RELATED: Rough day for Junior, others at Michigan | Race results
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series off weekend could not have come at a better time for Dale Earnhardt Jr. after a 39th-place wreck-induced finish in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
“Damn, I needed one,” Earnhardt said on Dirty Mo Radio’s “The Dale Jr. Download.” “I’m going to have some fun. Get my battery recharged for the rest of the year because we don’t have another off week until August. This break couldn’t have come at a better time. I was cooked. All the bad luck we’ve had, racing hasn’t been a whole lot of fun lately.
“We took off at the start of the year, having such a good time and really enjoying everything that was going on. This break, hopefully, will give us a chance to reset, come back with a good attitude. Get some points back, get some good finishes back in the bank.”
After five top-eight finishes in the season’s first nine races, Dale Jr. has had three finishes of 32nd-or-worse in the past six races. The latest a result of a three-car incident involving Chris Buescher (No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford) and AJ Allmendinger (No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet) on Lap 61 with a No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet that Junior believed to be a “solid top 10 car.” On the podcast, Junior explained what happened and why he took issue with Buescher’s role in it.
“Went down the front straightaway going into (Turn) 1, the 47 (AJ Allmendinger) got loose and went real high. I went underneath him in the middle lane to try and challenge the position shortly after a restart. The 34 (Chris Buescher) was underneath me on the bottom and he got pretty loose. I seen him coming and he clipped a car and I couldn’t keep it out of the fence. We got hooked up with the 47 I think and got into the wall pretty hard.
“I was real mad and I’m mad at Chris because you know, you try to take care of each other there. I know when I drive my car I try to think when I’m going into the corner, ‘Am I going to bust my ass and take this guy out?’ I mentally have concern for not only my well-being but his. You don’t want to ruin anybody’s race. I know Chris didn’t want to ruin my race and Chris probably is disappointed it happened. And I know that I made mistakes and everybody does but it doesn’t mean that I can’t have an opinion about it when it happens. If anybody wants to give me any (expletive) about being upset, you’d be singing my tune if you was riding shotgun when that car hit the fence.
“It’s easy to sit on the couch and play armchair quarterback. I’m not going to hold it against Chris. I like the guy. I’ve talked to him several times. He’s a nice guy. He’s a good racer and just made a mistake and cost us a big chunk of points. I still think we’re a good team. We’re going to be OK. We can’t have a lot of bad luck but things like this are out of our control. Can’t help getting taken out, wadded up. We just got to do what we can in the races we can run good at and take care of ourselves.”
WATCH: Junior wrecks amid contact with Buesher, Allmendinger
Crew chief Greg Ives took to Twitter on Sunday night to shoulder the blame for the team’s qualifying woes. The 88 team started Sunday’s race 27th on the grid and Earnhardt’s 16.8 average starting position is his worst since 2011.
“Greg is going to put that on his shoulders and take a lot of the blame for that but … I don’t quite agree with it.” Earnhardt later added that “Greg and those guys are working their guts out. They are a good team, full of good guys and they deserve a lot of respect.”
Junior is heading out of town for the off weekend as evidenced by a Twitter photo of he and fiancee Amy Reimann at the airport. Last year’s June off weekend saw the pair get engaged.
Gotta get that buffalo chicken wedge before lift off. @WhiskyRiverCLT #AirportFood pic.twitter.com/WK9JIKH6YB
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) June 13, 2016
And when the 41-year-old returns, he knows the task at hand as he sits 11th in points and winless after back-to-back seasons of four and three wins, respectively.
“Richmond (site of the regular-season finale and the season’s 26th race) is going to be here before we know it and we don’t want be sitting at Richmond having to run, having to finish X to make the Chase. I mean that’s crazy for a team like us, I just feel like that’s insane. We are definitely a top-10 team easy, maybe even a top-five team. We can run with them when we put it all together so I got good confidence that things are going to work out.”