NASCAR Darlington 2014: Dale Earnhardt Jr. happy with 2nd, wanted more

Don’t remind Dale Earnhardt Jr. that he nearly won the Southern 500 Saturday night at Darlington Raceway.

Earnhardt got the jump on a green-white-checker restart and built a lead with two laps to go when the caution waved for the wrecked car of Kurt Busch. His lead evaporated, Earnhardt lined up alongside Kevin Harvick, who had the dominant car throughout the evening and fresher tires, on the subsequent and final restart.

From there it didn’t take long before Harvick powered by Earnhardt into Turn 3 coming to the white flag and drove away.

“Everybody was telling me that I had a 15-car-length lead, and I don’t want to hear about that,” Earnhardt said. “I’m going to hear about it all day tomorrow, ‘Man, you almost won it.’ But I don’t know how good Kevin was. He was pretty fast. I think he was going to drive the (expletive) out of it and try to get there.”

While second was Earnhardt’s best ever at Darlington, he couldn’t help lament what might have been.

“I’m going to probably wished I would have run the top in (Turns) 3 and 4 coming to the white and made him try to pass us on the bottom,” Earnhardt said. “But I’m pretty sure he was going to get around us somehow.”

The difference Earnhardt acknowledged was tires. During his final pit stop crew chief Steve Letarte gambled and elected to go with just two tires in an effort to jump his driver up the leaderboard.

Harvick, who was leading at the time, got four tires and restarted fifth. And with two late cautions Harvick was able to close the distance on Earnhardt to setup the deciding restart.

“(Harvick) just had new tires,” Earnhardt said. “We had 30-something laps on our left, and it just wasn’t going to get the job done with him right there on us.

Winning a race at Darlington is something Earnhardt has long sought to accomplish, a track where his father won nine times. But for the majority of his career NASCAR’s oldest speedway has confounded Earnhardt, who entered the weekend with three top-five finishes in 19 career starts.

The second-place finish was Earnhardt’s fourth runner-up in eight races this season. He enters the first off-week of the year fourth in the standings, 26 points behind championship leader Jeff Gordon.

“I think we’re really got some great performance for our team,” Earnhardt said. “We just need to look at our competition, try to understand what we’re seeing and some areas where we can improve. There’s some spots where we can improve and get better.”