NASCAR Exec, Ty Norris, Tells Hilarious Story About Wrangling Dale Earnhardt Jr. Out Of Bed To Accept His Dad’s One And Only “Most Popular Driver” Award

He made the right decision in the end.

Recently, Dale Earnhardt Jr. shared an interview from a few years back with Ty Norris on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, and he had plenty of great stories about his friend and former boss, the late, great Dale Earnhardt.

Ty was hired in 1996 by Earnhardt to serve as executive vice president of motorsports for Dale Earnhardt Inc., and he played an integral role in helping the team become a real player at NASCAR’s top level of competition in 1998. Over eight years, DEI won 65 NASCAR races and 4 championships (from 1996 to 2004). He’s gone on to do a ton in the sports world, and is currently a partner with Justin Marks at the new and already successful Trackhouse Racing.

He traveled with Dale and Jr. a lot back in the day, and it was one wild trip to New York City (they had a lot of those) that he laughed about when he recalled having to wrangle Jr. out of the bed after a night on the town to go accept his father’s posthumous Most Popular Driver Award. For many years, Sr. lost that one to Bill Elliott, but the year he died in 2001, Elliott recused himself from voting and Sr. finally won… but only one person could rightfully accept it.

The night before the 8 am breakfast where Jr. was slated to speak, he went out with some of the guys from DEI, and you can probably see where this is going…

“There was a bar down there called Hogs and Heifers. Schraeder and Peachtree and all them, were like, tonight’s he night, Hogs and Heifers, ‘We’re going. You going?’ I’m like, ‘Sure, I’m going.’ Jump in our cab, sure, I’m getting in your cab. And they leave at 2 o’clock in the morning like they’re supposed to, and I stay until six or seven in the morning. If I remember this correctly, that was when they had the Myers Brothers breakfast right. 8 o’clock in the morning. I literally haven’t been back to the hotel but for an hour, and he came up to get me.”

Ty recalled being at the breakfast and finding out Jr. wasn’t coming, which he was obviously not okay with. Leading up to this day, Jr. had already filled in countless times for his dad, because sponsors still expected an Earnhardt, and he was tired of it.

He got back to the hotel just an hour before his speech, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Ty got the key to Jr.’s hotel room, and he marched up there where an argument was awaiting him:

“So I’m at the breakfast, and I’m a little rough in the night before too, but I’m sitting there. And so all those years that we knew Dale Sr. should’ve won the most popular driver award he didn’t. Bill Elliott won it every year, and so Dale never won it. And  he gets it posthumously in 2001. And so Dale wins the award, they’re like, we need Dale Junior to accept it. There’s a couple things about this. Now we rewind the clock to earlier in the year after Dale’s accident, and I had sponsor after sponsor after sponsor who was working with Dale come in and say, ‘Well, what are we gonna do now?’

Oreo, Remmington, not the Goodwrench guys but the Burger King guys and they’re like, well, we need Dale Junior. And every time you turn around, Dale Junior was having to carry what was just left by Dale, and he’s like ‘Man, the only reason why you guys want me is because dad’s not here. The only reason why you want me.’ And it wasn’t like, I’m not your guy, you’re not my sponsor,’ you know, it was like a fight. It’s always like, well you need to come do this interview to talk about you dad… all this s***, right. Dale Junior was over it.

We get to New York, you gotta go take this award, man, you need to go accept this award for your dad. And he was just like, ‘I’m not doing it.’ And so they’re all at the breakfast and they start the stuff, I look at Jade or Steve, one of those two, and I’m like, ‘Hey, man where’s Junior?’ ‘He’s in the bed. He says he’s not coming down.’ And I was like ‘What? What?’ He has to. I’m like, give me a key, cause they had a key to your room. So I go in there, I open up the door, s***’s everywhere Jr. had it like like a bomb had gone off.  and he’s sitting in bed, and we get into an argument.”

Jr. was adamant that he wasn’t going to do it, and after a heated discussion, Ty told him that he would live to regret skipping out on the one Most Popular Driver award his dad finally won, though it was ultimately up to him to let that opportunity pass and he was the only one on the earth who could accept it.

That talked some major sense into Jr., and about 20 minutes later, with bloodshot eyes and some stubble on his face (this was before Jr. had a beard all the time), he rolled up and Ty said he gave an incredible speech… but as soon as it was over, he walked to the elevator and went right to sleep:

“And I’m like, ‘You gotta go. We gotta go right now.’ He’s like, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it .’ And I’m not gonna use your vernacular, but he’s like, ‘I’m not f****** doing it.’ He starts talking, then he brings up all the stuff he’s had to do.

And then I’m like, I get it, and I said ‘Your dad will only win this award one time. There’s only one person in the world, in this earth, that can accept that award on his behalf. It’s not me. It’s not anybody else, it’s you.’ And I said ‘You will live to regret it if you don’t get up out of this bed and go downstairs and accept this award. And if you don’t wanna do it, that’s up to you.’ I just remember clear as day, I said, ‘That’s up to you.’ Because I put it on you, then I turned around and walked out.

And about 20 minutes later, here comes bloodshot eyes, a suit, unshaven, which doesn’t mean anything now because you’ve got a beard, but he’s unshaven and he’s, like, wrecked. He comes up and we’re tapping each other, like, he’s here. Because they pushed the award until late. And he goes up there, and he had one of the most eloquent speeches, I swear to God, it was awesome.

He spoke for like three minutes about the award he came off the stage, he went upstairs, and I swear in the elevator, you could see the jacket coming off and the clothes coming off. Because he got to his room and he was out. That was an argument.”

Jr. seemed to think it was pretty funny to remember that moment, and I have to imagine Ty was going to do whatever it took to make sure he accepted that speech for his father and probably knew he would ultimately make the right choice.

While it’s sad that Sr. was never alive when he won the award, I can only imagine what he would’ve done if he’d found Jr. laying out of something like that because he’d been partying too much… I imagine it would NOT have gone very well, and Jr. knew that and made his dad proud that day. Dale Jr. also went onto win the MPO award a record 15 consecutive times from 2003 to 2017.

It’s a great story, and you can watch them talk about it here:

The post NASCAR Exec, Ty Norris, Tells Hilarious Story About Wrangling Dale Earnhardt Jr. Out Of Bed To Accept His Dad’s One And Only “Most Popular Driver” Award first appeared on Whiskey Riff.