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Another race, another engine problem for Junior
By Rea White
Monday, October 22, 2007
STREETER LECKA / GETTY IMAGES
MARTINSVILLE, Va. - Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his Dale Earnhardt Inc. team endured another engine failure, but this time they made it to the end of the race.
Earnhardt Jr. did, however, limp around the track the final lap and surrender what had seemed to be a certain top-10 finish and end with a 23rd-place finish.
After he climbed from his car and spoke with DEI teammate Martin Truex Jr., who had endured his own share of setbacks and contact in Sunday's Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway, Earnhard Jr. seemed unfazed by the late setback.
"I'm not upset," he said. "We had a great day, I had a lot of fun, we ran really good even on seven cylinders, we had a popping and spitting motor down the straightaway, and I put them tailpipes in driver's ears so they could hear we were on seven and still going by them, so it was pretty fun."
He said the only sad part was that crew chief Tony Gibson and the team built such a strong car but did not have a solid finish to show for it yet again.
Earnhardt Jr. seemed to simply enjoy the race. Martinsville always breeds a certain amount of contact between drivers and this race proved no different. With the car of tomorrow, though, cars seem to be capable of taking a little more of a hit and continuing on track without too much of a setback.
So while the race featured a record-setting 21 cautions, it also contained a high number of saves and bumps that didn't result in anything more than a car sliding high out of the groove.
Earnhardt Jr. liked it that way.
"There was a lot of roughness," he said. "I was the cause of a lot of it, but my crew chief said that I wasn't sticking out like a sore thumb, that I was no different than anyone else when it came to being rough. These COTs are pretty tough, they'll handle it."
Mentioned Drivers: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
2009 Sprint Cup Race for the Chase Standings
Driver Standings after the Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500
| 1 | Jimmie Johnson | 6492 |
| 2 | Mark Martin | -108 |
| 3 | Jeff Gordon | -169 |
| 4 | Kurt Busch | -211 |
| 5 | Tony Stewart | -285 |
| 6 | Juan Pablo Montoya | -289 |
| 7 | Greg Biffle | -321 |
| 8 | Denny Hamlin | -352 |
| 9 | Ryan Newman | -411 |
| 10 | Kasey Kahne | -476 |
| 11 | Carl Edwards | -520 |
| 12 | Brian Vickers | -666 |
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