Down in the Pits: Late pass try costs Earnhardt
This and that from Daytona Beach:
Dale Earnhardt Jr. wanted to be a good teammate at the end of the Pepsi 400.
He wanted to be a good teammate to his pit crew.
Instead of pushing Dale Earnhardt Inc. brother Michael Waltrip to victory, Earnhardt attempted to pass Waltrip on the outside with less than four laps remaining.
No one drafted with him, and he fell back to sixth, where he finished when an accident on the same lap forced the event to end under caution at the Daytona International Speedway.
“I tried to make a pass for the win and came up short,” he said. “Michael went on to win the race, and that was good.
“It’s a tough decision when you’ve got your teammate up there and the company needs a win. Michael needs a win, but we need a win, too.”
Earnhardt and crew member Tony Eury Jr. talked on the radio before the move.
“I thought I had a good effort,” Earnhardt said, “but Michael got more help.”
Earnhardt said he was a little surprised no one drafted with him, but wasn’t surprised that the man right behind him, Rusty Wallace, didn’t help.
“I was kind of (surprised), but at the same time I knew Rusty never helps me,” he said. “I’ve raced Rusty for three years now, and the man has never drafted with me once.”
Earnhardt, who has won three of the last four restrictor-plate races, had followed Waltrip for most of the final 100 laps of the race.
Waltrip had pushed Earnhardt to the victory at Talladega in April.
“I stayed behind him most of the race and kept us both up front,” Earnhardt said. “When it comes to the last few laps, you’ve got to race.
“I don’t think if anybody (who) sits down and thinks about it would have wanted us to sit there and cookie-cutter the whole thing out and orchestrate the finish.”
Earnhardt said he didn’t spend time trying to think of a plan at the end.
“I wanted to help Michael until there were 10 laps to go, and then devise a plan to get around him,” he said. “I had to try to keep us both up there as close to the front as we could, to give us a good shot of both of us winning the race.
“It’s hard to pass the leader with the rules the way they are. I could have stayed behind him and finished second. Wrong decision or right decision, I don’t know. I guess I’ll never know. BUt it was a good run. We didn’t lead any laps, but we had a real strong race car.”
• The decision not to throw a red flag late in the Pepsi 400 wasn’t as strange as the fan reaction Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway.
When a four-car wreck on lap 157 forced officials to throw the caution, they didn’t have enough laps left in the 160-circuit event to stop the race. The drivers would have been stopped on teh backstretch on lap 158, given the signal for one more lap of caution at the start of lap 159, and then the green on the final lap.
NASCAR officials said they feared the drivers might be in danger due to the assorted debris that fans hurled onto the track when it became obvious that the race was going to end under caution.
“We simply ran out of time,” NASCAR vice president Jim Hunter said. “If they had run through a lot of debris, you don’t know what you have, adn we don’t want to send them back out there.
“They would have stayed on the racetrack, possibly in an unsafe condition.”
The fans’ actions on the backstretch surprised and perplexed some drivers.
“I thought they were congratulating me — I thought it was like a ticker-tape parade,” winner Michael Waltrip said. “You mean they were mad? I’m so stupid sometimes.”