Motor Trend: A Week on the Earnhardt NASCAR Crew

"So, you ever worked on cars before?" I heard this question a lot my first day on the job with Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Winston Cup team.

Usually, the person asking was looking me up and down and clearly wondering How This Chump Ever Got Through The Door. Actually, I was on official business: Motor Trend sent me here to learn the ropes of Cup racing. My job for the week would be to act as a fully competent mechanic for Dale Earnhardt Jr., even though, well, I'm the kind of guy who knows what a latte is and tends to enjoy cars featuring independent suspension. Upon departure, my girlfriend pinched my cheeks and offered a verbal pie in the face: "Good luck, tough guy."

Tuesday
Arriving for work at Dale Earnhardt, Inc. (DEI), in Mooresville, N.C., is a little more like arriving at Dale Earnhardt, Inc., in Bogota, Columbia. A metal fence lines the outer property line, and a tall, white-brick wall separates the serious parts of the race shop from the public showroom and gift shop. The strangest part about the outside of the building is not the lack of signage (honestly, would there be a Greek Orthodox church this big in Mooresville?), but the fact that the edifice looks like the late Dale Earnhardt's sunglasses. If there were ever a monument to the Intimidator, this must be it: a golden compound of racing that employs 220 persons on 360 acres of beautiful North Carolina countryside. And to prove this is a gen-u-ine NASCAR race shop and not some limp-wristed Formula One hangout, the property's four barns house 3000 Perdue chickens, each one destined to appear in a bowl of soup.

Walking into the shop and meeting the guys from Dale Jr.'s team is a humbling experience. Not only are they uniformed and competent mechanics, but they've already been at work for three hours by the time I arrive. A 12-hour day is standard, and most of these guys work six--sometimes seven--days a week.

When last weekend's No. 8 race car (from the Samsung/RadioShack event in Texas) arrives on the mothership Budweiser trailer, I help mechanics B. Hoover and Steve Wolfe unload the wreck. Wolfe ("Wolfie," to his friends) and Hoover ("B. Smooth," to himself) show me how to work the trailer's elevator platform, and we roll what's left of Dale Jr.'s car onto the shop floor. I turn around and bump into Dale Jr. himself, who's just arrived to inspect the damage with the team's crew chief, Tony Eury Sr.

Dale Jr. is forthright about No. 8's condition, which engaged in a mid-race accident with Shawna Robinson. "Yeah," he says. "You gotta watch when you mess around with women."

Junior, man, let me tell you, I don't know any girls who would do this to my car.

Chief Tony Eury Sr., aka "Pops," is a quiet man. I offer some bad jokes to loosen up the atmosphere and am just about to start another: "So there's a priest, a rabbi, and NASCAR official sitting at a bar..., " when Pops comes at my sternum with a Sawzall. Well, maybe he wasn't aiming for me, but I had to jump out of the way so he could start tearing the sheetmetal from the car. I hope I don't have to admit I've never used a Sawzall on a car before. Or ever, for that matter. Please, guys, if I pass out just tug on my cheeks and get me a latte.