Fired up Dale Earnhardt Jr. on Sammy Smith: 'Sammy f*cked up'

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he’s never been more “disappointed and frustrated” leaving a racetrack than he was this past Saturday night at Martinsville. Earnhardt took issue with the lack of respect shown between drivers during the race, as well as Sammy Smith‘s conduct on the final lap.

Smith, the JR Motorsports driver, slammed into race-leader Taylor Gray on the final corner, taking them both out of contention and allowing Austin Hill to drive by to take the checkered flag. Dozens of cars were torn up on the front stretch — a fitting image for a race that included 102 caution laps. In the moment, Earnhardt was furious with what he had just seen. But then, he had to put his car owner cap on, calm down, and speak to Smith, which he did on Sunday.

“I thought on it. Didn’t just freaking wipe it out of my mind and just go about my way. I sat on this for 48 hours,” Earnhardt said on the Dale Jr. Download. “Sammy’s my driver. This ain’t for anybody else, y’all can continue to be pissed and think what you want. But for me, I got to shift to what do I do to give Sammy the best, most honest advice I can to help him shift to do better. I gotta figure out how Sammy can clean this up. It’s a mess he’s made.

“In the end, I gotta support him and try to give him the tools and the knowledge to make the better decision next time. NASCAR’s gonna make its own decision how they wanna penalize him; I’m absolutely fine with that. I encourage NASCAR to act whenever they feel someone deserves some sort of penalty. I’m expecting it. I don’t wanna say I’m fine with what they wanna do. But I hope they handle this properly and I expect they will.”

NASCAR penalizes Sammy Smith for actions at Martinsville

NASCAR did penalize Smith for his actions. Smith was fined $25,000 and docked 50 points. Some felt NASCAR should have parked Smith for a race. Others suggested Earnhardt should do it. That was never under consideration, he said on the podcast.

“There’s a lot of people out there like, ‘NASCAR‘s gotta park him. Dale Jr. should park him. Dale Jr. should fire him.’ Anybody who thinks I’m going to park Sammy for a race — that’s out of the question,” Earnhardt said. “Never gonna happen, I wouldn’t suggest it again. Waste of a tweet.”

That doesn’t mean Earnhardt is fine with what Smith did. Far from it, actually. He admitted he “f*cked up” in that moment, and it’s on the team to help him “realize the error he made.”

“The Sammy deal sucked. Sammy f*cked up,” Earnhardt said. “We’re gonna try to give Sammy everything we can and support him going forward. We got a whole season to run. We’ll see if we can get him to where he’s making better choices in the moment and see if we can get him to realize the error he made. The messed-up part I think is for most people, that’s all they’re going to remember from that race.

“I told Sammy that. I said, ‘You know, it cost Justin [Allgaier] the Dash 4 Cash opportunity, cost himself a chance to race for the Dash 4 Cash next time, wasn’t gonna win the race with that move, it wasn’t a winning move. Dozens of cars destroyed on the front straightaway.’ That’s all people are going to remember from that race.”