What is the Story Behind Dale Earnhardt Jr’s ‘Red Headed Stepchild’?

In an episode of the Dale Jr download, former NASCAR driver Steve Park made an appearance. He spoke about a number of topics, and one of them was about a certain car driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. This machine, fondly known as the ‘Red headed Stepchild’, won the 1998 Kroger 200 at the Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Park said, “We were using Hudson Pagan cars at the time. And this car was built by Mark Laughlin and his group. And they built the car, and we went picked it up and we did the body ourselves on it. The reason why it got the name ‘Red Headed Stepchild’ was because anytime somebody worked on the car—now, I remember the story, I was there 12 hours a day—so anytime somebody worked on the car and they put a bracket on the car, and I thought it was too heavy, I’d wait for them to go home at 4:30-5:00 o’clock, cut the bracket off.”

What were the repercussions of doing this to a Dale Earnhardt car?

Evidently, nobody really appreciated the stunt and made their displeasure known. Nevertheless, Park’s work eventually paid off in spades. Of course, it was not instantly fast, but with a few tweaks, the car proved to be a l0t quicker. Despite this, he still had to weather everyone’s initial wrath.

He confessed, “Everybody got mad at me, that was working on the car, so everybody boycotted working on the car. And long story short, I finally got the car done, and we went to Nashville to test. . . . The car that we tested with for two days was pretty fast. I kept begging them, ‘Roll this car out! Roll this car out.’ So to appease me, they rolled the car out, and it was a tenth slower and then one change and it was a tenth faster.”

He continued, “Every car we had was painted gray, the frame was painted grey. Then we had the blue and red AC Delco and white body on it. He come in the shop and tells the guys, ‘you paint it bright red, get the inside’.”

In the end, that car won the 1998 Kroger 200 at Indianapolis. He finished ahead of Elliott Sadler and Buckshot Jones. Additionally, he also bested Randy LaJoie and David Green, who finished 4th and 5th.

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