Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Elton Sawyer apology for NASCAR Bristol race: 'What a travesty'

Dale Earnhardt Jr. knows that the Bristol night race on Saturday was disappointing for NASCAR. On the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Earnhardt reacted to Elton Sawyer apologizing to NASCAR fans for the tire issue while the drivers were competing at Bristol Motor Speedway.

“I appreciate that. I’m disappointed too,” Earnhardt said. “I’m not sure why they got the results they got, why the tire did what it did and all those things. It felt like we were getting somewhere, we had that tire we took to the road course the drivers really approved and appreciated. You saw at Watkins Glen the guys were getting yawed out and the car felt like it could be driven aggressively and they could slide that thing around.

“You’re like ‘Okay, they’re getting aggressive and we’re making some gains.’ Then we had this weekend and you’re like, ‘What in the hell is that?’ I don’t know that they have the answers. That’s what’s frustrating is I don’t know that they know why it reacted the way it did this weekend and why we had the race we had. They’re puzzled and I’m not confident we know what to do about it, which sucks man because just about five years ago, we were all begging for more short tracks. It was a hashtag trending on social media. And now, nobody wants to go to one. Now, nobody wants to see one on the schedule next week. What a travesty.”

Elton Sawyer says NASCAR was ‘baffled’ after Bristol race

The lack of tire wear led to Kyle Larson leading the race in 462 of 500 laps and winning by a seven-second margin. Sawyer, the NASCAR senior vice president of competition, spoke about the issue on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday.

“We’re baffled, to be perfectly honest,” he said. “We felt like that we had a recipe there from the spring that gave us what we’re looking for in our short track racing, putting kind of the tire management back in the driver’s hands.

“We’ve seen some great racing throughout the year. Richmond comes to mind. Watkins Glen, just a week ago with great tire fall-off. The anticipation, as we rolled into Bristol, was that we would see something very similar. Obviously, we didn’t see that as the weekend started to unfold.”