NASCAR's 50th Anniversary

Issue date:
Aug. 28-30, 1998

One driven family

Dale Earnhardt Jr., sensitive son of a flinty stock-car racing legend, struggles with his dad's success -- and now his own.

In this article:
The rewards outpace the hardships
Perspiration and broken bones
Early pain fed Dale Sr.'s ambition
A new generation, a new NASCAR
Father vs. son statistics

Perhaps even more important to Dale Jr. than winning races is winning the respect of his father.

Sometimes the son takes out the old video and slides it into the machine and remembers the part of his father he loves most, not the racing legend who now signs autographs under the glare of TV lights but the uncomplicated country kid from Kannapolis, N.C., who drove like a dervish possessed, sheerly from a passion for speed.

The tape shows Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s first Daytona 500 in 1979 after the racer in the underpowered car somehow had battled to the front of the pack, running alongside the Richard Pettys and the Donnie Allisons and the Cale Yarboroughs, NASCAR's elite. And the shocked announcers wondered out loud about this "cottonhead from Kannapolis," referring to the newcomer from a small town still dominated by cotton mills.

"That's who he was. That's what he is, down inside the nucleus," explains Dale Earnhardt Jr., the 23-year-old son who has started building his own racing reputation in NASCAR's Busch Grand National series. "But now it's blaring sunglasses and leather jackets and limousines and jet planes. ... Racing's made him more of a cardboard cutout, a mirage. But unfortunately, that's the way you've got to be. If you don't fit in their little plan, then they won't have you."

Dale Sr., 47, a seven-time Winston Cup champion, is known as "the Intimidator." After two decades of racing, this year he finally won NASCAR's premier event, the Daytona 500. Next major race: Southern 500, Sept. 6, Darlington, S.C. Dale Jr., 23, already is called "the Dominator." At press time, he led the Busch Grand National series, NASCAR's last step before the Winston Cup series. (Below, Dad congratulates him on his May win at Dover, Del.) Next race: Dura Lube 200, Sept. 5, Darlington, S.C.

The rewards outpace the hardships

But this same son seems keenly aware of the price racing has demanded from his father, possibly more aware than the great champion himself: the physical punishment, the constraints on what drivers can say and do without losing fans (and therefore money), the endless time away from family, perhaps even the submersion of some part of the essential man beneath a public image.

Dale Sr. is the all-time U.S. motor sports career money leader, with more than $32 million. He owns a helicopter, three planes and a Learjet. And at an age when many racers have retired, the 47-year-old star from Kannapolis finally won his first Daytona 500 this winter and is doggedly pursuing a record-breaking eighth Winston Cup title. It's fair to say he didn't accomplish any of this through introspection."I don't sit there and analyze things," he scoffs. "I go out and make'em happen."

Perspiration and broken bones

Even now, when wrecks have taken such a toll that last year he fell asleep in the first lap of the Southern 500, Dale Sr. won't slow down. Less than 72 hours after a May accident cracked a rib and knocked chest cartilage askew, he winces in pain and yawns during an interview. "Sorry. I got up at 4 this morning," the part-time chicken farmer explains on his massive property in Mooresville, N.C. "I was out on a tractor at 6 a.m."

Dale Jr., worried about the effects of so many crashes, says he now cares more deeply than anything else about the health of this parent who was rarely around during his childhood. "The years go by pretty quickly," he says. "When your grandparents pass away, you wonder what it's going to be like when your father goes. It's something you don't look forward to."

But as much as he obviously loves and admires his father, praising the honesty and fairness and common sense he sees, the younger Earnhardt seems to understand that he can't be his father, that he is in some ways a very different man.

"I enjoy contemplating," he says. "Most of all, I value my freedom to think how I want to think. But the more I get into this business, the more I have to bite my tongue." In conversation, his words and manner are those of an introspective, sensitive person with a fierce determination to live his own life. And even a casual visitor can see this isn't always the easiest thing for someone whose father is called the Intimidator, a rugged man of action who began with little and soon lost even that, going deep into debt pursuing his racing goals before forging a multimillion-dollar empire out of perspiration and broken bones.

DALE SR., 47 Began racing professionally at 23. Currently ranked ninth of 63 drivers in NASCAR's Winston Cup series. (He's won the series seven times.) Lifetime winnings: $32.4 million (more than any other driver in history). Sponsor: GM Goodwrench Service Plus. Drives Chevrolet. Hobbies: hunting, fishing, boating. DALE JR., 23 Began racing professionally at 17. Currently ranked first of 110 drivers in NASCAR's Grand National series. Lifetime winnings: $564,395. Sponsor: ACDelco. Drives Chevrolet. Hobbies: water sports, computers. All stats as of Aug. 8

The Mooresville home base for this conglomerate, called simply Dale Earnhardt Inc., is only about 20 minutes from Kannapolis, a place where you can still feel the ghosts of that young "cottonhead."

Dale Sr. grew up in a modest white house on the corner of Sedan Avenue and Coach Street, and to this day his mother refuses to leave despite repeated offers from her wealthy son. Three red rockers sit on the old wooden front porch, with its rusty light fixture and a birdhouse made from a Sundrop soda can. The small garage out back where Earnhardt and his dad built race cars is there, too. The Gem Theatre and What-A-Burger Drive-In sit tucked among other reminders of midcentury Kannapolis, though now one road is "Dale Earnhardt Boulevard." The local joke is that the teenager got so many speeding tickets there that the city named the pavement for him.

Early pain fed Dale Sr.'s ambition

Already married to his second wife and supporting a son and daughter, Kerry and Kelley, Earnhardt worked odd jobs and borrowed heavily to keep racing. Soon there was another child, Dale Jr., and another divorce. Over several frustrating years, his passion to race turned into a furious desire to prove his unrecognized talent against big-time competition. When his break finally came in 1978, Earnhardt wasn't about to let himself fail.

Such tenacity rarely happens naturally, and cultivating it often comes at a cost for someone so intensely driven -- and for those nearby. A fellow racer once complained Dale Sr. would give an aspirin a headache. "I am moody in a lot of ways," he acknowledges. "If I've got a task at hand, I like to do it ... and move on. It's not that I'm a bully. It's just that I'm determined."

Inevitably, this sometimes spills into the relationship between the famous father and the fast-rising son, who at press time had won five races and enough points to lead the series in his first full year of Busch events.

Those who know him say a warmhearted man lies underneath the elder Earnhardt's crust. After talking with him awhile, it's easy to believe this. "I do care what people think about me," he says softly. "It goes back to what advice my dad gave me and how he was raised and tried to raise me: When you leave here, all you're gonna have is your name and your word. If that's not any good, then you're not much good. ... I want to be remembered as much for that as for being a great racer -- being a good father, for one, but also a fair person in life, fair to other people." Which is not to say his fervor for racing is any less strong today than ever. It isn't.

Now his son has inherited that Earnhardt fire in the belly. But perhaps even more important to Dale Jr. than winning races, he seems to want to win the respect of his dad, to be looked upon as an equal. And there are signs that's happening. Dale Earnhardt Inc., which owns the Busch series team Dale Jr. drives for, recently signed him to a five-year contract, with an option for another five. The contract will put Dale Jr. in some 1999 Winston Cup races and may put him on that circuit full time in 2000.

A new generation, a new NASCAR

"Back then, there wasn't that much money in it and they just raced like hell 'cause they loved it," he says, his Southern drawl thickening. "Now NASCAR is a whole lot stricter and they don't allow nobody to run into the side of nobody no more, and everybody races around there like toy soldiers. It's crappy, to be honest with you, how racing's become."

As he grumbles about the new realities of motor sports, he also knows they're not likely to change any time soon. But even at this young age he seems prepared to accept for better and for worse the life he's chosen, all of the good and all of the bad that racing can offer someone named Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- and to begin striking his own personal bargain with fame.

Bob Knotts, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last wrote about NASCAR's 50th anniversary as one of the nation's hottest spectator sports.

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