SPEEDWAY, Indiana — There’s winner’s press conferences, then there’s winner’s press conferences with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
When the NASCAR Hall of Famer is in a good enough mood, you’re likely in for a ride. One that’s informative, insightful and a little entertaining.
My first time experiencing it was October 2014, after his first and only NASCAR Cup Series win at Martinsville Speedway. It was just my third NASCAR weekend as a journalist.
He went for 29 minutes and 27 seconds.
One year, I sat through a presser at Texas Motor Speedway where the 2004 Daytona 500 winner talked for about 30 minutes, giving his take on this and that.
It wasn’t even race day.
I wasn’t there, but his media availability after winning his final Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in 2015 was one such memorable marathon, lasting 38 minutes.
Saturday (July 26), roughly an hour after Connor Zilisch secured Xfinity Series win No. 100 for JR Motorsports — following a wild final 25 laps around Indianapolis Motor Speedway — Dale Jr. emerged from behind a black curtain at the front of the IMS media center.
He held the obligatory can of Budweiser.
After sitting down, he remarked, “I just worry more about this cold beer I’m about to drink.”
With that statement, the 100th Xfinity winners press conference for JR Motorsports was underway.
It was a good, brisk 20 minutes.
Dale Jr. shared that as he had made his way from pit road to the famous Pagoda, signing autographs along the way, a fan had gifted the beer to him.
“I was like, ‘damn. All right. Perfect brand, too.”
One thing about these press conferences: you could go the entire time without actually talking about the race.
The best thing about a Dale Jr. press conference: it doesn’t take much to get started.
You throw out a question and let him rip.
Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic did the honors this time. He asked Dale Jr., out of JRM’s 100 wins, which stood out the most?
“Man, the wins, they don’t stand out like that,” Dale Jr. answered. “Obviously, they all have little reasons why they’re fun or neat. Of course, winning as a crew chief was a pretty cool experience, one I never thought I’d have. Winning at Daytona is always special.”
He said that it was the “unexpected” things he remembers more.
“Some of that stuff’s always mostly off the racetrack stuff,” Dale Jr said. “Like getting a call from Navy and them saying, ‘Hey, do you want to start a race team?’ Buying that first car that was a DEI car that Paul Menard had raced somewhere.”
Or being nervous the day he called Brad Keselowski to come drive for his team.
“I’m thinking everybody in the world is calling Brad,” Dale Jr. recalled. “And I called him, thinking, ‘I bet somebody bigger or better has already called him to ask him to drive for him.’ And I remember calling him, thinking, ‘Man, I hope he’ll say yes.’ And of course he did, and he helped us.
“He helped us keep our cars in one piece so we could build them better and get them where they run good enough for him so he could get us to victory lane. I remember all that stuff more than specific wins.”
However, Dale Jr. really wanted to be able to remember win No. 100.
He told of the message — or maybe it was a warning – he’d given his teams on the eve of Saturday’s race.
He would have preferred if the win came this weekend or the week after the series goes to Iowa Speedway. A family engagement would have kept him from being there.
“That’s what I was worried about,” Dale Jr. said. “I told the guys last night, I said, ‘if y’all don’t win today, you’re going to Iowa with seven spark plugs instead of eight, because I can get (to) Watkins Glen.’ So I didn’t want to win next weekend.
“(That would be) first time I’ve ever gonna send a car to the racetrack and not wanted it to win.”
In the middle of his 20 minutes, the sound of a can being cracked open was heard from behind the desk where Dale Jr. sat.
A mischievous grin spread across his face.
It bears repeating that not all press conferences are created equal.
Eventually, it came my turn.
I asked Dale Jr. what the last nine months — from Justin Allgaier winning his first Xfinity title, to JRM making its first Cup start in the Daytona 500, to Zilisch’s Indy win — had been like for him.
“It feels like all the years, you know?” he began. “I know there’s some great moments in there, but it feels like every year feels this way. A lot of ups, a lot of downs, lot of great moments, tough moments, but that win with Justin to win that championship was a big deal. …
“There was a year, about two or three years ago, we won about 17 races or something crazy. And we thought, ‘man, we’ll never have this kind of year again.’
“That was just, crazy and exciting and just perfect. A lot of things lined up right for us to be able to to be able to get that kind of success, and we had never experienced that before, and didn’t really think we’d ever get to that point again.
“But here we are.”
JRM’s new phenom, the 19-year-old Zilisch, was, of course, the other focus of the evening.
Dale Jr. was asked by Christopher DeHarde, of the Indianapolis Star, what about the young driver’s accomplishments in such a small amount of time reminded him of himself or others contemporaries.
“The only thing I think it’s close to is probably Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson,'” Dale Jr. said. “He might be even more of a comet. … He might be even more rare than that.”
He later added, “We’re all kind of on the front end of witnessing this really incredible career. … It’s almost whatever he wants to do.”
In 11 years of covering NASCAR — which will come to an end after 2025 — I have few regrets.
But one of them is I never got the chance to talk to Dale Jr. one-on-one for an interview, not even when our careers overlapped at NBC Sports.
I’m not sure what I would even ask.
OK, maybe I know a couple things.
After the press conference was over, I began walking up the side aisle to my seat in the media center.
Dale Jr. was walking the other way, engrossed in a phone conversation.
He smiled and gave me a thumbs up.
I’ll take it.
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.