Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighs in on Ryan Blaney, expletive-filled outburst about 'golden boy' Kyle Larson

Ryan Blaney got a lot of attention for calling Kyle Larson a “golden boy” while talking to his team during the Brickyard 400. On the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Dale Earnhardt Jr. shared his reaction to Blaney’s outburst after losing the race to Larson.

“I used to say on the broadcast that (Blaney) has a short fuse,” Earnhardt said. “That’s not necessarily exactly true, he’s just… The guy that you talk to and know outside the car versus the guy that when he gets in the car, he takes the filter off and he says whatever is immediately top of mind into that radio.

“I think that will probably change as he races longer into his career. …I’m not going to make a big deal out of that because he’s just running his mouth in the car. I don’t believe that he even cares that much about it. I mean he’s mad in the moment, but he just says whatever he thinks. But I think over time, the more that the media picks up on these things that he says, the less he’ll do it.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. shares more on Ryan Blaney-Kyle Larson incident

Earnhardt continued. “You’d have to understand that go out and sit in your car in the driveway for three and a half hours without the air conditioner on 130-degree temperature heat and have something annoy you and how are you are going to react. That’s all this is. I do the same thing, and you think that you’re only talking to the person on the other end, which is your crew chief, but you’re not thinking about all of the other people with scanners and all of the public with connections. You’re not thinking about that. You’re not thinking about it, you don’t care about it, you’re made, you want to tell somebody.:

Larson won the race, and Blaney finished third. After the race, Blaney spoke to Dustin Long of NBC Sports about not being sure why he was so angry.

“I’m pissed. I’m pissed… I told my guys I’m ticked off but I don’t know who to be ticked off at. It’s just like, racing luck,” Blaney said. “The break that he got and the hardship that we got there with that happening at that time just killed our race. We put ourselves in the perfect spot to win and just that weird circumstance it just benefitted him and just killed our race, you know? Any chance of us to win. That’s what I’m upset about, I’m not mad at anybody.

On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this story.