Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Elton Sawyer threatening to park drivers over future race manipulation incidents

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had an interesting reaction to Elton Sawyer threatening to park drivers over future race manipulation incidents. On Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt explained why he didn’t like NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition making the threat following the Martinsville incident.

“I hate that because it’s kind of like your parent going, ‘Next time, it’s your ass. Next time, you’re getting the belt.’ Maybe now’s the time to bring the belt,” Earnhardt said. “…It’s just like that parent where they’re always threatening the next time. It’s like ‘Alright.’

“Maybe they got a great reason why they didn’t why they didn’t want to do it. Maybe they got a great reason why they didn’t want to suspend the drivers. To a lot of fans points that commented on our show yesterday, they weren’t all in favor of that. But I just feel like that would be a way to go.”

Earnhardt went on to talk about the time when Kevin Harvick was suspended for wrecking a driver at Martinsville. “You knew that he got that message,” Earnhardt said. “…I bet he was shocked when he was told the news. You aren’t racing tomorrow.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. explains why parking drivers is impactful

“…That’s the thing, man. Drivers would never assume that you were going to be told, ‘Man, you’re not running. You’re out. Going to get another guy in there.’ Why is that a deterrent? The driver’s embarrassed, they’re going to be mad initially, but then it’s going to fall into a bit of embarrassed emotion. They’re going to be embarrassed ashamed, ‘Oh s***. I let my team down, I’m not going to be there for them, they’re going to have someone else, they’re going to be working with someone else. Thats my team.'”

Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillion were each fined $100,000 and lost 50 driver points for race manipulation at Martinsville. And while the three drivers were not suspended, their crew chief, spotter and team executive will not be at the NASCAR Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix on Sunday.

“We felt like we wanted to ramp this one up and we did, we did that in a way that we included team leadership, Sawyer said, per NASCAR.com. “And this one, something that we feel like that, you know, we want to get our point across that it’s a responsibility of all of us, the team owners, the team leadership as well as ourselves here at NASCAR to uphold the integrity of our sport.”