No. 88 team struggles after leading laps early
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CONCORD, N.C. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t win Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, thus guaranteeing himself a spot in the next round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
He didn’t finish well enough to climb out of a hole he landed in after finishing 39th at Kansas Speedway a week earlier.
Instead, the Hendrick Motorsports driver found himself trying to battle back from a lost lap caused by a broken shifter, the result of a vibration, barely 140 laps into the 334-lap race.
In the end, it was a lost cause. The shifter was eventually repaired but the window of opportunity the 40-year-old needed had already closed.
Although he made it back onto the lead lap briefly near the end, a final necessary pit stop dropped him one back. He finished 20th in a race won by fellow Chase driver Kevin Harvick.
Earnhardt Jr. will head to Talladega next weekend needing a win or a miracle to remain alive in this year’s title hunt, 26 points behind teammate Kasey Kahne who resides in the eighth, and final, transfer spot.
"The vibration broke the shifter in half and it just wasn’t a good night," Earnhardt Jr. said afterward. "The car just wasn’t handling well and the vibration was really giving us a lot of problems."
Running ninth at Lap 120, Earnhardt Jr. informed his team of the shifter problem less than 20 laps later, just about the time the field was coming to pit road following the third caution of the race.
After multiple pit stops, Earnhardt eventually returned to the lineup 23rd but quickly told crew chief Steve Letarte that the quick fix "didn’t work."
A cycle of green flag stops cost him a lap to the leader just shy of the 200-lap mark — because he had only third and fourth gear, his crew had to push his car out of its pit stall to get him back under way.
"This isn’t what we need to do," he admitted after failing to end in Victory Lane in his 30th opportunity on the 1.5-mile track.
Now, it’s win Talladega or lose a shot at the championship.
"Go out there and win it," he said of next weekend’s Geico 500 at the 2.66-mile superspeedway. "We can do it; we have on there a lot of times.
"I know what we need to do. We will just have to build a fast car and hope that we don’t have any gremlins and try to go out there and win it."
Letarte, who will depart at season’s end to move into the broadcast booth with NBC Sports, said the team’s situation was simple.
"Listen, you can’t break parts if you want to win races," he said. "We’ve just got to figure out why the part broke."
The issue was similar to one suffered by teammate Jimmie Johnson earlier this season. "And we made changes to the parts so we wouldn’t have it happen again," said Letarte.
But the shifter wasn’t the cause of the team’s trouble, he said. It was simply fallout from the "phantom" vibration that the team was unable to correct.
"We didn’t really have it bad in practice but we picked it up today," he said. "Vibrations hurt horsepower, hurt handling, hurt parts. That’s probably the root cause and the shifter’s probably just the result."
While they were able to eventually repair the shifter, the lost lap proved more difficult to overcome.
"He started shotgun on the field and drove back to the 31 (Ryan Newman) who I think was running like 11th," Letarte said. "I think you have a nice smooth race and you keep your track position, give yourself an opportunity and we could probably run in the top five with no problem. But you’ve got to give yourself an opportunity; you’ve got to stay up there. You can’t give up laps."
Letarte said nothing has changed in spite of his driver’s finishing position at Charlotte. The team will start all over again next week with the same goal in mind.
"I don’t think a good run here was going to make a difference. You had to win. We had to win here and we didn’t; we have to win at Talladega," he said.
"Everybody sounds disappointed that the points system creates that but I would argue that it gives you the opportunity to move forward with a win. Last year, our blown tire at Kansas would have eliminated us (from title contention) as well.
"At least we have the chance. You go to Talladega and win and you’ll be tied for the points lead leaving Talladega."
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