Dale Earnhardt Jr. trying to rebound from season of discontent at Hendrick Motorsports
Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. will not be participating in the Chase For The Sprint Cup this season. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Scene
With the 26-race NASCAR Sprint Cup regular season behind him, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would like to turn the corner in Sunday’s Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Earnhardt Jr., who failed to make the Chase For The Sprint Cup, has struggled throughout 2009 and even since undergoing a crew-chief change earlier in the year.
Under the guidance of interim pit boss Lance McGrew, who replaced crew chief Tony Eury Jr. in May, Earnhardt Jr. hasn’t been as fast or consistent as he would like to be.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver has just five top-10s this season, two of them with McGrew. Only two of those top-10s are top-fives, which came at Talladega in April and at Michigan in August.
"We need to become a top-five team every week,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I'd like to see more consistency and more strength in our performance."
So would McGrew, who sees the June New Hampshire race as one that should have turned out more favorably for the No. 88 team. Earnhardt Jr. ran in the top five throughout portions of the event, only to end up 13th, in part because the race was called 28 laps early because of rain.
"The last race there came down to weather,” McGrew said. “I felt like we had the strategy that it took to win the race or to legitimately have a shot at winning it. The car was really good.
“It just happened to rain before the fuel window cycled through. It's aggravating because a lot of times you feel like the best car doesn't win, but that's the case for a lot of places we go to, really."
In 20 starts at the 1.058-mile New Hampshire oval, Earnhardt Jr. has eight top-10s, including five top-fives. One of the keys to getting around NHMS, in his opinion, is the rubber build-up around the track.
"New Hampshire can be a one-groove race track,” he said. “There's a lot of rubber buildup, and that determines where you can and can't run in the corners. If you can't run the line you want to because of the rubber buildup on the track, it makes it frustrating."
Ultimately, though, McGrew says the biggest ingredient to running well is having a car that handles well.
“The car has to roll through the center really well and have good grip off the corner because it's so hard to pass there,” he said. “If you can run the bottom and roll through there fast and not have a big wheel spin problem coming off the corner, then you'll be faster.
“So it's a challenge to do both because a lot of times to get the car free enough to roll through the center, then he's really going to have trouble getting the throttle down off the corner."
