Earnhardt Jr. can’t even do pitstops right

NASCAR's biggest hero comes up with another lame excuse for his pathetic driving

To hear Dale Earnhardt jr tell it, a succession of pit-road mistakes during Speedweeks at Daytona derailed his entire season. After sliding through his pit stall in the Feb. 14 Nationwide Series race, Earnhardt drove past his pit box under caution early in the following day's Daytona 500. Later in the race, he drew a one-lap penalty for pitting on the front white line of his pit box. Trying to regain the lost lap, Earnhardt subsequently triggered an eight-car wreck that took out several of the strongest cars in the field.

"Nothing is easy, but coming down at Daytona and getting in your stall is like breathing," Earnhardt said when the media tour visited the Hendrick Motorsports campus. "It's like shifting—you don't think about when you're doing it. You just do it. But it made me start thinking about it, and I started to backtrack and I didn't progress and fix it, actually I got a complex about it and became sort of definitely not confident about doing it.

"I didn't anticipate missing my stall. That was kind of the beginning of it. Who knew that would be the little straw that broke the camel's back?"