Dale Earnhardt Jr. praises energy from official who scolded Joey Logano for pit road incident

Dale Earnhardt Jr. loved what he saw from a NASCAR official who went after Joey Logano for his pit road incident at Richmond. On Dale Jr. Download, the racing legend said the sport needs more of what he saw from the inspector.

“I loved that energy. I’ve shared that with the folks at NASCAR, and I was afraid that individual would maybe even get reprimanded for his energy and how he handled that situation,” Earnhardt said. “From what I was told, that didn’t happen. I was encouraging that’s a good energy that we need the drivers to certainly respect the officials, especially when they’re thinking about who’s in that booth every race weekend. We’re very critical of the booth. I don’t love that, I don’t want to be critical of the booth. But there are moments when we the general fan base and ourselves are hard on them.”

Logano did a burnout in front of Austin Dillon’s crew and family on pit road after Dillon wrecked him during the final lap of the Cook Out 400. Along with the official yelling at him, NASCAR fined Logano $50,000 for the incident.

More on the Joey Logano incident at Richmond

“Some of this, we’ve got some work to do on our side,” NASCAR VP of Competition Elton Sawyer said, per NASCAR.com. “There was a lot of people on pit road, and there always is. We have our officials out there. The drivers need to understand that. Totally understand the emotion — I get it, I’ve been there a few years back. But you have to respect the fact that we do have people on pit road. Our officials will be there, security will be there. We’ll do a better job on our side to make sure that families and young children and sponsors and of that nature are not on the hot side.”

After the race, Logano made it clear he did not like what Dillon did to him. “No, when you get that far ahead, three four car lengths ahead in three. I didn’t back up the entry, I was like, ‘I’ll just wrap the bottom here, I’m good.’ And he just drives in so hard. Obviously, he didn’t make the turn because he hit me and the 11 was going to win the race,” Logano said. “So, he had no intention to race. I beat him fair and square on the restart and he just pulled a chickenshit move. He’s a piece of crap, he sucks. He’s sucked his whole career, and now he’s going to be in the playoffs and good for him, I guess.”

On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this story.