Dale Earnhardt Reveals He Knew of Jimmie Johnson’s Retirement, but Didn’t Want to Repeat Kyle Busch Mistake: “I Learned My Lesson”

One of the biggest side-news from Kyle Busch’s massive Richard Childress Racing move was certainly how Dale Earnhardt Jr. ‘leaked’ the information ahead of its official release. But if you thought he’d do it again, become NASCAR’s own Fabrizio Romano, then you’d be wrong.

Because Dale Jr. has learned his lesson.

Quite recently, former NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson announced his retirement from full-time racing. Johnson was Junior’s teammate for a long time at Hendrick, so you’d expect the Hall of Famer was ‘aware’ of where his pal’s career was going.

But this time he didn’t send out any cryptic tweets as he did with Busch.

Why?

“That’s not my story to tell,” he said. “A guy might change his mind or something.

“I already made a mistake with releasing Kyle’s news, I don’t wanna, I learned my lesson.”

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Kyle Busch gave Dale Earnhardt Jr a hard time for leaking his news

Even though he admitted to having made a mistake about Kyle Busch’s RCR move tweet only recently, Busch made Dale Earnhardt Jr realize what he did right after he put out the tweet.

“Kyle calls me and he’s like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Man, everybody’s speculating. I’m just jumping into this conversation,'” Earnhardt recalled. “And he’s giving me a hard time. And I’m like, ‘So I’m right? Am I right about this?’ And he’s like, ‘Dude, wait until Tuesday.'”

This led to both of them coming up with a plan for Junior to post another tweet just “to sort of throw people off.”

In fact, it was Busch only who suggested that Dale Jr. posts a tweet with a basketball, implying his move to Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing with the number #32. “I don’t know why we came up with that number then,” he added.

“He was just coming up with all kinds of ideas.”

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