Fifth-place finish enough to keep Junior's Chase alive (cont'd)

On Lap 177, he came on his team radio and asked: "Where's the 2?"

He didn't realize that the 2 car of Busch was no longer the foe directly in front of him in the points.

With 65 laps left in the event, as Johnson took the lead, Earnhardt slipped to fifth and was 107 points behind Harvick, who was running 21st.

"The car's starting to drag a little bit. It's real bouncy," Earnhardt complained on his radio.

The No. 17 car of Matt Kenseth was gaining on him -- quickly -- and soon temporarily took fifth-place away.

"It's very, very rough," Earnhardt told his team on the radio of his car's handling.

By Lap 200, with 50 to go, he had lost ground again in the points and was 136 behind Harvick. He did get a run on Kenseth to reclaim fifth shortly thereafter, but on Lap 210, Earnhardt came on his radio and worried that disaster had just struck.

"I think I've got a flat tire," he said.

Fortunately for him, it came at precisely the time he and the other leaders were about to cycle in for green-flag pit stops anyway. He took on two right-side tires and got off pit road as fast as he could, but was all the way back to 10th by the time he got back on the track.

From there, he battled back to fifth -- but it was the best he could do.

It doesn't look like it will be good enough, but at least the effort kept him mathematically alive heading into Richmond. So it could have been worse.

Afterward, Earnhardt made a quick exit. Asked for his post-race thoughts, he was brief and to the point.

"Hot, tired. Real tired," he said, and he looked it after a race that began with temperatures on the track in the 140-degree range.

Then he added: "I would like to thank my team. They worked hard. It's so hot out there, you get aggravated. You're never satisfied. But I'd like to think they can run just as good without me, but I would never be able to run that good without them. I want to thank my team."

And then Earnhardt was gone. His crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., never even saw Junior after the race.

"He probably got out of here pretty quick. As hot as it was today, I don't blame him," Eury said. "I told him good job on the radio, and he seemed pretty happy."

As frustrating as his No. 8 team's situation is at the moment, Eury said mishaps earlier in the season -- such as four races they couldn't finish because of blown motors -- were to blame for the predicament.

"Yeah, it's frustrating," Eury said. "But you've got to look at is as, we put ourselves in that position. You can't fix it in two races. We got here by having errors, have motors blow up, and stuff like that. We'll just have to chalk it up as we've just had too many problems."

And that is all Earnhardt and his team have left to hang onto when it comes to their Chase hopes, which are hanging by the thinnest of threads.

"You've always got a shot until they say it's over," Eury said. "Somebody can have a problem like we've had all year, blowing up motors and just stupid stuff happening. We'll see."