WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- In 2014, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won four races and recorded 12 top fives. The following season, he made three trips to Victory Lane, posting a career-best 16 top-five finishes.
This season's statistical spreadsheet looks different for the No. 88 Chevrolet driver in his final full-time season; one top-five finish, four top 10s and six DNFs 21 races into the season is certainly not the way Earnhardt Jr. would like his record to look heading into August's race weekend at Watkins Glen International.
"We have just not run good this year at the majority of the races,” Earnhardt acknowledged on Saturday at Watkins Glen. "… You have good years and you have bad years. We just didn’t draw the right cards. Just a lot of circumstances have led to the performance of our car this year that you can’t really put on one thing.
"… The No. 42 (Kyle Larson) has been really strong all year," he pointed out. “The No. 78 (Martin Truex, Jr.), they are really strong, they are in a different world, man. We want to go out and win races … it is easy to say that, but damn; we have a lot of speed to find. It isn't like we are going to show up and drive around those (cars). We have some work to do before the end of the year if we want to feel like we can legitimately contend for a win."
Junior Nation has seen glimmers of hope; the No. 88 driver nabbed a strong top-five finish at Texas and seemed energized for the rest of the season. At Daytona, he started on the pole and battled back after an early wreck -- only to be involved in a final accident that saddled him with a 32nd-place result.
For Earnhardt, these moments are glimmers of "potential." Glimmers that he saw turn into success in 2014 and 2015. So, he takes slight solace in the fact that they’ve seen speed at times this year -- because it means there's something there.
"I've had seasons where we’ve had no speed," Earnhardt said. "We ran bad and I finished bad. But at least at times this year there's been some glimpse of potential."
It's for this reason that Earnhardt doesn’t look at the team's expectations being too high at the start of the year; he knows what they're capable of accomplishing.
"You look at 2013, 14, 15 … that is our potential," he said. "We have been progressing as a team for years all through that period. I expect us to be able to maintain that type of performance, and we haven’t been able to do it. I think that is what we are capable of, but for a lot of reasons we haven't been able to put it together and have the speed we need in the cars."
A long-awaited trip to Victory Lane could turn the No. 88 season around -- even if it comes too-little-too-late, after the playoffs begin.
For instance, remember Earnhardt Jr.'s win at Martinsville in 2014? That win, which was Earnhardt's first at a track that holds importance to both him and Hendrick Motorsports, came right after the No. 88 team was eliminated from the playoffs at Talladega Superspeedway. It didn't help his championship chances, nor did it change what happened the week prior. But the team celebrated in Victory Lane like it was a last-chance win that locked him to the next round -- because it meant something to them.
And a win, even if it doesn't come in the playoffs this year, does wonders to affirm a team -- especially one that has spent countless hours working to make Earnhardt Jr.'s scrutinized final season a memorable one.
"We have to go into every race like this is going to be the week that we get it done," Earnhardt said. “I think that's the only attitude you can have if you expect to take advantage of an opportunity because one might fall in your lap and we just might find what we're looking for before the season is over. Certainly if we miss the playoffs, we're still going to try to win a race. We're still going to show up and try to give it everything we've got.
"There's nothing worse than leaving the race track feeling like you didn't try your best or didn't give everything you had," Earnhardt added. "And I certainly ain't going to finish my last season like that and carry that with me the rest of my life. So, we're going to work hard all the way to the very end and hopefully we have something to smile about at some point before it's over with."
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