Dale Earnhardt Jr. was not among the drivers caught speeding on pit road during Sunday's Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway. Apparently, that's a very good thing.
While Earnhardt never wants to make mistakes on pit road - which can ruin an opportunity at a win or even a good run - there is a particular reason Earnhardt would like to avoid such issues.
You might be surprised at the reason, which Earnhardt describes in this answer to a question about the abundance of speeding penalties on Sunday.
"Steve (Letarte, crew chief) told me about them and just said to be careful. So I was extra careful. I was
probably really ridiculously slow coming onto pit road. But I just don’t want to
get popped.," he said.
"I get burned on TV and by the fan base whenever we do anything
stupid on pit road such as miss our stall or something. It takes me about a year-and-a-half to get over that in a lot of people’s eyes; so I can’t make
too many mistakes on pit road. We have to be pretty careful."
Kinda unfair the standard he is held to.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely!
DeleteThere will be people this morning pointing out that he finished where he started, 8th... and totally ignore the fact that he led the second-most number of laps and that he took the next to last restart in 16th and got to 8th in about a lap and a half.
Might've done better if NASCAR hadn't wasted at least two extra laps under caution on that restart... probably the only reason some of the guys in front of Jr. didn't run out of gas. Remember that one the next time someone claims that NASCAR conspires to help Jr!