Dale Earnhardt Jr. breaks down why NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol was so hard to watch

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was not a fan of the racing at Bristol this past weekend in the NASCAR Cup Series. Among many things that stood out to the NASCAR Hall of Famer was the lack of excitement throughout the race, and he tried to make sense of it on the latest episode of the Dale Jr. Download.

“What stood out to me was the lack of excitement, drama throughout the field,” Earnhardt Jr. proclaimed. “Everybody knows I’m a Josh Berry fan. I’m not going to hide that. So, I’m watching Josh. Kinda of paying attention to where he’s at the whole race. He ran roughly from P12 to P16 all day. I think his average running position was P14. For long stretches, he and no one else made any passes. I’m sitting there, they weren’t really showing Josh on TV, so I’m looking at the NASCAR app and the intervals and looking on TV, they just sit there, stuck behind they guy they were stuck behind and the guy behind them was stuck behind them. It was like nobody could go anywhere. That was the problem for this race.

“The car has a lot of physical characteristics that will make a majority of the short-track races look a lot like what we saw on Sunday. Denny [Hamlin] dives into that on his show. You could watch the NASCAR app and look through the entire field from first to last and be like, ‘He’s a half-tenth faster. Half-tenth slower. Half-tenth faster, half-tenth slower.’ Everybody is just running the same damn lap time throughout the whole field.”

While Earnhardt Jr. diagnosed the issue, he doesn’t know how the sport’s governing body will fix it. It’s going to take a unanimous decision from the owners, but he doesn’t foresee that happening any time soon.

“NASCAR’s in a tough spot,” Earnhardt Jr. added. “Any change that could happen would take unanimous collaboration with the owners. The owners are already tapped out on spending, and likely don’t want to spend further on experiments. Unfortunately, I feel like we’ve got what we’ve got. Denny even said that. There’s no talk about any big change coming down the line.

“There’s not a — there’s no talk or conversation around something being different, which is interesting. When it comes to race tracks under a mile in length, this feels like something we’re all going to deal with.”

That’s not what fans are going to want to hear, but it seems to be the reality we’re living in at the moment. Change doesn’t seem to be on the horizon, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the rest of the NASCAR world will simply have to be alright with that.