While people joke about putting a picture of Dale Earnhardt at the top of their Christmas tree because he was an angel, it’s easy to forget the NASCAR legend was a regular guy. Well, he wasn’t regular when it came to racing skills, but he certainly was just normal as far as humor and everyday life.
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The sardines prank came up on Junior’s podcast a few years ago when Rusty Wallace was on. Someone showed his car bearing a crossed out Number 3 and wondered why he dissed his friend Dale like that. Wallace tried to feign ignorance of the decal, but Junior fully admits to having done similar things after being upset with other drivers. Racers are competitive and that sort of thing is just to be expected.
And that’s when the legendary prank was brought up. Apparently, Earnhardt hid some sardines under Wallace’s seat, making the stock car smell horrible after it sat in the heat all day. Wallace said it was so intense he “couldn’t see straight.”
When Wallace pulled up the seat cover, he found the sardines under it. Considering he was supposed to spend considerable time in there to race, that must’ve been stressful. But Earnhardt and several others were standing there laughing at the time.
Like we said, racers are competitive by nature, so Wallace decided to steal Earnhardt’s steering wheel the next week. The stunt caused quite the panic on Earnhardt’s team right before the race began. At the last minute Wallace decided to wave the steering wheel outside of his car, sending a clear message about pulling future pranks at his expense.
However, later Rusty got Dale’s goat with the help of ESPN, which put on a fake interview. During it, Wallace trolled Earnhardt through his earpiece. While Dale laughed it off, at the end he looked like he was already plotting how to get even with his rival.
Junior says he was quite the prankster as well, which we don’t doubt. After all, his dad was notorious for pranking other drivers, so he learned from the best. We’ve thrown in a video of him pulling some fast ones during a production day a while back.
Check out that fake ESPN interview for yourself.
Images via YouTube, Javier Balseiro
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