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Dale Earnhardt Jr, JR Motorsports Humbled in Icebreaker

Both cars struggled and failed to finish inside the top-15.

JR Motorsports

Dale Earnhardt Jr., Carson Kvapil and Josh Berry were sent back to the figurative drawing board on Saturday afternoon after the Icebreaker at Florence Motor Speedway in South Carolina.

Both Jr Motorsports cars were non-competitive with Earnhardt and Kvapil finishing 16th and 18th respectively without even cracking the top-10 once the race began in earnest.

Kvapil was eighth in time trials but immediately fell outside of the top-10 and top-15 once the race went green. He was lapped before the first caution waved on lap 110. He would get a free pass and finish two spots behind the boss who had his own share of troubles.

Earnhardt was saving for much of the race in all the ways you have to do at Florence, but just couldn’t get back on the throttle in corner exit and was caught up in an accident on Lap 110 when the field stacked up in front of him.

He turned Brandon Pierce around and it left him with fender damage — not that it made much of a difference in their performance one way or the other.

“Jeb (Burton) was having a hard time getting around the car in front of him, I think it was (Kade Brown). Jeb was underneath him and everyone kind of checked up and I got some wheel-hop from trying to stop it from spinning out.

“I could not check up. I was wrecking into the 2. He saved me from spinning out to be honest with you and I’m glad they gave him his spot back. =”

What went wrong on Saturday?

“We practiced really good, were fast in practice and I don’t know, I thought I was saving enough riding 11th and when it came time to go, we didn’t have anything more to go with,” Earnhardt said.

“We were spinning the tires there off 4, rear drive went away completely, and was just doing everything I could make whatever lap time I could. Carson didn’t run good so both our cars didn’t run good. I don’t know what was wrong with the 8 — he said he wasn’t running well.”

Earnhardt was second fastest in practice and JR Motorpsorts brought back the same baseline set-up from November when both cars contended for the win.

Berry serves as crew chief for Earnhardt in these races and doesn’t understand what happened.

“Carson struggled really tight and we just got really free,” Berry said. “Man, I don’t know. I don’t have a good explanation for you. We’ve had a lot of good nights and this is not one of them. We are pretty embarrassed to be honest with you.

“We’ll go back home, look at everything that happened and see if we can learn from it. It’s a tough deal man. The weather was up against us. We got 20 minutes of practice. The track was wet. It’s not a great day to be off when you’ve got 15 or 20 minutes after that to fix it.”

Earnhardt has some working theories.

“I really thought, after we took a set on in practice, that we were pretty good,” Earnhardt said. “It had turn and drove. You never know what you’ll have come laps 60 to 80 and I’m not going to run that many laps on a set of tires in practice and find out.

“We usually hit it in practice and for whatever reason, we didn’t. We took a little bit of sway bar wrap out and maybe we shouldn’t have done that. We were really happy with the car and just tried to make it better. Maybe we got a little bit too aggressive in trying to make it a little looser, but that’s the way it goes.”

Earnhardt says a day like this doesn’t change his enthusiasm for the discipline one way or the other – it’s simply part of the sport.

“No, not really because I’m hungry anyway,” Earnhardt said. “I want to come back and do this again. I love racing these cars, being in this environment and learning the people and drivers better. I love racing against some of the guys I raced in the 90s too.

“It was humbling today and it’s not always going to be your day. It shows you how good this series is, these cars and the competition.”

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Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Bill Petroff

    February 12, 2023 at 10:36 am

    Curious if they ran the 604 or the enforcer. I believe in the 604 and maybe a 500 carb if you run the enforcer. It doesn’t really allow you to burn your stuff up. Tires tires tires

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