Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a race he’ll quickly want to forget Sunday in the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. slowed by broken parts, wreck at Martinsville
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s race was over before it ever really began.
A bad vibration within the first 30 laps negated what Earnhardt thought was a “real fast” car. The No. 88 team sourced the problem to a loose left-rear tire, which they fixed during the first caution.
But the vibration was so violent it weakened the gear shifter and when Earnhardt went to change gears it snapped -- twice. Numerous attempts were made to repair the shifter, including handing Earnhardt a wrench so he could try and assemble it back together himself.
“That shifter is like a tuning fork and it just snaps it right on top of the transmission,” Earnhardt said. “There is nothing there to use. We finally put a third shifter on it that was unlike anything else we have had in the car.”
The extensive time spent on pit road cost Earnhardt track position, a precious commodity on a half-mile oval with little room to pass. And being stuck towards the back directly attributed to what happened next, as Earnhardt became swept up in a multi-car accident just short of halfway.
As Sam Hornish Jr., Casey Mears and others tangled in Turn 1, Paul Menard came to a stop trying to avoid the carnage. Earnhardt tried to do the same, but couldn’t slowdown in time and slammed into the rear of Menard’s car, incurring considerable damage.
“Somebody must have got turned sideways -- they all stopped pretty hard getting into the corner,” Earnhardt said. “It happens here. We were in the back of it, couldn’t get slowed down and knocked the radiator out of it. It happens.”
Heavy contact and a crunched front end are just a byproduct of short track racing, Earnhardt explained. The key is to be ahead of where most of the accidents take place. That was something he wasn’t able to do because of the broken gear shifters earlier and the reason why instead of contending Sunday, he finished 36th.
“You’ve got to be toward the front and out of trouble,” Earnhardt said. “We weren’t there, we were in the back. And it’s high risk back there. It bit us today ... just bad luck there being in the back.”
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