Earnhardt Jr. says Busch spin not payback
RICHMOND, Va. - In the end, it may not matter what the drivers think happened when Hendrick Motorsports' Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch while fighting for the lead in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400.
Because of the past history between the pair, people will draw their own conclusions about the incident in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
Earlier this season, Earnhardt Jr. was running at the front at Richmond, closing in on what appeared to be his first win in two years when he lost the lead after Busch hit him and sent him spinning. While both drivers deemed the incident an accident, Junior’s fans were enraged.
Then came Sunday’s storm-delayed race and the two were at the front again. This time it was Busch in the lead and Earnhardt Jr. chasing him. On lap 212, Earnhardt Jr. tagged the rear quarterpanel of Busch’s No. 18 Toyota and Busch spun.
Did he think there was any intent, any payback in the move?
“Who knows?” Busch said, adding that he thought there simply wasn’t enough room for both of them in that spot.
“I tried to make sure that I was leaving enough room down there,” said Busch, who finished 15th. “So, if there was a chance for a mistake, that he had enough room to gather it back up, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough room there and we got together.”
Earnhardt Jr. denied any intent on his part, though he did quickly point out that this incident happened earlier in the race.
“If I wreck somebody, I ain’t going to leave him in good enough shape to come back and get me in the same race, so that wasn’t really my intentions,” he said. “If I wanted to – I really ain’t never wrecked anybody on purpose – but if I wanted to do it, I would do it really, really good.”
Both he and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. said the car simply got away from the driver.
Earnhardt Jr., who went on to finish fourth, said he was working the outside groove when he went into Turn 1 carrying too much speed.
“[Busch] was running real hard out on the top and trying to keep the lead,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I was going to try and move up and get next to him and free my car up a little bit. We kinda came down in there, and he turned in there a little sharper, and I locked the left-front up and that was that.”
Still, it must have been tempting for NASCAR’s most popular driver to take credit for a little vengeance.
“I could say something real smart aleck, but I won’t,” he said. “It was an accident. Those things seem to happen.
“Not on purpose, as much as I would like to take credit for it.”
