Kurt Busch made his fifth Cup Series start at Rockingham in October 2000. Fresh tires and somewhere in the closing laps, he tagged Dale Earnhardt Jr. and put the No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet into the wall. Junior finished 38th. Twenty-five years later, Busch showed up on the Door Bumper Clear podcast and walked through exactly what happened after, including a theory about Dale Sr. that he still hasn’t fully confirmed with Junior to this day.
“Sr. was just not happy with me at all,” Said Kurt
Busch was straight about it. “I wrecked Dale Jr.’s rookie campaign in 2000 at Rockingham by accident. The closing rate, I had fresh tires, guys had older tires.”
That one incident flipped the whole Rookie of the Year race. Junior had been 14 points behind Kenseth going in. After Rockingham, the gap was done for. Kenseth won the title even when Junior had more wins, more poles, and a higher ceiling on his best days. Kenseth just never had a day like that one. Dale Sr. arrived at Homestead the following week and said nothing.
“There was footage of him for like 30 laps at Homestead the next week,” Busch said. Sr. had one driving sentiment in that race, as per him, ” He just wrecked my son. He’s running for Rookie of the Year.”
He concluded the past sentiment with a solution. “I honestly believe that, and I wish I could have talked it over with Sr.”
However, before officially ending his talk for the 12th May podcast, Busch looked at the present and saw something familiar.
“I see Preece and my brother in the same box,” he said, a nod to Ryan Preece’s $50,000 fine after intentionally wrecking Ty Gibbs at Texas this season. In 2000, there was no fine. Dale Sr. showed up at the next race and handled it himself.
Both men have long since moved on from those days. Busch’s career ended with a concussion at Pocono in 2022. He now works with 23XI Racing, Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s team, in a role he calls “Chief Fun Officer,” mentoring Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick and still finding ways to stay inside the sport.
Junior left full-time racing in 2017 and built something: the Dale Jr. Download, a media company, JR Motorsports in the Xfinity Series, and a lead analyst role with Amazon Prime Video and TNT Sports. He’s arguably more influential now than he was as a driver.
The part people miss when they talk about the 2000 season now is that it was the only full Cup season he and Dale Sr. ever got together. 34 races where you could see their relationship evolve.
In Texas, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his first Cup race in just his 12th start. Sr. finished seventh, climbed out of his car, and went straight to Victory Lane. Junior would later say his father looked at him differently that day, like something had finally clicked. Not pride in the usual dad sense either. More like respect. The kind Sr. almost never handed out for free.
A few weeks later was The Winston. Junior shocked the field again and became the first rookie to win the All-Star Race. Over the radio, fans heard Sr. blurt out,
“That little sh*t just won!”
Then there was Talladega. Sr.’s final career win. Junior had control of the bottom lane late in the race and hesitated for a split second. That was all Dale Sr. needed. He ripped the high side, sliced through traffic, and stole the win like he’d been planning it for 20 laps. Junior later talked about watching that move as one last drafting lesson from the best superspeedway driver NASCAR ever had.
By the end of that season, lines of their relationship blurred somehow. They were competing drivers on track, yes, but adjoined to that was their father-son relationship. And, as Kurt Busch put it, Sr. ran with a “He wrecked my son” mindset.
What It Was Actually Like for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Race Alongside His Father
The Rockingham wreck lands differently once you understand what that rookie season meant to Junior outside the point count. Racing wasn’t just a career. It was the only way he and his father ever really talked.
Junior has said it plainly over the years: he felt like a “complete disappointment” growing up. Sr. was absent for most of it. Missed soccer games. Missed his graduation. They were, in his own words, “practically strangers” until he got behind the wheel.
“The only reason I raced was to get closer to my dad.”
It worked. Once Dale Earnhardt Jr. started winning, Sr. started showing up in the shop to ask what happened. They finally had something in common. By the time Junior reached the Cup Series in 2000, that relationship had reached the best stage it had ever been at.
They had raced together 42 times. Junior actually led more laps: 425 to his father’s 243. Higher peaks, fewer consistent days. The son was still figuring it out. The father ran out of time to watch him do it.
