Dale Earnhardt Jr. has never hidden his disregard for NASCAR’s decision to mandate a front splitter on Cup Series race cars a decade ago and hasn’t seen much since to change his mind, either.

Bantering with JR Motorsports executive Mike Davis on their weekly podcast, Earnhardt was asked about Brad Keselowski and his remarks that NASCAR has a "poorly designed car" that is incapable of delivering a show that fans deserve.

Earnhardt quickly made the topic about his distaste for the splitter that was introduced in 2007 (alongside a rear wing) on the Car of Tomorrow.

"I know I have opinions about the car," Earnhardt said. "I hate the splitter. In my opinion, the splitter came with the wing. That was strictly an attempt to … they did want to limit travel with the splitter.

"What we had been trying to do with our previous car was traveling them so much that the fenders were laying across the tires and blowing them out, cause the fender strap was just tearing the top of the tire apart, or (it would) wear into the tire. I'd come in to pit sometime, see a groove in my tire and be like, 'Tony (Eury) Jr., what the hell? Get this thing off the ground.' Literally, we were playing with fire."

But Earnhardt believes NASCAR's reasons were more than just practical -- he thinks they were also an attempt to reach a younger audience and turn them into fans.

"I understand that the splitter was there to limit travel, but I've always thought the wing and the splitter was like a desperate attempt to grasp at the younger demographic," Earnhardt said. "This tech-and-tune generation, these kids that put all this tech into their cars. If you go to the (NASCAR Technical Institute,) you'll see these kids with wings on everything.

"They'll put a wing on anything."

After three and a half seasons with boxy looking race cars, complete with wings and spoilers, NASCAR ditched the wings in lieu of a more traditional spoiler by May 2010. Earnhardt, the most prominent lobbyist of the #TeamValence movement on Twitter, wishes the splitter had left with it.

Instead, the splitter was retained when NASCAR introduced the showroom mimicking Gen-6 machine back in 2013.

"NASCAR finally gave up on it, the wing at least, and went back to the old spoiler that had worked so well for the past 75 years," Earnhardt said. "But they will not give up on the splitter. I don't know what it is about this damn splitter. I've never liked it. I don't like driving a car with it on there. I don't like driving a car that's sliding across the race track with a splitter."

He also believes the splitter is responsible for the competition woes on downforce tracks, as well.

"All it does is make every car and every team live in the same place," Earnhardt said. "We all set our cars up to run right on top of the ground with that splitter. What it does is equalize the field because we all run the same travel. We all run with pretty much the same wheel rates in the front end to run right on top of the ground with that splitter ... That's why I think all the cars are so similar with speed.

"Like from first to 25th, there's not a lot of speed disparity there. So that's not conducive to passing. When you had the valence that was grinding off or not grinding off depending on how you had the car set up, guys were living in a much larger window as far as front travel and set up. So you might, you have two inches between one guy and the next guy, and that would have the cars run and feel different.

"With the splitter, every car runs it on the track and stays there. Every car. So every car is the exact same in the corner and every one of them is going to run about the same speeds."

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