Dale Earnhardt Jr. blasts NASCAR track promoters for wanting drivers to do more

From orlandosentinel.com

Did you read Bruce Martin's "Behind the scenes with Dale Earnhardt Jr." article on SI.com?

There is a part in there that talks about Junior going ballistic at NASCAR track promoters who want drivers to do more to promote the sport.

This from Martin:

Earnhardt would also be happy if less were expected of drivers. Case in point. At a recent round-table discussion involving the track promoters of Speedway Motorsports Inc. (SMI), several stressed that they'd like to see drivers do more to help the fans and the tracks in order to sell more tickets at those facilities.

Upon hearing that during a break in his commercial shoot, Earnhardt fired back with a message of his own.

"The race track owners want drivers to do more? Yeah, right. They need to go back to work," he said. "They forgot what it's like to sell tickets. That's their problem. They ain't had to sell tickets for a long time and none of them remember how or knew how or ever learned how.

"They need to get back to working hard and doing their promotions and putting packages together for race fans. They don't want to cut the ticket price but they probably should and get these hotels to quit gouging these people. They can dump that responsibility on drivers all they want but the responsibility really lies in their hands to sell race tickets and they have to get creative in doing it. We already do a lot. We do [bleeping] plenty and they are full of [bleep]."

Earnhardt believes the risk versus reward for a driver offering his opinion often leads to ridicule. That is why some drivers don't open up to the fans and the media.

"There are a lot of great guys in this sport," Earnhardt said. "We do what we do, man. We race as hard as we can race. I don't know what else we can do. I'm not going to be a part of no circus. I'm out there going to race and that is what we do. The cars drive the way they drive and we are driving them as hard as we can and get side-by-side and make it a show. We're driving our butts off."

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