In 2004, during a NASCAR off-week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. nearly lost his life while practicing for an American Le Mans competition in Sonoma, California. After bumping against a retaining wall, his modded Corvette burst into flames, engulfing the interior. He managed to get out of the burning vehicle 14 seconds later, with second-degree burns to his body. “At that moment, you think of everything,” recalled Dale Jr. on “60 Minutes.” “You think, ‘Could I could die here?’ You know, this could be how I go. This would really suck if that’s the way I’m going out.”
Inexplicably, Dale Jr. credited his father for making it out of that burning car alive. “I don’t want to put some weird you know psycho twist on it like he was pulling me out or anything, but he had a lot to do with me getting out of that car from the movement I made to unbuckle my belt to land on the stretcher, I had no idea what happened.” He later asked his PR flack to find the person who pulled him out of the wreck only to find out he escaped on his own.
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Earnhardt reflected on the incident six years later at a media conference. “It’s probably not healthy to daydream about situations like that,” he said to reporters, per SB Nation, “But I never realized it would be as hot and crazy as it was.”
