I’d be out of there as quick as possible.
Prime Video premiered the four-part series Earnhardt over the last week or so, which focuses on the life and legacy of the late, great NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt. Featuring interviews from Dale’s friends, family, and obviously his son, Dale Jr., the documentary also features never-before-seen footage of Dale during his racing career from both his personal and professional life.
It’s an incredibly interesting, and nuanced, look at Dale Earnhardt the race car driver, the man, the friend and the father, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his sister Kelley played a huge part in the production of the series, in addition to being heavily featured in it, telling stories about their dad and memories that were both good and bad.
There are so many compelling stories told by his children that most of us have probably never heard before, like this one about Dale thinking Jr. wanted to go to art school, and had no idea his son wanted to race. The comment about his dad being Dale Earnhardt, and Jr. wanting to get into racing, I think really speaks to their relationship when he was younger and formed a lot of his motivations to become a professional driver like this dad:
“Take all this art s— out of here.” 😅 All episodes of Earnhardt are now streaming. pic.twitter.com/4NWncPyFU5
— Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) May 29, 2025
He often talks about their complex, at best, relationship, on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, and the Earnhardt children actually a pretty difficult childhood compared to what most people probably think, and their relationship with their dad seemed to be strained for most of their lives. But naturally, much like Sr. and his father, Dale Jr. wanted to be just like his dad and race, too, though he sometimes had difficulty voicing that, especially when he was younger.
And so eventually, he started calling owners of other cars to see if he could get a spot racing on the big tracks in the Busch series, but they all said no:
“My damn last name is Earnhardt, like, come on, put me in your car. That’s what I was thinking in my head. I’m not takling to the man this way. All those guys told me no, and I thought, s***, you know. Dad was putting deals together behind the curtain like Mr. Oz.
And I’m not hearing a lot of things from da about what all he’s doing behind the scenes, and really, why. We didn’t talk. They just show up one day, ‘Dad goes, ‘I’ve got a sponsor for you to race this Busch race at the big track.’
His crew was obviously excited for such a big opportunity, though the pressure was on because he knew he couldn’t embarrass his father on the track:
“Dad wasn’t gonna let me be his fledgling son with no business on the race track. He wasn’t gonna let hat happen to his own reputation. He was like, ‘Convince me, and the opportunities will come, but you’re not gonna embarrass me.'”
Of course, Jr. was nervous about the race, but seeing as he’d never driven in an official race on these big tracks before, he spun out and wrecked the car and he was obviously scared of what his dad would think, as his friend Tony Eury Sr. recalled:
“He’s sitting on the edge of the race track, and he’s rocking back and forth, he goes, ‘My daddy’s gonna kill me. My daddy’s gonna kill me.’ He was tore up.”
Dale Jr.’s friend Josh Snyder drove him home, and he could tell that Jr. thought it was over and that he had just blown a huge change and disappointed his dad, the total opposite of what he was hoping for. Jr. went off to his double-wide trailer (which was on his dad’s land in Mooresville, North Carolina) and started drinking with his buddies to drown his sorrows:
“I think in his mind, he thought it was over. He had really disappointed his dad. Him and his buddies, they go over to the trailer and they start drinking or sorrows away.”
Well, as you can imagine, Dale Earnhardt was NOT gonna let that slide, and he barged through the door and told Jr.’s friends to get “the f*** off [his] property” and Jr. remembers them running out of the house and leaving their shoes behind. I mean, c’mon, what else would one do in that situation? That sounds like a horror movie and I wouldn’t wanna test that man at all…
“All of a sudden, the door flies open on this double-wide trailer I lived in. Boom, boom. I know immediately those are dad‘s footsteps. He looks over at my buddies that are sitting over there, and he goes, ‘Get the f*** off my property.’ Them mother******* ran out of the house and jumped in their cars, and they drove out the driveway while their shoes are still sitting in the floor. And he said, ‘Come here.'”
Jr. thought for sure his dad was gonna “whoop [his] a**,” but instead, they had the one and only father/son conversation that ever really stuck with him:
“And we walked out, I thought he was gonna whoop my a**. And he goes, ‘Man, what are you doing?’ I was like, ‘I thought my racing career was over.’ He’s like, ‘No, they’re gonna fix that car. That’s where you should be. You should be wanting to fix your car. Where is that? Where is that inside of you? What’s missing in you that you thought to come over here and sit on your a** and feel sorry for yourself.’
That was the one father son talk that we had that sunk in.”
From then on, his friends say Jr. was a different person, and became motivated on a completely different level. It changed him, and eventually, Jr. did make it to the Cup Series and raced for 18 seasons. He won 26 races, including two Daytona 500 victories, and he also holds the record for most Most Popular Driver Awards, winning it 15 consecutive times from 2003 to 2017.
It’s these types of stories that make the whole documentary so compelling, and you can watch that part of the documentary here:
The entire film is so well done, and I can’t recommend watching it highly enough. All four episodes are streaming now on Prime Video.
