Dale Jr. breaks his silence on NASCAR’s ‘peak’ Atlanta showdown over Daytona 500: “It’s as good as it gets”

Twenty-six-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner Dale Jr. recently backed up his statement from last week about Atlanta Motor Speedway providing better racing compared to the season-opening race at Daytona. On the latest episode of his podcast, Dale Jr. Download, he called last Sunday's (February 23) Ambetter Health 400 the peak of NASCAR Racing.

In the previous episode, the one ahead of the Atlanta event, Earnhardt Jr. voiced his frustration at the season-opening Daytona 500. He complained that a large portion of the race was spent with drivers simply saving fuel instead of pushing hard for position. He added that the current Superspeedway racing package, which affects how cars perform at tracks like Daytona and Talladega, has made the races less exciting.

On the other hand, Dale Jr. praised the racing action in Atlanta, describing it as more intense and competitive, with drivers taking more risks and battling hard for position.

"The last two or three times that I’ve been at Atlanta, I have been entertained to the fullest. It is way funner to watch. It’s intense as hell," he said in anticipation of a good racing show at Atlanta (59:40 onwards).

The action on Sunday didn't disappoint Earnhardt Jr. Instead, he enjoyed the race more than ever and called it NASCAR's best racing action on offer.

"What I saw at Daytona was great, we had a great way to start the season. But this is how... I mean it can be better right? It's okay to say, 'Look man, I want it to be better, I want it to be different than what I experienced.' It's okay to say that, and that's all I was trying to do last week. And so we go to Atlanta and we saw like the peak NASCAR, that's peak NASCAR. What we saw at Atlanta is as good as it gets and that's not an overstatement," Dale Jr. shared.

The Hall of Famer was also happy with how NASCAR handled the ending of the race.

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Dale Jr. supports NASCAR's decision to throw caution to end the race

Dale Jr. shared his thoughts on the recent controversy on how NASCAR chooses to apply the green-white-checkered rule introduced in 2004. The rule states that if there is a crash in the final two laps, NASCAR will send the race into overtime instead of ending the race under caution. There would be a second overtime restart if the field crashed in the first restart.

This was done to ensure that fans got to see the race end under racing conditions. However, in recent races, NASCAR has not been consistent with its application of the rule. While a caution was thrown to conclude the Cup Series race in Atlanta, the opposite was done the night before in the Xfinity race, where the drivers raced to the finish line.

The Daytona 500 also didn’t see a caution flag after a big wreck on the last lap and William Byron had to race Tyler Reddick to the finish line to win. Regardless of what others have said, Dale Jr. supported NASCAR’s choice to throw caution after the last-lap wreck at Atlanta.

“I was totally unbothered by how the Cup race ended. I do not have eyes on the back straightaway to know if somebody's sitting broadside on the racetrack, but I've seen enough things in the 30 years I've been around the sport to know that if there's even the potential of that, it's deadly. We don't even need to have that conversation," Dale Jr. said on his podcast (45:15 onwards).

NASCAR will return to action this weekend with the Echopark Texas Grand Prix on Sunday, March 2, at COTA with the race scheduled to start at 3:30 pm ET.