Kansas City, Kan.,— A seventh place finish in Sunday’s STP 400 at Kansas Speedway is another notch of consistency for Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports team.
“We had a good car and it was real consistent, so we’ve got that going for us,” Earnhardt said. “And we’ve just got to get a little bit more to get to where we can try to win some races.”
Earnhardt said the team is close to a win and is working hard toward that end goal. However, the driver isn’t focusing on winning too heavily.
“You’ve just got to think about what your car is doing and what you need to do to help your car and make your car faster and the wins eventually take care of themselves,” said Earnhardt. “We’ve just got to keep working and not thing about the big prize but just think about the little things we need to work on every day.”
Jeff Gordon and team will continue to work on the bigger things, like engines. Gordon said they “lucked out in some ways,” after finishing 21st after being black flagged for not maintaining minimum speed after the engine began to fail.
“We obviously had a valve spring I believe, something in the valve train that broke,” said Gordon. “They gave us more gear here this time and I think that took a toll on not only us, but on a lot of guys out there.”
“I felt like it was turning a lot of rpm, even though we have a rev limiter to keep it from going over what we think it needs to and it never did; but still, it caused a problem,” Gordon added. “Today wasn’t our best but Jimmie (Johnson) was up there and Junior (Earnhardt). Everybody is running good; we’ve just got to run a little bit better.”