“That's annoying”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. upset with NASCAR lengthening stage cautions at Chicago

Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently reacted to Michael McDowell urging NASCAR to remove stage cautions from road courses. NASCAR decided to take away the stage cautions from road courses during the 2023 season, a decision which was reversed for the 2024 season. But after the Cup race at Chicago, McDowell was of the opinion that NASCAR should reconsider a re-reversal with stage cautions on road courses.

However, Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes that NASCAR already went down that road and it didn't make things better, instead making them worse. He said on his podcast "Dale Jr. Download":

"I don't know where Michael is coming from there. I guess there was a situation where we had a caution leading upto a stage break and NASCAR said, 'Oh it's so close to a stage break, we're just going to leave it under caution.' So yes, that's annoying. 'We're lengthening the caution because you're going to have three laps to the stage break, we're going to run that under caution and then we're going through the whole process of stage break which is another five to eight laps.'" [at 32:00]

"I got up, I was like, 'Hell! I'm going to get up and go do something because this is going to be 15 damn minutes before the stage starts.' And so you don't like that."

Earnhardt further claimed that NASCAR wouldn't want the viewers to get off the couch or change the channel. He said that he wasn't sure if he loved the idea of NASCAR having an extended caution.

"Why wouldn't you just go ahead and try to get them back to green even if that's for a lap?" Earnhardt added.

Notably, speaking after the Sonoma race in 2023, Dale Earnhardt Jr. expressed his disapproval of NASCAR racing without stage cautions on road courses.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. wasn't a fan of no stage cautions on road courses during last season

Last year, Earnhadt had mentioned on "Dale Jr. Download" how NASCAR has struggled with their racing product on the road courses just as they have on the short tracks where, although it's easy to pass, everyone runs the same lap time.

"So if the top-10 are literally matching lap times if not just a little bit different, there is no passing. They don’t even catch each other. It’s a little frustrating," he said.

Earnhardt Jr. said that in a scenario where the race needs some action, a stage caution is a good option.

He claimed that if the product on the racetrack was better, he wouldn't have cared about it. But because the racing product was so dull, taking out the stage caution was "a weird deal," leaving him convinced that it didn't improve the racing or the experience of watching the race.