Dale Earnhardt Jr. thinks he should be in top 3 in points

“Our team’s a little stronger than we were last year, and I want to be able to show it,” Earnhardt said on this week’s radio show.

Earnhardt says he likes Bristol, which is up next on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series calendar and offers the No. 88 team an opportunity to show its improvement. He posted finishes of 24th in the spring race there last season and 39th in August. But his average finish at Bristol is 12.9 in 30 starts.

Earnhardt says having consistently good cars allows him to be aggressive — something his crew chiefs have asked of him in the past.

“When your car’s fast, you can be as aggressive as you want to. Get out of my way, I’m comin’ through,” Earnhardt said. “You can’t be aggressive in a car that’s going backwards.”

Several teams had issues with loose lug nuts at Texas, including Earnhardt, Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne and Richard Childress Racing‘s Ryan Newman.

The 2015 season is the first in which officials are not monitoring whether pit crews get all five lug nuts on the wheels.

Related: Debate over lug nuts continues

“We had issues on pit road with some lug nuts,” Earnhardt said. “But the boys were honest about it and we got it fixed. That’s the way you gotta be. I’m proud of them boys for the way they handled it.”

Earnhardt said he enjoyed the Duck Commander 500 and worked his track bar all night on the roller-coaster surface at Texas Motor Speedway.

“It traveled a mile, one inch at a time,” Earnhardt said, adding he enjoys running 500 miles at Texas.

With consistently fast cars and confidence coming out of strong practices, he hopes to build on the top-five finish at Texas and climb the points standings.

“Bristol’s coming up, lookin’ forward to it,” Earnhardt said, closing out this week’s ‘Download.’

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