“Beat s*** out of each other,” A controversial NASCAR race design is preventing Dale Earnhardt Jr. from making his Truck series debut
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is still the most popular NASCAR driver after retiring from the Cup series 6 years ago.
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Credits: IMAGO)
Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most popular NASCAR driver of all time, has raced in nearly all of the Premier stock car racing body-sanctioned races. The JR Motorsport owner still races part-time In the Xfinity series and late-model series races. But, one surprising fact about Dale Jr. is that he has never raced in the NASCAR Truck, third-tier national racing series.
The two times Xfinity series champion never explored Truck racing and invested his time in his Cup and Xfinity ventures. Later in his career, Dale Jr. expressed his desire to race in the series many times in his career, primarily after retirement but scrapped his plans for various reasons. The lack of Truck series starts in Jr.’s resume is intriguing.
The veteran racer, during his podcast Dale Jr. Download discussed his plans to race more in the 2023 season in the lower division and his own series, the CARS Tour. While talking about the potential future races, he said he wanted to race in the Truck series, but the stage system annoys him and deprives him of that desire. He pointed out that the stage break system introduced in 2017 has made the race chaotic midway through the race, which he isn’t a big fan of.
“The trucks. I would be interested. I’ll tell you this. If the trucks didn’t have stages, I would run that race. I would have already ran at Martinsville if the trucks didn’t have stages. But the stages at Martinsville in the truck race — what is it 40 laps?,” Dale Jr said.
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a proper racer reason for his decision
Dale Jr. is a fan of long racing with no unwanted breaks. He wants the race to go smoothly and likes to have a proper arcing experience where he has the opportunity to decide how to conserve tire. The two times Xfinity series champion is also a fan of spreading the gap between him and the one running behind him.
“They beat the s*** out of each other. They run over each other and dump each other in every corner, and the stages confine them to being all over the top of each other. You can’t get away from each other. The races and the stages and all that stuff. I’d probably run the truck race if I knew I was going to get a good long run, wear some tires out, sliding around, a chance to really put some distance on some people or whatever,” Dale Jr. said.
He pointed out that the short races are once again shorted with stages, and he isn’t big fan of it: He said, ”That kind of is a turnoff for me is stages. Short races that are already short. The trucks, the Xfinity, and stages at short tracks, it just to me, none of that works,”.
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Justin P Joy
(4923 Articles Published)