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Dale Earnhardt Jr., has a little apologizing to do.
In the wake of the Allstate 400 at Indy, where Goodyear’s tires were so bad that the longest green-flag run was 12 laps, Earnhardt had this to say last week: “I’ll tell you this. Tony George [owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway] said that they weren’t changing the track and I don’t blame them. It’s expensive to pave the track. But diamond-grinding the race track with the grooves does directly have an effect on tire wear. Directly. And anyone who wants to say otherwise is just in denial. All right? So, with that said, obviously I wouldn’t expect [Tony] to repave the race track, even though they did diamond-grind it for no good reason.”
Hey, Dale, ever heard of the Indianapolis 500? They’ve been holding that race ever since 1911, so you might have heard about it. Then again, it’s not a NASCAR race, so you probably haven’t.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was repaved in 2004, and when the track was actually too slick and too smooth following the repaving, IMS officials diamond-ground the surface before the 2005 Indianapolis 500. The surface has produced some incredibly competitive Indy 500s during that time and NASCAR has now competed on that same surface in four Brickyard 400s.
Earnhardt said he was in favor of “not testing” at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this year. “Pocono is a tough, tough race track to get a hold of, more so than Indy,” he said. “That’s why we picked it to test instead of Indianapolis. It’s not that the teams didn’t want to test there. There were more important places to go.”
Well, Dale, an open test could have given NASCAR and Goodyear officials information that may have prevented the tire situation that developed at the Brickyard this year.
There is no denying that NASCAR is the most popular form of racing in the United States with loyal fans and strong corporate support. But this is yet another example of how some Cup drivers don’t have respect for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and what it means to auto racing.
