Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Denny Hamlin tackled the biggest casual consumer question in all of NASCAR during the latest episode of the Dale Jr Download Podcast.
Do drivers pee during a race.
Hamlin conceded earlier in the month that he finally relieved himself inside the interior during a race last month at Atlanta Motor Speedway and this revelation shocked Earnhardt only so far that it’s only happened to the driver of the Joe Gibbs No. 11 twice.
Apparently, Earnhardt did it all the time, and that Hamlin is 20 years into a NASCAR career and just started this practice this season was a total shock.
“I don’t know, the bladder was bigger I guess, and it shrunk over time,” Hamlin said.
Earnhardt interjected to say Hamlin is getting old and he ‘can’t hold it’ like he used to. Hamlin continued by saying he has found a competitive advantage in peeing inside the cockpit.
“I like it now because it keeps me drinking,” Hamlin said. “Like, I would get so full before and I would have to stop drinking in the car so I wasn’t hydrating myself because I was in such pain and now I just let it go. I’m able to keep hydrating through the entire race, so it’s like, all right, I love it.”
Earnhardt asked Hamlin when he relieved himself at Atlanta and it was after the second stage at Atlanta. Drivers sweat a great deal, especially during the summer races and so much of the fluid is sweated out, but these winter races are apparently an exception.
It happened again on Sunday at Bristol, a race Hamlin won.
So Earnhardt followed up with the obvious question in that when does Hamlin let his interior specialist know that the seat has been … soiled.
“I told him this weekend when we got out in Victory Lane and he is like, he was like, ‘I gotta wash the thing again.’
And Hamlin has white fire suits, which led to Earnhardt sharing his experiences relieving himself during a race while driving with white fire suits.
“So when I had a white suit one time, I used to have a white suit, so when I had to pee in the car, I would get my guys to bring me a Gatorade or any kind of colored drink so I could pour it all over myself before I get out so nobody could see my yellow stains all over my suit.”
This is a completely serious conversation, by the way. Earnhardt told Hamlin he needs to be asking for Gatorades at the end of these races.
“That brought back a lot of memories,” Earnhardt told Hamlin. “All the yellow Gatorade I asked for because I was embarrassed that I couldn’t hold it. Its like, I’m trying to race and I’m distracted. You have to get rid of the distraction and you’re uncomfortable and you can’t do it during a green flag run either. You have to do it under caution.
“It takes a lot of focus to do that. The yellow comes out and the yellow comes out.”
That’s a pun by the way.
“When it happened, I felt so bad because it is nasty, right,” Earnhardt said. “The interior guy has to clean this out. They take the seats out … I had a hard time breaking the news to my interior guy, Adam back in the day.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.