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 "We just took our time and got the car working better on each pit stop." |
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Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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By Denise N. Maloof, CNNSI.com
LOUDON, N.H. – As if a potentially-slippery, flat track, and rain threats weren’t enough to spoil a driver’s day, starting from NASCAR’s equivalent of the nosebleed section didn’t help matters.
After pulling a provisional on Friday, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., started 37th in Sunday’s rain-abbreviated New Hampshire 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway. And even though the race ended 93 laps early, Earnhardt wasn’t complaining. He finished 11th at the 207-lap mark, leaving one naturally to wonder what might have been.
"If it’s going to rain, it’s going to rain," Earnhardt said. "There’s not much you can do about it. We just really hoped we’d be lucky enough to have a good position if it did rain."
He and his team had to work for it. By the time a rain-induced red flag flew at lap 19, Earnhardt was 25th. Once the race resumed one hour, 48 minutes and 21 seconds later, he fell back to 30th on lap 40. The back-of-the-pack run continued until lap 120, when Earnhardt surfaced at 20th.
By then, his team had adjusted away his Chevrolet’s initial tightness. And it seemed as if he might be primed for a run. Earnhardt had led some of July’s New England 300, finally finishing 23rd, and during Sunday’s the red-flag period, he’d hinted at a flashback.
"But we had a good car here the last time," Earnhardt said. "Good enough to win, but the track kind of went away from us."
Late in Sunday’s race, the track seemed to come back to him. He was 17th by lap 140, and eighth by lap 160. Settling for 11th turned out to not be so bad after all; Earnhardt almost notched his fourth top-10 finish in his last five races.
"We just took our time and got the car working better on each pit stop," he said. "We just kind of eased up there."
