DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — So what happened to Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the final miles Saturday night?
He appeared ready to win the Coke Zero 400, or help teammate Jeff Gordon to victory lane, but Earnhardt got trapped in traffic late and suddenly faded from contention.
“Those last several laps it was rough out there, and we did the best we could,” Earnhardt said. “Jeff got a great run on me and went to the outside and got the lead, doing what he can to win the race. That’s what you’ve got to do.
“I hate feeling obligated to my teammates too, so I don’t blame him. But it shuffled us back a little, and we tried to work our way back up to the front … and we got back into third a couple of times.
“But then Matt Kenseth got a good run, and I wasn’t up on my toes there watching him. He got a good shove and got on the outside of me, and the bottom wasn’t where I wanted to be.”
Still, Earnhardt tried to regroup.
“So I was trying to get back to the top — and we were getting turned into everybody and wrecked, and it bent something in the front end: On the backstraight Clint Bowyer turned me into Kevin Harvick real hard, and it bent the front end. The steering wheel went off center. I was just trying to hang on from there.
“But I was happy to be able to save it a couple of times, because we shouldn’t have. I don’t think a normal man would have saved it.
“But I was lucky on a couple, too. So I was real happy to come home where we did.”
But not real happy with some of his fellow drivers.
“Those last few laps I saw so much ignorance and some real risk takers out there,” Earnhardt said.” Some of it was ignorance — it was amazing to watch. We should have finished top five … we should have won — had the best car.
“But there at the end, man, I didn’t want to be racing with any of them guys I was around. It was crazy. They were running into each other and wrecking and carrying on…. and Clint hits the wall. And I think all that happened after the finish line.
“Dang. I still thought it was one to go. If I’d known it was the last lap, my mind would have been better prepared for what I saw. It was crazy.
“We’ve got to better capitalize at these races than we have been. I haven’t done what I think I should be able to do on plate tracks. I’ve been given great equipment, and I’ve just been not making the right decisions.
“I need to change my mentality, or something, in those last 20 laps … or just have a little luck.”
Gordon was kicking himself for the finish, first for giving the lead up to Kyle Busch, then for getting spun on the last restart, while running second, by Carl Edwards.
“Might have been my fault,” Gordon said of that spin. “They were all laying back, playing cat and mouse on that final restart. You know on a green-white-checkered it’s always going to get crazy.
“We were going for the win, and Carl Edwards got a run, and I went low to block him, and he kept going low…and I guess I must have come across his front bumper.
“I knew it was just a matter of time before we got wrecked, the way they were bump drafting and getting crazy out there.
“But I made a mistake when I let Kyle Busch get under me. I saw Matt Kenseth coming high, and he seemed to have more cars behind him (pushing)…..”
So Gordon moved up to block Kenseth’s line, and Busch drove under him to the lead, in the decisive moment of the race.
“It was a mistake,” Gordon said. “I should have never left the bottom. I should have just kept Kyle behind me.”
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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