Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to severity of penalties stemming from Kyle Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. fight

“Wow, I’m surprised by the severity of all these penalties,” Earnhardt Jr. posted on social media, echoing the sentiment of many NASCAR fans who were reacting to the news.

Of course, Stenhouse Jr. did wait for Busch after the race, and begin the altercation with a well-thrown right hand. However, Busch wrecked the No. 47 out of the All-Star Race for seemingly no good reason, and NASCAR has certainly benefitted from the publicity and the altercation going viral.

Regardless, NASCAR decided what Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and his team did was an egregious violation, and now the No. 47 team will pay the price, while Kyle Busch and the No. 8 squad looks to move on from the situation.

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

Earlier this week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. also broke down the lead-up to the incident between Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Kyle Busch.

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. 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.”

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.