Race: Ford EcoBoost 400
Track Specs: 1.5-mile oval / 267 Laps
Weather: Sunny, Warm
Race Winner: Kevin Harvick
Dale Jr.’s Finish: 14th
2014 Champion: Kevin Harvick
Dale Jr.’s Final Points Standing: 8th
In what was Steve Letarte’s final race as crew chief of the No. 88 National Guard team, Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished the 2014 season with a 14th-place finish in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Letarte is leaving his Hendrick Motorsports post to become a TV analyst for NBC’s NASCAR coverage in 2015.
Earnhardt finishes the season eighth in points with four wins, 12 top-fives, and 20 top-10s. He made the Chase for the Sprint Championship field for the fourth consecutive season, and won his second Daytona 500 in 2014.
Kevin Harvick won the race and the championship in dramatic fashion, holding off fellow-contender Ryan Newman on a restart with three laps to go. Before that, Harvick had opted for four tires during the 12th caution period while Denny Hamlin stayed out and Newman took two. That set up a thrilling finish in which Harvick went from sixth to first in two laps and held off Newman on a late restart.
Under the same caution in which Harvick took four tires, so, too, did Earnhardt’s 88 team. But Junior lost four spots on pit road and restarted 15th. He was only able to gain one of those positions back in the final 15 laps, this after overcoming a flat-tire and lap-down-deficit earlier in the race. He restarted 24th on lap 121 and gained 10 spots in 10 laps. He returned to the top-10 by lap 145, just past the halfway point of the race, and he passed Newman for fourth with 73 laps to go.
But that was as high as the 88 would climb. The pit stop on lap 249 jumbled the field with varying tire strategies, and Earnhardt Jr. found himself back in traffic as the laps waned.
DALE JR. QUOTES
“I was hoping for a better result than this. I wanted a better finish for Steve, who was on the pit box for the last time with us. It’s been an awesome year, and I wish we could’ve ended it with another win, but this has been one of the best years of my career, and I hate to see it end. We had to battle back from a flat tire there early in the race, but we caught the yellow pretty quick. Steve made good adjustments all day, but we struggled on pit road some, and you’re going to have nights like that sometimes. I’d put my pit crew up against any of them. They’ve been phenomenal all year. We’ll take this one and move on.
“I want to congratulate Kevin Harvick on the championship. It’s great to see him win it, not just for himself but also for Tony (Stewart) and everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing. Congratulations to Hendrick Motorsports engines on another championship. Those motors powered our JR Motorsports car to a championship in the Nationwide Series, and then Kevin’s car to the Sprint Cup. Very happy for those guys, and everyone who made this season great.”