Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Chris Gabehart firing back over option tires

Dale Earnhardt Jr. showed support for Chris Gabehart, who had a strong response to a NASCAR insider’s thoughts on having option tires at Martinsville. After the race, Jeff Gluck of The Athletic spoke on The Teardown podcast about how having option tires would have made the race more entertaining. This led to Gabehart responding to Gluck’s thoughts.

“I think, instead, we should make all the cars 100% identical and see if the drivers can overcome the natural laws of physics. I’ll wait,” Chris Gabehart wrote on X/Twitter. On Dale Jr. Download, Dale Earnhardt Jr. agreed with Gabehart’s statement.

“He’s right. The cars are all identical, and the drivers really are kind of limited on what they can do,” Earnhardt said. “Even when your car’s off a little bit, you just slow down, get to the curb down downshift and drive up off the bottom. The guy behind you just really has no way to set up a pass.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks more about the option tires

“…I don’t think bringing the option tire or giving them a couple sets of option tires fixes it at all. Then we just get to listen all day long about who’s on what tire and who’s going to do this and who’s going to do that. It an’t going to matter s*** because they’re all going to strategize and it’s all going to kind of be pretty much the same in the end. They’re all on the same tire at the end. We’re not going to ever have an option tire race where the race is ending, where people are on different tires.

Ahead of the Martinsville race, Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports revealed that the drivers would just have one tire compound. Goodyear used the option compound as the standard right-side tire, while the left side of the tire will be a softer compound.

“Martinsville is one of the most historical tracks we have in NASCAR,” said Stu Grant, Goodyear’s general manager of global race tires, via Jayski.com. “It is also our first true short track we have on this year’s schedule, so teams will have to navigate the tight, concrete corners, coming off the relatively long, asphalt straightaways. The Cup cars having to go 500 laps is always a challenge, and the winner will have to combine speed, set-up, and solid pit stops to get to victory lane.”

On3’s Nick Geddes contributed to this story.