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Friday, June 1, 2012 |  |
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Pavement over concrete tracks the preference for Dale Earnhardt Jr.
"I think that unfortunately progressive banking is a great idea when you're using asphalt," Earnhardt said Friday at Kansas Speedway. "When you're using concrete, concrete has a lot of limitations for our cars. We only have a few tracks that are concrete or have been concrete in the series or the sport. None of them truly became multi-groove race tracks. "Dover is the closest thing that we have to a multi-groove track, but to be honest with you, the majority of the racing is done on the bottom of that race track as well." Earnhardt says that if he had a say, the propsed work at Bristol Motor Speedway would include replacing the current concrete racing surface with asphalt. "In a perfect world, in my opinion, if I owned the race track and had all the money that Bruton (Smith) has or the technology that we have today, I would pave the track with the configuration that they currently have with the progressive banking with asphalt," Earnhardt said. "But it's not my decision and I think what they're doing is going to be fun and I like that they're making a change. Even though when you pave a race track, it typically doesn't put on the best races after a few years of weather and wear on the surface, it tends to work out okay and the track really comes into its own again. "As much as we'd like to have a lot of the tracks stay with the older asphalt, it's just some of them are deteriorating so bad that it's just not an option. I think progressive banking has done wonders at a lot of race tracks and been a real plus at a lot of places. It's just the combination of progressive banking and the limitations of that concrete is what's challenging to Bristol." Originally Posted: 2:04 p.m. April 20, 2012 on CBSSports.com - NASCAR Blogger by Pete Pistone |
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