The Tragic Truth About Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has undeniably done very well for himself, spending nearly 30 years as a professional driver on the NASCAR racing circuit. With 27 wins to his credit including two checkered-flag finishes at the Daytona 500, NASCAR's flagship event, Dale Jr. is ranked 29th overall in the league's list of best-ever drivers and still enjoys status as stock car racing's sole third-generation champion. Those achievements aside, Dale Jr. had long performed against the star-spangled backdrop of his legendary father, Dale Earnhardt, a seven-time series champion dubbed "The Intimidator" by fans, the same base that called Dale Jr. "Little E" when he was an upstart struggling with his pedigree stereotype. "I just saw, even at an early age before I was a driver that growing up in that that man's shadow was going to be a real hard challenge," he remarked, per Racing News.

That changed when his father was killed during a Daytona 500 race in 2001, leaving Dale Jr. to carry on the family name. He's also witnessed friends lose their lives during competition and has cheated death himself in a racecar numerous times. But his life away from the track has also yielded plenty of other tragedies from fragile family relationships to mental illness. Still, kept all that under perspective when he retired from his beloved sport in 2017. "I guess what I'm saying is that I accomplished way more than I ever dreamed," he said to ESPN. "So I'm good."

Born in Kannapolis North Carolina October 10, 1974, Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't benefit from his father's notoriety as a scrappy Southern-fried contender on the NASCAR circuit. A few years after his birth, his parents divorced, leaving Brenda in charge of the toddler and his older sister Kelley. Dale Jr. hasn't said much about those impoverished years, although he recalled more vividly the time their house got destroyed by fire. "I do remember some of the, you know, images of that day and what that experience was like for me," said Dale Jr. in a fire safety clip for Nationwide Children's Hospital. "Someone coming into the bedroom and getting me up, [I] walked out of the doorway of the bedroom and looked to the left, and it was just a wall of flame."

Fortunately, the family escaped unscathed. But unable to care for her children, Brenda decided to move back to her mother's place in Norfolk, Virginia, and gave the kids to their father, whose own life was far more stable. But a switch in households and guardians marked the beginning of a difficult transition for him. "So I was at my mom's watching our house burn down in the morning, and then that evening, I was at my dad's house rummaging through my toy box in the garage, seeing if all my toys had made the trip," recalled Dale Jr. on "The Dan Patrick Show." "And that's difficult."

Besides surviving a fire that leveled his family's home, the transition from living with his mother to occupying the same household as his father wasn't easy for Dale Earnhardt Jr. After all, he was only six years old at the time and with Dale Sr. on his way to becoming a NASCAR legend, he seldom interacted with his boy. "We just didn't have a relationship," Dale Jr. said to sports journalist Graham Bensinger. "We didn't do a lot of hanging out. We didn't communicate much unless he was telling me where to stand, or where to be, or what to fix, or what to clean up. We didn't go hunting together, he didn't take me on trips. Like when he would go do things, I was never like an idea or a consideration." 

Whatever moments the two had together were hardly heartwarming, as Dale Jr. felt that his father considered him to be a disappointment with a precarious future. On "The Joe Rogan Experience," he related one story about his father asking him to haul a bucket of feces, a task Dale Jr. couldn't complete because of the weight of the contents. "And I felt like that set the tone for our relationship," he said. "I feel like that was our relationship in a nutshell for most of my teenage years. You know, he looked at me, as you know, 'I don't know what he'll amount to.'" 

As a kid, Dale Earnhardt Jr. struggled to get his father's approval, and failing that, resorted to getting his father's attention instead. Unfortunately, that meant getting into situations that would annoy his parents. "I stole $80 out of my dad's change jar and bought a GameBoy," Dale Jr. recalled, per RacingNews.co. "[His stepmother] Teresa put locks on every door in the house after that. That was pretty damn embarrassing and shameful. I was literally locked out of every door, but my own." Dale Jr., who often referred to himself as a "troubled kid," also wound up getting punted from Christian school and a military education institution for his disruptive behavior. When discipline failed, the family sent him to therapy.

"I've been in therapy in and out of my whole life," he said on "The Dan Patrick Show." 'I was in therapy as a child, and definitely think that therapy is useful, a very useful tool if you meet the right therapist." He also credits couples therapy for saving his relationship with Amy Reimann whom he married in 2016. Long before they tied the knot, their romance was dotted with tension to the point where they were referred to a counselor named Jane. "Jane was the reason why we were married," said Dale Jr. on "In Depth With Graham Bensinger." "Jane is the reason why we're having a family. And, Jane is the reason why every day is way better." 

Flooring a stock car at speeds that exceed 200 mph on straightaways and heading into turn embankments as steep as 33 degrees (like Talladega's superspeedway) require intense focus, gritty determination, and a complete absence of fear. On all counts, Dale Earnhardt Jr. certainly had the right stuff while competing, but away from the track, he does have one phobia, and an unusual one at that. It's a fear of jewelry, something medical practitioners call kosmemophobia, a condition Dale Jr. has had since childhood. He blames it on his older sister Kelley who used to regularly terrorize the youngster with all sorts of those shiny accessories. "My sister used to chase me around the house with it, and it's creepy to me," he said at a NASCAR Media Day gathering, per Sporting News. "I can be in the same room with it and it doesn't bother me on other people. But if you watch Amy, she doesn't wear any, so that's a dead giveaway."

That phobia also turned into an obstacle when Dale Jr. was about to tie the knot with his better half Amy Reimann. "That was such a conversation between me and her as we were getting married. It's like I don't want to wear a ring. What are we gonna do?" he said in a promotion video for QALO, a ring manufacturer whose product Dale Jr. ultimately chose because its use of silicone materials didn't trigger his phobia.

Racing bumper-to-bumper and side-by-side against 40 other drivers at death-defying speeds is hardly an occasion to make friends, although Dale Earnhardt Jr. managed to bond with a few competitors throughout his career. One of them was Adam Petty, who like Dale Jr., got into racing with a pedigree connection as the grandson of Richard Petty, NASCAR's most victorious driver. "Adam and I met each other at an early age, and from that point on our lives and careers were virtually parallel," said Dale Jr. after donating $1 million to his friend's pet charity project, per Heart of North Carolina. "He was as genuine as they get and a great friend." 

Unfortunately in 2000, Petty died after his car hit a concrete barrier during a practice run for a race in New Hampshire. "It is a real blow to hear this news," said Dale Jr. to the LA Times after learning about his buddy's death. "We shared a lot of interests and we shared a lot of laughs–he was always smiling and easygoing." Petty was also generous, once lending Dale Jr. a pair of racing shoes at a Boston event after realizing his requisite footwear had disappeared and the two had the same shoe size. "And I was like, 'I need to borrow some shoes, if you got 'em,'" said Dale Jr. said on the "Dirty Mo Media" podcast. "He had a pair." Dale Jr. still owns those shoes.

In 2001, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had reason to celebrate when he finished second at NASCAR's flagship Daytona 500 behind teammate Michael Waltrip. But that joy turned into grief after finding out that his legendary father had slammed into the concrete guardrail in the final turn of the race. Distraught, Dale Jr. rushed to the hospital, where his worst fears were confirmed: Dale Earnhardt Sr. was dead. "I went back in my bus in the room and shut the door to my bedroom and just sat there," Dale Jr. told ESPN about what he did after hearing the news. "I thought to myself in that very moment, 'I'm gonna have to do this by myself.' The rest of my life. Having Dad was like a cheat sheet, like knowing all the answers to everything. And I was like, 'Man, I'm going to have to do this without that for the rest of my life.'"

Dale Jr. struggled with the loss, crashing his car the following week in Rockingham, later making it clear to the media about his mindset at the time. "I never wanted to see another racetrack or race car," he said, per Bleacher Report. A year later, he came to terms surrounding his father's death, telling the Daytona Beach News-Journal, "Instead of being sad about it, I think about all the awesome times we had and the good things we did and stuff he would be proud of today."

In 2004, during a NASCAR off-week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. nearly lost his life while practicing for an American Le Mans competition in Sonoma, California. After bumping against a retaining wall, his modded Corvette burst into flames, engulfing the interior. He managed to get out of the burning vehicle 14 seconds later, with second-degree burns to his body. "At that moment, you think of everything," recalled Dale Jr. on "60 Minutes." "You think, 'Could I could die here?'  You know, this could be how I go. This would really suck if that's the way I'm going out." 

Inexplicably, Dale Jr. credited his father for making it out of that burning car alive. "I don't want to put some weird you know psycho twist on it like he was pulling me out or anything, but he had a lot to do with me getting out of that car from the movement I made to unbuckle my belt to land on the stretcher, I had no idea what happened." He later asked his PR flack to find the person who pulled him out of the wreck only to find out he escaped on his own. 

Earnhardt reflected on the incident six years later at a media conference. "It's probably not healthy to daydream about situations like that," he said to reporters, per SB Nation, "But I never realized it would be as hot and crazy as it was." 

After impressive runs in the lower-tiered NASCAR Busch Series, Dale Earnhardt Jr. eventually won the respect of his father, who asked him to join his own racing company Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI) to compete in the top-ranked Winston Cup Series in 1998. Dale Jr. did well with DEI, winning 17 races on the Winston Circuit, but started floundering after 2004, his hottest year in NASCAR. Dale Jr. felt the answer lay in getting a controlling interest in DEI so that he could restructure it into a winning organization, but ran into conflict with stepmother Teresa Earnhardt, who inherited the team after Dale Sr. died in the 2001 Daytona 500. Negotiations were at a dead end and Teresa knew that Dale Jr. wasn't happy at DEI. "If Dale Jr. doesn't want to stick around here we'll make another Dale Jr.," she once remarked, per Whiskey Riff.

In 2007, Dale Jr. jumped ship for Hendrick Motorsports, where he would stay for a decade, although he only won nine races with the team. Dale Jr. believes things would have been different if he was able to connect with his stepmother. "We just didn't have much of a relationship," he said on "In Depth With Graham Bensinger." "And if opportunities were the same, I would have stayed. I don't know. It's hard to say, I can't even imagine what I would have done if things were different one way or the other." 

Even when he was a child, Dale Earnhardt Jr. never felt resentful that his biological mother Brenda Jackson relinquished her responsibility of caring for the youngster and sister Kelley. He knew she agonized over her choice after the family home burned down. "My mom is broke and she has nowhere to turn," recalled Dale Jr. on "The Dan Patrick Show." "So she had to move back to Norfolk Virginia to live with her mother because that's the only place she could go. And she made a very difficult choice to give up custody of me and my sister at that moment to my dad because she knew that he could provide for us." Eventually, Brenda found her own stability when she married a Norfolk firefighter in 1985, but eagerly moved with her family to North Carolina to be reunited with Dale Jr. and Kelley and do the books for their JR Motorsports racing team in 2004.

Brenda considered herself lucky to be back with her children, when she said in 2018, per CNN, "I've got two bright, beautiful kids that I am very proud of." She died in 2019 after a lengthy battle with cancer. "I'm glad her suffering has ended and she can be at peace," tweeted Dale Jr. "She would be in tears of happiness over the words of support and remembrance she's been shown today. Our family appreciates it as well. She will live in our hearts forever." 

You'd be hard-pressed to find any NASCAR footage of a race that didn't involve a car crash. But while fatalities are rare (Dale Earnhardt Sr. was the last NASCAR driver to die during an event, back in 2001), injuries are still common, including concussions. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has admitted he's had as many as 25 concussions during his professional racing career, and often worried about the long-term effects of those shots to the head. "I'm real concerned about what this means for me as I get older," he said on "In Depth With Graham Bensinger." "You know, am I going to have issues with my memory and my personality? You know there are things that are gonna be affected, are they already affected? Just not aware of it..."

Dale Jr. pinpointed his most serious concussion to a 2012 race in Kansas, where a blown tire triggered a high-speed collision with a wall. Earnhardt sat out at least two subsequent races to keep an eye on his symptoms. "You really can't get a measurement of that until you're in the car," he said in "Beyond the Flag." "There's just no way of knowing until you can drive." After the umpteenth series of hits by 2016, Dale Jr. sought treatment from University of Pittsburgh Medical Center physician Michael Collins. "Micky told me that if I ever did have any issues that he could fix it," said Dale Jr. to People, "And I believe in that." 

With no more track smash-ups to worry about, Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired from racing in 2017. But two years later, an incident over which he had no control and one involving his entire family could have morphed into tragedy. That was when a Cessna carrying Dale Jr., his wife, and daughter crashed in Tennessee. The family found themselves in a fiery wreck as Dale Jr. struggled to open an emergency door to no avail until one quick-thinking pilot managed to kick it open and usher the passengers to safety. "We are truly blessed that all on board escaped with no serious injuries, including our daughter, our two pilots, and our dog Gus," he tweeted.

The crash occurred shortly after the plane landed at Elizabethton International Airport when it bounced off the ground twice before catching fire. Dale Jr. and his family were admitted to the hospital and were shortly discharged without any serious injuries. A National Transportation Safety Board report later blamed pilot error for the crash. While shaken, the accident didn't deter Dale Jr. from taking any subsequent flights. "In a week, [I] was back on a plane or even sooner was back on a plane flying," he said on the "Bussin' With the Boys" podcast. "Now a little bit more nervous about landings and so forth, but I got right back to it." Earnhardt also returned to racing part-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2023.