Dale Earnhardt Jr. Recalls His Dad Throwing A Shoe At Him After Jr. Beat Him In 1999 Japan Exhibition Race: “Right By My Head”

It's pretty well-documented that Dale Earnhardt was as tough of a father as he was a professional race car driver. In fact, on his podcast Dale Jr. Download podcast a few years back, Dale Earnhardt Jr. recalled a testy time after he beat his dad in a exhibition race in Japan back in 1999. They had pushed and bumped each other some during the race, but that's something The Intimidator was kind of known for, and Jr. didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary. At this time, he would've been around 24 or 25-years-old, and he wound up beating his dad in the race. Let's just say, Sr. didn't take it too well... "Me and dad got into it at Japan one time, at the exhibition race in 1999. So me and him bumped each other little bit on the track, he was really, really, really ticked off. I thought what happened on the track was kind par for the course, and nothing I hadn't seen before. But I didn't know if he was just ready to get out of there, ready to fly back to America, but he wasn't in a good mood." And while they were changing, out of nowhere, Dale Sr. threw a show at his son pretty hard, and Jr. thinks he was definitely trying to hit him, though he had bad aim and wound up barely missing him, hitting the wall instead: "He threw a shoe at me, we were in this little trailer changing clothes after the race. I was super happy 'cuz I beat dad, that was the whole goal of the trip. It went right by my head, though, very close. I was looking down, and it came by at a high rate of speed. It would've hurt if it had hit me. I know his aim ain't that great, so I think his intention was to hit me cuz it came pretty close. If he'd have hit me, then we would've both been pissed. That wouldn't have been good. We didn't really have words, it was just kind like, I'm upset with you." We all know Sr. didn't like losing, but damn... he definitely didn't like losing to his son, or maybe he was just tired? Who knows... You can listen to Jr. talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgr4u8QoF5w