Late wreck costs Dale Earnhardt Jr. decent finish, drops him to 14th in points
Dale Earnhardt Jr. sports damage from a late-race accident at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. // LaDon George, NASCAR Illustrated
INDIANAPOLIS – Dale Earnhardt Jr. got caught up in Juan Pablo Montoya late spin at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Sunday and saw a potential top-10 finish turn into a 27th-place result in the Brickyard 400.
And while there is consolation in that his car improved over the second half of the race, the results show Earnhardt Jr. losing a spot in the standings and dropping to 14th, 93 points behind 12th-place Clint Bowyer with six races remaining until the Chase field is set.
“It does what it does to it,” Earnhardt Jr. said about his Chase chances. “Not much I can do about it. It’s disappointing, of course. But I’m not going to worry about it.”
Earnhardt Jr. started 17th and fell back to 25th early when he had to pit under green when his car was overheating.
“The 39 [of Ryan Newman] had a flat and was real high in [turns] 3 and 4 and everybody was scared he was going to spin out or come down the track or try to get to the [pit] access road,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “[Martin] Truex went below the concrete and hit the grass with his splitter, and that just carves it up like sod. It comes up in big chunks and that went into all the guys’ grilles behind them.
“I was running around and I’m like, ‘Why is everybody pitting?’ And then I looked down at my temperature and it was 280, and I was like, ‘Oh. All right. Time to come on down [to pit].’”
After that, Earnhardt Jr. was mired in 16th-18th position for much of the afternoon until moving up to 13th with 40 laps remaining. He had four fresh tires and was 14th on the restart with 18 laps remaining.
“We were good at the start of the race, one of the best cars on the track,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “The track got real tight and we were really [bad] after that in the middle of the race. Right around 50 [or] 60 to go, we pulled a rubber out of the left rear [spring] and man, that thing was great. … We could have run in the top 10, I think.”
But then Montoya spun with 14 laps remaining, and as he slid back across the track, Earnhardt Jr. bumped into Marcos Ambrose and then rammed into the back of Montoya, causing major damage to the right front of Earnhardt Jr.’s car.
“I didn’t even see him hit the wall,” said Earnhardt Jr., who ended up two laps down. “He came flying across Marcos’ hood in a dead hurry to stop the car and get to pit road. I had nowhere to go. I drove into the side of Marcos.”
Earnhardt Jr. was pleased that at least his car ran better than it did two weeks ago at Chicagoland Speedway.
“The finish is [bad], but what are you going to do?” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I can’t help what happened to me. I didn’t do it to myself this time. My crew was good and made some good adjustments on the car and we actually made it better.
“We’re getting better. We’re still missing a little bit, but we’re getting better. We ran like crap last [race], real, real bad. So it was good to run better. That’s about as good as I think we are right there. We just need to find a little bit more.
“We’re learning. If we keep having this kind of luck, we’re not going to make the Chase and it’s just something we’ll have to live with. We’ll keep working to try to make it.”
