The Bless Your ‘Hardt podcast has been well-received by NASCAR fans for offering interesting insights into the lives of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Amy Earnhardt. The popular couple discusses a variety of topics and answers questions from fans as well. In a recent episode, Amy narrated how Junior had taken her on a ride-along in his stock car when they first started dating in 2009.
Advertisement
Junior and Amy had been at Charlotte along with Rick Hendrick and some of his friends. After entertaining the team owner’s friends with ride-arounds, Junior turned to his girlfriend. He took her on a few laps around the track before he got a wild idea.
Dale Jr. wanted her to drive the car. But what he had not wanted to do was accompany her in the passenger seat. Amy was understandably terrified.
Recollecting that incident further, she said, “I am snapped into the HANS device. I can’t move my head. I can’t see anything. You can’t move your eyeballs when you’re in that thing.
“And I’m like mega out of my place. Out of my element. I have no business doing what I’m doing. I know how to shift a car, but that’s as far as that goes. I don’t even know how to start this damn car,” Amy went on to add.
Fortunately, the lady received help from Mr. Hendrick. He’d jumped into the passenger seat and begun guiding her on how to navigate the track with the car. She recalled how jumpy he got when she slowed down at a corner and downshifted as one would do with a street car. The move nearly blew the car! Needless to say, she’d been seething in fury at Junior when they got back around.
Junior admits that Rick Hendrick saved his marriage
But Amy Earnhardt suppressed her rage, at least on the face. She continued, “I couldn’t show it because Rick’s friends were there and we’d just started dating. But I’m like, ‘I can’t believe he did that to me and put me in a situation that could have been really bad!’” Junior picked up the story with what seemed like an apologetic smile on his face and quipped that Mr. Hendrick had saved his to-be marriage that day.
This isn’t the only experience that Amy has had inside a stock car. The second time Junior took her on a ride-along was at Bristol. He’d perhaps been racing too hard in an attempt to either impress or scare her. Shockingly, the PJ1 resin that the track’s bottom had been treated with ended up turning against him. His car got loose as he entered Turn 4 and slipped into the wall hard.
Amy remembers being scared to death and wanting to get out of the car immediately. It is rather fortunate that neither of them were injured. On the other hand, she did get the most realistic NASCAR experience anyone who is not a professional driver can get.
