To paraphrase an old saying, you don’t know what you’ll miss until it’s gone.
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And that’s exactly what Dale Earnhardt Jr. found out in the final year of his NASCAR Cup in 2017. Up to that point, Earnhardt only cared about racing – and obviously, winning.
But as the races in his final season clicked off week after week, Earnhardt began to realize some of the things he had taken for granted in his career – and that he would ultimately wind up missing.
Even though he hated those things during much of his career.
Right at the top of the list of things he hated were practice and testing, which, for all intents and purposes, were the same to Junior.
“I hated practice,” Earnhardt recently told the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast. “Because practice was a lot of times like testing. Testing and practice are very similar. In testing, you go to a racetrack in the middle of the week, weeks before you’re going to race there, and you’re usually there by yourself.
“You’re out there running alone, run five or 10 laps and then make a change. It’s very monotonous and boring. You almost get bored of telling (his pit crew) the feedback: ‘Okay, that made it a little better.’ ‘I didn’t feel anything.’ (Or) ‘We’re not doing nothing here, I’m just spinning my wheels.’ You’re just bored to death.
“When you practice on the race weekends, it’s the same thing, there’s no checkered flag, no winners or losers, it was maybe an hour. I just hated to do it. I wanted to race, the race was fun, but the practice was kind of boring.”
Then came Earnhardt’s final year in 2017. He was sitting in his race car during a practice session during race weekend at Kansas Speedway when he started to watch what was going on around him and became very introspective.
“I was in my car and I it just dawned on me that there’d be a day where I’d never practice again,” Earnhardt said. “I was just sitting in my car and in my garage stall, and would say, yeah, I’m going to miss this part. I hated this part, but I should have appreciated it more.
“I’m going to miss watching my guys that I love, going to miss my guys that work, going to miss taking this car into them and ask them to fix it, that it’s not working right or doesn’t steer right and get them to make it work, saying the car doesn’t turn right and they’re going to try and fix it. I’m going to miss that puzzle and work on it.”
When that final season was over and Dale Earnhardt Jr. climbed out of his Cup car for the final time, he finally came to realize yet another old saying: “We Will Never Pass This Way Again.”
“I knew I was going to miss driving in the race,” Earnhardt said. “I knew I’d miss the competition, but it was the prep work that I thought hated that I wound up missing as well.”
