NASCAR’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., has a number of racing accolades under his belt – including two Daytona 500 wins – so there’s no doubt to his capabilities on the race track.
But apparently, Junior has so much room for improvement while riding a bike that he was recently flipped off by a passenger car.
As he described it on his weekly Dale Jr. Download podcast, fellow Hendrick Motorsports driver Jimmie Johnson is quite the cycling enthusiast – even giving Junior a bike last year – and as other drivers have joined Johnson on rides, Earnhardt took notice.
“There’s a number of drivers starting to pick up on this cycling deal,” Earnhardt said on his podcast, particularly noting how many of them were riding together during the week of the Daytona 500. “So I’m thinking, ‘You know what? I’m going to try.’”
So last week, Junior flew the bike Johnson gave him down to the Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 – after tuning it up since it collected dust in his garage for a year – and was ready to join his fellow drivers on a ride.
More via the Dale Jr. Download podcast:
“I told Jimmie I said, ‘Look, I’m going to meet you outside the track. Ain’t no way in hell I’m going to let anybody see me ride through the infield wearing this biking-gear-spandex stuff.’ So anyways, I rode outside (and) pulled my bike out of the back of the Tahoe.
“Here comes Jimmie, (longtime HMS crew chief) Alan Gustafson, Kasey (Kahne, another HMS teammate). We all took off on a ride, and 16.7 miles we rode. Lot of fun, my first ride. It was a good time. I did get flipped off in the first five minutes.”
Elaborating, Earnhardt said in the past when he’s taken his bike out on his own property, he never had any issues riding it.
But this time – among more experienced friends on the road – he said he was nervous and couldn’t keep his hands from moving.
“So I’m shaking, and I’m all over the road. Jimmie and them are like six inches from the shoulder, and I’m like, ‘I can’t ride that close to the shoulder. I’m all over the place.’
And I’m wobbling all over the damn road, and this guy goes by and flips me off. I guess I kind of kicked him off. But anyway, I was surprised at how rude drivers are on the road.”
Even though Earnhardt admitted his riding buddies slowed down a little bit for him, he enjoyed himself so much that he’s talking to Johnson about getting more bikes and making cycling a consistent part of his workouts.
There’s still one small obstacle though.
“(I’m) still not quite over the self-consciousness of wearing the spandex,” he admitted. “I don’t know – I’ll get there.”
