Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Confidence Remains Strong Heading Into New Hampshire Race Despite Recent Slide

Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t panicking despite a backslide through the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings over the last four weeks.

If anything, he said, his confidence is as strong as ever.

“I think the best thing we can do is just stay positive,” he said. “We run good at New Hampshire; we’ve been kind of eyeing this weekend and looking forward to it. We want to come in here with a lot of confidence. We belong in the Chase, we belong up front in the top five and the top 10.

“We’re going to try to make that happen this weekend and run well.”

Earnhardt Jr. said his four consecutive results outside the top 15 – a stretch that has dropped him from third to eighth in points – are frustrating, but not a setback that is too much to overcome. Last week, Earnhardt Jr. blew a tire to cap a disappointing night at Kentucky.

“You know, running poorly is not what you want to be doing,” he said. “But we’ve just got to keep going to the racetrack. We’ve got good cars, we’ve got a really, really good team and we should be running better than we have been in the last couple weeks. And we know it.”

The opportunity to stabilize his position within the top 10 in points and climb back to where he was earlier in the season “shouldn’t be that difficult,” he predicted. There’s no need to put extra emphasis on trying to win a race to get a wild card berth, he said, because “If I could win a race, I’d win a race.”

How much does he worry about trying to go for wins as opposed to points racing?

“I don’t!” he said. “I don’t worry about that. I just go race.”