Dale Earnhardt Jr. analyzes lead up, fight between Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Busch

As the dust continues to settle on the post-All Star Race fight between Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Kyle Busch, the analysis is still rolling in. That includes more thoughts from NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt Jr., who broke down the lead-up to the incident.

Temperatures rose after the second lap when Stenhouse ended up in the wall at North Wilkesboro Speedway. He argued Busch pushed him into the wall and caused him to crash as the cars went three-wide – something Busch didn’t appreciate. At that point, Earnhardt said, he had a decision to make.

It’s similar to the comments Denny Hamlin had on the situation. However, Earnhardt said he understands why Stenhouse did what he did during the race by going three-wide.

“I think that there’s an arrow issue where – and we’ve seen it and the guys talk about it … where when somebody gets on your left side, it makes you tight,” Earnhardt said on Dirty Air. “And now, I think that Denny’s correct in that Stenhouse didn’t touch him, but Stenhouse gave Kyle a choice: lift or hit the wall. Kyle hits the wall and says, ‘Well, it wouldn’t happen if he wouldn’t have run three wide. Why are we going three wide on the second lap of the race?’ Stenhouse says, it’s an All-Star Race. Every restart, gotta take advantage of it. He’s right.

“That looked like Kyle Busch driving that 47 car through the middle, did it not? Have we not seen Kyle Busch do the exact same thing? Try his best to do everything he can on restarts to take advantage? And Stenhouse is right. Short race, not a lot of opportunity to – passes are difficult. He saw that and felt that in practice. He probably knew, gotta get everything you can on restarts. Teams preach that all week long. Restarts, get everything you can, try your hardest. He just was doing that. Could Kyle have done some things? Maybe not hit the wall? I think so. Did Ricky Stenhouse physically run him in the fence? No. Did he deserve to get wrecked? Did Stenhouse deserve to get crashed? No. Does Stenhouse go home if he can leave the track? Yes.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was ‘stewing’ after wreck

Of course, there was another important factor in Stenhouse’s response to the situation. He couldn’t leave the track, meaning he waited for 198 more laps until the checkered flag to let everything out. The picture of him waiting for Busch quickly made its way around social media, too.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. – who tweeted his desire to “cement up all the tunnels at these tracks” after the race – knows how that can go, comparing it to a race when his dad had to leave early after a crash. It was at Bristol, and he couldn’t leave, so they watched the race together from the track. That amount of time meant Stenhouse had to think through his next steps, and the rest was history.

“I was around when you couldn’t get out of a lot of these racetracks,” Earnhardt said. “When I was younger, Dad would crash. … He’s at Bristol, he wrecked on pit road. One of his very first races with Richard Childress in 1981. We couldn’t get out. So there we are, watching the rest of the race.

“That definitely played a role in him sitting there stewing. And he’s going, ‘I’m damn sure – I’m gonna tell you, I am gonna do this.’ I bet he was like, he got out mad thinking, ‘Man, I said what I said, but I’m gonna calm down.’ … And then, he stood there a while and stood there a while and he went, ‘I’m gonna do it. Maybe I have to do it. Maybe I have to do it because I said I was gonna do it.'”