I guess you could call it the ultimate love/hate relationship.
Love off of the track, but when they were racing against each other on the track… NASCAR greats Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt. were no holds barred, full-throttle racing.
By the time Gordon made his debut in the Cup Series back in 1992, Earnhardt had cemented himself among the all-time greats in the sport, having already won five of his seven championships and pretty much everything else there was to win.
And while he was a polarizing figure in the sport throughout his career, the Intimidator had a legion of die-hard fans who weren’t exactly happy about some hotshot young driver (from California, no less) coming in and beating their guy.
Gordon won his first championship in just his third full season in the Cup Series, and was quickly anointed as “the next Dale Earnhardt,” which didn’t exactly sit well with Earnhardt fans. Long story short, if you were an Earnhardt fan, you hated Jeff Gordon – and vice versa. Of course the two grew to be friendly off the track, but their heated battles on the track left NASCAR fans forced to choose between the two camps, and there really wasn’t any in between.
And during a recent interview on the Bussin’ with the Boys podcast, Gordon opened up about their dynamic and how they really felt about each other outside of the public eye. He explained that Dale was “really good” to him off of the track, and saw his potential and how much he could help grow the sport, which was one of Earnhardt’s top priorities.
But when it was race day, Earnhardt was not holding back, and Gordon came to learn that nothing gave Dale more pleasure than messing with his rivals on the track:
“We lost Dale right in 2001. I had built enough of a friendship… I don’t even want to call it a friendship, we had a mutual agreement, I guess this is what you could say. I mean, he was really good to me off the race track. You know, he really appreciated the business, he saw the sport growing.
He was very focused on the things that could just help that continue. And I think he saw something in me that was like, okay, I don’t wanna race him on the race track, but off the track, you could be helpful. So he was really good to me in that standpoint, on the racetrack, total opposite. You would go through those driver introductions, you feel like you got a moment, you kind of bonded. and you go down the first turn and he’d just body slam you.
And it didn’t matter if you if it ended your day, or if it was just a little love tap, or whatever it was, and come to realize when you raced against Dale that he was just grinning from ear to ear inside that car when he did stuff like that.”
Just classic…
The two of them have so much history, but underneath the rivalry and all of that, they’re two of the most talented drivers of all-time, and there was a mutual respect that transcended how much they didn’t like racing against each other, which is how it should be in my humble opinion.
Honestly, their rivalry made the sport that much more fun to watch, and it sounds to me like what Sr. saw in Jeff was probably a lot of himself when he first started racing:
@bussinwtb The Intimidator vs. Wonder Boy. A rivalry that changed NASCAR forever. #BWTB #nasca #jeffgordon #daleearnhardt ♬ original sound – bussinwtb
The full episode is available below.
