NASCAR CUP SERIES: DUEL 1 AT DAYTONA

February 13, 2025

Justin Allgaier

Dale Earnhardt

Kelley Earnhardt Miller

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kelley Earnhardt Miller, and here comes Justin Allgaier running up here.

We're going to go ahead and get started. We will start before we just go straight to questions. Kelley, we'll start with you. Obviously you guys were very involved in this process and getting to this point, but as those laps kind of ticked away, talk a little bit about y'all's emotions and what it meant to take the checkered flag knowing you were in the race on Sunday?

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: I said it earlier, yesterday, we really wanted to make it in yesterday. We've been saying on the way down here it'll be okay, whatever happens happens, this is our first try, so on and so forth.

Then last night came, and it was just really kind of a gut punch when we didn't make it on time. To have to race tonight was really nerve-wracking. L.W., my husband, said it best: Justin just made us relive Phoenix over and over those last few minutes there.

He sucked it up and got in the right position, and here we are. Thank you, Justin. And Michael McDowell and Josh Berry.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: And everyone else.

THE MODERATOR: Dale, talk about your emotions. We got to see your interview that was on TV post-race, but just talk to us a little bit about kind of your emotions there and really, like you said, We get to race on Sunday, what that really means to you guys as an organization.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, it's hard to sit here and put it into words. It really is probably the toughest thing I've ever had to answer.

Man, we have kind of tried to downplay how badly we want to race in the Cup Series. At least I have. It's like one of them things where you are like, man, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be. I'm not going to make it drag down all the other great things happening in my world, but man, we got here, and we got a taste of it. Holy moly, yesterday was so disappointing. I didn't know exactly how badly I wanted to do this or wanted to be a part of something like this until we started going through it.

Yesterday was just so tough to understand something as simple as just being 8,000ths too slow. It was really hard to understand and hard to accept.

I've just been sitting here all day thinking about how badly I wanted this for all of us, and we asked Justin to go on this journey with us. And he as the driver has to shoulder a lot of the pressure and more pressure than anyone. Greg Ives agreed to do this with us, and he has had to handle so much pressure to try to put this thing in the field. I wanted it for everybody that was feeling all of that.

Kelley said we race, we love to race, and racing is hard, and I wouldn't have it any other way. This was rough emotionally, but damn it, it's fun when it works out.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: We can just go home now.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I cannot wait for Sunday, and we have a freaking Xfinity race to run. That's going to be awesome. But we get to push a car on the grid Sunday for the first time ever and the biggest, most important race that I've ever known, and I can't wait. Doing it with Justin, my sister, L.W., our family, our team. B. Hoover is my car chief. B. Hoover worked on my ACDelco car. He worked on the Bud car.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: He was as excited as anybody.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: He was even reluctant to do this because of the emotions, you know? It's just special. There are a lot of people that have helped us and are on this journey with us.

Man, yes, we got to check the big box, and that's getting to race. From here on out it's really icing on the cake.

The last two laps, I didn't think we were in a good spot. I didn't think there was a third groove. I didn't think anyone would want to go out there with us. It was tried a couple of times in the race, didn't look very good. Our car was a little sluggish at points, but Justin didn't have any other choice. He went up there and got some help and made it work. I'm just thankful.

THE MODERATOR: Justin, you've had quite the stretch between winning the championship in November. Obviously coming here with the reality of having to make the race, Dale said you still have an Xfinity race to run tomorrow -- or I should say on Saturday. Just talk a little bit about the pressure. That's been a lot of months you've had some pressure on your shoulders.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I don't know what day of the week it is, what time it is. I feel like we're in a time warp. Last night was probably, I don't know, emotionally one of the more draining qualifying efforts ever, right, because I knew how important qualifying was and how much easier the race is tonight.

It was funny. I was pushing Martin with three or four to go, and I mean pushing. He's got his hand at the window like, What are we doing? I can't go anywhere. I told him, I said, I apologize to him, but we got to go.

Dale and Kelley being up here, L.W., I mean, when you look at the emotion of them and the emotion of everybody on pit road tonight, I don't know there's words to describe it. Dale has already said it, but I don't know why this feels different, why this is more emotional, why this is more pressure and stress.

I mean, I think for me, I just don't want to let Dale down, don't want to let Kelley down, don't want to let our fans down. Chris Stapleton has been extremely excited about this project with Traveller Whiskey. He's coming on Sunday hopefully, and I didn't want him to show up and not have a car in the field, right? That would be pretty weird.

But, honestly, those last two laps, I thought we were wrecking on the back straightaway. I think the 10 pulled up in front of the 16 and got into the wall, and I thought it was game over. Michael kept pushing, and I think Josh was behind Michael, right, and just kept pushing.

Coming across the line was like this relief that I don't even know if I got that same relief winning the championship last fall. It was really weird.

Proud of the effort. Proud of the team.

We got a lot of work to do before Sunday, some damage we got to fix from the first incident, things like that. Some things we can clean up as a driver and as a team. Like Dale said, this is icing on the cake now. We can go have some fun on Sunday and know that we're locked into the Great American Race. And feels good. Feels good to say we're going to start the Daytona 500.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go to questions.

Q. For you, Dale, there have been so many moments in the Earnhardt family history at this track, obviously good and bad, and I'm just curious how do you describe the relationship that you have with this track through your experiences?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I probably need a psychiatrist to describe it, but I'm not -- you know, Daddy loved Daytona and loved winning here. He just loved to win any race here. He loved to add to that number, whatever it was, 36 wins.

Gosh, I loved coming here as a kid, but just a lot of great memories. Then when he passed away, I had to make a decision. I had a career in front of me. I was coming back multiple times, and I had to figure out a way to be okay with it.

I knew that it wasn't the track that took him, and I knew that he, wherever he was, still felt the same about Daytona. So I've embraced it. Him losing his life in this property brought this property closer to me. Now, that doesn't work the same for other people and tragedy, but for me knowing I had to keep coming here, I made some peace with it and embraced the track and love it.

Add on top of that, you know, I've loved the history of the sport and add on top of the fact that this is the cornerstone, this is the foundation of the sport between Darlington, here, and a few other tracks, this is really what helped us launch ourselves off of the beach and out of the dirt tracks, the little bull rings, and make us a genuine sport, and all of the historic moments that have happened here and getting to win here myself.

I think that I was going to say at some point during this press conference that we should celebrate this track and this race. Where else do you go and barely make the field and cry tears of joy? Nowhere. There's some relief, but this is incredible. I think that's -- that helps you measure the importance of the race and how big it is to me, anyways. Yeah, that's kind of the way it is for me.

My kids, on the other hand, just love the MRO and playground part. Isla is always asking me when we're coming back to Daytona, and I get a little funny feeling inside because I'm like, dang, she likes Daytona. But it's just the MRO and the playground.

It's a special place. I don't know. It's cool.

THE MODERATOR: Kelley, do you want to answer that same question as well?

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: I don't know what to say after all that. Just the same thing. This place is special. Dale alluded to the memories as a kid, and that's what Isla is doing now, creating those memories as a kid.

Coming here, we came here on vacation, so to speak, was the vacation that our family took. Just seeing the wins with Dad and how hard he worked to conquer this track and after so many years and being here for Dale's wins, you know, in the 500 and just coming -- I mean, Dale said it best. There's just no better place than this racetrack. This is the crown jewel of everything that we do. This is the start of everything that we do. This is the big race that everybody wants to make, and here we are sitting here. We're about to start our first one.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Crazy.

Q. Either one of you, or all three of you can answer this, but you certainly made it dramatic.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Not on purpose, I can assure you.

Q. That was an amazing last couple of laps. If you could take us through that. And, Dale and Kelley, if you could just talk about what was that was like for you? You brought it to the wire.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: One of the things -- Greg and I sat down and talked about it before the race. We knew fuel mileage was going to come into play, and I don't think everybody got as good of fuel mileage in the race as what we thought we were going to get. People were saving. We were saving. They kept telling me, You're doing a great job saving. We're doing the right things.

In that moment you're riding around, and everybody is kind of saving. I can see the flames coming out the exhaust pipes, guys in front were an accordion with the amount of saving that was going on. I knew my car drove good, and I knew we had speed at certain levels.

We get down closer to the end, and one of the restarts we got shuffled to the back, and I got tight. I was up a little bit higher, and I got really, really tight off of turn four. It dropped me all the way to the tail. I was in a little bit of panic mode.

But I remembered right before the race Dale told me, he said, You can listen to whatever you want to listen to, you can think whatever you want to think, but you're going to instinctually make moves that are going to make you do the right thing. You have done this how many times, and you are going to make these moves, and it's going to work.

The spotter was telling me the 71 was -- if he wanted to jump out of line, we would go with him. We're going to commit to it and go for it without the help of those cars behind us. Maybe a little bit of help from the cars stacking up in front of us. I don't know that it would have worked. I thought we were in great shape.

Then the 16 got up in front. I thought, okay, we're okay here still. And then that last lap when the 10 pulled up, and I knew the closing rate was going to be huge. I just lifted early because I thought the 16 was actually going to wreck with the 10. I lifted a little bit early, and luckily we did. It got gathered back up.

The only hard part, we came across the line, and I couldn't hear Greg that well tonight. I came across the line, and I was like, Where did we finish?

I don't know if the 44 was able to make it up on the inside. I think, you know, to that point, the way that the race played out, it was so weird to have majority of the players that we were racing against crash out early. Even the 44. I spun the 44 out in the crash because I couldn't get slowed up in time.

So you don't know. You don't know how these races are going to play out. What they have talked about so far, I don't know, I feel like that's been the feeling of everybody. It's emotions, the pressure, the stress of how much this place means.

I think that's where those last couple of laps are like you just have to go for it. If you crash at that point or you don't make it, you got to walk out of here and say you gave it 100%. And we did for the last couple of laps, and we had a lot of help, and it worked out. We get to go have some fun on Sunday.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: You couldn't talk to Greg because I had him in a headlock. But, yeah, I mean, for me, I was pretty nervous too about what our options were. And when he went to the top, I wasn't 100% sure what would come of that because I didn't just have a lot of faith in that line, in that groove. Justin didn't have any other choice, and he just committed to it and got a couple of people to help, and it worked.

The bottom was absolutely not the place to be, which that's kind of where J.J. was, and he was looking really good, of course, but J.J.'s car and I think our car would have benefited from the top line. That's where we ended up getting the job done.

Learned some things I think for Sunday, but it was super intense those last two laps probably.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: Yeah. I was really nervous. You know, for me, none of us would be sitting up here if it wasn't for Traveller Whiskey to get behind us. We wouldn't be able to have this opportunity.

So from my business brain up here, I'm just really excited that we have a car in the 500 for them, our team, and everybody on board who has worked really hard. We came here with a really first-class effort in every single thing that we put together between our hauler and our car and our team and our uniforms and just everything together.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: We won the beauty contest.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: If you could see that car week in and week out for all 36 races, it's beautiful. I'm most happy about that. That's what I was thinking about the whole race. It's really special to be up here with Dale and Justin and be here for JR Motorsports. But we wouldn't be here without a partner that believed in the fact that we could do it.

Believe me, they've been texting our ears off.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I just looked at Dale's phone, it keeps lighting up. I'm scared to death of my phone, if it looks anything like his. I know he has a lot of friends, but holy cow, his phone keeps going.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Chris was texting me the whole race, What are we swapping tires for?

I'm like, Oh, we just run over some debris, we're going to be on the safe side.

He's super engaged. He was very particular about the design of the car, which it was funny because I am too. We were butting heads over emails about things that we wanted the car to have. I love that. I was glad that it was important to him.

Then we got to go to the photo shoot and do these interviews, and I got to interview him for the download. He was so gracious with all that time and so excited and looking forward to the whole project. He's been texting me all weekend about the car and what's going on and trying to plug in.

I'm thankful. He obviously wants to be here for the race. I'm thankful he will get that opportunity.

Q. Justin, for you, how will you now balance your emotions the rest of the weekend getting ready for Sunday with all of these highs and lows in 24 hours?

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I don't know what emotions you have anymore at this point. We get to go have fun. The Xfinity Series race obviously coming back after winning a championship last year, this is an important race for us, but it's going to be fun.

I know what we have on the Xfinity Series side. Our Brandt Professional Agriculture Camaro is really, really good. I know Jim Pohlman has been working really hard on it. I saw Jim standing behind the car, and he's here, and he's helping out with the Cup program. He really wants to be involved in this. So it's been really different for him, right, not being that crew chief role and just being behind the scenes.

His smile tonight was, like, oh, yeah, I know that Saturday is going to go really well now. We were in, and it takes a lot of the pressure and a lot of the stress off.

Then as Kelley alluded to, now we can go have fun. We can go to Sunday. And whatever happens on Sunday, you know, we can enjoy it. I think we'll have a good race car. Listen, Greg has worked tirelessly this weekend to make sure that we're doing all the right things. He talked about be on the car, but there's this great mix of veterans and then this youth and first time going to the Cup Series in our pit stall. It's so cool to see everybody's emotions because some people are excited because they know how cool this is. Other people are excited because they're experiencing something that they've never experienced before.

I think for me now it's just watching everybody else and get to enjoy the fun of this week. We've talked about it over and over and over again, but this racetrack is special, and this Daytona 500 is special. It's pretty wild what it turns into here for a week in February. It's really, really cool.

Q. Dale, two for you real quick. The garage opens at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday. Will you be here for that?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Hell yeah.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I'll give him a pass if he wants to sleep in.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: His kids will be here too.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: It will be easier because they'll wake me up either way.

Q. I heard you on the radio tonight giving some advice for Justin. Will you do that on Sunday, or will you keep yourself off the radio on Sunday?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Oddly, man, I feel totally uncomfortable doing that on the Xfinity radios because I'm so -- I'm around that group so closely. I don't like to get in their way, the crew chiefs and so forth. They have a plan. They talk. They spend the whole year, like, planning and game-planning. Who is this guy talking? We got a plan, okay?

I kind of don't want to. This has been ours. We've done this. This thing felt like I could just jump right in there.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: It was awesome, by the way. I don't know if you ever know this or not, but when Dale Jr. talks on the radio at Daytona, it's pretty special.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I felt like what I had to say would be helpful. I wanted him -- I thought he knew it too, and I wanted him to know, like, hey, man, I'm thinking this way, and he may have more confidence in his thoughts because we're race drivers, and we see the same things.

I don't know. It felt comfortable because I've been -- I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I'll talk Sunday for sure a lot.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I'll be upset if he doesn't. How about that?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I don't do it on Saturday because I feel like it's not my place.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: If you want to talk on Saturday, you can, just so you know.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Then the other guys get jealous because I can't talk to all of them.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: It is weird, though. His radio, oddly enough, was crystal clear, and I couldn't hear Greg at all.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: Same.

Q. For Dale or Kelley, you guys have talked about the emotions attached to all of this. Obviously you wished last night would have gone differently and you wouldn't have had the pressure. But because you went through that and all of those ups and downs, how much more rewarding does that make tonight for the both of you?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: More, yeah. I don't want things to be as hard as they possibly can, but certainly when you go -- we went into Xfinity championship in Phoenix, like, man, we were so out of it at one point.

And I don't know, when you have those kind of moments -- and, look, this might not seem as big to some other people in the room and even some people outside of this room, but I know how it feels internally for me, and I think everybody here is experiencing the same thing emotionally.

We kept telling ourselves, man, if it was easy, it wouldn't matter as much, you know? Not that we want it to be as hard as it possibly can, but damn it, it makes it rewarding when you finally get what you're looking for. That's racing. That's sports too.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: In our DNA is to earn it, and that's how we were brought up with Dad. I think everything that we do, you put that hard work in, and it feels better to earn your success.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I tell myself sometimes I'm a fool to come into these racetracks and think this stuff is going to be handed over just because of what we've done or where we've been in the past, and it doesn't care. It didn't care this week. We had to dig.

Q. Justin, I was talking to Greg a few minutes ago, and he said repeatedly that those last couple of laps, everything you had to fight back through kept reminding him of the Xfinity championship race last season. Is there any comparison in your mind? Do you agree with his perception of it?

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Yeah, I mean, I think you get down, and you get your back against the wall, and you just got to figure out how to get out of it.

I think that selfishly I think early in the race I ran a little bit differently because I didn't want to crash the car. I didn't want to be involved in any wrecks. I think if I look back at the 600 last year when I filled in for Kyle, you ride around at the beginning of the race, and you are just trying to get comfortable. You're trying to understand, like, where the switches are at and make sure you're hitting your shift points. There's a lot that is different about this car than the Xfinity Series car.

When it got down close to the end, you know, as the intensity ramps up, you are like, all right, I'm okay. I'm sitting in an okay spot. When we were rolling up the bottom and making moves, I'm like, okay, this is going the way that we need it to go.

Then it was like flip the switch, and it went exactly the opposite. That's exactly how Phoenix was. We drove up to the front of the field. Everything was good, and then you flip the switch. We have the penalty, and now you're sitting in the back.

I think that tonight was a lot of that, but I think, to Dale's point, if it was easy, it wouldn't mean as much. I know you don't ever want to put yourself behind. I mean, you're not going to start off at a golf game three strokes behind and be like, oh, I just want to give everybody a chance. That's not going to be the game.

I do feel like it made the -- those last two laps were probably the most fun I've ever had in a race car. You literally just lock your elbows, and Mika was pushing me so hard. I'm like, man, I don't know. I'm hitting the 16, he's hitting me, and it's like you don't know if you are going to come out the other side of it and spin out or whatever. You just got to go.

That was really, really special. Learned a lot for Sunday. You know, learned some things that I need to work on inside the car just comfort-wise that will definitely make a big difference. Winner, winner, congratulations, brother.

It was a special moment to run the last few laps. I think even when it started to go haywire at the end, you still keep pushing. That's how Phoenix was. It was really special.

Q. Speaking of the haywire moment, you addressed that. I'll leave this part to Dale and Kelley. I'm curious, in realtime -- and this might be hard for both of you to articulate -- but all three of the open cars, counting Truex, you guys are three-wide practically. I'm curious, do you just want Justin to get the best finish possible and then however it plays out is how it plays out, or are you guys calculating in your head, well, if Martin gets in, then it goes back on time or we need Martin to go forward or we need J.J. to go backwards? Are you guys doing all that realtime calculus?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I was.

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: I was yelling the whole time.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Justin is driving the car. He makes the choices. I told him before the race, you're going to do things on instinct and not think. You're just going to do, and that's how you race here.

But there were some moments where I'm, like, Man, if he could just push, the Truex is at the top, 44 at the bottom. They're kind of neck and neck there for a while. We're right behind them. Just commit to the 56. Just push the 56 by the 44, and we're good.

Justin is, like, No, I'm going to win this thing. I'm going to the top. I was, like, all right.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I tried to push him. He stuck his hand out the window and didn't want to go.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: He needed to get the hell out of the way then. I was, like, Ah. All that's going on the whole time. But, yeah, of course, yeah, I had how many hours today to play out all the scenarios and wonder if there might be scenarios hiding somewhere that I wasn't thinking about.

Q. You were just shouting, Kelley?

KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: I was doing the same thing. I was shouting at Justin, and they could all hear me over their radios just shouting for him to go and shouting for him to go.

We were right beside the 44 the entire time. It's like we needed to get away from it. Then that last caution I looked over at L.W., and I was, like, Is Greg going to bring us back to pit again? Every time we made up some ground, Greg brought us back in to pit. I was, like, Please don't bring us back into pit again. I don't want to have to go through this.

I sit there and yell and talk the whole race and try to figure out why they're not doing what they're doing. They're better at -- especially Dale. Obviously I haven't driven a race car at Daytona. The top and the bottom and where to go and how to go and all that, I'm just sitting there yelling at him.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I have to tell a story real quick, though. L.W. and Wyatt are sitting over here. We drove around all day on the golf cart. At least for a little bit. We went and sat at the lake. We talked about what happened tonight, like literally what happened tonight. We were even giving Martin some grief when we rolled back into the motorcoach lot because he pulled in, and we were blocking his pit stall. We tole him, If you are in the way, get out of the way.

It was just funny how everything kind of came full circle and all three of us ended up in that same spot. My biggest fear was I'm trying to push him, and he wouldn't go. I'm, like, Dale and Martin are really good buddies, and I don't want to try to pull to the outside right here, but I feel like I have to at this point. Dale is going to be sad if I don't, and it worked out.

So we at least got that done, but now you bought fishing poles today, right? I need to borrow them because Wyatt and I and L.W. were talking about going fishing in the morning, so...

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: It's Isla's pink fishing pole.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I will not be sad about a little kid's fishing pole.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Put the worm on. Here, you do this.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I think having the kids on Sunday, though, is going to be awesome.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yes. Oh, yeah. My girls will be here.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Same. It's going to be awesome.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Special.

Q. My question is for Justin. You ran two previous Daytona 500s. This will be your first one in 10 years. Did you think that you would ever get a chance to get back in this race?

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I didn't. No, I really didn't. Those two were amazing experiences. Rick Brandt was here tonight. I could just tell that it was the same emotion because he's lived through it with me.

Those two were great experiences for me, but I didn't have the level of, I don't know, want or understanding. I don't know what it is. This one is significantly different than those were. I mean, significantly different.

I don't think I realized how much I missed this race until you come back to it. In the moment when you are racing it year over year, it's still a big deal, but back then we had a provisional, and we were in, and it really wasn't that big of a deal to have to race your way in.

Tonight was like we're going home if we don't. I don't want to let everybody down. Yeah, I mean, I think for me I didn't realize how much I missed this race until I didn't have the opportunity to. I can't thank them enough for giving me the opportunity because it's special.

This whole week has been special. The whole project has been special. I'm excited to go after it on Sunday.

THE MODERATOR: I want to add as we wrap, one final congratulations. I do want to point out L.W. is not on the stage, but he has not stopped smiling this entire press conference. A big congratulations to all you guys, and we wish you the best of luck on Sunday.