Consider Dale Earnhardt Jr. one of the happy bunch regarding Aric Almirola\u2019s victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series at Sonoma.<\/p>\n
No, it wasn\u2019t the Cup Series, but the struggling Almirola needed a victory, and that\u2019s exactly what he got over the weekend. Earnhardt Jr. explained how much that win can help the Stewart-Haas Racing wheelman moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cAric Almirola goes out there, and he beats Kyle Larson and AJ Allmendinger in the Xfinity race. I think that was the biggest surprise of the weekend,\u201d explained Earnhardt, via the Dale Jr Download<\/em><\/a>. \u201cI mean, Aric was fast all weekend. Qualified well, ran well in the race. You know, his team got him in a good position to where he could you know, he could take advantage of what was happening on the race track around him. When he did get the lead, he was fast. Larson was a little bit quicker, but banged his car up a little bit. There was some contact with \u2014 who the hell was it, AJ. That bent the splitter, and I\u2019m going to tell you man, his car was never the same after that. And so, you wouldn\u2019t think something like that could, as fast as his car was, as good as he was, you didn\u2019t think something like that could really make that big of a difference. But he lost a lot of speed.<\/p>\n \u201cI think also being in a little bit of that dirty air behind Aric\u2019s car. And Aric\u2019s car just got so good right there at the end. Good job by Aric, man. He needs that.\u201d<\/p>\n While Almirola hasn\u2019t had the season he desired in 2023, Earnhardt Jr. believes that SHR as a whole has been a letdown, and singling out Almirola is unfair.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been seeing him, man. He\u2019s been getting a lot of hard \u2014 he\u2019s been getting a lot of flack, for how they perform on Sunday. But if you, outside of [Kevin] Harvick, SHR is struggling right now,\u201d added Earnhardt<\/a>. \u201cAs a group, they\u2019re having a hard time figuring this thing out. So he\u2019s not running any worse than any of his other teammates outside of Harvick. You know, Harvick and Rodney Childers, they\u2019re an anomaly. They\u2019re going to always be one, as long as they\u2019re together. But if you look at the rest of that group at SHR, I think Aric\u2019s just not benefitting from whatever\u2019s ailing that organization, is making it difficult for all of those drivers. <\/p>\n \u201cAric gets out of the car, I loved it man, he stands on Victory Lane and he goes, \u2018I know this is just an Xfinity Race,\u2019 I was like, \u2018Man, I know exactly the way he (feels).\u2019 You know, when somebody gets out and just talks genuinely, and he was so happy to be there. So happy to have something to be happy about. And his kids, right? I was watching his kids run up to the car and I was like, \u2018Damn right.\u2019 Getting to win a race, and for your kids, they go to almost every race. His kids are there watching that Sunday performance week in and week out, and they believe in their dad. They love him, they think that he\u2019s the greatest race car driver out there. They watch the frustration and the struggle. They watch him bring it home and deal with it the best he can. They finally got to have their day. Even if it\u2019s just an Xfinity race, like Aric said, it\u2019s still a moment of celebration and elation that those kids are going to remember forever. I really, really loved that moment, especially for Aric, having a little bit of a connection with him here at JR Motorsports.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps Saturday\u2019s victory will lead to an improved second half of the season for Aric Almirola, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes. Only time will tell, but there\u2019s no reason to root against the SHR wheelman over the next couple of months.<\/p>\n The post Dale Earnhardt Jr. reflects on Aric Almirola\u2019s Xfinity race win at Sonoma<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Consider Dale Earnhardt Jr. one of the happy bunch regarding Aric Almirola\u2019s victory in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}