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    Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Out of the Shadow of Greatness
    Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Out of the Shadow of Greatness
    Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Out of the Shadow of Greatness
    Ebook156 pages1 hour

    Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Out of the Shadow of Greatness

    By Mike Hembree

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    About this ebook

    Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s name virtually assured that his life would not be ordinary. Over the past decade, he has fulfilled that destiny. His father, one of the most successful drivers in the history of international motorsports, gave his son more than his name. Dale Earnhardt Sr. placed Dale Jr. in position to follow the footsteps and tire tracks he had left from Darlington to Daytona, from coast to coast, from one championship to the next. Entering 2001, Junior was set to turn the sport on its ear. Instead, his world was rocked in the first race of the season when Dale Sr., racing behind him in a wild finish to the Daytona 500, crashed into the outside wall and was killed. The racing world mourned, and Junior’s life changed in many ways. Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Out of the Shadow of Greatness tells the story of this remarkable young man’s journey from teenage dreamer to Winston Cup winner, from Street Stock racer to 200 mph superstar, from son of the greatest to a champion in his own right. Against the backdrop of one of sport’s biggest tragedies, he continues to carry the Earnhardt name to new heights. This newly revised edition is a must for any NASCAR fan.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSports Publishing
    Release dateJun 1, 2013
    ISBN9781613214350
    Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Out of the Shadow of Greatness

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      Book preview

      Dale Earnhardt Jr. - Mike Hembree

      CHAPTER 1

      I never told anybody that I was going to be as good as my dad. I’ve read that a lot, and I appreciate the comparisons, but that has a backlash when you don’t run well every week. I just want to drive race cars and make a living doing it. —Dale Earnhardt Jr.

      Photo: HHP/Harold Hinson

      Photo: David Griffin Photography

      The starting point in the racing life of Dale Earnhardt Jr. can be found along Sedan Avenue in Kannapolis, N.C., a small, nondescript textile mill town whose stature was elevated in the second half of the 20th century by the exploits of one racing family.

      Martha Earnhardt resides there, at the corner of Sedan and Court. The widow of Ralph Earnhardt, the mother of Dale Earnhardt, the grandmother of Dale Earnhardt Jr., she lives at a Grand Central Station of stock car racing, a birthplace of things fast and furious, a historic landmark along the road to motorsports glory.

      At the rear of the Earnhardt home, in a small cinder-block garage, Ralph Earnhardt began the great journey that would lift his family to international auto racing fame, make its famous son a millionaire many times over, and open the door to a third generation of greatness.

      Photo: Harold Hinson Photography

      This is the heritage that rides with Dale Earnhardt Jr. at every track, on every lap, into every winner’s circle.

      Ralph Earnhardt loved racing so much that he in the 1950s, and he succeeded. Most drivers of his era worked real jobs and raced on the side, trying to move dollars around to keep both sides of their lives going. Earnhardt put all his time into the garage behind his house and into his race car, and the results showed. He became a king on southeastern short tracks, and he won NASCAR’s Late Model Sportsman championship in 1956. Ned Jarrett, a two-time Winston Cup champion, described Earnhardt as absolutely the toughest race driver I ever ran against.

      Dale Jr. during practice on 10/2/2009 for the the Price Chopper 400 at the Kansas Speedway. Photo: David Griffin Photography

      Dale Earnhardt Jr., who would blaze a significant trail of his own in the family’s chosen lifestyle, was born a year after his grandfather died. A heart attack killed Ralph Earnhardt in September 1973 at the age of 45. He was still racing, still working on cars in that backyard garage.

      His grandson thus races with only the stories of his grandfather and of the big heart that gave out too soon, stories of the man they called Ironheart.

      I wish I had gotten to know him, said Dale Jr. of his grandfather. He seemed like a really, really great man. I’ve heard a lot of compliments about him. It’s a shame I never got to know him. I wish I’d had that opportunity—to see him, to watch him race.

      As the late Buck Baker, another NASCAR champion, put it, In those days, you just mashed the pedal to the floor and went. That was the way Ralph Earnhardt raced, and he passed the method along to his son, Dale Sr. , who traveled the Carolina racing circuit with his father, watched him tinker in the Kannapolis garage and waited impatiently for his chance to hit the track.

      Dale Sr. grew up with only one thing dominating his thought process—racing. He quit school in the ninth grade, convinced he could make enough money to survive while also keeping a small racing operation afloat on Carolina short tracks. He had seen his father do it; in his thinking, there was no reason he couldn’t.

      "THAT’S MY GOAL. NOT ONLY TO WIN A

      CHAMPIONSHIP, BUT CHAMPIONSHIPS."

      —DALE EARNHARDT JR.

      My dad was more independent than I am, Earnhardt remembered in an August 2000 interview. He was a self-made guy who worked hard for what he got. He was also a control guy. He didn’t buy it if he couldn’t afford it. He didn’t believe in credit.

      A determined Dale Jr. was excited by racing from an early age Photo: Harold Hinson Photography

      Photo: Harold Hinson Photography

      Dale Sr. didn’t have that luxury. He went into debt to race, leaving his garage virtually every race night knowing that he had to make enough money at the track to pay the next week’s bills. He also took jobs as a welder and insulation installer.

      You really grow up in racing around with your dad, Earnhardt said.

      Your dad is your idol, and everything revolves around him. You just want to race. My dad was the focus of my life. I didn’t like school. I wanted to be home working on Dad’s race car. I wanted to be home working on cleaning up the shop. I’d just as soon be washing wrenches. I followed him around with everything he did.

      Dale learned quickly from his father. He could figure out a lot about this sort of racing simply by observing his dad—and his cars. He’d walk into his father’s shop the morning after a race and check out the car. If there was more mud near the back of the car than the front, he knew his father had been in the lead most of the night.

      Photo: David Griffin Photography

      Teresa Earnhardt celebrates a victory with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Photo: HHP/Harold Hinson

      When he started racing, he wanted to be the one who placed the dirt, not the one who ran into its cloud.

      Dale Earnhardt’s never-give-up, never-give-in attitude enabled him to survive the harsh world of Southern short track racing and eventually launch his Winston Cup career. Two years after his father’s death, Earnhardt made his Winston Cup debut in the World 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

      Dale Earnhardt Jr. was seven months old when his father,

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