Dale Jr. Says He Wanted To Stay At DEI Following His Father’s Death: “I Was Calling Her Bluff, & She Was Gonna Call Mine”

It just makes you wonder what could’ve been.

Of course, if you know anything about the Earnhardt’s or NASCAR, you’ve probably heard a lot about how much fans strongly dislike Teresa Earnhardt (that’s putting it nicely), and her relationship with Dale Earnhardt’s kids Kerry, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley is strained, at the absolute best. When Earnhardt tragically and suddenly lost his life in the final turn of the Daytona 500, Teresa suddenly inherited another role: NASCAR team owner.

Dale Earnhardt had started his race team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., in the 1980s to field cars for himself in the then-Busch Series. The team eventually grew into the Cup Series, and in 2000 he began fielding a car for his son, the now-iconic Budweiser #8 Chevy. Longtime NASCAR fans know how the story ends: The sport’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., ended up leaving the team his father built after a bitter (and public) battle with his stepmother over ownership in the company, and the team folded just a few years later, though she initially thought she could just make “another Dale Jr.” More on that HERE.

It’s one of those major “what if” scenarios, because many believe Dale Jr. would’ve won a championship had he been able to keep the company and continue down that path, and I tend to agree, but who knows… it’s nice to think that would’ve been the case, anyways.

The whole DEI saga is a topic that Jr. has discussed on his Dale Jr. Download podcast before, and during an episode with his childhood friend and close friend of the Earnhardt family, Tony Eury Jr., Tony shed some light on a different side of Teresa. Following the death of Sr., Teresa and Jr. were in a heated, public battle over ownership of DEI. Because details on how it should be run, or who should run it, were not in a will, it all went to Teresa.

Tony was a car chief most of Jr.’s time at DEI, and they grew up together, so they obviously had a very close relationship both personally and professionally. When Jr.’s former co-host Mike Davis asked about Eury’s position in the battle, which he was clearly in the middle of in many aspects. Jr. wanted 51% of DEI to stay, and his friend knew that wasn’t possible for him to pull off at the time.

I found it really interesting when he talked about how Teresa truly thought the legacy of her husband was enough to sustain the company, when in reality, everything about it was tied to Dale Jr. and the sponsors that wanted an Earnhardt to be tied to, making Jr. even more imperative following the death of Dale Sr.:

“Well at the time, I was thinking, how is he gonna come up… she’s gonna have such a number on it that he isn’t going to be able to come up with 51%. The problem is, at that particular time… I don’t wanna talk bad about Teresa, because she has done a lot. You know, she has issues and other things, but at the end of the day when she’s sitting there, she honestly thought that the Dale Earnhardt Legacy was so big that she didn’t need Dale Jr.

And for her personal deal, yeah, we wanna keep Dale’s legacy, but at the end of the day DEI can’t survive without Dale Jr. Every contract, every sponsor, everything is tied to him. Some way or another, if there’s a sponsor going on the 15 car, somehow, they wanna be tied to Dale Jr. They wanna have something that’s connected to an Earnhardt name. So you’re sitting there looking at all that, and you’re like, this ship is taking on water.”

He did share a fond memory of Teresa showing up to the shop following the death of her husband, which he appreciated, even though she had, and has, a bad reputation among fans. Eury also explained how he felt for her during that time, and understood why she no longer wanted to go to races or be so involved. Of course, it ultimately led to the demise of the team, but as a human, you can’t help but understand her feelings on that in many ways:

“And what I mean by not being bad to Teresa is, here’s my whole thing on the Teresa deal. Y’all have had issues or whatever, but at the end of day, when I drove back into that place in 2001 from Dale being killed, she was in that guard shack and waved at every person that pulled into that shop. That little black glove come out, and I was like, well damn, if she’s here, I’m here. Two, I look at it as, okay, she just lost everything that she had.

You know, like, Dale was her shining knight or whatever. Why would she want to go back to a race track? It’s like, she just lost everything because of that, and it’s like, you got Dale and Kelley but they’re not hers. all she’s got his Taylor. I said, why would she even wanna go back to race track? For her to keep that business open for another seven years, and for her to have to go to the race track where she lost everything, it’s gotta be hard on her. It’s gotta be. I mean, when you love somebody like that and you lose them there, you don’t wanna go back.

I mean, you went down for Daytona before we ran at baseball car for two weeks just to make sure that your head was right. I look at that with her, and I was just like, man, I kind of feel sorry for in a way. But it was always, we had Theresa Standard Time. She did things on her schedule, and because she wouldn’t show up to events at the DEI deal, it cost us a lot of sponsorship, it cost this and that. But at the end of day, I can’t blame her because… I miss Dale Sr. every day.”

The business clearly suffered, and it’s easy to see looking back now that she should’ve relinquished and let Jr. carry on his father’s legacy with his team, but that’s simply not what happened.

Jr. added that, in his mind, Teresa would just give him the 51% outright, which got a good laugh from everyone at the table:

“It’s funny that you thought she was gonna put up a number and I would need to pay a number, because in my mind, and I maybe I’m crazy one, when I said I’ll  stay for 51% that I was gonna get 50% percent out right for nothing.”

Eury responded:

“We were all thinking, this boy ain’t got, I mean… I’m like, this boy ain’t got that much horsepower behind him yet. He’s good, but I don’t think he’s got that much.”

Dale Jr. admitted that, had they made the deal he wanted, he would’ve stayed and he was willing to work with his stepmom, even though they were bound to butt heads and have disagreements. Jr. seems to think it would’ve kept them both honest. Who knows, maybe they would’ve been the dream team had they been forced to work together and figure it out:

“If she would’ve said, ‘Deal,’ I would’ve stayed… and I was ready to… I was calling her bluffs, and she was gonna call mine and we were gonna do it.”

It’s still sad how DEI ended and imagine what it could’ve been, but Jr. has done extremely well for himself, and started his own race team Jr. Motorsports which runs mostly Xfinity cars now, but is seemingly looking to expand eventually into the Cup Series full-time one day.

It’s not hard to imagine Dale Sr. would’ve wanted his son to carry on his legacy as a driver, and one day, an owner, and Jr. has managed to do that and then some with his own team and everything he’s done since retiring as a driver. He’s made his dad proud in spite of all of the large, very real challenges, and that’s extremely impressive and admirable, especially considering the circumstances and what led him to strike out on his own.

If you’re interested in more on the Earnhardt’s, Dale’s legacy, and details on their personal lives in his heyday, you definitely need to check out the recently-released four-part Earnhardt series on Prime video.

The podcast clip:

The post Dale Jr. Says He Wanted To Stay At DEI Following His Father’s Death: “I Was Calling Her Bluff, & She Was Gonna Call Mine” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.