Dale Earnhardt Jr Reveals an Unknown Part of His Racing Past Leaving SVG Surprised

Rising from the shadows of his late seven-time championship-winning father, Dale Sr, Dale Earnhardt Jr is a NASCAR fan favorite who won the competition’s most popular driver award 15 consecutive times. In an illustrious career that spanned over two decades, the 48-year-old won the Daytona 500 twice and boasted career earnings in excess of USD 400 million in prize money and sponsorship deals.

Known as the “Pied Piper of Daytona”, owing to his success at the Daytona International Speedway, Dale Jr’s story is well known across the racing world. There are only a few details about the Hall Of Fame inductee’s career that spectators aren’t aware of. And yet, in the recent episode of “Dale Jr Download” podcast, the legend revealed a lesser-known interesting experience that he had in 2007 that left listeners and podcast participant Shane Van Gisbergen, driver for Trackhouse racing, utterly surprised.

What was this wild experience Dale Earnhardt Jr talked about?

Following the end of the 2007 NASCAR season, Dale Earnhardt Jr and a few of his friends had flown to Australia to witness the Supercars Championship’s grand finale that was set to take place at Phillip Island. This trip had turned memorable for Dale Jr when an introduction to Supercars legend Paul Morris resulted in him being invited to Queensland for a test drive of the VZ model Holden.

Speaking to Shane Van Gisbergen of the long-gone memory, Dale Jr said, “So when I guess in ’06, a new Holden was coming out, and Paul had built a new one for Russell Ingall. And he let me drive the last year’s car for the whole day (…) I had a lot of fun. He was like, man, let me put some tires on it. He kept telling me all day long, he’s like, don’t put tires on it, put tires on it. You’ll run a good lap. I’m like, I don’t want to know what I’ll run. I don’t want to know what I’ll run. I was like, I just want to ride around on this old stuff.”

What makes the ordeal more interesting is that the test drive coincided with the announcement that Supercars Championship winner Russell Ingall would race for Paul Morris Motorsport in the 2008 season. This resulted in the nation’s major news channels gathering at the Queensland Raceway Park, though none were aware of Dale Jr’s presence or test drive. And so, Dale Jr sat behind the wheel of a V8 car and drove it around the circuit at Ipswich.

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A car too tough to drive for Dale Earnhardt Jr

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Elated to hear that a NASCAR legend had visited his native land and tried driving a V8 Supercar, a vehicle that he was comfortably accustomed to, SVG asked, “But, what did you think of the cars?”

Dale Jr responded that he felt very comfortable in the car and the tires felt like they were bias ply. He also said that he could get to the top limit easily and understood why there was a big box as far as forgiveness in Supercars Championship tracks.

Going on to explain where he faced difficulties, he said, “The tough part for me was the shifting, because it was still an H pattern (…) And there’s a couple of mistakes I made. I thought for sure I’d blown it up, but there was one time I downshifted too early and went to the wrong gear or something. It was a mess.”

SVG quickly understood what the Daytona 500 winner was talking about and shared his own difficulties in his first year driving an H-pattern stick. “That was a proper skill,” he said.

Read More: Dale Jr & SVG Dig Into Justin Mark’s Gameplan Behind 3X Supercars Champ’s NASCAR Future

While it does come as a sweet surprise that Dale Jr has driven one of the coveted V8 Supercars, a lot of fans will be hoping with their fingers crossed that they get to see the NASCAR legend in one of the cars again sometime soon.