Just Enough: Junior snaps winless streak, wins Michigan

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been close to victory this season but for one reason or another, hasn't been able to seal the deal. That was until Sunday at Michigan International Speedway when Earnhardt and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. got creative in their quest to score their first win with Hendrick Motorsports. The duo outsmarted — or out-lucked — the LifeLock 400 field and snapped Earnhardt's 76-race winless streak.
 
“If we ran out, we ran out,” Earnhardt said. “We were going to try it and have a shot to win the race. We knew we had a chance to win the race so we just kept running like we were running all day and we made it happen, man. We got one.

“This is pretty meaningful because of Rick (Hendrick, team owner), he is such a great man,” Earnhardt continued. “I am glad to win for him and for Tony, Jr. for coming with me. I’m thankful for everyone at Hendrick believing in me, all my teammates and co-crew chiefs. All of these guys put so much in to this to help us. I just have to thank everybody, I just had a real good car.”

Earnhardt made his last pit stop on lap 148 of the event’s 200. Within the final 10 laps, many teams took their turn dropping down pit road for a splash of gas in order to reach the scheduled distance. Earnhardt stayed on track and conserved all of the fuel he could, which had to stretch through a nail-biting green-white-checkered finish.

Sam Hornish Jr. spun on the exit of Turn 4, bringing out the caution with three laps to go, which extending the event to 203 laps.

“We didn't have enough (gas),” Earnhardt explained. “We run out coming to the white, stumbled off the straightaway so we were close. We were going to stumble to the finish, probably not win the race but the caution saved us.”

Sitting third in points and having a solid season in his debut run with, Earnhardt claimed two wins early, both in non-points, pre-season Daytona events. His last points-awarded win was in 2006 at Richmond.

As Earnhardt led for the final three-lap stretch, another caution flag fell for a Patrick Carpentier wreck, freezing the field and ending the race under yellow.
 
Kasey Kahne, winner of two of the last three points-paying races in 2008, finished second. 

“The final run was the best that our Dodge was all day, but it was still a 10th- to 12th-place car,” Kahne said. “So Kenny (Francis, crew chief) decided to take fuel as late as we could under that last caution. Because of all the green flag runs all day, we just kept on taking on fuel and trying to save it.”

Though Michigan is usually dominated by a Roush Fenway entry, the closest the five-car camp got this weekend was a third-place showing by former champion Matt Kenseth despite an obstacle on pit road with a NASCAR official.
 
“Our car was pretty decent all day, Kenseth explained. “It felt like we were a little off, but our speed was really good all day. I thought it was exciting, three- and four-wide racing, and the track was real challenging today, so I thought that was a good time. But I thought we just kind of got beat on the pit deal gain. We had an official in front of our car when we did two (tires) and that cost us two spots leaving the pits, and that really hurt us. Then, we had a little miscue on our two-tire stop and that hurt us a little bit, too.”

Brian Vickers continues to compile solid finishes as he leads Team Red Bull’s turnaround, finishing fourth, though much to his dismay.

“I'm real proud of Red Bull and Toyota,” Vickers said. “We had a great car all day. I felt
like we  had the car to win there at the end. We kind of got it taken away from us. We passed the 8 car (Mark Martin) about two laps before the caution came out and for some reason NASCAR wanted to put them back in front of us. I'd love an explanation. I'm not sure exactly how that works. It wasn't even like we were side-by-side. We passed them like two laps before the caution and that pretty much cost us the race right there in my mind.”

Fellow Toyota driver Tony Stewart closed out the top 5 and vowed to donate his percentage of the day’s race winnings, $136,986, to the Red Cross to benefit his hometown of Columbus, Ind. and its recent flood victims.

Jimmie Johnson led a race-high 65 laps and finished sixth.

Carl Edwards, David Ragan, Elliott Sadler and Jamie McMurray rounded out the top
10.

Greg Biffle was the only Roush entry to not finish in the top 10 Sunday. He finished 20th after problems on pit road, much like the misfortunate suffered by his teammate, Kenseth. His, however, were the team's own doing and he was forced to serve a late-race penalty following a two-tire and fuel stop. On the exit from his pit stall Biffle ran over an air hose, forcing him to make a pass through penalty.

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