Getty Ray Evernham at NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2023.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has had multiple guests join him on his popular Dale Jr. Download podcast through the years who have surprised him with stories from the past about his father. That was the case in the February 21 episode with three-time Cup Series championship-winning crew chief Ray Evernham.
The pair of NASCAR Hall of Famers talked about a variety of topics, and, unsurprisingly, the rivalry between Dale Sr. and Evernham’s driver, Jeff Gordon, came up in the conversation, except the discussion took a surprising turn when the former crew chief revealed a secret alliance between the two teams.
“Andy (Petree) and I had our own channel between the two of us when he was crew chief for your dad,” Evernham said.
“And y’all would talk amongst each other?” Earnhardt asked.
“We would talk amongst ourselves,” the former crew chief confirmed.
“B*******,” Junior responded in disbelief.
“That’s the truth,” Evernham assured him.
“How long did that happen?” the former driver asked.
“It went on for two years and then Andy went and got his own team and I think we did it for one more year when he had Schrader,” the 66-year-old said.
“No kidding,” the podcast host responded, still surprised.
“One hundred percent. You ask Andy. We had the three and the 24 were almost their own little teammates,” Evernham said with a smile.
“No one is going to believe that,” Junior suggested.
“That’s 100 percent true,” Evernham assured him. “I’d talk to Andy on the box about pitting. He’d talk to me about this and that. There was a time in 1994 October at Charlotte I built the shocks for the three car.”
“B*******!” Earnhardt responded.
“That’s true. I was the crew chief on the 24 and built a set of shocks for the three car,” the former crew chief admitted.
“Unreal,” Junior said.
Ray Evernham Provides Details on Why He Left SRX
While Evernham’s remarks about the secret alliance between Dale Sr. and Jeff Gordon were newsworthy, that wasn’t the only breaking news Earnhardt elicited from his guest. That came later in the show when they discussed the now-defunct SRX Series, which surprised race fans in January when it announced there wouldn’t be a fourth season.
Evernham, who was a co-founder of the series with Tony Stewart, unexpectedly left the organization after the first season. He hasn’t talked publicly about what happened at the end until now.
New @DaleJr Download w/ @rayevernham
🤫Secret Alliances?
📗Trophies and Scars
🌐The Return of IROC
⛽ Pit Stop Revolution
3️⃣ Mutual Respect
LISTEN
Apple: t.co/pqLpjc93N4
Spotify: t.co/MCKZ5PCAEM
Web: t.co/ulugEidUmy
“As with anything, there’s partnerships, right,” Evernham said. “When you have a dream and you all agree this is the direction this is going to go and this is the funding that it’s going to take to do it. Here’s my job. Here’s your job. Here’s his job.
“At the end of the year, when there’s no moving forward financially or things like that, you have to have a hard conversation with the partners. Like, wait a minute, this is what we agreed on. This is what I think it’s going to take to be successful.
“And, at that time, the other partners felt like it was going to take something else for it to be successful or they could be successful a different way. And I didn’t want to do that so I said, ‘OK, well, you probably need to have somebody else run this then because I don’t believe that that path that you’re going on will be successful.’ So I stepped aside.”
Evernham’s Former Driver Made Headlines Week Before
Earnhardt has come out of the gates strong in 2024 with his podcast guests. In addition to Evernham’s headline news nuggets, his former driver and now Vice Chairman at Hendrick Motorsports, Jeff Gordon, appeared on the February 14 Download and offered some interesting words of his own when talking about NASCAR and charter negotiations when the podcast host questioned what kind of leverage the teams had with the governing body.
“I believe and the other teams believe this, that the investment that the teams are making right now in the sport, not just to go fast but to try to build our businesses into a business that’s sustainable, then something’s got to change,” Gordon said. “And I think if something doesn’t change I don’t think we’re going to see the sport get back to where it once was.
“What is the leverage? The leverage is that right now we don’t have a charter agreement that guarantees that the teams have to show up at the race track.”
We’re just one official race into the NASCAR season and Earnhardt’s podcast has delivered some pretty big news stories in the first few weeks. Fans have to hope it’s a sign of things to come.