Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t think he sped when pitted under caution with little more than 100 laps remaining in Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway. NASCAR officials, however, concluded otherwise, and issued a penalty.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s slow start to season continues with Martinsville crash
Earnhardt is 25th in points with a best finish of 14th this season.
Which meant Earnhardt needed to restart at the rear of the field on the subsequent restart, never an easy proposition on the half-mile track. And not surprisingly, because he was in the middle of a hornet’s nest, he had no means of escape when a chain-reaction accident ahead involving Denny Hamlin, Danica Patrick, and others occurred just 20 laps later.
“They just stopped and I couldn’t,” Earnhardt said. “I got into the back of (Kasey Kahne). His bumper knocked the top of the radiator off of it, knocked the fitting off the top of the radiator.”
Hamlin, Patrick and the others involved continued on. That wasn’t the case for Earnhardt, whose No. 88 car suffered a punctured radiator. This ended what had been a promising afternoon, as before the pit road penalty he had spent much of the race running inside the top 10. Instead, he finished 34th.
“We were fast all day,” Earnhardt said. “(NASCAR) said I sped on pit road, but hard to believe that, but it is what it is. We got back there in the back and got mixed up in something and it’s going to give us a bad finish, but we were having a great time — had a fast car.”
Martinsville was frustrating finish in what has been an underwhelming start to the season for Earnhardt, whose best finish is 14th though six races — the longest he’s gone into season without a top-10. Although the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports team has been competitive at times, it hasn’t scored finishes corresponding to where it has run. That has Earnhardt 25th points heading into next weekend’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.
“I’m disappointed with the way we’re finishing,” Earnhardt said. “We’ve got to finish better than this.”
See More:
