CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't come close to
challenging Tony Stewart for this past weekend's win in Daytona.
In years past, that failure would have put Junior and his Dale
Earnhardt Inc. team in a panic. But those days of fretting over
restrictor-plate wins and losses are long gone now.
Junior now is focused on a much bigger picture: Winning his
first Nextel Cup title.
"We're ready to run for a title," he said. "We're a hell of a
team compared to last year, maybe better than '04."
Die-hard Earnhardt fans know that 2004 was the last time Junior
was a legitimate championship contender. He won six races that
season, briefly led the points midway through the Chase for the
championship, and finished fifth in the final standings.
He then fell to the back of the Nextel Cup standings last year
in a season-long struggle that saw him win only one race, fail to
make the Chase and finish an embarrassing 19th in the points.
Now he heads into this weekend's race at Chicagoland Speedway --
site of that lone win last season -- on a turnaround. In the past
three races, Junior has climbed from sixth to a season-high third
in the standings and is a solid bet to make the Chase.
"I feel good about where we're at," he said. "We still need
to get better. We obviously couldn't hang with Tony and the guys up
front Saturday night at Daytona. But we got out of there with
little harm done, and even climbed a spot or two in the points."
That mentality means the team no longer wastes time fretting
over why it didn't run away with the win at Daytona. DEI spent four
years dominating Daytona and Talladega -- Earnhardt has seven of his
17 Cup victories on those two tracks -- and when the results tapered
off, everyone wanted to know why.
With a change of focus came the ability to set aside Saturday
night's 13th-place finish. Any disappointment from that is
overshadowed by his third-place finish three weeks ago in Michigan,
a place Earnhardt routinely has struggled.
In finally putting together a strong run there, Earnhardt knew
DEI was headed in the right direction.
"It was a very, very great feeling to really see there were
some things being done, because you sit there and wonder when we
were going to start doing the things we needed to do. When we were
going to take these complaints seriously?" he said. "We are now
addressing these complaints from the drivers and the (DEI) teams
and the crew chiefs, and we've made some gains.
"We're just trying to get it right so we'll be good in the
Chase. We'll deal with the plate stuff whenever we've got the rest
of the ballgame intact."
Earnhardt hasn't totally dismissed the plate races. In fact, he
made his way to Daytona's Victory Lane for the first time in more
than two years last Friday by winning the Busch Series race.
It was a dominating victory, with Earnhardt leading 88 of 103
laps. It gave him his 21st Busch win, tying him with his late
father and Harry Gant for seventh on the career list.
"Well, that's awesome," Earnhardt said, pumping his fist in
the air when told of the mark. "Cloudy skies are now sunny. Tying
my dad in anything is pretty damn awesome for me."
Earnhardt has a ways to go to catch his dad in other areas,
particularly championships. The elder Earnhardt was a seven-time
Cup champion and Junior is still trying to get his first. To date,
his two Busch Series titles in 1998 and 1999 are his only NASCAR
championships.
But Earnhardt sees progress, and a chance to get into the Chase
and make a run at that coveted Cup title. His swagger clearly was
back after his Busch Series victory, and his team was just a step
or two behind him.
"When it comes to the whole package, the team, the engine and
the bodies and all that, we've got a little mojo to get back," he
said. "But my mojo is intact. I think that the team knows what
areas we need to work on to get to where we were when winning is
what we did."