Dale Earnhardt Jr Ready For His Final Brickyard 400

Dale Earnhardt Jr. meets with the media at Indianapolis. [John Wiedemann Photo]

By Dan Margetta

Speedway, Ind., July 22 — In this his last full time season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be competing in his final Brantley Gilbert Big Machine Brickyard 400 Sunday afternoon and he took some time following Saturday’s practice sessions to address the media gathered at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“I have a lot of respect and admiration for this race track, for its history, and for what it means to American motorsports and motorsports globally,” Earnhardt stated, “It’s an honor to have the opportunity to race here and I appreciate that a lot.”

We’ve actually been pretty quick today,” Earnhardt continued, “I don’t like the way the car drives at all but the speeds are fast and maybe everybody’s car doesn’t drive well. I’m a little concerned about the balance of the car but our speed has been good.”

To prepare for the Brickyard 400 Earnhardt’s team utilized the relatively new simulation software many teams use to set up their cars prior to arriving at the race track.

“We did work on the simulator and we’ve learned some things in the simulator that with Indy could try to make some sense of it, “Earnhardt said, “Some tracks match up well in the simulator and I thought Indy was one of them so we worked in the simulator a little bit on Monday because we have such limited practice here it’s an advantage to be able to simulate practice.”

As his final full season of competition begins to wind down, Earnhardt said he has been trying to keep everything in perspective.

“I’ve enjoyed the season and we’ve turned the corner and heading down that last straightaway and this year is going to wrap up pretty quickly before you know it, “Earnhardt stated, I’m just trying to enjoy being behind the wheel because when you’re out there driving and you’re beating your head against the wall trying to get faster, you have to remind yourself to enjoy it because it is fun. It’s fun driving the car. The pure enjoyment of racing and driving is always going to be there even long after I retire.”

As far as this being his final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series start at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Earnhardt said the Brickyard brings out special emotions.

“What I’ll miss the most is the feeling you get when you come into this race track, when you walk through Gasoline Alley and we’re in the F1 garage and so forth, “Earnhardt reflected, “It’s the feeling you get when you know what’s happened here, who’s been here and who’s raced here. I was just thinking about that in practice going down the back straightaway about all the names that have went down that straightaway.”

“It’s so overwhelming if you could go back in time and experience everything that’s happened here, it’s so overwhelming to think about, “Earnhardt continued, “ I don’t know how you explain that or put that into words but the feeling you get when you walk in here is this is such a special place it’s hard to put into words. There are not a lot of tracks that give me that feeling, but what happened here in the last hundred years is bigger than all of us. It never gets old coming here because of that.”

Dan Margetta

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