Dale Earnhardt Jr. is one of the most legendary NASCAR drivers of all time, and he’s speaking out this week to reveal some secrets to his success that may surprise you.
Earnhardt Jr. Sounds Off
Believe it or not, Earnhardt Jr., 49, credits drinking and smoking with some of his greatest success in NASCAR!
“This is not advice. This is bad advice. But this is what I did. I felt like I didn’t run as good or race as good if I didn’t blow off some steam on a Tuesday or Wednesday night,” Earnhardt Jr. said on his “Dirty Mo” podcast earlier this week.
Earnhardt Jr. then dived into a story from back in his Hendrick days when some gym rats in the building convinced him to workout like Jimmie Johnson.
“I’m gonna work on it. I’ll do better,” he recalled thinking. “I’m gonna lose some weight, I’m gonna work out. I’m gonna do these new things to try and be in better physical shape and better mental shape. I would abstain from drinking or something for a couple of weeks and the results didn’t change for me.”
“And then I’d go party with my buddies or something or have friends over on a Tuesday night and we’d damn kick ass on the race weekend,” he continued. “I was like, ‘Maybe I’m just one of the old guards man. I need to drink and smoke cigarettes and go kick ass.”
What a legend!
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Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s Race Prep
Essentially Sports reported that Earnhardt Jr. went on to say that his legendary father Dale Earnhardt Sr., who tragically died in a racing accident in 2001 at the age of 49, also enjoyed partaking in drinking alcohol back in the day. Instead of smoking, however, Earnhardt Sr. enjoyed doing landscaping and construction on his own property to blow off steam.
“What dad did was that he drank beer with his buddies and then he rode a bulldozer,” Earnhardt Jr. recalled. “Like he would go spend Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday moving dirt and shaping his land.”
“He had property and he loved to build a dam or clear a field or…there was always a job and a thing to do that had to…he wasn’t like this property wasn’t making him money but it was a project of his,” he added. “So he was always clearing land, pushing trees over, and ‘We’re gonna make this look a certain way and I’m gonna…we’re gonna build a house over here so I’m gonna clean this stuff.'”
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Earnhardt Jr. Races Again
This comes days after Earnhardt Jr. wowed fans when he took on some of the very best drivers at the New River All-American Speedway in Jacksonville last Saturday. WNCT 9 reported that while Earnhardt Jr. is retired from racing at the NASCAR level, he couldn’t resist in taking part in a short-track race for some of his fans.
“I love any time you can get out to the coast, we’ve got a place in South Carolina, raced in Myrtle Beach, my sister went to Wilmington in college, so we spent a lot of time on the Carolina coast, and you can’t beat it,” Earnhardt Jr. said at the event.
“The weather is amazing this time of year and so we’re excited,” he continued. “It was unfortunate that the race got rained out and moved to this date, but it did give me a chance to come out here and compete.”
Earnhardt Jr. is a true NASCAR legend, and there will never be another one like him. It’s nice to see Earnhardt is a work hard/play hard type of guy in real life, just like his dad was!