When Dale Earnhardt Jr. is pondering the key moments in his racing career, one that often comes to mind is Lap 312 of the fall race at Atlanta in 2004...
Dale Earnhardt Junior (Right) said his feelings about the incident have changed over time, but they were raw for a while. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. is pondering the key moments in his racing career, one that often comes to mind is Lap 312 of the fall race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 2004.
At that point in that race, Earnhardt was in the driver’s seat, so to speak, as far as the season championship was concerned. He’d been on a roll, having already won five races.
His main rival in the then-new Chase, eventual winner Kurt Busch, had dropped out of the race on Lap 51 with an engine failure that had left him with 42nd-place points.
Earnhardt had the No. 8 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet in the lead pack and was poised to finish the race with the points lead.
But as he entered Turn Three on that fateful lap, he collided with then-rookie Carl Edwards. Instead of finishing second or third, he wound up 33rd.
His best shot ever at a championship was lost, and that one incident likely had an impact on his career decisions in the years since.
“When you look back over your career, that definitely sticks out in the top five,” he said, adding that if he’d come through that one corner unscathed it would have led to “a whole new outcome for our team and the championship that year, not only that year but in the future.”
His uncle and crew chief, Tony Eury Sr., agrees that a lot changed that fall afternoon in Atlanta.
“That was the closest we ever came,” Eury said. “Everybody thought we were going to be the ones to beat. We had everything going our way. It seemed like we had the luck and everything else, and that one deal killed it all.”
Eury said that if the team had made it through Atlanta, he would have played things differently in the remaining races, especially in the season finale at Homestead, where they finished 23rd after winning at Phoenix and finishing 11th at Darlington.
