Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to NASCAR racing product at Kansas, takes issue with Next Gen aero

Dale Earnhardt Jr. enjoyed the on-track product in this past Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Kansas Speedway. There was one thing that he didn’t love, however.

Earnhardt has expressed his issues with the Next Gen car aero before. He saw it again at Kansas, particularly in the corners.

“That track is pretty entertaining,” Earnhardt said on Tuesday’s Dale Jr. Download. “… The only thing that I don’t love — look, that was a good product, that was a great product on the racetrack this weekend — the one thing I do not love about the Next Gen car is how bad the air is when a car gets behind another car. We saw a couple moments in that race where they’re all trying to avoid each other’s wake when they go down in the corner, like you’re behind a guy on the straightaway and you’re thinking, ‘Alright, is he going low or high because I’m doing the opposite.’

“That’s the way all of them think as they’re going down the straightaway, I’m gonna do the opposite of the guy in front of me. But you gotta get clean air under the center of the car, and sometimes we’ll see, and we saw it in this race, they’ll make the wrong choice and boy, they have to jump out of the gas because they go into the corner following a car, they have no grip and they get out of the gas and lose all of this momentum.”

While that might have been a problem throughout, it’s something we routinely see in just about every race. Kansas, one of the more entertaining races on the schedule, still found a way to deliver.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. liked what he saw on the racetrack at Kansas

The ending was quite memorable, Denny Hamlin washing up the track and making contact with Bubba Wallace who brushed the wall. It allowed Chase Elliott to drive by on the bottom and take the checkered flag.

Earnhardt likes to see drivers going for it on the last lap as Hamlin did. He just didn’t love that it was Hamlin — 23XI Racing co-owner — doing it against Wallace — 23XI driver.

“But otherwise, I really enjoyed everything about this race,” Earnhardt said. “I see that little phenomenon with the aero a time or two in each individual race and it grinds my gears. Otherwise, I was really entertained, particularly with the finish. As much as I wish Bubba would have won the race because I thought he was in a position to do it, I hate that if it was not his team owner on the inside making that move, I’m OK with it because it’s another competitor going for it… those are moves that we want to see from time to time in the sport. A guy send it and overdo it, cook it and make the mistake, cost them the win.

“It just sucked because it was the team owner and the driver in this scenario, but otherwise if it was other drivers besides Denny and Bubba, we want to see that sometimes. We like to see our racing be flawed and imperfect and present those oh hell, guy coming off the corner, a guy slides by and wins the race and oh, it’s Chase Elliott, who happens to be one of the more popular drivers in the series.”