Find out what legends Earnhardt Jr. would put up there
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KANSAS CITY, Kan. – One of the best ways to determine a sport's all-time legends is to simply pose the question: "If someone built a Mount Rushmore for 'Sport X,' who would be on it?"
So that's exactly the question we posed … to Dale Earnhardt Jr.
So, Dale, whose faces would you carve in the side of a South Dakota mountain?
"My mind goes back to the 70's and stuff … Richard (Petty) would have to be there," Earnhardt said Friday at Kansas Speedway. "It would be so tough. I would probably walk out of here and think of four more, but the guys that stand out to me are Richard and my father (Dale Earnhardt), David Pearson."
Okay, we're with you so far – that’s 381 Sprint Cup Series victories and 17 championships spread out between the three NASCAR Hall of Famers.
But whose face gets etched in stone as the fourth?
"The fourth is a toss-up between guys like (Cale) Yarborough and Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip, obviously.
"Jeff Gordon, Jimmie (Johnson) (have) got to be in that conversation."
Pretty high praise for his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, considering they're still padding their respective resumes as active drivers in the series.
Then again, Gordon and Johnson aren't your typical surefire Hall of Famers. The duo serve as two of the strongest faces of NASCAR and each individually dominated the sport for extended periods of time.
Look no further than Johnson's record five straight Cup titles. He won a sixth in 2013.
"(Johnson) could even probably be the third guy. I would imagine definitely Jimmie would be on there," Earnhardt said. "But the fourth could just be about a handful of guys. You would get a different opinion from probably everybody in the room maybe."