Earnhardt hoping for a boost at Talladega

By Mike Mulhern
Media General News Service
Published: October 2, 2008

Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s championship hopes this season are all but gone, and he never really ever even got in the game.

Earnhardt and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. kicked off the year determined to fit in with their new teammates at Rick Hendrick Motorsports, determined to be good neighbors with Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and Casey Mears, determined to make the Sprint Cup chase.

They did all that. But they didn’t catch fire.

Earnhardt and Eury kept slapping singles while Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Johnson and Greg Biffle were slamming home runs.

Now Earnhardt and Eury are nearly 200 points down after the first three races of the Chase for the Championship. And even if they do something big this weekend at Talladega - where Earnhardt has won five times - it probably will be too little too late.

So where is Earnhardt’s head?

“It’s just a good track ... look forward to it ... it’s always a lot of fun, a real easy weekend, because it’s more of a mental race than a physical race,“ he said of Talladega. “It’s not really who has the best car, but the guy who makes the best moves and makes the right decisions at the end of the race.“

However, for Earnhardt, the Chase now isn’t so much about winning but about hoping his rivals have a lot of bad luck. Still, Talladega - and that sea of Earnhardt fans - should be good for his head.

“My dad was a real good plate racer, so I loved going to the plate tracks,“ Earnhardt said. “You always knew, going into Daytona or Talladega, if you were at the track or at home watching, you were going to have a lot of fun because he always ran well - led laps, made a lot of incredible moves.

“These tracks are really intimidating when you’re young and go to them for the first time…. Talladega is the biggest track on the circuit. So when you’re a 15-year-old walking around in the garage, and you see the speeds those cars are reaching, you just get a big amount of respect for it early-on.“

Of course even Talladega hasn’t always been kind to Earnhardt.

“I’ve probably left that track just as angry as anybody else,“ he said. “It doesn’t always give you what you want. It’s not so much about how the car handles or how really good your car is, it’s about the guy who’s making the right moves, and teaming up with the right team.“

And about the guy who has the most luck ... or the worst luck.

“As far as our position now in the Chase,“ Earnhardt said, “we’ve just got to go for broke. Really throw it out there and take some chances, really take some risks. “At Talladega you can make some pretty ridiculous moves - and some of them pay off, some of them don’t.“

At the moment, the Chase is a three-man race, and Sunday’s Amp Energy 500 might not change much.

“Looking at the guys in the top five (Johnson, Edwards, Biffle, Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick), two or three are probably going to finish in the top 10 Sunday,“ Earnhardt said. “They’re good drivers; they’re up there for a reason in the points - because they’re smart.

“So it’s going to be tough to gain on everyone in this race. It will be tough to really jumble up the points like you might want…. I’d love to come out with the top 10 within 50 points of each other…but it’s not likely.

“You just have to try to win the race. That’s the only way to really gain points on anybody right now.“

No wonder Edwards pulled that wild last-lap move Sunday at Kansas Speedway, trying to surge past Jimmie Johnson and hitting the wall.

“I haven’t seen what Carl did, though I’ve had it described to me,“ Earnhardt said. “All I can say is it takes a lot of guts to make a move like that. It really takes a lot. You can criticize the recklessness ... but it really shows how hard a racer Carl is, how determined ... and what he’s willing to do.“

This weekend at Talladega, when a driver sees Edwards in his rearview, he won’t be sure of what Edwards might do. And that could be one reason Edwards did what he did in Kansas.

Talladega, after all, might be the biggest mind-game track on the circuit.

“Over the years we’ve seen a lot of amazing things happen there ... a lot of drama ... and tragedy as well,“ Earnhardt said. “It’s the biggest track, the longest track. It’s had a lot of facelifts. And it’s just always been very dramatic…. It’s an amazing adrenaline rush for four straight hours.“

And yet Talladega is a very easy track to drive, and now it’s also incredibly smooth.

“They did such a good job making that track smoother,“ Earnhardt said. “It was really rough before. That was kind of fun - you slid up in the corner, you could run the top, the track was really bumpy.

“Now it’s really smooth - really easy to get around.“

But not that easy to finish.

Mike Mulhern can be reached at .