 | | Dale Earnhardt Jr. was forced high because his car would not go on the low groove. Credit: Autostock |
By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
September 25, 2006
07:03 PM EDT (23:03 GMT)
DOVER, Del. -- After two performances that he classified, by association, as mediocre, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is still optimistic about his chances for his first Nextel Cup championship. After carping about his 13th-place New Hampshire kickoff in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, and reportedly saying that a bad day at Dover would still result in a top-15 finish, Earnhardt's No. 8 Chevrolet struggled all day with ill-handling that induced horrendous tire wear -- and a 21st-place finish. "It's another frustrating day, but what can you do?" Earnhardt said. "The car was good early on in the high line. I could really get a run on a lot of guys running up top, but we were never worth a damn in the low groove. "The nose would push, push, push all day and it got worse and worse as the race went on. We struggled a little bit [so] we're lucky we finished 21st." Earnhardt now sits in the same seventh position he came into Dover -- though he fell a further 22 points behind new leader and race winner Jeff Burton. He's no less optimistic about his title chances, but he also said Kyle Busch and Kasey Kahne were still contenders, when those two men both said their championship hopes were "done" after they hit trouble for their second consecutive Chase outings. "I think Kasey and Kyle Busch still got a shot," Earnhardt said. "I don't know. It's going to be hard but you're never out of it -- [my] hopes are great. "We're a hundred points out with eight races [to go] -- that's plenty [of time]. We just gotta do great [and] win some races." Heading to Race 3 of the Chase, Earnhardt is 102 points behind Burton and feeling sporty. "Hopefully, we'll do better in the next several weeks," Earnhardt said. "We've been lucky to be only 100-some [points] behind. That's pretty fortunate right now." Sunday, Earnhardt started 13th for the second consecutive week and raced up to second by lap 100 of 400. He was far from happy with his car's performance, but was a gaming 13th halfway through the race and was still in the top 10 with 240 laps down. A Goodyear tire representative said the company's engineers were closely monitoring the No. 8 car after it experienced heavy tire wear and that Earnhardt's flat right-front tire, which caused a green-flag pit stop at Lap 282 that cost him two laps to the leader, was caused when the tire simply "wore out" after 76 laps on the car. "We took two tires to try and get some track position," Earnhardt said. "We were hanging on to the top 10, but then the [right-front] tire started going down and we dropped back." A caution at Lap 298 locked him into being two laps down, and he lost a third lap before the race ended. "After that [caution] it was a case of trying to pick off whatever cars were on our lap," Earnhardt said. "It's not a good day, but it could certainly have been a lot worse if we would have crashed when the tire went down." Earnhardt's spirits are even more bolstered by the fact that he's won 10 races at the eight remaining venues in the Chase -- though five of the victories are at Talladega. He also said he personally would try a different tack in preparing his team for the upcoming Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway -- leaving out the post-event "pep talk" he gave them after New Hampshire. "We had pretty much the same performance this week so I'm not going to talk to them [at] all this week," Earnhardt said. "We'll see if that works." | 
