Dale Jr. Download: Earnhardt Alarm Clock & the Red-headed Stepchild

[Music] man where do we start I don't even know where to start you you drove for D for two years mm-hmm in the AC Delco car yeah and I remember that team when dad drove for it I remember that team as dad sort of home family team with Tony senior Rick bossed eventually Tony Eury jr. Jeff green got put in the car has some reasonable results but the team was still sort of growing understanding how to run a full schedule because dad never ran a full schedule with the team you get in the car ran two years got him to Victory Lane you want in Nashville yeah and you built a lot of the cars we work in the shop this is a period of time back then when car you know that you work you spend a lot of hours during the week working on the cars right yeah yeah all the time I mean uh my background came from building my own race cars and racing up in New England and you know I used to work full time job people don't realize that when you're when you're racing not for a living I used to work a full time job so I could eat and pay my rent and then I used to race and you know if you made it extra couple hundred bucks I was great if you didn't you know you still had your job to fall back on you know so we used to work til five six o'clock at night have something to eat go to the race shop work till 12:00 1:00 o'clock in the morning every single night that was just a routine that we were used to and when I actually moved down to Charlotte and went to work for your dad I thought it was pretty amazing because I mean I was like man it was like my dream job I can just get up in the morning go to the shop and work on race cars and this was awesome and I think I told you dad I said I'd you know I just need enough money to live and Abed just put a bed in the shop somewhere and give me enough money to I can feed myself and we'll go racing and win a lot of races and yeah obviously I guess like that at me so but the point of my story is it was like the first day or second day I was working full-time in this dream job it's like 4:30 and I'm seeing all the guys going to the bathroom I'm like I asked Tony Eury said hey what's up what are you doing oh man they're washing their hands they're getting ready to go home I'm like man it's not even five o'clock and I'm thinking myself if everybody leaves what am I getting - what am I gonna do in a shock - till one o'clock in the morning and a lot of times I stayed because when I freely moved down here I actually lived in your dad's house in a spare bedroom for a while until he woke me up at 4:30 in the morning every morning and I begged I north to take me into a spare room in his house so you dad wouldn't wake me up so early every morning because I'd work til midnight one o'clock in the morning and I can't tell you how many times it'd be nine ten o'clock at night and your dad walk in and I'd hear the cowboy boots kind of marching across marched across the floor and I'd look and he'd be like parking what the hell you'd still doing here I'm like dad we got a race this weekend I got a you know we got to get this car done you know everybody left at five o'clock and I mean your house is only right there could by throw a rock and hit it and I'll just walk home when I'm done done working on race cars and he said well just you know you don't need to work all night long you worked all day as so that's what I'm used to so it's more of what you used to then it's like to know if you understand because I'm gonna wake you up at 4:30 you need to go well I tell you what and the way I was woken up you know a lot of people don't know is used to kick I don't know if he ever kicked your bed but he used to kick the end of my bed where the bed would almost fries up off the ground slam back down the ground and he'd be like parking about looking I'm like it's still dark out and you but get up you're gonna sleep your life away he said I got all these new deer I want you to come take a look at we have to go down on the farm 4:30 5 o'clock good morning we'd go down on the farm check out some of the new livestock you bought and and what are you thinking in your head when you're looking I know you're probably going oh well that's awesome right I mean you're saying all the right things what are you thinking well I'm thinking you know he's crazy for waking me up so damn early in the morning first of all and then I race cars that's all I did I didn't hunt I didn't fish never really had any interest in hunting or fishing and and he was just such a big hunter and and and knew everything you need to know about deer and livestock and everything that I've learned I learned from him because my dad all he did was race so I never knew a deer could jump like an eight foot high fence and he showed me that one time he had one deer I kept jumping over a fence and we went down there with a big red spotlight and headlights off on the truck and we're going 60 miles an hour across a grass field and in the dark with a big red spotlight he's like keep an eye on that knee right there keep an eye on him and I was watching him watched him and that deer reared back looked like he was sitting down maybe tired to take a poop or something and next thing you know next you know he just scaled like this eight-foot high fence and I was like oh my god good jump and he's like hey he's one he's one of my prized one I mean the stores are endless and I know I've told the story before about you know being with your dad and good he always had memory always had electric fences every fence he had garage door openers on his visor and like 15 of them and you'd come up to a electric fence and we're coming down at start road going back in the farm or cruising along probably 50 miles an hour and he's hitting all these clickers on top of his visor and that phantom budget and I'm looking at and I'm trying to time I'm like going 50 miles an hour I'm like even if he hit the brakes right now we're gonna hit that fence awesome boom the fence starts opening that's there ain't no way this fence is gonna get all the way open before we get this truck do it at 50 miles an hour so at the last second I was seat belted in it braced up against a floor and if you know what I mean tightened up and I was like I was like I'm like yeah we're not gonna make it and then he looked at me as that fence is open he said you don't tell seven-time Winston Cup champion how to drive and we went through that fence in your ball and it knocked both mirrors off both sides of the truck and I looked at him he had that half mustache grin waiting for me to say something because we did make it two things I didn't make it with the mirrors so oh my god pretty pretty funny story so online on Twitter one of the fans were was talking about the redheaded stepchild which is race car that we had a lot of success in you said ask Dale jr. who built that car I don't want you maybe you could tell us that's that's funny because that was one of the first cards that I'd built for di in this basically story when we went to one of the big tracks it might have been Charlotte and and then we were taking the we were getting ready to go race at Hickory and we're taking the same car and I said if I know anything I know how to get a car around a half mile because that's that was my background I knew the car we took to you know a mile and a half track was not the car we needed to run a 1/2 mile and so we went and we struggled and I think Randy Lajoie won with Steve Byrd and I went to Dale and said mana if I know anything and now to build a car for a short track I know we're going to Nashville next and let me let me have a shot at building a car so so we did and I think I think we're using Hudson Pagan cars at a time and this car was built by Mark Laughlin his group and they built the car when we went and picked it up and we did the body ourselves on it and the reason why I got the name the redhead stepchild was because any time somebody worked on the car now remember the pastor I was there 12 hours a day so anytime somebody worked on the car and they put a bracket on the car and I thought it was too heavy I'd wait from the go home at 4:30 5 o'clock cut the bracket off so everybody got mad at me that was working on the car so everybody boycotted working on the car and long story short I finally got the car done and we went to Nashville the test with Tony you are in jr. and two beer and a couple of guys and the car that we tested with for two days was pretty fast and I kept begging him roll this car out roll his car out so to appease me they rolled the car out and was like a tenth slower and then one change it was his tenth faster so Tony Eury said man it's this car it's pretty damn good you know so we took it back and they'll come in the shop it's in every car we had was painted gray the frame was painted gray and then had the blue and red AC Delco and white body on it he'd come in a shop and he told about it guys he said you paint this car bright red did the inside and so they did and I said why do you gotta paint it red he said because when I'm sitting in my motorhome at one of the NASCAR Cup races and you're running around in the back and it's got that red frame I know I know I know it's that car you spent all that money on I thought you knew that and so know why it we all know why it was pretty funny because I mean he was so smart he knew that he probably wouldn't be at the race the short track race and when he was sitting in the motorhome he wanted to be able to see that red chassis either right he swore it run in the back and I swore he'd win a race and you know thankfully I was right and it was so funny because you know we he called me in victory lane he said how's that redheaded stepchild I was like oh my god those the first time you know it's called a redheaded stepchild because I would always complain on we're not gonna get it done nobody's helping me work on it and he said because you keep cutting everything off that everybody helps you put on the car you know so uh anyway just a just great story is the car you won your first race with yeah my first you raced it - yeah in in 98 99 I think we won seven races with that car and it was everywhere we took it you remember to stepchild yeah yeah because we had this we had the stepchild and then the stepmama right yeah because we built another one or Dale jr. built had another one built from Mike Laughlin and it was supposed to be the twin of this car and I want a munch race with and they struggled with it I think we ended up looking at it measuring it send it back to Mike they redid a clip on it brought it back and Dale jr. ran it like 10 laps is it alright we're back that those cars the difference in those cars had a drop stops now and so being to everyone listening the pivot points on the front clip were dropped and that just for whatever reason lowered the center of gravity and all the measurements and everything else we made the car just turn so much better in the center of the corner and the car if a lot of people remember the the car that we ran at Richmond in oh one was the gossamer car is that oh one I don't remember I think it was that was a drop snout as well at a hunt you to Peggy drops now but the drops now I would have drops now work so well at short tracks versus the bigger you know one and a half mile track she didn't run the drops now yeah a lot of what to do was just like what you said it just really helped the front end turn better and and you know me and the drops now like I said it changed the points in the front end but I actually lowered the roll center so it gave the front more grip there was different camera changes which was better you didn't want to have a lot of camera change on a big track because you're going 180 miles an hour and it's the difference between 100 and 180 if you if you if you believe that but you know the way the car would set in the corner have a low center of gravity have a little roll center and have a have a quick camera change would actually help the car rotate through the center a corner and it made a ton of sense and that's what we learned and what we used you know like it tracks as big as New Hampshire New Hampshire was you knew this with the with your mods we did this with our Busch North car and we worked with with the modified Stu so different different type of suspension different type of weight but we learned a lot with the with the Busch North car and racing against gods like you know kelly moore and dick mccabe and just all these guys that would just you know dominate a nice and tear up in the bush north you know they they all had it figured out where they'd get these roll centers you know either centered up or move to the left or lowered and and just get the car to react in a different way which when when I moved down south you know the majority of tracks we ran were a half mile or smaller and then I'm when I moved down south majority tracks or Milan halves are bigger so you know it just seemed like once we got a chance to go to a short track I was like alright now we're in my wheelhouse you know I'm still learning how to run some of these big tracks and aerodynamics and but the short tracks I felt like I knew pretty well you

Channel: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

Views: 493,084

Keywords: Dale Earnhardt Jr, Dale Jr, Dirty Mo Media, Dale Jr. Download, Steve Park, NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt

Id: 2peJyRhH6Lk

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2019