Dale Earnhardt Jr. is looking to the past and the future of racing.
E! News recently sat down with the sports star to chat about his new Peacock series Lost Speedways, which follows Earnhardt as he travels across the country to explore forgotten and abandoned speedways of decades past. But the racing legend also gave insight into the future of NASCAR following recent events like NASCAR's ban of the Confederate flag and drivers coming together to support NASCAR's only full-time black driver Bubba Wallace after a noose was found in his stall (NASCAR and the FBI later announced they found the incident wasn't an act of racism or a hate crime).
"The future looks really bright in my opinion," Earnhardt told E! News exclusively. "I think we've got great leadership in the sport. I believe in Steve Phelps, our president, the people that are surrounding him and I also think our drivers are becoming better leaders every day. So I'm very proud of what our sport's done over the past several weeks and excited and proud for their future and where they're gonna take us next."
As for Lost Speedways, Earnhardt says the discovery of the Titanic was what truly inspired his curiosity for exploring lost and forgotten historical sites.
"It kickstarted this real obsession or passion for me of abandoned things. Sunken ships: I want to know the story of that ship. I want to know the story of that amusement park or whatever it is that's been abandoned or been left," he explained. "That spilled over into my world of racing and motorsports. About a decade ago I started to, just as a hobby I guess, pin locations on a map on my computer of abandoned race tracks."
Now Earnhardt is visiting these sites and talking to people directly connected to the forgotten speedways of America.
"The feeling that I get when I go to these race tracks is extreme curiosity about the track itself. What is its story? How did it start and how did it end? Who raced there? What did it mean to the community?" he said. "We really tell the stories of these race tracks as we go visit them in real time."
Watch Lost Speedways on Peacock starting July 15!
(E! and Peacock are both part of the NBCUniversal family)