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Dale Jr. Download: Some crashes evoke thoughts of mortality

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been in his fair share of scary moments on the track, so he knows exactly what was going through Bubba Wallace's mind at Pocono.

On this week’s edition of the Dale Jr. Download on NBCSN, Dale Earnhardt Jr. described the thought process a driver goes through in the moments before an accident like Bubba Wallace experienced last Sunday at Pocono.

“Normally in wrecks … the hitting just starts. You don’t have time to think about ‘I’m about to hit this and it’s going to hurt,’ ” Earnhardt said.

“But in that rare situation that Bubba described where something breaks and you’ve got time to think – like you’re heading toward this wall at 180 miles per hour and you’re going to hammer that damn thing – you don’t know what the result is going to be. You do think about your ability to survive it. Are you going to die? Or you going to be injured? You think about all those things.

“You’d be surprised at what all you can cover in a mere couple of seconds.”

MORE: Bubba Wallace on wreck: ‘I didn’t know if I was going to die or not’

Earnhardt understands the relief experienced by Wallace standing outside of the infield care center. To some, it might seem macabre to joke about his ultrasound after facing potentially catastrophic injuries, but a driver can find himself in an almost jovial mood because he survived, according to Earnhardt.

For more, watch the video above.

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