If you're a Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan, you know that most of his craziest and funniest stories tend to involve a decent amount of alcohol consumption. A lot of the times, Dale was the punchline of his own drunken shenanigans, like the time he cracked his head open at a pool party with Jimmie Johnson. But, every now and then, Dale liked to get a little buzzed and play a prank on one of his fellow NASCAR drivers. Just ask Clint Bowyer. He once spent an entire night locked in Junior's basement.
During the "Ask Jr." segment of a recent episode of The Dale Jr. Download podcast, one fan asked, "What was your funniest experience with a driver?" He had to think about it for a little bit, but when his co-host Mike Davis mentioned Clint Bowyer, Junior immediately remembered a time when he and Clint "got into the sauce pretty good" at his saloon (yes, Dale has an actual Wild West-style saloon on his property). Well, then things moved from the saloon to Junior's house, and as he describes it around the three-minute mark in the below video, that's when he decided to rib his buddy a little bit with the ol' check-out-my-theater-room gag. Gets them every time.
"I took him up to the house and put him in this theater room for him to sleep because it's super dark, no windows," Earnhardt recalled about his prank on Bowyer. "I was like man you'll love it. You might sleep till noon, it's so dark. He woke up at some point in the morning and I had him locked in. He didn't know how to get out. He was locked into the basement."
While they were on the topic of the theater room incident, Junior — who prefaced the story by admitting that he can be "weird" sometimes — also looked back on the Cup race in Martinsville back in 2014, during which he took advantage of a red flag to really mess with Clint.
"We were parked next to each other," Earnhardt said. "I was screaming over at him and yelling obscenities and acting like a deranged lunatic. I was like 'Hey man when this race gets back going, I'm just going to destroy this place, I am destroying you and everyone else. Be ready.' ... I didn't have to scream but I chose to be more psychotic."
It's clear that Clint sure has had to put up with a hell of a lot of Dale Jr.'s antics over the years. But, hey, that's what friends are for, isn't it?
