Earnhardt the Documentary Explains Earnhardt the Man in a Way We Never Thought We’d See
Dozens of sportswriters knew Dale Earnhardt better than I did, or covered him longer. But watching Earnhardt, the four-part documentary now available on Amazon Prime Video, it’s immediately evident that while this program certainly centers around Earnhardt, there are so many ancillary satellites revolving around the main planet, and as part four concludes with an […]
Dozens of sportswriters knew Dale Earnhardt better than I did, or covered him longer. But watching Earnhardt, the four-part documentary now available on Amazon Prime Video, it’s immediately evident that while this program certainly centers around Earnhardt, there are so many ancillary satellites revolving around the main planet, and as part four concludes with an obligatory, sad Willie Nelson song, you click off the remote and think: Man, so much about that time I forgot.
So much about his life, and his death, his friends and his enemies, the way he treated the people he liked, which was different from how he treated his family. How one day Earnhardt started showing up wearing a suit, glamorous third wife Teresa on his arm, became a tycoon, built his Dale Earnhardt, Inc. offices and shop, promptly dubbed the “Garage Mahal,” in 1999. Inside, it was chilly and confusing. Mixed messages abounded. Granite, with gold drinking fountains, plus a stuffed deer that Dale shot, and the shotgun he used to kill it. So many shiny trophies that, lumped together, sort of lose meaning. It reminded me of Graceland.
Dale Earnhardt Sr. holding hands with Teresa at the 2001 Daytona 500.George Tiedemann/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
Let’s face it: We all know how this movie ends, in a comparatively innocuous-looking crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. So you’re signing up to watch a four-hour documentary because you are either interested in NASCAR in general, Dale Earnhardt in particular, or you just enjoy a well-told story.
The documentary, executive-produced by Ron Howard and his longtime business partner, Brian Grazer, will win awards, and it deserves to: I’ve worked on projects like this, and through all four parts I marveled at the precise footage and perfect soundbites the production team was able to unearth, because I know for every minute of aired footage, they must have had to plow through hours and hours of archives, beg friends and families and fans for home movies, refuse to take no for an answer when they knew what they needed exists, out there somewhere.
You don’t have to be a race fan to appreciate Earnhardt, though it helps, especially if you’ve been around for a while.
I met Dale Earnhardt on November 19, 1989, at what was then the Atlanta International Raceway. It was the Winston Cup season finale—and isn’t that the smartest marketing you ever saw, when you had to actually say the name of a cigarette company when you were referencing the series?—where the ’89 champion would be crowned. I was covering it for the Dallas Times Herald. It was my first NASCAR race. I wasn’t a Times Herald sportswriter; I was actually the paper’s television critic, and I had timed a visit to CNN studios to write a feature on the news network’s upcoming 10th anniversary for an airline magazine (remember those?). It was not a coincidence that there was an important NASCAR race there that weekend—I’d been writing about motorsports for a while, and it came time for me to check that NASCAR box.
So I joined 15 or 20 actual sportswriters in the Atlanta track’s small infield press room, accompanied by nobody I knew, but several I’d heard of. I was not accustomed to being in a room that had no view of the actual racetrack, but soon learned that wasn’t unusual.
ISC Archives/Getty Images
It was not a particularly eventful race, until lap 202, when the orange number 22 car of journeyman driver Grant Adcox pancaked the outside wall and burst into flames as the car traveled down the embankment, into the infield. It seemed to take forever to get Adcox out of the car: They had to use the Jaws of Life to cut off the roof. He was taken to the infield care center, then helicoptered to an Atlanta hospital. There’s little question that Adcox was dead before his car stopped rolling, as the mounting for his seat came loose in the impact, and unrestrained, he suffered fatal head and chest trauma, but it is typical of all forms of motorsports to transport the driver to the hospital, where the family can gather and an appropriate member of the clergy breaks the news, and the carefully structured official announcement is made later, so fans can leave unaware that they’d just seen someone die. To a T, that script would be followed 12 years later for Earnhardt himself.
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Adcox worked with his father at Herb Adcox Chevrolet in Chattanooga. He never had enough money to compete full-time in NASCAR, but raced regularly in the ARCA series, which used older Cup cars. Dale Earnhardt had said in an interview earlier in the season that he was impressed with Adcox’s talent, and with enough money, maybe he could be a success in the Cup series.
Some of the Cup races Adcox had managed to run seemed cursed. In 1974, Adcox qualified for a race at Talladega Superspeedway. Midway through the event, the caution flag flew, and the drivers dashed for pit road. As he started to pull into his pit stall, Adcox’s car began to slide, right into Gary Bettenhausen’s Roger Penske–owned AMC Matador, which was being serviced by the crew. Several of them were struck and injured, the worst being Don Miller, who lost a leg.
The following year, Adcox again qualified for the race at Talladega, but his crew chief dropped dead from a heart attack right there in the garage. The car was withdrawn, but Adcox found another ride, and then the race was delayed a week by rain. Adcox, a working man, had to cancel, and his spot in the field was given to fan favorite Tiny Lund, the affable 6-foot, 5-inch, 270-pound winner of the 1963 Daytona 500. In a multi-car crash on lap seven, Lund’s car was struck broadside, and he was killed. He was 45. Had Adcox been able to race, Lund would have been watching from the grandstands.
1974: Grant Adcox with several of his cars inside his shop in Chattanooga, TN. Adcox moved from a successful short-track career to NASCAR in the 1970s and ’80s, but had most of his success in the ARCA series, where he was a nine-time winner.ISC Archives/Getty Images
Earnhardt won that race at Atlanta, though he lost the 1989 championship to Rusty Wallace. Earnhardt was cheerful when he came into the press room to talk to us: One of his first comments was, “Boy, I hope Grant’s OK. That was a hard hit he took.” A sportswriter sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, “Did nobody tell him?”
Apparently not, and we sure didn’t. I spoke to Earnhardt briefly, then was soon back in my hotel room, about to type out the story on my wretched Radio Shack TRS 80 laptop. But what was my lede? That Earnhardt won? That Wallace was the champion? That Adcox was the first Cup driver to die in five years? I don’t recall what I typed into the Trash 80, but I typed away. And I had covered my first NASCAR race.
As I went to more and more races, Earnhardt was always a looming presence. He was hated and adored. I fell somewhere in between. Rubbing may be racing, but Earnhardt’s aggressiveness often rubbed me the wrong way, especially earlier in his career. He was polarizing—you either got him or you didn’t.
1982: Mike Joy interviewing Dale Earnhardt Sr. prior to the 1982 Daytona 500 start.Robert Alexander/Getty Images
I apologize for the above autobiography, and I need to get back to Earnhardt. The praise is deserved, and the use of film and clips from TV broadcasts is Emmy-worthy. The TV critic in me was a little put off by the staging of some of the present-day interviews: It isn’t unusual for the interviewer, unseen and unheard in this case, to tell the subject to look at me, not at the camera, but several of the subjects appear to be speaking to someone in another room. The interviews with bass fishing legend Hank Parker, an Earnhardt confidant, are so dark and distant it’s almost like he was being filmed by a hidden camera. But that would be nitpicking director Joshua Altman’s style. Taken as a whole, Earnhardt is top-shelf. Part three drags a bit, but the rest seem right-sized.
As I watched, I took notes. Following are some expansions on those notes, in no particular order, which fans of the man and the documentary might find of interest.
Ralph Earnhardt
1958: When you have an injured leg, what better place to perch at a NASCAR race than in the trunk of a passenger car, as Ralph Earnhardt proves to several of his fellow NASCAR competitors (Bobby Isaac, Ned Jarrett, and Richard Petty).ISC Archives/Getty Images
I wanted more from Earnhardt about Ralph Earnhardt than we were served. The importance he played in his son Dale’s life, perhaps not so much by action as inaction, was telling at every turn. Growing up at racetracks in the south, I’d seen dozens of Ralph Earnhardts: Lean, hard-bitten, tanned, wary and suspicious, usually with a pack of Lucky Strikes tucked in their shirt pocket. Ralph was a talented driver, perhaps an even more talented car- and engine-builder, as often as not working for the drivers he competed against on Saturday nights.
Ralph toiled for years in cotton gins, looking for a way out. That would be racing. With his typically German meticulous, practical personality, he wanted more, but didn’t crave it, didn’t demand superstardom, didn’t much want to travel, but he dominated racing for years at local tracks, where he made enough money and got to sleep in his own bed every night. He was sick most of 1973 with heart trouble, had to let his friend Stick Elliott race his car, but was back behind the wheel that summer, and won two races at Concord Speedway. “Veteran Ralph Earnhardt is back in high gear,” said the Charlotte News in July.
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Two months later, Ralph Earnhardt died, at home, from a heart attack. He was 45. Years after, Dale spoke about his father in an interview. “That’s the last funeral I’ve ever gone to. It took me a year or so to get over being mad. I felt like I was robbed. I felt hurt,” Dale said. “It was too tough to take. The memories. All the things I wanted to tell him.”
Which, we learn from Earnhardt, isn’t at all dissimilar from the way Junior felt after losing his father, who was 49.
Teresa Earnhardt
Brian Cleary/Getty Images
Teresa Houston was pretty, and she knew it. She had grown up around racing—her uncle is Tommy Houston, who had 24 wins and 198 top-10 finishes in the NASCAR Busch series, and her cousin Andy Houston raced in all three of the major NASCAR series. She naturally met Earnhardt at the track, and they married on November 14, 1982.
She wanted to be a mother—her daughter Taylor Nicole was born on December 20, 1988—but she wasn’t crazy about being a stepmother. The relationship between her and Dale’s other kids, son Kerry, daughter Kelley, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., was icy from the start. Kerry related on Dale Jr.’s podcast that when he was finally invited to his father’s house for the first time—at age 16—Teresa slammed the door in his face.
It may seem that Teresa, now 66, has been unfairly painted as the evil stepmother, but she certainly hasn’t helped her own cause. She virtually disappeared after Earnhardt was killed. She inherited everything: The Garage Mahal, the race teams, so much property, and the spectacularly profitable souvenir business.
Teresa Earnhardt poses for a portrait in front of a painting of her late husband, at the Dale Earnhardt Inc. offices in Mooresville, North Carolina, on December 1, 2002.Rick Dole/Getty Images
Kelley, Kerry, and Dale Jr. got nothing, not even their own names. When Kerry and his wife Rene signed a deal with Schumacher Homes to help design and promote new houses, they called it the “Earnhardt Collection.” The ads were benign, in no way suggesting that Dale Earnhardt or his estate had anything to do with the project. Nonetheless, Teresa filed suit against her stepson in 2017, contending that Kerry, by using the name he was born with, was infringing on her copyright. Kelley and Junior were properly appalled, but not surprised. The case dragged on for years. It’s difficult to even conceive of a reason why Teresa would do this, aside from spite.
It’s worth noting, too, that Teresa had Senior buried on “her” land, and Junior revealed in a very recent Washington Post interview that he has only been able to visit his father’s grave once since he died, because Teresa has forbidden him and Kelley to access her property. Which may or may not be legal, given North Carolina’s confusing laws pertaining to whether or not a property owner can legally bar the next of kin from a gravesite.
(L-R) Teresa Earnhardt speaks as Kerry Earnhardt, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Taylor Earnhardt stand on stage during Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s 2010 NASCAR Hall of Fame induction.Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
With the possible exception of Brooke Sealey, Jeff Gordon’s first wife, no NASCAR ex has maintained a lower public profile than Teresa. Her name was most recently in the news last October, when she revealed plans for a portion of what the Charlotte Observer called her “vast landholdings.” The paper reported that she had asked the local planning board to rezone 399 acres in Mooresville so she could build an industrial park.
Earnhardt mentioned that Dale Jr. continued to race for the now-Teresa-owned Dale Earnhardt, Inc., until 2007, when the situation just became untenable. After his move to Hendrick Motorsports, sponsors fled DEI, and Teresa had to merge with Chip Ganassi Racing in 2008.
The extent to which Teresa is reviled by so many NASCAR fans wasn’t fully explored in Earnhardt, nor was her toxic relationship with her three stepchildren. It’s just so sad.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
George Tiedemann/Sports Illustrated/Getty Ima
No one is more surprised than I am that I’m describing Junior as a deeply complex man. In his younger years, that would have seemed absurd: What’s so complex about a kid who loves pickup trucks and beer and video games, and hanging out with his buddies, and who very possibly could have found happiness working forever at his father’s Chevrolet dealership?
One thing Earnhardt puts in laser focus was Junior’s need to earn his father’s respect, and he saw racing as being the road to that. Despite being a very wealthy man, Senior repeatedly balked at helping his children race, ostensibly because he wanted them to experience the same maturing desperation that he met and eventually conquered.
Hank Parker says in Earnhardt that he convinced Dale to spend some money helping them out, and Senior did buy them each a late-model car to run at local paved ovals, and a truck and trailer to haul them around in. It’s downright stunning when Junior says that he raced in 159 late-model races, and his father never came to a single one. Junior knew nothing about racecraft, and the man who possibly knew more about it than anyone declined to teach him.
Brian Cleary/Getty Images
Still, Junior battled through all that to win races—and a burgeoning fan base. When he moved to Hendrick, many of us thought he had it made, but Junior struggled. He had the same equipment Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon did, but they were winning championships and he wasn’t. After a colleague and I interviewed him during the now-defunct NASCAR media tour, we walked away disheartened by how sad Dale seemed. I asked him if he felt he had good chemistry with his current crew chief, and he said, “I’m not sure I’ve ever had good chemistry with a crew chief. I don’t even know what that is.” NASCAR drivers just don’t say things like that to reporters holding tape recorders. Afterward, my friend suggested, not entirely kidding, that Hendrick needed to put him on suicide watch.
When Dale Jr. retired at the end of the 2017 season, he had amassed a very respectable record: 26 wins, two of them the Daytona 500, with 260 top-10s in 631 races.
He and Kelley formed JR Motorsports, which in 2016 began fielding NASCAR Nationwide (now Xfinity) series cars, with the help of Rick Hendrick. The team began winning that first year and hasn’t stopped. Sponsors are delighted to bask in Junior’s company, and he and Kelley seem really happy in their respective roles.
Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Junior was one of NASCAR’s early adopters when it came to social media, founding the Dale Jr. Download in 2013, with Junior becoming the regular host in 2017. The podcast added video, and as Earnhardt honed his skill as a broadcaster, the Dale Jr. Download has become possibly the single most influential media source there is in the racing world—not just NASCAR, as Junior can and does have guests from all forms of racing. The way Howard Stern can get celebrities to emotionally expose themselves in a way they won’t anywhere else, racers will reveal parts of their lives to Junior that would typically be off limits elsewhere.
Never has Junior seemed so comfortable in his own skin. Years ago, I said this on a radio show that I hosted: If any racer had a license to be an asshole, it’s Dale Earnhardt, Jr. But he isn’t. In person, he’s polite, interested in what you have to say, patient with fans wanting autographs and selfies, and a genuinely nice guy.
I think that comes across in Earnhardt. Because the documentary is supposed to be about Senior, but Junior carries the day. Good for him, and Kelley, and Kerry.
Q. Ryan Blaney, what a fight by you. The cool suit failing during stage one. How tough was that? RYAN BLANEY: It was hot. Yeah, I flipped it on probably lap 15. I was like, Oh, it’s going to be a long day, so… It was warm. Was able to just keep going. Really proud […]
Q.Ryan Blaney, what a fight by you. The cool suit failing during stage one. How tough was that?
RYAN BLANEY: It was hot. Yeah, I flipped it on probably lap 15. I was like, Oh, it’s going to be a long day, so…
It was warm. Was able to just keep going. Really proud of the whole 12 guys from starting in the back, making good ground. Then me speeding set us back again. Having to come back up there.
Jonathan and the whole 12 team did a good job of kind of figuring out what to do from the start of the race and after my mistake. Yeah, just kind of stuck really there at the end, all three of us just kind of running the same pace.
Overall I appreciate Wabash, Ford Mustang Performance, Menards Body Armor, DEX Imaging, Advance Auto Parts. Really good day for us.
Q.Twice through the field, do you feel you made the most of your day?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah. I mean, obviously I would have liked to have won. I think after having to start in the back, then the mistake I made, I feel like we were recovered really well. Our car was fast enough to do it.
Overall I feel we made the most of our day. Just a little extra would have been one or two spots team. Overall really proud of the effort of the whole 12 team.
What drivers said at Pocono after Cup race won by Chase Briscoe
Chase Briscoe — winner: “It was a lot of (pressure). It was kind of weird. I wasn’t driving hard. It’s not like I was on the ragged edge. It was so hard to have a guy chasing you, probably the guy that’s the greatest of all time here. Trying to save fuel and everything else. […]
Chase Briscoe — winner: “It was a lot of (pressure). It was kind of weird. I wasn’t driving hard. It’s not like I was on the ragged edge. It was so hard to have a guy chasing you, probably the guy that’s the greatest of all time here. Trying to save fuel and everything else. Really the first race we’ve kind of executed truthfully all year long. Joe Gibbs Racing took a big chance on me. I wasn’t everybody’s first choice. For me to be able to get here and finally deliver a win is just an awesome feeling. Anybody that has worked with me knows I’m normally overdriving, missing my marks all the time. My dad tells me all the time, ‘Slow down, you’ll probably go faster.’ It’s true there. Amazing day. To get Coach (Joe Gibbs) in victory lane after them taking a chance on me, it’s so rewarding truthfully. Just a big weight off my shoulders. I’ve been telling my wife the last two weeks, I have to win. To finally come here and do it, it has been a great day.”
Denny Hamlin — second: “When five cars pitted and then the caution came and (Briscoe) and a bunch of guys jumped in front of us, I knew it would be really hard to give that track position back. It was just so hard to pass, so we did all we could. We were just next best in line. It definitely was going to be difficult. There was a key moment when (Briscoe) and some other guys pitted, and the caution came out and leaped him in front of us. At that point, we knew it was going to be really hard to pass those guys back on the racetrack. Team did a great job, next best in line there of our strategy, it just didn’t work out. We’re really strong. Not showing up with any weaknesses right now. I’m really proud of the effort that we’ve put forth and yeah, just love to get more wins But still it was a good overall solid day for us”
Ryan Blaney — third: “It was hot (with a malfunctioning cool suit). I flipped it on probably lap 15. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a long day, so… ‘ Was able to just keep going. Really proud of the whole 12 guys from starting in the back, making good ground. Then me speeding set us back again. Having to come back up there. (Crew chief) Jonathan (Hassler) and the whole 12 team did a good job of kind of figuring out what to do from the start of the race and after my mistake. Yeah, just kind of stuck really there at the end, all three of us just kind of running the same pace. Obviously, I would have liked to have won. I think after having to start in the back, then the mistake I made, I feel like we were recovered really well. Our car was fast enough to do it. Overall I feel we made the most of our day. Just a little extra would have been one or two spots team. Overall really proud of the effort of the whole 12 team.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver became the latest to lock into the Cup Series playoffs.
Chris Buescher — fourth: “Everybody’s put so much work into it to get this point where we’re unloading cars that are just a pleasure to drive. So to be in the hunt was fun. The last restart, we started on the bottom, and I think I just got too low trying to defend and got in the marbles and slid up into the middle there and lost some time. I was running them back down there, but with as hard as it was to pass today, I don’t know that would have been plausible to get around everybody, but certainly had a really solid speed. But overall, a really solid day and fun to have fast race cars like this. We’re chasing wins. Still in that mindset if we go to the race track and do what we did today, we’re chasing a win. How do we set ourselves up to have track position at the end to fight for a trophy? And today, a place like this with the speed we had, that brought points with it. So it’s kind of my motto. I try to go by that. Fast race cars bring points with them, and I think if we stick with this over the next handful of weeks, that part will come with it, but again I think we figured for the last couple months, it’s going to be a must-win situation I feel like these playoffs constantly do that, and you get to the end and have one or two that slip in on points but you’ve got to win races.”
Chase Elliott — fifth: “We were just really loose in (turn) three. I felt like I could pace pretty good through turns one and two, but I just could not get turn three right all day. Certainly as the run went on, it became more challenging for me and I started making more and more mistakes over there. I thought Denny (Hamlin) and Ryan (Blaney) could do a better job of kind of stalking the person in front of them to get themselves opportunities. I was just a little bit too far back and I think it was mainly because of that. But overall, happy to get a fifth-place finish for this No. 9 Chevy team.”
John Hunter Nemechek — sixth: “Both cars had speed this weekend right off the truck and qualified really well. It was my best qualifying effort in the Cup series and we raced well also. I’m proud of everything they’ve put in at Legacy Motor Club, all the men and women with all the effort they’ve been putting in. Looking forward to continuing to come to the racetrack when you have the speed. Just a testament to this 42 team. Travis Mack (crew chief), and I have been working really hard and we’ve been communicating well. Sydney, our primary engineer, Dex, Carl, Josh, and everyone who works on this thing. I’m just proud of the effort.” Kyle Larson — seventh: “It was an up-and-down day. It was really hard to pass. It was a good fight for the No. 5 Chevy team to get a seventh-place finish, and for three Hendrick Motorsports cars to get top-10 results. I just hope we don’t carry what we had the last few weeks into the rest of the season. Prior to the last few weeks, we’ve been really fast. It’s just been a rough stretch, but we’ll continue to go to work.”
Chase Briscoe won at Pocono Raceway to become the 11th driver to lock down a spot.
Brad Keselowski — ninth: “Yeah, we had a great car today. We got the lead there in the first stage and felt like we were in contro; and lost control of the race early with the pit road penalty. And I thought we recovered really, really well from that. Got up to third or fourth there. And we had kind of this strategy to run longer than the lead pack there, and the yellow came out in the middle of the cycle. And it came from 24th on that last run. I thought that was strong, but not enough. I’m just a big believer you can’t win by doing the same thing everybody else does. You got to be better than them and you can’t be better if you’re the same. So, we were in a little bit of a hole there. We’re trying to dig out of it and we were well positioned. I don’t know what that last yellow was for, but I wanted to strangle whoever it was, but you know, it is what it is. (on the penalty for pitting too soon) I just thought we made a really bad call. And I was right, but not for the reason I thought I was. And what was really confusing is the next lap when everybody else pitted, I was like, why would they do that? There are a couple of really interesting things from today. For whatever reason, and this is my fault, let me just be clear with this. We held pit road every pit cycle for three laps. And normally, they hold pit road for one lap. So when you get to lap two, it’s just automatic pit. And so when we were going down the short chute, the team said pit this time. And I had no reason to challenge them. And ultimately, I hold the steering wheel. And I’m the one that’s got to check. I didn’t check the crew chief and the spotter, and that’s my fault. I’ve got to give credit to my crew chief, Jeremy Bullins. He asked me to pit the lap before and I was in a clean air spot and I wanted to keep running, taking advantage of my tires. If I would have pitted the yellow came out while we were on pit road, we probably would have cycled inside the top 10 with new tires. Might have had a shot to win a race, so I feel bad about not taking advantage of that.”
Erik Jones — 13th: ““We had a really good No. 43 Toyota Camry XSE today, but it’s just frustrating how sometimes strategies can go your way and other times it doesn’t. Pocono is a track where strategy plays a big part in your finish more times than not. The team did a good job of bringing a car with a ton of speed, but that last caution caught us at a bad time in the middle of green flag pit stops. I think we were a top-five car, but we needed things to work out better. We’ll learn from it and move on to Atlanta.” Daniel Suarez — 15th: “It was an average day for the No. 99 Chevrolet team. We started the race OK on the short run, but then in the final stage, we just lost the balance of the car a little bit. We were just way too tight and never got it back.”
Kyle Busch — 20th: “Our Chevrolet team worked hard today at Pocono Raceway to overcome obstacles. A speeding penalty on pit road put us behind at the end of Stage 1, then we ended up with heavy damage to our Chevy after spinning towards the end of Stage 2. We just lost the air racing in traffic. Crew chief Randall Burnett and the rest of the RCR team worked hard to keep us on the lead lap. Our Chevy was never the same after the spin, and handling was really bad in traffic. We’ll regroup and head to Atlanta Motor Speedway.”
Austin Dillon — 24th: “Our No. 3 Chevrolet team fought hard all race long at Pocono Raceway. We had a long delay from rain and that changed the way the track reacted. It was hot and slick. We fought a tight balanced Chevrolet. Crew Chief Richard Boswell made great strategy calls, and the car handled better towards the end. I tried to make a move to the top on a late restart, but the track was rubbered up more than I was expecting and it cost us a lot of spots. By the end of the race, our Chevy went back to the tight side, and we couldn’t recover. We will regroup and head to Atlanta Motor Speedway next week.”
Michael McDowell — 35th: “I had warning half of the race that the brakes weren’t going to make it. It’s unfortunate. It wasn’t what we needed for this No. 71 Chevrolet team. We came off a good weekend (in Mexico City), and this is the exact opposite of what we needed. But we have Atlanta, Chicago and Sonoma coming up, so we have a lot of good tracks on the horizon for our team. The season is grueling sometimes. I was just trying to nurse it there at the end on that last restart, knowing I was starting to lose my pedal a little bit. In the car, there’s not a lot you can do other than dial bias to the rear and hope and pray for the best. What put us behind this weekend was yesterday in qualifying. I just made a mistake there, and that kind of sets you up for the whole race starting 28th. We did some strategy there and we were going to give ourselves a fighting chance. But like I said, I knew we had an issue with the brakes and I was trying to get to a place where hopefully they would last, but they didn’t. … I’ve been telling you guys all year that I’m not planning on pointing my way in. I’m planning on winning a race because that’s the way I see us getting into the playoffs. You’re going to have weekends like this where you have issues, you get taken out or you have something happen. You can’t plan on pointing your way in, especially this early on because there’s still a lot of opportunities for guys below the cutline to win, as we saw last weekend. When you have places like Atlanta, Chicago, Sonoma, Daytona, you’ve got a lot of tracks that it could open it up for a new winner, like we saw with Harrison Burton last year. That last few years, there’s been a few surprise winners.”
Bubba Wallace — 36th: “I was going to battle the 17 (Chris Buescher) and the 2 (Austin Cindric) and by the time I was ready to touch the pedal it just went to the floor and the brakes exploded. I hate it, we’ve had two or three good races in-a-row and there goes the bad luck again. But hey, (Michael Jordan) told me there’s no such thing as bad luck. We create our own luck. I apologize to the racing gods. This weekend sucked aside from practice, but that pays nothing. I hate it for my guys. We knew it was going to be a grind and I was mentally prepared for that all day. Especially as frustrating as it gets not being able to pass here in Pocono, we were going to just take our lumps and march our way through and set ourselves up for the end of the race, but the brakes just didn’t want to hang on that long.”
Riley Herbst — 37th: “I’ve grown up watching these races at Pocono and seeing what happened to me happen to lot of other guys. It was a scary feeling for sure. I was just starting to get tight, just a bad adjustment on my part. Getting into (turn) one, the brakes just went to the floor. A brake rotor exploded and I was along for the ride with our Camry XSE.”
NASCAR in season challenge bracket: Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Kyle Larson earn top-10 seeds
CONCORD, N.C. – The conclusion of Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway also set the matchups for the first NASCAR In Season Challenge, set to kick off on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The 32-driver field will be paired into a single-elimination bracket played out over the next five events. Instead of being based on the […]
CONCORD, N.C. – The conclusion of Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway also set the matchups for the first NASCAR In Season Challenge, set to kick off on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The 32-driver field will be paired into a single-elimination bracket played out over the next five events.
Instead of being based on the Cup Series points standings, the previous three races were used to determine seeding. Points accumulated over the three races were used to order competitors 1-32.
Leading Hendrick Motorsports is Chase Elliott, who earned his second straight top-five finish at Pocono. He is the No. 5 seed and will match up against Austin Dillon at Atlanta.
Next is Alex Bowman in the eighth position. He will tangle with 25th-seeded Joey Logano. Playoff standings leader, Kyle Larson, is seeded 10th and will face Tyler Reddick in round one. Finally, points leader William Byron is the 18th seed and will face the No. 15 seed, Ryan Preece.
Check back at HendrickMotorsports.com for updates throughout the tournament.
FROM WINNER TO CHAMPION, PART 5: Gordon vs. Earnhardt
Denny Hamlin earns No. 1 seed in NASCAR’s first In-season Challenge | Auto Racing
LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Denny Hamlin earned the top seed in the inaugural version of NASCAR’s In-season Challenge, a five-race, bracket-style tournament set to kick off next week in Atlanta. The tournament, which comes with a $1 million prize to the winner, is part of a new media rights deal that includes TNT. The […]
LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Denny Hamlin earned the top seed in the inaugural version of NASCAR’s In-season Challenge, a five-race, bracket-style tournament set to kick off next week in Atlanta.
The tournament, which comes with a $1 million prize to the winner, is part of a new media rights deal that includes TNT.
The final 32-driver field was set by results of the races at Michigan, Mexico City and Pocono. Chase Briscoe won the Cup race Sunday at Pocono Raceway to finalize the field.
The drivers will be paired in head-to-head matchups based on seeding, with the winners advancing to the next round in a bracket format that mirrors the NCAA basketball tournaments.
Hamlin goes head-to-head next week against the 32nd seed, Ty Dillon. Briscoe earned the second seed, Chris Buescher is third, Christopher Bell fourth and Chase Elliott fifth.
The format is single elimination with the field cut to 16 at Chicago, eight at Sonoma, four at Dover and the final two at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The tournament is patterned after in-season tournaments that are staged by soccer leagues around the world and even brought to the NBA.
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
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Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Denny Hamlin earns No. 1 seed in NASCAR’s first In-season Challenge
LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Denny Hamlin earned the top seed in the inaugural version of NASCAR’s In-season Challenge, a five-race, bracket-style tournament set to kick off next week in Atlanta. The tournament, which comes with a $1 million prize to the winner, is part of a new media rights deal that includes TNT. The […]
LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Denny Hamlin earned the top seed in the inaugural version of NASCAR’s In-season Challenge, a five-race, bracket-style tournament set to kick off next week in Atlanta.
The tournament, which comes with a $1 million prize to the winner, is part of a new media rights deal that includes TNT.
The final 32-driver field was set by results of the races at Michigan, Mexico City and Pocono. Chase Briscoe won the Cup race Sunday at Pocono Raceway to finalize the field.
The drivers will be paired in head-to-head matchups based on seeding, with the winners advancing to the next round in a bracket format that mirrors the NCAA basketball tournaments.
Hamlin goes head-to-head next week against the 32nd seed, Ty Dillon. Briscoe earned the second seed, Chris Buescher is third, Christopher Bell fourth and Chase Elliott fifth.
The format is single elimination with the field cut to 16 at Chicago, eight at Sonoma, four at Dover and the final two at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The tournament is patterned after in-season tournaments that are staged by soccer leagues around the world and even brought to the NBA.
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
No. 60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing wins Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen
Reflecting on the win, Colin Braun credited the team’s strategy and execution, saying, “It was just really good pitch strategy by the guys. Tom did a great job hitting the fuel number he needed to hit. The Acura, HRC, MSR guys were right on with the math to make it work. In the end, it […]
Reflecting on the win, Colin Braun credited the team’s strategy and execution, saying, “It was just really good pitch strategy by the guys. Tom did a great job hitting the fuel number he needed to hit. The Acura, HRC, MSR guys were right on with the math to make it work. In the end, it just came down to a battle of the fuel save. Great to grab the win, super proud of everybody, and hopefully, it kicks off some good momentum.”
