I guess this is why Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a professional NASCAR driver.
And on his podcast, The Dale Jr. Download, they’ve been taking a look back at some of the best moments of the year.
Coming in at #7 is the moment he narrowly maneuvered out of a dust up with the wall at Bristol Motor Speedway driving his wife, Amy, in a ride-along.
They even have video footage from inside the car, and as co-host Mike Davis describes it, you can see Amy’s face completely change when she realizes they’re getting loose and floating towards the wall:
“She went from having the thrill of her life to not having fun. Her face changes.”
I mean, going damn near the speed of light and seeing the car flying towards a wall probably isn’t the most comforting feeling, I’d have to imagine.
Dale insists that he was never in fear that they would crash:
“We get loose off turn two… watch my hands, you’ll know when we get loose. She had a little concern. She’s not happy.”
He continued, telling Mike that it slipped a little bit because the car wasn’t “grippy” enough in the beginning:
“I was running the top, everybody wanted to run against the wall, so I’m running a high line around Bristol, right.
And that time, I came down of the center of the corner, came down off the exit, and the left side’s got in that PJ1 and just turned sideways and we slid out to the wall at the flag stand.”
Whatever you say, Dale…
Mike also brought up another great point that, had something actually happened, it probably would’ve blown up into a massive news story:
“I’m glad you saved it, I really am, and saved might not even be the right word, because you don’t think you almost wrecked.
I’m gonna tell you something, let’s just think for a second, I had you hit the wall with your wife in the car, are we even remotely aware of the attention that would’ve got in terms of…
I mean, that would’ve been big news. If you would’ve wrecked with your wife in the car, oh my God.”
I mean, of course the guy knows what he’s doing, and he’s easily a better driver than any of us, so I don’t think they were ever in any real danger of a big wreck, but I do think we need Amy’s side of it now, because she might beg to differ…
You can watch how it all went down for yourself here:
