Dale Jr. was more concerned about Dillon than celebrating his win
RELATED: Dale Jr.: ‘That was terrifying to watch’
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is NASCAR’s perennial Most Popular Driver for many reasons. He’s a winner on track, he’s hip and engaging, he appeals to old-school and new generation fans and he’s got one of the most beloved pedigrees in the sport.
Here’s another reason, Earnhardt’s actions after winning the rain-delayed Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway speak to the kind of compassion and perspective fans want their cherished heroes to have. Dale does.
Even as Earnhardt claimed the checkered flag for his milestone 25th Sprint Cup Series victory in the early hours of Monday morning, there was no celebratory cheering on his radio — only raw fear and genuine concern as he watched a frightening wreck transpire in his rearview mirror.
"Oh my God. … that looked awful,” Earnhardt screamed into his team radio, his voice shaking.
"Oh no. Oh no. Did you see that?” He asked in disbelief watching Austin Dillon‘s car launch into the front-stretch catch fence, land back on track upside down and take another hard hit from Brad Keselowski‘s spinning car. The impact was so severe Dillon’s engine separated from the car and was still smoking yards away.
Earnhardt’s team assured him that help was on the way for Dillon and that included some of Earnhardt’s pit crew since they were close to the scene.
"Is everybody all right? Is everybody in the grandstands OK?” Earnhardt continued to press. Told that Dillon was out of the car and gave a thumbs-up, Earnhardt was still concerned.
"So all the drivers are good and everybody’s good in the grandstands?" he asked, still shaken. "Man, that looked scary."
Reassured again, that it looked like everyone was OK, Earnhardt finally praised his team for the win, but insisted, "I’m going to wait (on any victory celebration). I want to make sure everyone is good.”
It’s hard to listen to Earnhardt’s emotional radio transmission at the time of the accident.
It’s moments like this when you find out the true character of someone.
And for Earnhardt there was an immediate, instinctual priority shift. The trophy could wait.
Nearly an hour after the race had finished — long after Dillon and the other drivers had been checked and released from the infield car center — Earnhardt came into the Daytona media center still looking preoccupied and subdued, not like someone that had just earned a major victory.
"You’re just on the verge of tears, to be honest with you, because I think that the first thing that goes through your mind is — and I saw everything in the mirror pretty clearly — that car really went up in the air pretty high and I could just see that it was a black object that hit the fence and I’m assuming I’m looking at the undercarriage of the car,” Earnhardt said.
"I’ve never really seen a roll cage handle those catch fences very well and I just was very scared for whoever that was. I didn’t even know what car it was, so I was just very scared for that person.
"I didn’t care about anything except for just figuring out who was OK. We pulled down to pit road there and (teammate) Jimmie (Johnson) got out of his car, come around that’s the first thing we talked about. He was frightened as well and … we just really wanted some information about everybody.
"You imagine the news from the grandstands is going to come in a little slower, so you start thinking about that, waiting on that, seeing if everybody is OK there.
"I mean the racing doesn’t matter anymore.”
Although he didn’t specifically say as much, you have to imagine this kind of incident at Daytona is especially hard for Earnhardt. He lost his father and namesake, seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt, in a fatal crash here on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Earnhardt Senior drove a black No. 3 for Richard Childress Racing, as Dillon does now.
Although, in situations like this, it doesn’t matter if you have a special connection to the driver. Earnhardt explained how times are different now. As the sport has evolved and modernized, drivers actually spend more off-track time together now whether it’s promoting sponsors or sharing a barbeque in the motor coach lot.
"It’s an awful feeling,” Earnhardt said of watching a competitor be involved in such a serious crash. "We sit in those bus lots together, we all have become closer friends, I think, because of the environment.
"It aint’ like the old days where everybody is at different hotels and you never saw each other and you come to the track and run over each other and fight each other and not like each other.
"We all sort of live in this community and you may not like everybody, but you damn sure grow to respect them and don’t want to see anybody get hurt.”
And yes, Earnhardt conceded, this is the kind of thing that does cause you to question your mortality. This sport is like no other.
"I questioned it when I got my concussions and I’m sure I went through something when Daddy died,” Earnhardt reflected. "I think when I got injured a couple years ago I realized how close I came to not racing anymore and how quickly this can be taken away from you.
"I think turning 40 also helped me learn to appreciate this a lot more and try to really enjoy the opportunity I have because I’ve got such an amazing opportunity. I hate to go on about it but to be in these cars that I’ve got, to be with the team I’ve got, I feel so lucky and so blessed. When you get older, you definitely start to realize how fragile things are and how lucky you are to be able to be a part of it.”
Dillon’s crash and Earnhardt’s reaction to it is a not-so-gentle reminder that this sport is really much more about the people than it is the racing or the cars.
