Tuesday was NASCAR Media Day at Daytona International Speedway.
But for Dale Earnhardt Jr., it was also reminiscing day. A reporter asked Junior to go back in time, back before he was a NASCAR superstar.
As in back when, as Junior puts it on his official Twitter profile, he was a (now retired) “dealership service mechanic.”
For most of his 2 ½ years in that job, Earnhardt’s primary job was doing oil changes on customer’s cars.
“I was a quick lube guy,” Earnhardt quipped. “I got moved to a couple different positions for a couple months at a time, but always kind of ended up back at the quick lube machine.
“That was strictly my job. They had that 29 minutes or less deal (for the oil change to be completed).”
But there was a problem: Junior wound up being too good at his job.
“I got put on commission for a week, I made too much money, they took me off commission because I was doing them in eight minutes,” he said with a laugh. “I was doing ‘em pretty fast when I learned I could make money doing it. I was going through ‘em pretty quick.”
Earnhardt, though, has yet to meet a former customer.
“No, I haven’t really run across anybody that has said, ‘You used to change oil in my car back then,’” Earnhardt said. “I changed a lot of oil, I know that. I had a lot of fun doing that.”
Except the one time he made a mistake.
“One time I drove out of the lot without the filter on my car, ran all the oil out of it right through the parking lot,” he said. “It was hilarious.”
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