Sticky Business and Tough Sledding at Charlotte for Dale Jr.

Ron Lemasters | JR Motorsports | 5/24/2017

Charlotte Dale Jr. Dirty Mo Radio News

The 2000 NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway was perhaps the biggest triumph of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s career. What figures to be his last appearance in the non-points event, run last weekend, was...not.

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (May 24, 2017) – The 2000 NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway was perhaps the biggest triumph of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s career. What figures to be his last appearance in the non-points event, run last weekend, was...not.

A challenging night on the 1.5-mile speedway saw him finish 18th and not advance to the 10-car, 10-lap finale for the million-dollar prize, and he expanded on what went wrong that night on Periscope.

‘Nuff said.

“We had a terrible night, and I don’t want to talk about it too much,” Earnhardt Jr. said in kicking off his eponymous Dirty Mo Radio podcast, The Dale Jr. Download. “People want to know what we’re going to do going back (this weekend). We don’t take the same car back for the 600, and they already had it ready and going across the setup plate at HMS. Jimmie (Johnson) ran pretty good in the All-Star race. Our setups are really pretty different, especially on the front end. Greg (Ives, crew chief) says it’s a lot of stuff on the front end of the car. Talked to Greg on Sunday morning, and we took our 600 car, put it back on the setup plate and put it just like Jimmie ran in the All-Star race and start from there.

“It is sort of tough to go away from what you want to do and do what somebody else is running,” he continued. “When your teammate runs really well...that’s why they’re there. I’m sure Jimmie and Chad have already made a few changes to that. The great thing about going to the track pretty similar is that the drivers can communicate.”

That’s a total reset for the No. 88 team this weekend.

“It’s a big-time reset,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We’re mashing the reset button. I’m a bit more positive about the potential to run well this weekend than I was post-race Saturday night. I was pretty disappointed, and not sure exactly what to be excited about as far as going back, but after talking to Greg and Jimmie a little bit, and we’ll talk more this week...We’re going to have a lot of practice, a lot of opportunity to really work on the car.

“At the All-Star race, we unloaded out in left field and you only have an hour, hour and a half to fix it. We ran out of time, didn’t have enough practice for us to really understand how to fix our car and that showed up in the race. We’ll have many hours of practice, breaks in between, to go over the data and try to make some improvements. It’s going to be a long race if we don’t run any better than we did this weekend, but I’m anticipating it to be a little bit better, hopefully I can get up in there and mix it up.”

Despite being the site of one of his bigger victories in 2000, at that All-Star race, Charlotte hasn’t been very kind to Dale Jr. over his career.

“Charlotte has been a tough track for us, especially since the repave,” he said. “The last four or five years, none of those events stand out as ones where we’ve run great. Charlotte is a really rough track, a bit of an anomaly. You have to almost treat it like a road course.”

Say what?

“You’re going to do stuff to the car at Charlotte that you won’t do at Texas,” he explained. “That you won’t do at Kansas. Things that work there, don’t work at Charlotte. The things we’re trying that work everywhere else are not working. You have to treat this track like it’s completely different than the other 1.5-mile tracks.”

Asked about the constant drumbeat of noise calling for the All-Star race to be moved, Earnhardt Jr. had some interesting tidbits to add.

“Some people think it’s a short-track format (for the All-Star Race), and Jeff Burton says we ought to go to South Boston and race it,” he said. “No doubt it would be an exciting race if you took it to any short track. I know it would be an exciting race at Bristol. Don’t be surprised if they move it. I don’t know when.

“Bruton (Smith) and (son) Marcus own Bristol, and that’s why it’s at the top of the list. It needs a shot in the arm as far as attendance goes. One thing is, that does not fix the issue of CMS.”

He expanded on the Charlotte oval’s foibles in terms of surface and layout.

“The races there have been underwhelming,” he said. “One thing that doesn’t help there is making the bottom groove even stickier, and they shot themselves in the foot a little bit there. They can’t repave that track. It’s too much of an undertaking. If anything, they need to figure out a way to accelerate the aging process of the asphalt, especially around the bottom groove.

“Look at the difference in the color of the asphalt between Charlotte and Kansas. Charlotte looks like it’s brand new, it is still dark and it’s not aging. Kansas on the other hand is aging real well. It’s light gray and we run from the top to the bottom of the track. That is the standard of what you want in your track surface as it ages and the racing improves. [CMS] was the first track they paved with rubber polymers in the mix instead of crushed seashells or some such. Whatever it is they’ve done to Charlotte, it’s too good. I’m not an expert in asphalt, but they need to make some changes. Racing it during the day is a good direction. It’s getting rough, which is a good thing. It seems like the day races look a little bit better.”

Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Tyler Overstreet also checked in on doing victory donuts to the right, his off-again, on-again relationship with Kyle Busch and his history of running well but coming up empty in the 600-miler at Charlotte. At the beginning of the podcast, Earnhardt Jr. offered a touching tribute to Nicky Hayden, the champion motorcyclist tragically killed after being struck by a car on his bicycle.

Listen to The Dale Jr. Download on Dirty Mo Radio or download it from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and all other major podcast outlets.