Dale Earnhardt Jr. opens up on first Daytona after | Sports News

Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave an unfiltered look into how he felt visiting Daytona for the first time after his father, Dale Earnhardt Sr., handed away. 

In Amazon Prime Video’s new sequence centered on Earnhardt Sr., titled ‘Earnhardt,’ the youthful Earnhardt admitted that watching his father’s personal legacy resurrected was “hard to watch” and that he discovered more about his older sister, Kelley. Earnhardt Jr. additionally admitted that his father hardly ever watched his races, and that they hardly ever spoke about racing after they used to talokay. 

Now, Earnhardt Jr.’s true emotions on visiting the monitor the place his father died had been revealed. During the ultimate lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, Earnhardt Sr.’s car was bumped by Sterling Marlin, inflicting the previous to collide with Kenny Schrader and hit the wall at 160 mph.

In the new sequence, Earnhardt Jr. spoke on what he felt visiting Daytona for the first time after his father died. “I got it in my head, I was like, ‘Hey, I want to go see if we can go inside the track’ because I couldn’t drive past that track and go into town and hang out just knowing what had happened there,” he said in the series [h/t Crash].

He added that while he arrived at the general area where his dad’s car crashed, Earnhardt Jr. admitted he was searching himself to see how he would feel. “Would I get emotional? Would it be too much? Would it feel too heavy? Would I have a problem with it? I didn’t know,” he continued. 

Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.

Although Daytona was where his father died, the younger Earnhardt believed that it wouldn’t be right to harbor ill will against the track and not “dread going to Daytona.” The NASCAR legend revealed that he received a “really strange feeling of freedom” as a result and “felt guilty” about his feeling of freedom. 

“I felt so guilty. I’m still in the very beginning of my, hopefully, a long career, and so I kind of decided then and there that I wasn’t gonna hold anything against the track. And if anything, Daytona was maybe even more special because it’s where dad had passed away,” he concluded. 

Just a handful of months later, Earnhardt Jr. would win the Pepsi 400. Also, the former NASCAR star won the Daytona 500 twice: in 2004 and 2014.

Along with sharing his feelings on his father’s death, Earnhardt Jr. also explained how the new series has helped him better understand how his older sister Kelley felt about Earnhardt Sr.’s passing. During the show’s premiere, Earnhardt Jr. explained what the new series showed him. 

DON’T MISS…

“I learned a ton that I didn’t know about,” he stated. “Things she was dealing with and going through, and how hard that was for her.”

Kelley added: “They [my children] were introduced to many new aspects of our dad, our lives, and our families that they were previously unaware of. I hope many viewers take away a similar understanding of our father, his legacy, and his history. We want that legacy to endure in the sport and beyond.”

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Earnhardt Jr. additionally stated: “But I believe additionally what not directly occurred was studying more about Kelley. I discovered a lot about her, she discovered more about me. We assume we all know one another, however we do not actually, we by no means actually sit down and go, this is how I felt about this, this is how this was robust for me. And so it has been great to essentially be taught a lot.”