If Friday night’s Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway is the final NASCAR Xfinity Series race of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s driving career, the NASCAR Hall of Famer went down swinging on a night where he experienced a rash of radio issues through the majority of the opening half of the race.
“If I don’t ever run again, I’m happy at 50 years old to jump in once and run top-10,” Earnhardt stated. “I know there were some guys named Gant and Allison that were winning races in their 50s, so I know it’s doable. It’s not anything too crazy, but not doing it every week, man, you sort of feel like you’re kind of handicapped.”
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Despite losing track position due to unscheduled pit stops to address the issues, Earnhardt was able to battle back and score a respectable seventh-place finish.
“[The] Radio harness or something went out on the pace laps, so I didn’t have a radio for about 50 laps. Swapped out the earplugs, still didn’t work. Swapped out the helmet, still didn’t work. So, probably ran about 100-120 laps without really much communication with [spotter] TJ Majors,” Earnhardt said of his early-race radio troubles. “Finally, they stuck a radio with a short harness in it with a button I could clip to my chest. And I could hear them and talk to them under caution. It worked out.”
While racing without being able to hear your spotter isn’t ideal at any track, Bristol Motor Speedway, where so much can happen so fast is extremely unideal to run into those types of issues. Earnhardt says his experience played a factor in him being able to stay on track while his JR Motorsports team came up with a fix to the plague of issues.
“I’ve been around here enough, I kind of knew where I needed to be,” Earnhardt said. “And I kind of could tell where I was going to be clear or not clear and air on the conservative side. But I was in the back, so it was kind of easier doing it there. If I had been on a restart, lining up on the front three or four rows, it would have been tough.”
Once Earnhardt got the short harness radio in the car, he found more issues as the radio fell down into the rocker panel in the car and the volume knob maxed out. Earnhardt warned Majors to not yell at him or his ear would be blasted by the sound.
Under another caution later in the race, Earnhardt removed the water bottle in his car from its holder, and propped the radio there. Finally, his issues were resolved, and he was able to focus on the task at hand — driving the race car.
“As frustrating as it is, it’s important not to give up and lose a lap or anything and try to salvage what we could,” Earnhardt said. “Because we had a top-10 [to] top-five car, and I’m glad we were able to get a good result.”
In the closing laps, Earnhardt had a chance to score a top-five finish as he was locked in a spirited battle with Ryan Truex, the brother of his good friend Martin Truex Jr. Earnhardt said amid that closing laps battle, his car began to experience a tight handling condition, which kept him from being able to get around the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.
“He was loose, and I was tight. I could almost get to his right rear in Turn 4, but I was worried I would jump the cushion and hit the fence. But I was getting tight. We dropped the track bar, and didn’t really need to on that last run. It was fun racing him. I was trying to pass him because I knew Martin was watching. I was like, ‘I bet Martin is pulling for him,’ so, I wanted to pass him so I could rub it in.”
Earnhardt came up just short of pulling off the pass and would finish seventh while the younger Truex would come home in fifth.
After the race, Earnhardt shared some light-hearted words, and an embrace with Truex, and Shane van Gisbergen, and he would partake in his patented post-race beer celebration with his fellow NASCAR Xfinity Series competitors.
