Dale Jr. Shares His Biggest Racing Regret

[Music] it's my biggest regret racing was that decision if we had just figured it out patched it up we slept on it stayed the course yeah so go ahead yeah i mean that was i mean i remember i was sitting at home at your home and i said hey man i was like richie's like hey man we gotta talk we gotta do this i'm like why are we doing this you know all we needed was a breather everybody just was devastated let's like we're we're on a roll now like there wasn't a racetrack that we didn't walk into that we didn't think we could win you know like we were the threat you know we wasn't worried about nobody well when it all went down we went and set an office and it was like i think they said they were going to put pete with you and they and they said we're going to make pop's general manager we're going to make you a crew chief for you know for truex and i'm like well have you talked to bono about this cause bono had been doing the chance race and they're like yeah yeah we've talked to him and i'm like okay i'm like well if you want to do that that's fine i mean we'll take truex i like trex he's great you know if that's what if that makes him happy and that's what he wants to do then that's what we'll do well within 30 minutes bono is on a flight coming back from massachusetts because he doesn't heard about it because nobody has talked to him about it you know so he's upset so now we've upset the whole company as an uproar and i mean i even made a phone i made a phone call and asked and i cut another cup owner i'm like hey you want a race team because i mean we were the hottest thing there i said i'll bring all 25 people like we'll we'll all come and it was just like he said man if you call me one day earlier i'd hire everybody that's in that shop you know and i was like okay no problem so that's when i i told pops i said just tell them to give me michael and find me a young driver that we we can just i said i don't care if i go back xfinity racing if i got to come all the way back up through it i said well do it i said but if that's what he wants to do if that's his decision and we want to do it let's do it so ultimately that's how the whole deal we went in there and it was like just a team swap just at any point did you talk to dale or did dale talk no we never me and him never even talked about it and it was just like did you want to well yeah i mean at some point because you still you're like well i want him to be happy but at the time me and him was too immature to deal with it that was a problem it was like it my attitude back there and his attitude back then is like we it was just the wrong wrong attitudes in 2005 i'm sitting there and i just told all the guys in the shop i'm like look we're going to have michael this year what we're going to do is we're going to make our race team better we're going to do our own parts we're going to make quality control we're going to be a better race team now because of this that's all we can do if we go win a race with michael we're king so we go into the season well that was the year that we started coal binding we actually went to daytona and started coal binding and michael passed you off of four coming to the 125s and the two shops were at war the whole place i mean it was funny christmas time all the napa guys wore red and all the blood guys wore blue just because they swapped that's right so we're sitting there and uh we go into the season or whatever and i think it might have been richmond like we went run second with michael off the bat we had a chance to win the 500 uh with michael and it was like motor blue with like 25 to go and it was like i i was so mad at daytona because i mean richie come over to me said man i got a motor put in your car you're our best shot for the 500. i'm like i don't want it give me the motor that i'm supposed to run he said i promise it won't blow up i'm like i'm telling you i don't want it just if it's anything experimental at all do not give it to me i want my regular motor because i can win this daytona 500 with michael at the time these two they're not like everybody's so split i know he ain't gonna draft with me and michael ain't gonna draft with him so that kind of hurt the whole whole company so i went to stuart stuart to start in front of us i was like stuart do me a favor i said will you draft with michael i don't like michael i don't care if you like him or not i see you like me yeah i like you i see you like my team yeah i like you boys you're cool i'm like well draft with us he said i'll tell you what i'll draft with you but he's got to push me all day that's what he told me i'm like no problem he won't leave the home depot on your back bumper if you go back and look at the race michael's out there and he never leaves at 20. it was just like that was the new eight and we pushed to 20 all day and he's like tony i'm running half throttle behind this guy whenever you want me to pass him you just let me know i'm like you don't move you don't move i said you stay right there we come in for the last pit stop at 25 to go and i said all right michael game on do whatever you want he goes down into one pulls high drives right around him pulls down in front of him leaves three more laps and the motor blew up god i was so mad i got in the rental car drove home i would not get in the plane with him to drive home and it's just that's my attitude back now you wanted that race you wanted it out of spite yeah you know it was just you had so much anger built up in you it's like man i want you know i want to prove something yeah you know and it was the wrong way to be proven it and it was like during that year i think i he was having a terrible year it's awful it was awful that that speed weeks even wasn't that great i think you finished third dale but honestly i i started the race was over plowing yeah 30th and i'm like i i can't even go i can't stand the gas can't go nowhere this is this is going to be the worst race ever i don't know how we got the car better i mean honestly i mean i'll say this right here at this table but it bothered me so bad that we split up and sit there and watch him race with somebody else and me not raising with him i would go on dale jr what it would there was a dalejuniorpitstop.com or something oh yeah on our website i would go on there and read what people are saying and how bad they hated me and that would just fuel me to go to the next race he told his toy he took his cars i don't know why and i'm like yeah i got them good and pissed off now because i lived i lived off that and it's stupid at the time but it was like you you that's how i was feeding myself to go to the next race you know and then it's like i think richmond i come up into your bus and i think i asked i think it was first richmond you were running bad and i walked up in the in his bus and he said that's the first time we'd really talked richmond yeah which would have been like with a race well i mean we'd walk by and say hey okay have a meaningful conversation meaningful conversation and i walked up into this bus and i'm like what is your problem i said you're a better race car driver than what you're driving i said what is your problem i'm like i'm tired of watching you run 25th to 30th like you're you're going to lose your career over this if something don't change and that's when he says man i just i made a mistake he said you know these guys they don't they don't like they don't listen to me they got their own ideas and he says and i can't drive their cars away to do it and i just screwed up when i made this decision and i said well fix it you you helped create it like fix it well how do i fix it i'm like the only thing you gotta do is go tell richie you want your old team back and i said but the first thing you got to do is go over to that team because michael when he come in michael's just like thank you guys man you're a great kid in the candy store yeah he's loving us and he's he's feeding us with just y'all the best man like i can't believe i'm with the race team this way and i just told him i said you got to go over and apologize all them guys and tell them you want them back i said that's all you got to do i said because it was it was like a family i'm like just say hey you screwed up and let's go and ultimately that's what he he did and we got back together what 10 races to go you like that conversation with tony urey jr well you can listen to the entire interview because the dale jr download it's available on all major podcast platforms

Channel: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

Views: 263,884

Keywords: Dirty Mo Media, The Dale Jr. Download, Dale Jr., NASCAR

Id: nbIZRFqI_iA

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022