LONG POND, Pa. — Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s defense against a June swoon might just be getting the dreadful luck out of the way in May.
A look at his last four NASCAR Sprint Cup races reveals an odd lot of double-digit finishes with few May flowers among the bunch. Meanwhile, teams affiliated with Joe Gibbs Racing have won seven of the last eight, putting distance on Earnhardt’s No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports outfit and sewing up Chase postseason berths early.
In typically laid-back fashion, Earnhardt doesn’t sound overly concerned.
“No, I’m not feeling any anxiety, at 41 years old you kind of get over that stuff, I’m not going to worry about it,” Earnhardt said on a foggy Friday at Pocono Raceway. “I spent the first 18 years worrying myself to death. I think we are a good enough team to make it whether we get a win or not we are a good enough team. That is not a guarantee, I just feel confident that we will get in. A win would be what we expect, not just to lock ourselves in the Chase, we just expect to win.”
Earnhardt Jr. has met those expectations here in the past, sweeping the season’s two annual races at the triangular facility in 2014. And his current season hasn’t been without its positive moments, with three runner-up finishes (Atlanta, Texas, Bristol) in the hodgepodge of 2016 results.
Though Hendrick Motorsports‘ performance this year has been robust by most teams’ standards, Gibbs’ Toyotas currently have the hot hand heading into Sunday’s Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM). There is room for improvement, Earnhardt says, but pinpointing it is another matter.
“I have been racing in this series a long time and I have been asked that question dozens and dozens of times like where do you need to improve, no matter what team I was racing for, no matter what year is was. Even if you knew you wouldn’t tell,” Earnhardt said. “I mean you can’t say, ‘them guys in the body shop they need to get going’ — you are not going to throw anybody under the bus. The majority of the time you don’t know. The majority of the time there is no way to really put your finger on the exact area where you are getting beat.”
Having 590 premier-series starts over 17-plus seasons has given Earnhardt a certain amount of perspective about how seasons can ebb and flow. He cited the recent championship charges of Tony Stewart in 2011 and Brad Keselowski the following year as examples of how fortunes can turn in the postseason.
In both instances, those teams made gains from the experiences and experimentation of others. Earnhardt said replicating that sort of turnaround is possible for the No. 88.
“I can see us sort of in that situation where we are looking across the garage,” Earnhardt said. “Every team has enough smart people on it and if they figure out how somebody is making their mousetrap so well they will take it home and do it and make it even better. They will take those ideas that are great and improve on them and then bring it to the track and outrun that guy. That is just the nature of the sport. I’m not too worries about where we are right now.
“We are not running bad. We took off at the start of the year, had some second-place finishes, thought we were right on the verge of winning and we struggled this month. It’s been a rough month, but I think we can turn it around here.”
