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DALE EARNHARDT JR. NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD/ AMP ENERGY CHEVROLET POST-RACE RECAP / BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY DATE: March 22, 2009 RACE: Food City 500 START: 35th FINISH: 14th POINTS POSITION: 19th RECAPPING THE RACE: Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the No. 88 National Guard/AMP Energy Chevrolet, rallied from the back of the pack to finish 14th in Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. For the third straight race weekend, the No. 88 team benefited from a strong 14th-place finish. Earnhardt continued his climb in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship standings, improving five positions to take 19th place. He trails 12th-place Kevin Harvick by 66 points. Earnhardt lapped Bristol's high-banked, half-mile oval in 15.635 seconds (122.725 mph) during Friday afternoon's qualifying session and was credited with the 35th staring spot. However, the team decided to change the transmission in the No. 88 Chevrolet just before the race and was forced, per NASCAR rule, to start the event from the tail end of the longest line. The green flag waved shortly after 2 p.m. before an estimated sellout crowd of 160,000, and Earnhardt started his climb. When the first caution flag waved on Lap 26, the 34-year-old driver notified crew chief Tony Eury Jr. that the car was good and didn't need any changes. So Eury used the opportunity to bring his driver to pit road, and the crew went to work bolting on four fresh Goodyear tires and refueling the Chevy. After recording the team's fastest pit stop of the season, the crew sent its driver back to green-flag racing on Lap 32 in the 31st position. Earnhardt had improved his running position to 15th by Lap 188 when the fifth caution flag of the race was waved. He radioed that the No. 88 Chevrolet was not turning as well through the middle of the turns. The crew bolted on four fresh tires, made an air pressure adjustment and gave the No. 88 Chevy fuel. Earnhardt restarted the race running 15th on Lap 195. Despite the handling issue, the 34-year-old driver continued to race inside the top 18 during the middle stages of the race. There were five laps remaining in the 500-lap event and Earnhardt was running 15th when the caution flag was waved for the ninth time, setting up a green-white-checkered finish. Eury called his driver down pit road one last time for four fresh tires and sent him back to the action. Quick work by the crew netted one position on pit road, and Earnhardt held on to cross the finish line in 14th. QUOTING DALE EARNHARDT JR.: EARNHARDT (ON SUNDAY'S RUN.): "We worked real hard. We had great pit stops, and we just had terrible track position. I qualified really poorly and made some mistakes on our qualifying lap and made our qualifying effort so bad that we never had track position all day. We had a good competitive car, a top-10 car for sure -- we just could never get there."  ***** Courtesy of Hendrick Motorsports. Media Relations | No. 88 AMP Energy / National Guard Racing ***** Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Official Site - www.dalejr.com |
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