{"id":330814,"date":"2025-12-07T18:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/330814\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T18:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:32:12","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-had-awkward-moment-racing-dad-and-rival-he-hated-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/330814\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr had awkward moment racing dad and rival he hated – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has recalled risking the wrath of his legendary father while racing a rival he hated, before Dale Sr. recorded his last-ever NASCAR Cup Series win at the 2000 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on October 15, 2000.<\/p>\n

Dale Sr. raced from 18th to first in the final few laps to take his career 76th Cup win. However, long before the checkered flag, Dale Sr.’s son,\u00a0 Dale Jr<\/a>., was racing further up and against Mike Sinner, who wasn’t a fan favorite in the Earnhardt household. Dale Jr. went as far as to say his dad “hated” Skinner<\/a> and that a win for Dale Sr.’s rival wouldn’t have gone down well.<\/p>\n

“Should have won that race. I’m sitting there pushing, we got Bobby Labonte, me, Skinner, we’re all kind of right there together. I was leading a little bit, Skinner got to lead, Bobby Labonte got to lead, and we’re all kind of right there,” Dale Jr. recalled on his Dirty Mo Media podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“And then I’m sitting behind Skinner, and I’m thinking, I’m just kind of, he’s doing a really, really good job of not giving me a chance to get underneath him. I’m trying to wait on him to catch him sleeping and give me a little spot underneath. And there wasn’t a below the line rule yet.<\/p>\n

“You know, but I mean, they would block you all the way to the grass down the back straightaway. And so we’re sitting there, sitting there running and running, and here comes, I see dad on that side. He’s like eight rows back, six rows back, five rows back.”<\/p>\n

Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Dale Jr. continued: “And I’m thinking in my head, I should have jumped in front of his a–. Yeah, there was a chance, I believe. I should have, I should have pulled up in front of him. But you know what? He would have kicked, I was thinking in my head, he would have kicked my a– or probably put me three wide and sent me to the back. But he would have been madder than if I had jumped in front of him.<\/p>\n

“So I’m like, all right, I can’t do that. And then I got to thinking about how bad he didn’t like, you know, how bad he kind of, I don’t wanna say, how much he didn’t like Skinner. Right, but he didn’t want Skinner to win.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t want Skinner to win. Right. And so I’m sitting there going, s—, I can’t, maybe I shouldn’t be pushing Skinner.<\/p>\n

“I gotta get out from behind Skinner. I gotta get out behind Skinner. So I’m kind of lifting off of Skinner, too. And that’s even helping dad, right? Finally, dad gets to a point, I’m like, ‘All right, I’m screwed. I’ve screwed myself.'”<\/p>\n

Just a handful of months later, Dale Jr. and the NASCAR world would lose Dale Sr. He died following a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. It was a devastating death that shook NASCAR to its core and prompted the sport to make several changes to its driver safety.<\/p>\n

It was also a death that caused some trouble in the Earnhardt family, particularly between Dale Sr.’s widow, Teresa, and his three oldest children from previous relationships: Kerry, Kelley, and Dale Jr. However, Dale Jr. has expressed hope of reconciliation with Teresa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. has recalled risking the wrath of his legendary father while racing a rival he hated,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,14056,2332,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-330814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-dale-earnhardt-jr","11":"tag-motorsport-section","12":"tag-nascar","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}