USA TODAY Archives: Dale Earnhardt Jr. divides time between Daytona, dealership

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. snuck into a side entrance of the Chevrolet dealership bearing his name and bounded up a set of stairs toward the accounting department.

It was four days before the Daytona 500 and just hours before the week’s first practice session, but Earnhardt had decided to take a quick flight across the state to check on his unsuspecting employees.

Executive assistant Andrew Dewerff, the lone staff member who knew of Earnhardt’s surprise trip, led the driver up the steps and knocked on a door with a yellow sign that read, “Secure Area. Please keep door locked.”

It was indeed locked, and there was no answer.

Another knock. A long pause. Nothing.

Earnhardt, wearing a blue Goodyear T-shirt and jeans, shifted his weight and chuckled.

“Maybe we surprised them too much,” he said.

The heavy favorite for Sunday’s Daytona 500 and two-time 500 winner spent most of this week preparing for NASCAR’s crown jewel race. But for four hours on Wednesday, Earnhardt let USA TODAY Sports tag along as he offered a glimpse at both his past and future.

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A former dealership service mechanic who was once an ace on the quick lube machine at his father’s Chevrolet store in Newton, N.C., Earnhardt now has a dealership of his own in Tallahassee.

Actually, make that two. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Buick GMC Cadillac are 12 miles apart, a joint partnership between Earnhardt and Hendrick Automotive Group (NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick’s primary business).

Earnhardt could have stayed in Daytona on Wednesday and enjoyed a beautiful Florida afternoon with fiancée Amy Reimann before practice began, but he thought it would be worth the trip to let employees know he cared about the store’s success and didn’t assume it ran itself.

That’s in part because, at 41, Earnhardt is starting to think about what his post-driving career might look like.

“I’ve saved my money, so I don’t have to be (racing),” he said. “I love it because I’ve got great cars, I feel like I’m doing great, we’re winning. But for the longest time, I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a lot of years.’ Then you see Jeff (Gordon) retire at 44 and Tony (Stewart) is going to be what, 45? You’re thinking, ‘Damn, how many Daytona 500s do I got left?’”

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MAKING THE ROUNDS

Inside the sparkling showroom where a booming public address system announces new sales, Earnhardt greeted staff like a pinball on the loose.

A handshake here, a picture there, an autograph here, a chat about Daytona there. And everywhere he went, he left happy employees in his wake.

“Thanks for coming to make our day!” a woman in accounting said when he leaned over her cubicle wall to say hi.

“I’m starstruck!” another said.

“He’s so sweet,” another whispered to her co-workers after Earnhardt passed by.

Earnhardt was his typical deferential self with most of the employees – he leads all NASCAR drivers in saying “sir” and “ma’am” – but his demeanor changed when he walked into the service shop.

Suddenly, he was home.

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He eased into conversation with men whose palms were covered in grease. He peered underneath a car on a lift. He cracked jokes, handed out hearty slaps on the back, asked if they enjoyed working at the dealership. They’d face each other with hands on their hips, the men treating Earnhardt more like a colleague than a boss/celebrity/superstar athlete.

“When I walk in there, I just feel like I know where I’m at,” he said later. “You’re kind of reliving your heyday. I like to ask them what they’re working on. It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember fixing those.’”

When Earnhardt was 20, there was no dream of owning his own dealership. He was on the bottom rung at his father’s business 40 miles northwest of Charlotte, bouncing between various stations in the service shop.

He raced a Late Model on the weekends with no help from anyone but a man named Gary Hargett, who let Earnhardt keep the car in a makeshift shop with a dirt floor. Every Wednesday night, Earnhardt left the dealership, drove 90 miles to Hargett’s place in Pageland, S.C., worked on the car and returned home in time to catch a few hours of sleep before reporting back to the dealership in the morning.

On the weekends, Earnhardt raced at Myrtle Beach or Florence. His car was a total junker, with a stock front clip taken from a 1980s-era vehicle. The old box van they used to haul the car was even worse.

One night, on the way back from Myrtle Beach, the van broke down. Earnhardt and Hargett had to borrow parts off the car to fix the van in order to get home.

“It was rough, man!” Earnhardt said with a laugh. “But we had a blast. That little (stuff) happening, man, it really made you appreciate it. If it was handed to me, I certainly would not have appreciated it as much.”

EYE TOWARD THE FUTURE

An appreciation generated from enduring tough times might be part of the reason Earnhardt has enjoyed his career renaissance to such a great degree. He’s a regular winner again, and he feels pretty darn good about it.

Over one nine-season stretch (2005-2013), Earnhardt had a total of four wins; in the last two years, he has seven. But it’s more than just the victories -- it’s the speed. Earnhardt has at least 20 top-10 finishes in each of the last four years, a mark he reached only twice in his other 12 seasons.

He knows the success won’t last forever, just like his career. There’s no timetable for retirement, but Earnhardt is realistic: The era of Cup drivers sticking around until age 50 might be over.

“If you get lucky, you retire on your own terms and mentally you prepare to not be at the track,” he said. “But it might not be my choice how many more years I run. … The one thing I’m scared of is you’re physically injured and it just ends. It’s jerked out from under you.

“I think everybody is fearful of that. You don’t want that. If it’s thrown right there in your lap and it’s over, that’d be so emotional.”

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So he has to be prepared, whether his career lasts three more years or 10. And in addition to co-owning JR Motorsports and the Whisky River brand of bars, the dealership represents both a viable business and a return to his roots.

“If I hadn’t become successful in the car, I would have been a dealership mechanic,” he said. “That’s what I would have been. I would have pretty good confidence that’s where I would have ended up. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That was the other option.

“I feel comfortable in there. I have more to learn about the business side. But I think the store could occupy some of the void not racing and driving cars would create.”

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INVESTING IN TALLAHASSEE

There are no plans for Earnhardt to expand beyond his two dealerships in Tallahassee. Maybe it’s thinking small, he said, but he’d rather just put energy into making the current businesses the best they can be.

They’re already quite successful – Earnhardt loyalists travel from all over the South to buy cars there – but he remembers elements of his father’s dealership that he’d like to recreate.

One aspect? Just being present. When he worked in Newton, Earnhardt said his dad could be seen frequently around the store.

He’d like people to say the same about him when his schedule allows, to reach the point where employees don’t do a double take when he walks in because they’re used to seeing him more than a couple times a year.

“When the responsibilities of driving the car wane a bit, I can be more involved or at least more visible,” he said. “If I was working there, I’d want to know Dale gives a damn and is wondering what’s going on and how people were. If I never showed up, I just think it’d be a hard place to work.”

“Some of the employees say, ‘Been a long time,’” he said quietly. “That’s not good. You don’t ever want them to say that.”

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In the meantime, his other job is the priority. There’s another Daytona 500 to win, another Chase for the Sprint Cup to make and perhaps even an elusive championship to capture.

Earnhardt has seemed to master the draft with the current rules package better than anyone. Last year, he finished third, first, first and second in the four restrictor-plate races and has left his competitors marveling at his ability.

“He has a sense for it,” Brian Scott said. “He can feel the air and that he’s gonna go to the front and you want to work with him. That increases his chance of winning the 500.”

Knowing he won’t always have that chance, Earnhardt has been soaking up the entire experience -- including the off-track elements many drivers dislike. The days of being grumpy about things like doing ESPN’s day-long “car wash” or going through the annual Media Day circus are long gone.

These days, he understands all the things that go into being a race car driver are fleeting. These days, he said, “I’m savoring it.”

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck