HOMESTEAD, Fla. _ Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaves NASCAR with no regrets. He is relieved, in so many ways.
He's made it to the finish line healthy and whole. A winless season? Does it matter? To review, he's made it through the season healthy and whole.
Pop the bubbly. It's time to celebrate.
"I want to finish the race in one piece," he said during a media availability at Homestead-Miami Speedway Friday morning.
Traumatic events change a man's priorities. For Earnhardt, it was multiple concussions that forced him to miss half of the 2016 season. He returned to the track at Daytona at the start of the season a changed man.
"I've felt very good about that decision before the race in Daytona started in February, that this was it," he said when I asked if he was walking away with no regrets. "And I was more thankful to be able to compete this year than I was to ever question whether I should go farther.
"With everything we've been through, with the concussion and trying to come back, the emotion was man, I'm so glad I get to run this last year. It was always this is the last year. And I'm glad I get to run it.
"And, when I started in Daytona, I didn't know whether I would finish, you know, feeling delicate and feeling compromised and knowing how easily that could happen again. I confided in my friends and family and my wife that I was worried that I could get another concussion and how disappointing that would be."
Now? No worries. He will retire from full-time Cup racing after 19 reasons, although he's left some wiggle room to make a cameo here and there, including the Xfinity race in Homestead next year.
It's been a sentimental long goodbye on the #Appreci88tion tour, including a tear-jerking video from former sponsor Budweiser, to a shout-out from Shaquille O'Neal.
"You just don't expect stuff like that," Earnhardt said. "You don't ever assume. They were all very emotional. Amy (his wife) is the one that's obviously the most emotional, with being pregnant and everything, so they've really been hitting her."
There may be a few tears Sunday with his family, including his mother. And then, goodbye, and thanks for the memories.
"I'm sitting here healthy," he said. "And I'm going to run this last race. And I got all the way through the year, so I feel blessed. I feel really good with it."
