Earnhardt Jr. Featured on Season Premiere of 60 Minutes

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, will be featured in the season premiere of the weeknight edition of 60 Minutes. Dale Jr. is the first NASCAR driver to be profiled on the legendary news magazine show in 18 years. (Seven-time NASCAR champ Richard Petty was featured in 1988.)

The show will air on CBS-TV, September 29 at 8:00 pm (Eastern time).

Mike Wallace, the legendary 86-year-old correspondent and co-editor of 60 Minutes since its debut in 1968, conducted a series of in-depth interviews with Dale Jr., beginning at the Daytona International Speedway in July. The 60 Minutes video crews also followed NASCAR's most popular driver through a tour of the No. 8 Budweiser shop at Dale Earnhardt Inc., his new home and office, and Budweiser public appearances.

Dale Jr. joins a prestigious lists of historical figures that have been interviewed by Wallace. Some of the previous subjects include George Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Deng Xiaoping, Manuel Noriega, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Menachem Begin, Anwar el-Sadat, Yasir Arafat, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein, Hafez Assad, Muammar Qaddafi, Kurt Waldheim, H. R. Haldeman, Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Johnny Carson, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leonard Bernstein, among many others.