Dale Earnhardt Jr. Wins Pocono Spirit Award. What Is the Award About? How Are the Winners Chosen?

The National Motorsports Press Association’s Pocono Spirit Award is one of those few prestigious titles that are designed to give a shout-out to the achievements made in the face of adversity, as well as to unparalleled sportsmanship and contributions to the sport of NASCAR. It also recognizes the efforts of competitors who have fought through any illness or injury just to get back to racing. But how are the winners chosen?

Every year, the quarterly winners are elected as the first step. Among the quarterly winners, the overall winner is selected by a vote conducted by the members of the NMPA. To the utter glee of the racing enthusiasts, the award for 2023 was conferred on the group of NASCAR stalwarts who were responsible for reviving the long-forgotten North Wilkesboro Speedway.

The collaborative efforts of Dale Earnhardt Jr (@DaleJr), Marcus Smith (@MarcusSMI), Terri Parsons (@TerriPa61540204), and Steven Wilson (@savethespeedway) to resurrect @NWBSpeedway win the overall 2023 #NMPA @PoconoRaceway Spirit Award:https://t.co/FNemi2PnIf

— National Motorsports Press Association (@NMPAonline) January 22, 2024

This group includes the two-time Xfinity Series champion Dale Earnhardt Jr., co-founder of Save the Speedway Steven Wilson, the president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports Marcus Smith, and the wife of NASCAR Hall of Famer Benny Parsons, Terri Parsons. All the aforementioned dignitaries were honored with the title during the NMPA award ceremony hosted at the Great Wolfe Lodge.

Back when Dale Earnhardt Jr. organized a clean-up of the iconic racetrack

A throwback to a cold and rainy day in December 2019: Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his team showed up at the North Wilkesboro Speedway, a racetrack that had been abandoned since 1996, except for a brief span of late model racing in 2010 and 2011. All thanks to the JR Motorsports owner, the racetrack witnessed racing once again with the 2023 annual All-Star Race rolling out its fury on it.

In a short film called ‘Bringing Back Wilkesboro’ by Dirty Mo Media, Junior was seen getting his hands dirty wielding weed eaters and other farm equipment to clean up the track so that it can be scanned for iRacing, a virtual race simulator, which, Junior himself is a huge fan.

“It won’t be here much longer, as it continues to decay,” exclaimed Dale Junior. “If we can take a scan of the surface and the walls, we can go back whenever we want and recreate the racetrack as it was in any year. It’ll be there forever for us to enjoy.”

However, the biggest comeback of this track happened when the veteran driver drove the #3, bright-green Sun Drop car in a CARS Tour race which took place in August 2021. Although the racing action is now back on track, will the place be able to garner the same emotional experience that it once had during its initial years? The veteran racer expects it to come close to what it once used to be, if not replicate it entirely.