Wheels fall off of Junior's day-long battle at Atlanta

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. avoided potential disaster time after time in Sunday's Pep Boys Auto 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, rallying on several occasions with the help of his pit crew to put himself in a position for the win.

That is, until disaster finally struck in the form of a loose left-rear wheel that sent Junior careening hard into the wall one lap into the green-white-checkered restart and saddling him with a 25th-place finish.

"Man, that was a hit," Earnhardt said. "It was hard and loud -- bam into that wall. I knew when I was sliding up there it was gonna be big ... and it was.

"We lost a left-rear wheel. We must have had an issue with the hubs or something because we had loose lugs and a loose left-rear wheel several times through the day. When that wasn't a problem, we were fast as hell. We passed a lot of cars [Sunday] but you can only do that if everything is tight and screwed on correctly."

Junior said he realized something was wrong when he stopped for two right-side tires on his final pit stop, but there was little he could do about the situation until it was too late.

"I knew we had a loose wheel on our last long run at the end of the race, but when we pitted the last time, we changed two right-side tires to get track position, but the left side was still loose," he said. "It must have gotten worse during the yellow flags."

Junior walked away from the crash, although he was still hoping for an excuse to skip Monday's Car of Tomorrow tire test.

"All I know is I have a headache and I'm going to my bus to rest up," he said. "I did tell the medical staff, 'Hey, if you say I'm injured, I can go home and I won't have to test here the next few days.' But I'm all right and they wouldn't go for it."

Things seemed to go wrong right from the drop of the green flag. Starting fifth, the No. 8 immediately dropped to the bottom groove as Earnhardt tried to find a reason for a lack of power. Then after rebounding to sixth, Earnhardt hit the commitment cone leading to pit road following a Lap 34 caution, which resulted in him being placed at the tail end of the lead-lap cars.

"We had ignition problems at the very start, then got penalized for barely touching the cone at the entrance to the pit lane," Earnhardt said. "We really had a fast car, but we had one thing after another that went wrong and we'd fight back every time."

Junior restarted in 35th place but worked his way up through the field, running second behind teammate Martin Truex Jr. on Lap 103. But within 10 laps, he began to feel something wrong with one of his tires and was forced to make an unscheduled stop.

"I thought I had a tire going flat so we stopped under green and it turns out it wasn't flat and we lost a lap," Earnhardt said.

Stuck one lap down to the leaders, Earnhardt finally received the free pass when Bobby Labonte crashed on Lap 162 -- and once again fought his way back to the front. By Lap 189, he had passed eventual winner Jimmie Johnson for 10th. Within six more laps, he caught Jeff Burton for seventh just as the caution came out for David Stremme's accident.

Unfortunately, the loose tire situation resurfaced at the most inopportune time for the No. 8 team.

"We fought like mad to get back to the front, and we did, but we had a loose wheel on one of the long runs and I just did all I could to hold my position," Junior said.

Earnhardt was third behind Denny Hamlin and Johnson on the restart when Hamlin's car bobbled. Junior avoided that problem, but on the ensuing restart, the wheels finally came off, literally.

"We were just hoping that wheel would hold on and get to the finish," he said. "It didn't."