Dale Earnhardt Jr. Not Thrilled With Eighth At Texas Motor Speedway

Seven times, the representatives of Junior Nation at Texas Motor Speedway rose to their feet, cheering for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and pumping their fists as their driver took the lead.

Earnhardt Jr. was a fixture at the front of the field more than he has been at intermediate tracks in recent years, and he led seven times for 46 laps on a cloudy Monday afternoon.

But at the end of the race, his two fresh tires weren’t enough to out-run the cars who had four fresh tires, and he slipped from third to eighth in the final 12 laps.

“I just couldn’t hold them off,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “The new tires were coming. I tried to pinch everybody down and they just ran me up into the fence off the corner, and I drove it in the fence once myself.”

Earnhardt Jr. said he was having fun until the flood of late cautions.

“We run 450 miles to sit there and settle it in a bunch of mess there at the end of the race, and it is kind of stupid but that is the way it went down,” he said. “We all drive too hard and stuff happens. I don’t know why the things happen, but they do.”

The No. 88 was good, Earnhardt Jr. said, but realistically not capable of winning. He said it was a sixth- or fifth-place car, “but not a third-place car,” which is where he had run much of the day.

“We worked on it and worked on it, but we couldn’t really nail it and get it just right,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Two tires won the race [for Denny Hamlin], but when you’re running third in the dirty air with two tires, you’re just not quite as good.”

There was some thought that the return of the spoiler at the big tracks would benefit drivers like Earnhardt Jr., who had won plenty of races in the old car but struggled in the new model with the wing.

But Earnhardt Jr. nixed that idea, saying, “It didn’t drive any different for me. That’s not a bad thing; the car drives about the same. So it is what it is.”

“It’ll happen,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It’ll just take awhile.”