2017 Daytona 500: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson not concerned by unstable Hendrick cars

Dale Earnhardt may not have been on the track and instead serving as a Fox Sports 1 analyst, but what he saw from the broadcast booth admittedly made him nervous. Not only did Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 car break loose once exiting Turn 4 during Sunday’s exhibition Clash, it also happened a second time, and unlike the first occurrence Johnson couldn’t make the save and crashed into the inside wall.

That a driver crashed due to an ill-handling car isn’t a revelation. Even NASCAR’s defending Monster Energy Cup Series champion is at the mercy of a car that doesn’t want to cooperate. What made Earnhardt nervous was seeing his Hendrick Motorsports teammate have an issue that’s hampering the organization for a second consecutive Daytona 500 Speedweek.

Last year, Earnhardt and another Hendrick driver, Chase Elliott, experienced similar problems during the Daytona 500. In separate incidents, Earnhardt and Elliott had their cars snap around and spin coming off Daytona International Speedway’s fourth corner. Earnhardt crashed into the same wall as Johnson did on Sunday, while Elliott’s car went through the frontstretch infield where the front end dug into the grass ripping the nose off.

Seeing Johnson’s accident caused Earnhardt to flashback to 2016, where a promising bid for a third Daytona 500 win quickly vanished. And naturally, it made him apprehensive about what could happen in Sunday’s season-opener (2 p.m., Fox).

“Right after the Clash, just talking to Greg (Ives, crew chief) down on pit road about some of the things, I went down there pretty quick and voiced my concerns,” Earnhardt said Wednesday at Daytona 500 media day. “(Ives) told me a good half a dozen things to make me more confident that we’re working on those issues ‘cause they were certainly a problem for us last year.

Johnson also downplayed any concerns during his session with reporters on Wednesday. Due to the Clash being a non-points race and Johnson’s preference for a loose handling car, he said the No. 48 team chose an aggressive chassis setup last weekend.

We can’t sit still, we need faster cars,” he said. “Everybody is working on it. We were very aggressive in the (Clash) trying to create speed for the car, and I’ve a guy that likes a loose race car so I was willing to roll dice.”

The instability of Hendrick’s Chevrolets only occurs when in a pack, not during single-car runs. When not around other cars, Elliott and Earnhardt have shown great speed. Elliott won the pole for a second straight year with a 192.872 mph average lap, and Earnhardt will start alongside his teammate on the front row.

In Thursday’s Duel qualifying races, Cup cars will take to the 2.5-mile track in a pack for the first time since Johnson’s Clash mishaps. But the duels will not be an accurate barometer of whether Hendrick has solved its handling woes.

Unlike the Daytona 500, which goes green in the mid-afternoon, the duels take place at night with track conditions cooler and less slick. As evident by how divergent the Daytona 500 and the duels are in terms of track characteristics, Earnhardt led 43 of 60 laps in winning the first qualifying race a year ago.

“We have notes to fall back on,” Johnson said. “We had a very good driving car in last year’s 500 (and) two teammates that didn’t spinout in the Clash, so we have plenty of notes to go to.”