Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Pressure on Corey LaJoie manifested in Kyle Busch wreck

Dale Earnhardt Jr. broke down the wreck between Corey LaJoie and Kyle Busch at the NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono on Sunday. On the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Earnhardt talked about the pressure LaJoie is facing potentially leading to him wrecking Busch.

“He’s had a tough year,” Earnhardt said about LaJoie. “A lot of criticism going his way. He’s getting a lot of pressure because (Carson) Hocevar’s performance is pretty good. He’s now got a teammate that’s pushing him, challenging him. There are some rumblings in social media about Corey. There’s this new crew chief coming in with Rodney Childers, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

“…Those could be bad things if you listen to the media. But if you’re Corey LaJoie, you got to look at those things and go, ‘Those are positive things. I’m going to get better because of Rodney, I’m going to get better because of (Michael) McDowell, the 77 and Hocevar, they’re pushing me. I’m being pushed. That’s good. I had needed something to push me. He’s under a lot of pressure, and I think that was a moment where we’re kind of seeing him feel that pressure.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. shares more on Corey LaJoie

The wreck happened during the final stage of the race, and it led to Busch earning his fifth DNF of the season. After the race, LaJoie said the wreck wasn’t his fault but has since shown more remorse for his actions.

“I think he was definitely remorseful about tearing up all his race cars on Sunday in his post-race interview,” Earnhardt said. “Since then, I feel like he’s kind of felt like he bears the responsibility of turning Kyle. Kyle hammers the rev chip, and that’s the second shot that the seven gives him. If Kyle doesn’t hammer the rev chip maybe none of that happens but that’s not Kyle’s fault.”

LaJoie has yet to win a race since competing in the Cup Series full-time since 2019. He earned a P4 finish at Daytona to start the year but has not had another top-five or top-10 finish since. On Sirius XM NASCAR Radio this week, LaJoie shared his thoughts on wrecking Busch.

“You’re making sometimes proactive decisions, a lot of times reactive decisions in the car and they’re all split second decisions,” LaJoie said. “Sometimes they’re wrong and you make mistakes. I’ve been getting poked and prodded by my team about being more aggressive on restarts and putting guys in worse spots and putting myself in better leverage positions. So, I just made a commitment to just force the issue more like other guys are doing. His [Busch] car stopped having forward progress, at the same time, I was gonna merge in behind him and essentially hooked him and unfortunately wiped out a bunch of cars in the process. That’s not the outcome I wanted.”

On3’s Nick Geddes contributed to this story.