“A Lot of Bravado” – Dale Earnhardt Jr on the Behavior of NASCAR Drivers After Major Wrecks

Even though in this age of social media where fans are now knowledgeable enough about or get access to places inside NASCAR they couldn’t have known about or seen before, there are still some parts of the sport that are closed off. This is not because there’s any secrecy or mystery around them, but it’s simply because fans cannot be there. Yet Dale Earnhardt Jr recently explained the general scene inside one of those places and one of those parts of the sport.

Whenever there’s a wreck or a major wreck in a race, the first people to reach the scene are the safety personnel and the ambulance. The drivers who were involved in that wreck are then taken via ambulance to the infield care center where they’re evaluated.

This ambulance ride with other drivers, the experience of that was something that a fan got curious about and went on to ask Dale Jr., to which he had a hilarious response.

Dale Earnhardt Jr claims there’s a lot of deflection during shared ambulance rides

In the Ask Jr. segment of his podcast show, Earnhardt Jr. opened up on the ambulance rides with other drivers to the infield care center whenever there was a wreck in his career. “I’ve only rode an ambulance with other drivers, maybe on less than half a dozen occasions,” he described.

“It’s a lot of bravado. You kind of get in there and go like, ‘Man, look at this. Man, those hits were hard. Can you believe that guy did that?’ You sort of, you’re deflecting a lot. Your true emotions are disappointment, regret about the situation, regret about the situation you’re in and you deflect a lot,” Earnhardt explained. “It’s kind of like this sort of macho reaction … then you get out.”

“The ambulance rides are quick and they don’t strap you down or lay you down. You just hop in, sit, there’s a bench, you sit down, and they’re just asking you questions, ‘Hey man, you doing okay? You feeling alright? Got any pain? You hurt anywhere?’ And you’ll go answer the same questions in the medical center to the rest of the staff.”

Junior suffered 20+ concussions in his NASCAR career

It’s well known that Earnhardt Jr’s NASCAR career came to an unfortunate and premature end after his series of concussion injuries. But not many know the extent of such injuries he faced during his career.

According to Earnhardt, he may have suffered 20 to 25 concussions during his career. His condition and the frequency of his concussions were so much that he even began to keep a small journal on his phone in case something extremely unfortunate happened to him.

“I felt delicate. And if I was to have another random, rare, high-impact crash that could injure me severely — so severely that I wouldn’t be able to communicate properly… I wanted there to be some sort of documentation of what had been happening to me and what I’d been going through,” he said as per Jacksonville.

Fortunately, nobody needed that documentation, as Junior called the curtain on his NASCAR career at the end of the 2017 season, which came as a shock and saddening news to his fans.

But ultimately, everyone understood that it was for the better.