Dale Earnhardt Jr: Leaving the family business

before he passed on to your father and stepmother, as I understand it, that would make most of your decisions for you, how quickly did that change? Immediately after my father died, I had this very strange feeling of independence, it wasn't comfortable, I was just thinking. about all the things that I depended on dad for advice and direction and he just wasn't going to be there and what that was like and it was a strange, strange feeling, there was a release of a certain pressure that I can't quite describe and I don't know like I'm worried about how the hell I'm going to live the rest of my life without my dad, it's almost like this is really happening in my mind, it's just some kind of dream. surreal but I had always been in his shadow and I was always going to be in his shadow and I knew it and I was fine with it as long as he was there, you know, I traded being in his shadow for being close to him, you know when?

They took that away from me, man, that was a lot of strange emotions I had. I felt sadness and loss and a terrible, terrible, terrible sadness and loss, but I felt a strange independence and loneliness. A relief to be out of the shadows. I can not explain it. Don't know. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, it wasn't, it was very confusing, you ran for the team that showed her name now, suddenly, your stepmother, the owner, how difficult was that transition for you to her as the owner, well, she had been present and so on. It wasn't that hard and there were a lot of people in the company that I knew and trusted that were like, let's go with this, we're going to do this for Dale and we wrote about it for about four or five. years what changed during that period of time there were some personnel changes some of those people who had been there from the beginning were no longer in those positions.

I was starting to have a little bit of influence in some of the decisions for my team personally, I probably probably was - I definitely wasn't ready for that responsibility of making those decisions my contract was coming up my relationship with my sponsor Budweiser was coming to an end that contract was ending if they would stay the board of directors resigned what was their plan there were just a lot of crossroads a lot of bridges emerging around 2005 just several small personnel decisions took some of the wind out of my sails and it didn't happen that way and I tried and we tried to sort out correct it and put the pieces back in place, but it never fit perfectly again and it never felt the same as maybe around 2003 2004 and you know, I had a few opportunities to do some different things.

I had opportunities to get better equipment. Cars make a lot more money. It's hard to reject that. It's hard to know if you'll regret it. I've been with my dad's team all this time and we've done a lot of wonderful things. you know, and he's not here anymore and it's been a few years and I think we've gotten everything we could out of this situation, even if the opportunities were exactly the same, to what extent did you know that the relationship with the stepmother was like that? in a place where it was simply better for you to move on, it wasn't always warm and fuzzy and and and that, but it was okay.

I will say one thing about Teresa and that she was always fair, she never did an unfair action. Proposition I never felt like a man, I'm not getting a good enough team, we just didn't have much of a relationship, you know, and if the opportunities were the same, I probably would have stayed. I don't know, it's hard to say I can. I can't even imagine what I would have done if things were different one way or another, however, if at the time of starting Junior Motorsports Dale would probably end up needing to leave Dei, well, it was kind of a process, you know, in 2004 I made a new contract with Teresa and during that period of time things just weren't happening with the cohesion that they needed.

You know, we were being left out of things or we didn't have a seat at the table to get involved in certain things. Haunt Incorporated was going through a change in terms of presidents. There were several presidents that came in during that time, when you know we would have a new meeting to update them and then the four that you already knew, We were no longer there and we would have to meet with another person to update her and it was very difficult knowing that she she wanted things a certain way and if we didn't feel like that was the way it should be it was very difficult to have that conversation with her and it was pretty much how she wanted it or that's how it was going to be yet so it ended up being like that and In 2007 we made a change to determine how big of a change it was that for the two of you together it was a big deal, it was difficult trying to decide that you would leave the

family

business

knowing that's what your father built that

business

for, it softened with the fact that that you knew that she know, the indications that her actions gave us was that she didn't see things the same way and you know she didn't really see that that was built for the continuation of my father and his children and that legacy to build and that she was pretty, you know, in my opinion, she was very stubborn and selfish about it, you know, in a way that made us leave, so it was easier to make that decision, but it was still very difficult to leave the

family

business .

I think what worked for Dale and I is that that's the boat we were always in when we were kids and it always has a meaning which model and I mean, we were always in the situation where we needed to take care of each other, You know? and if so, we had each other to lean on in that relationship to lean on and know that we could get out of the bottom and be okay and just do our thing.