Dale Earnhardt Jr Is Finally Able to Move On From His Father’s Death in the Most Unexpected Way

The Earnhardt name is heritage in NASCAR. Dale Earnhardt was one of the most terrific drivers NASCAR ever saw, and he raked in numerous trophies over his career. Dale Earnhardt Jr was passed on the baton of the Earnhardt legacy, when his father passed away after a fatal accident.

Dale Jr was mentored for the early part of his career by his father – possibly the greatest mentor one can hope for. But looking back at the time of his father’s passing, Dale Jr had some things to say.

‘I think that you’re right about that man, when I lost my dad I didn’t wanna uniforms and his boots and stuff around. I didn’t wanna hug it all and stuff. It was like I went in a damn direction. As far as I could.”

“Now all these years later I’m trying to get all this stuff back, it’s okay if it’s sitting in the room next to me. It doesn’t bother me. It does have an energy. I got some boots of his. The boots are a cool thing because he walked in them and he did so many things wearing those boots. He would resole his boots, he would get a new sole put on.”

“It took a decade for me to get where I would be to want that. To get those material things back. I appreciated them and they didn’t hurt me, or it didn’t hurt to be around them,” he said on his podcast.

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Both Dale Jr, and Ben Kennedy, come from families that played crucial roles in building NASCAR in one way or another. While the legacy was huge, they also had to cope with not being able to spend a great amount of time with their families.

Dale Earnhardt Jr and Ben Kennedy reflect on the year following the incident

The two drivers had to go through the deaths of their fathers but for Dale Jr, it was a very public event given Dale Sr’s influence on the sport.

He said, “Going to the race tracks the next year, actually that year, and the 3 is painted on the apron. It was great but bad. It was like I love this, I thought it was amazing, loved that everybody wants to celebrate him and all that but at the same time it was so distracting. It’s weird.”

Ben Kennedy added, “I remember every third lap of every race everyone had the 3 up. It was so cool. And I remember the first couple of races and everyone put the 3 up. It was just like you couldn’t hear anything but the cars. It was emotional. It took you 4-5 laps to recover. It was special that year.” 

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A lot of times as fans we fail to understand what our heroes have to go through in their lives. Conversations like these help undo that.