Did You Notice?: Dale Earnhardt Still Leaves Everyone Grieving

Did You Notice? … The Earnhardt documentary on the life of Dale Earnhardt rocketed up to become the No. 1 most-watched program in the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video?

Roughly two and a half weeks after its release, it remains a breakthrough piece of NASCAR programming (it’s No. 8 as of publication time), reaching millions of people who don’t normally sit down and watch the NASCAR Cup Series every week.

Why is it must-see TV, and what makes the miniseries so powerful?

The answer boils four hours down to one word: Grief.

For anyone who’s ever experienced loss, grief is the lifelong side effect left behind. Memories can turn you to mush in a moment, crying in front of unsuspecting strangers as the finality of death never leaves you. Even years after a tragedy hits, no person can vaccinate themselves from that pain.

Feeling anguish, despite a generation’s worth of excellence, is what makes Earnhardt so compelling.

Forget the on-track stuff for a second. Yes, the documentary does an amazing job of explaining how Earnhardt rose to prominence by leaning into his Intimidator brand. In the mid-to-late 1980s, Earnhardt and Richard Childress Racing became unstoppable with a type of aggression Carson Hocevar could only dream of in NASCAR 2025.

Competitors were bumped out of the way without mercy, with Earnhardt chalking up wins while they dealt with scrunched-up sheet metal. Instilling a level of fear in rivals is part of what pumps up the all-time greats. It’s hard enough to beat the best, and 10 times harder when you don’t think you have a chance. How can you think of blocking a guy when you think he’s going to spin you out, successfully, and somehow get away with it?

But where the documentary shines is weaving together generations of grief. It starts with Earnhardt Sr., who lost his father, Ralph, to a heart attack when Dale was just 22 years old, two years before ever attempting a Cup Series race.

Ralph left a hole, but the hole in the heart was already there, as Ralph was the type of father who never outwardly expressed his emotion and who didn’t believe in telling his son, “I’m proud of you.” A man who poignantly, as the documentary explains, responded to a model engine Dale Earnhardt Sr. custom built with what was wrong rather than what was right.

Ralph left this earth without giving his son public approval. Earnhardt then spent a lifetime trying to achieve it.

You would hope Ralph in heaven was able to find the words, “Dale, you’re good enough,” after a career that resulted in a charter membership to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2010. Seventy-six career wins, a 1998 Daytona 500 victory after 19 very public years of failure and those record-setting seven Cup championships, tied with Jimmie Johnson and Richard Petty for the most ever, make Earnhardt the best driver of his generation.

You wonder, though, after this four-hour masterpiece, whether those achievements ever fully healed his heart. Instead, a pattern of keeping feelings in check worked its way into Earnhardt Sr. the parent. The same patterns of emotional distance showed up in the way he handled children Kerry, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller.

There’s grief in that, especially when it comes to Dale Jr. and Kelley, who spent much of their lives searching for the father figure whose fame and fortune could never fully replace Dad’s attention. There’s a distance they’re still trying to process, spending most of their lives searching for a father’s emotional support, even when he was sitting right in front of them.

For Dale Jr., that grief became a double whammy, as a relationship with his dad blossomed with NASCAR success. The son’s decision to race with the father provided common ground for two people so very different. Dale Jr.’s video-game playing, introverted, emotionally available persona was someone it took his father over two decades to start understanding.

And then … Dale Sr. was gone. It was just one year and one race into his son’s full-time ascension into the Cup Series on that fateful February in 2001. Mere seconds before his three-car operation, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., triumphed in the Daytona 500 for the first time with Michael Waltrip.

That grief is attacked by all sides in this doc, felt by all types in a powerful final episode. For NASCAR fans everywhere, no one from that generation forgets where they were and what they were doing the moment Ken Schrader motioned for help, the helplessness of Earnhardt sliding to a stop in the grass outside turn 4. It’s a moment that never leaves you, up there with more serious times in American history like Sept. 11th, 2001.

We’ve felt that grief through many years in the retelling of this story, through Waltrip and the way he was never able to celebrate his first Cup win. Or through Dale Jr. and how he had to buck up and race seven days later, a son in mourning simultaneously boosted and burdened by millions of new fans he never asked for.

But the most compelling moment of this doc is how grief is experienced by Kelley. The current business executive extraordinaire at JR Motorsports, Kelley then was at the start of her career and at an impasse when it came to the relationship with her father. Three weeks had passed since they had spoken to each other at the time of Dale Sr.’s death. So much sadness over a chance at a better relationship cut short; so much to process, with words and conflict that will forever be left unsettled.

The way in which Kelley and Dale Jr. process that, alongside how fans and others were dealing with Dale Sr.’s death, is the new information that will bring even hardcore fans to a new level of understanding. Despite the tragedy, you can feel how Dale Jr. feels he was given a gift those last few years, a fleeting moment the fatherly connection he wished for was granted. A never-before-told story before Dale Jr.’s win at the 2001 Pepsi 400, in which he snuck onto Daytona’s turn 4 to feel his father again, showcased how he’s been able to come to terms with some of it.

If there’s any criticism of the doc, it’s that Earnhardt’s direct involvement in its production may have minimized the flip side of that grief. A recent Washington Post story dives into some of the darker moments for him after Dale Sr.’s death, some deeper conflict with stepmother Teresa Earnhardt and how, at times, Dale Jr. struggled for meaning in this life until he met his now-wife Amy.

But the disparity in how he dealt with his father’s death, versus a sister that will never get closure, is handled impeccably in this doc. You find yourself crying with Kelley over having to push forward without ever getting that closure.

It’s a relatable moment for everyone. When I was younger and my grandmother passed (the matriarch in our extended family), I found myself with a level of closure most don’t get. The night before she died, I had this moment I will never be able to explain where I felt compelled to tell her exactly how I felt. I got loving answers that will last a lifetime and helped dramatically in how I was able to manage grief, changing the way I dealt with it compared to everyone else.

Typically, those experiences in handling grief tend to rip families apart. But the doc helps explain the special bond between Dale Jr. and his sister, the way in which their tough relationship with their father helped to bond them together even in grief. It’s a better understanding of why they’ve become a powerhouse in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, getting the most out of mentoring future drivers rather than aiming their sights at the top.

It’s a documentary well worth seeing and sparking the type of curiosity NASCAR’s been seeking ever since Drive To Survive. Person after person in my orbit has been suddenly interested in watching stock car racing after they’ve seen it.

There still needs to be quality racing on the track, plus a driver with the type of aggressive Earnhardt persona (Hocevar, perhaps? Ross Chastain?) that can draw fans in and keep them there. Through grief can come a silver lining, perhaps some long-term growth in NASCAR that everyone who cares about stock car racing is looking for.

If so, a thank-you card to the Earnhardts is in order. They keep opening the door of a private world typically reserved for close friends and family. They’ve become experts at letting people in.

If only their father could have learned the same thing.

Follow Tom Bowles on X at @NASCARBowles