Recently, Amazon Prime announced a slew of sports documentary series that will be released very soon. Among them is a docuseries based on the late Dale Earnhardt, and that has caused a massive stir. Obviously, Dale Earnhardt Jr will be massively involved in the project, which will be produced by Oscar-winner Ron Howard.
Dale Earnhardt Jr has a lot of expectations for the docuseries to do his father justice. The late 7-time NASCAR Cup Series champion is highly revered and has had a few documentaries about him. However, for some reason, not all of them have been able to capture the essence of who he is, and Dale Jr hopes to do it with this latest one.
Junior told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that Amazon Prime, NASCAR’s $1.91 Trillion Partner had approached him at JR Motorsports. So when they pitched a Dale Sr documentary, that certainly got the attention they wanted. The 2-time Daytona 500 winner acknowledged that the streaming giant would have green-lit the project, with or without their blessing. As a result, the former NASCAR driver felt that it would be good to be part of the project and help shape it to tell the story right.
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He said, “You and me both might agree that the best documentary ever done on dad was the Dale documentary. Ryan McGee wrote that and Paul Newman, I believe, narrated that. To me, anyone who wanted to know who dad was, especially Amy, my wife. When we got married, I said, ‘You want to know dad? Best thing I can do is sit down with you and watch the Dale documentary’. That’s the standard for me.”
3⃣ “There’s another generation of fans that have come into the sport that never saw him drive and they don’t know the true impact that he had in the sport.”
Who else is excited for the new @PrimeVideo documentary on Dale Earnhardt Sr. that will air next year?! pic.twitter.com/3MQqaiFtlE
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) May 22, 2024
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Dale Earnhardt Jr has a lot of faith in the documentary’s success
Although this is a daunting task, the future Amazon Prime commentator believes in the project. He confessed that Amazon Prime’s involvement was a coincidence, but someone was going to tackle it anyway. In a way, Dale Earnhardt Jr is glad that Amazon is undertaking this, and he admitted that the pressure will be immense. This is because the standard set by the 2007 documentary is pretty high.
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The best part is that this new docuseries will expose a new generation of fans to Dale Earnhardt. Anyone born after that fateful day in 2001 would have lost the chance to see him race live. So with the help of this series, Dale Jr hopes to show the younger generation what his father meant for the sport.