Dale Jr. explains why he didn't move Stewart

“I had a great race with Stewart,” Earnhardt said on “The Dale Jr. Download” podcast on Dirty Mo Radio. “A lot of fans — reading their comments on Twitter — thought I should have moved him out of the way. There are two options as far as moving a guy at this race track. It’s Turn 7 and Turn 11, and he was not blocking me going into those corners.

“He would give me the inside braking zone and I would get down there on his inside and he was smart enough to take a line that would give him good drive-off to be able to beat me out of that corner and into the esses to take that position back. You can’t run over a guy that’s giving you the option to pass, and I just didn’t have enough race car at the time.”

Earnhardt also explained that a left rear tire rub was causing him to lose a lot of grip as he was pursuing Stewart.

“So coming out of Turn 4, I needed to be right on the back of the 14, and I didn’t have the grip in the left rear exiting that corner that he did. Coming out of that corner, he would kind of squirt away a little bit and get two or three car lengths on me. So when I get into the braking zone in Turn 7, I would use up everything I could just to get even with him and that wouldn’t put me in position for a good exit. It was real difficult.

“I really used up that set of tires there and that tire rub was bothering us a little bit. Tony was driving an awesome line. He was running great laps. He would put together great corners everywhere and wouldn’t give me a lot of opportunity. Getting into Turn 11, I never had enough position on him. Coming out of 10, he had three or four car lengths on me every time so it wasn’t like I could just drive down in there and boot him out of the way. I did all I could do in the braking zone just to get back to him.”

All in all, though, the Hendrick Motorsports enjoyed his run at the 1.99-mile track. He finished third in this race last year but was involved in accident with Matt Kenseth that he recalled while racing with Hendrick teammate Kasey Kahne.

“I ran hard with the 5 at the end there. At the end of the race, he bonsaied into Turn 11 on the last lap and tore the whole right side off the car but we survived. Both of us got back out of the corner and down the straightaway to finish so that was good. I wrecked the hell out of Matt Kenseth last year at this race and me and him had some pretty good side-to-side action so that was fun to race with Matt clean without putting him in a tire barrier like I did last year.

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“I knew it would be fun. If you can run every lap there, you are going to have a good time.”

With the first road-course race of the season behind him, Dale Jr. has turned his attention towards the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ second trip to Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca-Cola (Sunday, 7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM). Of his three Daytona wins, only one has come in the summer, and that was in 2001. And with one win this year (at Talladega Superspeedway in May), Earnhardt wants more.

“It’s a long, hard run to Homestead, and we don’t need to get complacent. We need to keep charging. We definitely need to get another win or two before this Chase and continue to work on finding speed to separate ourselves from the competition. That’s something that you think about when you get to the halfway point of the year.

“It’s definitely a time to sit down and communicate and reflect and make sure everybody is on the same page. You can’t just motor through this whole season without taking a moment to get everybody together.

“Greg’s (Ives, crew chief) doing a great job. All the guys, we got a great team. We got a bunch of good, hard-working guys that all get along. We’ll probably look back on where we are today, years from now, and it will really sink in how good we have it at this particular time when it comes to guys we got and how easy it is to work with each other. We’re in a good place. We’re real fortunate.”