Junior: Points position through first 16 races 'very frustrating'
Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t think his points position is reflective of how good his team has been throughout the first 16 races of 2016.
“We are a little frustrated with how we ran through the month of May,” Junior said. “We have seen more speed out of our cars and had some bad finishes, wrecks and so forth. Tore up a lot of cars this year, uncharacteristic I think for us to be in so many accidents. So, where we are in points is very frustrating. It creates a lot of anxiety between me and Greg (Ives, crew chief). I think that we both are not happy with where we are in the points. We are wondering and worrying about trying to make the Chase it shouldn’t be something that this team is concerned with. I think we are way better than where we are.”
Currently 12th in the standings, Junior has six top-10 finishes. But five of those came in the first eight races of the season. His lone top-10 finish over the past eight races is a second-place finish at Pocono.
In May, Junior crashed out at Talladega and got caught in a crash at Dover. He also finished 14th and 15th at Charlotte and Kansas.
Junior crashed in the Daytona 500 too. The common denominator between Daytona and Talladega in 2016? His car. In both of those races Earnhardt Jr. drove the car named “Amelia” that was incredibly successful at Daytona and Talladega the year before.
The defending July Daytona winner said Friday that he won’t be naming cars from now on.
“No, we’re not going to be naming cars anymore,” Junior said. “I knew as soon as we did that it sort of took off and put a lot of pressure on that car and the team. These cars just don’t stick around long enough to get names. You used to race cars for years and years and they would show a personality. These days, you only keep a car for maybe a year before it’s unrecognizable or it’s cut out of the herd.
“We had so much success with that car last year that we ran it this year and we probably shouldn’t have. There are newer ideas and theories and better ways to do things that car didn’t have. But we assumed, hey, it was doing so well, why wouldn’t it keep going?”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
