FORT WORTH, Texas – It was a busy night at Texas Motor Speedway for Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“We had to pass a lot of cars tonight,” Earnhardt said.
Sixty-three, to be exact, and those were just cars running in the top 15 while under a green flag. He led the field in quality passes for the race.
“But once we finally got the track position,” he continued, “I thought we were a top-five car for sure.”
It didn’t take long to gain that position, but he had to earn it back throughout the event.
By the first caution flag, Earnhardt had moved from his 25th-place starting position into the top 10. But during that caution, he had to visit pit road twice to tighten lug nuts on a loose wheel. While he said he appreciated the No. 88 pit crew’s call to fix the mistake, it put him back in 30th position.
That was on Lap 37, and by Lap 103, Earnhardt had once again cracked the top 10.
From there, it was all about vying for the race lead.
“We didn't have quite enough for the (No.) 4 or the (No.) 48 until right at the end,” he said. “I think from 20 (laps) to go to 10 to go we were the best car.”
To that point, Earnhardt jumped all the way from 10th to third during a restart on Lap 21. However, even though he passed a competitor for second place on the final lap, he couldn’t hold the position and ultimately finished third.
He was left wondering what if, as he believed if he caught the second-place car and eventual winner Jimmie Johnson a little earlier, he had a good enough car to head to Victory Lane.
“No matter if you come in third, second, you come close, you always think there was something you should have done different,” he said. “That's one that's going to bug me for a few hours. The other side of it is we've had a couple tough weeks. We've had very fast cars but the results haven't been very good and we've been frustrated, so it was good to get a good finish in the bank to reassure ourselves that this is where we need to be running and should be running every week.”
It marked Earnhardt’s fourth top-five and fifth top-10 result of the season.
“Our cars are really good. Our motors are amazing,” he said. “I'll be honest, I mean, I've been a lot more competitive over the last couple years. We've got a lot of great people working at that organization, but my resurgence or whatever you want to call it is mainly due to how good the cars are, how fast the cars are, how well prepared we are, how much work we do. We do a lot of work.”
And he hopes that work soon leads to a trip to Victory Lane so that he can feel all the more secure about his Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup prospects.
“I want to win to know I'm in,” he said.
For now, he’s happy to keep building the foundation for a successful 2015 with another third-place finish.
“You work your guts out in there driving that car around there because the track is so slick,” he said of Texas Motor Speedway. “So it's a very physical race, and I had a blast.”