Earnhardt takes a final spin
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is far too concerned with the way his season is going to worry about retirement, even though the end of the former in five months will signal the beginning of the latter.
“I’m still swept up in trying to run well and have been a little preoccupied trying to do well to think about it,” said Earnhardt. “I’m not able to see or think too much or observe too much about the process of this being the last season. It just feels like another year of me trying to win.”
Earnhardt made the comments during a free-flowing phone interview last week that was equal parts informative, entertaining, brutally honest and — at times — poignant.
It came a week ahead of NASCAR’s annual Northern California stop, next Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, and during one of the lowest points in the career of the driver fans have chosen as NASCAR’s most popular each of the past 14 seasons.
Earnhardt is in 23rd place in the Monster Energy Cup standings, so far down that he sees only one way to make the 16driver, 10-race playoff tournament that begins in mid-September: earn an automatic berth by winning a race.
“We just gotta win, I don’t think we can do it by running well and points-ing them to death,” he said. “We’re too far behind and there aren’t enough races left to climb back in without a win. Can we win? Yeah. I’m not disheartened heading into (Sunday’s race at Michigan), thinking we need a win and can’t get it. We can, but it might be a surprise to everyone else.” Yes, it would. Earnhardt, who sat out the second half of 2016 while dealing with concussion symptoms, last won in November 2015. This season, he has only two top-10 finishes in 14 races and has led a total of 10 laps.
Moreover, he has become his own worst enemy. At Pocono last weekend, he blew a shift — putting his car into second gear instead of fourth and destroying his transmission in the process.
“No answer other than pilot error,” said Earnhardt, who did the same thing in practice two days earlier. Crew chief “Greg (Ives) and I talked quite a bit . ... We’ve made at least three physical changes with the shifter to make it more difficult to do so again.”
Having issues changing gears on the oval tracks NASCAR visits almost every week is one thing. But on the 10-turn, 1.99-mile Sonoma road course, the ability to smoothly and efficiently change gears is everything.
“It’s one of the tougher tracks for me physically and mentally,” said Earnhardt, whose best finish in 17 Sonoma starts is third in 2014. “A lot of our muscle memory is for turning left all the time, so the muscles in our backs and neck get used to that. (At Sonoma) we’re going to go in the opposite direction using muscles you’ve never used and you get sore.
“It’s also very hot there. Temperatures in the cockpit will reach 130-140 degrees. And you have to concentrate with downshifting into the corners, you have to do it without wheel-hopping and getting off into the dirt. It’s not a discipline that all of us are very good at.”
Regardless of how Earnhardt finishes in Sonoma, the emotional outpouring from fans will almost certainly be over the top as they bid farewell to yet another of the sport’s biggest names. In 2015, Vallejo native and four-time series champion Jeff Gordon retired; last year three-time titlist Tony Stewart and fan favorite Carl Edwards called it quits.
“People keep telling me and fans say, ‘We’re going to miss you,’ ” said Earnhardt. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
That’s true, but fans will have to look a little harder to find him. Earnhardt, who said he has no desire to ever be a team owner in racing’s top division, will still be seen at the tracks on weekends as the owner of an Xfinity Series team. JR Motorsports drivers Elliott Sadler, Justin Allgaier and William Byron are 1-2-3 in the standings — and teammate Michael Annett is 10th — after Saturday’s race in Michigan in the series, which is NASCAR’s equivalent of Triple-A baseball.
“We have a lot of fun in the Xfinity Series,” he said. “It fits our personality, and it’s what we enjoy. Cup level is so much more high pressure. You have three to four times the number of employees and payroll to deal with, and you’re dealing with major corporate sponsorships, multimillion-dollar deals, and if one doesn’t show up it’ll cripple the team.”
The decrease in pressure should also allow for an increase in personal time.
Earnhardt got married on New Year’s Eve and hopes to have children someday. And while he looks forward to being a father, he doesn’t care if his sons or daughters decide to carry on the Earnhardt family’s three-generation tradition of racing for a living.
“If they want to, we can check it out and see if they’re any good,” he said. “I’d have fun with that, but I wouldn’t put any pressure on them to do that.
“With me retiring and getting out before I have kids makes the chances of them becoming drivers a lot smaller. Sons want to do it when they see their daddy do that.”
That was certainly the case for Earnhardt, who grew up watching his father, Dale, win seven series championships and lay claim — along with Richard Petty — to being the greatest driver of all time. The older Earnhardt was killed in a final-lap accident in the 2001 Daytona 500 — a race in which his son finished second.
And while the younger Earnhardt says he hasn’t thought much about retirement, he didn’t hesitate when asked to consider his career highlights.
“Any victory lane I shared with my dad, those are special,” he said. “My first win at Texas, the All-Star win at Charlotte (both in 2000) ... he was there. We were both just short of shocking the hell out of each other that I (won). I think I was just as surprised as he was.”