Danica Patrick’s Wonder Woman Car Added to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Race Car Graveyard
It’s bound for the great junkyard in the sky. Or, rather, the woods behind Dale Jr.’s house.
When he retires from NASCAR at the end of this season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will go down as one of the most beloved racers in modern history. His successes in the driver's seat have certainly played a part, but his fan-favorite status also stems from his off-track escapades—like his growing collection of wrecked race cars dating back to the 1930s tucked in the woods on his property, each with its own story to tell. And it looks like he's just picked up the latest addition, courtesy of Danica Patrick.
Following last weekend's fiery wreck at Kansas Speedway that took out Aric Almirola, Danica Patrick, and Joey Logano, a member of Patrick's team reached out to Earnhardt Jr. and asked him if he'd be interested in the "Wonder Woman" car she'd been driving, according to Fox Sports. This weekend, the trashed shell finally showed up at Earnhardt's Dirty Mo Acres property in North Carolina where the catalog of destruction is stored.
And by stored, we mean literally just scattered throughout the woods - some rest in waist-high underbrush, almost hidden from view, while others lie amidst the towering trunks of old oak trees. It's a striking, almost post-apocalyptic sight, just the way Earnhardt Jr. likes it.
"It’s just a way to have something cool out here that someone will stumble upon some day and wonder what exactly was going on and why there are all these wrecked cars laying around," he said earlier this year.
He started throwing decommissioned cars from JR Motorsports on the property a while ago; over time, it turned into a proper collection of over 75 cars with contributions from other teams and representatives from some of the more famous wrecks in the sport's history. The car that Juan Pablo Montoya smashed into a jet-dryer in 2012? Check. Jimmy Johnson's notorious car with the illegally modified C-post? Check. A shell from his father's arch-rival? Check. And he's even got a 1937 Flatback Ford that was allegedly raced by his grandfather Ralph Earnhardt in the early 1950s.
For his part, Earnhardt Jr. doesn't exactly consider himself a steward of history, or even a custodian of cool. Some of the cars have been used for target practice, others are falling to pieces, all while the elements continue to take their toll on the whole collection. But again, that's by design.
"I’m fascinated with nature taking over,” he told UPROXX last year.