It was a local newspaper story that began Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s journey into what would become his life’s work: that of a race car driver.
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Junior’s father, Dale Earnhardt, and his wife, Teresa (Junior’s stepmother), believed Junior when he tried to beat around the bush and said he wanted to become an artist because he was too afraid to tell his father he wanted to become a racer like his old man.
To make matters worse, father and stepmother one day surprised Junior with a large supply of costly art supplies—not the cheap stuff, but true artistic quality.
That painted Junior into a corner, so to speak.
Junior casually mentioned he’d like to try his hand at racing, but the senior Earnhardt wasn’t listening or paying attention. He truly believed his son wanted to become the next Picasso.
But as time went on and Junior’s interest in paint and brushes waned, he kept on bringing up that he wanted to try his hand at the family business of racing—after all, his grandfather and father were both racers of note. That one day, his prayers were answered somewhat.
Dale Sr. threw a local newspaper’s sports page on the table in front of Junior and stepbrother Kerry. A story touted that Concord (North Carolina) Motor Speedway was starting a new street stock series. The boys leapt at it, bought a wrecked Michael Waltrip race car, got help from Dale Sr. in welding pieces together to form a raceable car, and off they went racing.
“I remember it specifically, 13 years old, sitting on the couch, and I looked at dad, and he was sitting there watching TV, and I said, ‘Dad, I can’t wait to race.'” Junior told Kyle Petty. “He just brushed it off. And then one day, me and my brother are sitting at a picnic table. Dad walks by and threw down the sports paper, and the article said, ‘New Street Stock Series starting at Concord Motor Speedway.’ That was it.”
“And I went over to Sabco (a team owned by Felix Sabates, who Petty also raced for several seasons) and got one of Michael Waltrip’s crashed cars from the backyard. It was a bent center section they were going to throw out. Daddy cut that four-point off, cut the roof off of our ’79 Monte Carlo, and he put the roll cage in it. Me and Kerry were like this ball at the top of the hill that just needed that little small shove. And it was that article in that paper.”
But there was one problem: even though Kerry and Junior were the offspring of one of the greatest NASCAR drivers ever, they had no idea about becoming race car drivers.
“We were completely clueless as to how to make it happen until Daddy showed us that article, and we went, ‘Here it is, all the answers.’ And we just went and did it,” Junior said.
Junior Had an Ulterior Motive To Want To Go Racing
However, Junior also had an ulterior motive to get into racing, as he described back in 2018 on the In Depth With Graham Bensinger Show.
“The only reason I raced was to get closer to my Dad,” Junior admitted. “That was the only way I would. Nothing I did would register with him. Not that I was doing a lot. I was an average C/D student in school, so I wasn’t impressing him that way, and I didn’t have any real athletic attributes to bring home a trophy for any kind of sports in school.”
“And finally, when I started racing and I won a couple races, I noticed like we would talk about it. He’d come into the shop and want to know what happened. So I got more into it because ‘Hey, I want to do racing because it gets me closer to Dad.’ And luckily, that happened.”
Looking back, it is no wonder Junior did start to race eventually, with his passion for the sport raging to date, just in different ways, such as broadcasting and on the team owner side.
