“He’s like a son. We’ve had for many, many years a tremendous relationship”. When team owner Rick Hendrick said this for a retiring Dale Earnhardt Jr, back in 2017, did he guess the allegiance Junior has shown, will change soon? Well, like all things must come to an end, Dale Jr recently burst the “HMS fanboy” bubble as he shared his thoughts about the controversial late-race restart at the Brickyard 400.

Ryan Blaney almost had the Brickyard 400 win in the bag

There was no way Brad Keselowski’s #6 Ford was going to make it to the start-finish line, being low on fuel. Therefore, Ryan Blaney and his team made a strategic call to take the outside lane, knowing that Keselowski running out of fuel on the restart could impede their run with a spin. Truth be told, it sure felt like a winning strategy. But that is until the RFK Racing driver conceded the front row to Larson, who swooped in, appearing to jump the restart.

While this led to a huge controversy with fans (and several drivers) claiming that the race was rigged in favor of Larson, Dale Earnhardt Jr shared his take on the matter. In a candid conversation on The Dale Jr Download podcast, the veteran revealed how his friends gave him a lot of flak for his supporting HMS, when in reality it was quite the contrary.

“Listen, I wanted Blaney to win the race. I was hoping Ryan Blaney was gonna win at Indy. I got some buddies around me giving me sh*t that I’m a Hendrick fanboy and want Larson to win the race, any Hendrick car, right? I was sitting there with 10 to go, hoping Ryan Blaney was going to win Brickyard 400. But it didn’t work out,”he said.

Furthermore, he also discussed Ryan Blaney’s infamous expletive-filled rant from last weekend. While the Team Penske driver’s “F****** golden boy” tirade put the attention squarely on NASCAR’s alleged bias, Junior said, “I’m not going to make a big deal out of that because he’s just running his mouth in the car. I don’t believe that he even cares that much about it. I mean he’s mad in the moment, but he just says whatever he thinks. But I think over time, the more that the media picks up on these things that he says, the less he’ll do it.”

Notably, just like Dale Jr suggested, Blaney was seen taking up a different tone after the race and blaming his luck instead. The Team Penske driver has swiftly moved on, it seems.  

On a separate note, when it came to the restart, though, Dale Jr surprisingly sided with NASCAR.

NASCAR wasn’t at fault for the late race restart situation, says Dale Jr

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One of the concerns fans expressed online was NASCAR allowing Larson to fire off from the front row, stating that NASCAR should’ve intervened in the situation. However, all of this happened very quickly, and in the eyes of race officials, it wasn’t something that warranted their interference.

Dale chimed in with his view, stating why NASCAR didn’t involve itself in the restart situation. “That was right on top of the restart zone. I think if you waived it off, you could also have the potential of an accordion effect or some mistake happening by a driver not getting that information and having some damage created by some contact midfield … So if I’m personally in the booth in that moment, I would fear that and say, ‘Let’s just let this happen.”

This decision by NASCAR was reminiscent of the call they chose to make at Richmond earlier in the season. It was a similar situation with a late-race restart, where Denny Hamlin jumped the restart line, but again, NASCAR let things flow naturally, trying not to alter the results with their judgment call. While the #11 admitted to the deed and even said it’s something drivers have taken “advantage of over the last billion years”, a NASCAR official had opined how rulebooks cannot be followed at times.

“There’s no doubt he rolled early,” NASCAR’s Senior VP of Competition, Elton Sawyer said, while adding, “And again, it’s a bang-bang call, it’s at the end of the race. We’re a live sporting event. We don’t have the luxury of a timeout and go to the sideline and review it and make that call. If this happens at lap 10 or 50 or 300, the call could have been different.”

Another instance of the same also takes us back to the 2007 Daytona 500, when a caution wasn’t waved in the ending laps of the race, as Mark Martin and Kevin Harvick raced toward victory. And what did it give us? The closest-ever finish of 0.02 seconds since electronic scoring started in 1993 and a race ending people still talk about to this day.

It seems something drama triumphs all. Wouldn’t you agree?