There's some mess going on behind the scenes there. I've heard that the widow Earnhardt and her stepson don't really get along, plus her stepson seems to want to try to conjure up the memories of Curtis Turner and all the hard-living NASCAR racers of the past rather than to live up to his potential and follow in his daddy's footsteps. Such as the race at Las Vegas, where it was reported by a Las Vegas newspaper that Little E was out partying rather hard until the wee hours of the a.m. the night before the race, then he crashes out of the race inside the first 10 laps in what was a silly wreck that was so obviously his fault that he didn't even try to spin it to the interviewers, he had to admit that he'd screwed the pooch.
The days where people used to party all night and then race the next day are romanticized, but they're also gone and never coming back.