“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Nope – it’s Earnhardt and Superman!”
This weekend, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 National Guard Chevrolet will have a special passenger on board – Superman.
“It’s a pretty neat deal,” Earnhardt Jr. commented. “HMS (Hendrick Motorsports) has teamed up with DC Comics to do a three-year program. This particular weekend, Superman and the National Guard are getting together. Basically what DC Comics wants to promote on this particular weekend is their Superman Hall of Heroes, which is an online gift-giving portal where you can go and induct someone that you think deserves that title.”
Earnhardt added that there are other promotions that are in the works for future weeks.
Earnhardt has worked with DC Comics before with their characters and as he noted, he has been successful with them on board.
“We had a Superman car in ’99 at Phoenix in the Nationwide Series where we wrapped up the championship there. We had Batman on the car in 2012 when we won at Michigan,” he said. “We’ve had some pretty good history. Hopefully we can have a good run.”
Charlotte Motor Speedway is one of the tracks on the circuit that Earnhardt has yet to win at in a points paying event – that he’d badly like to win.
“This is a track where that I always got to come to ever since I was old enough to get to the race track, so we haven’t missed many races here. I sure would love to win one here,” he expressed. “It’s been very difficult to do. The 600 would be in the top-five of my favorite wins if I can get that this weekend.”
Earnhardt recalled sitting up in the press box watching qualifying for the 1983 World 600 and says that once Charlotte got the condos in turns one and two, he hasn’t missed a race.
“We watched a lot of races over on the last corner of the road course up on the hill with most of our family and all the Eury’s and everybody,” Earnhardt added. “We just always came here, and it’s frustrating that I haven’t won a race here other than the All-Star event. We’ve had some good cars but not anywhere near good enough. There are a lot of other race tracks where I think, ‘Man we were really close’ or the car was fast enough. But I’ve never really had a car here that I thought we had it, we were walking away and we gave it away. We always seem to get outrun here but hopefully this weekend we can change that.”
So far, the weekend has started off well as Earnhardt Jr. qualified 10th on Thursday evening.
