Not great, but Junior's first year at HMS a good start (cont'd)

So there have been plenty of bright spots. Earnhardt has been out of the top 10 in the standings only one week out of 32 this season, so he has been remarkably consistent. He has run up front and challenged for victories.

But too many times, especially lately, his finishes had not matched the effort or the early-race successes. Sunday's did.

"This will give us momentum heading into Atlanta and Texas, and that's what we need," Eury said. "We want to finish this season strong. We run strong at these tracks coming up, and it's important to finish this off the right way and build some momentum that we can take into next year."

Learning experience
It hasn't been a horrible first year for Earnhardt at Hendrick. It just hasn't been the grand success that Waltrip and others had envisioned for him.

After Earnhardt's fifth-place finish at New Hampshire -- the first event in the 10-race Chase -- Hendrick took great pains to point out that he has been very pleased with Earnhardt's first season with his organization. But he also made it clear that he, like Earnhardt and Eury and everyone else associated with the team, believes that it could have been better and should be better in the future.

Earnhardt is hoping Sunday is a start down that path. He said he considers himself lucky to be working out of the same building as the No. 48 team of two-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson, who moved one step closer to becoming the second driver in NASCAR history to win three consecutive titles when he was the only one to finish ahead of Earnhardt at Martinsville.

"I'm fortunate enough to be in the same shop as Jimmie and see how they work and what they do," Earnhardt said. "Hopefully a lot of that stuff is going to rub off on us."

Maybe it's already starting to. There were fleeting moments when Earnhardt thought he might even catch Johnson on Sunday. But they passed before he could make the pass.

In the end, the consensus was that his car just wasn't quite strong enough.

"I would have liked to have had that opportunity and I think I could have given Jimmie a good run for his money, but I knew for a fact that wasn't going to be the outcome," Earnhardt said.

The outcome, as it was, did not turn out that badly for Earnhardt. And on the whole, neither has his first season at Hendrick Motorsports.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.