Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. This year’s series concludes with NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is now a broadcaster for Prime and TNT, also co-owns the JR Motorsports Xfinity Series team and hosts the “Dale Jr. Download” podcast. This interview has been edited and condensed, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions Podcast.
1. What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid, and what do you remember about that moment?
Autographs didn’t really get cool to me ’til later in life. I have become someone who definitely appreciates autographs, but one of the very first autographs I asked for was from Richard Petty. When I was young, Richard Petty had a comic book, and it was really large in size. And in this comic book, it was the story of him and Maurice (Petty) and Dale (Inman) growing up as kids and racing these homemade box cars down a hill and then growing up and racing with their dad, Lee.
I found four of them online and bought them and took them to Richard. I loved this thing when I used to read it as a kid and I found some in very good shape, and I took them to Richard and had him sign them. I still have them.
2. What is the most miserable you’ve ever been inside of a race car?
I was racing in my first (Xfinity Series) race at Myrtle Beach in 1996. I’m guessing it was about 95 degrees, middle of the afternoon, and before the race, I had a 100-lap Late Model stock race. I was running at Myrtle Beach every week in my Late Model car, so running a 100-lap feature in the middle of the afternoon wasn’t a big deal.
But I wasn’t very aware of my health or hydration or anything like that. None of that had been scienced out at that point in my life. With about 20 or 30 laps to go (in his Xfinity debut), I was driving around the racetrack, and I had this insane, very apparent, super self-aware realization that I was bone dry. I had been sweating all day long and my suit was soaking wet and then all of a sudden, all my skin felt extremely dry inside this suit. It was really weird. It grabbed my attention, and immediately I started getting really dizzy and started having a hard time staying awake and getting through the final laps.
I’d basically just gotten so dehydrated that I was delirious and it was really scary.
3. Outside of racing, what is your most recent memory of something you got way too competitive about?
There’s a bunch of us in this NCAA College Football Xbox/PlayStation dynasty (league). I’m not a good loser. I don’t just hop up from the console after a loss and put it behind me. It bothers me.
We used to be in a Madden league back in around 2012 and I won the Super Bowl three years in a row, so I was pretty good, but playing Madden with your friends brings the absolute worst out of you. Nothing else is like this. And I had to stop and tell myself: “This isn’t healthy if I can’t control my emotions around winning and losing.” Brad Keselowski was in this league and he would talk about breaking remotes every other week, throwing them across the room. I don’t know what it is about console games and your friends, especially sports games.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. on set for Prime during their broadcast of NASCAR’s Mexico City race in June. Earnhardt is also a commentator for TNT Sports. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
4. What do people get wrong about you?
When I went to race at Hendrick Motorsports, Jeff Gordon was like, “Man, I didn’t know you were as funny or as big of a smarta— as you were.” That’s something I got from my mom. And this is a compliment — my mom was an unbelievable smarta—, and I loved it about her. She was going to pick on you, she was going to jab, but it was all in fun, and it was hilarious, and nobody was safe. If you slipped up around her, you might get called out. And she was just so damn funny.
5. What kind of Uber passenger are you, and how much do you care about your Uber rating?
I care about it. I’m a great passenger. I don’t make a fuss. I’m not loud, obnoxious. If I’ve had some drinks and you’re picking me from the bar, I’m going to be calm and quiet. I’m not going to be hollering and having loud conversations in the back with my friends. I’m not that kind of person. I’m worried about what this person who’s driving this car thinks about me. I don’t want to create a problem, much less get a bad rating.
But apparently, I wasn’t doing something I was supposed to be doing in the first week I had Uber, and I got a really low rating. It was like a 4.4, which I thought was really good. Fast forward a couple months and we’re somewhere else using Uber, and I’m getting ready to call the Uber and my friend goes, “Man, you might not get picked up with that rating.” …
Since then, I’ve been steadily over-tipping, being overly nice, trying to get my rating back up. It’s a 4.83 now. I like to use it. But if I’m with somebody who is kind of rowdy and loud or maybe a little bit too intoxicated, we’re gonna use yours, not mine.
6. I’m asking each person a wild-card type question. Brad Keselowski said recently: “The sport is really interesting with how it perceives itself. It’s one of the sports that has the most noticeable negative feedback loop. That said, it’s also a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease sport, where if somebody’s not squeaking, things don’t ever change.” You have arguably the biggest platform and loudest voice in the sport. How do you balance the times when you feel it’s necessary to push for change versus worrying about potentially hurting the sport by feeding into that negativity?
When I saw that comment, that certainly makes you reflect inward. And I hear from NASCAR, and their concern is genuine and it’s real. When they say, “Man, all people hear about is what we’re doing wrong. You’re telling everyone these things are bad, and they’re not going to want to come see it if you’re telling them not to watch it.” …
I absolutely understand where they’re coming from. Since I bought the CARS Tour, I’ve gotten a really unique perspective on NASCAR’s position. … I worry about that. I do. And there are absolutely some things I’ve said in the past that I shouldn’t have said that have turned somebody away or have convinced somebody not to appreciate NASCAR or not to enjoy it.
And I hate that, because honestly, it’s the most important thing outside of my family. It’s the most important thing in my life, and it means the world to me. If NASCAR failed, or if NASCAR was to diminish, all the things that I ever accomplished — or more importantly, that my dad accomplished — are less valuable, less important. I want NASCAR to succeed and be the greatest thing ever. We’ve all got our own version of NASCAR, and what we think NASCAR could be and should be. I believe in its success. But it’s hard sometimes to keep your mouth shut.
The podcast has been helpful with this: I’ve gotten better at understanding how to phrase something and how to get my point across without dragging the sport down. Like, I can tell you with all honesty, no B.S., the champion this year is a deserving champion. I would celebrate them, drink a beer with them, and be as envious and as jealous of them as any champion we’ve ever had. But I have a format that I love better than the one we use today. So I can tell you both things, and they both can be true.
Sometimes I wake up one morning and think I need to be less of a talking head, because a lot of the things I want or think are better are not going to happen. And so I’m spewing all this criticism and critique into the middle distance that’s benefiting nothing. But then there’s days you get up and you’re like, “I want this to be better. I want more of this. I want more for this.” And you want to fight for something, or you get confident or passionate about a particular viewpoint in the sport or about the car itself.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. celebrates with driver Connor Zilisch after Zilisch’s win at Indianapolis in July, the 100th Xfinity Series victory for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports team. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
7. This is my 16th year of doing the 12 Questions interviews, so I’m going back to an older one and re-asking a question to see how your answers compare. In 2010, I asked you: How much longer would you like to keep driving? You said: “Until I’m 50 or 55, that’d be awesome. I don’t think you can get to where you can quit. You can’t just stop and go sit at the house.” You’re 51 now and your NASCAR career has wound down. Do you see an endpoint where you stop running Late Models as well, or will you keep digging well into your 60s?
I don’t know the answer to that. I’m definitely going to run next year, and it’s really a year-to-year kind of thing. I used to own a helicopter. I bought my helicopter from Tony Stewart, and I had that helicopter for a couple years. It was great. But I woke up one day, out of nowhere — nothing happened, I didn’t see anything, read anything — I just woke up one day and went, “I don’t want to get in a helicopter anymore.” And I sold it.
So (with racing) I think one day I’ll just wake up and go, “You know what? I think that was it. I think that was the last one.” I really feel it’ll be that way. It’s been like a faucet I’ve been slowly turning off as I went and ran those Xfinity Series races once a year, and now the Late Model races. I’m just kind of slowly turning that faucet off until I feel like I’m ready to shut it off entirely.
8. Other than a JR Motorsports driver, name a driver you’d be one of the first to congratulate in victory lane if they won a race and you were there at the track.
Josh Berry, Ryan Blaney, (Carson) Hocevar. Hocevar and I text all the time. He’s something else.
There’s a handful of guys. Probably Connor Hall, Landen Lewis, Kaden Honeycutt — anybody that’s been through the CARS Tour would be somebody I’d probably go over and congratulate.
9. How much do you use AI technology? Are you a ChatGPT guy at all?
Yeah! I ask it all kinds of dumb stuff. Just earlier today, I’ve got this really big playlist of music on my phone, and every song was skipping at about the 10-second mark. And I was like, “Hey ChatGPT, what’s the deal with this skipping every song on my phone?” And we had a conversation around it.
I’ll ask it all kinds of questions about weather and different things, but I don’t ask it anything important. I use it for fun and just to see what it’s going to say and I try to think of stuff to talk about to it, but I don’t ask it anything that I really might not want to know the answer to. (Laughs.)
Dale Earnhardt Jr. steps into his Late Model car before a 2023 race. “I’m just kind of slowly turning that faucet off until I feel like I’m ready to shut it off entirely,” he says of racing. (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
10. What is a time in your life you felt was really challenging, but you are proud of the way that you responded to it?
My dad’s passing (Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500). That’d definitely be the main thing. And that was a process of 20 years or even all the way up ’til today.
Also, getting my s— together and asking (now wife) Amy to marry me, how important of a move that was and how I put that together. …
Parenthood, I would not put on this list. (Laughs.) I have not handled that well. I’ve not played that game very well.
11. I know you’ve spoken about this topic frequently on your podcast, but what needs to happen in NASCAR to take the sport to the next level of popularity?
We need some rock stars. It’s all about having some driver come in here and captivate the hell out of us and make people who aren’t watching go, “Who the hell is that?” That’s what it’s going to take. We’ve got very cool people racing; there’s a lot of people in there who I like, cool guys who are fun to hang out with, but I don’t know how we get them to become mainstream stars.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. The last one was A.J. Allmendinger, and he wants to know: Why’d you always flip him off when you were racing against him?
(Laughs.) I don’t know. Probably because the way he drove, he was aggravating. And I mean that in the nicest way. He wasn’t a blocker like (Ryan) Newman, but he was antsy out on the track. He’s high-energy, and I’m the complete opposite on the racetrack. I’m trying to stay calm.
But I think he’s joking. I don’t remember flipping him off a ton. I just always found his energy and mine to be polar opposites.
This is the end of this year’s version of the 12 Questions interviews. Earnhardt will submit a question for the 2026 edition prior to the Daytona 500. Next week will feature a compilation of the best answers from this season’s Championship 4 drivers during their 12 Questions interviews this season.