Dale Earnhardt Jr. calls out 'egregious' manipulation in manufacturing at superspeedways
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has some interesting things to say about manufacturers at NASCAR Cup Series races at superspeedways. On the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Earnhardt expressed his feelings about the manipulation he’s seen with manufacturers at tracks like Talladega and Daytona.
“There’s a lot of people that truly believe in the loyalty and you do everything you can to make… The manipulation in manufacturing by teams and manufacturer camps of the races at Daytona and Talladega have gotten way out of hand,” Earnhardt said. “It was even more egregious a couple years back. Remember, they were pitting together and practicing together and everything was so orchestrated. It was nauseating. …It ruined racing at Daytona and Talladega when the manufacturers were all trying to connive and work against each other.
“When Joe Gibbs Racing all started to work together and basically get in the front of the field and the entire race, it sucked. It sucked as a driver, it sucked as a viewer unless you were a Gibbs fan.”
Why Dale Earnhardt Jr. sounded off on manufacturers
The conversation comes after Harrison Burton won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona this past weekend. Burton got a boost from Parker Retzlaff who pushed him during the final lap. Retzlaff drives the No. 62 Chevrolet , and the manufacturer was not happy with him because he didn’t push Kyle Busch (another Chevy driver) to victory.
“It’s not what we hoped for, so not going to get into the whatever, I guess the back-end stuff, but it was definitely not what I wanted to happen at the end of the race,” Retzlaff said. “I didn’t wanna push a Ford to win necessarily but FunkAway has supported me for the last two and a half years of racing in NASCAR and it was their first Cup race. I wanted to do everything in my power to give them a good result and kind of try to put my name on the map.
“Like I said, the end of the race is not how I wanted to work with pushing a Ford, but I also didn’t wanna give up everything with how much FunkAway has done for me and how much I would like to show that back to them.”