Truck Series drivers were unanimously criticized for their chaotic championship race in Phoenix. In the following days, Xfinity and Cup drivers took it upon themselves to showcase an exemplary season finale to counter the youngsters’ unprofessional racing performance.

However, team owner of two Championship 4 contenders, Dale Earnhardt Jr had not forgotten a similar chaotic race by the Xfinity drivers in Martinsville.

The Truck race amplified the heavy cost of track rivalry according to Dale Earnhardt Jr

One week before the championship race, Richard Childress Racing teammates Austin Hill and Sheldon Creed were eliminated as a result of the same on-track rivalry displayed by Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim in the Truck Series. Moreover, in the same Xfinity playoff race, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Sammy Smith was equally miffed with teammate John Hunter Nemechek for not supporting Smith’s Phoenix qualification. How did the Xfinity drivers evolve within a single week to produce a clean racing spectacle for the season’s finale? Dale Jr had the answer. 

In his podcast, the Dale Jr Download, Junior’s associate, Mike Davis, posed the same question to the owner of JR Motorsports. As always, Dale Earnhardt Jr promptly answered with his infinite wisdom and experience. “You know why? Because of the Truck race that happened the night before.” To elaborate, Junior proposed a hypothetical scenario in which brand new multi-million dollar race cars were destroyed in the Busch Light Clash at the beginning of the season, even before the regular season points were awarded.

Dale Jr said, “Alright, so when we got to the Duels at Daytona, forever, we’d race at the Duels at Daytona in February. You spend six months building this pristine car, polishing, molding, fixing. You sent it out there and you go out there in the 125 and wad it up. And the first race, you had this big crash that would take out six or eight, ten cars. And everybody in the second race would go, ‘Oh sh*t! We better not do that’.” The Hall of Famer explained that the profound consequences of the Truck race made others realize how foolhardy it would be to wreck each other on purpose and nullify their own title hopes.

Similar to how the drivers would feel if unnecessary crashes occurred in the season openers. Dale Jr continued with the likely reactions of that scenario, “I forgot – this car is important. I forgot – this car is massaged and perfect. I better get it into the actual race that is Sunday, the Daytona 500. And so the second race would be like ‘Everybody, mind your p’s and q’s, everybody, take it easy here. We know what’s at stake now. Boy, that was a good reminder’! And so I think it was a little bit of that.”

Watch this story: Dale Earnhardt Jr Speaks Out on Chaotic Truck Series Race

As far as the actual wreck-fest was concerned, the 2xXfinity champion was left baffled by the Truck racers’ self-defeating behavior.

Dale Earnhardt Jr gave a free racing hand to his Championship 4 drivers in Phoenix

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When the foremost Truck championship racers Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim wrecked each other and stamped upon their winning chances, the endless cautioned filled overtime race was disparaged by many racing luminaries. But Dale Earnhardt Jr simply failed to understand the purpose behind ruining one’s own racing performance.

Prior to the Xfinity race in Phoenix, Sirius XM asked his opinions on JR Motorsports’ Sam Mayer and Justin Allgaier. Junior said he gave a lot of leeway on the racetrack as long as it didn’t come in the way of the race outcome. The prolific racer understood racing hard only if it led to the season’s trophy.

Junior declared, “I don’t really care what they do as long as one of them wins. It’s when you do things to each other on the racetrack and nobody wins that’s kinda difficult to understand and difficult to explain away. So give each other a shot, but as long as one of them comes back and can take the trophy back to JR Motorsports, that would be our preference.”

Ultimately, though, the coveted trophy went to Cole Custer of Stewart-Haas Racing. Nonetheless, Dale Earnhardt Jr ended the season as a proud team owner of two racing prodigies who did not give up fighting till the very end.

Read More: “Trying Not to Cry”- Dale Earnhardt Jr Dissects Painful Emotions on Justin Allgaier’s Back-to-Back Championship Fail