Earnhardt: Focus turns to finishes, not points
Sunday, 30 April 2017
By Kelly Crandall / Image by John Harrelson, LAT
As an old B.B. King song goes, "If it wasn't for bad luck, you know I wouldn't have no luck at all." Nine races into the season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. knows the feeling.
Earnhardt finished 30th Sunday at Richmond International Raceway – the fifth time he's ended up 30th or worse this season. Everything that could have gone wrong did in the Toyota Owners 400: a speeding penalty, colliding with his teammate (Jimmie Johnson), cutting down a tire and going for a spin. Afterward, Johnson and Earnhardt talked it over, with Johnson telling Earnhardt he didn't even know the 88 was there before the two made contact coming off Turn 2.
"Just terrible luck," Earnhardt said of his day. "I don't know what to do, but we were probably going to finish anywhere around 10th to 15th, not all that awesome, but we just have such terrible luck."
It wasn't all bad. On Friday, Earnhardt made it to the final round of qualifying and earned the 12th starting position. But after moving forward on one run, the speeding penalty knocked Earnhardt outside the top 20, where he found himself stuck.
"We're supposed to run two yellow lights [on the dash], then when you get in the curve we go up to two orange," Earnhardt said. "I had two yellow and one orange, I was pretty conservative but they said we sped. We're real aggressive with our lights, we need to be maybe a little more conservative just so we can get through a couple of these races without issues like that. But all I can do is run the lights like the dash is programmed."
Before the car was torn up, Earnhardt admitted he was happy with how it had reacted to changes. The team was planning on using strategy to try and get to the end by staying out longer as the leaders began to pit, which worked until Earnhardt and Johnson collided, resulting in the cut right-rear tire that brought out the caution. He finished two laps down.
"Car took it well," Earnhardt said of the damage. "Tore the sway bar off it, so we finished the race without a sway bar, but still, luck this year is just awful. I don't know what else we need to do. We're out there taking care of ourselves and running along and something always seems to bite us."
Last Tuesday, Earnhardt announced this season would be his last in the Cup Series, but he's not content to just ride around. Performances like Sunday's are not going to cut it when Earnhardt says he wants to run well and win a few races before this year is over.
"[Crew chief] Greg [Ives] told me last week we weren't looking at them anymore," Earnhardt said of his position in the points. "We're just going to try win a race. We're so far back – if you're sitting 15th, 16th, 17th, probably can't help but look at points then.
"We're sitting so far back we just got to get this thing to where we can finish. Put some races together. I'm just going to concentrate on trying to get about five or six races put together in a row [of] top-15s. See what the points look like after that."