Dale Jr.’s sandwich project going strong, raising $145K – Nascar

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BRISTOL, Tenn. — Just 10 days after Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted out a photo of a banana-mayonnaise sandwich, NASCAR’s 13-time winner of the NMPA Sprint Most Popular Driver has helped raise $145,000 for Blessings in a Backpack, an organization that provides food for elementary school children across America who might otherwise go hungry. With $50,000 of the total donation coming from Hellmann’s, another $50,000 is being matched by Junior, himself.

Along with the Hendrick Motorsports driver’s charitable efforts, the sandwich was picked up by Bristol Motor Speedway for this weekend’s race events. The Tennessee short track plans to sell the unusual sandwich combo to fans for $4, with $1 of every sandwich sold going to the Dale Jr. Foundation.

“It’s awesome that tracks are participating and anyone donating however they want to donate, that’s a great thing,” Dale Jr. said on Friday at Bristol. “But it’s important to say the whole thing was completely organic. I was sitting there bored with a little time on my hands in between taking pictures for a Hellmann’s photoshoot and they always have me make this sandwich at the photoshoots and it was laying there as a prop they were preparing for a picture, and I took a picture of it and I had no idea that that was going to take off like it did.”

Carrying over 1.4 million Twitter followers, when Dale Jr. tweets, the world listens, so he might be alone in the shock of the sandwich tweet’s takeoff, but leave it to the NASCAR veteran to turn what many viewed as gross, to good.

“The thing is is 25 percent of the country knew exactly what I was talking about and the rest were completely disgusted,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “So, it got a lot of attention and I think the disgust is what really drove the tweet viral. But it had everybody’s attention so I called Mike Davis (Director, Brand Strategy and Communications at JR Motorsports) and said, ‘It just seems silly to let this fizzle out and not seize this opportunity to do something good.’ ”

And with one simple phone call the JRM team has generated awareness for an important cause, all with the help of just three simple ingredients.

“The response from the fans, as far as donations, has been amazing. And also, you have things like this where the tracks are doing their own thing and it’s helping people. So it’s been an amazing thing, and I’m super glad we have the resources at JR Motorsports to make these things happen.”

You can donate to the cause at DaleJrSandwich.com.