Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently hosted Doug Richert on his podcast show. During their conversation, Junior and Richert, the former crew chief of Dale Earnhardt Sr., looked back on the early years of the Intimidator’s career in NASCAR.
The podcast’s host and the guest touched on the phase in Earnhardt’s career when he was receiving a lot of criticism for his aggressive driving style. It’s worth mentioning that Dale Sr. would end up becoming one of the biggest stars of the sport known for his aggressive driving style, earning him nicknames such as the Intimidator or the man in black.
However, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. recalled, that style of driving wasn’t always a hit aspect of his father’s image. Junior looked back on ‘a flash point’ in Earnhardt’s early career when he made Richard Petty mad at Martinsville. He wondered what that meant for Earnhardt and whether it made him consider changing his style.
“He continued to race everybody pretty aggressively. All the veterans at certain points of the year would would criticize dad. At Michigan, for example, in 1979 he drew a lot of criticism from Darrell Waltrip and Richard Petty for his overaggressive driving and then the Martinsville thing with Richard Petty. Cale Yarborough would, dad would win the Nashville 420, Cale is beating on dad’s bad back bumper the last 20 laps or so of that race and actually jumped to the outside and dad squeezed him off the corner and Cale gets out and claims that dad runs him into the wall,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. described. [25:10]
Junior claimed that looking back on 1980 in his father’s career, he doesn’t think about aggressiveness as being part of Dale Earnhardt’s image. He mentioned that the aggressive aspect and the Intimidator phase came much later in the late 80s.
“I mean, there were some hard times, but we win a lot of races, but there was some moments where you’re like, we damn pissed everybody off here,” Junior added.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. further said that in 1980, Dale Sr. was just ‘a young driver’ with some flaws which required polishing.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. wonders if his father’s aggression in 1980 led to some introspection with his crew chief
Further sharing his thoughts on the year 1980 in his father’s career, Dale Earnhardt Jr. touched on how Cale Yarborough became more vocal against his father. This prompted Junior to wonder whether such criticisms led to any conversations between Earnhardt and his then-crew chief, Doug Richert.
“I think what was happening was the style of racing in that day was different than Dale’s style of racing. And I say that is because I think everybody had races where they just kind of rode along. They were biding time. They were saving their brakes. They were saving their time. Whatever it was, Dale wasn’t. So his aggressive driving is actually now starting to force other people out of their comfort zone,” Richert told Dale Earnhardt Jr. [27:10]
The former crew chief claimed that Earnhardt’s driving would make his rivals ‘mad’ because they had to adapt to that pace of racing. Richert added that drivers then had to race at their 100% every lap because if they didn’t, they’d stand a chance to lose spots.
Richert mentioned that the idea of another driver wrecking Dale Earnhardt Sr. didn’t bother them heading into a race. He told Dale Earnhardt Jr. that they ‘got what we had coming’ because it was them who started it.
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Edited by Tushar Bahl
