For Earnhardt, slow pace of improvement continues

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- For Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kansas Speedway brought a small step forward in a long, lost season. It won't help him in the point standings, and it won't snap a winless streak that now stands at 49 races. But for one afternoon, it felt good just to be one of the fastest drivers on the board.

"We've been waiting a while for the [No. 88] team to do something like this," he said after securing the second starting spot for Sunday's Cup event on the 1.5-mile track. It was Earnhardt's best qualifying position of the season, bettering a third-place effort at Indianapolis more than two months ago.

These days, Earnhardt will take the positives wherever he can find them. NASCAR's most popular driver is well outside the spotlight of the Chase, working to make improvement as his three Hendrick Motorsports teammates vie for the series title. It's a shoulder-to-the-grindstone kind of process full of advances and setbacks, like his back-to-back top-10s at Michigan and Bristol followed by his current streak of four consecutive finishes of 17th or worse. Yet Earnhardt continues to build on his relationship with crew chief Lance McGrew, and manages to keep his perspective intact.

"I've always felt like I belong in the upper percentage of our sport, and when you don't perform that way, it's definitely tough on you," he said. "But I've maintained my confidence, and I've maintained good confidence in my team and in Lance, and I just feel like the more we work together, the better we understand each other and the better our opportunity is to do something like we did [Friday]. But we looked at the rest of the season as any time we can get on the race track to try to prove ourselves and prove our worth to the rest of the sport, that's what we'll do for the rest of the year."

The crew chief change that much of Junior Nation demanded earlier this year hasn't produced the magic turnaround that green-clad fans of the No. 88 car had hoped for; in fact, Earnhardt has actually dropped four positions in points since owner Rick Hendrick appointed McGrew to succeed Tony Eury Jr. prior to the first Dover race. But Earnhardt has had nothing but positive things to say about McGrew, who was named crew chief on an interim basis in June, and has clearly had an effect on his driver's demeanor and professionalism.

Will McGrew be back in the same role in 2010? Earnhardt sounds as if he'd like to see that happen. But ultimately, it's not his decision. (Continued)