Earnhardt Jr. ran into a little bad luck during this year’s ‘500’ earlier in February. He is determined to not let that happen again this weekend. “When you don’t run well, you hate it. We spun out at Daytona and Talladega and we have a pretty good understanding of why our car has been unstable,” he said during today’s media availabilty at DIS. “We brought a new car that’s hopefully going to be a much better race car for us. We went back to our set-ups that seemed to work so well. The guys are always working and trying to find speed and we that really made the car unstable so we dialed some of that back out and went back to our older set-ups and hopefully that is going to be all we need to be competitive and be able to get up there and be aggressive.”
Hamlin explained during today’s media session that he enjoys racing at Daytona and he’s been in close competition with Earnhardt Jr. during the past few races on the Florida speedway. “It’s been a great – for some reason, it was about five years ago that something happened on the restrictor plate race tracks where I just – it clicked and I got it,” he explained. “I can name a few instances it’s really helped me, but I don’t want to necessarily say that, but I just feel comfortable. I feel like I know what I’m doing and the results have showed it. I’ve just been very fortunate on superspeedways and the bad finishes that I’ve had it’s not because something I feel like I did. It was something that I could caught up in, so I’ve been fortunate. It’s been a great battle with the 88 (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) probably the last four years with me and him. There’s been a lot of one-two finishes with us and hopefully I’d love to complete the sweep winning the Unlimited, the 500 and the July race. I feel like I gift basket-ed him that dual win on Thursday this year, so I’d like to get him back here in July.”
- NXS: Hamlin Handles the Field in Irish Hills 250 - June 17, 2017
- NXS: Busch Scores Irish Hills 250 Pole - June 17, 2017
- NXS: Irish Hills 250 Preview - June 16, 2017