Dale Earhardt Jr., the son of the legendary NASCAR racer Dale Earhardt, has recently made a statement about the strategy he and his guys incorporated in his 2007 Chase for the Nextel Cup.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave this statement to MSN:

“We might have talked ourselves into making too much of a gamble there. We were a top-five car, but we’re here to win, so we made some pretty big changes on that (lap 156) pit stop. We figured if the race stayed green to the finish, we could make one more stop and take just two tires. That seemed like a great strategy. But, it meant we restarted way back in traffic and the car behaved like it was possessed. I’m kinda freaked out because I thought something was broke on the car. I just couldn’t drive it - it was so loose it was like I was wreckin’ every lap. I got pushed out of the groove eventually and that made it worse until I finally spun out. We changed some things back after that, and we were still fast but you can’t make up that much ground on a track like this when it’s so hard to pass. We dropped a lap behind at one stage after we spun, and we ran down and passed Bowyer under green flag conditions, so I feel like we had a car that was fast enough to finish in the top-three or top-five. I guess that’s the gamble you take when you’re trying to win…”

Around the time Dale Earnhardt Jr. reached lap 156, the team opted to have a lengthy pit stop and change all the tires including the front Chevrolet shocks. It just amazes me how changing the shocks could be as noteworthy as having the wheels changed. Not everyone looks at shocks that way. At Bilstein shocks, however, one can find a number of shocks to suit one’s vehicle.