MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- It didn't take long for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to find trouble Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.

He was reminded of it often, too -- like every time he shifted gears in his No. 88 Chevrolet. From Lap 43 on in the 500-lap Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500, Earnhardt's shifter was held together by a bungee cord.

“

Hopefully, we can find what the problem is, because we damn sure don't need that happenin'.

”

DALE EARNHARDT JR.

When it first popped out of gear on him he fell all the way to 38th in the 43-car field after getting it, um, fixed. He appeared to be looking at a long day that likely would be punctuated by a poor finish he could ill afford.

Instead, Earnhardt maintained his composure and told his team over the radio, "I can deal with it. Let's just work on getting some of this track position back and I'll take care of everything else."

Earnhardt battled all the way back until he was running third at one point before settling for an eighth-place finish in the race won by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson.

When it was suggested afterward that at least maybe Earnhardt salvaged a good racing story out of the day, along with his top-10 finish, he laughed and replied: "Yeah, well, but it ain't nothin' I ain't heard before."

That's because it wasn't the first time this season his day has hinged on the sinewy threads of a bungee cord.

"I was calm because we've had it happen before, and I knew we could get a bungee cord on it," Earnhardt said. "I just hated to lose all that track position. I knew we were going to have to put that bungee cord on there and lose a bunch of track position in the process. That hurt us pretty bad. But we were able to get something out of it."

Earnhardt remains a long way from where he would like to be this season, but by salvaging the eighth-place finish he at least continued a climb in the point standings that has been steady since he began the season by finishing 27th and 39th, respectively, in the first two races.

After the second race of the season at Fontana, Earnhardt sat 35th in points. He was up to 19th heading into Sunday's event, and moved up three spots to 16th by virtue of his finish.

He said he was proud of the way his No. 88 team worked hard on pit road. But because rain washed out qualifying and he wasn't higher in points (the field was set according to the owners' standings), he was left with an unfavorable pit stall that made getting off pit road in timely fashion a difficult task.

• Lap-by-Lap: Martinsville
• Video: Race Rewind

"We had a better car. We had it up to third at one point," Earnhardt said. "We made some adjustments toward the end that didn't help, trying to win, and got ourselves beat on pit road a little bit. Our pit stops were fast, but our stall was bad -- because I would beat guys out of their box. But they would run the bottom on the inside of me around [Turns] 1 and 2 and beat me off the line. My tachometer is in the red and I can't go any faster or I'll get caught for cheatin'.

"That's just a product of the place. But that was unfortunate. We got beat by the 14 [of Tony Stewart], the 33 [of Clint Bowyer] and the 5 car [of Mark Martin] off pit road like that, and that right there [cost us] the top-five finish we were looking for. That was track position."

Earnhardt also lost a door-to-door duel with Ryan Newman, who eventually moved past Martin to finish sixth, in the final laps. For a few laps, Earnhardt and Newman were banging into each other before Newman drove on by.

"The 39 [driven by Newman] was real good at the end, running alongside me. He was faster, and I would have done the same thing he did," Earnhardt said.

In the end, Earnhardt was somewhat pleased to salvage the finish he did and move up in the points. But he stopped short of admitting he was happy with it.

"Not really. We don't want to give anybody the impression we're satisfied. I'm a little frustrated. I wanted to get a top-five. We always seem to run in the top five here," said Earnhardt, who finished second in his previous Martinsville race. "We're just a tick off still from where we were last year at this time. It seems like every race we go to, we're about five spots off of where we were last year. I don't know why that is and it is very frustrating.

"We're working hard, though. Everybody is working hard."

He added that seeing Johnson notch his first win of the season -- the first for Hendrick Motorsports as a whole -- was encouraging.

"I am happy for Rick [Hendrick] that they got a win. I'm especially happy for the company. I am glad to be a part of it," Earnhardt said. "This is excellent equipment. We've just got to know what to do with it.

"We've got to get a little bit better as a team to compete. The stuff is right there in front of us, man; we just gotta figure out what to do to make it work."

That includes figuring out what went wrong with his shifter so early in Sunday's race. He would like to avoid another date with a bungee cord in future events.

"I was pretty upset because we've had it happen a lot this year, and we haven't found what the problem is," Earnhardt said. "Hopefully, we can find what the problem is, because we damn sure don't need that happenin'. Poppin' out of gear as you go into the corner is not a lot of fun."

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.