Earlier this month, Dale Earnhardt Jr. sat down with Joe Rogan and had a fascinating conversation about his relationship with his father, legendary 7-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Sr.

In an unguarded and revealing interview, Dale Jr. opened up about feeling like a disappointment to his father during his teenage years.

(Warning: video contains profane language.)

“I always felt like when I was younger I kind of let my father down, because…. There was this one time, I was probably 12 years old. Me and my buddy [were playing outside]. My dad’s standing over there and there was a bucket, full of [expletive]. And he’s like ‘hey, come here Junior, pick that bucket up and move it over here.’ And I went over there and tried to pick it up, and I was like ‘I can’t lift it.’ And he got so pissed off at me because he knew I didn’t try. And he says to my buddy, Ryan, ‘Ryan come over here, pick the bucket up and take it over there.’ And he turned around and gave me this look of pure freaking disappointment. And I felt like that set the tone for our relationship. I feel like that was our relationship in a nutshell for most of my teenage years. He looked at me as, you know, ‘I don’t know what he’s going to amount to. I don’t know what this kid’s gonna do. I don’t know what skills he has, or whether he’s ever going to get his act together.'”

Dale Jr. says that his relationship with his father changed completely following his unexpected success in what was then called the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series.

“They made the decision to put me in this car in the Xfinity Series. You’d think that dad would come tell me, or we would have a press conference – might be a press release, at least. This is a month before the race season starts. I think I’m out of racing, right? I ain’t even talked to anybody about what I’m racing or if I’m racing in a couple months. I think that it’s dried up, opportunities are gone. I walk into the shop to get something, where [Tony Eury Sr.’s] race car was, and my name was on the roof. And I was like… I thought it was a joke, like a mean joke. A prank. And they were laughing, and I’m like ‘man, that’s messed up. Man, y’all are [expletive] for putting that name on there.’ And they were like ‘it’s true, man.’ …. So I started racing that car, and I had great success. We won six or seven races the first year, we won another six or seven races the second year, championships in both seasons. So, I mean, the choice to put me in that car worked out better than he probably ever imagined. Ever. In 159 late model races that I ran from ’94 to ’97, I won four. So he put me in this car on a whim and a prayer, and we ended up winning a championship. Two in a row. So he is thinking ‘Damn! This little [expletive] can drive a car!’ And that’s when our relationship completely changed. That’s when [he] had his arm around me, we were doing [expletive] together, we had sponsor deals and promotions together. We were doing photo shoots together. I saw him all the time, and we talked about all kinds of [things]. We talked about life, girls, everything but racing. We didn’t talk about racing much, which is fine. And it was awesome. So ’98, ’99, and then 2000 I went to Cup. He built a Cup team around me…. And then he got killed in 2001 at the start of the season in the Daytona 500. So those three years – ’98, ’99, ’00 – were as good as it could get.”