Dale Earnhardt Jr. Q&A: On North Wilkesboro’s return, his voice in the sport and more

Heeding a call from NASCAR’s most popular figure, RFK Racing driver Chris Buescher showed up to North Wilkesboro Speedway on a cold, wet day in December 2019 to lend some assistance to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s attempt to preserve the legacy of this historic but abandoned North Carolina short track.

Earnhardt wanted to clear the decaying track of weeds so that iRacing could scan it to build a simulation for its virtual racing platform that allows users to replicate what it’s like driving an actual racecar. If the 0.625-mile track was going to fade forever, Earnhardt wanted to at least have a conduit so that future generations could appreciate the significance that North Wilkesboro, which first opened in 1947 and hosted NASCAR’s premier Cup Series from 1949-1996, has had in stock car racing.

But having largely sat dormant for years, the track needed to be spruced up so that iRacing could do its work. So with Earnhardt, a devout NASCAR historian whose passion for short track racing runs deep, spearheading the movement, a call for volunteers went out to help him eradicate the weeds. And then they went to work.

“We got there, and I remember Dale riding around on the street sweeper, just making laps, smiling ear-to-ear, covered in mud,” Buescher said. “It was nasty. It was cold. But, man, he actually did the bulk of the work already. … It’s pretty remarkable to see where it’s gotten to now.”

The transformation North Wilkesboro has undergone since is something no one who was there that December day ever thought possible. Spurred by Earnhardt, the track’s owner, Marcus Smith, reopened the doors to the facility in 2022 so that grassroots-level racing could compete there.

Then came something even more unfathomable.

In 2023, NASCAR returned to North Wilkesboro, bringing its non-points All-Star Racing there for three consecutive years. With the response overwhelmingly positive, the question became whether North Wilkesboro could one day host a points-paying Cup race.

The answer is yes. On Sunday, North Wilkesboro will hold its first points race in 30 years.

Many factors contributed to North Wilkesboro again having a date on the Cup schedule. But, undoubtedly, the driving force behind it was Earnhardt, who still carries a loud voice even though he retired from driving almost a decade ago.

“(Earnhardt) has such a huge influence in our sport — probably the most, I would say,” said Denny Hamlin, driver at Joe Gibbs Racing and co-owner of 23XI Racing. “He’s still the most popular, certainly the most influential. And when he went on a journey to revive the racetrack, it just seems like he made it happen.”

The Athletic sat down with Earnhardt to discuss North Wilkesboro’s improbable comeback, from a facility that some say should’ve been condemned to one whose future appears bright.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

It’s been nearly seven years since you went up to North Wilkesboro to clean up the track and pull weeds in the cold and rain. What was the genesis for doing this, and what were you wanting to accomplish?

I was thinking a lot about Wilkesboro, and I was challenged by iRacing to come up with, not a gimmick, but a unique opportunity. And I thought, “Man, I really think we need some vintage cars.” We keep creating all these brand-new modern cars, but there’s not any vintage NASCAR. So I said, “What if we did like the Wilkesboro track and paired that up with two cars, like we did Bill Elliott’s car and Dad’s car?”

My iRacing connections were a little hesitant about it. I’m flying on a jet with Marcus to Vegas … I said, “Marcus, I want to scan Wilkesboro.” He’s like, “Let’s do it.” I then tweeted, “I can scan Wilkesboro. I got the clearance from the guy right here that owns it,” and that put the pressure on iRacing. So, (executive vice president) Steve Myers at iRacing is like, “Oh damn it.”

This put the plan into motion, and the whole agenda for that day was literally to just scan it for the software and to create that little neat package. And we did.

But then, before too long, this evolved from just scanning the track to having the thought of holding a real-world race there. How did North Wilkesboro go from crumbling to being back on the NASCAR calendar? 

I had kind of given up on the idea of the track ever coming back. Every six months,  there’d be a little conversation on Twitter that would happen, but otherwise it wasn’t coming back. It just wasn’t.

But some of the guys that Marcus was working with that were doing some of the dirt races at Bristol thought about having a dirt race at Wilkesboro, and there was this idea and plan to put dirt on it and have a race there. They were going to shift that whole thing to Wilkesboro. I heard that and I said, “Hey, man, if you’re going to have some racing there, why don’t we take the (regional) CARS Tour there?”

I didn’t own it then. I called the CARS Tour owner, Jack McNelly, and I said, “Man, would you come race at Wilkesboro with the tour if I got that clear?” He’s like, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” … I said, “I’ll race in it; just trust me.” Like he didn’t believe it was true or real. He thought it was just some f—ing crazy idea. But I talked to Marcus, I talked to this promoter, and we ended up all putting a deal together to run that race there.

What was the feeling when the race (in 2022) happened and the realization you had pulled this off, a track left for dead had been brought back?

That race goes off, we’re standing there that night, and I’m telling you, man, it was like a dream. We’re standing there, and I’m like, “This doesn’t even seem real.” It just didn’t feel real the emotions and the feelings that I had. I never experienced that at a racetrack before. It felt like we had traveled through into another realm, like you were dreaming.

You’d literally look around and the place was packed. We were thinking we’d be happy if we got 8,000 people to show up, but nearly 30,000 people showed up. There were people still trying to get in when the race started.

And this was despite the accommodations being fairly sparse, with limited concession stands and portable bathrooms needing to be brought in.

Nothing worked. No plumbing. It was freaking terrible. It had every right to just fail miserably, but there was so much grace given because everybody was so happy to be there and the race was great. I ran great, which was a bonus (he finished third), because I think it would have been kind of ho-hum if we had went out there and stunk. We gave him a hell of a race.

And Marcus, he tells me later on, he was standing there when all that went down and went, “There’s something here.” And I was like, “I can’t believe it took all that for you to see it.” … Then it kind of snowballed from there.

Why does North Wilkesboro mean so much to you personally?

It’s not so much Wilkesboro; it’s the vintage atmosphere and what being at a race at Wilkesboro feels like. It’s the experience that you get when you’re at Wilkesboro. It’s short track racing, which we have sort of abandoned in a lot of areas of our industry. … We’ve lost that. And I’ve talked to (NASCAR CEO) Steve O’Donnell and they’re anxious to sort of reestablish what’s been lost there and what’s eroded away.

How important is it for NASCAR to maintain this connection by having short tracks make up a good portion of the schedule?

I just feel like NASCAR Cup Series racing is a five-star dish and the perfect recipe has all the right ingredients. And we’ve been missing a little bit of what short tracks deliver for our series and our sport to be as healthy as it possibly can be and for that dish to be perfect. What is the right combination of short tracks, intermediates, road courses? That’s debatable, and everybody’s got a different opinion.

On Sunday, you’re going to be in the broadcast booth as an analyst for TNT, with this race part of TNT’s five-race slate.  I would imagine this is something that excites you considering the role you’ve played in this happening? Because it wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t have a major presence. 

I’d be missing out. I’d have some FOMO, for sure. It’s one of those things where the universe is just kind of working in your favor. We got really fortunate for it to fall in this little window that I’m actually working the booth. … It’ll be really emotional, and I’m sure a lot of new memories that I haven’t really uncovered yet from my time there as a kid.

You probably have one of the loudest voices in the sport. … What is it like having that responsibility and knowing that what you believe in is going to help direct the sport?

It doesn’t feel like that. I feel like it is really hard to make things happen. You mentioned a couple things that I might have had some influence on, but there’s 1,000 things that I wanted to happen that didn’t. It doesn’t feel like I have my hand on a lever or I can just reach over and mash a button. I talk to O’Donnell, and I talk to different people in the sport about things that I think are important, and I worry about whether my input is effective or if it’s heard. …

Now, there’s some things you can influence, and there’s some times when you can be a good influence on things. But other times, it’s out of your hands, and you just have to buy in and embrace change that necessarily isn’t change that you wanted, but it’s just change that’s going to happen, whether you like it or not.

What’s the next passion project?

I don’t know. I think (NASCAR’s second-tier) O’Reilly series, I suppose, and what the future of that is, and what JR Motorsports’ (the team he co-owns) future in the series is. We love being there, but not sure what our path forward is, what our identity needs to be. Honestly, I don’t have a whole lot of things going on in the sport that I’m not actually positive about. I feel like we’re really in a pretty solid place right now, comparable to maybe five or 10 years ago. Things seemed more disgruntled and uncertain and frustrating a decade ago. Yeah. And now there’s been a lot of change, and it just feels like we’re going in the right direction.

Now, I have opinions about the current car and other things, but I don’t know enough and I’m not involved enough really to influence those things. So, I’m just going to trust that the right people are in the right conversations to try to figure that out.