Dale Earnhardt Jr. suspects something nefarious from drivers who blow out their tires following Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victories.

For whatever reason, the practice has become more commonplace since the advent of the Gen-6 race car back in 2013. In the name of parity, the NASCAR rule book has become so thick and detailed that it doesn’t provide many avenues for teams to work in to find an advantage.

A popular opinion in the garage nowadays is that winners destroy their tires while doing burnouts so they can damage the back-end of their cars to such a degree that NASCAR can’t put it through a rigorous post-race technical inspection.

It’s a perspective that Earnhardt subscribes to.

"It just seems like the [current] Gen-6 car once everybody started figuring out how to trick the underbody and things like that everybody blows the tires out," Earnhardt said. "It is just hard for me to see the logic in suspending a crew chief, car chief for some tape flapping on the spoiler when the winner drives into Victory Lane with the rear of the car tore all to hell. I don’t see how that doesn’t come across anybody’s conscious or common sense. I don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

"And it never has, I have been kind of waiting all this time for NASCAR to eventually say look you know we would just rather you guys not blow the tires out. They talk about not wanting to be the ‘fun police’ being the ‘fun police’ is not on the radar of their damn problems. You know, I don’t think they need to worry about — that is a cop out in my opinion. But, I think that you can do burnouts without blowing the tires out. That happened for years."

Earnhardt's teammate Chase Elliott was docked 15 points for unapproved aerodynamic modifications at Chicagoland Speedway last weekend. Elliott finished second to Martin Truex Jr. appeared to have tape on his spoiler after the race.

More to the point, Earnhardt says it's obvious to him why drivers are executing monster burnouts and it has nothing to do with the current Cup Series title sponsor.

"NASCAR needs to step up," he said. "They’re the governing body. It’s obvious it’s done intentionally. It’s not unintentional. And you cannot tech the race car. They have to jack it up and put tires on it. If you’re watching the video of these crewman trying to fix that tape on that spoiler of [Elliott’s] car, imagine what the hell’s going on with the car that gets to jack it up and put tires on it before it can go across the LIS.

"We could go on and on about it. It’s something I don’t really got to worry about no more after the end of this season. But, I’ve been feeling this way about the blowouts for a long time. It’s like damn, why don’t they just tell them to stop. You can do a damn burnout without blowing the tires out."