The most recognizable last name in motorsports, and one of the most famous last names in all of sports in general.
This week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a guest on the Bussin’ with the Boys podcast, where he talked about his career in racing and his success with his own race time now, Jr. Motorsports. Of course, in his younger years, his plan was to eventually take over his father’s race team Dale Earnhardt Incorporated (DEI), but when his father passed, issues came up between the siblings and their stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Jr. ultimately left and had no further role in the team.
DEI has since shut down, officially closing its doors in 2009, and Dale Jr. has since started his own race team with his sister, Kelley. Hosts Will and Taylor asked Jr. about carrying the Earnhardt last name and what it was like the first time he had his “own thing” that was completely separate from the legacy of his iconic father.
Dale has talked in the past very openly about his strained relationship with his dad, something that I think many fathers and sons can relate to, though I imagine their struggles were exacerbated by everything that came along with who his dad was.
Dale Jr. explained that opening Jr. Motorsports, his Xfinity team (which is basically like minor league or college-level racing, if you will), is completely his, though his initial plan before his dad died was to run DEI for the rest of his life with his sister:
“Probably Jr. Motorsports, the race team that we have. We’ve ran in the Xfinity series, which is again that is the kind of the college level. We’ve ran there for seems like 18 years, a long time. We’ve won 90 races, five championships. Me and my sister run that together. She’s hands-on, my sister is, she’s tough. Really, really tough business woman. Savvy. And so in negotiations, she never loses. That’s her.
And so she’s tough, she knows what the value is. She knows the value of everything and understands what’s realistic and just sharp, and so I’m very fortunate that I got her as a teammate. So we have run Jr. Motorsports together, our dream, or the idea was that me and her would be involved in DEI, which was my dad‘s race team, Dale Earnhardt Incorporated. Our thought was that that would be what we would do all of our lives, right?
And so a lot of things happened, Dad passed away, and we ended up leaving the team over the course of the 6 or 7 years. So that didn’t happen and we started this other team, and started it with one race car, three or four employees, very modest and we’ve grown it into a really successful deal.”
He talked about the thrill of seeing not only his drivers graduate to the Cup level, but also crew chiefs, marketing people and everyone else it takes to make a race team successful:
“We love being at that level where we graduate people up into the top series. So drivers come through our program, crew chiefs, mechanics, engineers, even people in our office marketing, licensing, they all come and work at our business, get educated, get a great experience, get a reputation and then they get a call from a Cup team.
It sucks to lose great people, but it’s also like a big reward, like we’re doing something right where people are wanting to hire our good people. and so when when a driver gets a phone they’ll call me… I remember one guy called me, and he’s like, ‘I got some tough news.’ He’s like, ‘One of the cup teams called me and I gotta do it.’
I was like, ‘That’s not tough news. That’s what we… that’s like winning a race. That’s that’s a victory for you, for me. That’s why we did this. I did this so that you would get this chance, not that you’re gonna be a career Xfinity race racer for me, right?’ Hopefully, if everything works out, most of our drivers are only there for a year or two and they move on to the Cup level and race on Sunday. That’s a fun thing to do.”
Dale Jr. explained how proud he was of that, and the fact that it’s totally his is a fulfilling feeling that he may never have had if he stayed with DEI:
“I can look in the Cup field today, the field that runs on Sunday, I can look in that field and there’s at least a third of the field that raced for me on Saturday, at some point in their career. There’s mechanics, crew chief, tons of people in the industry that have came through our race team to get to the top level.
That’s fun, so I’m proud of that. That’s mine.”
While it sucks how it all happened in terms of what led to the closure of DEI, it has certainly worked out for Jr. in the long run and he’s built another Earnhardt empire, along with his sister, that is one of the premiere teams in racing.
Not to mention, he’s built a media empire too with his own podcast and whole Dirty Mo Media umbrella, and it’s something that might’ve never happened had he not had to go out on his own and put a whole new meaning behind the Earnhardt name.
It’s a great conversation, and you can watch that part of the conversation here:
