A behind-the-scenes look at Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s media tour
Play: NASCAR Fantasy Live
Editor’s note: Dale Earnhardt Jr. was in New York City last week for a Road to Daytona 500 media tour and let NASCAR.com tag along.
NEW YORK — It’s cold at 9:30 a.m. in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Thirty degrees won’t come for four more hours, and the wind whips and swirls between the skyscrapers and billows down the sidewalk at the intersection of 67th and Columbus, where a line of people snakes down the sidewalk.
These huddled masses are lined up around the block outside 7 Lincoln Square, awaiting the opening of the doors that will bring both warmth and a seat inside the “LIVE with Kelly and Michael” studio.
NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt Jr. has already called in to “The Dan Patrick Show” as his first media obligation on Feb. 11, and he has four more stops on the docket as part of the Road to Daytona 500 Media Tour. He’s in a black Chevrolet SUV fighting morning traffic, but steadily making progress toward this tiny pocket of the largest city in the United States.
And he’s running late. Congested morning streets make it hardly Junior’s fault, but he bustles into the dressing room at the “LIVE” studio a bit behind schedule, and there’s a pair of show producers eager to get him prepped for his spot.
Part of their job is to make Earnhardt feel both welcome and comfortable. With Valentine’s Day three days away, it’s an easy talking point — and one Junior will hear relentlessly throughout both this trip, and at Media Day in Daytona Beach, Florida, the following day.
“Got any big plans for Valentine’s Day?” an assistant asks Dale Jr. after a few quick brushes in the makeup room.
“We’ve got a race,” Junior says.
“Oh, how romantic!”
• • •
It’s a commercial break, and host Michael Strahan signs an old New York Giants jersey that was tossed down from the balcony. He banters playfully with the audience, including one member who makes fun of his arm strength. “Hey, I wasn’t a quarterback,” he says. “I hit quarterbacks.”
An image of Earnhardt Jr. suddenly blares on the television screens behind the hosts, and Strahan teases, “You don’t know who our next guest is, do you?”
“Dale Jr.!” screams the audience, and there’s a few shrieks thrown in there as well.
The man himself strides on stage, and that’s where one first sees the transformation.
Quiet and reserved by nature, he is a media chameleon of sorts — his personality adapts to its surroundings. When the camera comes on, there’s Junior smiling, there’s Junior giving these well thought-out answers to questions he’s answered literally hundreds of times before.
He’s stopped just once in this building, by a pair of veterans who ask for a quick picture with NASCAR’s 12-time Most Popular Driver as he walks to his waiting ride in the building’s parking garage after the filming is completed.
“Thank you for your service,” he says before climbing into the back seat and being whisked away.
• • •
At the “Rachael Ray Show,” an employee named Vida creates a pet name for Earnhardt as she describes how the taping will go.
“Hey, pumpkin!” she says when he walks in. “OK, pumpkin?” after her final bit of instruction.
“Yes ma’am,” he replies. It’s how he always replies.
Vida appears flustered when Earnhardt is pulled away to do the stage.
“I have to get a picture with him,” she says on the way out.
Vida’s not the only one at this stop to feel the Junior Effect.
Chad Carter, a producer on the show, is from Concord, North Carolina. It’s a town just north of Charlotte (Charlotte Motor Speedway is actually in Concord), and about 20 miles southeast of Mooresville, where Junior grew up. He’s talked Earnhardt up all week, so the staff is eager to meet the man.
“In my area of North Carolina, it’s Jesus, Elvis and Dale Earnhardt Jr.,” Carter told the show’s associates, and even Ray herself, leading up to this day.
Carter left a note for Junior, along with a gift bag full of local beer, gin and bourbon. The wooden table has a stack of North Carolina-specific books, an attempt to make the glamorous green room feel more like Mooresville than Manhattan. A succinctly titled “Duke Sucks” sits on top.
Earnhardt thumbs through Carter’s 1994 Concord High School yearbook, and a book of photography by Hugh Morton, one of North Carolina’s most well-known native sons, while waiting to be called to the stage. The TV blares behind him. Someone brings food — flank steak and popovers.
Junior has already changed clothes so he doesn’t appear on different talk shows wearing the same outfit, and he reacts to a new piece of clothing like most everyone. He puts on his new striped suit jacket, fixes it, pulls on it, then checks it out in the mirror before finally asking, “Does this look OK?”
Vida will soon get her picture, and Carter is waiting for Earnhardt when he gets back to the green room after his interview with Ray and special guest host Regis Philbin. There isn’t much time for pleasantries, but Earnhardt greets Carter as he does everyone else he encounters on this trip — a look in the eye, a firm handshake and a one-word introduction: “Dale.”
“Thank you for the gift bag,” Earnhardt says. “That was very generous of you.”
• • •
At lunch, Earnhardt perks up at the prospect of food. It’s been a busy morning.
He offers suggestions to the sushi novice (black dynamite, on account of the tempura shrimp — the crunchiness hides the fact that there’s actual raw fish jammed in there), then expertly wields his chopsticks with his left hand while polishing off a salad, miso soup and two lines of brightly colored sushi.
Whether it’s eating or walking or making a decision, Earnhardt Jr. is always moving fast, as if his personality mirrors how he hopes to perform on the track. Maybe it does. But there is no wasted movement with this man in the city, no dallying.
When lunch is finished, he rises, puts on his jacket and is 25 feet away before anyone else has pushed a chair back from the table. He power-walks on the city sidewalks, reaching his vehicle before anyone else in his group and not waiting for the driver to emerge and open the door for him.
Now, at 1 p.m., is the only break Earnhardt has in the day, a 45-minute stretch in which he doesn’t have a commitment, and doesn’t need to be chugging along in his rented ride to get to his next commitment.
He can do anything he wants. And he wants to go to Bleecker Street.
Nestled near New York University, Bleecker Street is a trendy nightclub district in Greenwich Village. It also has a Burberry store. That is the purpose of this detour.
Junior looks like any man shopping for his significant other when he walks through the doors and is confronted with a dizzying array of pink purses, accessories and clothes.
He selects two scarves for his girlfriend Amy Reimann, but the merchandise continually catches his eye as the employees ring him up. He inspects a wallet, whose well-designed interior is stunning when he pops it open.
“That’s cool as hell,” he murmurs. Two scarves quickly becomes two scarves plus a wallet … plus a shawl … plus a new purse to replace the one stolen from Amy on vacation.
Not even the loud buzz as he walks out the door — two of the security devices hadn’t been removed — harshens his mood.
• • •
That famous selfie in Victory Lane at Daytona International Speedway last year is the first image of Dale Earnhardt Jr. that people on Twitter glimpsed. It was the first tweet from @DaleJr, and it kicked off a year in which Junior delighted his fans and followers with Throwback Thursday photos, race predictions and late-night Q&A sessions.
It directly led to this penultimate media tour stop at one of the Twitter offices, where a bunch of hip 20-somethings sequester Junior into a conference room and film his reasoning — and reaction — to joining the platform.
“It’s hard to do,” Earnhardt says. “You can’t try it for a week and go ‘It’s not for me.’ I needed a moment. …
“But it also gives us a way to say we’re confident, and fans want to hear that confidence. And when we win, we get to celebrate with all our fans.”
The Twitter folks exude New York. They are trendy, they wear jeans to work and they are young. Yet the 40-year-old Earnhardt does not look like an outsider. He looks like he could be either Twitter’s guest for the day, or one of its executives.
That’s something else we learn from this trip. Earnhardt somehow is both the laid-back guy from rural North Carolina and a media mogul that can blend into the biggest city in the United States, looking like he belongs on Wall Street.
It’s a dichotomy that shows up everywhere, from the people he meets to his Southern politeness, even to the way he dresses. Sure, he’s wearing blue jeans (Wrangler, no doubt) but his black dress shoes are gleaming as if they’ve been freshly polished, and he bought a new striped sports coat for this occasion.
He gives thoughtful, professional answers on questions that need them. But when he’s off camera, and sees a beautiful three-layer cake the Twitter folks surprised him with, he grins. “Hell yeah!” he says.
• • •
He arrives at the day’s last stop at 3:32 p.m. It’s the fifth hit of his day, a day that began in North Carolina before the sun came up, has spanned states and necessitates that a somewhat introverted man talk almost nonstop.
Junior has not yawned once. In fact, this day of racing talk has him amped for the start of the season.
An offseason with virtually no testing had the driver itching to get back in the car alongside his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, one of whom is Jeff Gordon.
This is Gordon’s last full-time season, and it has Earnhardt thinking about his own future. Junior tackled the topic of retirement multiple times last year, and admits it’s almost an obsessive thing to mull when one of the greats hangs it up.
“I often think about retirement, and what it is that makes people retire,” Earnhardt Jr. says. “I wonder about myself. ‘What is going to take me out of the car? Is it gonna be family? Is it gonna be health?’
“I can tell you I wouldn’t step out for the car right now for anything.”
Minutes later, his “Pardon the Interruption” taping is finished. And one final time, we see the two sides of Dale.
He’s leaving a beautiful midtown studio, the type of place so very few people have access to, walking away from the marble flooring and fancy recording equipment. It’s a building that so few people — really, so few professional athletes — will ever be qualified to enter.
His day is done, but there’s still one final piece of business as the elevator takes him down and spits him back toward the crowded streets.
Before he leaves, Dale Earnhardt Jr. heads to a small nook of a convenience store and buys a Powerball ticket.
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