By Denise N. Maloof, CNNSI.com
AVONDALE, Ariz. -- The engine seized, the car sputtered and profanity flowed.
If fuel had been as plentiful as frustration on lap 117 of Sunday’s Checker Auto Parts 500, then Dale Earnhardt Jr. might have checked out for the rest of the afternoon.
But when the gas tank emptied on Phoenix International Raceway’s backstretch, the No. 8 Chevrolet was forced to limp back to pit road. Gone-with-the-gas ultimately meant gone-with-the-win, and Earnhardt settled for fifth place instead of Victory Lane.
“Pretty bad calculating there,” said car chief Tony Eury Jr., who blamed the fuel snafu on bad math.
He said the team’s motor guys give him statistical information that he plugs into a computer program, and one of the results is projected fuel mileage. The dry-out was eight laps short of the computer-generated fuel window.
“That puts you back in the middle of the field,” Eury said. “And this is a place where you gotta be out front to really run well to keep the car underneath you, so that kind of put us in a predicament we didn’t need to be in.”
Earnhardt, who started third, grabbed the lead from pole-sitter Ryan Newman on lap seven. He led twice for 105 laps, 12 fewer than eventual winner Matt Kenseth. Earnhardt was leading when his tank ran dry.
As he nursed the car back to pit road, he erupted verbally. Eury Jr. told him to calm down, took the blame and -- with encouragement from spotter Ty Norris, who doubles as Dale Earnhardt, Inc.’s executive vice president -- radio order was restored by the time Earnhardt rejoined the field.
He managed to stay on the lead lap and was ninth after pit-stop cycling.
Trying to soothe Earnhardt, Eury told him, “Sorry about your little inconvenience.”
“It made me mad,” Earnhardt replied. “Hadn’t been that mad in a long time.”
His reply ended on a humorous tone, and later Earnhardt said compared with the previous week’s nosedive at Rockingham (he finished 34th), a fuel problem was tolerable.
“It was tough,” Earnhardt said of running out of gas. “It was real hard to handle. But after last week, we wanted to come here and run hard.”
Some damage, however, was done. During the next 20 laps, Earnhardt hovered from ninth to 13th. He moved toward the top five with 32 laps remaining, claiming sixth place on lap 240 and overtaking Kurt Busch for fifth place with 25 laps left.
“It could have done a number of things in there to the motor,” Eury said of the effect of running out of gas. “It might lose a little compression or anything like that. It’s just like over-revving one.”
Still, Sunday’s finish was assuaging on two fronts. Prior to last week at Rockingham, Earnhardt had nailed four top 10s and a win, which came at Talladega. He’d also worked his way from 13th to 11th in the Winston Cup point standings, an accomplishment for a team that’d been preseason-pegged as a championship contender. Heading toward next week’s season finale at Homestead, Earnhardt is only 52 points behind 10th-place Ricky Rudd.
Perhaps more important, he logged a top-five finish on a flat track. Phoenix’s one-mile oval is the kind of the layout that usually befuddles him, and he’d finished 27th and 37th in 2000 and 2001, respectively, in his only other Cup starts here.
“After a run like this, it makes the plane ride back a lot easier next time and something to look forward to,” Earnhardt said.
“As bad as we ran last week, and as embarrassed as we were, to come out of here with a top five, we’re happy,” Eury Jr. said. “It pumped us up for Homestead.”
"It made me mad. Hadn’t been that mad in a long time."
