The late Dale Earnhardt had plenty of rivals. Even his close friends off the racetrack were among his fiercest foes on it. Among Earnhardt’s biggest rivals was Geoff Bodine, one of the three famous Bodine racing brothers.
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Two years ago, on an episode of the Dale Jr. Download, Dale Earnhardt Jr. recalled how his father and Bodine had a rivalry and hatred that was arguably unmatched between the elder Earnhardt and any other driver.
“Dad and Geoff Bodine, to me, has to be like on the Mount Rushmore rivalries in NASCAR,” Dale Jr. said. “There was a true hatred across both sides, (there was) sparring in the media, going back and forth, (and) the teams did not like each other.
“I mean, dad would lose his mind. He’d go out on the track and no longer was he worrying or thinking about the checkered flag or winning the race, it was, ‘I’m going to wreck Geoff Bodine as fast and as quickly as I possibly can,’ knowing that it was going to result in five-lap penalties or they invented a penalty box during the middle of that rivalry and they put dad in it. Yeah, he dared them.
“Funny thing, when we had Kirk Shelmerdine (Dale Sr.’s former crew chief) in here, (and team owner) Richard Childress, even when dad was basically just kind of throwing the race to be able to teach Geoff the lesson he thought he needed to teach him, Kirk and Richard had his back. They were like, ‘Yeah, man!’ Everybody in the moment was like, ‘What needed to happen, happened.’”
That description was given new life in this week’s edition of the Dale Jr. Download, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. welcomed in the youngest Bodine brother, Todd (nicknamed “The Onion” for his shaved head). Junior and Todd commiserated about Dale Sr.’s rivalry with Geoff.
“In around the mid-80s or the late-80s, dad and Geoff had a really rough couple of years,” Dale Jr. said. “The Earnhardts didn’t like the Bodines and the Bodines probably didn’t love the Earnhardts, at least that particular section of the family, Geoff and dad. There were times when if dad could spin him out and get away with it, I was okay with it.
“But then there were times when he would get himself five-lap penalties, and I’m thinking, ‘What are you doing? Why are y’all so mad at each other that you’re going to throw the whole race away? There was one Xfinity (Busch Series) race where they actually wrecked each other or dad wrecked him (Geoff), wrecking my granddaddy’s car (Bodine drove Ralph Earnhardt’s car at the time) and dad spins him out down the back straightaway.
“They go into the Cup race the next day, running seventh or something like that, not even racing for the lead, and dad ends up wrecking Geoff in (turns) three and four and gets a five-lap penalty… I’m like, ‘Your whole family’s up in this suite, there’s like 30 of us up here to watch you race and you and him are out there (messing) around’, and now we’re five laps down and we got 500 miles to go, like what are we doing? But they were just so hard-headed.”
Todd Bodine had a different relationship with Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Even though there was bad blood between his older brother and the senior Earnhardt, Todd Bodine had a more friendly relationship with “The Intimidator.”
“I’m different and I look at things way differently than most people,” Todd Bodine said. “For me, yeah it was Dale’s wrecking my brother and they’re racing hard and doing these things and it was almost a sense of respect maybe for (Dale Sr.) and Geoff, the way they raced each other so hard.
“I never disliked Senior because he was wrecking Geoff, it was more like these two guys are hard-ass racers and they’re racing hard kind of a thing. I think that’s why me and (Earnhardt Sr.) always had a different relationship because I never felt that way about him, never held it against him.”
Here’s a story that illustrates the difference between the youngest Bodine brother and the late Earnhardt.
“I had a farm about five miles from his farm, and he and (daughter Taylor) would get on their horses and ride through the woods to my farm,” Todd Bodine told Dale Jr. “They did it four or five times one summer… So, they would ride over and every time (Dale Sr.) would bust my a** because I had no hitching post for (the horses). He’s like, ‘You know I’m coming over here, damn it, give me a hitching post up here.’
“So that winter I ended up putting up a hitching post and he never got to use it. But if people knew the relationship we had, they’d be like, ‘Why? (There was) you and him and your brother?’ It was different but it was cool, it was different.”
Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine were the inspiration for a key element of Days of Thunder
Perhaps fittingly, the Earnhardt-Bodine rivalry was the inspiration for the Tom Cruise NASCAR classic, “Days of Thunder,” when Cruise’s Cole Trickle character had a bitter rivalry with Michael Rooker’s Rowdy Burns character.
A decade ago, Geoff Bodine wrote an opinion piece for TheRacingExperts.com called “My Relationship with Earnhardt,” where Bodine gave his side of the bitter rivalry with Earnhardt.
Both the elder Bodine and Earnhardt came into the then-Winston Cup Series the same year, 1979. Bodine’s season ended prematurely, but Earnhardt would go on to win the first of his seven Cup championships the following year, 1980, driving for team owner Rod Osterlund (Earnhardt’s other six titles were for Richard Childress).
“We were friends off the racetrack,” Geoff Bodine recalled. At first, that is, until their rivalry began to heat up.
“My kids and their mother went down to Dale’s lake house and played with Kelly and Dale Jr. They rode go-karts,” Geoff recalled.
“I’ll never forget Dale came to the track one day and said, ‘Hey, you owe me some money.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Well, your kid wore the tires off of Dale Jr.’s go-kart, I need some new tires.’
“We went out to dinner a few times, and it was really neat. But in life, when you’re in a competitive situation with someone, it changes things a little bit. After I made the move to Hendrick Motorsports and started to win races, we weren’t getting invites to dinner anymore, or the kids didn’t play with each other like they used to.
“Now through the years, on the track, it’s documented… the rivalry we had when we put those helmets on and climbed in those racecars. We banged fenders, and I got run into a lot.
“As his nickname stuck with fans as ‘The Intimidator,’ I called him ‘The Eliminator’ because he’d come behind you and towards the end of the race, he’d run into you and eliminate you.
“The race fans loved it; he had, and still has, a tremendous fan base. NASCAR and track promoters alike loved Earnhardt’s racing style because it helped with filling seats in the grandstands and helped with TV.”
Days of Thunder had another element based on a meeting with Bill France Jr.
“He and I, back in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, were the ones banging fenders on the racetrack and creating controversy. Like in the Days of Thunder movie, the meeting in Daytona with the boss, Bill France Jr. was real; that was Dale and I after a race weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“He never came to Victory Lane when I won, nor did I when he won, but that was okay. He was a competitor; he didn’t like to lose and I didn’t like to, either.
“He was friends with all the drivers, he made friends with everyone. He would joke with you, come over and talk with you, squeeze you, but he didn’t care behind-the-wheel of the racecar. He’d knock you out of the way.
“When I saw his car in the rear view mirror, I just kept racing, but a lot of drivers would move over and let him go by. Well, with me being a hard-headed Yankee, I raced hard all my life and I was never intimidated by anyone.
“I raced hard, raced clean, so when I saw the No. 3 in my mirror, I knew it was going to get tough.
“Even after he had run into you, spun you out, or did whatever he did, when I’d see him coming, I would think, ‘Well, he won’t do it this time,’ but darn, he did it. You’d give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’d always prove me wrong because he would use that bumper.
“But once we left the track, we left it all behind us.”
Concluding the article, Geoff Bodine said about his rival who was actually his friend off-track, “Even though he spun me out a few times, I still miss him.”
