“We Never Talked About It Afterwards” – Dale Earnhardt Jr Reveals He Never Talked About “Death Threats” Again With Sterling Marlin After Doing Him an Initial Favour

On February 18, 2001, the NASCAR world lost Dale Earnhardt, putting the entire community in despair. Even after 22 years, his tragic demise still affects the fans. And much like those fans and community, fellow driver, Sterling Marlin—one of the other two drivers involved in the accident—might be the one hit the hardest.

And to this day, he still has to relive those last 10 laps of the 2001 Daytona 500.

On that fateful day, the sport’s iconic figure left the world after an unfortunate crash involving both Marlin and Ken Schrader. And in a recent episode of the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Junior revealed the dark side of being a culprit in his father’s death.

Junior went back to the year when Earnhardt passed as he recalled an incident with Marlin, “He came to me that day at Rockingham a week after dad’s crash and said, ‘hey, man, would you mind doing me and assist here and telling people to get off my back there, literally giving me death threats.'”

To which the young Earnhardt obliged, “And I thought, yeah, I can handle that and clean that up for you.” But getting death threats is bound to impact someone’s mental health, and Dale Jr understood that.

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He added, “We never talked about it afterwards. So that stuck in my mind is like, you know what kind of. You know how if he didn’t have any guilt or […] concern or doubt about involvement in what happened that day that, you know, getting death threats about it certainly would have an impact on your psychological feelings about it.”

The death of Dale Earnhardt Jr’s father indeed affected Sterling

Sterling Marlin seems like a pretty strong man emotionally. But Junior revealed later that Marlin was clearly affected by what happened. He got to know the story because when the driver came in for an interview, he brought company. Junior said, “He came to the studio with a group of people and some friends of his and so forth.”

And those friends really told Dale Jr. what it’s like to be the guy that wrecked Dale Earnhardt to his death as he said, “They said, you know, about once a month, he watches the last ten laps of that race. And maybe looking at what might have could have been done or happened differently.” 

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Of course, being a person who indirectly led to a legend’s death has bound to take a toll on them, even if it wasn’t their fault. Clearly, Sterling Marlin is one of those and he has had to suffer due to it.