Dale Earnhardt Jr. still has the No. 3 Wrangler Chevrolet sitting in his shop on a lift. Most people don’t know that. The car has just been sitting there, quietly, for fifteen years, even as the conversations around it faded. That detail matters here because when someone on the internet decided to question whether Junior’s victory was fair, Dale Jr. didn’t reach for statistics. He pointed straight at the lift.

When a social media user by the handle @S1apSh0es came across a throwback post celebrating Jr.’s July 2010 NASCAR Nationwide Series win at Daytona, they didn’t exactly have good things to say.

“This mf– was the most cheated up race car I had ever seen. He didn’t even need the draft,” the user wrote on X.

Earnhardt Jr. then ended up challenging the user online with an open invitation: “I got it at my shop right now on a lift if you ever wanna come over and show me what your talking about.”

The accuser, faced with an open invitation to put their money where their mouth was, withdrew the accusation almost immediately, while Jr. kept it light: “Well, now you gotta really come see it sometime.”

This isn’t the first time a Daytona win with Earnhardt’s name on it has attracted this kind of noise. The accusations go back further than 2010. When Dale Sr.’s son won the Pepsi 400 at Daytona in July 2001, just five months after his father passed away on that same track, the conspiracy crowd came out then, too.

And Dale Jr. was furious. He said that winning that race was the biggest moment of his career, and that having people question it felt like a slap in his face, his father’s face, and crew chief Tony Eury’s face all at once. “I never drove harder in my life,” he said at the time.

He might have felt the same this time, even if slightly, because the 2010 race had its own layer of meaning.

To even get that No. 3 Wrangler Chevrolet on the track, it took conversations between Dale Jr., Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress, and Teresa Earnhardt. Now, those are four people with enough personal history and professional friction between them that just getting them in the same room was its own achievement.

They put all of it aside to honor one person: Dale Earnhardt Sr. The car wore a retro paint scheme, a direct tribute to the Intimidator’s iconic look from his championship years, and Jr. took it to Victory Lane by holding off a hard-charging Joey Logano, who was right on his bumper at the end and easily could have dumped him.

In Victory Lane, Jr. said something rare, considering that he rarely talked publicly about his father in personal terms. But that night he said, “I never knew what I was going to get with Daddy — he was a loose cannon. But I think he’d be proud.”

Now, the comment from the user came on Dale Sr.’s birthday, who would have turned 75 this year. So, the comment must have been a disturbing one for Junior. Still and all, there is one perspective that helps him sail through.

Dale Earnhardt Jr’s philosophy for his father’s birthday

Even after well over two decades of his passing, Dale Earnhardt remains one of the most celebrated drivers in the sport’s history. He was extremely powerful on the track, and his unapologetic behavior earned him millions of fans throughout his career. Even now, many of his records remain unbroken, and he continues to be an inspiration for the new drivers.

It is that power, that personality of his, that makes Dale Earnhardt Jr. feel that he simply doesn’t need one particular day to celebrate his father.

“I enjoy this one, his birthday. It usually doesn’t register for some reason. I see a lot of posts on social media I think it’s cool, every day is a great day, right. Every day is a Dale Earnhardt day, not just a birthday,” he said. “I see posts of dad all the time, every day, all year so, it’s just a little more on his birthday.”

When Dale Sr. died, the full weight of NASCAR landed on a 26-year-old Dale Jr.’s shoulders; a responsibility he has since admitted he couldn’t handle at the time. So, the man who came out the other side of that, steadier, clearer, more sure of himself, isn’t going to be rattled by an anonymous account with a grudge.