DOVER, Del. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. set a track record on Friday in Dover to capture the pole for Sunday’s AAA 400.
Earnhardt Jr.’s lap of 161.849 mph was enough to hold off point leader Matt Kenseth and Ryan Newman, both of whom came close to knocking him from the top spot. It’s the second pole of the season for Earnhardt Jr. and 13th of his career. And the fact that it came at a non-restrictor plate track, felt pretty good admitted the sport’s most popular driver.
“The car had really good speed and really good balance right off the trailer and felt like we were really competitive and more so than we’ve been here in the past, especially in practice,” Earnhardt Jr. said about his start to the weekend.
“When we put the car into qualifying trim, made a couple mock runs the car again showed really good speed. Wasn’t quite the fastest but the way the car drove was relatively easy and to make the runs we were making was very challenging and the grip in the car was really over the top so I was expecting to put a good lap down and thought we’d be competitive enough to get inside the top 10 pretty easily.”
The last time Earnhardt Jr. sat on the pole was Kentucky in June, he was leading but lost a potential shot at the win when an errant tire carcass came back up the track and into the grille of his No. 88 National Guard Chevrolet. His Chevrolet at Dover has been just as strong leaving the team with little work to do and Earnhardt Jr. pleased from the start.
Made much easier by the fact he’s not counting points or thinking about all the equations that can take place in terms of the Chase. Sitting 11th in points and over 60 points behind Kenseth, the championship is a long shot, but victories are not.
“We’re going to try to win some races before the year’s out,” he said. “I’ll be really disappointed if we don’t win a race this season because I think we’re a better team than we were last year and I felt we came so close so many times. So we’d just like to get out there and get some trophies and the points will take care of themselves when you’re doing that.”
He’s a past winner at Dover, winning the first NASCAR race after the September 11 attacks in 2001. But he hasn’t won yet in 2013 despite the last few weeks where he and crew chief Steve Letarte brought competitive cars to the track, qualifying their down fall. Earnhardt Jr. revealed how disappointed he was about last weekend in New Hampshire when he didn’t qualify better than the sixth place he earned.
Last season Earnhardt Jr. and Letarte started unloading with a better focus on where they started on race day. With such an emphasis on qualifying, it’s been expected to show in race results.
“The longer we work together the better we get at it and the more we understand each other and the more he understands what I need in the car,” Earnhardt Jr. said about his crew chief. “We’ve also kept the majority of the team intact from the beginning and that’s so important to keep that together if you can because everybody learns what they can about each other.”
Following their fast Friday, the driver wasn’t afraid to admit that Letarte was responsible in more ways than one.
“Steve’s really good and he’s made me a better race car driver and he makes his engineers better and he’s really good at his job,” he admitted. “He deserves a lot of credit for us improving and being able to get these poles and just qualifying better.”
