In the final episode of the four-part “Earnhardt” docuseries on Prime Video, Dale Earnhardt Jr. revisits his first trip back to Daytona Beach, Florida, after the death of his father at Daytona International Speedway.
Cruising into the oceanside town with his friends before the July race weekend, Earnhardt Jr. wanted to make a stop at the track before indulging in some downtime.
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“We’re jamming out to music. It’s the middle of the afternoon, sun’s out. It’s a beautiful day,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I got it in my head, I was like, ‘Hey, I want to go see if we can go inside the track’ because I couldn’t drive past that track and go into town and hang out just knowing what had happened there.”
As they entered the track, Earnhardt Jr. hopped out of the car and made his way to Turn 4 near the area where his father hit the wall on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
“I don’t know exactly where his car came to rest, but I kind of came to that general area and I just got out,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I wanted, I think really, to see how I would feel. Would I get emotional? Would it be too much? Would it feel too heavy? Would I have a problem with it? I didn’t know.”
While Earnhardt took in the moment, he thought of his dad and all the memories they had made at Daytona, including his father’s one and only Daytona 500 triumph in 1998, when an entire line of people from the NASCAR industry came to pit road to give “The Intimidator” a high five.
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In Earnhardt Jr.’s words, it gave him a ‘weird feeling’ to experience the wave of emotions the superspeedway gave and took from him.
“I just had this feeling that I shouldn’t be mad at it,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I shouldn’t dread going to Daytona.
“I almost hesitate to say this because it isn’t going to make any sense to anybody, but there was this really strange feeling of freedom, and I felt guilty even about feeling that way at all. I felt so guilty. I mean, I’m still in the very beginning of my, hopefully, a long career, and so I kind of decided then and there that I wasn’t gonna hold anything against the track. And if anything, Daytona was maybe even more special because it’s where dad had passed away.”
Watch the first two episodes of “Earnhardt,” available on Prime Video now.
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