Dale Earnhardt Jr. searching for answers heading into Darlington throwback weekend

Carrying a deep appreciation for NASCAR’s rich history, few drivers have championed the Southern 500 throwback weekend with such enthusiastic zeal as Dale Earnhardt Jr., who’s frequently stated that the concept now in its third year needs to be maintained as a revered tradition.

So invested is Earnhardt in the idea of running an iconic paint scheme that pays tribute to the past, he has a heavy hand in conceptualizing what design he’ll race at Darlington Raceway each Labor Day weekend. This year, the throwback livery on his No. 88 Chevrolet will mirror the look his car had when he won consecutive Xfinity Series championships in 1998 and 1999.

In this final season before retirement, the design is an appropriate nod to Earnhardt’s early years racing at the NASCAR national level, when few knew anything about him except he was son of the seven-time Cup Series champion.

But as Earnhardt prepares to make his final Southern 500 start after announcing in April he would retire at the end of the current season, the promise of a weekend where he potentially could win at a track he cherishes and in an event that he adores has given way to the reality that just being competitive may be considered an accomplishment.

Earnhardt’s final full season has featured significantly more downs than ups. He has just one top-five and four top-10 finishes through 24 races, and a whopping nine finishes of 30th or worse. Indicative that the biggest issue hampering the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports team is speed, Earnhardt has led all of 24 laps.

”I’m excited about the car; it’s a great-looking car,” Earnhardt said Tuesday on his weekly podcast, The Dale Jr. Download. “I’m proud to have that opportunity to run this car, but for me, I feel pressure to myself and to my fans that if we don’t run well, it won’t matter.”

Earlier in the season, Earnhardt remained ever confident his results would turn around as he was in amid a slow start. The No. 88 car had been fast most weeks, he and crew chief Greg Ives reasoned, that all NASCAR’s 14-time most popular driver needed was a bit of good luck to counteract the misfortune he routinely experienced during the opening months.

Now, though, the results and the speed are both absent. In the seven races since winning the pole position for the July 1 race at Daytona International Speedway, Earnhardt hasn’t qualified better than 13th (twice). His best finish during that span is 12th. And last week at Bristol Motor Speedway, one of his better tracks, he started 31st and finished 23rd.

Any shot to earn a spot in the 16-driver Cup playoffs hinges on winning either Sunday night or the regular season finale Sept. 9 at Richmond Raceway. If not, the final 10 races of the year will be all about pride rather than attempting to win a first-ever championship.

”We started the season out, and we always said, well, if we didn’t have a good finish we did have speed, and we were fast at a lot of racetracks up until the summer, and then we lost our speed,” Earnhardt said. “Now we’re not only having difficult finishes and frustrating runs, but we don’t have the speed to be excited about going into the next weekend.

“I’m just really concerned with how we’ve been running. Obviously disappointed with how Bristol worked out for us and how we finished, and I feel growing intensity or pressure mounting to start making some things happen, like get some results on the track.”

Maybe Darlington will be a time warp, triggering some kind of throwback performance where the No. 88 car had the speed allowing Earnhardt to wheel to the front. He finished eighth in the Southern 500 two years ago, the last time he raced on NASCAR’s oldest superspeedway having missed the 2016 edition race recovering from a concussion that sidelined him for the entire second half of the season.

More likely, odds favor Sunday being a continuation of what has been a trying final season, a fact Earnhardt seemingly concedes.

“I’m a little nervous for how difficult [this] weekend is going to be for us if we don’t have speed,” he said. “It’s hard enough as it is when the car’s good and you’re running well. I haven’t been to Darlington in a while where we’ve not just struggled, fought all night and ran mediocre.”