Earnhardt describes how hot it was at Loudon en route to fifth-place finish
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The hot weather at New Hampshire Motor Speedway had an affect on several drivers in the 5-hour ENERGY 301 with a few drivers needing to go to the infield care center after the race for heat-related issues. On "The Dale Jr. Download on Dirty Mo Radio, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he was feeling the effects of the heat later that night.
"It was a real hot race," Earnhardt said. "Seen a lot of drivers wore out. I was hot, my face was hot. Rest of me was fine, just my face. It was kind of weird. Even later at night trying to go to bed, my face felt like it was sunburnt."
Earnhardt scored a fifth-place finish in the 5-hour ENERGY 301 for his 10th top-10 finish of 2015 and his fourth straight top-10 showing at the Magic Mile. But to get that top five wasn't easy.
"We had a bad gauge. Oil pressure gauge was showing 120 pounds and that's not good."
And then there was some contact with Kurt Busch around the two-thirds mark of the race took Earnhardt outside the top five and down to 24th when he pitted under caution before a Lap 204 restart.
"We got on the outside of the 41, racing with Kurt a lot during the day. I don't think he knew I was out there. We got on the outside of him in 1 and 2 and coming off of Turn 2, he just came up like his spotter didn't tell him I was there and I torn his bumper up. His bumper got stuck in my bumper. It was causing us a lot of problems so we ended up having to come down pit road and pull his bumper out of my bumper and patch a hole. Fix this and fix that. I didn't know if we were going to be as competitive with all that trouble but we ended up driving back up through there. Had a pretty good car, that helps us out in a situation like that."
However, Earnhardt was able to work his way up through the field and was racing Matt Kenseth late for fifth-place. The two drivers competed for Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors in 2000 and have come through the Sprint Cup ranks together, dating back to when Kenseth finished second in the then Busch Grand National Series (now the XFINITY Series) to Earnhardt in 1998.
"Right at the end I got to race pretty good with my buddy Matt Kenseth. Me and him have raced each other all our careers. It's always fun to sort of work together on the race track and race each other. He wanted that top-five finish and so did I. He was struggling pretty bad and I was having a hard time getting around him. I ended up finally getting around him so that was pretty cool."
Now, the series shifts to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Crown Royal Presents the Jeff Kyle 400 at the Brickyard (Sunday, 3:30 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network, IMS Radio, SiriusXM) where a new high-drag package will be run at the 2.5-mile track.
The driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet has just one top-five finish in 15 starts at the Brickyard and is looking forward to running this new rules package for Indianapolis. The same type of package will also be run at Michigan International Speedway in August.
"Got new rules, big spoilers, lot of drag. There's not more downforce. From what I am told there is a piece that they put on the bottom of the rear bumper that actually makes this package have less downforce in the back then what we have ran all year. I don't know how true that is. That's what Jeff Gordon's been telling me. So can't really call this the high downforce package, it's just a high drag. We'll see how the racing is and looking forward to it. Should be an interesting weekend for everybody."