HAMPTON, Ga. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. was breathing a little easier Sunday night at the Atlanta Motor Speedway after an eighth place finish moved him closer to the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
“I was real thankful the car was as good as it was,” he said after climbing out of his National Guard / Race2Achieve.org Chevrolet. “We have struggled here and not ran great here the last several trips. It’s so hard and it’s such a struggle to get a car that has a good balance and we did.”
With the right balance on the car, the focus on the night became tires. Most notably spinning the tires on the restarts, which was a problem for many drivers. Earnhardt Jr. saw it first hand when teammate Jeff Gordon stacked up the outside lane early and collected Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne – who suffered major damage that ruined their nights – but luckily Earnhardt Jr. was unscathed.
The 88 team carried on and kept Earnhardt Jr. amongst the leaders as the race ran into long green flag runs that saw many cars go a lap down. Not even a potential loose wheel derailed his night. Goodyear brought the new zoned tire and with Atlanta being slick and tough, Earnhardt Jr. said he was worried about it entering the night but that it held up pretty well.
“We had a fast car, a faster car than a lot of guys,” the happy driver said afterwards as he watched his team load up his Chevrolet.
Happy with tires, happy with the car, all Earnhardt Jr. needed was the lane choice. If he had it, he might have “easily” finished in the top five, although perhaps not close enough to Kyle Busch, who ran away with the race over the course of the final 21 laps. But he’ll take his top 10 and head to Richmond and the final race to make the Chase.
“We just get to go there with a really nice cushion on the guys behind us to make the Chase and go to Chicago and enjoy all that experience,” he said.
He’s a three-time winner at RIR, the last in 2006. But recently he hasn’t been on par with his performance and has found himself fighting for a decent finish. The last two seasons he’s had to go to Richmond and fight for his Chase spot, even battling back from an early wreck in 2011.
Last season he won the pole for the event, led 64 of the races first 93 laps, but finished a disappointing 14th. He has just two top 10 finishes in the last nine RIR races.
So this season as the Steve Letarte led team found themselves again heading toward another Chase defining race at Richmond, they decided to utilize one of their NASCAR tests. Hoping that it will lead to a little less stress this time around.
“We tested at Richmond so hopefully that’s going to pay off for us,” Earnhardt Jr. said.
“We worked really hard trying to figure out some things because we haven’t ran great there, similar to Atlanta, in the last several trips. We worked really hard at the test and we’ll see if that worked out for us.”
You know, I’m getting a little tired of these top-10 finishes every so often from Dale Earnhardt Jr. Everyone seems to think with that, we will be Champion. I would like to see more wins. We are treating Earnhardt like he is a rookie…”Oh these top-10s will turn into wins. He will be great someday.” That’s something we should say about Danica Patrick or Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Dale Jr is a veteran driver and should be winning a little more like he had been at D.E.I. Numbers show that he was better at D.E.I. than he is at Hendrick. Six years and just 2 wins within 4 years of each other. Best finish of 7th in the Chase just once…infact his only top-10 finish in the Chase.