“Hotel Furniture In The Pool… Drunk”– Dale Earnhardt Jr. Recalls Hilarious Story About Being Hungover At Practice

Definitely don't drink and drive, but don't drink the night before you have to drive a race car, either. This week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. pulled a Dale Jr. Download podcast episode from the archives, which featured his friend and former coworker, Tony Eury, Jr. Tony Jr.'s dad, Tony Eury Sr., was Dale Jr.'s longtime crew chief, and a close friend of Dale Earnhardt Sr., as well. He worked for Dale's DEI Motorsports for many years, and remains a close family friend of the Earnhardt's, along with Tony Jr. And during the episode, Dale Jr. told a great story about the time he had a little too much to drink after having a good day of practice at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida back in the day. Naturally, he and his friends went out to party, and celebrated a little too hard to be working the next day. Jr. was a quite the party animal back in the day, so that part doesn't surprise me, but of course, the next day, he was feeling every bit of those bad decisions: "We went to Homestead, I’m driving the AC Delco car, we have a pretty decent first day and then we all went and got drunk. So we go out to eat, and then we go to the bars and stuff at night, and we got drunk. I mean, put hotel furniture in the pool drunk. Yeah, it was wild. And so we get up the next day, and I’m telling Tony Jr. Sr., I’m like, 'I can’t drive, I am sick. I’m about to throw up.' They’re like, 'Well go throw up. Go do it.' And I’m going in the bathroom every 30 minutes trying to puke so I can start feeling better, laying up in the lounge of the truck in the air conditioner. They’re all out the car just finding things to do. Finally, around 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, Tony Sr. comes up to the truck, and he says, 'We gotta test. Like, you gotta f****n' pull it together. We gotta run some laps.' So I’m like, 'Alright.' I go out there and I ran, and I come in, and Tony Jr.'s  like, 'Dude, you are two seconds slower than you were yesterday.'" Yeah, not a great look... of course, everyone was blaming the car trouble on Dale Jr., thinking he just wasn't driving well due to the nasty hangover. He even thought that was the problem, and they wound up testing all day long trying to figure it out: "Tony Sr. hadn't even gotten to the car yet... I was like, 'Man, I don't know. I don’t know what to tell you to do. I can't tell what's going on, it doesn't feel great.' He's like, 'Yeah, you're way off.' And so I say, 'Let me try again.' So we go back out there and run. Slow. And we test the whole entire day, we didn’t get within 3/4 of a second of what we did the day before. It's way off, and everybody's scratching their head, and Tony Sr.'s getting angry and everybody’s wondering what’s going on. And of course, you know, they're thinking it's me, I'm thinking it's me... everyone's thinking it's me. And we get home and I go over to the shop the next day, and I don’t know how we’ll figured it out." Then, Tony Jr. jumped in to tell the rest of the story, which was hilarious... because they did eventually figure it out, and it wasn't Dale Jr's fault at all: "Fuller was our tire guy, Rob Fuller. And he's sitting there going, he goes, 'I'm telling you, this thing is evil.' He goes, 'When I go down pit road, it turns to the right.' He said, 'It's almost like the stagger's backwards.' So I go over there, and there's a stack of tires sitting right there. I just took a tape... there was an inch of stagger. And he's like, 'Okay, maybe that ain't it.' I mean, we're putting rear bars on it, all kinds of stuff. So Monday, I think Rob left, flew to Phoenix, and we had blistered some right side tires. And he goes up to the Goodyear guy, and he's like, 'Hey, man, what are you gonna do about them 30's out there? I mean, we blistered them.' He goes, 'Blistered 'em? You ain't supposed to have no tire problems.' He  said 'Yeah, them 30's on the right, blistered up.' The guy goes, 'You had the 30's on the right?' He goes, 'Yeah.'" Well, as it turns out, those were the tires of the left side of the car, and Rob didn't realize they were made to go on two different sides when he put them on. Of course, they were all scared to tell Tony Sr. what happened and how they figured it out... "He goes, 'Well, you had them on backwards. Them's the lefts.' And so immediately, Rob calls me, he goes, 'Hey, man. I know Pops is gonna kill me, he's gonna kill me. But I didn't know, and I put the tires on, I had them marked backwards.' So all day, we had run with an inch of stagger the wrong way. And the bad part is, we made it turn... we made it turn like that. So I walked into Pop's office, and I mean, you know how bad it is, 'cuz you're just like, I don't wanna go in here... 'cuz this is not gonna end well for Fuller or us." Dale Jr. joked: "Gonna end well for me!" How he got himself out of that one is impressive. And Tony Jr. had an amazing answer for his father when he walked into that office: "I walked in there, and I said, 'Pops, you want the good news or the bad news?' [He said] 'Well, what's the good news?' I said, 'We have got a car that will turn absolutely on a dime at Homestead.' And he goes, 'So what's the bad news?' I said, 'Fuller had the tires on backwards, I'll see you later, bye!'" Classic... You have to watch Dale and Tony tell it themselves, though... it's absolutely hilarious: https://youtu.be/7whYgSepcmg?t=1065