The No. 8 crew replaces the battery in Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Chevy. He went on to finish 11th. Credit: Autostock

Earnhardt Jr. , team still puzzled by Darlington

DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. would purchase Darlington Raceway if International Speedway Corp. president Lesa Kennedy would let him.

And once the transaction was complete, he'd at the very least pave the track's surface. But given an especially bad day, he might just be enticed to detonate the joint.

Southern 500 •   Unofficial Standings •   Unofficial Results •   Lap by Lap Southern 500 Videos Busch banged up Kurt Busch, in need of a pit stop, is saved as the caution flies Waltrip wrecks Todd Bodine gets loose and Michael Waltrip slams into him Hard hit Dale Jarrett gets loose and hits the wall hard on Lap 195 Blown engine Ryan Newman's engine expires on Lap 331 Final laps Jimmie Johnson beats Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon to the checkers Victory Lane Jimmie Johnson celebrates his 2004 Darlington sweep

As usual, Darlington's gritty asphalt gave Earnhardt fits Sunday night in the 55th and final Mountain Dew Southern 500. But he fought it, and battled into the top 10 in the race's late stages before a dead battery halted his momentum.

He battled back to finish 11th overall, but dropped to fourth in the championship point standings with one race left to decide the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

"Ol' place just needs some new asphalt," laughed Earnhardt after sliding out of the Budweiser Chevy. "Believe me, I'll pay it myself. I'll buy the whole damn thing if I could.

"But anyway, good finish for us. It wasn't a great race, wasn't a bad one. I can go home and not lose a bit of sleep over how we ran. We don't traditionally run good at Darlington."

True. Entering the weekend his average finish at "The Lady in Black" was 18th, so Sunday's 11th-place effort was well above the norm. He's content with that. It's the consecutive 33rd-place finishes at Martinsville and Atlanta that have him bummed.

"I was disappointed at the two 33rd-place finishes. That was big," Earnhardt said. "We'd still be in great shape (without them)."

He's not in dire shape as is. But his 72-point deficit to leader Kurt Busch heading into the season finale at Homestead will be quite difficult to overcome.

"That's too many, too many points," Junior said. "We'll go to Homestead and, damn, try our best. But that's a lot of points for one race. Especially the way Jimmie (Johnson) and Jeff (Gordon) ran at the test at Homestead, the way they always run, and the way they've run lately. We'll have to be lucky. Need to be good, too. It's hard to be both at the same time."

That's not to say he's completely given up hope, mind you.

"As long as we're mathematically in it, at least we can go in there with confidence that we're still in this Chase," Earnhardt said. "A lot of guys are way out of it.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"We've fought tooth and nail throughout the whole thing. Doesn't look like it's in our favor right now, but I'm proud of my team still. I'm real proud of my team, real proud of my result."

Early on Earnhardt struggled with an ill handling car. The team continued to adjust on it throughout the day, but could never truly dial it in.

"We got lucky. The caution came out, allowed us to change the battery or we were going to be in bad shape," Junior said. "Not a good car. We've had better racecars here. We've had worse ones, too.

"It's not necessarily the team's fault. We, as a group ... I can't really communicate the way I want to about this track and tell them exactly what I need.

"We'd adjust on the car. We were decent and we'd adjust on it, it'd get worse. We could come back to where, at its best it was a 10th-place car -- at its best. And we could always get back to that but couldn't improve on it. Everything we tried to do made it worse."