I found this at NASCAR's site.
TALLADEGA, Ala. -- The grandstand capacity of Talladega Superspeedway is listed at 143,000. Depending on whom you ask, about 120,000 of those are Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans.
And most of those were hopping mad when a couple of NASCAR decisions didn't go their way. First, NASCAR ruled that Jeff Gordon was ahead of Earnhardt Jr. when a caution came out while the two were battling for the lead.
Jeff Gordon was pelted with trash on the way to victory lane. Credit: AP
The caution froze the field, which put Gordon in the lead. And with four laps to go, NASCAR does not display the red flag, not does the sanctioning body allow one lap of green flag racing.
Thus, Gordon won the race, and Earnhardt Jr. never got another chance to win under green.
The result? A shower of beer cans littered the track in the final two laps, and boos rained down from the grandstands.
"I guess you could look at it as a form of expression," Earnhardt Jr. said. "We can only speculate why they did that, but I'm sure each little beer can had its own message to it. Luckily it wasn't seat cushions (which fans threw on the track at Daytona in 2002). Those (cushions) are a lot harder for your car to climb over.
"And if you noticed, there wasn't anyone throwing their Budweiser away. All I saw was Coors. What's that tell you? I guess those last few swallows of a Coors really ain't that good."
While Earnhardt Jr. joked about it, other drivers weren't happy.
"It was kind of disappointing," Kevin Harvick said. "The tape is what it is. If it's wrong, they'll go back and fix it. It's kind of selfish on the fans part. I love them to death, but you've got to play by the rules and you've got to do what's right. There's no calling a foul ball fair. If the tape shows that, then it is.
"They say right in the drivers' meeting what the lap number when we don't go to red. That's what it is."
Rookie Brendan Gaughan was just as vocal.
"Junior fans need to learn how to take it easy," Gaughan said. "They did a little extra damage to these racecars that we didn't need to do. I saw a bunch of beer cans, bunch of Pepsi cans laying out there.
"There are certain things that we have to do in this sport. In the drivers' meeting, they layed it out: 183 and we don't red flag it. If they could have got it green they could have, but when the fans started throwing stuff on the racetrack, there went any shot of a restart."
Gaughan's teammate, Ryan Newman, said it was "pretty embarrassing" for NASCAR when fans throw things on the track before the race was over.
"I guess it was all those Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans," Newman said.
NASCAR vice president Jim Hunter said the fans who threw cans on the track were "in a small minority."
"And actually, they were showing their disgust to the wrong people, to the drivers who had raced their cans off all day," Hunter said. "It's not the drivers' decision; it's NASCAR's decision. And I think a little bit of that might have been Earnhardt fans being frustrated."
Robby Gordon, who finished fifth, said the fans deserved a green-flag finish.
"I saw Jeff get hit with a bunch of (cans)," Gordon said. "How can I say it politically correct? There's no reason this race couldn't have gone back green.
"I think you would've definitely seen a different result in Victory Lane. I don't know if we would've won or Junior would've won or Kevin Harvick or Jimmie Johnson, but it would've been a whale of a finish. That's what these fans pay to see."
But the finish would have been too wild for NASCAR's liking.
"Here and Daytona, we're not going to run a one-lap shootout just because of safety," Hunter said. "We feel like here and Daytona, those just aren't places to do that."
Clearly, some fans disagreed Sunday.