{"id":15163,"date":"2014-10-10T10:28:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T14:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/?p=15163"},"modified":"2014-10-10T10:28:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T14:28:45","slug":"nascar-fan-favorite-dale-earnhardt-jr-turns-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/10\/10\/nascar-fan-favorite-dale-earnhardt-jr-turns-40\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. turns 40"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_13243\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13243\" style=\"width: 594px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/05\/daleearnhardtjr.jpg\" alt=\"getty images\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/05\/daleearnhardtjr.jpg 594w, https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/05\/daleearnhardtjr-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13243\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">getty images<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nNASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. turned 40 on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet SS at Hendrick Motorsports has won three races thus far in 2014 but a lost right front tire last week at Kansas Speedway has him 11th in the points and facing elimination.<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR will run the Bank of America 500 this week at Charlotte Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday Charlotte track president Marcus Smith and Speedway Motorsports executive Don Hawk president surprised Earnhardt Jr. with a U.S. Legends Dirt Modified car that is an exact replica of a U.S. Legends car that the driver drove at the speedway as a teenager.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I appreciate that,&#8221; Junior told Smith and Hawk. &#8220;That is exactly the way the car looked. &#8230; That was my very first race ever right there. I think we ran before the Nationwide race that day. I appreciate this. What a nice looking little piece there. This track and you guys, especially you two, mean a lot to me, and continue to be great friends of mine, and I really appreciate that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. turned 40 on Friday. The driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet SS at Hendrick Motorsports has won three races thus far in 2014 but a lost right front tire last week at Kansas Speedway has him 11th in the points and facing elimination. NASCAR will run the Bank of America [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,788],"tags":[],"coauthors":[675],"class_list":["post-15163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cup-series","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15163"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}