Getty Image
No driver has ever, or likely will ever, entered the NASCAR Cup Series with as much hype or expectations as Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Which makes his Hall of Fame career all that much more impressive.
But it wasn’t always easy for the son of seven-time series champion Dale Earnhardt.
Earnhardt Jr. faced a number of difficult moments throughout his 19-year stint in the Cup Series. He recently joined former Cup Series racer Kenny Wallace on the Kenny Conversation show and revealed one such moment that reduced him to tears.
“I’ve never shared this with anybody, but I’ll give you this one,” Earnhardt Jr. began. “…We’re at Richmond and I feel like I’ve qualified 23rd for eight weeks in a row. I mean, I really didn’t qualify 23rd for eight weeks in a row, but gosh I felt like I had this sort of writers block. I just could not get past that sort of mediocre, even less than mediocre, performance in qualifying and I didn’t know why we couldn’t do better.
“…We were at Richmond and it was wearing on me. I’d take it home and think about it and, you know, the race performances probably weren’t a whole lot better, to be honest with you. But I qualified 22nd or 23rd and went back to the bus and walked into the bus and walked back into the bathroom and shut the door and cried.
“I mean, I didn’t know what else to do. And Amy (Earnhardt’s wife) come (SP) back there and don’t know why am I upset about this. It’s just qualifying. And I’m like, you know, you’re doing this all your life. You know in your heart you believe you’re good at it. You wanna believe you’re one of the best at it. And no matter what you’re doing or no matter how you try to approach it, you keep getting the same result.”
Earnhardt Jr.’s story is an unsurprising show of humility from a star who has routinely shown as much. But it does come as a surprise in a sport where crying is generally frowned upon.
Though surely everyone can relate to his feeling, and it’s a great inside look at one of NASCAR’s all-time biggest stars.