It’s Bristol, Baby
In last year’s fall NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a force.
Leading 47 laps, the two-time NXS champion was flying in the high line and running away with the race before a mechanical issue caused a fire in the cockpit of his No. 88 Hellmann’s Chevrolet, ending his run short of the finish.
It’s a new year and a new opportunity, but Earnhardt Jr. is ready to go after another BMS victory.
“Last year was a blast,” Earnhardt Jr. said on the latest edition of his Dale Jr. Download program. “Yes, I have thought about what would have happened had we not had the issue with it. I’ve run that over in my head a million times, and I have a vivid image of looking down at the floorboard and seeing that fire and thinking, ‘this is over.’
“I want to go back and finish the job. We have one race, and you know how tough it is, how easy it is to show up and not be on, to miss the mark or miss the setup. We don’t know, when we unload, if it’s going to be as good as it was last year. That was a winning car. That car should have won the race. That was as good as you could ask in terms of that. The chances of getting that good a car are not very good. We feel prepared and ready. It is the same Hellmann’s car we ran last year, too.”
Coincidentally, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of one of the more dominant performances on the tricky banking of the .533-mile oval. In the fall race that year, Earnhardt Jr. swept the weekend, winning both the NXS and Cup Series events in dominating fashion. Over the two races, he led 420 of the 756 laps.
Despite that, there is a bit of a nerves factor, he said.
“I get nervous, can’t help it,” he said. “Last year when we went, I was freaking out. We were one of the two cars that could miss the race (in qualifying), but we’re locked in this year (points). I told the guys that without that pressure I’m probably going to qualify worse.
“For me, I just have to keep reminding myself that if I listen to all of them, I hear, “man, you’ve got a shot! You almost won it last year.” That’s pressure, and that makes you nervous because you want to go and deliver. You have all these people setting an expectation and you’re like, ‘Now I’ve got to go run good enough to win.’ Some of us look at that and say, ‘that’s more pressure.’ Others look at it and go, ‘that’s opportunity.'”
As for expectations, Earnhardt Jr. has a few, and they are about what you would expect from a driver of his caliber.
“When I get into the car, I have to go, ‘all right, here are my expectations. Here’s what I want to be happy,'” he said. “If I go run top-five, we run like we did last year and we get to the end of the race with a chance to win or a damn good result, I’m like, ‘hell yes!’ I will be ecstatic. I just want, when the race is over with, I want to have enjoyed what I just did.”
“I want a car that drives good, a car that I can move around and be creative with and a car that I can pass with. I want to have some fun with whoever it is that I’m racing, don’t want to get pushed around. There’s a lot of options that I want to check and some I don’t, and at the end of the night…we came here to do what we did with it and had fun doing it.”
My very first trip to race @ItsBristolBaby with Ed Whitaker. 1997 pic.twitter.com/ww56K5lxyT
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) September 20, 2024
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