Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s hopes for 'Dega win come to quick, ugly end
Dale Earnhardt Jr. will not repeat as the winner of the GEICO 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway after a crash on the backstretch on Lap 50 of the 188-lap race.
Earnhardt was exiting the second turn when the rear end of his Hendrick Motorsport came around and he made contact with teammate Kasey Kahne and the Toyota of Matt DiBenedetto.
The contact caused heavy damage to “Amelia,” the nickname Earnhardt gave to this, his favorite restrictor-plate race car. Earnhardt also crashed out of the Daytona 500 in a crash he called “identical.”
It was a hugely disappointing result for Earnhardt, who is the active leader in Talladega victories with six and restrictor-plate race victories with 10.
Yikes! @DaleJr controls the car WITH HIS HAND after his steering wheel comes off. That was awesome. #NASCAR https://t.co/KivxuTmuvG
— FOX SPORTS: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) May 1, 2016
Earnhardt said the car was ill-handling from the start of the race.
“We had a real bad problem at the first run,” said Earnhardt. “The splitter was on the ground real bad. I was really tight and couldn’t run anywhere, but up against the wall. We made some adjustments to help the car and the splitter was still on the ground really bad.”
And then, disaster struck.
“I got in a bad area with the wind and the air and it just got loose and spun out,” said Earnhardt. “The same thing that happened at Daytona to us. We just got to look at what we are doing on our adjustments and try not to do that.”
Kahne, unfortunately for him, was collateral damage in the incident.
“I saw the No. 88 (Earnhardt) went left and then he came back right spinning in front of me,” said Kahne. “So, I didn’t really know exactly what happened. We didn’t have anywhere to go once he came back across the track. We were done at that point, but we had a great Farmers Insurance Chevrolet. I felt really fast.”
Earnhardt’s team repaired the car, but on Lap 110, Carl Edwards blew a right-front tire and hit Earnhardt, sending the No. 88 hard into the wall and ending the race for both drivers.
