“Sit Still and Allow the Fire to Happen?”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Acquits Brad Keselowski From Violating NASCAR Rules

Even though Brad Keselowski’s donuts under the red flag at Daytona to put out the fire in his car were a hilarious sight, after the race, some insiders wondered if NASCAR should’ve penalized the #6 driver. The argument in favor of a penalty was that Keselowski moved under a red flag as well as that he gained a competitive advantage over the others. However, Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t believe in that narrative.

The Hall of Famer recently explained why Keselowski did anything wrong by putting out a fire in his racecar and the fact that NASCAR didn’t penalize him in the moment, should suggest that they won’t do so now.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. defends Brad Keselowski’s mid-race donuts

During a recent episode of his podcast show, Earnhardt reacted to the comments from Kaulig Racing’s Chris Rice and Denny Hamlin in which both of them more or less put forward the idea that what Keselowski did wasn’t right, to which Junior said, “Is Brad just to sit still and allow the fire to happen?”

“No. So he’s gonna do these donuts to get a little air moving through the rocker box or whatever’s going on to try to get the fire to go out, and he did.”

“This was a situation where all the teams, they were trying to do everything they could to save the fuel and manage gas and try to stay on pit road as minimal amount as possible in the last stop to be able to take as little amount of fuel as possible,” he described.

“Well, he was giving everybody a competitive advantage there by burning fuel and running in circles.”

Junior would’ve been okay with NASCAR penalizing Keselowski in the race

Having defended Keselowski’s actions to put out the fire, Earnhardt did claim that had NASCAR penalized him in the moment, he would’ve been okay with it. He explained, “I would’ve not had a problem if they had reacted in the moment and said, ‘We’re glad the fire’s out, Brad. That was probably a good thing to do because you get to continue to race but you’re gonna have to drop to the back.'”

“I would’ve been fine with that.”

However, considering that they didn’t react, all of the conversation and the debate after the fact around Keselowski’s mid-race donuts to put out a fire inside his racecar is something Earnhardt doesn’t really care about.