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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Brickyard Huge For Earnhardt Jr.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s best career finish in the Brickyard 400 was sixth in 2006...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted July 17, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has enjoyed minimal success at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)
As NASCAR Sprint Cup races go, they don’t come much bigger than the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And no one knows that better than Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is in need of something good to happen.

“It is a battle between it and Daytona in the country, in my opinion, of being the most prestigious tracks in the United States,” Earnhardt said of IMS. “There are a lot of other road courses that are famous that could be in that conversation, but between it and Daytona, man, it is hard to beat the heritage of those two places.”

Earnhardt heads into the July 25 Brickyard 400 ranked 13th in points, a mere 15 points out of the all-important 12th and final cutoff spot to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Granted, 15 points is a small total, especially with seven races to run before the Chase field is set. But with just 96 points separating 10th-place Carl Edwards from 14th-place Mark Martin, the competition is fierce to make NASCAR’s playoff round.

And that, in turn, means finishing well at the Brickyard 400 will be critical for Earnhardt.

In the past, this historically has not been a great race for Earnhardt, who has a career-best Brickyard finish of sixth in 2006. Last year he finished 36th here; in 2007, he was 34th and in 2005, 43rd. He’ll be looking to do much better this time around.

Earnhardt said he and crew chief Lance McGrew have been making progress of late in improving the performance of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Left) and crew chief Lance McGrew (Right) have high hopes for Kansas. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

“Lance and I are just working together better,” Earnhardt said. “My cars feel better to me. They’re more comfortable. I feel like I’m able to drive them instead of the car really being difficult to control.”

One of the things that will be key this time around will be qualifying, given that the 2.5-mile track is difficult to pass on. And Earnhardt is a good Brickyard qualifier, having started sixth or better in five of his 10 previous appearances here.

Still, the track is a challenging one.

“It is real tight into Turn 1,” Earnhardt said. “If you can roll down into that corner, there is a lot of speed to be gained there because as you go around the track each corner seems to be easier and freer to get through, Turn 4 being the loosest corner. So Turn 1, just turning down in there and getting the car turned and being able to carry speed into (Turn) 2 I think creates a good lap. From there on, you build on the momentum and speed from what you did in Turn 1. It all has a repercussion on each following corner. I think that is the most important.”

And in addition to the points at stake, the Chase spot and the prestige that comes with the Brickyard, there’s one other factor to think about: If Earnhardt can win the Brickyard 400, as his late father did in 1995, the Earnhardts would join Al Unser Sr. and Jr. as the only father-son duo to win major races at IMS.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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