Beatin’ and Bangin’, Cheatin' Death & The Curse of the "She Said No"

Summary

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The Dale Jr. Download

Episode: Beatin’ and Bangin’, Cheatin' Death & The Curse of the "She Said No"
Date: August 22, 2025
Host: Dale Earnhardt Jr. (with TJ Majors, Amy Earnhardt, guest Joe Nemechek)
Podcast Network: Dirty Mo Media, SiriusXM

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into three core themes:

1. State of NASCAR Racing – Candid commentary on short-track racing, tire development, and how changes have impacted the sport’s intensity.
2. Joe Nemechek’s Wild Stories and Resilience – Firsthand accounts from Joe Nemechek about near-death flying experiences and overcoming cancer while racing.
3. The Tale of the "She Said No" Boat – Dale and Amy Earnhardt share candid tales of buying (against Amy’s better judgment) and maintaining a houseboat, with all its joys and frustrations.

Blending passionate racing insights, harrowing personal stories, and down-to-earth humor, this episode balances technical discussion with personality and warmth.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Ever-Shifting Narrative of NASCAR Short-Track Racing

Start: 01:04

• Mood Swings in NASCAR Fandom & Media

  • The conversation opens with Dale reflecting on how quickly opinions about NASCAR’s health can change.

  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. (01:04):

    "We get ourselves a little bit mired in the conversation around, you know, the direction of the sport... things are good. And then something will happen. There'll be a race and we get all riled up and social media gets us riled up."

  • TJ Majors (01:47):

    "You could have five great races and one bad one races them all."

• Importance of Aggression and Old-School Racing

  • Dale longs for eras when drivers could mix it up more (“beatin’ and bangin’”), and sees recent changes as a positive step.
  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. (03:10):

    "The one thing that I asked for... was for the guy if he was, you know, mad enough or aggressive enough... to run the back, somebody knock him up the track. I wanted them to be able to do that... In the 80s, that's what I loved about NASCAR."

  • He praises the recent Goodyear tire for enabling this old-school racing, with drivers able to run into each other and visibly struggle for control.

• Technical Deep Dive: Tires and Car Setup

  • Goodyear’s efforts are highlighted as critical: softer tires lead to more exciting, challenging races.
  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. (04:57):

    "So if we got what we got, and Goodyear can do what they did this past weekend, maybe... there is light at the end of the tunnel."

  • Goodyear is commended for reaching the limits of their manufacturing capabilities and striving for more.
  • Tire performance significantly shifts with temperature and track conditions.

• Notable Moment: Giving Goodyear Credit

  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. (06:57):

    "Good job, Goodyear. ...They intend to continue to travel further down this path."

• Handling and Driver Challenge

  • Increased tire wear and harder-to-drive cars are welcomed by both host and guest.
  • TJ Majors (09:58):

    "You could see the guys fighting the handling... Off of four a couple times - I mean, he was like, whoa, Whoa. Like how it used to be..."

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2. Joe Nemechek – “Cheatin’ Death” and Persisting in Racing

Start: 12:06

• Near-Death Plane Experiences

  • Joe tells two harrowing stories of in-air disasters – one where the plane clipped treetops and another with Mark Martin struggling to fly through clouds.

  • Joe Nemechek (13:05):

    "Started hearing something... bang, bang, bang... It was treetops, damn it. Yeah, we were hitting the tree tops of the trees, the wings and everything. Luckily, Captain Ron pulled us up out of there..."

  • On another flight:

    "Mark was starting to learn how to fly... I see him go lift off his hands, off the thing goes. I can't do it. Take over."

• “Cheatin’ Death” – Cancer and Racing

  • Joe openly recounts his cancer diagnosis during a championship run in trucks, discovered after noticing blood while snowmobiling.
  • Joe Nemechek (16:01):

    "Went to the doctor and they said, yeah, you got bladder cancer, you got a tumor in your intestines... Like, oh great. Here we go."

  • His matter-of-fact approach to fighting cancer while maintaining his career—chemo on weekdays, racing on weekends—stuns Dale.

    "I’d go do chemo on Tuesday and then go race on the weekend. But it didn’t bother me that much, really. No."

  • He never completed his last treatment due to his doctor’s tragic accident, and has simply moved forward, never seeing another doctor.
  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. (18:18):

    "That’s crazy. I guess it got taken care of."

  • Joe Nemechek (18:24):

    "Yeah, I guess so... Thank goodness."

• 2003 Championship Controversy – “The Curse”

  • Joe recounts losing the 2003 Truck championship due to a penalty for passing to the left on a restart. The sun was blinding, chaos reigned, and the rule was applied without room to react.
  • Joe Nemechek (19:19):

    "I moved to the left real quick to avoid him [Mike Bliss]... And everybody was so slow, I kind of kept going and blending in line... If I would have thought about it at the time... maybe I would have had time. But... it slipped on us."

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3. The "She Said No" Boat Saga

Start: 22:06

• The Boat’s Origins & “The Curse”

  • Dale spent a year browsing, obsessed with a particular houseboat online, while Amy repeatedly discouraged the purchase.
  • Amy Earnhardt (22:40):

    "We had discussed it, I talked you out of it and then all of a sudden it’s in the driveway."

  • Through serendipity, the boat came back on the radar via a family connection—and fate decided it was meant to be theirs.
  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. (24:15):

    "I'm expecting to get a photo and not be the boat... Sure enough, sends a picture. And it's the picture. It's the boat. I'm like, all right, this is the universe. This is fate. It's a sign."

• Boat Inspection and Refurbishment

  • Dale meticulously inspected the boat with a pro before buying, renovated it, and furnished it so it would suit the family's needs.
  • The boat was humorously named "She Said No" to commemorate Amy's original veto.

• First Cruise—Dreams vs. Reality

  • On a rare couple’s day out, generator failure won’t let them relax. Dale becomes obsessively (and amusingly) frustrated, eventually fixing the problem through trial, error, and a FaceTime call.
  • Amy Earnhardt (26:56):

    "He had cracked one beer, and we had just sat down upstairs... Like, there’s no motor. Nothing’s going. The radio stopped... The generator goes out."

  • Dale, sweating and mad, is ultimately philosophical:

    "I bought a 25 year old boat. I wanted it, I begged for it... It's gonna have problems. Never gonna be perfect."

  • Amy, the voice of calm:

    "I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried because he's always good at fixing things. I just knew he was going to figure it out."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Time | Speaker | Quote |
|---------|-----------------------|-------|
| 03:10 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | "The one thing that I asked for at the short track races was for the guy if he was... aggressive enough... to run the back [of] somebody, knock him up the track." | | 04:57 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | "If we got what we got, and Goodyear can do what they did this past weekend, maybe... there is light at the end of the tunnel." | | 06:57 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | "Good job, Goodyear. ...They intend to continue to travel further down this path." | | 13:05 | Joe Nemechek | "Started hearing something... bang, bang, bang... It was treetops, damn it. Yeah, we were hitting the tree tops of the trees, the wings and everything." | | 16:01 | Joe Nemechek | "Went to the doctor and they said, yeah, you got bladder cancer, you got a tumor in your intestines..." | | 18:24 | Joe Nemechek | (on surviving without final treatment) "Yeah, I guess so... Thank goodness." | | 19:19 | Joe Nemechek | "I moved to the left real quick to avoid him [Mike Bliss]... And everybody was so slow, I kind of kept going and blending in line..." | | 22:40 | Amy Earnhardt | "We had discussed it, I talked you out of it and then all of a sudden it’s in the driveway." | | 24:15 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | "Sure enough, sends a picture. And it's the picture. It's the boat. I'm like, all right, this is the universe. This is fate." | | 26:56 | Amy Earnhardt | "He had cracked one beer, and we had just sat down upstairs... Like, there’s no motor. Nothing’s going. The radio stopped... The generator goes out." | | 29:33 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | "I bought a 25 year old boat. I wanted it, I begged for it... It's gonna have problems. Never gonna be perfect." | | 31:29 | Amy Earnhardt | "I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried because he's always good at fixing things. I just knew he was going to figure it out." |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• NASCAR Short-Track, Tires, and Aggression: 01:04–10:26
• Joe Nemechek – Plane Incidents and Cancer: 12:06–18:24
• 2003 Truck Championship Penalty: 18:26–21:06
• “She Said No” Boat / Earnhardts' Day on the Lake: 22:06–31:33

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Summary

This episode of The Dale Jr. Download is a classic blend of motorsport insight, old-school storytelling, and family comedy. It examines the perennial tension between tradition and innovation in NASCAR, celebrates resilience in the face of danger and illness, and delivers hard-earned laughs about the realities of buying a “dream” boat.

Listeners get:

• A behind-the-scenes look at technical changes shaping NASCAR’s future.
• Jaw-dropping, true-life stories from Joe Nemechek about flying and battling cancer mid-career.
• Relatable Earnhardt family moments around high hopes, mechanical misadventure, and the truth that sometimes, you get exactly what you asked for.

The tone is candid, wryly humorous, and deeply genuine—essential listening for racing fans and anyone who enjoys stories about navigating challenges with grit and good humor.

Transcript

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Hey, everybody, I'm Dylan Hart Jr. And this is the Dirty 30. The best highlights from all of our podcasts this week. 30 minutes every single Friday. The Dirty 30 coming at you. Let's get right to it. This happens from time to time. We get ourselves a little bit mired in the conversation around, you know, the direction of the sport, and we do that from time to time. Well, things are good. Things are good. And then something will happen. There'll be a race and we get all riled up and. And social media gets us riled up. And yep, man, it happens fast. Happens fast. Things are great. Oh, sky's falling. Things are good again. You could. Falling.

[TJ Majors]

You could have five great races and one bad one races them all.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, but. And you know, so I admit that, I admit we do that, but we got into a conversation and a debate with, you know, there's a big. There's a lot of people on social media that have opinions about nascar, good and bad, right? And of course, all. I think everybody wants NASCAR to be awesome, right? And they're in their version of awesome, whatever that is, right? Everybody wants NASCAR to succeed. Now, there might be some people out there that want NASCAR to fail, but we don't pay attention to them people. Everybody that's in the room that's conversating, whether they agree or not is in the end wanting the best for NASCAR at a successful nascar. But I didn't, I'll tell you, you know, I've been talking about the, the short track package and how they need to act. And they need to be working on it, improving it, trying to make sure it's as good as it can possibly be. And they go out and have a great race at short track. Is there no problem? Is there a. No. Is there. Is the car the next gen car? Okay?

[TJ Majors]

It sure tracks now, the tire like you were. You were fighting the tire so much that you didn't have the grip.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The one thing that I asked for at the short track races was for the guy if he was, you know, mad enough or aggressive enough. If a guy wanted to drive down in the middle of the corner and run the back, somebody knock him up the track, I wanted them to be able to do that. Even if that's not the wise decision. I want those drivers to be able to make some dumb decisions. And I mean, in the 80s, that's what I loved about NASCAR. And I loved that guys could run into each other and push each other around, you know, even in the 90s or, you know, all, all my life growing up in nascar, NASCAR was hitting, pushing, shoving. My dad was very aggressive.

[TJ Majors]

That's what it was built off.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I loved it. And with this car, my complaint a couple weeks ago was that, you know, a guy can't drive down in the corner and hit somebody in the back bumper and push them up the track because they would get arrow tight and lose the grip. And they knew that that wasn't realistic. But they did it this weekend. The 99 Suarez knocked in 54 up track into the 45. Hell wreck or, you know, big, big drama. And I watched some of the, some of the race, you know, they right on. They've driving right on each other's asses in the corners. So maybe the tire is a bigger part of this than I realize. Yeah. Goodyear's been crushing it for helping save nascar. Really? Think about it. Come on. It ain't saved it if NASCAR is not dying. Not like not saving the sport, but like with this next gen car, Goodyear has been progressively trying more. I think it's just that the tire may be a bigger part of this than I even realize.

[TJ Majors]

I think it's a huge part of it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right. You know, I, I still would I have built the car this way. No, and I said it, you know, four or five weeks ago. It is what it is. It ain't changing. You know, a lot of money's been spent to get down to this, get this far down the road. Right. You'd have to spend that much money to get back, I assume. But the car is what the car is. So if we got what we got and Goodyear can do what they did this past weekend, maybe we kind of have an opportunity. Maybe there is light. This is light at the end of the tunnel. This is. Maybe this is the path toward something we can all appreciate. What I did hear from Goodyear a couple of over the past probably two or three months, TJ is. Is that they are pretty much at the end of their rope in terms of how soft they can build this tire until they can retool at the plant. So they want to go softer even more. At a lot of, you know, in a lot of opportunities throughout the season, they can get softer, but they need to be. They need to be able to change the tooling at the plant on how they build the tire to be able to actually make it softer. So, like, they have exhausted themselves to be able to do what they did and provide us what they did this weekend, which I appreciate. They should be applauded. Good job, Goodyear. And they want to go softer and try to get more aggressive, but it's going to be. It's going to take some time to be able to get what they need in their plant to be able to do it. That's at least what I was told. And that might be the tools to actually make the tire or actually the materials that the tire is made of. But either way, they're. They intend to continue to travel further down this path. So I'll. I'll give credit where credit is due, man. Apparently, you know, this is a. This one did really good on the Gluck. Good race pole, I think 83, 86%. Second. Second overall. Richmond, since the poll's been taken some like that. So, anyways, either way, great race. And so, yeah, maybe the car really looks bad and frustrating when the tire is hard and not allowing the drivers to really do what they need to do. What other races are we gonna get this tire from? Because I think that'll help other futures, too. Sorry. Like, isn't New Hampshire getting the same tire? Look, I think going softer is great, and Goodyear needs to keep doing it, and I think it's gonna help us at a lot of racetracks.

[Joe Nemechek]

Awesome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I couldn't tell you what to expect when we go to these races with this tire, because the temperature seems to matter a lot. Honestly, when it's colder, it seems to do odd things. Right. Like it did at Bristol that day. I would have never assumed the cold temperature would have increased tire wear. But what happened is, when it's cold the track don't. Rubber in the track don't adhere to the rubber, and so it just stays green. The track, for the most part, stays very green and very abrasive. And so it just continues to wear every tire you put on it. And when the track is hot, for example, like the summer race at Dover, it rubbers the track in, gets really dark and. And tire wear is bad until the rub tracks rubbered in. When the track rubbers in, tire wear or tire durability improves, you know, you don't have tire wear as severely throughout the day.

[TJ Majors]

Is that something the teams can manage? Like, is that something you just say, hey, this is soft.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Control the weather.

[TJ Majors]

That's what I'm saying, though, is that something like, hey, where Goodyear doesn't have to say, we got to bring a hard tire here in case it gets cold. You know what I mean? Like, is this something where, hey, this is a soft tire. Manage it correctly.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's my. That would. If I was Goodyear, I'd be like, here's a tire. Hope it lasts.

[TJ Majors]

Make it work.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. It's on your team. Yeah. Figure it out.

[TJ Majors]

I'm in agreeance with that for sure.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I was not expecting the race to be as good as it was. I guess I'll eat a little bit of crow. My NASCAR that I love, everybody's is different. The NASCAR that I love is. I love tire marks, donuts on the side of each other's cars. I loved walking into the shop and seeing, all right, if there's donuts on the right side, we're passing people. If they're donuts on the left side, we must have been getting past. I love looking at a car and seeing the. The scrapes, the marks, the.

[TJ Majors]

The story, the fact that you could get to them points and have that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And, man, you know, the way the car has been racing, it's been tough for the drivers to. To be able to, you know, be aggressive with each other. Now it's a tough little race car, and when they can they beat out each other. They do, yeah.

[TJ Majors]

One thing that I could see differently this race is I could see the guys. You could see the guys fighting the handling on the X or the corner. Like, they could spin the tires, see the car bobbling. You could see the car. And I went back and I was watching some in cars, and I listened to Bowman's. I was watching Bowman's in car and man off of four a couple times. I mean, he was like, whoa, Whoa. Like how it used to be, where, if you just leaned into the throttle a little bit too much. It stepped out and I love to hear that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, making the cars harder to drive and more out of the racetrack at a place like Richmond or any of the short tracks is going to be beneficial.

[Amy Earnhardt]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Subsidiary Tell me about the plane story. Flying with, I guess Mark Martin in his plane, there was a bit of a close call.

[Joe Nemechek]

Well, when you said plane, I don't know. I had so many of them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really?

[Joe Nemechek]

Well, kind of, you know, DK Ulrich were up there flying on our landing gear and falling down and this and that. One time the motor half quit. But this one here we had a plane full and we're going to Talladega to test. Jimmy Fenning's on board and everybody you know, Mark was going to meet us there. So we took off out of Greensboro, I believe, with everybody. And it was foggy, kind of rainy down there in Talladega. And we made an approach, coming in to land. It was Mark's pilot, actually, and we had a rental plane, it was a King Air. And we started to land and I kind of wondered. I heard the alarm go off. You know, it's like 200ft or whatever. I just still can't see anything. I said, this ain't right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Joe Nemechek]

So at the last minute, I looked out the window, we started hearing something bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It was treetops, damn it. Yeah, we were hitting the tree tops of the trees, the wings and everything. Luckily, Captain Ron, as we call him, throttled up real hard, pulled us up out of there, or else we were just. We were like way off the Runway. Landing. We were in the trees, damn it. So. Oh, man, that was close.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So you made another approach and finally got in there?

[Joe Nemechek]

No, no, we went to Birmingham. We went, you know, took a. There was an ILS there and Stu.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Damage to the plane.

[Joe Nemechek]

Yes, there was damage to the plane. We couldn't fly it anymore. The FAA had to come out. I mean, there were sticks stuck in the oil coolers. Oh, yeah, there was. That's. I mean, that's as close as you're gonna get.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

Jimmy Fennegal. I could see his eyes were about big. A saucer.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I've had some pretty bad experiences with planes, and I can imagine Joe knowing sort of the cowboy style of some of the pilots that we had back then. And we were all in those King heirs and just, you know, not really to your point. Like, you know, you didn't, you know, you'd take off and be like, yeah, yeah, we should be good. You know, the ceiling's a little low where we're gonna land, and you get there and you're like, it's really low. Oh, you know, and you would be like, Ah, 300ft. That's not a problem. And it. You'd get there and it's like 150ft. Well, it's changed a little bit. We're still going to try to get in there.

[Joe Nemechek]

That was. That was the scariest and closest to death I think we've all been. But there was another time flying with Mark Martin back when he was living in Florida, got his own plane, and I traveled with him back and forth to the racetrack. I think he was. I'm not sure it was the King Air or his jet, but he had his pilot with him. No, it was the King Air. Because he flew left seat. Mark was starting to learn how to fly.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

So I get on board and I'm sitting in the back and I look and all of a sudden Mark's in the left seat. And I'm like, oh, he's captain. He's flying this thing tonight. You know, I'm like, oh. So we get going and we. The day was fine. There was no storm, nothing. But we, we took off and we got up and we started getting pretty heavy clouds. So I see Mark struggling and all of a sudden I see him go lift off his hands, off the thing goes. I can't do it. Take over. You know, he got disoriented. You know, he wasn't used to the instruments and stuff or whatever. I'm like, oh, geez.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, you had a lot of success. You know, your, your, your cup series was, your cup career was over, but you would have this entirely new complete chapter through racing in the truck series. You got seven wins in 2001. Second in the points to Jack Sprague. 2004. 2000. From 2002 to 2004, you were third in the championship points each season. But in 2003, you announced that you were fighting bladder cancer.

[Joe Nemechek]

Well, yeah, I had that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't remember that. I didn't remember you even had to go do that.

[Joe Nemechek]

I mean, you don't. You know, it's just everybody has their own little deal, you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How did you manage to. How did you discover what was going on?

[Joe Nemechek]

Well, actually, how I discovered it was Jimmy Smith took myself, Jason Leffler, and we all went up to Salt Lake City, Utah for snowmobiling. I think, you know, even Evan Walk, Walker Evans was there and a few, you know, we had a great time. I went to the bathroom and I had blood like, oh, this ain't right. So it continued on. So I'm like, I better go see a doctor about this. So I went to the doctor and they said, yeah, you got bladder cancer, you got a tumor in your intestines and this and that. So like, oh, great. You know, here we go.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Is this something that was a. I mean, had. Did you know about your family history? Was there any kind of connection?

[Joe Nemechek]

No, no, no, no.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Nothing made this sense.

[Joe Nemechek]

This was just completely out of the blue. Yeah, completely out of blue. So, yeah, they had to go in and get this golf ball size tumor broke up and pulled out of me. I'm not even going to tell you where or how it came out, but it was not, not nice.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

So I was in the hospital for a day or two there. Then I had to go back and do a chemo, you know, for like a month or two months. So this was going on while I was right. I'd go do chemo on Tuesday and then go race on the weekend.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

But it didn't bother me that much, really. No.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

I always say, even the first time, they even had a backup driver from Martinsville because Jimmy Smith says, I'm going to have somebody here just in case you can't. I was fine. I think it was the best Martinsville race ever ran.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So the. The. You got the cancer taken care of, and that's a.

[Joe Nemechek]

Well, here's the thing. I was going back for my last treatment. Dr. Cass here in Mooresville.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

I was going back to his practice for the last treatment. I went there, and the place was closed up. I'm like, what the heck happened here? He was killed. He was health nut. You know, Run a bicycle all the time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

Got hit. Oh, yeah. So I never got my last treatment. And then to find out what was. If everything's okay. So I'm like, I hope it's okay, you know? Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You have no idea. That hadn't bothered you.

[Joe Nemechek]

No. I never go see a doctor. I know. I don't have a doctor. I never go. I never go doctor. I don't take. If I get a headache, I don't take aspirin. I don't take anything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really.

[Joe Nemechek]

Yeah. Hey. Foot to the floor till it's done.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's crazy. I guess it's. I guess it got taken care of.

[Joe Nemechek]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

Thank goodness.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. No kidding. There was a controversial finish to the 2003 championship, and I was really surprised at your ability to put this behind you. You were penalized in the very last race for passing to the left on a restart and scored last on the lead lap. There was a lap truck in front of you that NASCAR deemed that you'd moved left to pass, and you lost the championship to Travis Quapple. Me and Travis are good friends. His sons race My Late Models.

[Joe Nemechek]

Doing good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

My Xfinity car. Yeah. Great kids, y' all waited 10 minutes, the whole whole field, you know, whole series, waited 10 minutes after the race to find out what NASCAR was going to do, and they decided that they would uphold the penalty, and you were scored. If you had not been penalized, you win the championship. The penalty would cost you the championship.

[Joe Nemechek]

Well, here's how it is. And you well know, too, because you raced it on there at Homestead and late day Looking down the front straightaway, that sun is right in your eyes. You can't see nothing. It was the last caution of the day. Like five laps to go, or even less, maybe three. So I'm lined up and I'm right behind Mike Bliss, which was the second team truck for IWX and Travis Kwapple. He brought another, you know, Mike Bliss is driving it. So I'm lined up right behind him and I've got to pass him and I think one other truck to win the championship, no matter whatever happens to everything else. Yeah, so I'm right behind him. We're going on the front stretch and get the green and you can't see the flag, man, because it's just suns in your eyes. I just listened to Spotter and Spotter's like, green, green, green. I took off and next thing I know, everybody lurched forward and then locked it up. There was a stack up. So instead of running in the back of Bliss, you know, because he locked it up pretty good, I moved to the left real quick to avoid him because if I hit, I would have knocked the radiator out. Have been done. So I jumped to the left, passed him, and everybody was so slow. I kind of kept going and blending in line. So it took like a lap or so. And then I hear over the radio Eddie Thrapp. My spotter says, hey, you got to get back behind Bliss. I said, what do you mean to get back passed before? Oh, man. So I'm looking and he's quite a ways back. I figure if I let off and go all the way back there, there's no way I'm going to pass back all the way back up here. It was like the end of the race was like the last lap. I had no opportunity to really get back. But if I would have thought about it at the time, if I moved to the left, said, oh, wait a minute, that's a penalty to do this. Maybe I would have had time to do it. But you're thinking, okay, I gotta pass you to it. Gotta get this somehow. Hey, it slipped on us.

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

A boat trip yesterday. We haven't. We've got the. She Said no. It's a. For those that don't know she said no is a fiberglass hull houseboat 2002 Gibson and it is in really good shape and so pretty cool interior, top deck, all that. And I was looking at this thing on the Internet. We were sitting on it yesterday on the lake and I said, man, I cannot believe we're sitting on this boat after staring at it on the Internet for like six months. She goes, more like a year.

[Amy Earnhardt]

It was, it was at least a year. We had discussed it, I talked you out of it and then all of a sudden it's in the driveway.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Lo and behold, it found you again.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, it was weird how that happened. So I was just. I just. I'm a. I'm one of those kind of people that like to just look on car trader and just, just. I'm not looking for anything. I'm just kind of curious as what's out there and boat trader, rv, four wheeler, whatever, atv. I'm trying to see what everybody's got and selling and all that stuff and what things are worth. I do that with houses, Zillow, all that stuff. So I saw this. I missed my old house boat and. But I didn't love it. I didn't love the interior of it, certain things about it, but I did miss having it. And we had a pontoon, had a lot of fun with that. But you know, I wanted something to spend a night out on the boat, on the, on the lake and stuff. So I thought one day maybe I might get a boat that we could sleep in. So I started looking at all kinds of boats and different things and they're very expensive. But I saw this. I saw this Gibson and looked at the other Gibson's and saw the price and thought was good. I showed Amy and I'm looking at this thing and looking at this thing and looking at it. Every couple of days, I look at it and I'm like, oh, man, that thing does look good. I wonder what it smells like, you know? I wonder, what is it, you know, smell. Okay, does it smell bad?

[Amy Earnhardt]

So it didn't smell good.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Just say that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Anyways, I'm good. The boat's out of my life. I actually went back on the Internet. It's gone.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Listing was gone.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Somebody must have bought it, right? All right, that's probably better, you know, somebody else buy it. I'm glad it's disappeared. I didn't need that. I didn't need to do that. That's my. You know, it's okay. And months go by, and my niece Carson says, hey, boat you're looking at. I talked about it on our podcast. She says, the guy that has that boat still has it for sale. I was like, man, you can't be talking about the same boat. I mean, of all the boats out there, how do you know? How did you. How did this guy get back to you? And I was like, send me a picture of the damn boat you're talking about. And I'm expecting to get a photo and not be the boat and go, hey, it's not the boat. This guy don't know what he's talking about. Sure enough, sends a picture. And it's the picture. It's the boat. I'm like, all right, this is the universe. This is fate. It's a sign. It's a sign. It's calling me. The boat needs to be in my life, and so the boat needs me.

[Amy Earnhardt]

The boat needs me to fix it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I made a long list. I made a long list of that. I needed to know about this boat. Does it stink? Does. Does this work? Does this work? Does this work? I don't want to buy a boat. I got to fix a couple certain things that were going to be really tough to fix.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Yeah, major things.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Long list. So I send Sunny and a boat guy, a boat expert, marina guy, out to Gatlinburg to look at it. Sonny gets on it, sends me videos. He's on it riding, riding on it, tells me everything's fine. So we bought the boat and took a while to get it over here. It went to a ship. It went to a marina and set in the yard, jacked up on stilts. And we worked on it and cleaned it and fixed a lot of things and put all new carpet in it. Got it ready. We furnished it and we called it. She said no, because Amy because this is a joke. Yeah.

[Joe Nemechek]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And, yeah, until recently, I think Amy just finally. It finally clicked for Amy. I think in the last couple years of month or so.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna enjoy the boat. It was fun. It was fun going out. Yesterday we decided we were just gonna take Wednesday since there was nothing on the calendar, and go hang out with no kids.

[Joe Nemechek]

Awesome.

[Amy Earnhardt]

They had school.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It was great.

[Amy Earnhardt]

And it was great. It took me a solid four hours to, like, truly relax. I asked Dale, like, what time is it? Because I actually just stopped thinking about all the things I have to do. And it took about four hours. Took him about an hour and a half. But we get on the boat and we get out of the slip, no problem. We cruise. Dale throws the anchors out, and then all of a sudden, the boat dies.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, no.

[Amy Earnhardt]

The generator goes out. I mean, he had cracked one beer, and we had just sat down upstairs, and he's like. Like, there's no motor. There's nothing's going. The radio stopped. Everything stopped. And he's like, oh, crap. So he goes downstairs and I stay away from. Just to not get in the business. And he's got the. The deck flap open, and he's looking around where the engines are and everything, the batteries, and he's tinkering and messing. And I feel like he's going to figure it out at some point because he just is good at that. You know what I mean? I was not worried whatsoever. I was getting a little hot up there. I'm like, oh, crap. I hope he, like, gets it moving soon. All of a sudden, I hear his pitch. Like, he's got Sonny on the phone and he's FaceTiming, just trying to work through it together. And I hear his voice get really high pitched. And I didn't hear what he said, but I knew it wasn't probably something nice. And so I, like, slowly slink down the stairs and get a little closer. Like, is there anything I can do to help you? And he's like, not unless you can fix a generator.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Ooh.

[Amy Earnhardt]

I'm like, I'll just get my broomstick and go get my wand and I'll be right back. And I went back upstairs and just sipped my wine. It was, you know, texted with Sonny and Katie. I was like, oh, gosh, this is bad. This is so bad. He's laying on his belly with his hand in there, just pushing buckets and.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Flying, and I'm sweating up a storm.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Oh, he's red in the face because.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You gotta get down in the Engine compartment. We just ran the. And things to get out in the water.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Yeah. And it's got a little water and sludge in the bottom. That's just part of. It's just part of it. I'm like, oh no, he's gonna have to get down in that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The generator has an auto. The generator has the start switches on. You know, it has a little starter box mounted at the top of generator. And on that starter box is a couple of amps. And you can start the generator there or you can actually go up to the front of boat and the exact same switches and system is up there as well. And one of those amps had kind of came. One of those amps that kind of jarred itself loose. And so when I'm. I was trying. I don't know why the generator quit running, but maybe because the amp with the amp comes out of that starter box, it just shuts the generator down. But I finally figured it out. And that little wouldn't stay screwed in there. It spring loaded. And so I got a couple pair. I got a pair of pliers and finagled it around and got it to where it would lock in and stay and cranked it up and all was well. But it took took me a while to figure out exactly why the generator had zero power. Like it had no. Like it didn't have a battery hooked up to the starter.

[Amy Earnhardt]

It wouldn't turn over at all.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Starter wouldn't do. So I got really hot and mad about it. And I was sitting down there with Sunny and I was like, it's like nothing ever works. Nothing ever works. And then I got. I got upstairs after we got everything running and I sat down and she goes, she goes, yeah, I heard you getting upset. I said, yeah. I was like, you know what? I asked for this. I bought a 20 year old. I bought a 25 year old boat. I wanted it, I begged for it. You know, I got it and here it is and this is what I get. You know, it's gonna have problems. Never gonna be perfect. It's gonna have. There's gonna be things that it doesn't do right or.

[Amy Earnhardt]

I couldn't believe he just got so mad. So. I haven't seen him that mad in a really long time. I happened fast.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, we had just.

[Amy Earnhardt]

We had just sat down.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I don't. I try not to do this, but I had thought about that. Go. I had thought about going out on that boat for the last 24 hours.

[Amy Earnhardt]

And built it up in your mind.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And I'm like, man, this is gonna be so much fun. Me and Amy by ourselves out on the lake. We're gonna have six hours to just sit and man, we get out there and I'm like, well, I guess we got to go back to the dock. I mean, I can't run the generator can't run. Air conditioner can't run nothing. This ain't be that comfortable, you know.

[Amy Earnhardt]

But how would we have gotten back to the dock?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All the motors run fine. Oh, the boat would run.

[Amy Earnhardt]

We could have just gonna have to swim home.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, we could have, you know, we could have motored around on the lake. But you know, it would have been. We could, we would have. We would have been able to be fine and out there without the generator. But like, yeah, like nothing would. You wouldn't have power to nothing. You wouldn't be able to.

[Amy Earnhardt]

I gotcha.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know the refrigerator, right? Would all the refrigerator. All the food and all things would be so. All the beer would be cold and refrigerator. We had, we had some ice on us. But we'd have figured it out.

[Amy Earnhardt]

Yeah, it would have been fine. I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried because he's always good at fixing things. I just knew he was going to figure it out. He came back upstairs like, I can't believe you got so mad about that. He's like, I just don't want to have to work on something. Every time we go somewhere, everything's always. There's always something to fix. I was like, I know, but you, you're good. You can fix it. You fixed it. I can't believe you got so mad. He's like, you're just telling me that to make me feel better. I'm like, no I'm not. I'm blowing smoke up your ass. But is it working? Cuz calm down.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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