Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn't seem like the sort of guy who gets mad all that often, but the NASCAR Hall of Famer has definitely had his moments over the years. During the "Ask Jr." segment on the March 7 episode of The Dale Jr. Download podcast, a fan asked Earnhardt to recall a time that he was angriest behind the wheel. The first thing that came to Junior's mind didn't even have to do anything with NASCAR at all, but rather involved a recent road rage incident that happened in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Eventually, Earnhardt shifted gears to NASCAR talk. Not surprisingly, Kyle Busch got under Dale's skin on multiple occasions. But, Earnhardt fans were probably a little more shocked to learn than one of his angriest moments in NASCAR involved a run-in with his now good friend, Matt Kenseth.
"Matt's going to be mad," Earnhardt began. "I was racing with Kenseth. We were running — there's not many instances that I can remember being really that upset after a race, but me and Matt are racing for like eighth at Michigan, last lap. And we're side by side through Turns 1 and 2 and he's on the inside. And we come up off of 2, and he squeezed me into the wall. I think we actually hit the wall. I had to lift off the gas and I finished 11th or 12th."
"I was like, 'Matt, I had a top 10.' When I'm racing, I'm thinking about those things. Top five. We're going to get top three. Wherever we're running. Top 10, alright. And, in an instant, like I'm 12th. Sterling Marlin goes by and a couple of other guys. I was like, 'Damn Matt.'"
Once Dale Jr. got going, he couldn't help but bring up a similar dust-up between him and Mark Martin.
"Mark Martin did the exact same thing at the same track," Earnhardt said. "Squeezed me off the wall on Turn 2. There's a YouTube clip of me sitting on the back of the tailgate talking about Mark. I was so pissed off."
Unlike his skirmishes with Kyle Busch (they would bump heads several times during Dale's career), Earnhardt's feuds with Kenseth and Martin were few and far between, which is probably why he remembers them so well.
"So Mark and Matt are very similar in their styles and I loved racing them," Dale continued. "I really learned a million things from Mark Martin driving in the Xfinity Series and racing against him in the Cup Series. They were both very good friends of mine. They were both very supportive of my career. So those two moments were sort of uncharacteristic, and I think when somebody does something sort of out of character, that kind of catches you off guard."
