Joe Rogan - Dale Earnhardt Jr. on What It's Like to Flip a Car

What else but driving a racing car? I mean, you have a giant engine, you're strapped into a seat and you launch it down the road at extreme speeds right next to other cars doing the same thing, just the intensity and everything is in 9:00 at all times so it's one way wild to make a living sir, yes, thank you, I mean, when I was little, when I was little, I was like, do you know

what

the hell I'm going to do when I grow up? And if it was my dad, really successful in sports, so I'd go to the races and I'd watch him race and I'd watch him win and I'd watch him go through Victory Lane and celebrate and all that stuff and I thought man, this is

what

I've got.

What to do, I have to do this. This looks fun, this looks exciting, people, you know, there are people in all the drivers, the race, my dad, the personalities, and I really wanted to do it, but I knew the odds of making it were tough, so There are only 40 boys. in the country every weekend, so there's 40 guys in this across the country who'll get shot for doing it, you know, and I, even if my dad was as successful as him, I'd have a lot of doors open. for me, but the odds of me actually getting there and being able to stay have staying power and the success and the talent that I knew was tough, so I didn't know if I would ever get that chance, but you know, I remember.

The first time I went to a two and a half mile track it's Talladega and you keep it open. I was working at my father's dealership changing oil. He owned a Chevy shop in Newton, North Carolina, and the phone rang and he said, "My dad, my dad." I was there at the time and he was at Talladega for a test and he said, put the helmet on the suit and we'll meet you at the racetrack the next day. You're going to fly King Air to the runway, I don't know, no. I don't ask questions, just do it, so I got there and I knew I was going to Talladega and I thought, man, I must be driving this, this is going to be crazy, I'm going to go these two and a half miles to track.

Full speed at 190 miles per hour, I've never done it. I was never faster than 90 or 95 on a racetrack before. I've never handled anything bigger than half and I tell him he knows I got there and he says you're going to try this. card, get in, get ready, he gets me in there and tells me you have a grip wide open, if you don't keep it wide open the motors won't run, it will damage the motor, you have to hold it the way they tuned the motor to run wide open it's got to run it's got to run at full throttle if I was trying to go around there at half throttle to burn the pistons in a race to tilt all those things, so he was saying that and I thought to myself.

Is he just telling me that just to make sure that he kept it wide open because he thought he would, that he wouldn't and then I thought, man, I'm a little nervous about keeping it wide open, but I pulled it out? on the track, now I put the pedal to the metal and I'm going down the backstretch and I thought I was looking down the backstretch towards the next corner, this long corner and I was wondering how it's going to turn out, do you know what it's like? the car is going to house the car is not going to fly off the track like I'm going so fast I don't feel like it's going to stay on the track and I kept running and I kept running that through my head about my dad saying I have open control of wide open I say, well, that's it, it's going to be wide open around here, so I don't think he knows.

I believe everything he says and you go in. into the corner and you turn into the corner and there's more grip than you can imagine. There is so much grip that the car is glued to the track with such grip that you have never felt this before in your life. This is this grip. as if you couldn't slide down that track that required the tires and the car, it holds on to the track so hard and tight that nothing will make it, it just spins around there like it was the craziest thing, and that's why today, when I tell people when I have this two-seater car and we take people for a ride and they get in there and I'm like, man, what am I going to do?

What are you going to do to explain to someone how this will feel? Well, I'll tell you there. things to pay attention to to pay attention to grip you're not going to believe how much grip this car has like you're just not going to believe it's going to stick to the track the way it does so pay attention to that and pay attention now bumpy and violent, you know you drive a Cadillac, any car down the street, well, you know, six and eight inches off the ground, these big old inflated tires and big giant sidewalls, and it's going to feel good , you know, when it hits a little. bumps our cars are stiff and sucked into the ground and they don't have much travel in the suspension and you know, it's just built to go fast, not to feel good, you know, and it's going to be hard as hell and it shakes.

And that's what I remember about it and as soon as I got over that initial fear, I think it was the only time I had a real fear of driving a car. As soon as I thought, well, what happened? You know, nothing else is going to be as scary as that. It was okay, driving a car and I mean

flip

ping and when I

flip

ped for the first time and you know, the cars spinning and the parts flying flying in the air mime, I thought to myself that I wasn't afraid or I was never afraid to change my thought: I simply did something that many people will never experience.

You know, I did something that only a few people know what it's like and I feel confident. I have always done it. I felt incredibly safe inside the car, you know, especially with the, I mean, in the last 20 years, safety things have really focused and improved and they're better and better, but I look at the interior of our cars today in comparison. with 20 years ago. on it, so I can't believe it, some of the things we used to ride on, but you felt calm as it turned, oh yeah, always good, I've seen cars turn right, I've seen it for years, so I know it's possible so I went in there and I got lapped in a race in 1998.

I was racing at Daytona and I got lapped and the car so I'm lapping for the first time in my life and these cars are over 3,000 3,000 pounds. , so it is, but it flies in the air like it's a paper man, it's the craziest thing in the world, it's so weightless, you know, and what it felt like to me because the car rolled on its side and fell on its side. It felt like someone rolled a wall of grass into the car. You know, I'm saying that when I was on my side and I could see the ground, it felt like I was right side up because when you turn this over, the force pushes.

You lie down on the seat so you sit forever. You feel gravity all the time as if you were a car that is turning over. They push you into the seat so you feel great. You feel your weight in the seat that never changes. You never get out of your seat like that, you know? So it's like someone rolled a wall of grass against the side of the car and then against the roof and then against that side and on this, you know, he kept doing it. that and I think it's the strangest feeling and you feel completely safe, you know, you feel like you know nothing is going to hurt me, but this, you know, just you, one of the things they always talk about, is like having in your hands something because the spin makes your arms move like that and if you look at a lot of old accidents from the sixties and seventies you'll see the guy's arms fly out the window and they're just like spinning around, they can't pull you up, it's It turns so fast you can't pull it and your arms move like that so as soon as you know you're going backwards you grab the bottom of the steering wheel and you just know look but I flipped my truck one.

Christmas Day and I wasn't holding the steering wheel and my arm went out the window, you know, for a split second, it hit and the end of the window fell on the sill and I thought, man, you know, I got it back. I got in and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and ever since then I've thought you know, now I know that every time I have an accident you have to grab something with your hands because that's the only thing you can't control, you're strapped in with the seat belt. and everything but your arms, you know you can go anywhere and in that moment when the car is rolling or barrel rolling or flipping over, it's as fast as if you can't move your arms. just go over here, yeah, the craziest thing in the world, that's the only fear, I guess, is that your arm might go out the window and get crushed or something, because that's happened to kids, yeah, I I imagine, yes, how did you turn when you were?

On Chris's Christmas Day, my sister knows this won't be news to her, but it's probably not fun for her to be here every time she tells it, but I had a van with the recorder and she bought me that Walkman. CD with the adapter for the tape deck that sticks on, you know, the cassette adapter and she bought me the Walkman cassette adapter and I'm in my well I'm in I'm in my truck I have an s10 extended cab I'm driving from my house to my mother's house, where the family reunion is, my father is there, everyone is there, the whole family is there.

I'm a little late and I'm driving down the highway and I started playing with that Walkman and I went into the ditch and I hit a hidden driveway or a drain pipe in the driveway and I flipped like seven times and destroyed this truck and in the middle of the flip I remember that that happened and my whole change of jacket, everything that was loose in the car ended up down in a corner like a floorboard everything accumulates in that corner it is spinning and crushed a windshield the mirror was down on the radio you know that the roof was crushed very badly.

I was very lucky to have my hands on the steering wheel and the windshield they kept hitting my knuckles and hitting the almond broke all my knuckles very badly and then I let go and my hands went here and I finally put it back in and grabbed the bottom of the steering wheel and broke it. the tires flipped, you know, they tore and came off the truck and this, I got out of the truck and I was fine, I didn't have any injuries other than just my knuckles, they kind of scraped me up, I met this newly married couple, they just did it. have.

Engaged or newlyweds were driving the wrong way and saw everything and stopped and were like you, okay. I say, yeah, and sure enough, there's a line of cars behind me stopped on the road and this lady stops. and I was like, "I need to borrow your cell phone to call my dad. She's like you're in shock, you need to sit down. I was like, now I'm not in shock. I just needed to borrow your cell phone, so I went into the next car." and I received a cell phone from this person. I called my dad and I was like dad, I was like a man.

I overturned my truck. I had pay. I got financing for this thing for five years. Paying $100 a month is perfect. I was working at a dealership changing. Oil probably makes $130 a week and I mean I just bought this truck for probably two three months and I used a truck but it was good it's garbage. I called dad and told him, man, he's going to be mad, he can't be that mad because I. I'm paying for the truck but he's angry with me because I'm ruining the family union and at Christmas he comes looking for me. He would flip this truck very close to where our farm was, so he ran to the farm and got this. flatbed truck and he goes out with the flatbed truck and he stops and as soon as he stops the state trooper pulls up and the state trooper and his dad talked for a minute and they got state troopers like they know one car accident, what?

Alright? Everybody's okay, dad, dad, are you going to put this on the platform? Take him home, yeah, okay, yeah, wait, I'm not going to investigate or anything. It's all good just talk about you Ben and say he left so you did us a favor there and he didn't give me a traffic ticket so dad and I put the truck on the bed and we were going back and he He started laughing and I was like, man, I hoped you were really mad because he was a fiery kind of dad. I know and I took off my belt and went to town, you know, he was a tough, strict, tough, tough guy, so I thought at least I was going to get a good curse, but he started laughing and I told him , man, what's so funny and he said, "I was." 18 when this happened he says when I was 18 I flipped my car he says I can't get mad he says just I'm glad you're not hurt I'm like that's cute so we went back I took pictures of him and I got him to have some insurance because He got like 11 12 grand for insurance so he could buy another truck, so don't work there