By Aaron Bearden, Motorsports Editor
Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t win the Alabama 500, nor did he give the thousands of JR Nation faithful much to cheer about as he ran mid-pack, but the retiring star emerged from his final start at Talladega Superspeedway happy, unhurt and with a seventh-place finish after a difficult 500 miles.
“This has been a hell of a weekend for me, and I’m glad to be able to finish and finish well,” Earnhardt said. “That means a lot to me. I know a lot of folks came and traveled here to see us run, so I know they’re disappointed we didn’t win, but I’m glad they got to see us run the whole event, and hopefully they enjoyed it.”
On a weekend that begun with Earnhardt receiving one of his father Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s 1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo race cars, the six-time Talladega winner filled his fanbase with hope as he led the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series field to green for Sunday’s race after claiming the pole on Saturday.
In the end Earnhardt’s early optimism would prove wishful thinking.
The Hendrick Motorsports shoe lost track position with two early pit road penalties, and struggled to regain competitiveness for the rest of the afternoon. Despite narrowly dodging all three of the race’s big crashes, Earnhardt never again found himself at the front of the field until the event’s closing moments.
Earnhardt took the final green flag in third, but proved unable to contend for the win with splitter damage sustained in the race’s final crash after contact with Chase Elliott. While Brad Keselowski went on to win in a special No. 2 Ford that paid homage to his time competing for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports XFINITY Series team, the Earnhardt faded over the final three-lap sprint.
“Just got lucky on those wrecks,” Earnhardt said. “Just things start flying around, I don’t know, you just ‑‑ ain’t nothing I’m doing, I’m just not getting hit, you know, and not losing control of my car. Just really luck.
“But the last one knocked the right front end really bad and bent the splitter down about an inch and a half and knocked it on the racetrack, and when we got going there on that last restart, it just wouldn’t go in the corners especially, so everybody around us was just wasting their time pushing us, and they sort of figured that out after a lap or two and decided to leave us alone, and we just kind of hung on there to get a seventh.”
While his seventh-place run wasn’t bad by any stretch, Earnhardt admitted to feeling disappointment that he couldn’t bring home a win in his final restrictor plate run.
“I’m always disappointed when we don’t run well at tracks I know we should, but we did run well today,’ Earnhardt said. “But I know that everybody was probably ‑‑ is a little bit of air out of the bag there at the end to finish seventh. I know those folks were hoping we could put something together, and I know there’s a lot of folks came here, particularly to see this race because it’s the last one here.
“I hate to leave slightly disappointed, but hopefully they enjoyed everything else they saw. I mean, we ran as hard as we could, did the best we could.”
While he might not have had the run he hoped for, Earnhardt did end his final start at Talladega with one positive. Less than one year removed from a difficult bout with a concussion sustained at Michigan International Speedway, Earnhardt left the Cup Series’ biggest track unhurt.
“I think that anyone who questions our desire to be here and compete this year and our desire to run hard and face can look at the risks that we took this afternoon, knowing that any of those crashes would have probably given me a bit of an injury that would have held me out of the rest of the season,” Earnhardt said. “We definitely ‑‑ it’s hypothetical, but I think it says a lot about being out there and competing, wanting to compete, showing that we want to compete, and working hard, racing hard.
“This was one that I was worried about, you know, in the back of my mind, I was a little concerned. But you can’t win the race if you race scared, and I’ve raced scared here before, and you don’t do well when that happens, so you have to block it out and just go out there and take the risks and hope that it’s just not your day to get in one of those accidents, and it wasn’t.”
Barring unforeseen circumstances, Earnhardt will retire with a career that includes 10 restrictor plate victories – including two Daytona 500s and four-straight wins at Talladega from fall 2001 through spring 2003. His six wins at Talladega place him second on the track’s all-time win list, tied with Jeff Gordon and trailing only his father Dale Sr.’s 10 wins on the 2.66-mile oval’s all-time wins list.
His restrictor-plate career complete, Earnhardt can look back on his impressive drafting career fondly as one of the style’s all-time greats.
“Anytime anybody says you’re the best at anything, it’s an awesome feeling,” Earnhardt said. “I can’t deny that it feels awesome to hear that. People consider you good at anything, it’s a great feeling. I knew that I wasn’t going to win 200 races and seven championships and do all those great things. I just wanted to come in here and be considered talented. But to be great at anything was beyond my imagination.
“I appreciate people’s compliments on my plate driving and the success we’ve had at all the plate races.”
And while he may not race again at Talladega, Earnhardt hopes to remain close to the Alabama race track.
“I hope to always have a great connection here,” Earnhardt said. “Trust me when I say that whatever the track needs from me, anytime they want anything, I’ll be here to help promote and support this place no matter what the request is. They’ve done so much for me, and I want to remain very close.”