Last saturday’s Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway Mears ended up inadvertently tapping Earnhardt and sending him spinning into the wall. Earnhardt retaliated after completion of the race by spinning Mears during the cool-down lap, after which Mears’ No. 07 car ran down Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet as they came down pit road and rapped him a couple times.
“Me and Mears are cool,” Earnhardt said Friday at Talladega Superspeedway.
The two were teammates at Hendrick Motorsports last season. Mears now drives for Richard Childress Racing.
“Me and Casey are real good friends, so we definitely wouldn’t go the week without having a discussion about it,” Earnhardt added. “He’s having a better year this year, but is still not satisfied and I’m definitely in the same position he is. We’re just trying to run better.
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“It’s just frustrating. I knew that he had made a mistake because Casey doesn’t run over people, but I just lost my cool. It happens. I just hated leading the race and running good and then getting wrecked running 20th. That’s all that was.”
Mears said that he accepts the punishment and that he believes a six-race probation is fair.
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“We didn’t put anybody in harms way with what we were doing,” Mears said. “I mean, we got down to pit road when I bumped him. But I obviously knew we were on pit road. I wasn’t going to shove him into somebody on pit road. I just wanted to bump him a little and know I was upset. And where he did it on the race track, it was after the race, there was nobody out there and nobody was going to get hurt. I think we both proved our point and no harm, no foul, we’ll go on to next week.’‘
Next week, of course, is here now. Neither driver expects any ill will to carry over to this Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega.
“I know him pretty well. I am sure he was pretty frustrated with the fact that he ended up getting wrecked, which is understandable. Mine was clearly an accident, his was clearly deliberate, so I was clearly [ticked] off about it and did something back.” Mears said
“At the same time, I think NASCAR takes the precaution [of handing out the probations] because you don’t know [what’s happening] behind the scenes. I might not have been able to get a hold of Junior, and there’s no telling what we’d be thinking coming into here. On their side, they do something that makes them feel good about it, and makes us think about it a little more.’’
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