driver
Earnhardt Jr. became biggest star in NASCAR while driving for dad’s team
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s first decade in NASCAR was spent at Dale Earnhardt Inc., the team his father built into one of racing ’s best.
That era produced dramatic highlights — emotional Cup series victories at Daytona International Speedway and two Xfinity Series championships, for example — but also hit Earnhardt Jr. with the death of his father and a rocky ride through his final years at DEI.
Earnhardt Jr. scored 17 Cup victories while running under the DEI banner, none more emotional than his Daytona win in the summer of 2001, only months after Earnhardt Sr. had been killed on the final lap of the Daytona 500 in February.
Over the majority of his run at DEI, Earnhardt Jr. carried both the burden of being his father’s son and the pressures inherent in being his sport’s most popular driver, a hero to millions.
Now, Earnhardt Jr., 43, has four races remaining in a 19-year NASCAR Cup Series career before he retires from full-time racing and awaits the birth of his first child — a daughter due in May — to carry on the Earnhardt name through another generation.
MAGNET FOR FANS
Cathy Earnhardt Watkins, Earnhardt Sr.’s sister, saw that experience firsthand, even before Earnhardt Jr. rolled into Cup racing. She and her husband, Mike, traveled the country during Junior’s run to two Xfinity (then Busch) Series championships in 1998-99, hauling the team’s souvenir trailer. As Junior’s career grew, the blue trailer became a magnet for fans.
“Fans slammed our trailer every week,” Watkins said. “I won’t ever forget a couple who came to work at our trailer after they had worked for a different driver. We had a $35,000 day. They were dragging. They said, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe you do that much in one day.’ Mike said, ‘Wait until Sunday.’
“We often worked four to eight people across the counter in the trailer. The restocking was constant when we were busy.”
Those fans helped make Earnhardt Jr. one of the country’s biggest sports names, allowing DEI to attract one of the sports world’s biggest sponsors — Anheuser-Busch and its Budweiser beer brand — as Junior’s sponsor for his Cup debut.
“It unfolded unbelievably with Dale Jr.,” said Don Hawk, former president of DEI and a key player in Earnhardt Sr.’s business connections. “Those Busch years were something. When he got in those cars, he decided to become serious about full-time racing. Second place to Dale Sr. was not acceptable. He instilled that in Dale Jr. He responded with backto-back championships.”
DEMANDS OF FAME
Public relations specialist Jade Gurss, now Mazda Motorsports public relations manager, won the tough competition to represent Earnhardt Jr. and Budweiser as Junior began his Cup career. Gurss was hired in 1999 as Junior was stepping gingerly into NASCAR’s premier series with a fiverace schedule prior to going full time in 2000. Gurss was a nearconstant presence with Earnhardt Jr. at racetracks and public appearances through the 2007 season.
“I hadn’t met Dale, but I had been around enough to know that the last thing I should do was come in guns-a-blazing,” Gurss said. “I knew he loved music. I brought along a CD with a mix of music I thought he would like — what you might call alternative music. We seemed to hit it off over music.”
Earnhardt scored two wins during his rookie Cup season in 2000 as growing fame put increasing demands on his time.
“It was a crazy rookie season,” Gurss said. “It seemed like everything was going at 200 miles per hour. But he rarely, if ever, had a scenario where he lost patience or outwardly showed frustration. Part of Anheuser-Busch’s intent was for him to be completely real, not to be the sort of robotic, polished guy who’s going to read off a bunch of sponsors in every interview.”
EMBRACING RACING
Hawk remembers Junior’s teenage years, his early experiences in short-track Late Model racing and his tendency to keep a daily schedule that was quite unlike that of his father, a very early riser.
“Dale and I would go to the double-wide (trailer) Junior lived in and wake him up in the morning,” Hawk said. “I’d say, ‘Hey, it’s time to get up,’ and his dad would say, ‘You’re missing the best part of the day.’ But when he got into that Busch car, he decided to become serious about full-time racing.”
Jeff Clark rode the Junior wave during those early years, working as an engine specialist and pit crew jack man for the Cup team.
“The best memories about Dale Junior are about how serious he took the racing,” said Clark, who now works for Roush Yates Engines. “He had fun outside the track, but when he showed up, his focus was 100%. You could look at him and know what he was thinking. We had almost a code as to what he was thinking and feeling. That’s how close the chemistry was during those years.
“Dale Senior had high expectations of Dale Junior and us. It was a great run, a great era to be around those guys.”
TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY
There were rocky times, too, however. Earnhardt Jr. won multiple races each year from 2000 through 2004 (finishing a high of third in points in 2003), but his performance sagged over the next years, with only one win in 2005, one win in ’06 and a shutout in ’07, his final year as the team went through a series of crew chiefs.
He had an uneasy relationship with his stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt, who retained an ownership role in the team after Earnhardt Sr.’s death. When an opportunity to move to Hendrick Motorsports appeared, Junior jumped at the chance and did what many once thought impossible, leaving the team started by his father.
Through the ups and downs, Earnhardt Jr., an inherently shy person thrust into a very public role, has maintained his composure and self-confidence. He has been the calming force in the middle of a whirlwind of drama, remaining as much of a “normal” person as one can in such turbulence.
His sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, who watched his triumphs and struggles at DEI and now runs his Xfinity Series team JR Motorsports, said Earnhardt Jr. never ceases to surprise her.
“Growing up, Dale was just never fiery enough to me to want to race cars,” she said. “He was shy and reserved. We had a gocart. I backed into a wire from a telephone phone, and he got upset and said he was never going to ride with me again.
“I wrecked us once in a Volkswagen that we drove on my dad’s farm before I had my license. I slammed it into a tree on the passenger side and made the running board fold up. He couldn’t get out. He said he was not going to ride with me any more and that he’d walk to the barn.
“I never would have bet on him to become the person he has — to handle everything in the way he has.”