Dale Earnhardt Jr. confronts Connor Zilisch over roof hatch celebration troll: ‘I assume they’re cheating’

Dale Earnhardt Jr. filled in as Connor Zilisch’s crew chief this past weekend at Pocono Raceway. The JR Motorsports wheelman ended up winning the race in grand fashion, and he climbed out of the roof hatch to celebrate on the track.

On the latest episode of the Dale Jr. Download, Zilisch joined Earnhardt Jr. to discuss the win and the subsequent celebration. After the two-time Daytona 500 champion previously stated that anyone who climbs out of the roof hatch after a win is cheating, the young driver admitted to trolling his crew chief a little bit.

“I said on this show several weeks ago, ‘If anybody gets out of the roof hatch, I assume they’re cheating,’ they’ve cheated up the roof hatch,” Earnhardt Jr. stated. “NASCAR, when they check it later, if they find something, ‘I opened it. It must’ve happened when we opened it to celebrate.’ I’ll tell you where this comes from. I had a teammate, Michael Waltrip, Slugger Labbe, the blue No. 15. When we went to Talladega and Daytona, I knew I was racing the No. 15 for the win. Me and him were going to help each other if we could, and it really came down to who was leading in the end, who was going to win, who was going to help.

“If I could cycle myself early in the race in front of him, then obviously he was going to help me win. If he was in front late, I was going to be the one helping him. I knew what they did to their cars, and I knew what we did to our cars. We’d come down pit road early in the race, start taking rounds out of both back springs, getting the car down. You’d cross the tech legal, and then you’d make it illegal in the race. Everybody did all these things, but when we were doing it — I knew that Slugger was aggressive, and we were too, with our car. We had to be. We were sharing a lot of information, but there were other things that maybe we didn’t share.

“Michael would come out of the roof hatch when they won. I’m like, ‘They must be messing with that roof hatch. I bet that roof hatch is cheated up,’ because if you can raise that roof hatch a little bit during the lap, it will knock the air off the spoiler. I’m like, ‘I bet they’re doing something.’ So, that’s kind of where I’ve carried that from. You don’t see many people pop out of the roof hatch. If they’re doing it at Daytona and Talladega, I’m absolutely thinking your ass is cheating. I don’t care if it’s JR Motorsports. Now, everybody’s coming out of the roof hatch when we win.”

It’s a pretty interesting point from Earnhardt Jr. regarding the roof hatch. However, it gave veteran JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier a great idea, and Zilisch executed the moment to perfection after his Pocono win.

“Justin told me before the race, ‘If you win the race, you have to get out of the roof hatch,’ because you were my crew chief and you said that,” Zilisch told Earnhardt Jr. “So yeah, that was the first thing I did when I stopped. I popped that thing open and climbed out.”

Even after the win, Earnhardt Jr. has no love for the roof hatch. He later proclaimed his hatred for them: “I hate them. I think they’re goofy looking,” the NASCAR Hall of Famer said. “I know why they’re there, if you like get trapped up against a fence or something in a crash, you can climb out of the car, when popping the side window out, climbing that way with all the headrests is just not possible.

“So, I understand why we have them. … I think it’s like, cartoonish. But hey, I’ve never come out of one. Maybe I would enjoy it.”

Regardless, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Connor Zilisch made a dang good team at Pocono Raceway. It was a landmark moment for the two men, as JR Motorsports celebrated the night away in Pennsylvania last Saturday.