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Dale Earnhardt Jr Shares Wild Story of a NASCAR Champion Team’s FBI Arrest Before His Absurd Return Years Later

Published 11/16/2022, 8:30 AM EST

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Recently, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a surprising reaction to an interesting NASCAR fact. He was referring to the DeWitt Racing team, who competed in the 1970s. Safe to say, the 70s was a very wild era, with all sorts of infamous scandals. One of them was the L.G. DeWitt scandal, which supposedly resulted in the team shutting shop for good.

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The team was relatively successful in the Winston Cup arena. Accolades include the 1973 Winston Cup title, courtesy of Benny Parsons, in his second season with the team and in the sport. Unfortunately, the dream came crashing down when the FBI linked some crew members to a car-stealing racket. It later transpired that DeWitt sold his equipment in a public auction.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. discovered the whole situation

As per reports, crew chief Bobby Hudson was allegedly involved. Hudson was supposedly complicit in a “theft to order operation”, leading to his arrest in October 1980. However, he was soon got back as crew chief for Terry Schoonover in 1984. Two years later, he linked up with Bobby Allison.

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It is also worth mentioning that there were unfounded rumors floating around. According to some of them, Terry Schoonover was an undercover FBI agent when Hudson was his crew chief. In all honesty, many of these NASCAR stories from the 70s and 80s sound like something out of a Hollywood movie.

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Safe to say, this whole thing was news to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who had not heard about this story at all. With so much mystery surrounding the issue, he definitely would have found it intriguing.

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On April 20, 2022, the icon made his debut and won in his first race at the iRacing Mooncar series. He drove the vintage 1987 Winston Cup stock cars at Talladega Super-speedway in dramatic fashion, flipping across the finish line. Currently, he is preparing to compete in a Late Model race at the Florence Speedway.

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Written by:

Dhruv George

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Dhruv George is a senior Motorsports author for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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Edited by:

Akash Pandhare