Junior explains events that led up to incident at Kentucky
RELATED: Danica rips, bumps Junior | Listen: Patrick vs. Earnhardt on the radio
Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a bad night at Kentucky. You've heard about his run-in (run-into?) with Danica Patrick. On "The Dale Jr. Download" on Diry Mo Radio, Earnhardt detailed how the night unfolded with crippling brake problems.
"Admittedly, Kentucky's not one of my best tracks, and the rain didn't help things," Earnhardt said.
He learned a lot in the XFINITY race and hoped to carry some of that knowledge from his eighth-place run Friday night into Saturday night's Cup race.
But the trouble started when he forgot to flip some switches.
"I forgot to turn on switches that cool the brakes and keep the tire temps down. We took off running there in the first run and the brakes started fading a little bit. Luckily, the caution came out and I was able to get the switches on.
"Come down pit road, pull the tape off the brakes and that should fix it. Everything should go back to normal and the pedal should come back, and that's not what happened. It continued to get worse and worse each run."
The No. 88 car was pretty good, definitely top 10, Earnhardt said, but things kept getting worse from there.
"We ended up having a lot of brake problems. It got so bad at one point that if I didn't pump the brakes all the way down the straightaway, it would go to the floor in the corner. So we're sitting there pumping the brakes, pumping the brakes, pumping the brakes lap after lap after lap. Just staying out there tyring not to get passed til we fixed it.
"Caution would come out, we'd bleed the right front. Run out of time. Bleed the brakes on the left front. … But it would eventually get hot on the long run.
"…Anyhow, I started taking it easy, sort of running along pumping the brakes a lot. I had just let Danica go by and down the back straightaway I'm pumping the brakes and they're not … I can't pump 'em all the way to the floor on the straightaway cause you don't want to slow the car down while you're trying to accelerate. You're just trying to get the fluid up, get the pedal up, but when we got to the corner, I mash the brake and it went all the way to the floor. I let off the brakes and mashed it again. At this point I'm gonna hit her. I let off the brakes and mashed it again and it goes to the floor and I ran into the back of her. There's wasn't nothing I could do about it."
Junior said the fact that he hit Patrick saved him from going into the wall, so that was the "silver lining" of the incident.
MORE: Highlights from Patrick's 100 Cup races
"She flew off the handle, got pissed off. Our spotters communicated and told her about the brakes. She still ran into us on pit road for whatever damn reason."
Junior doesn't really blame Patrick for being mad, admitting he's been in that position before, too, and has lost his cool at times. But he's not happy about what transpired after their wreck, either.
"That just brings a lot of unwanted attention to both of us for the wrong reasons."
After that, a full replacement of brake fluid helped, and the No. 88 came home 21st.
All said, Junior was happy with a car that was still able to pass amid pumping the brakes. And the team learned a lot heading into Darlington Raceway, which is the next race to use a similar low downforce package on Sept. 6.