Richard Childress Recalls Dale Earnhardt Taking Blame For Poor Performance In 1998 – “I Wish Now I Would’ve Said, ‘Yeah, It Was You, Go Retire'”

A tragic ending to the life of a NASCAR hero. Dale Earnhardt sadly passed away on February 18th, 2001, after being involved in a final-lap collision during the Daytona 500. He crashed into a retaining wall after making contact with Sterling Marlin and Ken Schrader, and it truly was one of, if not the , saddest days in NASCAR history. The sport hasn't been the same since, and we all miss him just as much now as the day it happened. Of course, Dale drove for owner Richard Childress for most of his career, from 1984 to 2001, and had incredible success. He won seven NASCAR Cup Series championships throughout those years, 76 wins in total and 26 poles. But the last few years he was racing were not so successful, though he did finally win the Daytona 500 in 1998, which was always a goal of his. Other than that, he definitely wasn't winning as much as he'd been accustomed to, and his owner, Childress, assured him at the time that it was because of the cars they were putting on the track, and not him. And on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour Podcast this week, Childress was a guest, and Harvick asked him a really interesting question about Dale's potential retirement, seeing as he was 49 years old at the time which is getting up there for a race car driver, even by today's standards. While Childress played it cool, saying that there were only three other people (Richard, his wife Judy, and Dale's wife Teresa), who would ever know what Dale was planning to do in terms of his retirement. He did say that he wished he could go back and tell Dale that it was him, not RCR's bad cars, causing him to lose, so he would've retired before it was too late: "I ain't gonna answer that right now, but he was, we talked more about it in 2000. And I knew our plans, and I'm sure Teresa knew our plans. But nobody was gonna know what he was gonna do except me, Judy, Teresa and him. I know what he had in mind, it was a little after 2000. I just didn't end like we wanted it to, you know. '98 we won the Daytona 500, about halfway through the year there we weren't running good. I changed crew chiefs, got the car a little better. He said, 'It's me,' I said 'It ain't, Dale, we're not giving you cars you can drive. We've got to fix the cars.' and I wish now I would've said, 'Yeah, it was you, go retire.' But it's too late." Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but you certainly can't blame him for feeing that way: You can watch the full podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxvL1SVU46U