Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins Atlanta pole but knows more work needs to be done
Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the pole for Sunday''s Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It was his ninth career pole in the Cup series. // Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Illustrated
HAMPTON, Ga. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. won’t say that his being on the pole for the Kobalt Tools 500 will result in a great day on Sunday, but he is willing to say that his first pole in nearly two years is another sign that changes to his Hendrick Motorsports team are working.
In addition to the pairing of Earnhardt Jr. with new crew chief Lance McGrew last May, the team has a new engineer and the group is working more as a unit with the No. 5 Hendrick team with driver Mark Martin, which is housed in the same shop.
“We made a lot of changes,” Earnhardt Jr. said Friday after winning the pole. “We tried to make the right ones in the offseason. We tried to sort of forget about what happened last year and try to come into this season with a renewed sense of confidence and you try to get rid of the bugs from the year before.
“It really has a lot to do with how confident you are and what you’re getting ready to do. Everything that you get ready to do, whether it’s to get ready to get in the car for practice or get ready for the race, you’ve got to try to be confident. We just got beat down last year and we figured we would have a chance to start anew this year. It’s just a better race team, and they’re working really good together.”
The Hendrick Motorsports driver said he concentrated solely on qualifying during practice Friday. He turned a lap of 192.761 mph, which outpaced Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch (192.280 mph). Now Earnhardt Jr., 15th in the Sprint Cup standings, needs to get back to work Saturday in practice.
“I always enjoy this place,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “But at the same time, we have come here and practiced really well on Saturday and not been able to have that same experience in the race.
“We will have to try to work a little bit harder to see if we can’t make sure, if the car is really fast in practice, just make sure we’ve got it driving good. … Just getting a pole anywhere for our team is good, but we’re just so hungry to do much better on Sunday.”
Earnhardt Jr., who won at Atlanta in March 2004, said the key for him this weekend will be to race on the bottom line. He said the Hendrick Motorsports cars are good enough to run the bottom groove.
“I need to practice on the bottom,” he said. “It’s going to be real tempting to move up off the bottom and run around the middle and even the very top as you’ve seen some guys do [today]. I think I need to practice on the bottom and try to get the car to work there. If it will work on the bottom, it should work on the top.
“I just need to sit down there and concentrate on the car and think more about how the car is driving even if it is running some good laps, think more about how the car feels and try to make the car as comfortable as I can make it.”
It is the first pole for Earnhardt Jr. since April 2008 at Texas. It was the third top-four starting spot of the season for Earnhardt Jr., who had only three top-10 starting spots in all of 2009.
“It looks like we’ve got some things working better, so we’ll see if we can’t keep improving our team,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “These kind of runs help the guys’ confidence and our team. When confidence gets better in what you’re doing, you kind of feed off of that and you’ll see things around you sort of steadily improve. Hopefully that will happen to us.”
The improvement is evident in his starting spot. Earnhardt Jr. started the races at Atlanta in the 20th and 31st spots last year.
“A lot of things can change over a period of time,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We’ve seen race teams completely change their identity almost in the offseason before. I hope that’s what we’ve been able to do. Hopefully the offseason and the changes we’ve made are definitely what we’ve needed.
“I’m real happy with this performance.”
Of course, it’s more important where a driver finishes than where the driver starts. Earnhardt Jr. has finished worse than he started in each of the last two races.
“I’m just hoping to see this type of difference in the car on Sunday, and I think we will,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It’s just a matter of time if we keep performing like this.
“It should start leaking over into our performance on our Sunday and we can get to where we want to be as a race team. … We don’t see a pattern where this is the part or the piece or this is the thing that needs to be different or we need to go in this direction.”
He said pit-crew issues last week weren’t to blame for his 16th-place finish. He said the team still has to become the total package and needs to be able to capitalize when it starts a race with a new car.
“We haven’t cured everything,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We learned a lot from last week’s race where we ran the entire day and we had some opportunities to seize a good finish and we missed those opportunities. … I definitely don’t like pointing fingers. We know we missed some good opportunities on pit road and lost some spots but I didn’t have the car or wasn’t the driver to make them up on the race track, either.”
Starting second will be Kyle Busch (Joe Gibbs Racing), while Juan Pablo Montoya (Earnhardt Ganassi Racing) was third fastest. Two of Earnhardt Jr.’s Hendrick teammates –Martin and Jeff Gordon – will start fourth and fifth, respectively.
Racing their way into Sunday’s field were Bobby Labonte (TRG Motorsports), Dave Blaney (Prism Motorsports), Mike Bliss (Tommy Baldwin Racing), Max Papis (Germain Racing), Scott Speed (Red Bull Racing), Joe Nemechek (Nemco Motorsports), Bill Elliott (Wood Brothers Racing) and Michael McDowell (Prism).
Those failing to qualify were Aric Almirola (Phoenix Racing), Casey Mears (Keyed-Up Motorsports) and Terry Cook (Whitney Motorsports).
