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.

"I just want to make it clear, I guess, that the decision is Rick's and his management team. I like working with Lance. I get along great with Lance. We have had some great runs, and I feel like I can build on that type of success and have it happen more often, more consistently with Lance. And I hope that we're successful the rest of the year and that we go into next season with the same group of guys," he said.

“

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.

”

-- DALE EARNHARDT JR.

"But the decision isn't mine, and never will be mine. So I hope that we'll have more success and continue to give Rick and the people that do make those types of decisions good reason to keep us as a team and keep us working together, because I really do enjoy working with him. I feel like I'm a different race car driver than I've been the last several years, just my temperament and my disposition throughout the races and the weekend.

"I still have to check myself every once in a while. I get a little angry, but just during practice and stuff when something you do to these cars can frustrate you. But for the most part, Lance is really great at controlling the situation and controlling our team and directing our team throughout the weekend and the races themselves. I've enjoyed the experience working with him."

At Hendrick, rebuilding Earnhardt's team has proven an organization-wide effort. McGrew has dedicated engineers and team executives at his disposal. Earnhardt and his crew chief have been studying the characteristics of the cars of teammates Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin, and Jeff Gordon -- all of whom are in the Chase -- trying to figure out what makes them fast and how to apply that to the No. 88.

Ideally, it would be Earnhardt providing his title-hunting teammates with help to win the championship. But given the size of the mountain he's trying to climb, the flow of information has mostly been in the other direction.

"You'd love to be able to go out on the race track and be quick and provide them with ideas, because they're trying to win a championship. And if I could help them on any given weekend, that would be one of the better accomplishments to these last 10 races for our team, aside from winning," he said. "But we're still sort of trying to find speed, so we're still leaning on them quite a bit as we have been the last several months trying to get our program to where it's more consistent. And we have yet to really improve on anything they've been doing, we've just been trying to get that in itself to provide us with some more consistency and better performance."