Earnhardt explains broken shifter, team sticks together
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When Dale Earnhardt Jr‘s No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet SS got caught in a seven-car stack-up in Turn 2 on Lap 228, he and his team already were in the midst of a long day. So could have been excused if they decided to pack up and go home.
But the driver and pit crew rallied, and Earnhardt was pleased with their efforts and happy to get back on track 47 laps down and fight for every point he could earn. The team improved from 39th to 36th, gaining valuable points that helped him keep pace in the point standings with winner Denny Hamlin in a tie for seventh.
Following a 14th-place start, Earnhardt was running fourth by Lap 50. A broken shifter dropped him as far as 38th by Lap 100. But he made it back to 20th place before the crash on Lap 228 sidelined him until his return at Lap 276.
"When you have those kinds of days, what’s important is that you get the car fixed and you go back out there," Earnhardt said on the "Dale Jr. Download" on Dirty Mo Radio. "And even though you’re 37th worrying about how you can be 36th, you’re still fighting, and you’re still trying and putting forth your best effort. It may seem pointless to worry about gaining a spot or two, but as a competitor, you have to find something to work for, some goal. Something has to matter.
"So it felt good to get back out there and keep digging. As a team, we have to stick together and try to go to the next race and put it behind you, and that’s the best way to do it. Get out there and do everything you can do, run every lap you can run and load up and go to the next race."
The broken shifter was the second for the No. 88 team in the last 12 races. Earnhardt suffered a similar problem last October during the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Earnhardt described how one problem led to a vibration that ultimately caused the shifter to break.
"We had some kind of issue I think with the driveshaft," Earnhardt said. "There was maybe like a little roller bearing or something in the universal joint fell out or came out, disappeared, disintegrated and created a real bad vibration.
"And that vibration is so bad that it actually will break the shifter. It’ll shake the shifter so bad, the shifter literally breaks right off, right on top of the transmission, and I think you guys saw that from the in-car, how we were having that problem. We put another shifter on the car, and it broke that one real quick. And then we put a third shifter on there that actually was a completely different model that held up.
"That had us in the back, but the guys were doing a great job, keeping the car on the lead lap and trying to get that changed. I felt like we needed to come behind the wall and change the driveline, and I’m glad we didn’t because we would have lost a lot of laps doing it. But I felt like that vibration was so bad that we weren’t going to ever get the shifter thing fixed."
Although he was ultimately disappointed with result, Earnhardt said his car, which returned to the track without a nose and resembled a Whelen Modified Tour vehicle, stayed fast like it was to start the day.
"The car was fast even with the nose tore off like it was," Earnhardt said. "We still were passing guys up into the top 20. Got to feel good about the speed we’ve had this year aside from Phoenix. The car has been pretty fast everywhere we’ve gone."
The crew’s determination combined with a competitive ride got him back on track and racing to the end of the 500 laps. Even though his Mooresville, North Carolina, home is a relatively short ride from Martinsville, Virginia, Earnhadt said it was important to finish what the team started last Sunday.
"We had a real good car and got it behind the wall, fixed it up, got back out there and kept digging," Earnhardt said. "That’s what you gotta do. I’ve had times when we’ve tore the car up and basically just packed it in and went home. And you don’t really know at the time, but once you get home and you’re bumming around the rest of the week about how you finished, there’s a part of you that feels a lot of remorse for not trying to do everything you could and run every lap you could run and fight for every position you could fight for. That’s a terrible feeling."
Following an off-weekend, Earnhardt returns to Texas Motor Speedway on the 15th anniversary of his first career premier series victory. It’s also marks a year since a 43rd-place finish that ended in a fireball on the frontstretch when he drove into the grass. But Earnhardt is optimistic he’ll have a result more like his win during his rookie campaign in 2000.
"I expect us to be quick," Earnhardt said. "If we keep showing up fast, we’ll eventually get us a win. We’re going to have a lot of fun running toward the front until we do."
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