DARLINGTON, S.C. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on Thursday that he’s not surprised by the storm of controversy generated by last weekend’s wreck at Richmond International Raceway.

Earnhardt and Kyle Busch Jr. were battling for the lead with less than three laps remaining in the race when contact sent Earnhardt Jr.’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet backing into the wall.

Busch went on to finish second, putting the Joe Gibbs Racing driver atop NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series point standings while Earnhardt Jr. finished 15th and saw his winless streak reach 72 consecutive races.

“It was a big deal,” Earnhardt Jr. said of the wreck after Thursday’s first Cup practice session at Darlington Raceway, site of Saturday night's Dodge Challenger 500. “Somebody was saying the other day, ‘Ah, that was a bad deal.’ It was a bad deal for me and I was pretty frustrated by it, but it’s exciting for the sport and whether I want to deny it or not, there are people out there that enjoyed it.

“Kyle, he’s got some fans I’m sure. And there might be a lot of people that aren’t his fans but just don’t like me.

“It wasn’t good for us, and that was disappointing; I wanted to get a better finish than 15th.”

That he had to be back in his No. 88 car on Monday for a test session at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, he said, helped put the incident behind him.

“Get back in the car, get to racing, get to working, that’s the best way to get over that,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “You sit at home, it’s hard to get over it because you’re thinking about it, what you could have done, should have done, how it could have played out differently. There’s no real answer for that [so you just] get back in the car and get to work.”

Earnhardt Jr. called the incident “avoidable” and said neither he nor Busch were at fault, regardless of how it looked to the sold-out crowd and a national TV audience.

“I blew turns 1 and 2 real bad so I pushed way up the track,” he said. “He saw that and almost had me cleared off of [Turn] 2. I got back beside him down the back straightaway, had a pretty good run. I went in the corner ... I didn’t go in there as high as I’d been going; I was about a half a car length lower, and I think he was anticipating me going in where I’d been running. I anticipated him going in on the bottom because he’d been running real tight on the apron. We both sort of ran into each other.

“... A lot of people think it was intentional; I don’t think it was. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.”