Dale Earnhardt has been dead for nearly 25 years, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired as a NASCAR Cup driver nine years ago. Even so, NASCAR fans cannot seem to get enough of the stories about \u2018The Intimidator\u2019 or Junior.<\/p>\n
On a recent episode of the Dinner Drive podcast with Kyle Petty, Junior delved back into his personal memory bank of growing up as Dale Sr.\u2019s son.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, it\u2019s hard to be the son of one of the greatest NASCAR drivers in history. Junior learned early in life that as the son of the elder Earnhardt\u2014a.k.a. \u2018The Intimidator\u2019\u2014he\u2019d be subject to harassment and bullying because of who he was and who his father was.<\/p>\n
Junior tried to make the best of it, but there were times where\u2014as much as he didn\u2019t want his father to get involved\u2014the elder Earnhardt would have to step in either to protect his son or, if his son acted out or did poorly in school, give him a good kick in the pants.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot everything\u2019s a bed of roses,\u201d Junior said about his younger life to Petty. \u201cI went to a lot of private schools. Dad finally decided, we\u2019re going to go to a public school in Mooresville (North Carolina) when I was going into the ninth grade. And I thought, when I go to this public school, I\u2019m probably going to have a lot of friends, and everybody\u2019s going to know who my dad is, and they\u2019re all going to think that\u2019s crazy cool, and I\u2019m going to enjoy all that attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the exact opposite. There were a couple kids that anytime that anything happened that was bad, they were ones that want to point it out to you. I remember a good example of this was when Bobby Allison blew a tire at Talladega<\/a> in the Miller (High Life Beer) car. Dad was behind him, like three or four car lengths, \u00a0not even close.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe cars were all strung out coming, and his tire blows out, and he goes into the grandstands, it just tears down the fence. It was a bad deal. I go to school on Monday, and three or four kids come up to me and go, \u2018\u2019Your daddy\u2019s a dirty driver. He wrecked Bobby Allison.\u2019 It was that kind of thing every week. If Dad didn\u2019t do good, you weren\u2019t real excited to go back to school on Monday cuz they were going to tell you about it,\u201d elaborated<\/a> the now Xfinity team owner.<\/p>\n Junior tried to shake off the youthful criticism from his peers, but it definitely hurt.<\/p>\n At the same time, criticism of his father by his fellow students lit a fire inside Junior that he, too, wanted to be a race car driver someday.<\/p>\n It was right around that same time that Junior more or less had an epiphany, and he made the conscious decision that he wanted to continue the family business. His grandfather, Ralph, was a racer; obviously, his father and namesake was a racer, and Junior wanted to be a third-generation racer.<\/p>\n