Dale Earnhardt, Jr. led the most laps in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway, but came up short from taking the win. Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/NASCAR via Getty Images
This wasn’t the storybook finish that fans of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. coveted.
Earnhardt came into Sunday’s CampingWorld.com 500 needing a victory to advance to the Eliminator Round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. As a six-time winner at Talladega Superspeedway, it was very much within the realm of possibility and something he sensed.
“Just been real nervous, feeling sick to my stomach,” said Earnhardt, describing the way he felt all weekend.
With the race on the line, he was on the inside of the front row, alongside Joey Logano, for a green-white-checkered restart that was aborted a split-second before the green flag dropped. An accordion pileup of cars on the row behind Earnhardt prompted the caution.
Then, on the restart that counted, Kevin Harvick triggered a wreck that brought out another quick caution before the leaders could reach turn one. After poring over replays, NASCAR officials ruled that Logano was a ahead of Earnhardt when the caution came out.
While many fans were dissatisfied, Earnhardt handled things with characteristic class and refused to be drawn into the controversy.
“I felt like, per the rule book, it sorted out and I finished second,” Earnhardt said. “I’m OK with that. We could argue they could have waited another hundred feet to throw the caution, but they didn’t have to. They threw it when they needed to. I’m fine with that.
“I know those guys up in the booth, and I really believe in the choices they make and decisions they make for the sport, whether it’s in the middle of a race or a new rule in the middle of the week, whatever it is.”
He didn’t rant about the rule, saying “I can live with it.” He recognized that two previous finishes in the Contender Round were devastating.
“I can look back on a lot of different things that put me in this situation right now, starting with the first two races in this round where we didn’t run well,” Earnhardt said. “We got wrecked by the 19 (Carl Edwards), and just didn’t run well at Kansas.”
Instead, he merely raved about his car and its performance. It wasn’t always an easy day. He felt a vibration midway through the race that couldn’t have been helpful to a nervous stomach. He was penalized when one of his crew members climbed over the pit wall too soon. Earnhardt caught a break when, moments before being passed to go a lap down, a caution came out on lap 133.
He was “just real happy with how we ran today. I’m more proud of the drive I had today than the two wins this year. The two wins came a lot easier than this second place did.”
A season ago, he was left disappointed after Talladega only to go to Martinsville the next weekend and win.
“The best thing that could happen for us is the same thing that happened last year, go win,” Earnhardt said. “We’re disappointed today.
“If we can go to the race track and win,” he said, “it certainly makes our situation much more bearable.”
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Denny Hamlin drives the No. 11 FedEx Freight Toyota after reparing the roof flap during Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway. Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images
The roof came open and the bottom fell out. That was Denny Hamlin’s day in a nutshell.
Hamlin was second in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings coming into Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, but a disastrous 37th-place finish left him on the outside looking in as the Eliminator Round begins with eight surviving drivers.
The No. 11 FedEx Toyota suffered a fluky mechanical issue early, then was victimized on a last-lap restart when he was caught up in a massive pileup that left Hamlin irate with defending Sprint Cup champ Kevin Harvick.
Harvick had acknowledged before the final restart that he couldn’t get his Chevy up to speed. When Trevor Bayne tried to loop around him, Harvick clipped him, beginning the chain-reaction accident that collected Hamlin.
“I knew the 4 (Harvick) could only run 30-40 miles an hour and he knew he wasn’t going to (advance to the next round) unless a wreck happened,” said Hamlin, standing impatiently outside the infield care center where he was taken after the incident. “I don’t know if he called for it. Everyone’s trying to do everything they can.”
Indeed, had Harvick simply eased to the rear of the field, he likely wouldn’t have had sufficient points to remain in the top eight in the Chase. However, NASCAR vice chairman Mike Helton said after a review of video and conversation with a number of teams, “We believe we did everything procedurally correct and the 4 car did nothing wrong.”
But the quirky mechanical issue and bad communication on the Hamlin team was just as costly. A little more than a third of the way into the race, a problem developed with the escape hatch atop his car.
“I could see daylight coming in,” Hamlin said. “Inside, it didn’t change that much.”
Hamlin pitted and his crew taped down the hatch, which is optional equipment the team has been running “for many years.”
The tape “kept peeling up for some reason,” Hamlin said, and NASCAR ordered the team to come up with a plan to repair the damage. Therein, the miscommunication. He was not ordered to immediately pit, though that wasn’t the message that came through in the cockpit.
“I should not have come in unless they told me I had to come in,” Hamlin said. “Not unless they told me I had to come in. Worse comes to worse, the things flies off and a caution comes out and we fix the hole in the roof.”
After applying levels of tape, the crew ultimately bolted some sheet metal atop the roof.
“It took us four times to get it fixed and that in the end put the nail in the coffin,” Hamlin said.
“There’s nothing I could do different. I’m not going to feel any different being that it wasn’t my fault,” he continued. “We’re going to win and lose as a team. It’s very, very frustrating that it ends on something like that, something as silly as that.”
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