Last week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. received a gift from a gentleman he was not acquainted with. It came on February 18, the death anniversary of Dale Earnhardt Sr., and it was a No. 3 car that the Intimidator once drove. Junior was beyond thrilled with the present and expressed the same on his podcast. However, he had a job to do: Find the car’s history.
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He put out a tweet on X asking for information about it. In the latest episode of Dale Jr. Download, he opened up on how far his investigation has got.
He said, “I haven’t had a chance to really dig in. I did send that information to Danny Lawrence who’s at RCR. He’s a great friend of mine. He kind of manages the Xfinity team at RCR and he’s worked on my dad’s team forever.”
“So, I’ll see what he comes up with. He’s going to take that information over to their archives, and they have all of these notes. They will know what this car was… Where it ran.” His working theory is that the car was used to race in 1989 at Watkins Glen International. The notion arrived after seeing an image that someone had posted of a similar car on the road course.
He continued noting that he needed to look at where the battery box was located in the car to back this theory. For races on oval tracks, the box is fixed on the left rear. For road courses, they may be moved to the right side to balance the weight of the car. Junior would love himself if he figured things out before the answers came from Lawrence.
Why Dale Jr. chose to use the power of social media on this quest
On X, Junior shared the numbers on the roll cage of the car. They were 3, 8, 10, and 89. He wrote, “I believe the 8 10 89 is a reference to the date of frame construction. Thought Id share so some of y’all can do your own digging.” When asked about why he chose to get fans involved in the investigation, he admitted that he wanted to see if they could get the job done for him.
The serial # or identifying numbers on the rollcage are….
3 8 10 89
I believe the 8 10 89 is a reference to the date of frame construction.
Thought Id share so some of y’all can do your own digging. https://t.co/NZ0jFnRequ
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) February 21, 2025
He said, “There’s a lot of people that I thought, ‘Man! They might figure this **** out for me and have fun doing it.’ So, we’ll see what happens. I’ll learn something about it. I’m sure it’s got some history.” The car was a gift that made Junior deeply emotional. The individual who’d originally purchased it had removed its actual hood.
However, the removed part sat in Junior’s uncle’s garage for nearly 40 years. They’d found it when clearing things out and fortunately, kept it stored. Today, the hood is reunited with the body and the car is in the exact form that Earnhardt drove it back in the day.
