Gordon and Earnhardt patch up Talladega drafting spat
Quote selected text Published May 3rd, 2008 in NASCAR News
Dale Earnhardt Jr. admits his 71-race losing streak played a role in his decision not to help teammate Jeff Gordon in the final stages of last weekend’s Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway. He also says Gordon could have made a better choice.
Gordon says he was doing what was right for him to win the race just as Earnhardt felt he was doing the right thing and that the situation has been overblown.
Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. both agree last weekend’s incident in Talladega won’t be an issue moving forward.
It was the first clash between the Hendrick Motorsports teammates, one both agree won’t be an issue moving forward.
“He and I have talked about it, and I feel like it’s a nonissue,” Gordon said on Friday at Richmond International Raceway. “You’re going to make decisions that sometimes you’re going to work with your teammates and sometimes you’re not.
“I feel like the decision I made and the decision he made just really didn’t really blend together… Everybody is making a much bigger deal about this because it’s Junior and myself. I said plenty of things about others out there too that no one is interested in talking about.”
Gordon was angry as he shouted over his in-car radio about Earnhardt’s decision to go with Ryan Newman instead of him with about 25 laps remaining.
The two talked about the situation during a Tuesday test session at Nashville. Earnhardt said the two are “fine” heading into Saturday night’s race at RIR, where he scored his last victory in 2006.
“I said, ‘Look man. I’ve got nothing but respect for you. I’m the first guy here ready to cooperate and the last guy wanting to make any problems or cause any issues.’ I guess the one thing he wanted to make sure that he understood was I didn’t have a spot in my mind to spite him or to show him up in any way.”
Here’s what happened. Earnhardt and Gordon were in a draft with Ryan Newman on the high side. David Ragan pulled up as they came to the front straightaway hoping to get pushed to the front.
Newman dipped to the middle line and Earnhardt, saying they were about 10 mph faster than Ragan, went with him. He thought Gordon would do the same, but Gordon chose to stay with Ragan.
More at ESPN.com
- NASCAR to watch bump drafting Sunday
- Ralf denies Schumacher spat
- Gordon says trouble inevitable at Talladega today
- Jeff Gordon unhappy about Earnhardt, Jr’s bump drafting
- Bump-drafting is a hot topic at Daytona testing
Big Deal, both of them made a split second decision and it did not work out as well as Gordo thought it should. He had no room to complain. WINNING is the name of the game and if you help your team-mate in the process so much the better. Gordo would have bumped him out of the way to win if he needed to so for him to have yelled about Jr’s lack of help is BS…
Aw….Isn’t that sweet, now everyone loves Jr again……
They should have never let Loomis go i dont think Letarte has what it takes to win.
Like gordon said…its not a big deal. they were both doing what they thought they needed to to win the race. GOOO GORDON AT RICHMOND!!
gonesouthern wrote:
Gordon’s a crybaby and will always remain a crybaby until retirement & beyond☺☺☺
JAG wrote:
the only crybaby i see on this website is the people who bash gordon
JAG wrote:
So is he being a crybaby when he’s looking out for driver’s safety?