MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Aug. 17, 2017) – “It’s Bristol, baby!”
With those words, Dale Earnhardt Jr. encapsulated the unvarnished, bare-knuckle style that accompanies one of the most iconic tracks on the NASCAR circuit. That he uttered those words in Victory Lane at “The Last Great Colosseum” just adds to the mystique.
As the 42-year-old Earnhardt Jr. prepares to make what could be his final appearances on the .533-mile concrete oval - he’s doing double-duty for the first time this season in both the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Cup Series - he’ll enter the arena with one last opportunity to make it to the roof of the South Building in Turns 3 and 4 at BMS and recapture that feeling of 2004, when he was on top of the world.
During his interview following that victory, Earnhardt Jr. called it perhaps “the biggest victory of my career.” Considering that he has two Daytona 500 victories to his name, that’s saying something about how important Bristol is in the NASCAR firmament.
There is ample evidence that such is the case, too. The night before earning his first—and so far only—NASCAR Cup Series victory at Bristol, he had dominated the NASCAR Xfinity Series event. Winning on Saturday night made him the first driver to ever sweep the weekend at one of NASCAR’s toughest tracks, and it came five years to the day after his late father’s last of nine Cup victories at Bristol.
“I am worn out,” he said after that race. “That was a long green-flag run; I think it wore everybody out. This is one of the biggest wins of my career. This is huge for me, and awesome for my team, we really needed this.
“I never thought I would win a (NXS) race and a Cup race in the same weekend at Bristol. Good Lord.”
The victory was his fourth of the season and 13th of his young career, and he would go on to win twice more before the season ended on the way to a fifth-place finish in the series points.
Such was his domination of the Friday night NXS event that his Dale Earnhardt Inc. crew put that setup on his Cup car prior to the race, and it worked out, especially over the 85-lap green-flag run to the finish.
“It worked out,” commented Earnhardt. “I learned a little bit about a different type of line to run last night. We had the same set-up we used in the car last night. That long green-flag run, that was something. I have never seen anything like that here. We were out there leading, and I was just thinking of all the ways I could get my ass beat.”
That wasn’t going to happen, not on that night. He had started the race in 30th spot, which is usually a death knell for any chance at victory, but had worked his way to the lead at lap 64.
Earnhardt Jr. led a 295 of the race’s 500 circuits, taking the lead for good on lap 416. The rest of the field combined led just 205 laps on the evening.
In the NXS race on Friday, Earnhardt Jr. had to hold off Matt Kenseth on a restart at the end. In his career at Bristol, he has made 34 Cup starts, with the one victory, eight top-five and 16 top-10 finishes. In NXS competition, he has the one victory in 11 starts, seven top-five and nine top-10 finishes. He’s led a combined 1,004 laps there, 790 in Cup and 214 in NXS.
That season, 2004, was his best in terms of victories with six, and he was in the thick of the championship battle and even took the point lead by winning at Talladega, but he was controversially fined points and cash by NASCAR for saying what it deemed an unnecessary word on live TV in Victory Lane. He won again at Phoenix, but it wasn’t enough, and he finished fifth in the standings.
That season also is important because it was the same year he was badly burned at Sonoma during a sports-car race. A month before the Bristol sweep, Earnhardt Jr. paired with Boris Said in one of the Chevrolet Corvette team cars to gain more experience for his Rolex 24 Hour competition, and was driving the car during the opening stint at Sonoma when he spun and hit a tire barrier. The car caught fire, and Earnhardt Jr. tumbled out of the wrecked racer with second-degree burns on his legs and neck.
The recovery, smack in the middle of the hotly contested NASCAR Cup season, was a pain, to say the least. The following week, at New Hampshire, Earnhardt Jr. started the car to earn the points, but gave it over to Martin Truex Jr. for the remainder of the race. He competed as normal at Indy, Watkins Glen and Michigan before arriving at Bristol for the night race. He was still recovering.
“I had this big open wound on my leg, and I was having to wrap it every day, about twice a day,” Earnhardt said during an episode of his eponymous Dirty Mo Radio podcast, the Dale Jr. Download earlier this year.
“At one point that weekend, like Friday or Saturday, I was getting in the car for practice, and I was trying to get my seatbelt tight, and one of my crew members came in there to help me and accidently punched me in the leg – and oh my God, did that hurt,” he said. “It started to just bleed so badly. I had the wound doing really well (up to that point), and that set me back. That busted it open, and it was bleeding like crazy, so I'm changing it out, but it's sore and hurting.”
Little did he know that the thrill of victory would be tempered by the sting of free-flowing celebratory champagne.
“We win the race and champagne got down inside there in Victory Lane, so I'm standing in Victory Lane during all those pictures, and my leg is on fire because of the champagne going into that. It was terrible. It was so bad.”
That’s about the only thing that was bad that weekend, given what he accomplished. Being the first to bring out the Bristol broom was a major deal, and so was overcoming the pain of his injuries from Sonoma.
When he crossed the finish line under the checkered flag, the roar that went up from 160,000 fans rivaled anything given to his famous father. The place just...exploded, and it went on for several minutes. Celebrating his unique accomplishment, Earnhardt Jr. planted the front bumper of his No. 8 Chevrolet against the wall near the start-finish line and just dumped the clutch, burning the rear tires down to the cords.
That was a helluva couple of days in Thunder Valley for Earnhardt Jr. and the rest of JR Nation. If it happens again this weekend, in either race, you can bet that the roar from the crowd will top even that of one night in August, 13 years ago.
Photo Credit: Bristol Motor Speedway