“Don’t Move”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Echoes Denny Hamlin’s “Don’t Overreact” Demand to Goodyear

What happened with the Goodyear tires in the recent NASCAR Cup race at Bristol was an accident, but one that significantly improved the racing in a way nobody had anticipated. It was a happy accident. But going forward, there could be a possibility that Goodyear ‘fixes’ the problem and corrects what they did ‘wrong’ in Bristol. Yet that’s exactly what Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t want them to do.

Speaking on his podcast show, Earnhardt pointed to how it’s been a long time since teams have worried about the tires. And because they had to worry in Bristol, they were forced to be more creative and more aggressive. Or, in other words, they had to improvise. They had to adapt.

This is exactly what Earnhardt wants going forward. He revealed his stance on this subject, “Goodyear, don’t move. Goodyear, don’t change.”

“Ask the teams to make the adjustments. Ask the teams to adapt. Just the same way they adapted during that race. Ask the teams to find what they can in those cars, in the setups of those cars to make those tires work.”

“Goodyear, don’t change. Ask the teams to make the adjustments.”

https://t.co/FmK1Rq1IAy pic.twitter.com/NVNDfbLr8A

— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) March 19, 2024

Denny Hamlin doesn’t want Goodyear to repeat the Bristol formula, but not change it completely either

While most teams struggled with the tires at Bristol, it was the #11 team of Denny Hamlin who found a way to manage the tires and eventually win the race. And just like Dale Earnhardt Jr. did later, Denny Hamlin too asked Goodyear to not act in a hurry with what happened.

“Don’t overreact,” Hamlin said in the post-race press conference. “Whatever happened in the mixture department maybe at Goodyear, that’s something certainly that could be used, maybe not to that extent, but it could be used. I think they have to figure out what in their process changed from this batch of tires versus last.”

“Just cut it back a little bit.”

So going forward, it’ll be interesting to see how Goodyear changes or doesn’t change their tire mixtures for future races. Of course, what happened in Bristol wasn’t intentional on their part. But what it led to was one of the most interesting and exciting races Bristol has seen in a long time.

And that accident on the tire maker’s part, the happy accident, perhaps, was a good thing that they should just accept and embrace.