MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
BRICKYARD 400
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
JULY 23, 2017

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS – Sidelined due to incident on Lap 76
THIS WAS YOUR FINAL START AT THE BRICKYARD AND IS NOT THE WAY YOU WANT TO GO OUT. WHAT HAPPENED?
“I don’t know. There were just a bunch of cars slowing down and stopping and it was a chain reaction and we got into the back of the No. 6 (Trevor Bayne) and I guess they were all kind of running into each other and it just knocked the radiator out of it. We hit the No. 2 car (Brad Keselowski) earlier in the race kind of doing the same thing and it damaged the front end and I think it knocked the bumper bar out of it then, so we really had no protection after that. But, we had a great car and I was having a lot of fun. The car was fast. We had a top 10 car for sure. It’s kind of frustrating because I was really enjoying being out there. Hopefully our luck’s going to turnaround. It’s been pretty tough and this is a difficult one to put up with.”

HOW TOUGH ARE THESE RESTARTS? IT ALMOST SEEMS LIKE A STREET FIGHT OUT THERE
“Well, they always are. And, it’s fun. Sometimes you’re in the wrong end of it and sometimes you can make something happen. It was great. We were leaving it in third going down into (Turn) 1 and running third gear through the short shoot and everybody’s grabbing gears and trying to do everything they can to get an advantage. And you’ve got to push hard and that got us in a little bit of trouble there when they all started checking up on the outside. I was just trying real hard to get as much as we could on restart, and we got bit.”