Earnhardt blows engine, damages Chase hopes

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. saw his hopes of qualifying for the Chase for the Nextel Cup take a blow Sunday when, for the fourth time this season, an engine failure in the Centurion Boats at The Glen sent him to the garage early.

But neither Earnhardt nor his Dale Earnhardt Inc. organization is showing any sign of giving up, despite finishing 42nd Sunday and falling another position in the standings.

Earnhardt dropped from 13th in the standings to 14th, 100 points behind Kurt Busch, who finished 11th.

Lap-by-Lap

Read how Jeff Gordon spun out in the closing laps, giving the lead to Tony Stewart.

• Lap-by-Lap, click here
• Video Highlights, click here

"It won't be easy, but we've done a whole lot harder stuff than that," Earnhardt said. "I can handle it. We'll just come back and try again. I'm going to make sure that I show my confidence in my team and make sure that I show them that I'm not giving up -- and they'll follow suit.

"They'll show me a thing or two [and] we'll get something out of this."

After a track vehicle pushed his No. 8 Chevrolet to the garage, Junior took full blame. He said a number of engine over-revs through the weekend had done him in.

"I think it was due to some of the downshifts I was doing during practice -- we just beat on the motor too hard," Earnhardt said. "I think we was just too rough on it. The motor was good [and] the car was really, really good."

DEI's director of motorsports Richie Gilmore -- the organization's former head engine builder -- said Earnhardt's day was doomed by a valve train failure in his car's Chevy SB2 engine, which was not from the new DEI/Richard Childress Racing engine program.

"That was still a DEI combination," Gilmore said. "But it doesn't matter whose combination it is, if you turn 10,000 RPMs four or five times in practice Saturday and then you do it in the race, you're not going to finish the race.

"That's what Junior was talking about when he apologized to the team. It broke a valve spring and I don't think there's any valve spring in the world that would hold up to that."

Earnhardt said he had no gross over-revs in the race, but he knew his role.

"We didn't turn anything over 10,000 during the race, but during practice all weekend, I was having trouble with the car and struggling -- I was using the downshift to slow the car down and get some speed out of the thing," he said.

"We might have beat on the motor too hard this weekend, but [our engines] have been really good this year. We have had a lot of gremlins, but as far as failure in parts -- rods and things like that -- we haven't had them."

Earnhardt suffered engine failures earlier this season at California, Texas and Indianapolis.

"It's very unfortunate, because everybody looks at it as two engine failures in three weeks, and unfortunately it's circumstances that are out of our control," Gilmore said. "California, we broke a [valve] spring and here we broke a spring, and Indy, we broke a part, the front mandrill.

"But this one here and Texas -- I mean, it's a team -- but both of them were driver-related. At Texas, when we got in the wreck when Kyle Busch hit us, it was over-revved and all the valves hit the pistons, and when we went back out, we broke a valve.

"So the car was demolished, but at the end of the day it had a blown engine."

Not only did Earnhardt lose ground to Busch, he fell four points behind Busch's Penske Racing teammate, Ryan Newman, who survived several incidents to finish 13th. Busch was hit with a pit road speeding penalty under a debris caution that flew right after Earnhardt's engine failed. Busch got knocked back into the pack as a result of having to restart at the end of the line, but finished 11th.

"It was a good day," Busch said. "We worked our way up all the way to second at one point. We tried to be conservative on fuel and that put us in the back of the pack -- all those yellows at the end made it too tough to pass.

"[But] it was good for the points. That finish bumped us up just a little bit -- [and] every little bit counts."

In the end, the outcome was a disappointing one to a day it seemed Earnhardt's team had saved.

After declaring after practice that his team would have to improve to contend in the race, Earnhardt's team had done just that through the first two-thirds of the Centurion Boats at The Glen.

He started 14th when the lineup was determined by owner points but marched halfway to the lead in the first 10 laps. From that seventh position, he advanced to second by lap 50 and was fourth on lap 60.

But on the 64th lap, Earnhardt's car faltered and then coasted a while before he pulled off on the backstretch.

"I am real proud of my team -- we were terrible all weekend but that car was good during the race -- it was fun to drive," Earnhardt said. "I thought we were putting on a show, we were working really hard and had something to be proud of -- now all kind of disappointed, but we will come back next week."

Gilmore said little will change in the team's focus.

"We have to go back to the shop and look at what happened and evaluate that," Gilmore said. "But you can't get conservative because the people you are beating are top-notch organizations.

"So we'll have to go back and look at what happened, evaluate it and make changes as we need to."