“You Don’t Have to Worry So Much”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Admits NASCAR Drivers Are Under More Pressure Than Team Owners

Dale Earnhardt Jr. spent nearly two decades driving in the highest levels of professional stock car racing. He founded JR Motorsports in 2006 and began focusing on race organization fully after his retirement as a driver in 2017. This career path has exposed him to two different realities: The first is that of the driver, and the second is that of the team owner.

Despite working towards similar goals, the lifestyles of a driver and a team owner are starkly different. In an interview with Hard Rock Bet, Dale Jr. explained how a driver’s emotional graph moves up and down every week, while a team owner is much more relaxed about weekly results and is more concerned about how the team performs long term.

“If you’re going to be the driver, you have got to be willing to take getting your teeth kicked in, being embarrassed, humiliated, but also if you’re going to take the celebrations and the accolades and the credit for when you win, you’re absolutely going to get it when you don’t,” said Dale Jr.

“As an owner, you don’t have to worry so much about the week-to-week performance.”

So, what does a team owner worry about? He continued, “I think as an owner, you’re really judged on the culture of your business. You’re judged on the long-term success, you’re judged on a bigger picture, not week to week, lap to lap.”

It is scales like how employees are treated and how stable a team is financially that an owner is judged against.

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They make decisions that affect everyone who works in the race shop. This demands a lot more smartness than what is expected from drivers. Dale Jr. rounded up, “The driver experience is like a rollercoaster every single day. As an owner, it’s much more forgiving, I would say.” 

From two Busch Series championships to multiple Daytona 500 wins, he secured many prestigious awards as a driver. He did go through bad stretches along the road and came out on top of them all. His legacy as a team owner stands at the same height, if not taller.

He has made JR Motorsports one of the most powerful teams in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and is on the verge of disrupting the Cup Series as well. Tougher than his job as a driver or not, it can be said with confidence that he is one of the few team owners out there who have mastered the sport completely.