Dale Earnhardt Jr. once more came close to snaring his first NASCAR Sprint Cup win of this season. But once more, he found himself settling for second.
Earnhardt Jr. has finished second four times this season — at Atlanta, Texas, Bristol and now on Monday at Pocono Raceway. But his runner-up finish in the Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400, delayed to Monday by rainy conditions, could have been sweeter than the others.
Why? Because he snapped a five-race stretch in which he had a top finish of 13th.
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Still, Earnhardt is intent on getting a win — and on Monday, he looked like he had a chance. He restarted with the lead with less than 40 laps to go, but Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott immediately challenged him, and eventual winner Kurt Busch overtook both of them.
"Really we lost the race on the restart,” he said. "[Elliott] and me were racing pretty hard. He was really trying to get his lead back, and he knew if he could get the lead, he was going to win the race. He got me loose a little bit. That slowed us up some.
"[Busch] got a good run on him and I didn't do a good enough job holding him off. I could have been a little more aggressively doing some things differently. But we ended up getting tight and not really having anything anyways right at the end of the race, and [Busch] saved enough."
We should have won today.😡 I didn't do my best on the final restart.😫 My team gave me a shot at it.💪🏼 Hell of a group of guys. @AxaltaRacing
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) June 6, 2016
In the closing laps, he was focused on holding his position and actually said that the team “certainly finished better than we should have.”
.@KurtBusch did a great job. Congrats to him and his crew. I've worked with several of his guys on the old DEI 8 car.
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) June 6, 2016
Earnhardt certainly found the positives in his top finish.
He described the race as a “good step in the right direction.”
Still, he is intent on continuing to improve as the season wears on.
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“We just have such high standards after the last couple years we've had,” he said. “Man, when you get just a little bit behind in this series, holy moly, it takes so much work to just regain what you lost, not really even to have an advantage, just to get back to where you were. A tenth out on that racetrack is impossible to find.”
Now, he has already turned his attention to the upcoming races at Michigan and Kentucky.
“I'm looking forward to Michigan, and obviously it's going to be a different package, but I think we'll run good on that track, too, and anticipate having a good run at Kentucky,” he said. “We've always done really well on the repaves, so for whatever reason our cars hook up pretty good, or as a driver I just like that. I don't know.”