Hendrick driver upbeat despite not pulling off third straight win at Pocono
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LONG POND, Pa. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. came to Pocono Raceway looking to join the select company of Bobby Allison and Tim Richmond as the only drivers to win three straight races at the Tricky Triangle.
And while that didn’t happen for the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet, his reaction on pit road after the Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 wouldn’t have given away an 11th-place finish.
“I had so much fun today,” Earnhardt said after the race, his first result outside the top 10 at Pocono in his last five starts at the 2.5-mile track. “My car was awesome, we were passing five, 10 cars on restarts, having a blast.”
Earnhardt started the race 20th and by Lap 20, found himself in the top 10. On Lap 75, he was running in second place and looked to be making his way toward the lead. He would spend a good amount of the next 50 circuits in the top five before restarting sixth on Lap 126.
On that restart, Earnhardt made contact with his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne, resulting in some left-rear quarter-panel damage on the No. 88 Nationwide Chevy. Junior went from sixth to 12th in a short span before pitting under the next caution on Lap 131. He explained what happened after the race.
“I can’t visually picture what exactly I saw coming off of Turn 2, but I thought I was up on the quarter-panel of the 2 (Brad Keselowski),” Earnhardt said.
“I knew the 5 (Kahne) was down there, and I thought the 2 yanked off the wall as if he had almost hit the fence or something. He sort of yanked the car to the left, and I saw that and moved and hit the 5. Tore the left side of my car up. I’m sorry whatever it did to Kasey. I’m sure it didn’t help him being run into like that.”
Junior restarted in 28th on Lap 134 and in two green flag laps had moved up to 17th before another caution came out. He was able to do something similar on the next restart on Lap 140, moving up to 11th before the last caution of the day occurred.
From there, he couldn’t work his way into the top 10 over the final green flag run of 16 laps, despite recording the most green flag passes (83) and second-most quality passes (41) on the day, according to NASCAR loop data.
“I’m racing hard. It’s so hard to pass here. You got to take every position you can and when you get a position on a guy, when you can get to his quarter-panel and draft, you got to go.”
Earnhardt also didn’t think the team’s pit stall did them any favors, a result from their worst starting spot since the April race at Richmond International Raceway. The 88 team had stall No. 12, which was right in the middle of the first block of 24 stalls on pit road at Pocono.
“We had a really bad pit stall behind the 4,” Earnhardt said. “They had to pick last because of their penalty and ended up forced into the stall behind us. So we had to come around him all day and the 16 come around us all day. So we’re terrible getting in our stall, losing several spots because of that. And that cost us a lot.”
Still, on a day where he could have been disappointed by his showing and seeing Hendrick’s five-race winning streak at Pocono end, the sport’s most popular driver remained very upbeat.
“We had a good enough car to run in the top three. Probably not win the race, but I had a blast.”