Joe Rogan - Dale Earnhardt Jr. on What It's Like to Flip a Car

What, but driving, driving a race car, I mean, you have a giant engine, you're strapped into a seat, you're hurling down the road at extreme speeds, right next to other cars doing the same thing, just the intensity and just everything being on nine at all times, like that is a wild way to make a living, sir. Yeah, thanks. I mean, I, um, it, when I was a little, uh, when I was little thinking about, you know, what the hell am I going to grow up and be? Uh, I was, my father was really successful in the sport, so I would go to the races and I would watch him race and see him win and watch him go through victory lane and, and celebrate and all those things. And I thought, man, this is what I gotta do. I gotta do this. This is, this looks fun. This looks exciting. People are, you know, people are in all of the drivers, the race, my father, the, the, the personalities. And I just wanted to do it real badly, but I knew that the odds of making it are tough, so there's only 40 guys in the field every weekend. So there's 40 guys in this, in the whole country that are going to get the shot to do it, you know, and me, the odds of me, even with my dad being as successful as he was, I'd have a lot of doors open to me, but the odds of me actually getting there and being able to stay, have the staying power and the success and talent. I just knew we were tough, so I didn't know if I'd ever get that chance. Um, but it is, you know, I remember the first time I went to a two and a half mile track, it's Talladega and you hold it wide open. I was working at my dad's dealership, changing oil. He owned this Chevy store in Newton, North Carolina, and the phone rang and he said, my dad, my dad was on the end and he was in Talladega for a test. And he said, uh, get your helmet and your suit and meet me at the racetrack. The next day you're going to fly in the King air to the, to the track. Don't know. Don't ask questions. Just do it. And so I got there and I knew I was going to Talladega and I thought, man, I must be driving this. This is going to be crazy. I'm going to go around this two and a half mile track full speed at 190 miles an hour I'd never done. I never went faster than 90 or 95 on a racetrack before and never drove anything bigger than a half mile. And, uh, I pulled out, he's, you know, I got there. He's like, you're going to test this car, get in, get ready. He puts me in there and he's like, you got to hold it wide open. If you don't hold it wide open, the motor's not going to work. It'll hurt the motor. You got to hold it the way they tune the motor to run wide open. It has to run it. It has to run at full throttle. If you tried to go around there at half throttle to burn the pistons that are run too lean, all those things. So he, he was saying that and I thought to myself, is he just telling me that just to make sure I hold it wide open. Cause he thought I would, I would, I would be a pussy and not do it. And so I was like, man, I, I'm a little nervous, uh, to hold it wide open, but I pulled out on the track and I mashed the gas full throttle and I'm going down the back straightaway and I was like, I'm looking down the back straightaway into the next corner, this long corner. And I'm like, how's it going to stick? You know, how's the car going to, how's the car not going to fly out of the racetrack? Like it, I'm going so fast. I don't, it doesn't feel like it's going to stay in the track. And, uh, and I kept running, kept running that through my head about my dad saying, I got to hold it wide open. I'm like, well, that's it. It'll, it'll, it'll go wide open around here. So I don't think he would, you know, I believe everything he says and you go in the corner and you turn, uh, into the corner and there is more grit than you can imagine. Like the, there's so much grip. The, the car is stuck to the track with such grip that you've never felt this before in your life, this, this grip. Like you can't slide across that track. The tires in the car, a hold of the track so tough and tight that nothing's going to make it, it just goes around there. Like it's, it's the craziest thing. And so now today, when I tell people, uh, when I got, we got this two seater car and we take people for rides and they get in there and I'm like, man, what am I going to do, what are you going to do to explain to somebody what this is going to feel like whether I'm going to tell you things to pay attention to pay attention to the grip, you're not going to believe how much grip this car has. Like it's you're, you're just not going to believe that it'll stick to the track the way it does. So pay attention to that and pay attention to how bumpy and violent it is. You know, you drive a Cadillac or, uh, any car down the street, well, it's, you know, six, eight inches off the ground, these big old inflated tires and big giant sidewalls and it's going to feel nice, you know, when it hits little bumps, our cars are rigid and suck to the ground and don't have much travel in the suspension and you know, it's just, it's, it's built to hand to go fast, not to feel good, you know, and it's going to, it's rough as hell and shakes, shakes the hell out of you. And, um, that's what I remember about that. And, and as soon as I got over that initial fear, I think that was the only time I ever had any real fear of driving a car as soon as I was like, well, all right, but you know, anything, nothing else is going to be as scary as that was, right? Driving a car and I mean flipping and when I flip for the first time and our, you know, the car's tumbling and flying parts flying off the air, my, I thought to myself that I wasn't scared or I never was scared of flipping. My thought was I just did something a lot of people are never going to experience. You know, I did something that, uh, that only a few people know what that's like. And, and I feel safe. I've always felt incredibly safe inside of the car, you know, with, especially with the, I mean, in the last 20 years, this, the safety stuff has really been focused on and improved and better and better and better. But I look at the interior of our cars today versus 20 years ago. And it's like, I can't believe it's some of the stuff that we used to climb into. So you felt calm while it was flipping. Oh yeah. I always, well, I've seen cars flip, right? I've seen it for years. Right. So I know it's possible. So I get in there and I got turned around at a race in 1998. I was racing at Daytona and I got turned around and the car, so I'm flipping for the first time in my life and this car's like over 3000, uh, 3000 pounds. So it's, it's, but it flies up in the air. Like it's paper, man. It's the craziest thing in the world. It's so you weightless, you know, and what it felt like to me, because of the car. Rolled on its side and, uh, came down kind of on its side. It felt like somebody rolled a prop wall of grass up against the car. You know what I'm saying? When I was on my side and I could see the ground, I felt like I was right side up because as you're flipping, the force pushes you down in the seat. So you feel it. Internally, you feel a gravity all the time. Like you're, you know, as the car's flipping, you're, you're pushed into the seat, so you feel great. You feel weight of yourself in the seat. That never changes. You never kind of come up out of the seat like that, you know? And so it was like somebody rolled a prop wall of grass up against the side of the car and then against the roof and then against that side. And then this, you know, it kept doing that. And I'm like, it's just the weirdest feeling and you feel completely safe. You know, you feel like, you know, nothing's going to harm me, but this, but any, you know, just, you just, one of the things they always talk about is like, get your hands, um, onto something because the spinning makes your arms just go like this. And if you watch a lot of old wrecks from the sixties and seventies, you'll see the guys' arms come flying out the window and they're just kind of flopping around. They can't pull it. Yeah. It's spinning so fast. You can't pull it in and your arms will go like that. So as soon as you know, you're going upside down, you grab the bottom of the steering wheel and just kind of, you know, watch. But, uh, I flipped my pickup truck one time on Christmas day and I wasn't holding on the steering wheel and my arm went out the window, you know, for like a split second, it banged around in the, in the, in the window seal. And I was like, man, you know, I got it back in and grabbed a hold of the steering wheel with both my hands. And so ever since then I've like, you know, now I know like anytime I'm in a crash, you got to have your hands, a hold of something, because that's the one thing that you can't control. You're, you're strapped in with your seat belt and everything, but your arms are, you know, can go anywhere. And in that moment when the car is rolling or barrel rolling or flipping, you it's so fast, like you can't, your arms just go this way. It's the craziest thing in the world. That's the only fear, I guess, is that your arm could get outside the window and get crushed or something. Cause the guys have had that happen. Yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. How'd you flip when you were on Christmas? On Christmas day, my sister, uh, she knows this is, she just won't be news to her, but, um, uh, it's probably not fun for her to hear every time I tell it, but we, I had a pickup truck with the tape deck in it and I had, she got me that Walkman CD with the adapter for the tape tape deck that you stick into you. You know, you can set adapter and she bought me the Walkman set adapter. And I'm in my, I'm in, I'm in my truck. I got an extended cab S10. I'm driving from my house to my, my memo house where family reunion is my dad's there, everybody's there, whole family's there. I'm a little late. Um, and I'm driving down the road and I got to messing with that Walkman and I drove off into the ditch and I hit a driveway cover pipe drainage pipe in a driveway and went like seven flips. And destroy this truck in the middle of the flipping. I remember that happening and everything, all my change jacket, anything that was loose in the car ended up down in the one corner, like floorboard, everything sort of collects into that one corner. Is it spinning? And, uh, it crushed the windshield down. The mirror was down into the radio. You know, it was crushed the roof down real bad. I was really lucky. I had my hands on top of the steering wheel and the windshield kept slapping my knuckles and knocked on busted all my knuckles real bad. And so then I let go and my hands went this way. And then I finally got them back in and grabbed the bottom of steering wheel. It broke. It, the tires were flipped, you know, broken and busted off the truck. And this, I got out of the truck and I was fine. Didn't have any injuries other than just the knuckles kind of being scraped up. This, this newly married couple, they just are either got engaged or just got married, were driving the other way and saw the whole thing and they stopped. And, uh, they were like, you are. And I'm like, yeah. And, uh, of course there's this line of cars behind me stopped on the road. And this one lady pulls up and I was like, I need to borrow your cell phone. To call my dad. She's like, you're in shock. You need to sit down. I was like, no, I'm not in shock. I just need to borrow myself, borrow your cell phone. So she, so I walked to the next car and I got a cell phone from this person. I call my dad and I was like, dad, I was like, man, I flipped my truck, I had paid, I had got, I'd financed this thing for five years. That's paying a hundred dollars a month is perfect. I was working at dealership changing oil, probably making $130 a week. And I mean, just got this truck for probably two, three months and, um, use truck, but it was, it was good. It's junk. Uh, I called dad and I'm like, man, he's going to be mad. Can't be too mad because I'm paying for the truck, but he's going to be mad at me because I'm screwing up family union and Christmas. He comes to get me, uh, I flipped this truck real close to our, where our farm was, so he ran over to the farm and got this flatbed truck and, uh, he pulls out there with the flatbed truck and he pulls up and as soon as he pulls up, state trooper pulls up and the state trooper guy and dad talked for a minute. And the state troopers like, yeah, one single car accident. You okay? Yeah, everybody's okay. Dad, dad, are you going to put this on the flatbed, take it home? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I ain't going to, I ain't going to investigate or anything. Everything's cool. Y'all just go about your business. So he left. So he did us a solid there and didn't give me a kind of traffic ticket. And so me and dad put the truck on the flatbed and we're driving back and he started laughing. And I was like, man, I expected you to be really mad because he was a, uh, fiery kind of dad, you know, and, and, uh, pulled a belt out and go to town. You know, he was a rough, strict, tough, tough dude. And so I thought I was going to get, um, a good cussing at least, but he started laughing and I said, man, what's so funny? And he goes, I was 18 when this happened. He goes, when I was 18 years old, I flipped my car. He's like, I can't get mad. He's like, it's just, I'm just glad you're not hurt. I'm like, that's nice. So we drove back. I took a couple pictures of it and, uh, got me, got an insurance for it. Got like 11, 12 grand for the insurance to be able to buy another truck. So it all worked out.