Even the most experienced media personalities have bad days as they fumble their words in front of the camera. A person who has spent most of his life behind the wheel of high-performance racing machines would be no exception. Serving as an analyst for NBC since his retirement back in 2017, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has gotten in front of the lens on plenty of occasions. Contributing to Cup Series programming, Dale Jr got involved once again at Darlington on Sunday. 

Walking around the wall with Jeff Burton before the race, he got into a criss-cross with his words and committed a mistake on Live TV that he had no way back from. Getting back to his studio after the night, he sat with Mike Davis on his podcast and revealed what led to the unlikely occurrence.

Dale Earnhardt Jr commits a rookie error in front of the camera

Dale Jr’s exploits on the race tracks of America are no secret. In his time, he was regarded as the most popular driver and won enough accolades to show for it. Leaving the Cup Series field, he signed with NBC to serve as an on-air analyst. In addition to this, Dale Jr also hosts the ‘Dale Jr. Download’ podcast and ‘Lost Speedways’, a documentary produced by Peacock.

Being a racing legend with a plethora of experience behind him, one might not have expected Dale Jr to call the wall of the Darlington Raceway a “fence”. But that’s what happened on Sunday.

Talking about the lighthearted incident on his podcast, Dale Jr. gave us an insight into the process that he follows before taking on the camera. He said, “Typically, man, if I’m gonna do some play-by-play, even if it’s that third stage, I’ll sit down and I’ll write out exactly what I’m gonna say when we go to commercial or when we’re gonna come back from commercial, or how I might even open it up at the top of the stage (…) If I feel like I’m gonna just go blank, I can grab this page and get through it, right? I didn’t do any of that.”

When co-host Mike Davis asked why he didn’t follow the usual on Sunday, Dale Jr. got into providing some interesting insights on the incident.

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What went wrong at Darlington for the most popular driver?

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Going over the evening, Dale Jr got into explaining how he’d come to call the wall a fence. He talked about the walk and talk that is done prior to races and mentioned that Jeff Burton and himself were at turns 3 and 4 up against the wall on that particular evening. Noting that writing a script and memorizing it usually works for him, he said, “Like this weekend, Saturday. I really didn’t have a script. I just got up there and I said, ‘Jeff, I’m just gonna talk and then I’ll hand it to you.’ And I just said whatever came to my mind and gave it to Jeff. And it was fine.” 

He proceeded to discuss the pre-race moments of Sunday and revealed the unusual process that he followed. He said, “I sat down Sunday morning and started like ‘Man, I wanna say… I want, I want to compare this race and this track to Mount Everest. I really want to send the point home that this is, this is the toughest hill to climb this racetrack, this wind, this Southern 500.’ And in trying to write a scripted comment, I stumbled over the word ‘fence’. “

The former racer went on to explain the workings behind mistakes like this. He talked about how there was a high chance that a speaker stumbles if they don’t have a script in their brain that they try to spit out. 

As Dale Jr. preferred to keep his on-camera exploits more like normal conversations, Mike Davis agreed and assured him that the stumble on Sunday wasn’t a particularly bad one. With the camera not yet ready to fall out of love with NASCAR’s once most popular driver, the ‘Pied Piper of Daytona’ will be hoping to avoid such mistakes in the races that are to come.

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