NASCAR fans have associated Dale Earnhardt with NASCAR, but he was a true racer at heart. He used to keep himself updated about endurance racing and took an interest in Le Mans. Back in 2000, a British driver, Andy Pilgrim, went on to clinch the Petit Le Mans title. It wasn’t an ordinary win, but rather similar to Earnhardt’s pass in the grass at Charlotte. During the closing laps of the race, Pilgrim made a daring move as he approached turn 1 and cut inside of Tommy Archer’s Dodge Viper, running side by side with him to the corner.

Surprisingly, the two cars never touched, but allowed Pilgrim to make a pass for the lead, and since then, the move has become famous as ‘Pilgrim Pass.’ Dale Earnhardt reached out to the British driver, even wrote a letter congratulating him on the win. But, there was another agenda on Earnhardt’s mind: to race with the Corvette team at the 2001 24 Hours of Daytona, and two weeks later, this became official.

Now, Earnhardt is used to NASCAR’s stock car, and the only way to prepare for the mega event was to have test rides in the Corvette C5. Earnhardt asked Pilgrim to take him for a ride, and they headed to Sebring International Raceway, a track with twists and turns, not the ideal playground for the 7-time NASCAR champion. So he asked Pilgrim to take him around the track to get a feel for the car, and what happened next shook the British driver.

“I took him around steady, pointing things out,” he recalled. Earnhardt listened, silent and focused. Then, as they idled on the pit lane, Dale dropped the hammer: “Now it’s my turn.” Pilgrim obliged, unaware he was signing up for a near-death experience in a bone-stock Corvette C5—a car with no roll cage, racing seats, or safety modifications.

Earnhardt attacked Sebring’s Turn 17 like a dirt track, slamming gears “bang, bang, bang. Oh my God, this is going to be crazy,” Pilgrim thought, bracing as the Corvette snapped sideways. Then came the back straightaway. Earnhardt, “flying into Turn 17” in fourth gear, realized too late he’d overcooked it. “He got into the corner, realizes he’s got to slow it down, slams it into third… No, first! And round and round… I saw bridge, wall, bridge, wall. We must have spun like three times. And when it finally stopped, your dad was smiling and looked at me and goes, ‘You nervous yet, Nelly yet boy’ and I was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ And he said, ‘That’s not what your right foot’s telling me.'”

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They did race at the 2001 24 Hours of Daytona, and it led to a major win for the Corvette team. Johnny O’Connell, Ron Fellows, Chris Kneifel, and Frank Freon won both the GTS class and the overall victory, and the Earnhardt’s finished 14 laps behind their teammates to earn second in the GTS class and fourth overall. This race resulted in a friendship between Andy Pilgrim and Earnhardt, who would write another letter to the British driver expressing his desire to race with him again. But they never could. After the IMSA race at Daytona, Dale Earnhardt suffered a horrifying crash at the Daytona 500 race that would result in his death.

This was the time when Dale Jr. was finally getting close to his dad, and just when this relationship started to flourish, it was all gone in just a split second. Earnhardt was doing his best to keep Jr. and Michael Waltrip in front for them to have a shot at winning, but he paid the ultimate sacrifice. Now we know that Junior had made his peace with the passing of his father, but the “Earnhardt” docuseries by Amazon reveals how he made this tough emotional call.

Dale Jr. recalls the moment he made peace with Daytona International Speedway

After the tragic accident at Daytona, the team at DEI went right back to work and showed up at Rockingham Speedway the next weekend. There was a sense of nervous energy around the track and the feeling of sorrow, but for Dale Jr. he couldn’t even comprehend the emotions he was feeling. He had to put on his helmet and do his job, but he couldn’t. He crashed out of the race in the very first laps, and the coming few weeks of racing were just a passing thing.

Jr. had lost the sense of a purpose, the drive and hunger which he once had, and it all came down to the immense weight he was carrying in his heart. But as the NASCAR Cup Series returned to Daytona International Speedway, something changed inside of him, and he recalled the moment when he entered the track and visited the Turn 4 wall where the No. 3 RCR Chevy made the impact.

“I don’t know exactly where Daddy hit the wall. I don’t know exactly where his car came to rest. But I kinda came to that general area, and I just got out. Stood around a little bit and just looked around. I was just there. Would I get emotional? Would it be too much? Would it feel too heavy? I didn’t know. I thought about it in the moment, and I was like, ‘You know my dad loved racing here. He loved Daytona, and he loved winning there. He was proud of it. And I just had this feeling that I shouldn’t be mad at it. I shouldn’t dread going to Daytona,” Jr. opened up on the Earnhardt docuseries.

Well, it sure helped Dale Jr., as on the weekend, he would park his No. 8 DEI Chevy in the victory lane at the Daytona International Speedway. The only way he made peace with his emotions and the feeling of a void was by conquering the very track that took away his father. And this remains the most heart-touching story in the modern era of NASCAR racing.