Fox_NASCAR_Guy's Blog

Day 1 Photos

Day 2 Photos


Day 3 Photos

The day began with a visit by Hall Of Fame Racing and their new driver JJ Yeley. Yeley was released from his ride last year at Gibbs to make room for Kyle Busch.  Not many people picked up on the fact that the night before while we were at Gibbs, they showed a video recapping their season. A few scenes showed Yeley’s No 18 with the words ‘THANKS JJ” superimposed.

Yeley seems very optimistic with his new team. And as well he should. They receive a lot of support from Gibbs and Toyota and if the mix there is right, Yeley may just surprise a few people.

We then moved on to Petty Enterprises in their new shop, which happens to be the old Robert Yates Racing shop. Yates of course is now retired and the Petty’s made the move from Level Cross where they’ve been since their inception some 60 years ago. The new shop as more room for them and Kyle Petty told me that it helped that they did the move in the off-season between the transitions from the old car to the new one. The new shop only has pieces and parts for the new cars; they simply left the old cars behind.

Kyle said he did get a bit emotional when he saw his granddaddy Lee’s initials in some old concrete one off several outside some of the buildings.
“It marked another mile stone,” Petty said. “It meant that we were getting successful enough to add another building.”

The Petty family hasn’t abandoned the old shop entirely. They still do some work out of there and Richard Petty still maintains his personal office there.

Perhaps the oddest stop of the week happened during lunch Wednesday. We rolled into Dale Earnhardt Incorporated and were already on edge after being told prior to our arrival that there would be no individual ‘break out’ sessions like we did at every other shop. That seemed to set the tone for the whole visit.

Max Siegel, vice president of global operations introduced CEO Teresa Earnhardt. Earnhardt gave a few remarks and told us to enjoy our lunch. Then to the surprise of us all, Earnhardt and Siegel began to walk to each table and greet everyone. I was amazed when she stopped by ours and talked for a minute. Nothing but idle chitchat, but amazing none the less. She was very cordial and seemed genuine, but then again she could have been staging an Oscar winning performance for all I know. Of course as is the norm with the DEI stop every year, we never saw Earnhardt again. She vanished.

Something noticed by all as well was the lack of Dale Earnhardt Junior photos, memorabilia and the like.

Siegel was asked about the legacy of Earnhardt Junior, who scored 17 of DEI’s victories, in the open Q&A.

“I think on any given week we look at it that we have eight opportunities at three companies to make a positive impact on the Earnhardt legacy — Dale Jr. at Hendrick, the drivers over at RCR that are powered by the Earnhardt-Childress power, our five Cup drivers here,” said Siegel. “This company is focused on its objective to be a premier race team and a fine organization across the board.”


Speaking of Dale Earnhardt Junior, he made an appearance with his new teammates on stage for the first time at our next visit, Hendrick Motorsports. He also defended the team he just came from when asked about Siegel’s comments.

“I don’t know what else you would expect,” Earnhardt said. “I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t think there’s any animosity, and I don’t think they would do anything to directly insinuate, ‘We’re totally free of that,’ or ‘We don’t want to have anything to do with him,’ or ‘We don’t want to recognize his time here.’

“I don’t think there’s any intention on that. I don’t think Max is like that. I don’t think Teresa’s like that. If there is, it doesn’t matter to me — because it doesn’t matter to me.”

Earnhardt Junior seemed very comfortable and more importantly, ready to race. I know from talking to him at Daytona during the testing sessions a few weeks back that he feels more pressure now then when he was at DEI. There he always knew that he would have a job because his dad started the company, but at Hendrick he knows he must perform or risk losing his ride. He feels that it’s exactly that kind of pressure that he needs to take his career to the next level.

Jeff Gordon commented several times that he was impressed with Earnhardt so far and he seemed to be meshing with everyone nicely.

The evening was topped off with a visit to Michael Waltrip’s ‘Race World USA’. Basically Waltrip has taken an old movie theatre and converted it into a race shop. Fans can walk along glassed in portions over the rooms and watch everyone work. There are individual placards and visual aids along the fan walk that explain what’s going on in that particular room. At the end of the walk, the main cavern of the race shop awaits.

Of course the star of the show was Waltrip despite the appearance of an honest to goodness stand up comedian.

Waltrip wants us in the media to take him seriously. And after the performance of his teams during Daytona testing he may be on to something but having a stand up comedian perform in the middle of your presentation may not be the best way to go about it. The guy was funny and we all enjoyed, but it was perhaps the wrong place wrong time.

Thursday the tour wraps up and the highlight will be the big announcement of the NHRA event this fall at the new drag strip at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Having covered the NHRA a bit I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends.

After a visit to Roush and the Wood Brothers, the tour will end and Kevin and I will begin the journey south to Orlando.