“My dad was a real good restrictor-plate racer” - Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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Oct 01, 2008
“Talladega has been a good track for us. Always run good there …. got a lot of fans there.
It’s just a good track. We look forward to it. It’s always a lot of fun, more of a mental race than a physical race. It’s not really who has the best car; it’s the guy who makes the best moves and makes the right decisions there at the end of the race. …
“My dad was a real good restrictor-plate racer. So I loved going to the plate tracks to watch and to be a part of his success. You always knew going into Daytona or Talladega, if you were at the track or at home watching, that you were going to have a lot of fun because he always ran well, led laps, made a lot of incredible moves. It just made it a lot of fun to watch. …
“[Talladega and Daytona], those tracks are really intimidating when you’re young, when you go to them for the first time. They’re the biggest tracks on the circuit. So when you’re a 15-year-old walking around in the garage area, you see all the preparation that goes into it, you see the speeds those cars are reaching, what not, you just get a big amount of respect for it early on. ...
“Obviously winning races at the track yourself, you’re going to get a great relationship with the race track and feel good about going back to it because you’re having success there. …
“To me Talladega is special. I don’t think everyone gets that sensation going into the race. But to me it’s a pretty important place just ‘cause my family’s done so well there. And the way the fans treat us there makes it exciting, makes it a place you look forward to. I think that’s probably the biggest key, the fans and how they’ve treated us at that track. It really gets you excited when it’s coming up on the schedule. …
“I think as far as our position now in the Chase, we just kind of got to go for broke, really throw it out there and take some chances, really take some risks. I don’t know if we can take any more than we’re taking now. We can only get what we can get out of the car each weekend. …
“At Talladega you can make some pretty ridiculous moves, and some of them pay off, some of them don’t. We’ll just have to see what kind of position we’re in on any given lap to be able to try to take advantage of some things happening around us. …
“Talladega is just impressive, the size of the track, the speed, how close we run together. I mean, we’re running 190 miles an hour in the draft, tight door-to-door, bumper-to-bumper. There’s literally no room for any error whatsoever. It’s just really, really exciting. It’s an amazing adrenaline rush for four straight hours. You got that feeling constantly throughout the whole race. “
