2014 Sylvania 300: Dale Earnhardt Jr. overcomes early trouble, rallies to finish 9th

Through two races of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been anything but spectacular, but NASCAR’s most popular driver is satisfied with his position heading into next week’s Round 1 elimination race.

Earnhardt finished a hard-fought ninth Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. That followed an 11th-place effort the week before in the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway.

Those two results have Earnhardt sixth in the standings, and a comfortable 28 points above the cutline. (The four lowest-ranked drivers without a victory are eliminated next week at Dover International Speedway.)

“I know everybody is looking at us like we are falling off a little bit,” Earnhardt said. “But Chicago hadn’t been a great track for us and New Hampshire hadn’t either. Dover has. So I will be surprised if we don’t go down there and be competitive. We were racing for a win there last year and ran pretty good there this year. I look forward to going and having a good car.”

Earnhardt experienced an eventful Sylvania 300 Sunday. A loose right front wheel required an extra pit stop early and dropped him a lap down. But a rash of yellow flags -- a season-high 15 in total -- allowed Earnhardt to eventually get back on the lead lap, and from there gradually pick his way back to the front.

“The guys gave me great stops after that and I’m proud of my team,” he said. “You’re going to have mistakes. I’m going to make mistakes, but nobody really got on anybody, everybody sort of regrouped and we finished out the day.”

Several of the cautions involved drivers in the Chase including Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski among others. Earnhardt himself was involved in incident when a tap from Austin Dillon pushed him into Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who then spun.

“There are going to be so many yellows at the end of this race, there just are always especially in the Chase as the season is winding down and the action is getting furious,” Earnhardt said. “Things are going to happen on the race track that you typically don’t see in these races. You see yellows at the end of the race, but today in the last 100 laps we had quite a few.

“You know some of them guys are going to have a hard time dodging some of that stuff. That is what I was thinking about when we were back there. We got our lap back. I was glad to get some track position and sort of get up there where things are a lot calmer and more organized.”

Earnhardt and his team’s ability to overcome adversity paid dividends Sunday. Instead of heading to Dover on the Chase bubble and starring at possible elimination, he heads to the one-mile track in fairly safe position to advance.

While not his best track, Dover has been good to Earnhardt recently. In the June race he finished ninth and a year ago in the September event was runner-up leading 80 laps.

“Dover is not a track where we practice well,” Earnhardt said. “I just have to keep that in mind while we are out there practicing and not get too distraught because we race pretty well there.”