Dale Earnhardt Sr has gone down in history as one of the greatest motorsports athletes of all time. The late Cup Series driver had won seven NASCAR Cup Series championship titles over the course of his career, a record that has been matched but is yet to be broken in any form of motorsports. During his time behind the wheel, Earnhardt has won the love and respect of fans around the world, even ones who don’t particularly follow NASCAR. The Intimidator has been an inspiration to motorsports athletes around the globe. It was a fatal crash at Daytona in 2001 that took Earnhardt’s life after inflicting a head injury. His death shook the motorsports world to its core and NASCAR subsequently took measures to ramp up safety measures for the drivers.

Earnhardt’s son, Dale Earnhardt Jr has also made a name for himself in NASCAR and is one of the most popular people in the sport today. In a recent episode of the Dale Jr Download podcast, Junior reminisced about the time when his father was in his rookie season in the Cup Series.

Dale Earnhardt Jr Recalls His Father’s “Eerie” Call

He might have been called The Intimidator later on in his career, but in 1979, 27-year-old Dale Earnhardt was racing at that level for the first time. On one occasion after a crash in which he suffered an injury, The Intimidator sounded fearful.

“When you hear him, when you hear that call, there’s a lot of fear in his voice about how bad the impact was. Dad’s leading the race and so, there’s no footage that I know of, there might be a little footage of the crash but it’s very faint. I can’t remember. I don’t think there is actually,” Junior said when talking about a crash his father suffered in his rookie season.

There is no video of the incident available as it occurred way back in 1979, but the memory of it is clear in Junior’s mind.

“But, there’s no camera, there’s no photos on social media, you know, all of my 49 years, I’ve never seen an image of this car crashed or even after the crash,” he added.

Dale Jr. said that it is difficult for people to imagine how the crash went down and the extent of the impact and damage, but his father’s voice after the incident gave him an uneasy feeling.

“So you don’t really have those things to use your imagination to try to imagine how the crash looked and all those things. But that call is eerie man, it’s a bit sketchy man,” he concluded.

Dale Earnhardt Jr has always been one to not shy away from speaking his mind. That is exactly what he did while talking about one of Hendrick Motorsports’ crew chiefs, who has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism from fans after the Cup Series race at Watkins Glen.

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Junior Comes to HMS Crew Chief’s Rescue

Chase Elliott had a must-win scenario going into The Glen and was in a good position in the final stage of the race. However, it turned out that he had not refueled his car and the #9 stalled in the middle of the race. Alan Gustafson, Elliott’s crew chief, was the one who took the decision to gamble with the fuel and when it didn’t pay off, fans were quick to jump on his case and criticize him for his poor decision-making.

Dale Earnhardt Jr had a different opinion as he came to Gustafson’s defense and called him one hell of a crew chief.

“Listening to the team’s comments after the race and Alan, the crew chief comments, ‘Hey man! We can’t win the race doing what everybody else is doing.’ I think that’s great. He’s a hell of a crew chief. He is a bada**. And so, I like what they tried; they were thinking maybe come to pit road first, get a lucky caution, or something like that, and they could flip it. I don’t think they had the pace to drive to the field,” the former Cup Series driver quipped.

The gamble at Watkins Glen did not pay off, and Chase and Gustafson cannot afford to make mistakes like that at Daytona. In the final race of the regular season, HMS’ golden boy has to give it everything he has and win if he hopes to make the playoffs. Will Elliott shock the world and take a miraculous victory?

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