NASCAR visits Chicago this weekend in what is going to be a truly historic weekend as the Grant Park 220 is set to be the first Street Course race in the sport. While most drivers and analysts tend to agree that the track is going to be tough to race on, many believe that this is the perfect way for NASCAR to expand its audience and open into new markets. One of those is Dale Earnhardt Jr. The two-time Daytona 500 winner has been extremely vocal about the fact that this weekend’s race truly has the potential to open up new doors for the sport.
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Earnhardt Jr., who retired from full-time racing in the Cup Series in 2017, appeared recently on the Dan Patrick Show and opened up on the Chicago weekend, about his plans for racing this year and his performance if he participated in Chicago this weekend.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes he will be “humbled quickly” by the other drivers
Upon being asked how he thought he would fare this weekend if he took part in the race at Chicago, Junior gave an honest answer, saying, “I probably wouldn’t do that great. You know I say this often but it’s the only way I can really articulate it, racing at the Xfinity, Truck level or the NASCAR Cup level, these guys do it every single week, they live it every day, they’re in the simulator every day preparing all week long, they are in meetings every day.”
“For somebody even like me, with all you know, with two decades of experience to not have raced in a year or more to hop in one of these cars, you would get, uh, you would be humbled quickly. Because they are in that cycle, week after week after week, they’re doing it over and over and over, they know how to get that car all the way to the limit of the grip of the tire, right up to that moment where the tire is about to break traction.”
Earnhardt was quite self-aware about where he stood, adding, “For me to hop in there after not being in the car for a year to find that limit is really really hard, and I would rarely get up to that limit, you know I would be quite a ways off of it.”
What are Earnhardt’s racing plans for the year?
After retirement, Earnhardt has made it a point to take part in one Xfinity race per year, and this season is no different. The JR Motorsports owner opened up on his plans, saying, “I’m gonna compete in a couple times this year in the Xfinity Series, we’re racing at Bristol, and we got a couple events we’re gonna run but I don’t know, I don’t go in with high expectations but I’ll tell you that because it’s pretty humbling to compete with those guys when they’re doing it every single week.”
Earnhardt has been one of the more vocal voices when it comes to NASCAR opening up new doors, and if the Chicago race goes how the North Wilkesboro and LA Coliseum experiments went, maybe the sport can think of expanding into other countries too.
