Fan's Eye View ~ Earnhardt, Jr. Now Looking For Back To Back Wins
6/11/2014 |
When the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series rolls into the Irish Hills
of Michigan this coming weekend for the Quicken Loans 400, the words on the
lips of many Dale Earnhardt, Jr. fans could be “repeat.”
Now that Earnhardt has gotten his second
win of the season, a feat not accomplished by the North Caroline driver in more
than a decade, his rabid and success-thirsty fans are going to want to see
more. The Michigan International Speedway may be just the place
for Earnhardt to score his first career back to back victories, at least in the
Cup Series, as up until he won the Daytona 500 earlier this season, Earnhardt’s
last two wins were scored at the smooth two-miler. And they were four years apart, a fact which
is not lost on many of Earnhardt’s fans, nor his detractors, of whom many
called Earnhardt “over-rated” for many years because of the lack of wins. As Earnhardt celebrates his 21 career win,
and looks for his next, he was asked about those detractors, especially those
who reach out to him through social media. “I don't worry about that as much anymore,” he said.. “I'm turning 40
this year, and the overrated talk is way behind me. That used to bother me when I was younger,
but when you get old you don't really care anymore about those kind of
things. You just kind of go along and do
your job and enjoy what you're doing, and I've got to really maximize what's
left of my career and have as much fun with it as I can, try to enjoy it as
much as I can. I took it for granted,
and don't take anything for granted anymore when it comes to being at the
racetrack and working with my team and how hard it is to get good and get
competitive and how hard it is to get the right people in the right place. “I feel like I'm such a lucky guy to have this second
opportunity almost to be competitive again, and so I don't really worry about
the detractors. I really enjoy -- I have
a lot more fun actually kind of reading that stuff on Twitter than I do a
typical normal joke. Some of the stuff
the haters say is the funniest stuff.
It's really funny. “So I kind of get off on that. But I don't feel like I've got anything to
prove. I've been given another
opportunity working with Steve and these last five years or so have been a
blessing, and I feel like I've made a good account of myself, and I think we've
got more we can do.” With Earnhardt now focusing on the positive and pushing the
negative off the back porch with a broom, he’s understanding
that there are things in this sport you have control over and there are many
things you don’t. In order to win races,
you have to be in the position to win races on a weekly basis. “I think it's the difference between running fourth at the
end of this race and running second,” he said.
“It's a very small thing, but in years past when it was someone else
seizing that opportunity from Brad and we were running third or fourth watching
it happen, whereas we've improved our game a little bit and we're getting a
little faster and the company has gotten better. The company is really moving along great
right now. But a year or two ago, we weren't running second to seize that
opportunity, and now we are.” But along with the good comes the bad. In fact, it was just earlier this year at Las
Vegas when the roles were reversed. Dale
Earnhardt had led the previous 44 laps, and then ran out of fuel on the last
one, and it was Brad Keselowski who was there to take the win. But not dwelling on that, Earnhardt moved on
throughout the season and had some good runs and some bad ones. Those good runs are needed in order to take
advantage of those unthinkable moments in our sport when the leader has a
problem in the closing laps. “I mean, he (Keselowski) just delivered that to me wrapped
with a bow. The rest of our competition
was mired -- the guys that had been running up front all day, the 14, all those
guys were mired in traffic where we weren't.
That's Steve. That's all
Steve. That's a big part of why -- I
think he just gets better and better and more confident in himself and his
choices, but the cars are improving all the time, and like I said, two years
ago or a year ago we were running third or fourth in this particular situation
and someone else gets the luck of the draw and wins the race, whereas today
we're good enough not to be leading and dominating but there when something
strikes the leader, and I understand and keep it in perspective that Brad had
the race won had he not had trouble.” So, what about Michigan?
Many are wondering if Earnhardt can pull off his first career E-Peat. Earnhardt himself would like nothing better,
but also knows that he’s in a good place right now as far as the Chase goes. “That would be awesome.
I haven't done that since the Nationwide days
back in '98 or '99. We won a couple
there back to back, I think. That's a
really good feeling. Puts you right on
top of the world. A win gives you a lot
of confidence, but you know and realize how difficult those are to come by and
how competitive this garage is, but man, when you win two in a row, man, that
sets you apart a bit from your competition.
That would be a great thing for us. “We started out the season when we won at Daytona, man, it
made the rest of the year a lot more relaxing, a lot easier, less stress and it
makes it fun, because you can just go to the race track and just race and not
worry about points. We went to -- we
used to -- last year and every damned year we would test at those road courses,
Road Atlanta and here and there and work ourselves to death trying to figure
out how to go faster at a road course, knowing damned good and well I wasn't
going to run well because I don't know how to drive them. But I can run okay at the Glen every once in
a while, but Sonoma, it's embarrassing, man, I haven't finished in the top 11
there ever. We just decided not to work
that hard and just go there without a test and wing it, and we got teammates to
test it and we'll see what they did and liked and we can go there with an
attitude of it's not -- we don't have to dig and gouge for every single
position and we don't have to worry if it's a total disaster or if it doesn't
work out, if we get spun out on the last lap.
We can just go have fun. Driving
around the track and running that particular race, it is fun, but at the end
when you get run over or you don't finish well, you're so pissed off, and it's
such a long way home. It's a terrible
trip home when you don't run good at Sonoma.
We don't have to worry about that now.
We can go to Michigan confident, happy, and a track where we really run
well at and we can have fun this summer knowing those two wins have got us good
and locked in pretty good.”
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