For Earnhardt, one chapter ends, and a new one looms

RICHMOND, Va. -- It was a little before 10 p.m. Saturday when the faintest hint of brightness began to creep into what had seemed a desperate situation for Dale Earnhardt Jr. He had spent most of the evening complaining about everything, from the handling in his racecar to the chattering in his brakes to the discomfort of his seat. Then a few adjustments took hold, the No. 8 shot to the front, and the man he needed to beat for a Chase berth saw the faintest geyser of steam emitting from under his hood.

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The scenario no one thought possible seemed unfolding, right here before 112,029 sets of eyes at Richmond International Raceway. He needed a miracle, a race win or a top-five finish, and for Kevin Harvick to place near the back. And he seemed to be getting it -- on a restart with 150 laps remaining, he was in second while Harvick stood 29th after being assessed a penalty for pitting too soon. What had been a 128-point deficit had been whittled down to a mere 37, and the red-clad faithful in the grandstand began to stir with hope.

Even the driver, who seemed surly and frustrated earlier in the race and once questioned why his crew had cost him six positions on a pit stop, seemed relaxed while conducting an in-car interview as the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 was stopped under a red flag.

"Today we're working hard, tomorrow we'll be hardly working," he said in typical driver fashion, relishing the idea of a rare Sunday off. "I can't wait to get out to that lake. I'm not going to get on anything that goes over 5 mph. I'm just going to chill and watch the Redskins. I think they're going to whip Miami."

It was all so hopeful, as much as Earnhardt's quixotic charge of the past four weekends, and equally as futile. For all the promise he and his Dale Earnhardt Inc. team showed Saturday night, too much was out of their control. With each lap, with each caution period, with each car wrecked by another driver, Harvick stealthily closed in on his berth in the sport's 10-race playoff. The question became not whether Earnhardt would make it, but why his team hadn't been able to show all season the kind of sustained excellence they've demonstrated with their backs against the wall.

Saturday night's race was almost a microcosm of Junior's entire season -- rocky at the beginning, good near the end, and ultimately just short of the goal. The normally chatty driver was quiet for long stretches over the team radio, with only the repeated "clear" of spotter Steve Hmiel breaking the silence. When Earnhardt did talk, it was usually to let his crew know that something was wrong.

"Front brakes are vibrating like hell," he said on Lap 107. On Lap 137, it was his seat, which had evidently been adjusted for the Bristol test, and was hurting his back. On Lap 175, it was the vehicle as a whole. "It's not your setup," he told crew chief Tony Eury Jr. "It's the COT. Piece of crap."

But as the race neared its halfway point, the white Chevy began to improve, and on Lap 215 Earnhardt at last broke into the top five -- where he had to finish to have any hope of bridging the gap between him and Harvick, and remain in contention for the Nextel Cup title when the circuit moves to New Hampshire next week. Earnhardt was doing his part to make the miracle happen, and suddenly Harvick seemed to do his.

"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.