Earnhardt places 7th in Talladega finale
Junior says he was worried about race
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was red in the face and seventh in the finish order, his last workday at Talladega Superspeedway finally, mercifully, over.
Battered by concussions that almost ended his career and cast a shadow over his quality of life, Junior decided months ago that Sunday’s Alabama 500 would be his final race at Talladega, a track surely ranked in the top five when one considers danger zones in NASCAR.
That Junior made it out safely on a dangerous day that offered many chances for bad things to happen didn’t escape his notice. Another concussion could be very bad news for a driver whose résumé lists too many.
“This was one I was worried about,” Earnhardt said. “In the back of my mind, I was concerned, but you can’t win if you race scared. You have to block it out, take the risks and hope it’s not your day to get in one of the accidents. And it wasn’t.”
Junior led seven laps Sunday but ran somewhere between fifth and 15th for much of the day. The fact that he was still in the hunt for the win with 15 laps to go could be attributed, in large part, to big wrecks that eliminated or crippled many wouldbe winners. To Earnhardt’s credit, however, alert driving kept him mostly removed from the vicious center of those accidents, and his car suffered only minor damage.
This kept hopes afloat in the frontstretch grandstands, which could have been mistaken for a meeting of the Worldwide Dale Jr. Club. Junior Nation stood and cheered his every move as the retiring driver tried to give them one more win at one of his best tracks.
It wasn’t to be. Although Junior’s Chevrolet was among the 14 cars remaining on the track at the finish, he couldn’t compete with the fast group of eventual winner Brad Keselowski, Ryan Newman, Trevor Bayne and Joey Logano. He climbed from his bright green car on pit road, surveyed the damage to the front of the racer, talked briefly with team members.
His first thought was of the thousands of fans who made the pilgrimage to Alabama for one last ride with their hero.
“I would have loved to have won the race for all the fans that came out here,” he said. “Trust me, I wanted to win it for all those folks more than myself, but just couldn’t get it done.”