Former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked back on the good old racing days with Tony Stewart. The JR Motorsports owner and Stewart competed together in the Cup Series starting in the 2000s.
Earnhardt Jr. began his Cup Series career in the No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet for his father’s team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc. (DEI) and drove the car till 2007. The 50-year-old recently reacted to a picture of him nudging Stewart's No. 20 Home Depot-sponsored Pontiac on X and summed it up in just two words.
"Good times," Dale Earnhardt Jr. wrote.
Earnhardt Jr. moved to Hendrick Motorsports in 2008, where he drove the No. 88 car until he retired from full-time racing in 2017. He won 26 Cup Series races over 19 years and got the Most Popular Driver award 15 consecutive times from 2003 to 2017.
Earnhardt Jr. resurrected the iconic No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet and raced at the South Carolina 400 at Florence Motor Speedway in late November last year. This year, he will join Amazon as a broadcaster on a multi-year contract starting with the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season and will also return to racing in some of the zMAX CARS Tour races.
"Tony and I work well together" - When Tony Stewart beat Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Daytona
Tony Stewart beat Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon to win the Budweiser Shootout at Daytona International Speedway in 2002. Stewart, in Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 20 Pontiac, won the race for the second year in a row.
Earnhardt Jr. started in 16th place but moved into the top five within five laps. He led for 20 laps but couldn’t get past Stewart in the final stretch. Dale Jr. said he tried everything to pass Stewart after the race and reflected on his efforts.
"I was doing all I could. That was all I had - and all the car had. I did not have any chance to make a good run at Tony - he was always able to make a move to stop my momentum. I was trying to use my brakes to get the car behind me right on my bumper, and it also took the air off of Tony so he would lose momentum as well," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said.
"Tony and I work well together. We've worked together on the superspeedways the last couple of years, and it seems like our cars draft great together... but there comes a point at the end of the race when you have to quit working together and everybody's trying to win the race," he added.
Earnhardt Jr. still managed to finish ahead of Jeff Gordon for second place.