Dale Earnhardt Jr. remembers joining Earnhardt Sr. in IMSA Rolex 24 at Daytona | NBC Sports

In 2001, Dale Earnhardt, senior and junior, experienced the unique thrill of the Rolex 24 Hours, one of the last races the senior ran, everyone was very excited that dad was there, we were going to a really different pond, you know, we were going to drive a car that is much more sophisticated with drivers that are road course experts, you know, specialists, he didn't act like a guy, I'm going to like the world, let me show you or you know I'm Dylan Heart, move over, by the way, give me you are enjoying my space you are enjoying this emotion bigger than you think here we are together informing and talking about the car and I am trying to impress you in everything I do the curious thing about a 24- In a one hour race you make a lot of mistakes , either the team doesn't know or they just don't say anything about it.

I think Dale Jr will get his baptism of fire here at the 24 Hours of Daytona later in the The night they put me in the car and I went into the first turn, I hit the gas a little bit, you know, to get out of that turn and turn. the thing, there it goes, there it goes, it just slides slowly, you know, like 21 on. our glide is so slow and I think I don't even know where I am right now once this thing gets going I think it stops it now I just knew you know run 500 miles and just go hard. hard all the time right to the limit and dad was the complete opposite.

Dale Jr. has been driving the car very aggressively while older Dale has been very conservative in Dad's mind and he was so smart that he just wouldn't do anything to anyone. Well, if we crash and go broke, I'd say it looks very, very soft out there. He has the look of a long distance runner. He just didn't put any pressure on himself. He is passing people right and left. You look like a happy man. about that I don't want to stay there another sense I think when I was starting to make my sense I realized I just had to keep the car in one piece and they were telling me ask them if I could I didn't do a double but then they said man , I assure you that the Earnhardts finished second in their class while their teammates won the overall Rolex 24 at Daytona is all Corvette. 2001 was a banner race for Corvette racing and a special father-son experience we never got to go to. "Thinking we had a chance to win the whole thing, we were thinking more about trying to place well in our class, but we did it.

I think Dad was really proud that it would have been nice to be on the overall podium, but we won." I won't be back next year. I just appreciate it. I guess we have to do that. You know, before it was taken away from him, but it was probably like one of the first dominoes in a series of things he might have wanted. I do it outside of Nascar, you know, and that was probably the first one you knew about when we decided to build these cars. I didn't know that Dad was going to be taken away from us shortly after, so the car became much more important to me. so, because this is a bit of a symbolic piece for me, something we did together at the end of its life and I had to re-decal it once because the decals age and deteriorate a little.

I only have a handful of cars to my name and there are only one or two that I will never get rid of and this is one of them I will always have this you