RELATED: Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s complete history at New Hampshire
For his final full-time season as a driver, NASCAR.com will offer an analytical preview on Dale Earnhardt Jr. ahead of every remaining Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race.
Race: Overton’s 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Date: Sunday, July 16, 3 p.m. ET (NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)
Previous five results at New Hampshire: 25th, 5th, 9th, 10th, 6th
Notable: Although he’s winless at New Hampshire, Earnhardt has performed well at the ‘Magic Mile’ in recent years. Among active drivers, Earnhardt is tied for the fifth-best average finish (10.8) over the course of the last 10 New Hampshire races. And that’s with the driver of the No. 88 having missed both races in 2016 because of a concussion. Earnhardt has also led 368 laps in his 33 New Hampshire starts with 15 top-10 finishes.
Memorable: While it wasn’t a career-best result for Earnhardt at New Hampshire, the fall race of 2003 has been to date his career-best performance. Earnhardt started sixth and led a race-high 120 of 300 laps. However, he faded to a fifth-place finish over the course of a 101-lap green-flag run to the finish. A year later, Earnhardt did grab his career-best result when he finished third. It is one of eight top-five finishes Earnhardt has at New Hampshire.
Quotable: “I’m looking forward to New Hampshire. It’s a fun little racetrack,” Earnhardt said. “Obviously, it’s flat, and it’s kind of tricky to get around, but it’s fun. We haven’t been as good as I want to be there. I’ve seen some guys on the last couple of trips there do some things that I want to be doing, and we’ve got to figure out how to get our car to work that way. It should be a pretty fun race for us. I heard they’ve been working on the track surface, so it will be interesting to go there and see exactly how the track is.”