Fuel gamble not trademark for Junior duo, but it works

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Long-awaited Earnhardt win ends in storybook fashion
By Joe Menzer, NASCAR.COM

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- The rain held off, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. held on.

And when it came down to it Sunday at Michigan International Speedway, crew chief Tony Eury Jr., who readily admits he is not the Las Vegas type, finally found a gamble he was willing to take. Earnhardt simply agreed to go along for the ride, for better or for worse.

It turned out to be the perfect combination that allowed Earnhardt to drive -- or rather coast -- to victory in the LifeLock 400. It had been 76 Sprint Cup Series points races since Earnhardt had gone to Victory Lane, and he couldn't have made it without his teammates.

No, seriously. He couldn't have made it to Victory Lane without his teammates pushing his No. 88 Chevrolet, which ran out of gas at the end of pit road shortly after Earnhardt took the checkered flag.

"The engine might have cranked," said Earnhardt, smiling. "I thought it would be a better story to be out of gas and get pushed."

With or without the final touch, it already was a pretty good story. In his first season with Hendrick Motorsports, Earnhardt has been solid if not spectacular, routinely cranking out top-five and top-10 finishes that had permitted him to climb to third in the standings and stay there for much of the year.

But he hadn't won a race in more than two years. Although Earnhardt insisted that he did not let the winless streak eat at his self-confidence, it had nonetheless become more than a monkey on his back -- more even than the proverbial 300-pound gorilla. It sat on him like a house in foreclosure.

Until he won again, it was going to be part of every conversation involving the sport's most popular driver.

LifeLock 400 Unofficial Results

Pos. Driver Make
1. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet
2. Kasey Kahne Dodge
3. Matt Kenseth Ford
4. Brian Vickers Toyota
5. Tony Stewart Toyota
6. Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet
7. Carl Edwards Ford
8. David Ragan Ford
9. Elliott Sadler Dodge
10. Jamie McMurray Ford

When Earnhardt signed with Hendrick last summer, television analyst and former driving champion Darrell Waltrip quickly predicted great things for Junior -- saying he would win the 2008 season-opening Daytona 500 and "at least" five more races before the inaugural circuit with his new owner was completed.

Asked at the time about Waltrip's bold predictions, neither car owner Rick Hendrick nor Earnhardt flinched. They indicated that they were ready to tackle 2008 full throttle ahead, that they had no doubts that several wins would follow.

But Eury, Earnhardt's cousin and longtime crew chief, said Sunday that he has never been driven by fulfilling the expectations of others. It mirrored what Earnhardt said all along as he repeatedly insisted his drought of wins bothered others more than it bothered himself.

"I'm like Dale Jr. The winless streak hasn't really bothered me. I've seen what we're capable of doing, that we can run up front with fast, fast racecars and stuff like that," Eury said. "We've got a fire in us, but it ain't really an inferno. If I can be around my wife and people I really enjoy being around, and I can run top-five every week, I would be happy with that. Winning is a bonus.

"I just feel very fortunate and lucky. I've been doing this for 14 years. I've seen a lot of stuff come, and I've seen a lot of stuff go. And you realize right quick that life is short, and you've got to enjoy it while you're here. I can remember times when this was all I breathed. But when you lose certain things in your life, you learn to understand that racing isn't everything."

So there have been times when instead of rolling the dice and going for a win that might have put a solid points day at risk, Eury has opted not to take the chance. Earnhardt ultimately has backed him on those decisions.

But at Hendrick, Eury and Earnhardt learned quickly that oftentimes bigger risks that may reap greater rewards are what are expected of the race teams. "We've got to get a bigger fire going in us because Rick expects us to win races," Eury said.

Sunday's drama
Hence, Sunday's late-race drama presented itself. Earnhardt's last pit stop came on Lap 148. Typically at Michigan, a sweeping 2-mile oval, Sprint Cup cars can run 40 to perhaps 45 green-flag laps on a full tank of fuel, which holds 19.2 gallons.

Eury said that initial calculations for Earnhardt were that he was going to be six laps short in the 200-lap event, meaning they expected him to be able to milk it for roughly 46 laps, taking him to Lap 194. A caution on Lap 153 brought some others, including Earnhardt's Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon, back onto pit road to pack even more fuel in; Gordon, in fact, came in for fuel on three consecutive caution laps at that time.

Earnhardt stayed out and maintained his track position, while Eury and Hendrick engineer Darian Grubb furiously recalculated the fuel mileage for the No. 88 every single lap. The caution laps saved enough fuel that they figured they had enough to coax it through Lap 198 -- still two laps short.

But they knew there were others behind Earnhardt that had enough fuel to go the distance. So pitting, even for merely a splash of fuel to make sure, would have robbed them of any chance of winning.

"I'm not a gambling man," Eury said. "I don't even like going to Las Vegas to put $20 down. ... But if we ran out of gas, we were going to finish 25th. If we came in and pitted, we were going to finish 25th.

"So I told him we were going to go for it. We were either going to win or run out of gas and finish 25th."

That decision was made with 20 laps to go. They were feeling pretty good about it while leading with two laps remaining -- when a spin by Sam Hornish Jr. brought out another caution and suddenly turned the 200-lap race into possibly a 203-lap event because of a green-white-checkered finish.

"I was pretty sick. I was like, 'OK, we're done. I could make 200, but 202? We're in trouble,'" Eury said. "I told him as soon as the caution comes out, shut it off."

Earnhardt did, and coasted whenever he could until the ensuing restart to conserve what little fuel he had left. No one could tell how much gas exactly this was saving, but Eury said later that "coasting around like he did is probably what got us the win."

And the win was all that mattered. On an afternoon when rain threatened but the skies never opened until just after Junior's lifeless car had been pushed to Victory Lane, for once everything that could go right for Earnhardt and Eury did.

Shortly after the restart, the No. 10 of Patrick Carpentier spun on the frontstretch and the final caution of the day came out just after the white flag flew, freezing the field a final time with Earnhardt out front. If it hadn't happened, who knows if he could have made it around one more circuit of the big 2-mile track without running out of fuel?

Earnhardt didn't even seem to know for sure, saying at first that he couldn't have made it and later stating that, well, maybe he could have. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that he won again.
Finally.

"Man," Junior said, "this is storybook stuff."

It sure was.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.