Baseball players have their favorite baseball bats. Hockey players have their favorite sticks. Basketball players have their favorite shoes. NASCAR drivers have their favorite cars.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. will have to find a new favorite car, because he is putting his beloved “Amelia” to retirement.
Earnhardt said on Tuesday he is sending his car, which he affectionately calls Amelia in honor of Amelia Earhart (seriously), into retirement rather than repair and patch it up after a couple of accidents from a race on Sunday. It is the same car he drove in wins in 2015 at Talladega and Daytona. Earnhardt said the car was not racing well at Daytona and Talladega this year anyway, so the writing may have been on the wall for Amelia.
Another hard shot for @DaleJr and Amelia. #GEICO500 https://t.co/cYbFbpQZIn
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 1, 2016
“Not that that car got obsolete or that is the reason why I keep spinning out in it, but we typically wouldn’t keep bringing a car back for that long a period of time,” Earnhardt said. “We would have built a new car by now. But we really thought it could keep continuing. It’s probably best that we go ahead and build a new car.”
So what is to become of Amelia now?
Think it might be time for Amelia to find her way to Dale Jr.'s car graveyard & remember her in happier times. pic.twitter.com/mYDJIiiwfN
— Xfinity Racing (@XfinityRacing) May 1, 2016
Earnhardt has a car graveyard consisting of some of his former cars as well as cars from other drivers he has acquired. Amelia will now have a final resting place in this junkyard museum of Earnhardt’s.
The question now is, who will Dale Jr. name his next favorite car after?
[ESPN]
