NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. agrees with Denny Hamlin on frustrating 'problem'

NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. has become the latest to highlight a 'problem' with the sport that reared its head once again at Martinsville last Sunday after Denny Hamlin also spoke out this week.

Stage breaks in NASCAR have been a controversial topic ever since their introduction in 2017, but one particular aspect of them continues to cause particular frustration - laps wasted under yellow after a stage break.

With Martinsville being a short track, it was particularly noticeable on Sunday. In stage one, for example, the stage ended under caution when a yellow was thrown on lap 78, and the race did not go green again until lap 96.

In total, by the end of the race, 54 full laps (13.5% of the race) had been spent under caution, with 29 of these (7.25% of the race) having been during stage breaks, if you include the lap 78 caution. These are only full laps, too, and do not include the laps in which the caution was actually thrown.

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Earnhardt Jr. responds to Denny Hamlin comments

Hamlin first spoke about this on his Actions Detrimental podcast earlier this week, clearly stating: "We're running for too long under caution. We have to find a way to shorten them up."

The Joe Gibbs Racing star did admit it's not an easy dilemma to fix, though, with TV needing time to air their commercials during the stage breaks.

Earnhardt Jr first responded to those comments on X, stating: "He's right. It's also chewing into the next stage and shortening up those parts of the race: taking product off the shelf."

Now, speaking on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, Earnhardt Jr. has gone deeper.

Earnhardt Jr.'s problem with stage cautions

“I don't really have a problem with the length of cautions in a general part of the race where it's a natural yellow, right?” Earnhardt Jr. began. “NASCAR’s usually got a good reason why a caution is what it is.

“My comment, and I think some of Denny's points too, was the length of the stage break cautions. But let's all talk about the realistic possibilities of that.”

The NASCAR legend continued: “NASCAR is not just going to get rid of stage cautions, they're just not. No, my problem really is that it eats into the next stage.

“Pocono is a perfect example. They eat into like 20 percent of the stage with the caution. Look, the stage cautions are manufactured yellows. They are what they are. It shouldn't eat into the remaining part of the race.

“I don't know what you do because you got teams, teams are going to say, ‘Well, we got all this data that we got all these computers, we're running all these programs to do fuel mileage’. NASCAR has scoring systems that would probably go apes**t if you were to be scoring this caution lap, but not this caution lap.

“I don't know what the technical challenges are, but I don't like the idea that the stage break caution takes 20 percent off of the next stage.”

After being told how long Sunday’s race spent under caution at the end of stage one, Earnhardt Jr. concluded: “That is not okay.”