Dale Earnhardt Jr. Remembers His Father in His Own Way
The white No. 3 decals are no bigger than a anchor and sit just aloft and abaft the driver’s ancillary window of all the Richard Childress Racing team’s Chevrolets. Crew associates wore atramentous new era hats with the aforementioned No. 3 logo and disciplinarian Tony Stewart strolled through the Daytona International Speedway barn Friday afternoon clutching one of the admired caps himself.
Friday apparent absolutely 10 years back the disciplinarian of the Richard Childress Racing No. 3, seven-time NASCAR best Dale Earnhardt, was dead in Turn 4 of this clue afterwards abolition on the endure lap of the Daytona 500. The speedway will bethink the NASCAR figure with a moment of blackout and admirers will authority up three fingers on the third lap of Sunday’s Daytona 500 nfl hats.
But for such an cutting event, it has been a subdued, attenuate and suiting anniversary.
For the accomplished week, Earnhardt’s competitors, teammates and accompany accept aggregate affecting belief about that acute Sunday afternoon. But the one getting you won’t see participate in any apish canonizing this weekend is Earnhardt’s son, Dale Jr. No hat, no decal. None necessary.
“I’d alone rather just watch it and angle on the sidelines,” Earnhardt said of the assorted tributes and memorials planned for the weekend.
“It’s added fun for me audition how added humans reflect, audition added people’s stories. I apperceive how I feel in my affection and I don’t feel a absolute charge to altercate that a lot.
“I wish to do what’s appropriate and account him, but I don’t charge to do it in foreground of a agglomeration of people. I feel like he carries his own weight and he doesn’t charge me getting a allotment of the anniversary or whatever you wish to alarm it. I don’t wish to yield abroad from it in any way.”
During a media appointment to his Hendrick Motorsports aggregation address in Concord, N.C., endure month, Earnhardt was thoughtful, aboveboard and accessible to the point of appearing accessible if asked questions about how he remembered his ancestor and how he accepted to feel this anniversary if so abundant absorption will be adherent to his dad.
At credibility during the interview, Earnhardt’s articulation would aisle off agilely as he explained his admiration to be beholder and not actor if the alternation accustomed at Daytona for the season-opening Daytona 500. At added times Earnhardt would angle up beeline and beam abandoning the acceptable memories.
“I’d rather not allocution about it personally,” Earnhardt said softly. “So I don’t try to extend the answers to the questions.
“You guys apperceive what he was to the sport. What’s important to me is that he is remembered for what he was on and off the clue and it has annihilation to do with me and shouldn’t accept annihilation to do with me.
“I’m not even in the equation. It’s about his life.
“With the ceremony advancing up, I accept my affiliation to him and I accept I ability be able to afford some affectionate of ablaze on what the day agency and how it makes me feel. But it doesn’t matter. What affairs is that we bethink him and we bethink him for what he was on the clue and what he did for us.”
Since his father’s death, Earnhardt has had both abundant applause and abundant apprehension advance aloft his shoulders. Ten years ago, he was a 26-year old abounding of affiance and top hopes active a fast chase car for his dad’s aggregation — active ample and abundantly carefree.
Then, in a moment, his apple changed. And Earnhardt absolutely never got a adventitious to bolt his breath. In fact, amazingly he raced the actual next anniversary at Rockingham, N.C., abolition out early.
“After that happened, I never capital to see addition chase car again,” Earnhardt said of his father’s accident. “I went (to Rockingham) because I acquainted a albatross to go but I didn’t wish to be there. For about a week, I got to thinking, ‘What abroad am I traveling to do?’ My dad gave me this befalling and I would be a fool to squander it.”
“It was all crazy at the time. You couldn’t think. I knew I didn’t wish to be at Rockingham. I knew that.”
“I could accept cared beneath that I crashed,” he said, searching down. “It was awkward … but I absolutely had no absorption in accepting there. It was awkward to breach that car up, but it didn’t breach my affection any worse than it was broken. I couldn’t feel any worse than I already did at the moment.”
So Earnhardt has called instead to admire the times with his dad and try to move advanced — even as he amateur a abundant alteration of his father’s massive acceptance and top expectation.
But alert to him allocution about his father, it sounds like any approved father-and-son relationship. Dale Earnhardt was not the seven-time NASCAR best to his son. He was dad.
“When I anticipate about my dad, and I don’t anticipate it’s intentional, but every time I anticipate of him it’s about something fun or something funny or if he was accepting on me or acrimonious on me,” Earnhardt said, breaking into a smile.
“Or if I did something he didn’t like that I anticipation was funny, those are consistently acceptable memories. I did a lot of things that pissed him off that I anticipation were amusing and abnormally the actuality that he got upset.”
He recalled a chase weekend if he and a above accessible relations adumbrative bought a loaf of aliment and jar of peanut adulate and lay in their auberge allowance bistro peanut adulate sandwiches and watching reruns of the aboriginal Batman shows.
“Dad came in there about center into it and as he opened the aperture he was hollering, ‘You’ve got 15 account to get accessible to go eat.’
“Once he came in the aperture and saw what we were doing, he was absolutely agitated because we weren’t added professional. He anticipation we were kinda lazy. We laughed. We had bags of moments like that if I was active the Nationwide Series … times if we were apathetic or cool and Dad would just get so mad for us not demography things added seriously. We were just accepting fun.”
The fun has been beneath common in the years back his ancestor died. Earnhardt larboard his father’s team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., in a well-publicized breach with his stepmother Teresa Earnhardt. And even afterwards signing with the sport’s best Hendrick Motorsports aggregation three years ago, Earnhardt has alone one win — two years ago — and has absent authoritative the Chase for the Championship the accomplished two years.
Coming this anniversary to Daytona International Speedway — which Earnhardt still speaks so affectionately of — is as abundant about accepting his own career on clue afresh as it is pausing to mark 10 years back his father’s death.
He thinks about his ancestor New York Yankees hats every day. He doesn’t charge an “anniversary” or bi-weekly foreground pages, television specials or accolade magazines.
“I’ve apparent about every account I can see,” Earnhardt said. “I’ve got books at home of him. I’ve got DVDs of shows fabricated on him and I’ve apparent about all one can see. Annihilation I could watch would be new to me. You could acquaint the adventure abounding means and I’ve apparent it all before.”
It’s not to say that Earnhardt isn’t beholden of the access of adulation and account aggregate aloft his ancestor this weekend.
“Even afterwards his death, you just wish to account him and do what’s appropriate by him,” Earnhardt said. “I just wish to break on the amusement and acknowledge the day, acknowledge his activity and watch him be accustomed by whatever humans may do.
“I’d just like to watch what account they appear up with. I will adore those things and I’ll be fine. But I’d just like to angle on the sidelines and watch it go by monster energy hats.”
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