(Courtesy of Dale Earnhardt Jr.)

Chasing ghosts with Dale Earnhardt Jr.

In October 2023, Dale Earnhardt Jr. turned 49. That’s the same age his dad was in 2001, when, before the last turn on the last lap of the Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s car careened into the wall at 160 mph. 

Seventeen million people had watched it live. Until then, crashes were as intertwined with the sport as cigarettes and beer.

Now, after a wreck he couldn’t walk away from, NASCAR had no choice but to confront and overhaul its outdated safety mechanisms. No driver has died since.

Beneath something so unprecedented was a most relatable thing: a shell-shocked young man who had lost his dad.

A young Dale Earnhardt Jr. with his dad. (Getty)

Hidden on Junior’s property in rural North Carolina is a vast graveyard. More than 80 cars lie across an unmarked wooded area accessible only by ATV: the charred remains of the car Juan Pablo Montoya crashed into a track dryer during the 2012 Daytona 500; the tub of an IndyCar that Will Power once wrecked; and quasi-recognizable cars once driven by Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin. There is, noticeably, nothing ever driven or owned by Dale Sr. – those were controlled by Teresa, Dale Sr.’s third wife and Dale Jr.’s stepmother. 

Dale’s sister, Kelley, hasn’t seen her father’s grave site since his internment. She says it’s understood that she and Junior are unwelcome – and Kelley suspects that’s the real reason her brother has collected all his cars. 

“There’s just this longing,” Kelley says, “to put pieces together.”

Junior shrugs at that theory, but it’s hard to deny what the assemblage amounts to: a graveyard he doesn’t have to sneak into.