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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: ALL-STAR RACE

May 21, 2016

Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Concord, North Carolina

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by our third‑place finisher, Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the No.88 Mountain Dew Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. This was Dale's best All‑Star finish since 2002, so congratulations on a great finish. Talk us through your race tonight.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, we started out right around 10th and ran there for most of the night. Just real hard to pass. The middle and the top didn't get as competitive as the bottom was. As cool as it is outside and the track temp staying low like that, that bottom is going to remain pretty quick, so it was hard to‑‑ you saw some guys using the top or the middle in the afternoon today, but I couldn't really get it to work unless somebody was really struggling in front of me.
But it was pretty good strategy by Greg. I don't even remember what he did, but somehow or another we ended up in the top 5. I don't know how we passed all them people, but once I got toward the front, the car started obviously driving better in the cleaner air, and right before the last segment, right at the end of the second segment, I thought we had a great car. Not as good as the 42 and the 75, but I thought we had a really good car, much better car than we did the last segment. The last segment we made a couple of adjustments to try to help our car take off a little better and just go on that short run, but it didn't really handle well, so we got tight immediately on the first lap of the last segment the car was pushing. I knew we were going to struggle to be able to capitalize on our position to win the race, but we ended up finishing okay.
For our team it's a good step in the right direction to get more competitive. A lot was made about the comments I made in the podcast on Monday. I just want the team to succeed and really like the crew and Greg, and I think we can do it. We did it last year. We started this year off really awesome and hit a little rough patch, but this week was a great opportunity for us to learn, and I think we did. We had about 80 percent of the setup on the car was new stuff, some stuff we hadn't really ran in a lot of different directions that are outside the box for us and what we were competitive with earlier in the year. So I hope Greg learned a lot tonight. We didn't get a lot of practice, so we had to learn as much as we could in the race, and I think we learned some stuff.
Next weekend it will be great to actually get some practice and actually tune on the car a little bit more.

Q. NASCAR kind of wanted to change the format to try to increase excitement. Did you feel you increased excitement? There seemed to be a lot of confusion out there about exactly how things would work, and then with only two cars on old tires on that last‑‑
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, wasn't‑‑ you know, I think that the intent was really positive, and the ideas were great. But I think the simpler we make it, the easier it is to follow. You just have to worry about rooting for your guy.
I was pretty confused right up until it was 13 laps to go, and then I knew, well, we're racing from here to the end, and this is all the normal rules. But everything before that was really out of my‑‑ I was out of my element.
But NASCAR did a good job making sure‑‑ even though all the pitting was confusing and how the lap cars were pitting with the leaders, people weren't really where they were supposed to be, NASCAR did make sure all the lineups were correct before we went back to green. So you can't really complain about that too much. It was just an unorthodox way of doing it. I don't know. I think they ran into some scenarios tonight that they didn't really anticipate and got caught off guard. I think the 20 obviously not pitting, however that worked out, that threw them for a loop and everybody was confused from that minute on.

Q. What made you think if the All‑Star Race became a race of innovation and you guys just raced whatever you brought to the track?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I don't know. We probably wouldn't pass too much because we'd all be wide open. We would all be full throttle. I just think they ought to go back to the original formats that they started with that are simple and make the cars race better, you know? Gimmicks and all that stuff, trying to trick up the race is going down the wrong path. The way to make the racing exciting is to make the cars exciting.

Q. Along those lines, the changes that were implemented, could you tell from the driver's seat, did they have much effect in this race on the racing in general?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: There was a lot of‑‑ yeah, I mean, we gained some track position somehow. You know, all the mandatory stops during the segments, then the mandatory stops in between the segments. Somehow or another Greg did some magic and got us into the top 5. Guys were struggling, and I don't know. You know, it came down to the 22, the 42. That was pretty exciting, and I don't think that had anything to do with any format, so that was just two guys going at it, and that's what you really want.

Q. What about the downforce, side force stuff?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, you know, I think that taking the skew out of the housing and limiting the toe and doing things like that will certainly slow down the mid‑corner speed a little bit and there will be a little bit more off‑throttle time, and I think that any time we can get more off‑throttle time, there will be more opportunities to out‑drive a guy into a corner, beat a guy into the corner or drive up to a guy's bumper to get him loose or move him out of the way or however you need to do it. You know, you saw the 22, he could get right up to that 42. Man, if we were running the '14 or '15 package, the 42 could have went wherever the 22 was going and kept him about 10 car lengths behind him the whole time. He didn't ever have to worry about it.
So the fact that the 22 can drive up there right to him and the 42 can't do anything about it, we're going down the right direction with all that stuff.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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