TALLADEGA, Ala. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. has always felt comfortable at Talladega Superspeedway.
“It was so much fun coming here; this was a great racetrack to come to when I was a kid,” Earnhardt recalled. “We didn’t really watch the races. When the race would start, we would wait for the wrecked cars to come in. We loved walking around those things forty times, looking at every dent. Just being kids.”
Earnhardt is hoping to create another happy memory at Talladega on Sunday. Sitting 11th in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup standings, an almost insurmountable 31 points behind the eighth and final transfer position, Dale Jr. needs to avoid those Talladega wrecks that fascinated him so much as a kid because he’s pretty much in a must-win situation.
And he’s totally fine with that.
“I wouldn’t rather be going anywhere else than Talladega for the next race if we need a win,” Earnhardt said after the 21st-place finish at Kansas Speedway that put him in his current win-or-bust situation. “That’s a good opportunity for us — even over Daytona, I think.
“When you look at all the tracks, where would myself and I’m sure my fans think we’ve got a shot to win? Where else would we want to be going besides Talladega?”
History backs up Earnhardt’s swagger. He’s tied with Jeff Gordon among active drivers with six wins at the biggest, baddest oval on the NASCAR schedule, and he has won two of the last three Sprint Cup Series restrictor-plate races, including the spring race at Talladega.
Since being reunited with the Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, he drove to victory in the 2014 Daytona 500 after it was released from a year on museum duty, Earnhardt has been on a restrictor-plate rampage. He finished third in this year’s Daytona 500, then won at Talladega in May and again in the 400-mile July race at Daytona.
“I got the car,” he says.
More important, he’s got the mentality. While other drivers have been dreading Talladega because it has the potential to wreck a championship campaign, Earnhardt has been looking forward to it for weeks, long before disappointing finishes at Charlotte Motor Speedway (28th place) and Kansas put him in jeopardy of not being among the eight drivers who advance to the Eliminator Round.
After winning two of the last three plate races (and three of the last seven), Earnhardt has regained the confidence that made him such a force at Daytona and Talladega in the early part of his Cup Series career.
His record at Talladega was especially spectacular. For a three-year period from fall 2001 to fall 2004, Earnhardt finished first or second at Talladega in seven consecutive races, including four straight wins.
But then came an extended restrictor-plate drought, where over the course of a decade, Dale Jr. had more finishes of 25th or worse (eight) at Daytona and Talladega than he did top 10s (six). Like many others, he adopted the strategy of running around at the back, trying to avoid those big accidents that excited him so much when he was a kid.
It was a huge mistake.
“That felt so foreign, coming here and not knowing what the hell to do, because we’d been so confident for so many years, winning five races and having so much success,” Earnhardt said. “I got my confidence back now. I know what I need to do, and that’s run hard — not lay back, not worry about crashing out, or bad points. I’d rather crash and not finish well trying than to be riding around in the back. Certainly a hard lesson to learn, but I learned it.”
Speaking to the media between practice sessions Friday, Earnhardt expressed doubt he has the rest of the Cup Series field psyched out at restrictor-plate tracks.
“You’d have to talk to everybody, but I’m sure there are some other guys that are just as confident when they come here,” he said. “We won here this year, and we ran good and won at Daytona over the last several years. So when we come to all the plate tracks we feel confident we can do well.
“The confidence you have in the car is where it all stems from. The car gives you the confidence to make the moves that make you look good. It’s the car really making it all happen. But you’ve got to know what to do with it. You’ve got to put it in those situations where it can excel and it can do the things it’s capable of doing. It just don’t happen on its own.”
As the dominant restrictor-plate driver of his era, Dale Jr. is carrying on a legacy started by his father. Dale Earnhardt Sr. won the Daytona 500 only once, but he triumphed a record 10 times at Talladega, eight of them since restrictor plates were mandated in 1988 in an attempt to slow the cars down on NASCAR’s fastest tracks.
Dale Earnhardt’s last race win occurred at Talladega in October 2000. And just as they did when his father was racing and winning at Talladega, the grandstands erupt when Earnhardt Jr. runs out front.
“I feel like we have a lot of supporters here because of Dad’s success,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I think about all the races he won here and at Daytona. All I ever want to do is make him proud, and I feel like when we win at those tracks where he was successful, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
“I leave here more disappointed than I do other tracks when we don’t win the race. The fans get excited when we take the lead. They’re happy when we’re up front. They want us up front every lap. I mean, I feel that.”
A win on Sunday would enhance Earnhardt’s reputation as the best restrictor-plate racer of his era.
“It’s real intense. There’s no denying the intensity and the pressure it puts on drivers like myself to be in a situation where you’re eliminated if things don’t go perfectly on Sunday,” he admitted.
“But if I’m a fan, I like it. Even if we don’t make it past this weekend, it’s still going to be exciting. We’ve seen all the controversy and excitement we saw all of last year and it’s not even Texas yet — and we all know what happened there.
“So who knows what’s left? I’m excited to see it and hope I’m a part of it.”
