“Take It Like A F****** Man”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Goes On Fiery, Expletive-Laced Rant Following Jesse Love & Rajah Caruth Confrontation At Martinsville

Casey Young·
CULTURESPORTS
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. culture sports
Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

An all-time great Dale Earnhardt Jr. rant.

Over the weekend, two NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series drivers had a heated moment at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday when Jesse Love confronted Rajah Caruth after a series of aggressive on-track incidents.

The pair swapped bumpers in the final laps, causing both to lose positions, leading to an animated discussion in the garage… it eventually ended with a handshake, but still, Jesse was NOT happy, even though he is known for being a very aggressive driver and plenty of on-track physicality in terms of the cars:

But Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a lot to say about it…

He is no stranger to contact on the track, especially at Martinsville, and he let Jesse pretty much have it over the incident during an episode of his Dale Jr. Download podcast yesterday. Jr. dropped many F-bombs during his expletive-laced rant, saying that he felt Jesse was basically being hypocritical because he “drives the way he doesn’t like to get driven”:

“Here’s the thing about Jesse. Jesse drives the way he doesn’t like to get driven… I like Jesse too, and I don’t want to give him the wrong idea, but honesty, Jesse races hard, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when it comes back around… and especially at Martinsville, like, damn, you’re supposed to get run into.

And I want Jesse and everybody to hear this. I would go to  Martinsville looking f****** forward to getting run into. When I was driving, we had steel bodies. You go to Kansas and Chicago and road courses and all these f****** tracks, you can’t touch no f****** body, if you barely bend the f****** quarter panel.

You’re f*****, you couldn’t touch nothing. So I couldn’t wait to go to f****** Martinsville, and I’m like, please, f******* door me. Somebody put some donuts on this motherf*****. Let’s go.”

Jr. recalled his own experience racing at Martinsville back in the day, saying his former crew chief Steve Letarte would get on the radio and tell him to “save some race car” because of how much contact he would make with others:

“We’d get a hundred laps into the race, Letarte would come on the radio and go, ‘Dude, you got 400 laps to go. Can we save some f****** race car?’ Because I’d have both sides f****** lit up. I loved it.

When a guy got loose under me and f******* knocked me, you know, hit me in the left side door. It’s what I went to Martinsville to f****** expect.”

Jr.’s co-host TJ Majors pointed out very accurately:

“At the time, it did not make you happy.”

Jr. kind kept going, breezing past that comment (he was really on one at this point), saying that drivers should expect this king of thing at Martinsville and other similar tracks, explaining that they obviously shouldn’t take it so far as to ruin someone else’s day, but it’s “an eye for an eye,” and he wants to “trade bumpers” and “see the story of the race written all over the sheet metal.”

He also added that they need to “take it like a f****** man”:

“I just went to those races going, I’m ready to f****** trade some sheet metal. I’m not gonna spin a guy out, I’m not gonna f****** ruin somebody’s day, but if I run into the f****** side of your car, take it like a f****** man. Let’s go, you know. You wanna give it back to me in the next corner? Fine.

But it’s, you know, it’s an eye for an eye. Don’t be a f******* idiot and take me out. I’m not gonna take you out. Do I wanna hit? Do I wanna trade bumpers? Do I wanna get out of my car and see the story of the race written all over the f******* sheet metal? Yes. Yes I do. And I want it on both sides.”

Tell us how you really feel, Jr…

I honestly agree with him, but I also think it’s a lot easier for him to say now in retrospect, because it seems highly unlikely that he would have said all of that back then… hindsight is always 20/20, of course.

But still… as the Harry Hogge (played by Robert Duvall) said to Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) in the 1990 NASCAR film “Days of Thunder,” “Rubbing, son, is racing,” and I think that’s a very simple way of summing up what Dale Jr. said here (without all the F-bombs, which did make it funnier and much more animated):

Tons of fans in the comments commented on the nature of this expletive-laced rant, and I’m surprised at how surprised some of them were to hear him cuss like that because he does it all the time on his podcast, though this was even more than normal (and it helps me understand where his daughter might be getting some of her vocabulary):

The full podcast episode is available below.

 

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