Twelve laps into Sunday’s Crown Royal presents the Samuel Deeds 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Dale Earnhardt brought his No. 88 Chevrolet SS to pit road.
It was a case of necessity being the mother of prevention.
Inexplicably, Earnhardt had a loose wheel when he started the opening run in the 20th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race of the year. He had to bring the car to pit road to prevent a disastrous failure. When he left pit road, Earnhardt was a lap down at the tail end of the field.
“I’ll tell you, you can’t have a wheel come off here,” Earnhardt said. “You’re running that thing at 200 miles an hour at the end of the straightaway. You don’t want to take any chances.
“We came in. (Crew chief) Steve (Letarte) said it was loose, and it was a good job and a good save.”
The early stop put Earnhardt off sequence in the pits, but he persevered and regained track position by staying out under caution when most other drivers came to pit road on Lap 82. Ultimately, he claimed a hard-fought sixth-place finish that solidified his fifth-place position in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings.
But that doesn’t mean Earnhardt wasn’t worried when his wheel began shaking soon after the opening green flag.
“Yes, a little bit,” he confessed. “But it’s still a long race, and Steve is a good strategist, and we ended up all right. The car had good speed. We finished about where we should.”
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