Earnhardt: "Absolutely Responsible" For Gordon Crash

Dale Earnhardt Jr. tangled with teammate Jeff Gordon midway in Sunday’s “Food City 500” at Bristol Motor Speedway, cutting Gordon’s left-rear tire and send the No. 24 AARP Drive To End Hunger Chevrolet spinning into the outside wall and out of the event.

The crash ended Gordon's day.

"I absolutely feel responsible,” said Earnhardt afterward. “I got into his door a little bit. We were racing and having a good time, to be honest with you. I put the pipes up against the left rear tire of his car, and knocked the side wall out of it. I feel bad about that (and) I'm going to have to do some damage control this week. I know Jeff understands what was going on out there, but his boys work real hard on their car, and they had a good run going. They had a potential win or good finish going; and they deserve it. We were racing really hard (and) iIf there is a track where you can lean on each other a little bit, then this ought to be the place. We just barely rubbed down the back straightaway.”

The Diet Mountain Dew/National Guard Chevrolet driver defended the contract between the two teammates, saying, “I'm sure some people might have thought that was a hard hit, (but) that to me was good hard racing. The pipes on my car cut the left-rear tire down. I feel terrible about that happening to my teammate… but there are four of us out there. We are bound to race each other and run into each other every once in a while.

Earnhardt promised to apologize to Gordon personally this week, saying, “I'll just have to sit down and talk to him and see where he's at. I've got to own up to my responsibility in the situation, which I will, and go from there."

Earnhardt was in contention for the win for much of the day, until a pit road speeding penalty in the late going dropped him to a disappointing 15^th-place finish. “I'm frustrated about the finish,” he said, “but we did run good. We ran better than we ran here last year. We’ve run really good, pretty much everywhere except for Phoenix. Things are looking up for our team.”