“Taught Us All How to Race”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Credits This NASCAR Legend for Changing “The Entire Culture” in the Sport

In the list of the greatest NASCAR drivers without a championship, Mark Martin almost always finds a place at the top. Despite zero titles to his name, Martin is still considered to be one of the most influential racers of all time, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. explains why.

Speaking on the Kenny Conversation with former NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace, the Hall of Famer opened up on how the five-time Cup Series runner-up impacted an entire generation of NASCAR drivers.

“Mark Martin changed the entire culture on the racetrack. One guy taught the entire field how to race. You know when you ran a guy down you didn’t race the crap out of him you let him go. He’s faster you know, it’s halfway in the race, you want to hold him up and slow both of you down,” Earnhardt expressed, stating that this holding up almost always led to both drivers suffering straightaway.

Junior added that what Martin taught them was to let the driver go the first time around, and then later in the race, run him back down, and if he does not return the favor, you could hit him and take the place.

“So Mark taught us all how to race and I cleaned up my act a little bit and certainly wasn’t quite as rough as I might have been earlier in my career.”  

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s big regret in NASCAR career

Like Wallace, Earnhardt Jr. has also left a massive legacy in the sport despite no Cup championships to his name. But this aspect of his career could have been different had he believed in himself more when he was in a terrific position in 2004.

“It was disappointing because we didn’t, I didn’t know what kind of, I didn’t realize that we could have won the championship that year. No point in that season did I wake up and go, ‘Damn, I got a shot at this’ and I regret that,” Earnhardt told Wallace.

One can only wonder what that championship could have done for Earnhardt’s legacy, a sentence one more often than not associates with Mark Martin.