Dale Earnhardt Jr. draws race manipulation line heading into NASCAR Cup championship at Phoenix

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has made his stand on race manipulation during NASCAR Cup Series races following the Martinsville controversy. On the Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt drew the race manipulation line ahead of the Championship 4 at Phoenix.

“The line isn’t clear for some people,” Earnhardt said. “That’s the one thing that is tough for me is we had the thing with Austin Dillon at Richmond where he runs into the 22 [Joey Logano] and then the 11 [Denny Hamlin], the contact and all that. NASCAR made a call and changed the outcome of it.

“We go to Martinsville and Christan Eckes pushed Taylor Gray out of the way and wins the truck race. Everybody is going, ‘Well why is that okay? They did this with Austin Dillon,’ but the two events are not the same. I will stand here all day and tell anyone that I got a damn good hold on race etiquette and what’s cool, what ain’t cool, what’s over the line, where the lines are. For the most part, I feel like I understand what a good block is and what a bad block is, what rough driving is what being aggressive is, what using the chrome horn is and what flat wrecking a guy is. I can look at both of those situations and understand why one is okay, and one isn’t. It’s not up for debate for me.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. says the Martinsville incident was ‘not okay’

Earnhardt then laid out of an example of what isn’t race manipulation at the upcoming championship race. He said if Ryan Blaney lapped teammate Austin Cindric and then Cindric is “racing the s***” out of William Byron who’s in second place, that’s not race manipulation. However, it would be a different story if Cindric threw a bad block and runs Byron into the wall.

“What happened at Martinsville, not okay blocking the track and not allowing other people by and having faster cars and sitting behind people intentionally,” Earnhardt said. “That stuff flies in F1, but I don’t think we want to allow that to be pat of what we have going on here.”

NASCAR penalized Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon for race manipulation at Martinville. Each driver was fined $100,000 and lost 50 driver points. The good news is Wallace, Chastain and Dillon are not suspended and will compete at Phoenix in the final race of the year.