Pace Cars, Fence-Hopping and News Highlight Dale Jr. Download

Ron Lemasters | JR Motorsports | 9/12/2018

Dale Jr. Dale Jr. Download News

Pace car duties, calling the action in a turn plus silly season news and a possible return to one of NASCAR's historic venues all highlighted this week's Dale Jr. Download.

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 12, 2018) – Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a big weekend—and then some—in Indianapolis last weekend. From driving the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 pace car to starting the 25th running of the Brickyard 400 on the iconic oval at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to getting the opportunity to call the event high atop Turn 3, it was a lot of action jammed into a single race event.

The 15-time NASCAR Most Popular Driver touched on these moments and much, much more during this week’s episode of the Dale Jr. Download, his eponymous Dirty Mo Radio podcast.

The torrential rain that turned a planned Sunday start into a Monday event was tough on everyone, but Earnhardt Jr. spent his time wisely. From watching niece Karsyn Elledge compete on Indy’s new permanent dirt track in Turn 3 to getting the opportunity to do another radio-style broadcast for NBC Sports—and driving Chevrolet’s classic Camaro to start the event—he had his hands full.

There was also a funny moment when his pace-car-driving duties ended, which he and co-hosts Mike Davis and Matthew Dillner spent time rehashing. Monday’s action started with the driver’s meeting.

“I hadn’t been in one for a while,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I got to stand on stage and shake the hands of all the drivers. (Clint) Bowyer said, ‘this is awkward,’ when he came by. It was good to see everyone for a while. I don’t spend as much time around the drivers as I used to.”

When the moment came to climb aboard the Camaro, Earnhardt Jr. was a trifle nervous, since pace car practice had been rained out along with all the other racing activity for the weekend. That soon passed, he reported.

“I climbed in the pace car with (NASCAR official) Buster Auton, I’ve known him for a long time and he’s set to retire soon,” was how the story started. “We had a good conversation, and he ran the whole thing. All I had to do was put it in drive, set the cruise control for 55 miles an hour and hold my line. Buster was running the lights. I’m listening to NASCAR and Letarte and those guys in the booth too.”

The action started soon after he put the car in drive, Dale Jr. said.

“Kyle Busch bumped on the car,” he related. “I saw Kyle before the race and he said, ‘you think people would boo me if I wrecked you in the pace car?’ I said, ‘how ‘bout you just run into the pace car?’ Everybody that is on the front row...it’s sort of a thing. You go up there and bump the pace car. It’s some celebrity in there, and you’re just screwing with them. It happens just about every race. I said, ‘you better bump it, because I want the full experience.’ He did that early, as soon as we pulled off and got going, hit it pretty good and rubbed on it. I’m like, ‘wow, this is excessive.’ I was a little concerned for him and his car.’”

Getting his exit from the front of the pack was an important item on his bucket list. “The cool pace cars are the ones that wait until the last possible second to get off the track,” he said. “They veer onto pit road...I tried to wait until the last possible moment, don’t know what it looked like.”

He had other problems to worry about.

“I had no idea where the car went when I got done,” he said. “I thought I would go down to the end of pit road, but they go toward the access road for pit exit, part of the road course. There’s this little road, part of the track. It’s not behind fences and barriers. There’s no exit, no opening in the fence to get back to the infield. There’s cars on the track. I’m sort of stuck. It would be similar to the sand pit in Turn 6 at Watkins Glen. That’s where I was. I’m looking behind me, wondering how I get across the fence. I saw my golf cart go past on the other side of the fence. We found a way to get over the fence (which was helpfully posted to Twitter when it happened) and they took me straight to Turn 3, where I got up in the deer stand.”

The deer stand? Let Dale Jr. explain. He is referring to the TV tower in Turn 3, where he was to call the action in the 160-lap event. There’s a ladder that leads to the platform, and all that’s up there is a monitor and a chair.

“It really reminded me of riding up on my four-wheeler to the deer stand, getting off and walking up to the deer stand, where I was going to sit for three or four hours,” he said.

The crew discussed Brad Keselowski’s move to win the race over Denny Hamlin in the final laps, as well as Hamlin’s commentary on the late-race caution that likely cost him a victory in a NASCAR major. That led to a discussion about the racing leading up to the Cup Series Playoffs and a preliminary report on who the Final Four might be in the series finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November. In addition, Earnhardt Jr. talked about the shock closing of Furniture Row Racing at the end of the season, the sudden opening of the No. 1 car at Ganassi and where some displaced drivers will wind up next year.

Kasey Kahne, Dale Jr.’s teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, drew a lot of praise from Earnhardt Jr. for addressing a potentially serious health concern. Earnhardt Jr. had to deal with that himself, with life-altering effects.

“This (Kahne) is a guy really using his head,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Last week, he suffered from some heat exhaustion. Went to see his doctors and he told them this was an ongoing problem. You can see from Victory Lane last year at Indy...just the look on his face. There is genuine concern on his face, not just misery, about what he was feeling at that time. He’s scared about how his heart is beating and how he’s feeling. This is a year ago. He’s continued to have some issues and struggled with stamina and endurance, it just isn’t there. This is a real serious issue, because he is putting his organs in a dangerous place. This could create some real problems for him and damage his organs to where racing would be the last thing he is concerned about. He wants to go to Homestead and close the book by himself. Really proud of him doing the right thing.”

News that talks have been reported between Speedway Motorsports Inc. and the city of Nashville, Tenn. could lead to the restoration of the big five-eighths-mile oval track at the Nashville Fairgrounds drew vigorous commentary from the DJD crew as well.

“Nashville, the Fairgrounds, the iconic track, needs to be on the schedule,” Dale Jr. said. “Not just Trucks and the Xfinity Series, but the Cup Series needs to go back there. Marcus Smith and his team will go in there and improve that facility. We should have never left. Five years ago, we said there’s too many 1.5 mile tracks on the schedule. Nobody was listening. Now, they’re listening.”

For the full discussion, tune in to www.dalejr.com and hit the Dirty Mo Radio link at the top, or simply click here. Of course, there’s the 5:30 p.m. ET Thursday broadcast version of the Dale Jr. Download on NBC Sports Network, and the podcast is available free of charge on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and all major podcasting platforms.