When Dale Earnhardt Jr. finally caught a break or two Sunday, after half a season of miserable luck, he seized the moment and wouldn’t let go.
Thus he blasted out of a 19-race losing streak–and out from under the microscope of the NASCAR nation–with a serendipitous victory in the USG Sheetrock 400 at, of all places, Chicagoland Speedway, where he never had finished better than 10th.
At times speechless in Victory Lane, and seeming as astounded as he was euphoric, Earnhardt gasped, “This is a long time coming, man. It’s real emotional. More than I can handle right now.”
His red No. 8 Chevrolet still wasn’t up to the level that won him six races last year. But Earnhardt, like his late father before him, found a way to carry the car in the waning laps.
“To be quite honest, our car was not as good as Junior made it look,” said Steve Hmiel, who took over as interim crew chief in May, bent on bringing the team out of the doldrums. “Junior drove the wheels off it. I could see how high his elbows were. He was in there wheeling the heck out of his car.”
Earnhardt’s triumph came at the expense of one of his best friends among drivers, Matt Kenseth, who dominated most of the race but then lost by using what should have been the right pit strategy.
“We obviously didn’t have the best car,” Earnhardt said. “Matt Kenseth had it, hands down. But we had the pit strategy at the end that put us in position to win.”
With 20 laps to go, Kenseth pitted for the prescribed four tires. Earnhardt, who’d been no match for his buddy all afternoon, asked Hmiel to give him just two tires, and to get him out of the pits quicker.
The first part worked. Earnhardt was first out of the pits–to the roared delight of an estimated 90,000 at the Joliet track–and second only to Scott Wimmer, who hadn’t pitted at all. Kenseth came out ninth but with a freshly shod Ford plenty capable of running down Earnhardt’s Chevrolet.
Earnhardt caught the crowning break when Jeff Gordon crashed to bring out the final caution and cut Kenseth’s green-flag window for catching Earnhardt to only the final 13 laps.
But on that last restart, Earnhardt first had to get around Wimmer, which he did with 11 laps to go, and then hold off the fast-closing Kenseth the rest of the way. Kenseth ran out of laps and wound up second, less than three-tenths of a second behind Earnhardt.
“That’s the kind of thing you have to rely on a driver to do,” Hmiel said. “When you make a call like that, and put him out there on not as good tires as somebody else has, and the other guy’s coming [to cut] a tenth of a second a lap in your mirror, you can’t mess up. You’ve got to run hard, you’ve got to protect your position. And Junior knows how to do that.”
It was all a sort of rush for Earnhardt, who’d eased almost unnoticed into the top 10 earlier in the race, with his crew making small improvements and getting him out quickly on his pit stops.
As the race wound down, “we as a team were pretty happy with finding ourselves in the top five,” Earnhardt said. “Then the caution came out, and I said, `Well, Steve, what do you want to do?’ He thought for a second. I said, `If you put me in front with two tires, maybe I can hold ’em off. Maybe it’ll take those guys with four tires (Kenseth and Tony Stewart, who’d been running second before the stop) some time to get through the field, and we’ll have a chance to get away from ’em a little bit.’ Steve agreed, and made the call.”
“It was a no-brainer,” Hmiel said of both his own call for two tires and Kenseth crew chief Robbie Reiser’s call for four. “When you have the best car, you come get four tires every chance you get.”
For Kenseth, the ending was tough to swallow after he led 176 of the 267 laps.
“We pretty much led the whole race,” Kenseth said. “It was just disappointing to give it away. You hate not to be a gracious loser, but it’s tough to lead almost every lap and then get beat at the end on pit strategy.”
Was losing this way any less painful because it meant his close friend had broken a slump?
“No,” Kenseth said. And for several seconds the silence resonated.
SUNDAY’S USG SHEETROCK 400 RESULTS
At Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet; 1.5-mile laps
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F ST DRIVER CAR LAPS MONEY PTS (PL) ’05 MONEY
1. 25 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 267 325,033 2,139 (11) 3,405,643
2. 4 Matt Kenseth Ford 267 265,201 1,970 (16) 2,705,781
3. 1 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 267 217,266 2,548 (1) 4,070,056
4. 5 Brian Vickers Chevrolet 267 146,300 1,781 (22) 2,258,680
5. 13 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 267 169,561 2,397 (3) 3,508,521
6. 22 Jeremy Mayfield Dodge 267 135,220 2,179 (9) 2,415,824
7. 28 Ricky Rudd Ford 267 130,564 1,680 (27) 2,283,454
8. 19 Kurt Busch Ford 267 148,775 2,172 (10) 3,891,255
9. 3 Casey Mears Dodge 267 125,608 1,683 (25) 2,132,818
10. 20 Mark Martin Ford 267 112,375 2,202 (6) 3,377,755
11. 6 Greg Biffle Ford 267 107,625 2,440 (2) 3,250,095
12. 33 Rusty Wallace Dodge 267 123,458 2,300 (4) 2,586,238
13. 26 Bobby Labonte Chevrolet 267 126,350 1,689 (24) 2,484,160
14. 24 Kyle Busch Chevrolet 267 99,600 1,886 (20) 2,161,550
15. 15 Joe Nemechek Chevrolet 267 115,058 1,958 (18) 2,255,448
16. 31 David Stremme Dodge 267 84,800 115 (57) 618,390
17. 30 Scott Wimmer Dodge 267 110,158 1,476 (34) 1,915,388
18. 8 Dale Jarrett Ford 267 121,458 2,139 (11) 2,517,398
19. 9 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 267 129,936 2,052 (14) 2,665,856
20. 43 Jason Leffler Chevrolet 267 93,050 1,287 (36) 1,393,890
21. 17 Bobby Hamilton Jr. Chevrolet 267 96,958 1,122 (37) 1,528,668
22. 36 Jamie McMurray Dodge 267 92,600 2,190 (8) 2,257,760
23. 7 Scott Riggs Chevrolet 267 102,397 1,681 (26) 2,352,697
24. 40 Jeff Green Dodge 267 112,136 1,561 (31) 2,111,526
25. 42 Mike Wallace Chevrolet 267 82,890 1,391 (35) 1,522,470
26. 41 Ken Schrader Dodge 267 81,775 1,644 (28) 1,671,935
27. 29 Kyle Petty Dodge 267 81,175 1,594 (30) 1,796,505
28. 39 Kevin Lepage Dodge 267 80,075 975 (38) 1,136,945
29. 2 Ryan Newman Dodge 262 122,366 2,196 (7) 3,027,866
30. 35 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 260 103,970 1,964 (17) 2,227,250
31. 32 Stuart Kirby Chevrolet 259 76,925 107 (58) 144,165
32. 38 Sterling Marlin Dodge 253-x 104,633 1,693 (23) 2,217,013
33. 14 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 249-y 126,211 2,046 (15) 4,293,021
34. 11 Mike Bliss Chevrolet 249-y 76,325 1,557 (32) 1,633,425
35. 12 Robby Gordon Chevrolet 222 76,125 965 (39) 1,062,293
36. 27 Michael Waltrip Chevrolet 214-y 103,139 1,925 (19) 2,469,349
37. 23 Elliott Sadler Ford 210 115,691 2,230 (5) 2,752,671
38. 10 Dave Blaney Chevrolet 200-z 83,500 1,597 (29) 1,744,830
39. 21 Carl Edwards Ford 170 93,290 2,073 12) 2,279,890
40. 37 Carl Long Dodge 148-z 75,080 151 (51) 346,570
41. 18 Kasey Kahne Dodge 138-x 106,955 1,800 (21) 2,630,045
42. 34 Terry Labonte Chevrolet 124-z 74,695 557 (40) 612,605
43. 16 Travis Kvapil Dodge 13-x 82,486 1,541 (33) 1,747,086
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x–engine failure; y–accident; z–handling
Time: 3 hours 8 minutes 16 seconds Margin of victory: 0.291 seconds
Winner’s average speed: 127.638 m.p.h. Caution flags: 10 for 47 laps
Lead changes: 17 among 12 drivers. Lap leaders: Johnson 1; Newman 2-10; Johnson 11-30; Biffle 31; Kenseth 32; Biffle 33-65; Kenseth 66-81; Hamilton Jr. 82; Schrader 83; Kenseth 84-119; Lepage 120; MWallace 121; Kenseth 122-165; Petty 166; Kenseth 167-245; Marlin 246; Wimmer 247-256; Earnhardt Jr. 257-267
POINT LEADERS
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RK, DRIVER PTS RK, DRIVER PTS RK, DRIVER PTS
1. Johnson 2,548 6. Martin 2,203 11. Jarrett 2,139
2. Biffle 2,440 7. Newman 2,196 12. Edwards 2,073
3. Stewart 2,397 8. McMurray 2,190 13. Earnhardt Jr. 2,057
4. Wallace 2,300 9. Mayfield 2,179 14. Harvick 2,052
5. Sadler 2,230 9. K.Busch 2,172 15. J. Gordon 2,046
ehinton@tribune.com
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