Fast friends: Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth are rivals with vastly different images and backgrounds, but that doesn't stop them from hanging out together and admiring each other's work

Sporting News, The, May 10, 2004 by Lee Spencer

From the outside looking in, Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. might seem to be NASCAR's odd couple.

But from the inside, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, compared with Earnhardt, NASCAR's resident rock star--shooting a music video one day and photographing the Dahm triplets for Playboy the next--Kenseth does seem like the mild-mannered guy next door.

That's only if your next-door neighbor has a gorgeous wife; a custom-built Harley, a gift from the factory, in the garage; Metallica blaring from the speakers, and a Winston Cup championship trophy sitting on the mantel.

It's enough to make a lot of guys jealous, even Earnhardt, stock car racing's It Boy.

Like most friends, neither Kenseth nor Earnhardt is above a little one-upmanship. After clinching the title in the fall race at Rockingham, Kenseth was granting yet another interview at Homestead, site of the season finale, when Earnhardt popped his head into the trailer. Initially, the conversation was about the reconfiguration of the track. Then the drivers sized each other up according to the lap times they'd laid down.

Earnhardt won that exchange, but Kenseth raised the ante by bragging about his upper hand in their Madden 2004 video game rivalry. For good measure, he recalled how two nights earlier he'd enjoyed the football fantasy of a lifetime back in his native Wisconsin: a tour of Lambeau Field guided by Brett Favre, which included watching the Eagles-Packers Monday night game from the sideline and a helmet exchange with Favre.

"Man, I wish I could have gone," said Earnhardt, a Redskins fan. "That must have been cool."

It was. But what makes Kenseth's NASCAR journey even cooler is having his wife, Katie, and his son, Ross, accompany him. Earnhardt often mentions his dream of starting a family and having the opportunity to raise "Ralph Dale"--his given name; his grandfather was Ralph, and his father was Ralph Dale--in racing. Sometimes he seems to hear the pendulum swinging.

"I'm turning 30 in October" Earnhardt says. "My buddy Little Hank (Parker, a Craftsman truck driver) got married, and we're only three days apart. And I was like 'Man, he's way ahead of me? So I envy him. I envy Matt. They have great marriages, and that's what everybody wants."

Another benefit Kenseth enjoys is traveling in relative anonymity. Sure, as the defending champion, it's not as easy as it once was, but there are no life-size cutouts of Kenseth next to seemingly every beer display in America.

"I'm not really jealous of anything he does," Kenseth says. "I don't really envy anything he does or has. I'm just happy to be me and do what we do.

"I do enjoy hanging out with him. I get along well with him. I'm sure there are days when it's really cool to be Dale Jr., and I'm sure there are days where he wishes he could be left alone and kind of be in the background without everybody noticing him."

Nextel Cup driver Jeff Green and his wife, Michelle, became good friends with the Kenseths when he and Matt were in the Busch Series. He says the primary tie that binds Kenseth, 32, and Earnhardt is age, but he adds that many people gravitate to Kenseth because of the caliber of driver and person he is.

"He doesn't want anything from anyone other than to race people fairly," Green says. "If more of the competitors were like that, NASCAR would be a lot better."

Earnhardt's car chief, cousin Tony Eury Jr., agrees with Green's assessment. He says that like the late Dale Sr., Dale Jr. believes he'll be a better driver if he surrounds himself with stronger challengers.

"They're both great racers," Eury says. "When you're out there racing, you respect someone for the way that they drive. They can race, but they can also have fun.... It's like playing basketball, and you enjoy it because you're playing against someone good. He knows that Matt is at his level.

"When Junior started, he wanted to beat Jeff Gordon. Why? Because Jeff Gordon is the best. They've gained respect for each other, and you don't want to race against someone who doesn't have respect for you."

The Earnhardt-Kenseth connection started in the Busch Series.

"He admired my father," Earnhardt says. "That's the man that he really appreciated, and I find something comfortable in that fact. That's the reason we became friends.... I thought, well, maybe he and I could become good buddies because there really wasn't anybody I knew other than Tony (Eury Jr.) and the guys that I was racing with."

The two drivers followed different paths to stardom. Before reaching the Busch Series, they raced late models and built their own cars. But once Earnhardt climbed into the No. 3 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet for the 1998 Busch season, it was advantage Earnhardt. He won the 1998 and '99 titles. Kenseth drove for Reiser Racing, which had limited resources, but he finished second in '98 and third in '99.

"I think Matt has always wanted kind of what Dale Jr. had ... very good equipment in the Busch Series and a name to go off of," Katie Kenseth says. "Matt came from a totally different background. Not that Dale didn't have to work for it, but from Matt's perspective, I think it looked a little easier."