Earnhardt Jr. enjoying grandfather clock from Martinsville win

FORT WORTH, Texas  — Dale Earnhardt Jr. wasted no time to get his grandfather clock up and working at his North Carolina home.

Earnhardt , who won Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, was showing off photos on Twitter by Monday afternoon of the clock in his home. The clock is the iconic trophy given to the winner of the race.

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The Hendrick Motorsports driver doesn’t sit and wait for the top of every hour to hear it chime, but Earnhardt loves it every time he hears it.

“It goes off every hour,” Earnhardt said Friday at Texas Motor Speedway. “It’s great. And it’s not real annoying. It’s kind of like a low, slow, deep chime so it doesn’t really wake up anybody in the middle of the night.

“It is neat though because every time it goes off, it sort of takes you back to that memory. I imagine it will do that forever.”

Earnhardt had said he wanted to put the clock right by the front door so he could see it every day, but it would be up to his girlfriend Amy Reimann of the location. So where did his girlfriend Reimann choose to put it?

“It’s right next to the stairs when you go down in the basement right in the living room,” Earnhardt said. “You can see it from every angle.”

So now he has a reminder of a great victory at a track where he used to go watch his father race.

“I was really excited,” Earnhardt said. “I’m telling you, man, it’s like going your whole career and not winning the Daytona 500. There are just certain things in this sport that you want to accomplish and winning at tracks that have something unique about it. And that’s that clock.

“I was real glad to get that done and I couldn’t wait (to put it in the house).”

Earnhardt didn’t have much time to celebrate the victory. He tested Tuesday and Wednesday at Homestead-Miami Speedway and was back on track Friday at Texas. He’s starting 12th Sunday in the AAA Texas 500 with the car that won both Pocono races this year but was nearly destroyed by a crash at Kansas.

“It is an amazing car every time you use it,” Earnhardt said. “I was just real concerned how it would run today, whether it would ever be the same.

“We liked our speed in race trim.  … The car has got real good speed.”

Obviously Earnhardt would like nothing better than back-to-back wins. But if not, he has a clock at home to remind him of a recent victory.

“I already had to wind it one time,” Earnhardt said. “That’s even pretty fun.”

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