Six races into his rookie season, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s confidence was shot.

After three weeks of bouncing off concrete walls, he was starting to wonder if he even belonged in NASCAR’s elite Winston Cup Series.

Sure, he had won two straight Busch Series titles and sure, he is the son of the seven-time champion. He had even gotten off to a respectable start in his highly-anticipated rookie campaign, driving a car owned by his father.

But when the bottom fell out and he plunged down the charts like a one-hite wonder, he needed a serious attitude adjustment. With one miserable race after another, he was starting to question himself.

Did a part fall off his Chevrolet at Atlanta, or did he just screw up and drive into the wall? Was the axle already broken at Darlington, or did he break it when he slapped the wall again?

And at Bristol, did he keep wrecking because he was in the wrong lace at the wrong time, or was he driving over his head? Did he let his emotions get the best of him when he started rubbing fenders with his old man?

Junior, just 25, didn’t know, and he needed some serious answers. And with his father busy tending to his own affairs — running three race teams and trying to win an eighth Winston Cup championship — he didn’t know where to turn.

“The past three weeks had been pretty hard on him,” crew chief Tony Eury Jr. said.

“I was pretty crappy,” Earnhardt Jr. admitted. “And you can beat yourself up only so much before you take a lot of confidence away from yourself.”

As he sunk into despair, he got a little help from his friends, like Busch Series driver Hank Parker Jr., who had been through his own share of “crap,” as Earnhardt calls it.

“There was a time when he thought he was never going to drive again,” Earnhardt Jr. said of Parker. “He told me, ‘Dude, just chill out. There are people who would give their left arm to be in your position.’ That helped me get ready to go again.”

But what Earnhardt Jr. really needed was a pat on the back from someone who could assure him that every great race car driver goes through tough times that make him question his ability.

He found the encouragement he needed from an unlikely source — NASCAR official and Winston Cup Director Gary Nelson.

As a former crew chief, Nelson has been through the wars of Winston Cup racing. He has seen young drivers come and go, some taking advantage of their unique talent while others fall by the wayside, squandering an opportunity of which every racer dreams.

“He told me some things that nobody else ever said to me before,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Even though a lot of good things have happened to me in my career, I still sometimes need to be told I’m a good race car driver.

“It’s just like being in a marriage. Even though your wife knows you love her, you’ve still got to tell her sometimes. That was the kind of situation I was in. I was like, ‘It would be nice just to get a pat on the back sometimes, even though we had a bad weekend.’”

He got that from Nelson, a man known more for technical innovations and rules enforcement than career counseling. As NASCAR’s chief inspector and head watchdog, he is often viewed as a nemesis by racers trying to gain an advantage. But there he was at Texas, offering the sport’s next big star some valuable advice.

“He told me he knew I was going to be able to make it and be a good race car driver, I just needed to calm down before I made a fool out of myself,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It was good to hear. I ain’t been hearing that from anybody else. When I crash out of a race or something, I go to the house and the phone don’t ring and you sit there and you wonder if anybody even gives a s—-.

“To hear it from somebody like Gary Nelson, who can’t play favorites and has nothing to gain by telling me I’m going to make it, it sounded pretty good to me.”

It did wonders for the hotshot rookie. Two days later, he shocked the NASCAR world by whipping the field at Texas Motor Speedway and winning his first Winston Cup race in just his 12th career start.

Afterward, he said he knew all along he could win at this level, “I just didn’t know how quickly it would come.”

It came quicker than anyone could have imagined. The only driver to ever win sooner was Ron Bouchard, who scored his only career victory in his 11th start 19 years ago.

Earnhardt Jr. beat his dad by four starts. The elder Earnhardt won his first race on April Fool’s Day in 1979, or 21 years and one day before his son.

When he finally reached victory lane, Earnhardt Jr. danced on the roof of his car, then leaped into his proud father’s arms.

“That’s crazy, isn’t it?” Earnhardt said. “We knew the kid could do it.”

That was in serious doubt, however, entering the seventh race of the season. Earnhardt Jr. had finished 29th, 40th and 38th in his last three races. And in the three events prior to that, he had qualified up front and raced well at times, only to fade from contention during long, green-flag runs.

Though he qualified fourth at Texas and was motivated by Nelson’s boost of confidence, he still didn’t have high hopes. A decent run was possible, he figured, but a victory nearly unthinkable.

“We had done the same thing everywhere else,” he said. “We qualified pretty good and we run pretty decent in the races, but we struggle on long runs. After 40 or 50 laps, our car seemed to go away at every race.”

But Earnhardt Jr. got a break at Texas from Mother Nature, who had wreaked havoc on the Dallas-Fort Worth area with a series of destructive tornadoes and then threatened to wash out the area’s biggest sporting event.

When rain canceled the final practice session on April Fool’s Day, it played right into Earnhardt Jr.’s hands. He already had a fast car. If he could keep it fast, he could fool the entire field.

“I could just point and shoot and that thing went,” he said. “Our car was good right off the trailer and a lot of guys would have been a lot better off having an opportunity to practice.”

Once the race started, Earnhardt Jr. “hauled butt,” taking the lead on lap 17 and quickly establishing himself as a threat. Though he could clearly race with the leaders, he never expected it to last. He figured drivers like Mark Martin, Jeff Burton and Bobby Labonte would quickly adjust their cars and run him down.

“Every time they had a caution, I was like, ‘Now, they get to adjust more and more on their cars and get closer and closer to us,’” he said. “I was thinking that any minute that somebody was going to come hauling up there and be the guy to beat.”

But it never happened. Though Labonte, Burton and Rusty Wallace each led portions of the race, Earnhardt Jr. was either in their rearview mirror or preparing to run away from them.

“I would run ‘em down and pass ‘em and I’m thinking, ‘Wonder what they are doing? Are they just riding around, or what’s going on?’” he said. “Then we’d drive away from ‘em and I just could not believe that our car was that good.”

But it was. He took the lead on a lightening-fast pit stop on lap 114, then left Labonte nearly a straightaway behind, opening up a five-second lead.

It was then that his confidence began to soar.

“They dropped the green and that thing was just crazy fast,” he said. “It was easy as pie to drive. We got a four– or five-second lead and I’m thinking, ‘Man, this thing is just awesome.’”

But with a rookie team and a rookie driver, a win so soon still seemed improbable. He knew he would need more breaks than favorable weather to pull off a Final Four-like upset.

But on a gloomy, haunting day, the race features enough bizarre twists to eliminate several of Earnhardt Jr.’s challengers.

Tony Stewart, for instance, was penalized when his team let a tire get loose on pit road. Earnhardt Jr.’s dad had to pit several times while his crew changed a faulty battery.

Jeff Gordon, who struggled all day, saw his chances ruined when he bumped his teammate Jerry Nadeau to trigger a multicar pileup, then watched Bill Elliott’s car seemingly fall out of the sky, landing on his hood and crushing his car’s front end. And Dale Jarrett, who led 18 laps, got bumped by his teammate, Ricky Rudd, and spun into the wall.

Even Earnhardt Jr.’s own teammate, Steve Park, would fall victim to the gremlins that seemed to control Junior’s fate. Park led six laps and had a fast car until the engine blew up late in the race.

Others took themselves out of contention. With 12 caution periods leading to a dozen acts of pit road drama, team after team gambled with two-tire pit stops, hoping track position would be enough to keep the faster cars behind them.

It didn’t work with Earnhardt Jr., who was suddenly confident he could run them down and regain the lead. He insisted on four new tires on every stop, believing he could slice his way through the field.

“We stuck with a four-tire routine all day long … (because) we didn’t want to upset the handling of the car,” he said. “That was the smartest thing we did all day.”

Though it proved to be the right strategy, it made for some anxious moments. Every team that gambled on two tires pushed him deeper and deeper into the field, forcing him to dart through traffic and tread lightly around slower, lapped cars.

‘I would really get nervous on the restarts having all those lapped cars up there and worrying about what was going to happen,” he said. “I was just really freaking out there, wondering what was going to happen going down into turn one. I was just wanting to get back up in second or third position where I felt like we belonged.

“It was kind of exciting to drive up through the field like that, but when you know what is at stake, it makes you pretty nervous.”

He looked like he had nerves of steel, though, on his final, dramatic charge to the front. On lap 276 of the 334-lap race, Park took his own gamble, using a two-tire stop to beat Wallace and Matt Kenseth out of the pits.

Earnhardt Jr. was fourth, with Labonte, Burton and Stewart on his bumper. Not only did he have to charge back to the front, but he had to hold off two of the sport’s biggest winners and the 1999 Rookie of the Year.

It took him just three laps to charge back to the front and set his sights on his first checkered flag. Through one more caution flag bunched up the field again, Earnhardt Jr. ran away from Labonte and Burton, forcing them to fight for second while he built a final margin of nearly six seconds.

Afterward, he paid homage to Labonte, the 13-time winner and current points leader who stalked him most of the day.

“It was fun racing with Bobby Labonte and running like we did in front of him, because I admire him a lot in the way he carries himself around the garage area and stuff,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He’s just a really cool guy.”

When he finally took the checkered flag to a thunderous ovation, Earnhardt was astounded. “Hoooooooly s—-,” he screamed as he pumped his fist in the air.

As he took an extra victory lap around the 1.5-mile track, his father sprinted to victory lane, eager to greet his son and showing about as much as emotion as you get from the man known as “The Intimidator.”

As he hugged his son, he whispered the words of encouragement his son had been waiting to hear.

“He just told me that he loved me and he wanted to make sure that I took time to enjoy this and realize what we had accomplished,” Earnhardt Jr. said of his father, who won for the first time as a Winston Cup car owner. “He showed some emotion, but he’s pretty smart about it, because he knows just as easily we could have three more bad weekends.’

Even if he does, Earnhardt Jr. knows now that he has what it takes to win. He finally knows for sure that he belongs at NASCAR’s highest level.

“After three weeks of looking like the biggest fool out there, it was fun to get out front and show these guys that I can use my head and make smart decisions and be patient and pick my way up through there,” he said. “It was kind of fun to prove that to them and improve my status as a driver.”

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