It really is quite the miracle that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is as well adjusted as he is. Losing a parent is always going to be extremely tough. That grief has a way of ravaging you for your whole life, even after you've relatively gotten used to the loss. But the NASCAR legend saw his father pass away doing the sport they loved most. No one would've blamed him for walking away from racing after such a deeply traumatizing experience.
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But still Dale stands a happy man with a family and his own racing team JR Motorsports. How did he navigate out of such a tragic circumstance into where he is today? Recently, Earnhardt Jr. spoke with Barstool to promote Amazon Prime Video's new docu-series about his father. There, he quips about how his friend and business partner Mike Davis also would've sworn he would be mentally screwed up after everything happened. However, he also says that this was also something he had mentally prepared himself for too.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Explains That He Always Knew His Father Would Die
"Mike Davis, who runs Dirty Mo Media where I do all my podcast content, that's what he says. He's like, I don't know how y'all aren't more f****** up. Because we've gone through some s***. It's tough. There's been some tough things, but I've always been of this belief that, I knew this was all gonna happen, right?" Earnhardt Jr. says.
I didn't know when I was gonna lose my dad, but I knew it was gonna happen. I didn't know when my mom might pass away, but I knew it was gonna happen, I don't get to choose to experience it or not," Dale explains. "And I've learned too, you get up the next morning, the day after dad died, you look out the window, people are going to work, people are doing their s***.
At the end of the day, Dale understood the world wouldn't stop for him. No matter what, he had to put one foot in front of the other. With that fresh perspective, he persevered despite the trauma. "The world is still going, and you can sit here in the sideline as long as you want, but eventually, you gotta get back in the groove and get back in the rotation and make something happen, do something, right?"
