An interview with: DALE EARNHARDT JR.
THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today’s NASCAR teleconference with Dale Earnhardt, Jr., driver of the No. 88 National Guard Diet Mountain Dew Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
Earnhardt sits seventh in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings, 26 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson. He has a win and eight top-10 finishes at Dover International Speedway, the third race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Dale, talk about your Chase so far and the next two weeks with favorable tracks coming up in Dover and Talladega.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: We definitely had a frustrating week this past race at New Hampshire. We salvaged a decent finish considering how frustrating it was and how the car actually was performing throughout the day.
That gives me a little bit of confidence that even if things aren’t going quite well, we can still get a decent enough run to keep ourselves in the hunt.
I feel like we’re still in the hunt. Obviously there are some teams that are showing strength over the last couple weeks. But we’re not giving up. There’s a lot of racing left, a lot of adversity these guys have got to go through. Hopefully we can maximize these eight remaining races, capitalize on some unfortunate things happening to some other teams, put ourselves back in the hunt.
This thing can turn around in a week or two and we could be right back up in the middle of the battle up front. We just got to keep working hard to give ourselves that opportunity if that opportunity arises.
THE MODERATOR: Out Twitter question this week is: Other than your win at Michigan, which win this year has been the most fun for you?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: That’s a good question. There’s been a lot of good times. I’ve had a lot of fun throughout the year. I can’t really say there’s one race that stands out beyond the win. But there’s been some races that have been fun. We had some good finishes, drove some really good racecars, had some cars that have been a lot of fun to drive.
Hopefully there’s a win or two more before the season’s over with, and we’ll go into Homestead with an opportunity to still be in the championship. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll now go to the media for questions for today’s guest, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
Q. When you come to Talladega you like to maybe explore a little bit in the infield and elsewhere. What is your most vivid moment or memory at Talladega off the track?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Probably when I was young, I used to love to go around the garage while the race was going on ’cause it was a ghost town. You would just be amazed at the things you would find lying around by the teams, sparkplugs, parts, things that they’d fabricated or thrown off the car, taken off the car. Maybe a couple cars had had an accident, had come through there, they cut the stuff off the cars, load the cars up, go home, leave the debris, sheet metal laying there. Just kind of sifting through all that stuff while the race was happening on the racetrack was something we used to do quite a bit as kids at Talladega.
Q. You would supply Jimmy equipment that way, didn’t you?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: We used to get probably a box. Me and Brad on a couple of occasions would go around, there would be dozens of sparkplugs still in the box laying around on the floor. This was different. Back then, teams would have pit carts. When the race was going on, there was nothing in the garage, it was basically empty. We would get all those sparkplugs. There would be cans of glass cleaner, brake fluid. If it was half full, we’d put it in the box. We would take it over to Jimmy’s hauler. I don’t know what they ever did with that stuff.
Me and Brad thought we were doing something, occupying ourselves while the race was going on.
Q. With the way that the Chase is structured, I know everybody feels like you can have a Mulligan. When you have a mediocre race, guys like Jimmie and Denny run away with it, even Jeff finishes third and can’t make up any ground, how difficult is it to say, All right, we’re still in it, keep your hopes up, not feel discouraged?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I think we feel that this is going to be very hard. It’s obviously a heck of a challenge. And we do feel like we need top fives. We’re going to have to have top-five finishes. With Jeff running up in third, he didn’t gain any ground on those guys, but he has to run third again and hope that they don’t.
That’s really where we are mentally. But we’re not discouraged, yet we know that the hill got a lot steeper over the last couple weeks. We’re trying to catch some teams that are frankly some of the strongest teams in the sport.
The guys that we’re trying to catch haven’t been very inconsistent. You got eight races left. You got to go in there with a good attitude. You got to have the body language and everything where your confidence is high so your team around you feels the same way, and everybody works hard. You got to keep trying.
Even if things don’t go exactly the way you want, there’s eight chances to win some races, eight chances to have some things to celebrate, have some good things happen to you.
Here we are trying to race for the championship, that’s our main focus. But we would love to win some races during the process, and that would give us an opportunity.
Q. I know you’re a big football fan. Were you watching the game last night and what were your thoughts on the call?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I just thought it was consistent with what we’ve seen throughout the year in how the replacement refs have had some problems and some challenges. They faced a lot of criticism. They get a lot of attention. I know they’re probably doing as good a job as they can do, they’re trying as hard as they can to keep the game going, maintain integrity of the game.
It’s not quite working. I think some action needs to be taken to shore up an agreement with the refs to where we can bring them back. Even if we do bring them back, I’m hearing it will still take three or four weeks before that process can be finalized and they can get to the field.
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- 2012 NSCS Coke Zero 400 Q&A with Team Chevy Driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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