Earnhardt Must Win Talladega After Rough Kansas Race

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. used to own Talladega Superspeedway. After a disappointing run at Kansas Speedway in Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400, he’ll need to re-ascend to the throne next Sunday if he is to keep his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship hopes intact.

Can do, Earnhardt, who finished 21st at Kansas and two laps off the pace at Kansas, said after exiting his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on pit road.

“Don’t count us out,” he said. “We got confidence and we definitely have the car to do it…and Talladega is a race we can win.”

Earnhardt did not have the car to do it at Kansas. Nor did he have the precision in the pits that championship hopefuls need.

He started 15th in the second of the three Contender Round events and moved backwards from there.

He was plagued by vibrations a couple of times in the race and then, on lap 160 of the 267-lap event, what he believed to be a loose wheel sent him to the pits under green. When he emerged, he had dropped off the lead lap.

It marked the second time in the Chase that a loose wheel caused him problems. At Dover a couple weeks ago, he was plagued by one. But before he was about to pit, a caution saved him from having to make a green flag stop and allowed him to advance to the three-race Contender Round.

Despite the wheel problems, Earnhardt insisted after the Kansas race that he has big confidence in his crew and crew chief.

“I’m fine,” he said. “We’ll get it figured out. I believe in my guys. I really do.”

Earnhardt, who will start the race at Talladega next Sunday 11th in points and 31 points out of the eighth and final berth in the Eliminator Round. A good finish won’t be good enough for Earnhardt’s championship chances. He will likely need to win.

His overall history at Talladega says a victory is very possible.

Earnhardt won the spring race at Talladega this year — but his the last victory before that was in 2004.

Earnhardt, who said he arrived at Kansas knowing he would likely need to win Talladega in order to advance, said, basically, “so what” to that.

“I know that one race, one opportunity, one chance makes the odds feel bad, but we won there this year,” he said. “And we went to Daytona (which, like Talladega is a restrictor plate track) and ran third in the 500 and we won our 125 (qualifying race).”

Earnhardt was asked late Sunday afternoon about the frustration of having such a good season boil down to the X-Factor event. He sneered.

“I’m not frustrated and I’m not emotionally drained or anything like that,” he said. “The Chase is going to give you these kind of results.

“I’ve been in this before and it is what it is. We’ll go and try to run hard and if we can’t win the championship this year, it’s not life-threatening.”
There are lot of females who are using branded viagra pills for women should try this generic medicine and like all other generic medicines, it has its side effects; but with Kamagra, the fallouts are mild and of short duration. When seminal vesiculitis is at the chronic phase, patients can also make their patients from the online medicinal stores. * Patients must never make any excess intake of such drug cheapest viagra price devices If you’re looking to have sex for a longer timeframe. However, the morbidity rate of pre-diabetes, i.e., impaired glucose cheap cialis professional regulation, in the rural population is higher than normal. Buying price sildenafil from your local medicine store can be the ideal place to purchase this capsule at a cheaper rate.
Harvick, Truex Struggle On Pit Road At Kansas

It was a picture-post card autumn day in America’s Heartland for both fans and a couple of Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship contenders at Kansas Speedway on Sunday. But on the final green flag pit stop, things got cold and dark for two of the top contenders.

On that late-afternoon pitting sequence, which began with 54 laps to go in the 267-lap race, goofiness resulted in pass-through penalties to drivers who started the day second and third in points and kind of comfortably above the cutline as the Chase nears yet another cutoff event under its elimination-format playoff.

As a result, both defending champion Kevin Harvick and fellow Chevrolet driver Martin Truex, Jr. will head to the final race of the three-event Contender Round portion of the Chase needing to avoid trouble – if not notching a victory – at almost-always troublesome Talladega Superspeedway next weekend.

Harvick was penalized when a fueling can bounced out of his pit stall.

The defending series champion, who had led 21 laps and was a major threat to get the victory, fell off the lead lap and finished 16th.

He dropped from second in points to fifth and will head to plate-racing Talladega for the final race of the Contender Round just seven points ahead of the cutoff in his attempt to make the Eliminator 8 Round.

Harvick, nicknamed “Happy,” wasn’t terribly sad after Kansas.

“We are lucky to come out of it as good as we did with our Budweiser/Jimmy John’s team,” the Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet driver said. “We didn’t have a great weekend. A lot of things falling on and off and now we’ve got to go to Talladega and have a good week. All-in-all it could have been a lot worse and everybody kept digging.”

Harvick’s late-race problems were not confined to a bouncing fuel can. He also had a broken gear shift lever.

“It was just really hard to shift from second to third (gear) just because there was nothing to grab onto for leverage,” Harvick said. “But in the end the car vibrated all day I’m lucky something else didn’t break.”

Then there was Truex, Jr. of one-car team Furniture Row Racing. Third in points when the day began, he ran near the leaders until that fateful pit stop. Leaving his pit box was a tire. The penalty was the same and by the time he completed his pass-through, he was off the lead lap and headed for Talladega sitting on the eighth-place bubble.

“It was a tough day,” Truex said. “We were in good shape before the penalty. We fought hard on the car all day and got much better right when we got the penalty. We were fast at the end, but not enough time to get back up there. This Chase format is tough, really tough. It will be a battle next week in Talladega.”

A very tough battle, too. Truex has never won a plate race. He has had just two top-five finishes in 42 starts at plate tracks.

If things don’t go his way next week, it won’t be because of a lack of positive attitude on the part of his team.

“We’re still alive,” crew chief Cole Pearn radioed Truex after he took the checkered flag. “Considering what happened today I guess it could have been worse. We’re still on the plus side heading to Talladega.”