Dale Earnhardt Jr. says oil caused him to hit wall, NASCAR disagrees

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he could see oil on the track, Kyle Busch said he saw it as well, and each cited fluid on the track as the reason why they hit the wall in separate incidents during Sunday’s NASCAR race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Earnhardt was the first to run through the oil stationed in the upper groove between Turns 1 and 2 and left by Justin Allgaier’s damaged car. NASCAR twice called for a caution to clean the area, but Earnhardt said track workers didn’t adequately treat the track and just six laps after a restart he clobbered the wall, severely damaging the No. 88 car.

“They put speedy-dry where they thought there was oil, but I don’t know,” Earnhardt said. “I went around the speedy-dry where they laid it on the track, and man, I flew into the fence and ran over all kinds of fluid out there closer to the wall than where their speedy-dry was. I couldn’t see it and maybe the shadows were giving them a hard time also, so they could clean it up.”

Oil also caused Busch to hit the wall, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said. Similar to Earnhardt, Busch was running the high groove into Turn 1 when his car slid into the SAFER barrier incurring right-side body damage. Other drivers, including Brad Keselowski and Sam Hornish Jr., reported fluid and ask NASCAR to investigate.

“Thanks to NASCAR for cleaning that up,” Busch said sarcastically.

Sprint Cup Series director Richard Buck disputed Earnhardt and Busch’s claims that NASCAR didn’t sufficiently check and clean the portion of the track in question. Buck said he was “absolutely confident” the surface was in proper condition to race on.

“We looked everywhere, including putting people on the ground and walking the area where they said the oil was and there was no oil,” Buck said.

“I don’t know that you say that anybody misread anything. We all did our jobs. We actually had a human being, protected by the trucks, walking that area to make sure. We do everything we can to bring the surface back to a raceable condition. I think we’ve got an excellent record of that.”

Busch finished 20th, Earnhardt 28th and both are endanger of not advancing past Round 2 of the Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff, below the cutoff by 10 and 19 points, respectively. Two races remain before the 12-driver field is trimmed by four following the Oct. 25 event at Talladega Superspeedway.

Earnhardt won May 3 at Talladega and finished third May 9 at Kansas Speedway, the site of next week’s race, and is confident he can overcome Sunday’s troubles.

“It ain’t over,” Earnhardt said. “Don’t worry about that. We don’t have to go to Talladega and be nervous like those guys that are going to have to play it safe. We can just go hard. We’ve got a great car that can win that race. We can go to Kansas and run great. I like that track and don’t see why we can’t run great there and maybe win the race there.”