For Earnhardt, one chapter ends, and a new one looms (cont'd)

"The 29 car looks like a choo-choo train," Eury told his driver over the radio. And indeed, a small but prominent plume of steam emerged from the overflow valve of Harvick's yellow racecar. A few cars were off the track because of accidents, but none had been announced as officially out. You could almost see it -- a cloud of thick, white smoke suddenly emerging from the rear end of Harvick's car, NASCAR's most popular driver charging to an unthinkable berth in the sport's postseason, and series marketers trading high-fives in the suites above the .75-mile Richmond track.

"I'm just very disappointed for the engine failures that took us basically out of the Chase. We've had a top-five car every week." -- Dale Earnhardt Jr.

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Harvick, dogged to the end, wouldn't let it happen. The steam from under his hood dwindled and disappeared. He charged back into the top 10, this time for good. The brief period of drama waned, and reality settled in. Harvick needed only to finish 32nd or better to clinch his spot, and with 50 laps remaining, 11 cars were out of the event or more than 20 laps down. For each eligible driver, collectibles giant Motorsports Authentics had manufactured 144 caps to be distributed to Chase teams and sold to fans. The ones bearing Earnhardt's number were doomed for the incinerator, like T-shirts crowning the losing team in the Super Bowl that never see the light of day.

And then, with six laps remaining and Earnhardt running third, came the unfortunate exclamation point. "[Bleeping]-A," came the cry from the driver's seat. That old bugaboo, engine failure, had arrived to manifest itself again. Crewmen tossed red mechanic's gloves to the ground. Eury climbed off the pit box, stripped away his radio headset, and walked solemnly toward the garage. The final result was a 30th-place finish that left Earnhardt 198 points shy of the Chase. A lone solace: the margin was larger than the 100-point penalty the team incurred for mounting wing brackets illegally at Darlington.

"I'm just very disappointed for the engine failures that took us basically out of the Chase," Earnhardt said behind his team hauler, surrounded by microphones, after his fifth engine failure this season. "We've had a top-five car every week. My team is very upset, disappointed, and bummed out about it. We've got 10 more races to run together before we may never race together again, and we'll just try to have fun and enjoy the kind of cars we can put on the track and see if we can win a race or two."

For Earnhardt, it's the beginning of the end of one chapter of his career, his long association with Dale Earnhardt Inc., which concludes with the season's final event. His move to Hendrick Motorsports is now but 10 races away. There is no longer a championship, a big picture, to compete for. There are only smaller goals, and a finite amount of time, before this new episode of his life opens to the world.

"I'm going to work really, really hard with my guys," he said. "I promised them that these last several races through the last half of the season that no matter Chase or not, we owed it to ourselves to race hard and work really hard. It would be foolish and uncharacteristic of my team to kind of skip along and ride it out. No matter what the results are, I want my guys to feel when we turn the last lap at Homestead that we worked hard and we had great integrity."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.