Dale Earnhardt Jr. heard it when people associated with NASCAR would openly say, "We need Junior to do well."
"I didn't understand the whole context, and I may get offended or my feelings hurt," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said this week in a phone interview. "I would hear, 'You're not good enough,' or, 'You're not doing good enough for us.' My sister and I talk about that and we battled self worth all the time. That made me feel that way.
"I get it now."
When Dale Jr. retired in 2017, he was easily the sport's biggest name without being its most successful, like a Jimmie Johnson.
The problem was, and remains, a guy like Jimmie Johnson is dull to the consuming public whereas Junior had a personality and panache to complement wins on the track. People well outside of the track knew Dale. Jr.
There are few drivers, if any, that fans outside of the sport know the way they did Junior. NASCAR is becoming like Indy Car in that sense.
NASCAR is still a good product for its traditional gear-head fan, but the evolution of its drivers from having some character to product-endorsing robots, combined with its marriage to too many races, plagues what was once a thriving sport across America.
On Sunday, NASCAR returns to Fort Worth for the AAA Texas 500, the third remaining race on the schedule, and the playoff series.
