Dale Earnhardt Jr: Why I retired

[Music] your contractors coming up you're at the racetrack get back to your trailer and your wife Amy says do you Rick you know wants to see you on his bus take me into that room when you walked in to discuss contracts and what you said I been feeling some of the concussion symptoms but I didn't really know that it was still before I had went to see the doctor but I'm for like two weeks I'm having some vision blurry blurry vision at distance and very short fuse you know really snappy I go into Rick's bus and we sit down he's like I need to start talking about you know what we're gonna do I want to renew the contract before even the media starts asking us questions about it and I was like you know what recommend thinking about I'm not sure I want to keep driving I don't I don't know whether I want to race or rock I'm not having fun and I'm you know I just go on and on and on about the frustrations of and you're getting pretty riled up yes I don't remember yelling about all this but Rick is in his interview for our book recalls me being very animated and loud you know and so I didn't give him a you know an answer and I hadn't had my mind made up on what I was gonna do when I left I mean I just went in there and pretty much just unloaded all my anxiety and frustrations and walked out and then a week later I was in the hospital getting looked at it was after a race at California Speedway that you call him and tell him you want to meet with just him yeah take me into that room and what was said I said I want to I want to talk and he came to my house sit on the couch and I said hey I'm a decision I don't want to I don't want to run after 2017 I want to I finish our contract that we have and be done I wanted to go back to the well one more time in racing 17 and hopefully get through that healthy and then just say alright you know let's not push our luck and keep on getting hurt and what is this doing to me long-term you know if I keep on keeping on hitting the fence and having these little episodes over and over and over is it is this really something I'm gonna regret terribly when I'm 60 50 even and so you know it was hard because he's like I want you I want you to I loved racing working with you I loved you being part of my company and part of my team and that made me feel great to hear that but he also was like hey man you know you well that isn't that is all secondary to our relationship as friends and and you mean too much to me for you to be compromised and I want you to do what you think is best for you and take care of yourself so it's your last race before the race he comes up and yeah grabs you by the neck giving you a big hug the only time I ever cried during the whole retirement mess was when Rick was around why I didn't want to disappoint him he was like a father to me he was like a dad you know I don't say that casually we're here today to confirm the news he received this morning that I've decided to make this season my last is a NASCAR Cup driver why was it relief that you felt after the retirement announcement I was just glad to be out of the car and out of the crashing no more head banging and getting hurt and getting sick how much did it drive you crazy that there are some like uninformed folks in the media that are like oh he's retiring because he's making him retire a lot of that was not surprising I think it was just an easy target I'm an easy target for something like that without a lot of information - they're just gonna assume and it was ironic timing considering he was going to come and come coming to the end of his career anyway and we were getting married iced got pregnant it was just kind of all cumulative and easy it didn't bother me I felt like I've developed a thick skin but it's just easy to see that that was just an easy target so I didn't bother be too bad and plus I stayed off of social media when we were really going through the really bad parts of it mmm just because he and I both didn't want to see what everybody was saying your sponsor Mountain Dews owned by PepsiCo is talking to their marketing VPS order and he was telling me how before you made the retirement announcement you called him up and gave him a heads-up as to what was going on and he said it was unexpected so classy and meant the world to him why was that important to you well I think that when you have such when you have partners like my Mountain Dew and in Nationwide and those people put so much into that investment they put so much effort and man-hours and time into that investment I think that's the right thing to do to let them know they can't find out about this decisions from someone else or some other way you know there are big reason why you're able to compete is to have the support from those sponsors so what's your perspective on why he wrote the book well I think there's a few reasons I think he wrote the book because he wanted to share his perspective and really share everything he went through when he was going through it he kept a lot to himself not just like the notes that he kept from everyone but he kept a lot of the real dirty grind of what he was going through from the media and from his fans so I think he wanted to make sure that they knew what he went through and why he was really retiring and then I think he wanted to make sure that if in sharing this story he could possibly help someone else going through something similar that's important to him it's really important to him I think that drove him sharing it more than just because of his phrase fans and wanting to put closure to that

Channel: Graham Bensinger

Views: 210,655

Keywords: Graham Bensinger, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Dale Jr, Dale Earnhardt Jr retire, Dale Jr retire, Dale Earnhardt Jr last race, Dale Jr last race, Rick Hendrick, NASCAR owner, Amy Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr wife, Dale Jr wife, Dale Earnhardt family, Dale Jr family, Dale Earnhardt Jr book, Dale Jr book, Dale Jr announcer, Dale Earnhardt Junior announcer, dale earnhardt rick hendrick, dale jr. rick hendrick, dale amy earnhardt

Id: 0b7ZZMELb2g

Length: 6min 34sec (394 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 05 2018