I mean, that’s one way to do it…
Today, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had his longtime crew chief Tony Eury Sr. on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, and of course, they talked about his legendary father and NASCAR icon, Dale Earnhardt.
The two recalled some awesome stories from back in the day, but one Dale Jr. told from when he and his siblings were racing street stock cars just about beats it all.
Dale Sr.’s carpenter, Todd Savage, was working on one of his Ford’s at the shop, and his boss, Dale Sr, walked by and asked where the gas tank was. Dale Jr. explained that his dad wanted a plastic “safe tank” that was better for racing in there, and Todd explained that he wasn’t putting one in.
Well, as you can imagine, Dale wasn’t too happy about it…
But instead of arguing with him or explaining why, like most bosses would, Dale Sr. took a gun and shot through the tank, so Todd had no choice but to replace it with the one Dale wanted:
“Some of the better memories I had was one time, we were racing street stock cars. I had my street stock car, Kelley wasn’t racing yet, but me and Kerry were sharing a car, or had two cars at one pint.
Todd Savage, who was Dad’s carpenter, had an old Ford he was racing. And that one time Dad walked by and shot the gas tank out of that Ford. I think Dad asked Todd, where is… Todd had the trunk open, and Dad asked Todd where the safe tank was.
Like the plastic, good racing tank. Todd said ‘I ain’t gonna put one in it.’ And so he shot a hole through the quarter panel and through the stock fuel tank, so that he would put a safe tank in it.”
You can’t make this stuff up…
Tony added that the funny part was, Todd was literally under the car welding something when Dale decided to fire off, so he had a mask on and couldn’t see or hear them above the car.
When Dale shot through the tank, Todd thought it had blown up (which I’m sure would be most people’s first assumption, not that someone had shot it):
“The funny part about that was, Todd was up inside of the car that he was welding the… spotting the back firewall in. So he’s up in there, he don’t even see us, he’s got his helmet down and he’s in there spotting that firewall in.
And he walks by and he shot through that thing. And Todd thought the gas tank had blew up. It scared Todd to death.”
Obviously, he was shakin’ in his boots, so to speak, which Dale Jr. laughed as he explained:
“Scared the sh*t out of him.”
I can imagine it certainly did… I don’t think most people would’ve handled it that way, especially in this day and age now, though this probably happened in the mid-to-late 80’s or early 90’s, so obviously, it was a very different time. Clearly, I don’t think Todd was in any real danger or Dale Sr. wouldn’t have done it.
And as Tony Sr. says at a different part of the interview, there was one way to do something, and then there was Dale’s way… which clearly wasn’t always the safest or most conventional, but hey, they don’t call him the Intimidator for nothin’.
You can watch them tell the story below, my jaw dropped when I first listened to it’s a pretty great one if you need a good laugh today:
