How Dale Earnhardt Jr and Tony Stewart Turned a Heated On-Track Incident Into Friendship

Published 12/14/2020, 5:00 AM EST

In NASCAR, many drivers get along well with each other and are fairly good friends. On other occasions, drivers cannot stand each other. However, they mostly try to separate their personal and professional lives. Recently, Dale Earnhardt Jr and Tony Stewart revealed how they went from rivals to friends.

As it turned out, everything started with an incident at the Pikes Peak International Raceway a few years ago. At that time, Dale Jr was battling Stewart for a position and he kept bumping him again and again. Finally, Stewart had enough and punted him into the wall at Turn 1 during a restart.

Obviously, the officials were not too impressed with those stunts and promptly called the two drivers over to the NASCAR hauler. When they reached the area, there was a bit of a standoff between both their crew members. Luckily, there were no fists thrown, and things calmed down a little after a while.

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How did Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr patch things up?

Apparently, Stewart was in a bit of a rush, because he had to race a super-modified car later on. So, while he was being called to the hauler, his upcoming race was in the back of his mind. Stewart also acknowledged that Dale Earnhardt Jr understood etiquette, and he did not.

The former Stewart-Haas Racing driver did not understand at the time that Earnhardt wanted him to move aside. In fact, Dale Jr was rather civil about the whole situation.

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According to Stewart, he had “eight opportunities to flat dump me, and be done with it.” Sitting in the NASCAR hauler, Stewart had time to get rid of the red mist and think more clearly.

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He said, “That actually started the process and we actually had time to talk about it there”. Dale Jr admitted that was the first time he met Tony Stewart properly. Later on, at the next race at Milwaukee, Stewart approached Dale Earnhardt and the two of them buried the hatchet. Since then, the two have been great friends and they truly respect each other.

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst 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.