Prior to Saturday's Xfinity Series race at Pocono Raceway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was known as a NASCAR Hall of Famer, a two-time Xfinity Series champion and a two-time Daytona 500 winner, among many other notable accolades. After the checkered flag waved, he added Xfinity Series crew chief winner to that list after leading rookie Connor Zilisch to victory at the Tricky Triangle.
Earnhardt Jr. was filling in for Zilisch's full-time crew chief, Mardy Lindley, who was serving a one-race suspension for two loose lug nuts following the race at Nashville Superspeedway on May 31. Once news broke that the JR Motorsports co-owner would be making his debut atop the pit box, fans were eager to see how he would do in a position that was new to him.
While the excitement behind his crew chief debut was clear, one driver saw things from a different perspective. Two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch spoke with Dalton Hopkins of Frontstretch prior to the race and shared his thoughts.
"It's all publicity, but spin it how you want it," Busch said. "He's just going to be a warm body sitting on top of the box. You know, they've got enough stuff from the shop and enough technology these days of being able to have the crew chief still involved. So, I could say I could do the same thing with one of my truck teams, but the guys at the shop would be the ones handling it.
"Still, great, you know, cool. Eyeballs, and putting some attention on their team, and stuff like that. I mean, JRM is one of the top two, three teams in the Xfinity Series. So, let the best man win."
Busch later clarified what he meant by his comments on his X account following Zilisch's win in the Explore the Pocono Mountains 250 on Saturday.
"This has nothing to do with with any animosity towards Dale Jr.," Busch tweeted. "I'm referencing how silly the suspensions for crew chiefs are these days with all the technology they have to stay in contact with their teams. I'd say the same thing if (Jeff Gordon) went on a (Hendrick Motorsports) box as a crew chief."
Denny Hamlin reacts to Kyle Busch's comments
Fresh off his runner-up finish in Sunday's Cup Series race at Pocono, Hamlin reacted to Busch's comments on his Actions Detrimental podcast. He looked at it more from a 50-50 perspective.
"I think we've got to give Dale Jr. a little bit of due and certainly, don't want to undersell the fact that the team was doing the heavy lifting," Hamlin stated. "I think that the answer can be somewhere in between of Kyle Busch says he's nothing but a warm body up there - the TV sells it as if he's an actual crew chief - I think the answer is probably somewhere in between. But you still got to be responsible, right?
"You got to get the messages to the driver, and he saw opportunities, strategy wise, and he's probably talking to the engineers about the strategy. The result was he was walking to Victory Lane at the end of that race and obviously, Connor drove that car fantastic."
To be fair, the communication between the teams when it comes to receiving information from the engineers or from the shop is nothing new. Even if Earnhardt Jr. did not make all the decisions, though, he still led Zilisch to victory by getting everything communicated to his driver and giving him helpful advice throughout the race regarding the restarts and certain things he was familiar with as a driver himself.
To top it all off, Earnhardt Jr. has a perfect winning percentage as a crew chief. Who knows if the opportunity will present itself again, but he certainly made the most of it on Saturday and returned to Victory Lane in a role that was entirely new to him.