Dale Earnhardt Jr. was as dumbfounded as the rest of the NASCAR world last weekend, when Bayley Currey lost his literal roof during the Craftsman Truck Series event in Atlanta.
Of course, Currey went viral for his roof flying into the wind, which caused him to park his truck for the afternoon in Georgia. Afterwards, Earnhardt gave his thoughts on the matter, elaborating on how he believes NASCAR can ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“One thing about the Truck race. The roof on the truck. They said a piece of debris hit it, and that’s why it deformed. We’ve seen teams do that intentionally, the add downforce. I don’t care, whether they were trying to do that or not. I think that, going forward, when a car has that happening, it has to get black-flagged. Black flag the car, truck, whatever, and it has to come down pit road and get that fixed,” Earnhardt said, via the latest episode of The Dale Jr Download. “That roof coming off is, and I’m not telling NASCAR anything they don’t know, is dangerous. That thing going up into the stands, oh my gosh. I don’t even want to think about it.
“But so I think going forward — we saw it. Everybody saw it. We were talking about it on Twitter. It was this thing that was going on for laps and laps and laps. Black flag. Come to pit road.”
Alas, that makes a ton of sense from Earnhardt, especially his point regarding the roof potentially flying into the crowd. Regardless, the development was a disappointment for the Truck Series wheelman last weekend, as he had a fast car in Atlanta, but had to shut it down after his roof came off.
“We hit a piece of debris early and when that happened, it knocked the left side brace down and there’s so much turbulent air here, trucks moving around and being in the draft,” Currey told Sportsnaut, following the event. “It started flapping and flapping and it’s like a Coke can, you bend it back and forth, and it’s going to break. Basically, the windshield bed separated from the roof, all the braces broke and for about 20 laps, was running with the windshield running on the roll cage.
“I didn’t want to stop because we had a great truck. It was awesome. We could have won the race but it kept getting worse and worse and worse. I could feel the drag getting into the truck, could feel it getting colder inside the truck. It started whistling down the backstretch and I knew it coming.”
We’ll see what NASCAR decides to do if the situation ever arises again moving forward. One thing is fore sure, Bayley Currey will be hoping it’s not his truck in question if it does.
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