The Dale Jr. Download - Becoming Earnhardt Vol. 9 - The Dust Settles On 1979

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

The dust has settled on the greatest NASCAR Cup season in history, and it’s time to recap all that we’ve learned about 1979. Dale Earnhardt Jr. invites some of the guests from BECOMING EARNHARDT for a roundtable discussion to recount all that we’ve learned and conclude some of our favorite characters ’ stories. Dale’s aunts, Cathy Watkins and Kaye Snipes, as well as Osterlund Racing crew member Doug Richert, return as first-hand character witnesses who helped bring the story of 1979 to life.The chat once again sets the dial back to the beginning of 1979 and views Dale Earnhardt through the eyes of his family, as he’s getting ready to embark on the biggest opportunity in his young racing career. It also dissects complicated characters like Jake Elder and the team dynamic at Osterlund Racing. They dive into the significance of the NASCAR Cup Rookie of the Year in 1979 and just how close things got in the race between Dale and Joe Millikan. Finally, some new details are revealed about the severity of Dale’s injury at Pocono and his lengthy hospital stay and time out of the driver’s seat.FanDuel: Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets, which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirtymoe Media. The sensational driver from Canapolis, North Carolina, Dale Earnhardt, and the Australand Racing Olds will be... Earnhardt continues to show the wave. You can't say enough about this young driver. He made the veterans sit up and take notice of his driving style. All right, so welcome to episode nine of Becoming Earnhardt, presented to you by Chevrolet. The first eight episodes of Becoming Earnhardt. encompass the season.

And this is a roundtable, and I have some guests with me today. My aunt Kathy is here, and my Aunt Kay, who actually helped make the scrapbook. How are you doing? I'm doing good. And y'all have been featured in the show. You've done some extra work for us to help sort of promote the series. But we'll talk about that. and also with us as crew member in 1979, Doug Reichert.

Very good. Thanks, Dale. Yes, sir. Thanks for being here. I'm thankful that y'all are here, and I kind of have a lot of questions. But basically, when we started out the series, we explained how I get these two scrapbooks, okay, and you made these, and back when the moment was happening, right, going through the 20th season. You make the scrapbooks, and they, you make the scrapbooks, and they, you. where they just literally just laid around the house for under my bed for 40 years or whatever

for years yes when you made them do you remember making them do you remember those moments i do i mean um i bought blue and yellow because that's the car Dell was driving at the time the wrangler car and each week you know articles would be in the paper or either somebody would give me an article i'd cut them out and i did not wait I went ahead and placed them. Where they go? Yeah. So anytime I had anything, I put it in the scrapbook.

Do you remember this, Kathy? Well, credentials, anything we had extra, we gave them to Kay. Gotcha. Because they're in there too. Yep. Yep. She kept all credentials, tickets. I kept my own credentials and tickets, too.

I mean, for the first year or two that we went to the race, we always got passes. And we all kept everything, but mine's in. in a tote somewhere. They're not in a scrapbook. Yeah. They're still up in a tote up in the attic. So this is dad's very first year full time. Why did you want to make the book? Because we knew it was a big thing, hoping, you know, this was going to be his start to something wonderful. And it just seemed like the right thing to do to document it and

remember it so you know you got to realize that we watched him sacrificing off a lot in the sportsman series and dirt tracking and following in daddy's footsteps and giving up so much that when he finally got this break i mean i don't i can't speak for k she's the one that made this awesome scrapbooks but i know how we all felt as a family just watching him sacrifice and and try so hard, you know, try so hard to be something and make something of himself. So the great thing about the scrapbooks is really when you open it up and you start going through them, it's perfectly in order. Like, you know, you did it just like you said.

As the articles came out, they went in the book. And so that's a good thing I did it that way or they would not have been. They would have been all over the place. It's a history book. Yeah. And that made it easy for me, really, to come. I had been talking to Mike for a couple of years. about doing a show around a story.

And so I had this article around the boycott of the Talladega race that happened in 69 or whenever that was. And I wanted to do a podcast around that story, you know, and really tell it in detail. But this was a better idea, right? Obviously put right down in my lap that, you know, had this scrapbook. And I know about, I can look in, you know, a website or I can look in a magazine and,

the finishing order and find the statistics. But the scrap book had the quotes, right, from the articles. It had Dad's own words. It had other drivers. And it really gave you the temperature of the moment and how funny it was how, like, at the start of the season, Dad's very, I just want these guys to respect me. I'm just trying to earn their respect. I'm just trying, you know, they seem to be okay with me racing up there front.

They seem, you know, he's worried about the veterans, right, getting annoyed. by him or whatever. You can hear his voice, can't you? You can. And then at the end of the year, he's like, we're going to win the championship. You know, he's totally changed. He flipped from, he was now a veteran

in like a matter of like nine months. He's like, oh, yeah, I got this. You know, we're here to kick some ass. Doug, when you're, I know you, I mean, how often do you really get a chance to think about those times? How often do you allow yourself to go back and really,

with the new NASCAR's got that new NASCAR classics out so you can go watch these races you know and I need to. I'll learn a lot. Right. All of the stuff's right at your fingertips. How often do you ever dive in? I know on a few of these shows, it's like, you know, we always talk about, we were talking about it in the lobby. Like somebody will say something and it just triggers.

Yeah. You know, and it's like, oh, God, yeah, let me tell you about that. You know, what happened? And, you know, just I learned so much just by listening. I mean, back then I was the kid. I was a kid that left California with a beanbag in a suitcase. Yeah. And I came this way and I was like, we're going racing.

I didn't know what racing was going to be. It's like elevate. What are I supposed to do? I just did it. Yeah. Right? And we all did it and learned together. It was kind of cool.

I'm fascinated by how you were 20 years old and maybe even younger than that during the 79 year. I don't know exactly how old you were in February when they started. 19. Okay. So you're 19 years old. The team has. some veteran members on it, older crew guys that have probably been in the series of the sport. They weren't all 19-year-olds from California.

Jake Elder, you know, been in NASCAR forever. He knew all of them, you know, he'd been in every ditch there was, right, to get through the sport. How are you able to establish yourself in such a way at such a young age to be dependent on, right? How did you acquire the respect and the camaraderie with the other guys and the team that allowed you to eventually in the 1980 season get the crew chief opportunity? So, I mean, it doesn't make sense. Like the numbers don't make sense. So how did it happen? I mean, I did leave awful early.

And actually, going back and looking or thinking about the 79th season, birthday was in June. So at the start of the season, I was only 18. Oh. So that'll knock that down a notch. But it's like anything. And throughout my career, you have to earn your respect from the elders. In my case, I was the sponge. I was learning from Jake. He's the one with all the experience. We started. First race was out in Ontario. We showed up. We didn't know what we were doing. But how do you learn? You do it. And that's all I did. I worked alongside of Jake and we were hand in hand the good and the bad you know the temperament he had his temperament so do I but I tried to be I'm probably a more of an outgoing guy than than Jake was I was probably happy go lucky and he was serious he was that was racing that was his life but I learned a lot and

I just took it all in early in the scrap book I'm reading an article right out of Atlanta Atlanta's the first race with Jake it's like the fourth race of the year whatever Jake has a quote during the post race, right? So you have this good run. And I was trying to figure out a way to talk about his temperament. Talk about it's their fifth race of the year. And so I was trying to have a way to discuss Jake and share with people what he was about. And he had these during the race or after the race, he goes,

he kept calling dad the boy. They're asking him about, you know, they're asking Jake about dad, and he's like, well, the boy listens to me. I stick with, you know, the boy, the boy's got talent. The boy listens to what I tell him, the boy, and he never would call dad by his name.

And so we will one day, you know, when we do the next episode, reveal, when we do the next series in 1980, we're going to reveal really how they felt, you know, Jake falls apart. We'll easily get into his temperament during that conversation. But before then, in 79, you know, he does come in and he's like, you know, he's, he's like, I've seen it and done it.

Just do what I tell you, and we'll be fine, right? Exactly. And he, but he seemed like, you know, there's these moments during the, during the season where, like, Dad's racing at Charlotte for the 600. And he's like, well, I'm telling him to slow down. He's talking to the media. He's talking to Ned Jared on pit road. He's like, Dale's overdriving the car.

He's running the car too hard. Well, tell him to slow down. I tried to tell him to slow down. He don't, he, you know. Wasn't in his blood. They were, there was this weird thing where I felt like, Jake would, Jake wanted things just to prove he, just to prove and show that he had the control.

Is that really kind of how it was? Because like, you know, He would, you know, if he said, hey, Dale, I think if you slow down, you know, we'll save a little race car for the end of the race. And plus, you know, the new payment in three and four guys are having some problems. You know, they could have had a conversation or whatever. But he would get frustrated when dad wouldn't just do what he said without context, right? Slow down. Why?

Right. And then when he didn't do it, Jake would get frustrated. And like, because he was just used to everybody to listen and every word he said to do, right? Was that kind of true? Was Jake, was Jake that, you know, was that the way the relationship was with Dad and Jake? Yeah, because he's the one that had all the experience.

Yeah. You know, and it's hard to beat experience. That's why we do it so long. And the better we go that we have something for the next team. Yeah. Well, he had something for us. We needed that. I didn't know.

other guys on the team that came, you know, Dave and Jeff Prescott and those guys that came out with us. Yeah. We didn't know what we needed. He did. He's been there. Like when he told us to pick a spring, right, he'd go over and pick a spring and he'd squat on it. He'd put that spring between his legs and kneel down and go, yep, this is the one. Didn't matter what it was.

You don't matter what it is. This is the one. Put it in the car. Oh yeah, that was me. I was the doer. Yeah. So when dad didn't listen, which he didn't listen at times, especially on the racetrack, Jake liked to be able to, you know, remote control the driver.

All right, time to push. All right, don't push right now. Okay, back it down a little bit. And all the other drivers like Kale and Benny and they all knew when to go and not go. You know, none of them went out there and just ran hard as they, hard as they could. like dad tended to do. Did you see Jake get frustrated at times with dad? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Standing there with him, of course, you know, even though he might not say something on the radio, but we could see his body reaction. He might not have heard it. Yeah. But yeah. And so did they, did Jake and him have conversations at the end of these races about it? Sometimes, sometimes they'd have it during the race.

I have to bring this up because it's a beautiful quote. And I think it was at Charlotte. And Dale kept saying, cars pushing. The car's pushing. I can't get off of four. The car's too tight, too tight. He said, Dale, listen to me.

He said, I can do a lot of things. But I can't stop the wind from blowing at turn four. That's why your car won't turn. Yeah. He knew it. Yeah. And it was just to hear stuff like that. You know, it's like, okay, I got it.

Drive thoroughly. Right. I think, you know, Jake was great for the team. You guys, that was like the only part of the whole team that was really missing was like that crew chief. Roland was doing some of that stuff at the start of the year, I suppose. We talk about Dave Marcus quitting because of the, you know, the team going to two cars and how that was kind of taboo. Back then, drivers didn't like the idea of having a teammate.

And then Dewey Live and Good was fired, which I guess pissed off Dave Marcus a little bit too. Yeah. But while all that's happening, Dave buys a couple cars from Osterman to race the 79 season. So the cars, I mean, even though there was a fallout and disagreement. Still liked them. Still liked them enough to buy and sell some cars back and forth and wheel and deal. He'd call, I guess Dave had to call him up and go, man, you won't sell a car to. Dave just really didn't realize that that was the model.

Up and Coming model. Why didn't you want to learn from someone else? They always say you don't want to be on an island by yourself. Yeah. Having a teammate to roll stuff off that runs the same car, why wouldn't you? That's what we do now. Yeah. One of the frustrating things about this whole series was when we get to the Bristol race.

So there's a lot of information that we learned that existed and a lot of audio of all these races. And so, you know, we know MRN today, right? And, and we think MRN did everything forever. But there were other, there was another publication, or there was another, there was another entity or property. It was, what was it called, the U.R or something? There was another group that was broadcasting a lot of the races in the southeast, and all of that, all of that material is now at App State in the archives. And so we were able to get a hold of a lot of these races in the 79 season that the broadcast radio rights to it.

And so unfortunately, there's not a lot of video of the Bristol win. There's this very short, like sort of five-minute reel of dad going around, crossing the finish line, a couple laps at the end of the race. and in one little clip of that, dad ramps up the wall. And I'm thinking, I want to think that this is like in the last handful of laps

when he's trying to run away from Daryl. Do you remember? Where he climbed the wall or some coming out. Was it out of four? I do remember that. What was that? Now you triggered something. I triggered that.

Right. Was that late in the race? Oh, yeah. Damn near. Reck. He damn near. Took himself out. Right?

But that's, see, that's what Jake could always envision. Man, boy, don't run so hard. Right, right? You're leading. Savor it. Well, no. That wasn't Dale's model. Yeah.

You know? That wasn't in his DNA. No. Yeah, I was watching that clip, and I'm like, damn, it looks like he climbs the wall right there. That's so wild. And then those cars were tough enough to handle that. Oh, gosh.

They were tanks. Right. So a great story that came out of the show is you tearing up your cigarettes and not smoking anymore. Your 19, 18, 19 years old smoking cigarettes like any kid was at that time. Winston's.

Told your boy, you told the crew. You said, if we win, I'll quit. And right there in the middle of Victor Lane, you tore up your cigarettes and you never smoked since. And to this day, from that day and that time, I have not had a cigarette, period. Another thing that I thought was interesting is right in Victory Lane is where the car got teched.

Like there's pictures of the roof, the hood up, the car, the engine getting gone through. They didn't even pull it out of Victory Lane. They just put it up on four stands. You just brought your stuff. Did the tech right there in Victory Lane? Yep. That's hilarious. Where were y'all at when Dad wins Bristol?

I was in the infill. You were there. I was there. I was not. So there's some pictures that I have with you. Danny and it's from that race. So you were there. You were not, where were you at?

I was at home. Did you want to be there? Well, of course. Well, you certainly didn't know Dad's going to win. No. Yeah. I had a husband and kids and things just preventing me going. So how do you learn that Dad wins the race?

You listen to on the radio? Well, if it was on the radio, I was listening, if it was on TV, I was trying to remember how many races were. So yes, definitely, probably 103.7. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so you're there. I was there. I had Shelly and Stacy with me and... You had the girls, would you? We tell Gated and Kelly and y'all were there. I was not there.

Y'all were in the infill. In 1979? No. No. Yeah. All the kids, it seemed like all y'all were there. Yeah. No, I wasn't. I wouldn't. I mean, there's no photos of me there and I don't remember being there. Well, I just know that there was a bunch of kids and we were all in charge of the kids. in the infield.

Mom was there and we had pictures. We made pictures with Daryl Walter up and Tim Richmond and we had food out. Where are all these photos? At my house. Kelly's probably got a copy of them somewhere. I'll pull them out and get them to you. But, yeah, mother got to go to Victory Lane. Dale didn't let us come up to Victory Lane until after the tech and all that was over.

Then we got to give him a kiss and a hug. But, yeah, it was, you know, know it was just a dream come true. It was just so awesome to see him up there and just one of heart you won the heart was so full for him. Yeah. Do you remember one of the pictures that sent his album, our shared album of his trophy and I'm standing beside of him with curly hair? He brought the trophy to the daycare and showed it to all the kids and And there's another picture with all the kids around him, but he brought it up there to show us the trophy. In Canapolis. You were working at the daycare.

Yeah. And that I went to that daycare. And so he brings the trophy to the daycare. He brought it to the daycare. There was another thing that he did later in the year was like at the Jackson School. What's the school around there? Jackson Park. Jackson Park.

He went to Jackson Park. There was like a Dale Earnhardt Day at the second Charlotte race. in October and he was doing doing appearances was like a brand new thing for him I imagine doing anything you know where he's being kind of recognized was had to been like a complete 180 from where he was just 12 months ago before that right he did an autograph session in downtown at a dealership that year as well and he had you know had quite a line but it wasn't anything like

later yeah as he got more popular but He didn't get a chance to go to Disneyland or anything like after his win. No. So do you remember what y'all did? I guess you drove home? Drove on home. In the articles it says that him and Jake were in the car together on the way home, just laughing like kids.

Could have been. Yeah. I think we actually called it the Bozo Bus. Oh. It was a van that we all rode. It was yellow and blue and all that. Yeah. That's what we rode in.

That was our bus. Yeah. driving to every race. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was before we unheard of, airplanes or private planes, right? You might have flew to Ontario, but otherwise.

Yeah, those. Yeah. But everything else, you were in the car. Yeah. Dan. So, um, I'm, I know it happened because the cars got there, but it always kind of surprised me that the teams could get to Riverside and Ontario and go out there and race like hell and get everything done and get back home.

And it just seems like as the. the sport was so small back then. I don't know how they traveled all over the country like that. Commercial. Commercial. But as far as the cars go, even then, we had to have other cars, right? We couldn't go out with one car. So we had spared.

At the time, we were building our own stuff. And, you know, I think we were kind of ahead of the time in that era, too. And so we had spares. We had them ready. Had to come back, turn the trucks around just like you do now. Oh, and Dale to get back to Bristol And the celebration that we had In Canapolis in the shop

I think in the previous one of the previous Episodes we talked about Dale and Mike bought a Got a bottle of champagne And he kept in the refrigerator at the shop And we all gathered there And I brought you cups Those are the cups

Those are the cups that Connie Put in her China cabinet So I guess they're 50 years old or right there at it and wanted to give those to you. There's a picture with Dad sitting there on the go car with one of the cups next to him. Yeah. So let me ask you about that. Are you there? All right.

So I got the pictures, have seen those pictures all my life, really didn't know zero context about them until, you know, get a little bit older. And then obviously doing this little series, they definitely come into focus. and what was happening. But so he has this bottle of champagne. He says he's going to crack the bottle open when he wins his first race. Does he, you know, is this the night after the race? No, it was, it was a few weeks. A few weeks later?

It wasn't. It wasn't the night after. It was only a few days. It was at least a week or so. It wasn't the night. It wasn't that week. I don't remember it being that far out. It wasn't that far out, but it wasn't that week because he was really busy.

Did he call y'all and say, hey, everybody come over? We all knew he was coming. So we all, all five of us were there. He said, come to the shop. Well, it was me and Mike and all five kids. All five brothers and sisters were there. I don't think Terry, Randy's wife came. I know that Sherry, Danny's wife came.

I don't think my husband was there either. And Mama. I've seen Teresa in the picture. Teresa was there. Mamma'all. Mother and Connie Goodman and her husband. Of course, Connie's one that made the pictures. He actually said, call Connie and ask her to come make pictures.

And I did. And so this is Ralph's shop. Shop dad, been racing out of next to Mamaw's house and running his little sportsman car. And so it looks dark. It looks late. Yep. It was at nighttime.

Yep. Y'all eat? Nope. Nope. He just walked in, y'all cracked the bottles. Well, we all. Had the trophy out there? I swear, I really think it was like the next night or something.

There was a pool table. It was not weeks out, I don't think. It wasn't weeks, but I don't believe it was that night. I mean, the race was Sunday, so it may have been Tuesday Wednesday. I think it was that night. Well, right. Either way, I mean, it still happened. But anyway.

Connie said she wished she'd have dated the cups and had him son. It would have been cool. So there's a pool table sitting there. I don't remember a pool tail being in this show. It's always been there. It was always there. And that refrigerator was dad's refrigerator that sun drops were kept in as long as I remember. And so y'all drink the champagne, then what?

I think we just hung out a while and then went on. He got on that go-kart and laughed about daddy building it and riding on it and how Danny got on it and went up in the hedges when he rode at that time. Because there was a little track out there on the side lot beside the highway. and Danny couldn't get it to stop and ended up in the hedges. But, yeah, just goofed around. Yeah. That's the same go-kart that Kelly and I got on when we were little.

That thing, I wonder where it's at today. I have no idea. It's got to be somewhere. Did you end up in the hedges? I ended up driving up a guide wire on a telephone pole. But, yeah, they said to mash it wide open, and I mashed it wide open. Speedway.

And it just was going wherever it was going. It's out of control. We need to investigate that. Find out where it is. Well, yeah, it's hiding somewhere. I mean, not nowhere. I don't think it's anywhere where we're going to find it, but that thing was built like a tank.

There's no way it's not still in. He may know where it's. There's no way the frame's not still laying somewhere because there's no, it would have been impossible to cut it up. Can't rust through that. No. So the scrapbooks, the 79 scrapbook I redid. the book itself was coming apart and the pages were bad.

But I meticulously reconstructed it into a new book, just so you know. Good. Yeah. The 1981 is still in the original book right now. But yeah, I wanted it to last another 40 years. One of the characters that's kind of prominent in this whole thing is Joe Milliken. And so I've watched a lot of old races and I remember, you know, in my mind, Joe Milliken, you know,

raced, uh, he would, he worked for the petties and the petties let him take a dodge to Daytona and he'd go run to Daytona Raka race or the Daytona Sportsman race in the 70s and do well, you know. Um, outside of that, I didn't really know much about the guy. Uh, I knew everything about his cup career, right? But before that,

just the only thing I knew was those races he ran. Um, reading and learning about this, you know, in this document, I realized that he raised short tracks at Carraway. and had a lot of little local short track background, more of a foundation in driving and racing than I expected or new. He gets the opportunity to race the DeWitt car. My perception of that team is it's not a really strong team.

A lot of people have left that team. After 78, when Benny left to go with MC Anderson, the team didn't get better, right? They lost engine builder and a crew chief and a driver. and so and the owner, L.G. DeWitt, is sort of now, you know, sort of backing out of the sport in a way and not quite 100% dedicated or sure about his ownership of a car. He's got the racetracks, Rockingham, and a couple of speedways he's got to take care of. And the one thing I will say about that car is, you know, Benny Parsons wins the championship in 73.

and every year after that, that car was probably the most dependable car in the circuit. You know, it didn't run as strong as junior's cars and the Wood Brothers, but he outlasted a lot of them most often, and they always got really, really good results, and that's actually how they win the championship in 73 was just they never broke. And this was basically the story of Milliken. You know, he would run fifth, tenth, every week. You know, when dad was in the races,

Dad could, you know, usually outrun him or show more speed, but if Dad didn't crash or break his collarbones and miss races and all those things, you know, Joe Milliken was always going to run in the top ten or somewhere around there. As this season's going, Dad talks about it in the articles that the rookie of the year is important to him. Does the team care about the rookie of the year? Are you getting the idea that it's important to Dad? Is that something that y'all are working toward every week?

Are you watching it in the Winston Cup scene or the Grand National scene? Are you looking at the score? Yeah, every week. Yeah. I mean, when you think back to 78, the only reason we ran only five races in 78 was so he was still eligible for rookie of the year in 79. And, you know, that was always big. That was always everybody's focus, you know, for the longest. time, yeah, of ovies.

And so when the season begins, do y'all handicap, like, you know, you got Gant, Labani? I mean, I don't know if you took Gant seriously or took Labani seriously, because we don't know Terry Labani that we, you know, we're looking at this through a different lens, right? Right now we're looking at through 2024 lens. Terry Labani's a two-time champion and damn Hall of Famer. But in 1979, he's some guy from Texas. Just another car. Just another car, right?

You have no clue that he's going to have any kind of the career that he ends up having. But I guess the one car that you do know about and you do have a history with and understanding with is the 72. Maybe not you specifically because you're so young and coming into this whole deal. But the season gets going, 10, 12 races into the year, Millikan's hanging around. Did y'all – and Dad and him seem to get along okay. Did y'all – were there any unique moments? So I guess with the Milliken team that stand out or any kind of memories of that battle between y'all two throughout the year? I don't think it was a very bad battle.

I mean, I don't remember anything, any fights or any confrontations. You know, it was a little different back in. Yeah. You know, we were all new, so we're not going to go start a fight. Yeah. But, you know, he was competitive, though. We all realized that. And if we had to make sure we did our jobs right, you know, I was a tire changer.

you know, had to go through the motions and we had to do our stuff right. Otherwise, we could lose it just as easy as he could make a mistake on the track. Right. Yeah. That was, you know, when I've got this giant scrapbook of photos and I've sort of kind of divided them all down to where they go, all right? And I have one specific collection of all 7980. and for the longest time I couldn't tell you which one would be 80 and which, you know,

if you pulled a picture out of there and said, all right, is this 80 or 79? It'd take me a few minutes to really look into the details of it and go, yeah, I think that, you know, that that must be this race, right? But most of them are one or the other and I couldn't tell you, the between them. Now after doing this, I can tell, you know, I can look at a picture of a car on the racetrack, dad's car and say yep that's rocking ham second race yep that's that's riverside where the fender fell off or you know um Nashville where he tore it off inside the truck right so um I I as I'm reading you know as I'm learning all this I will say um you know sometimes dad got swept up in some stuff that was none

of his doing the Rockingham race like the second race like the second race after Daytona where the kale and Donnie get in another wreck and they spin in front of the field and dad T-Bones Donnie and everybody gets wrecked right. Richard's mad, Daryl's mad, everybody's out of the race and tore up. There was some races like that in the season where dad just kind of found himself in the wrong place, the wrong time, but there were some other races where he just was hard on equipment. Like Martinsville? Yeah.

Like hitting the curb, taking out half the field. Yeah, three wide on Richard Petty, the king. At the start. At the start. In the term one. You've got those pictures. Yeah. And so, you know, I, there's, it's just funny to me because, again, looking at it, looking at it,

we don't ever, we don't ever talk about dad being flawed because in our eyes, he was this crazy seven-time champion that was great at everything. and just incredible. But in 1979, dude was flawed. He made so, he made mistakes, right? Almost every race,

there was a moment where he screwed up something or did something he shouldn't have done. Stuff he couldn't do five or ten years later down the road. But 79s is Ricky year. You know, he's going to do rookie things. When he, you know, when he gets out of the car after a Martinsville,

for example, right? He teabones Richard in turn one and crashes a bunch of cars out. And I'm surprised like Harry Gant gets out and goes, yeah, Dale turned Richard and this and that and happen. He's not even that mad about it. He should be really mad. He should be furious at dad. They said that Richard got out of the car at the end of the race and stuck his finger in dad's chest and was like, don't you ever do that again? You better than that, right?

Do you remember those moments when dad gets out of the car after a race? race where he might have not made uh everybody happy he might not have made everybody happy but he also might have you know he made mistakes right does he get out and there's pictures of him right sulking or or head hanging head hanging sitting at the back of the hauler like damn that that didn't go well you know do you remember those moments well yeah of course we us as a group we're all a team you know we're afraid of what's going to happen right we we know these guys are going to be mad. They're not happy. I mean, it can't make everybody happy, but also I think people understood that because he was a rookie. Yeah. That's what rookies do. You learn. And if he did it

two or three more times, like someone in the past years that did a whole pattern of wrecking people and then, you know, then you get that, oh my gosh, you know, is he ever going to learn? Yeah. But he learned. we all learn yeah when he's going i guess for the sisters as he's going through this year and he's making you know you're wanting this to work you're wanting this to you want dad to have the success and this be his career um and these races you know obviously you're not able to watch races on tv like we are today so you can't see detail right you just hear what the radio tells you um and so you know but is there's there's some he obviously would go into 1980 and he wins a championship but 1979 was rookie of the year champion but he also you know had a lot of struggles not

even aside from the injury you know are you guys you know do y'all get a chance to be around dad or spend much time around him during that year and get his sort of not a lot but I know first of all I'm an Earnhardt this is hard but Kay was right

the toast was Monday night after the Sunday race there you go I figured it was it was that's so hard

because I was wrong she was right well I knew it wouldn't have been weeks I just in my mind I gave her pictures and I asked her in my mind

I knew it was right after at some point anyway what was do y'all remember what to temperament was when you were so y'all are around him in little chunks right you're

gone there'll be yeah there'll be a month where you won't see him and then bam here together honestly dale invited mike and i when he was hurt del invited mike and i over to dinner at teresa's apartment uh he had his brace on you know he was upbeat i mean dale was always bigger than life even when you know he never thought he would fail del always he was a winner in his mind, in his actions, and his personality. You know, he came at Thanksgiving. You always brought you all on Christmas. I mean, we were just a family then.

We really never talked racing. If he talked racing, it was with the men, if they walked out of the house or in the shop or something. But when he was around family, he was always upbeat. He never, ever really showed the pressure. Well, I know, and this has to be when he was hurt too. He had the lakehouse, didn't he? We all went out there because we were all up there and all the kids laying on the dock.

There was a picture of them laying on the dock. Yes. He invited us all up as a family. So that was one thing I learned. Just here and there. That was a neat thing that I learned. So in one of the articles that he writes, I'm assuming, I'm just assuming, right? I don't know that he's writing this article with Whitlock.

I have no idea. He has to, he's not writing it by himself. So he's doing, somebody says, hey, yeah, somebody says, hey, you should do these bimonthly articles and he's like, all right. So it must have been Whitlock. And so he talks about him one of those articles while he was broke, while he's out with, you know, six weeks with the collarbone issue, he moves into the house. So you remember him being over at Teresa's apartment in Charlotte with the collarbone.

Before he had the house. So like literally a week or two later, he's. He's got the house. And so, which is still, they still own it. It's down there in Mooresville. And that's the house we ended up moving in in 81, 82. And I remember in 1981, this old YouTube video, you can find it on YouTube, one tough customer where you're pulling dad on a tube on the lake out from that house.

He would have gatherings with the crew after the lake. All the parties. Even after the races. Yeah. And so being able to really get timeline of things, right? Hearing dad, I knew he bought the house, but I didn't know when, and I damn sure hadn't heard a word about his feelings on it. And so when he's talking in the articles, like, man, I love it.

It smells great. It's new. It's awesome. I love this house. I got a lot of things. Well, I never do that either. Right. Because he never talked about it.

Right. But, you know, he brought Rod Austerlund, mother. We cooked a meal at Mother's house. and Rod, they brought Rod for dinner up there. Really? In 79 that first year. Wow. And, you know, you think about someone with Rod's kind of money

and prestige that would be able to own a race team. You know, again, we're just from small town Canapas and never been anywhere or in that kind of world. Yeah. That you would expect him to be different, but Rod walks in the house and blue jeans. and a regular shirt and, you know, talks just like a regular person, fit in, ate mashed potatoes with the rest of us and was just a wonderful man.

We just had the best time that night. I have a picture of that night as well. Yeah, well, that's one of the people, that's one of the characters that we really didn't get to hear from, and he played such a prominent role in this whole thing. So he did seem very calm and quiet, you know, well-spoken. what was Rod like for a boss? You know, we didn't really,

let me try to remember, right? My boss was more Rowland. You know, Roland had to answer to Rod, but most of my dealings was with Roland all the time. But when Rod came around, I mean, you know, we all met Rod because his daughter went to high school with us. Yeah. You know, so it was, he's kind of started knowing each other, even when we were out there.

Yeah, way before the racing. Yeah, and then with, with Roland, working for Rod and some of his projects, and then us running at San Jose Speedway, knowing Lana, the daughter. And then finally, when they start talking about merging, well, we merged with it, you know, is this kind of a fit, right? I remember traveling in the motorhome with them down to Daytona one time, and different things. It wasn't my motor home.

It was his, but just stuff like that. He was a good guy. He seemed like it. I mean, he gave me my start. But one thing I don't think any of us really thought about because it wasn't our world was he was a businessman and had to make those kind of decisions as a businessman. And so that affects a lot of people's world, as we all know from history.

The part we don't always understand. The part we never understand. Yeah. Hey, everybody. Dale Jr. here. Let's take a minute to talk about Chevrolet. As you know, the Earnhardt family is a Chevy family. I own a Chevrolet dealership that I'm very proud of,

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So in the episodes, we hear about y'all's experience, learning about that and wondering if that was okay and learning that he's okay and he's got these injuries. So all my life, I thought, you know, he wrecks at Pocono and breaks two Crollabones, right? Digging into the articles and reading all about other things, it's more than that. He hurt his jaw. He was, you know, eating foods through intravenously. for a week or something. These are in these articles, right? The helmet was scuffed and that he was dealing with a concussion.

That they kept him in the hospital for a week. It took him a whole week before they released him from the Pennsylvania Hospital. So the injury in the crash was a whole lot more significant. He may have been there a few days, but I know Mother and Randy went to Pennsylvania, and he checked himself out. That part two doesn't make sense to me. Before he got home. Why would y'all...

Before they got there. My first reaction to that is, did they not call Dad and say we're coming up there? We didn't have cell phones for one thing. Well, you had a rotary. True. All I know his mother was hell been on going. Randy said, if you want to go, I'll take you.

They went. So they drive up there, and then while they're driving up there, dad's checking himself out and flew home. And got on a commercial plane. And that may have been a few. days it could have been a week. It was a week. I just remember that hearing about how horrendous pain he was in on an airplane, a commercial plane flying home, but he was hell been on coming home. Yeah. Well, they checked him out and he goes home. And so, you know, there's a lot of articles

that really detail the car, the damage to the car, the helmet, the wind of net was busted. And dad's own injuries and doctors and all these things. And there was a hole in the net. Yeah, where it scraped the wall, right? Or it scraped the wall. Yeah, where the helmet and the wall, the hole. So it must have been this really very brief, like, bam, bam, quick. Like, I mean, obviously, if he crashes and he makes contact with his helmet to the wall,

in most cases, that's going to be a near-fatal injury, right? I mean, that's a bad deal. But it must have been this very, very brief. contact with the wall that his helmet makes. And when I've actually got some pictures of the car, sliding down the racetrack after it made contact with the wall, I'd never seen a picture of the car post the crash. It's not up close.

It's blurry. It's bad. There's no pictures of the car in the garage after the race. There's no way to look at this thing. There's no way to really know, like, okay, what hit first, how did it hit, where did it hit? You hear it's driver's side. you know you're just piecing together very very limited piece of information if i remember right it was really from going into the corner pocino is fairly flat yeah and it was back at the tunnel

that the tunnel turn which is flat and he went in and got loose and it just slapped the wall driver's right and at that time technology i mean you know he had those van seats in the yes in the car no side No head support, nothing. Nothing on the left side of the seat. Nothing. Yeah, so you slide right out. You never anticipated hitting the wall on the left side. No, all right.

You thought you were always going to hit with the right. Yeah. So looking at this image of the car after it's made contact with the wall, there's very little damage. The back, you know, the back is fine. The deck lid's good. There's no wrinkle bend there. The hood's fine. There's no big bend or wrinkle in the hood.

The front's not knocked over. it must have been just a real flat pop. And what's, I can't understand is how do you break your collar bones? I mean, he must have had them damn things so damn tight. I know he was pretty bad about tightening his seatbelts up to a ridiculous amount. I think the biggest thing of what happened in that case was there was no support on the left. And he just was able to move so much further. Yeah.

Well, your neck's going to stretch. That was before neck restraints. Yeah. Headrests. And all he had was his bubble goggles and his helmet. Yeah. Right. Well, that weight of that helmet, just wink, snap.

Yeah. And the sad part for us was, you know, it rained it out, so they had it on Monday. I was on my way home from work, listening on the radio, went to commercial, came back from commercial, and he had wrecked. Yeah. Yeah. They don't tell you how bad it is. No. Well, they can.

Well, you can. They don't. They don't even know. And I think part of the thing with Mother was she couldn't get any information every time. She'd ask, well, how's Del? You know, you'd call, oh, he's fine. He's fine. Oh, he's fine.

And after a day or two, maybe of that, she thought, I'm tired of this crap. I'm going. I wonder, he never, like, how he doesn't get on the phone. From wherever he's at. That part I do not remember. You know that. No, I mean, if I'm dad.

That control world. I don't. If I'm dad and I'm sitting in a hotel room for at least at the minimum three days, I mean, if we go by the articles, A hospital room. I'm just saying if we go by the articles in multiple instances, it tells us he was in this hospital for a week. If I'm sitting in there in the hospital room,

I'm calling somebody at some point, right? Yeah. And you know, Teresa knows where he's at. She's right there. She's sitting right there. Answering the phone. Yeah. But I mean, she can call people.

Surely there is somebody got a call. Someone had to be communicating. I know. I don't understand how Mamal and really. Randy drive all the way up there and Dad doesn't know they're coming and that they and dad inadvertently leaves because he gets checked out and goes home and Mrs. and Dad and Randy and Jim, ma'am all get up there and they're like where's he? Come on. He's gone. He's gone. Oh, he's gone. That's strange. And there's nobody else that can really verify that. That's the comical,

that's comical part of the whole thing, I guess. Anybody that knows Dale would have forced or something. Yeah. As soon as they give him the word. As soon as they crack the door, he's leaving. Which says a lot about the entries because he was there as long as he was, right? You know he's going to leave at the first opportunity. He had to be feeling it. Yeah, he must have. He comes back, and one of my favorite things to talk about in old racing, I don't know if

the drivers are, I don't know if the young drivers today are as wowed by this as I think they are, but one of my favorite things to talk about is the relief driver situation back in the 70s and 80s. pretty much every damn week somebody got some relief. And as we'll learn in these articles, sometimes the drivers get back in. Richard Petty would get out for 100 laps and then climb back in, right? All right, I feel better.

And so we go to Richmond. Dad sits on the pole. First race back. And Lenny Pond falls out of the race. They put Lenny Pond in the car. You guys did. Great idea because Lenny Pond and Richmond are, that's like his best track.

He goes out there and finish his top five, scores some rookie points for dad. Then you go to Dover, which is probably not a great track with broken collarbones or collar bones that are healing. And I called Bill Elliott. And I said, hey, I said, you relief drove for Dad at Dover. And I was like, you know, you're not on the entry blank. You didn't race. You didn't qualify. How did you get there?

Why were you there? I know he raised some races for Roger Hamby in the 17. Roger was in the race, so I thought maybe he just went along with Roger and was just standing around. Well, he said that Jake called him midweek and was like, hey, can you go? Just go to be there. If we need somebody. Just in case. And so I thought, wow, okay.

So Bill goes up there. They're running along in the middle of this race and dad spins out and doesn't hit anything. and then just a dozen laps or a couple dozen laps later he spins out again. And I think after the second spin, he's talking about being tired. And Jake's like, come on in, get out. And so he gets out and Billy gets in. And then with 100 laps to go, because they ran 500 laps at Doverbackman. It's like a long race.

Dad gets back in. I just think that's so funny that they're like, y'all are like, 10 laps down, running in 8th or 10th. And dad's like, yeah, I'm good. I'm going to get back in there. Like, once you get out, you just think you'd just stay out. Yeah, there was no reason to get back in. He got the points for starting.

There's no point to get back in. Right? That was the only reason he started. It's just interesting to me. But it's Dale. That's Dale. But you would think Jake would be, you would think finally now he's in the pits like you were with Jake.

And Jake would be like, yeah, no, you're not going in. What's he doing? What's he saying about the car? Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was pretty interesting. But he ends up, you know, coming back and finishing out the year pretty good, pretty decent. So, clawed back into the rookie of the year battle, which, you know, Milliken led multiple times throughout the year.

But he climbs back in. It's the best 15 finishes. And he put together enough. points and with the win at Bristol to rightly win the rookie of the year. Yeah. So that's it. I mean, I want to thank you, K, for having the idea to even create those scrapbooks in the first place. I'm very thankful.

I was thankful first that you thought enough to give them to me. You know. Well, you, you were making plans to come to moms. Yeah. To see what you may want to take home. Yeah. And I got to thinking about them, and I thought, they're just laying under my bed. I knew how enthusiastic and passionate you were about it.

And I thought, well, he may appreciate him. If he doesn't want them, he can give them back to me. And we are the seniors in the family, so we're depending on you to be the person that keeps the stories going. It keeps the stories going and talks to the babies and tells them about our brothers and our family. so that scrapbook is there for a reason. But I also heard you talking earlier about scrapbooks and what was inside those scrapbooks and all that. Well, this was the rookie of the year

that we've all been documenting, right? So what else could I not do but to have that shirt? That looks like a damn, an original. That is an original. In the wrapper. It's not been open. Bull crap. Dale, here you go.

Man. It's like what more appropriate thing? We've been talking about this now. How do you have this? How do you still have this sitting here unopened? You haven't been to my house. I have everything. Have you ever been to this house?

So this shirt is kind of the holy grail of vintage racing shirts in NASCAR at least. And in the bag. Yeah, in the bag. Good Lord. One of these things on the hangar is going for $100, $150. So I can't believe we have one still in the bag. I bet it's the only one left. Not really.

Might even have another one. Oh, shit. Oh, my God. Takes two. Yeah. Don't you have two girls? I do. Well, wait a minute, those could be the two girls that carry on the rookie of the year.

Yeah, that would be sweet. Number two. All right. Damn, dude. that's pretty incredible you know that's i i tell you that was because you know i got them from my mom yeah you know we always finished up in ontario we won the championship there i'd always get my mom stuff right they were the biggest fans and i she had the scrapbooks of all the san janezate paper articles and all that stuff i wish i would have dug those out they're probably somewhere

yeah but you know i always got she always wanted stuff so i would take the truck home and I park it in front of the whole house, take the whole house. The whole hauler thing. Yeah, the whole rig. Yeah, yeah. And I'd bring her home. My dad even rode home with me one time.

It was like, that was cool. Those are, my family things, they were really into the race, and they loved Dale and they had them. Well, I appreciate that, man. That's pretty amazing. I will make sure that these are probably just going to stay just like they are.

Been in that bag a long time. Yeah, they have. I want to leave them in that bag. But thank you all for spending some time, with us. I want to thank y'all from all the listeners for giving us your time to help make this series what it is. You guys bring a lot of great insight and information into that season and make it kind of jump off the page, if you will. And when we start leaning into the next installment of becoming Earnhardt, the 1980 year, we will need you to come back and we will.

We may study a little bit before that. You guys go ahead. Y'all go ahead and go home. and start thinking and getting your notes together and we're going to all get together in a big room full of big table and come and put together a show that'll be even better than this one. Maybe we could spark some more stories. Yeah, for sure. I certainly will.

Now that we have a blueprint and an understanding of what we're trying to do, I think 1980 could be even, you know, be much, much better. So thank you all. And until then, until I see you again. Thanks, Dale. Enjoy it. Thank you, guys. Thank you. As awesome as it is to be able to talk to Doug, Kathy, and Kay, as we wrap up the last show or last episode of The Coming Iron Heart,

I kind of wanted to touch on some of the key people that were part of this storyline. Rod Osterlin, the car owner for Dad. you know we know they win the rookie of the year in 79 and the championship in 1980 rod would actually go on in the middle of the 81 season and sell his team to a man named jd stacey pretty sketchy character of this jd stacey as we talked about him in some of the podcast over the years but either way rod would leave nascar but then reenter the sport with huss strickland in 1989 and jimmy spencer in 1990 if you remember the hines Number 57 Pontiac?

Yeah, that was Rod's car. As far as we know, Rod is still alive in Southern California. Now, Roland Volatka, who was the business manager for the team, would continue to work in the sport with drivers like Buddy Baker and Rodney Combs and Hudson-Drickling even, worked around the truck series, even briefly worked with Kevin Harvick. Roland was well respected by dad. as far as I could tell, and I thought he, you know, considering what they accomplished in such a brief period of time in 79 and 80 with a new team.

Roland must have done a great job. Roland unfortunately passed away at the age of 81 in 2020, but it's been fun sort of getting to know more about him in this series. Jake Elder, also known as suitcase Jake, not going to talk about him much right here. You know why? because he's going to be a big part of our next season of Becoming Earnhardt, the 1980 season. Yes, we want to do the 1980 year, and I have that scrapbook ready to go. And so we'll get into that, maybe in the next installment of Becoming Earnhardt,

what happens to suitcase Jake Elder and the racing team? We do know that far beyond the 1980 season, he worked for Robert Yates and was actually fired by Robert Yates and replaced by Larry McReynolds. And he passed away in 2010 after some health issues he dealt with. Doug Reichert, who was here for the roundtable, continued to crew chief in the sport for a long time. Winning races is recently with Greg Biffle at Roush, and he continues to seek out opportunities to work in the sport. Still feels like he has something to offer. He's also an incredibly good handyman carpenter.

If you need something made, built, he can do it. One of the things I think we talked about, maybe you don't recall or maybe you missed, Doug showed me a copy of his wedding certificate, and Dad had signed that as a witness. Dad was his best man also in Doug's wedding. So they were really close even after Doug and dad split up beyond the 1981 season. Doug would go to work at Junior Johnson's with Darrell Walchip's, Mount New Car, and so forth.

But they remained close enough friends that Dad was his best man during the wedding in the mid-80s. You know, we talked about the end of the Petty Pearson era where, you know, those two had ran nose-to-nose, tooth and nail. so many first and second place finishes between Pearson and Petty, all of that came to an end in the 1979 season. That to me, that's it. That story, I know it. You know it. We've heard it many, many times.

But reading through it and sort of living through it, I say, it really hit me on a personal level, how I never thought about it like that. You know, you've got these two incredible professionals, no matter what sport, battling each other in so many great matches and finally it has to end right you never love to see it when your heroes you know have to hang up the helmet but not that Pearson was retiring but that rivalry that had been so good for NASCAR uh was over david Pearson would continue to erase but you know with very very limited success after that he won't have few more races and then eventually

decided to hang it up for good driving, you know, at the end of his career he's driving cars. It really just couldn't get the job done. This was the whole thing of the Darrell Walter Pendell Earnhardt error. And Darrell says as much during the show multiple times. Man, it looks like I'm going to have

to be racing this Earnhardt guy for the rest of my career. And man, they would. It would really come to a head around the, you know, 1886 season when Dad and Darrell would wreck at Richmond in a massive crash that would give Kyle Petty his first cup win. I have the car that Darrell crashed in that wreck in the race car graveyard.

Dad and Darrell would account for six championships throughout the 1980s. The rookie class obviously goes on to be incredible except Joe Milliken. We'll talk about Joe Milliken a little bit in the next episode of Becoming or Her the next season of becoming our heart for 1980, but he gets a few part-time rides, one with Ray Mock in 1981. He eventually gets a ride in the car that would become Rick Hendrix number five car.

That team would end up getting sold to Rick. He makes some sporadic starts, though, all the way up until 1987 when he was out of cup altogether. He never had really another full year of competition from 81 on where he was in the same car throughout the year and a steady ride. He returned to the late model ranks back at Carraway in some of the weekly race tracks. He had a scary crash at Carraway in the 90s. And then went on to work for race teams, driving transporters and doing things like that for teams like Rouse.

Actually was involved in a transporter crash in the 2010s with Roush. and he's still out there roaming around. We tried really hard to get Joe to come sit down and talk to us or just be able to really pick his brain a little bit about this series, but it was really difficult to make that work. But we are so thankful for his career and his effort in battle through the 1979 season. Terry Labani, we know he's going to go on and win championships

as recent as 1984. I mean, literally five years removed from this season, Terry's a champion. Harry Gantt wins a ton of. of races, obviously becoming a household name. And also, I think it's a little fascinating to me how much the rookie of the year deal mattered. Yes, of course, we're embellishing it, we're blowing it up, we're making it a big deal in the show, but it really was that big of a deal back then. The rookie of the year battle was something people were so excited about because this really

was where there was such a small group of veterans, you know, capable of winning every week, half a dozen, maybe 10 cars at times. but there were really a half a dozen good winning cars on the racetrack and those rookies were exciting. That rookie of the year battle was always compelling. We lost a little bit of it, its identity over the years, but every once in a while we get a really good crop of rookies that fires up the excitement in that rookie of the year battle.

Obviously, we talk about J.D. Stacey. Now, one of the stories that got cut from the show is about J.D. Stacey. he owned the car that Neil Bonnet drove in the late 70s, and they got into dispute with crew chief Harry Hyde, and Harry says, we're parking these cars. I'm not taking them to the racetrack anymore. J.D. Stacey would go over to Rod Osterlin in 1978. Dave Marcus's Rod's driver, dad's not there yet.

J.D. and Rod would cut a deal to where Rod Osterlin would put cars on the racetrack that Neil Bonnet would have raced to be able to finish the 1978 year. That really ticked off Dave Marcus. When Dave Marcus quit, it was as much about the next year trying to share a ride with Dell with my dad. It was as much as frustration over that, the firing of Dewey Live and Good, and also in 78, he's having this great year, they're running well, and all of a sudden now they're going to start preparing cars for J.D. Stacey and Neil Bonnet?

well that wasn't in the plan jd stacey eventually resolves his conflict with harry hide but in the off season that year jd stacey works in coal business in the off season that year jd stacey's limo was parked in the parking lot of a concord hotel police found a bomb underneath that car rigged to explode as soon as the car backed out of its parking spot and they happened to be just walking by this car. They weren't even like looking for this, right? They see the car and they're just like, oh, look, that's a nice limousine. What is that strapped to the bottom of the thing? They get in there and inspect it. They don't know whose it is, whose car it is. J.D. Stacey would say this was the second attempt on his life at that point in time. J.D. Stacey would lurk in the shadows, if you will,

of the NASCAR circuit through 79 and 80. And then in 1981 and in 1982, in 181, in 182, he would buy Rod Oshelan Racing. Dad, obviously getting all this information from Neil Bonnet, says, yeah, I don't need to drive for this guy, I'm quitting. He would quit in two weeks and go drive for Richard Childers. Mid-season in 81. J.D. Stacey will go to the racetrack and start paying everybody all kinds of money just to put J.D. Stacey on the side of his car.

There's like seven or eight cars out on the racetrack with J.D. Stacey on the side, and eventually the checks starts bouncing. People aren't getting paid and JD Stacey just disappears. Quite an interesting character. Another great story that got cut from the 79 show was Kale Yarbril appearing on the Dukes of Hazard. Now this is something that I was a little bit confused by because I recall when I was a kid,

I believe it was in the 1984 year. I remember Kale Yarborough being on. that show. And I remember it was right after he had won the Daytona 500 in the Hardy's car and they actually used a little bit of the clip of him winning or the in-car camera footage or whatever in the in the Dukes of Hazard show. I don't know if Kail's been on the show twice or what but in 1979 in articles Kale talks about how he's so nervous because he's got to go to Hollywood to shoot an episode of the Dukes of Hazard. So maybe Kale Yarborough was on there twice.

He eventually went to Hollywood, shot his episode in the middle of the 1979 year, and then during one of the final races of the season, the episode ran on like a Friday or Saturday night. And imagine all of the industry probably tuned in. There's probably only like three stations on the television. They tune in to watch Kale on Dukes of Hazard, do a terrible job of acting, even trying to play himself, and then go to the racetrack the next morning and give him a hard time for it.

You know that happened. We also have a interesting thing that we kind of missed. Now, I've got this picture, so I apologize for letting this slip. David Pearson drove Dad's car in relief for Dad while he was injured. They go to Bristol, and I made a big deal. Like, man, David Pearson racing at Bristol, he hasn't raced here in a long time. And he was older and running a limited schedule. Why would he run this race?

It's definitely going to wear him out. Well, he did get worn out. He got relief driving. from Lenny Pond. Lenny was popular for a relief driver back then, but Lindy gets in the car. I've got pictures of this on my phone, and I just missed it,

and it should have made the show, but pretty cool to know that, you know, Lenny was climbing in everybody's cars back then when they needed help. So during this show, you and I learned more about dad's crash at Pocono and the injuries he dealt with than I even knew, right?

I thought it was broken collar bones. much more than that. Well, let me read you an article from the Winston-Salem Journal on August 3rd, 1979. This is a Friday. Rookie Hart out for at least a month. Dillenhart will be transferred Sunday to a Charlotte Hospital from the East Strasbourg, Pennsylvania Hospital, where he's currently in the intensive care unit recovering from injuries from Monday's Pocono 500. Earnhardt, the hottest rookie on the Grand National Tour in several years, has several bruises and one broken collar.

bone, one cracked collarbone, an injured jaw in a concussion. I didn't know about the jaw. And he is expected to be out of action, at least until the Capitol City 400 at Richmond. Wow, they had some foreshadowing there. And according to Jake Elder, the team's crew chief, because of his jaw injury, Earnhardt is being fed intravenously. Dang. So busted his jaw.

I guess he's got his jaw sewn shut and he's getting fed through a tube. Is that what I'm reading? Sounds like it. But depending on relief driver David Pearson's showing here Sunday and the talks next week between team manager Roland Volaca and Pearson of Spartanburg, South Carolina, the veteran will likely drive the team's cars at Michigan, Bristol, and Darlington, and perhaps Dover.

So Elder says, I went over and saw Dale Monday night. His neck and shoulders were all swelled up, and he could only lift his hands just a little. The first thing he said was, I hit hard. I said, no kidding. And then he asked me, when can I drive my next race? Elder didn't have the heart to tell him not for quite a while. This is another neat little tidbit.

Bruton Smith, that's Marcus's dad, who's been on the podcast many times, and the owner of Charlotte Murder Speedway, sent his personal plane to Pocono to bring Dad back. That's from Elder's mouth now. The sisters said that Dad got a commercial plane home, so we really don't know. We could ask Marcus, I guess. But Elder is telling this article that Bruton Smith,

is sending his personal plane to bring Dad back from Pocono, and Dad will probably check into a hospital for a couple days and let the doctors run some more tests. Darrell saw the crash and he said the tire exploded into a million pieces and the wreck smashed the driver's seat all to pieces and tore the steering wheel clear around, and it smashed the rowbars almost clean metal to metal flat. Now, I don't want Dale to come back too quick or come back too soon, but I do want him to get back in the car as soon as he can, like getting back on a horse that's thrown you. I know he's going to miss four races.

Heck, you can't even run Bristol when you're actually well. That place will really get to your neck. And Darlington, Dovers, those are where you plumb out. I figure he ought to be ready to run Richmond if he's able. NASCAR Grand National Competition Director Ray Hill conceded. There's a possibility his head brushed the wall. Based on the crew's review of the accident, a hole was torn in the car's safety window net by the impact,

which Doug Reichardt, the crew chief, backed up earlier in this show. Elder said that Earnhardt has been complaining of pain in the back of his head. So there you go. That's just some more information. You know, I mean, you know, we're all still just speculating

really what happened in the crash, but Dad hit the wall. We do know this. He had to hit the wall flat driver's side. I thought it was a head-on crash or somehow. How did he move forward in the seat? I just assumed the shoulder straps broke the collarbones.

but apparently he went to the side, to the left side, and without anything on the left side of that seat to stop him from moving toward the doorbars and toward the left side of the car, that's when the shoulder harnesses really kind of just broke the collarbones and did that damage. But he moved far enough to actually hit his head on the wall briefly, get him a bad concussion,

and somehow broke his jaw, which I'm maybe guessing, guessing that he hit his jaw or something on the doortop. But, you know, just a lot more injuries than I'd ever considered. So, what is the next stage of becoming Earnhardt? Well, we have the 1980 scrapbook. All right. And we, you know, when we wrote this episode, 1979,

I sat down and threw the script together. We did this, as Mike would love to say, we did it backwards. And this came together well, and I'm real proud of it, but I think if we do this the right way and write the outline and then bring all the information together and the audio from the races and everything else, it could be so much, so much better as a product, easier for you to listen to. So we're excited about that.

We're going to do it. The 1987 is going to happen. The 1980 season is going to happen. Probably next year. We're coming off of the rookie of the year. 1980 is going to be a big year for dad as well. He's going to have more wins. It's the last season of the big-bodied race car.

They're going to go to the smaller cars in 1981. And I have the car in my possession that Dad ran the final race in at 1980 to clinch the championship. That car also won at Atlanta and did several other things throughout the year that we'll talk about. We have the car in our hands. Pretty cool. So we'll talk about that and let y'all know how that's coming along. But there's a lot of incredible happenings and moments throughout the 1980s season. I don't want to spoil too much, but Jake Elder will not be the crew chief when the team wins the championship.

And that split is really, really dynamic. And there's a lot of articles with some pretty telling quotes. Dad and Kell Yarborough get into a bit of a, spirited battle not only on the racetrack for the championship, but in the media. There's some quotes and comments from both drivers about their opinions of each other and their driving. So it should be a lot of fun. We'll also include, obviously, the sisters and Doug Reichert for their take and information,

what they can recall. Now that we know what we're trying to do with this series, I'm telling you. I think 1980 in that season will be even more entertaining. So until then, I hope you've enjoyed our look back on the 1979 year. Becoming Earnhardt came out of some scrapbooks that my aunt made with love. And it's been incredible to create something with those. And I've really enjoyed the feedback that everybody has given us. And I hope, you know, it's an evergreen series.

If you enjoyed it, now you can share it with friends. They can listen to it in full. Have some fun with it. and keep the stories out there like my aunt said. Keep telling the stories and keep sharing with people some of the cool things that happened in my dad's career, but NASCAR as well. We'll see you next time on Becoming Earnhardt. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.