After ten and twenty years, Dale Earnhardt Jr. looks back on his two Daytona 500 victories.
Some races Dale Earnhardt Jr. won during his Hall of Fame NASCAR career hold such a place in his heart that he knows the minutiae of what transpired as well as he knows his own name.
On this list is Earnhardt’s win in the 2000 All-Star Race, as he became the first rookie to win that event. So too is his 2004 win at Bristol Motor Speedway. As is his 2014 win at Martinsville Speedway.
But among his 26 career Cup Series wins, there are two that stand apart: the 2004 and 2014 Daytona 500.
The Daytona 500 holds special meaning to Earnhardt, who witnessed the struggles his father — seven-time Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt Sr. — endured in trying to win NASCAR’s signature race. He saw just what it meant to his dad when, in 1998, after 20 years of near misses, he finally hoisted the Harley J. Earl Trophy.
“When I was growing up and before I ever drove a race car, I was watching Dad go down there, talk about how important it was, how special it was, how badly he wanted to win it,” Earnhardt said. “I grew up as a child with him hammering the importance to me and how badly he wanted to win it into my brain.”
Earnhardt doesn’t know how many times he’s watched the 2004 and 2014 races. But it’s enough that the memories remained strong when he spoke with The Athletic recently about the critical moments from each race on the occasion of the 20- and 10-year anniversaries of those wins.
2004: ‘I don’t have to wonder if I’m ever going to win’
An old, worn Daytona surface that chewed tires and a final 120 laps that ran caution-free created an unusual finish for a superspeedway. Earnhardt and Tony Stewart dominated the race, leading a combined 154 of 200 laps. Led by Stewart, the duo got out front with 24 laps remaining and drove away.
If Earnhardt was going to pass Stewart, he needed to do it by himself. Complicating matters was the lapped car of Kurt Busch, who had latched onto the lead cars. Busch was a lap behind because earlier contact with Earnhardt had cut one of his tires, and he wasn’t keen on helping Earnhardt.
“(Busch’s team) was mad because we had touched earlier in the race to get a flat tire and they were like, ‘We’re not going to help you. We’re a lap down and it’s your fault, so don’t expect anything from us,’” Earnhardt said.
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