MOORESVILLE, N.C. (May 12, 2017) – During his weekly media availability, Dale Earnhardt Jr. always bounces around on topics both arcane and mundane. Such was the case Friday at Kansas Speedway.
The 42-year-old driver handled queries on his just-announced home renovation show on the DIY network, social media and its effect on him and his fans, and the pavement on the 1.5-mile oval outside Kansas City.
Q: What is your role going to be on the DIY Network show on the Key West renovation?
DEJ: “I’ve been wanting to talk about this (laughs) because I think everybody’s got a little bit different idea. But, we bought this property in Key West a long time ago. We didn’t know what to do with it. And I was trying to figure out a way to renovate it but stay reasonable on our expense. And we also had some friends that we knew at the DIY Network and HGTV. And we reached out to those guys and said ‘hey, we really want to renovate this property.’ There’s kind of a cool process that you go through in Key West with the historic foundation on how you can renovate homes down there and what you can fix and can’t fix. Like if you have a rotten board, they only let you replace the rotten area. You’ve got to keep the rest, and so on. And they go through the whole house, sort of picking apart what you can and can’t fix. So, I was thinking this would make a great show.
“I think people connect this to the retirement and it’s absolutely not connected in any way. We were talking to them two and a half years ago about could we do this and would this be interesting to them. Would I have the time to do it? And we finally got it agreed upon to put it together. It’s going to be four episodes and it’s not going to take a ton of my time, but I definitely want to be involved; and Amy and I both want to be involved quite a bit. It just kind of connects to trying to renovate this home in a financially responsible way. And the show helps us do that and that’s the end of it. I don’t know what comes of it afterwards or what this might be a springboard to. We’re certainly open to anything. But, that’s really the story from the top to the very bottom of it. There’s no hidden agenda. The historical folks, the folks down there that are in charge of the Old Town, you can’t just demolish houses. They want everything to look the same and look like it’s been for a hundred years.”
Q: Can you talk about the Dew-S-A paint scheme you’re running this weekend?
DEJ: “Yeah, it’s a good-looking car. Mountain Dew has got a summer promotion with this DEW-S-A flavor they have mixed the Code Red, White Out and Voltage together. We did a little commercial shoot a couple of months ago at Hammerhead (productions) which was a lot of fun. We got a little infomercial that we shot and that will be fun for everybody to take a look at, but it’s good. I’ve tasted it out. It’s pretty awesome and only 170 calories. That is pretty good. Anyhow, yeah, the car looks great and this first practice I thought it was a lot of fun to drive and didn’t mind our lap times too much, so we will see what we’ve got in this second practice.”
Q: You had a close call in practice. How close was it, and how is the car this weekend?
DEJ: “It was real close. That would have been a back-up (car) for sure. You know, I looked up there and against the fence it looks like the (NASCAR Camping World) Trucks have been up there and there is some rubber down, so I thought it was pretty clean, but we went up there and it was a little dusty for whatever reason. That is where we are going to race. That seems like, you know, this track has greyed up quite a bit, good age on the surface and it will continue to get even more fun and wider. It’s pretty wide as it is, so I wanted to try to get up there as soon as I could and see how our car drove, so we didn’t find out anything in the race that we didn’t already know. We will get to practice a little bit more and see how that goes. Right now, we are kind of running in the middle of the track and that will change a little bit. That won’t really be what we are doing in the race. In the race, I think, we will be up at the top or at the bottom.”
Q: Who are the next wave of guys coming up that are going to become big names in the sport?
DEJ: “Well, (Kyle) Larson is a big name now, but he is going to be a guy that will be around for a very long time. Very talented, going to have tons of success, championships and all that good stuff. Chase (Elliott) is already a star and once he starts winning multiple races the fans awareness of him outside of the sport will grow and he will become a household name, if he is not already outside of the sport. You are going to have to have guys that can kind of reach beyond the grandstands and grab new fans. They are doing a lot of good things. They took a group of them to New York City and I know a couple of them guys like doing that stuff, a couple of them don’t. I never really did either when I was young, so I can’t say too much, but those are the things that will really help us connect our new guys to new fans and old fans as well. They’ve got to get out there and promote themselves and NASCAR realizes that and they are creating opportunities for those guys to do that.
“(Ryan) Blaney is a natural. He loves promoting the sport. He is great on social media. He says yes to anything. So, he is the kind of guy that is a sponsor’s dream, got a great personality and doesn’t mind going anywhere and everywhere to talk about what he is doing. They need guys like him. He would be a great example, I think, for a lot of the guys to look at and understand kind of how they need to be or how they need to engage. And there are some guys that do it really well and there are some other guys that are great drivers, great people, just a little bit shy or maybe not quite as into the social media thing. I mean I didn’t join until just recently. There are a lot of guys like that that sort of don’t want more on their plate and they look at it as a job or work, but it’s pretty important and I think that we just kind of promote these guys the best we can and there are some of them that make it really easy.
Q: Is there on bucket-list place for you where you would like to earn a victory more than anywhere else?
DEJ: “The (Coca-Cola) 600 would be awesome. Charlotte is our home track and haven’t won a point’s race there. So, I would like to win there, but there is a long list. Any of them that we haven’t won at would be great. Any win this year, right, would be good. But if I had to pick Charlotte would be… winning the (Coca-Cola) 600 would mean a lot. I always went to that race as a little kid, so I like to win at the places where I spent tons of time at growing up and that was one of them.”
Q: How has this track changed since the repave and do you prefer it?
DEJ: “Oh yeah. The new asphalt is not always a lot of fun, really narrow groove, hard to get rubber laid down and if you get outside of that groove it’s real treacherous, you saw Texas was pretty bad. But, it was the best-case scenario because of the work they did all week at Texas, but think about how Michigan used to be when it was repaved, very single-groove. Can’t pass when there is only one way around the track, so this place the color of the asphalt has changed quite a bit. It’s gotten slicker and a little more abrasive and we move up and run against the wall, run in the middle, run the bottom and drivers love to have options. If the car is not working perfectly in the groove they are in they can move around and then the old race track, old surface like that gives you that chance. You can’t go moving around on new asphalt; you will spin out and wreck. I think everybody loves it. I certainly didn’t hate the old track, as far as the configuration, but I like banking and like running against the wall and we can do that here.”
Q: What does it take for family like the Earnhardts, Pettys and Andrettis to have three generations of drivers?
DEJ: “Well, you get lucky, I think, but certainly when you are in this sport and you have children it gives them an opportunity to grow up around this environment whether they plug into it and find it interesting and want to pursue a career in it is up to them. But, sometimes they do and that is what you get. You get another generation that gets in there and falls in love with it and becomes a big part of it and sometimes you get that happening generation after generation. Obviously, the chances of your son or having a son or even a daughter, but more so the sons, they are going to want to race, whether they can drive or not. You go over to Millbridge (Speedway) and you will recognize everybody over there. They’ve got all their sons over there racing, some of their daughters even and it’s pretty impressive. So, there are a lot of guys that want to race, just some of them don’t get the breaks or don’t have the talent and if you get both then you get to stick around and that is how you develop the generations of successful families.”