MOORESVILLE, N.C. (July 28, 2017) – Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s success at places like Daytona and Talladega is well-documented. In his 18-year career as one of the top NASCAR drivers of his era, he has been nothing short of dominant on restrictor plate tracks.
His successes at a flat, oddly-shaped track in the heart of the Pocono Mountains are much less publicized, but they are impressive in their own right.
As the 42-year-old third-generation driver winds down his full-time NASCAR Cup Series career this season, his performances at Pocono Raceway should be celebrated on a level similar to those gaudy statistics above.
The two races are seven weeks apart, on average, in the middle of the brutal summer schedule for NASCAR’s top series. There’s not a lot of time to fix stuff that went wrong from the June race to the July event, but there’s also the fact that it happens quickly enough that information doesn’t get lost in the lag between visits.
As he makes his 35th and final start on the 2.5-mile triangle, his numbers are stellar. He has two victories over that span, sweeping the races in 2014, and added 11 top-five and 15 top-10 finishes to his total. Those totals are just about evenly split between his early career and the latter stages, by the way, which is interesting in its own right.
To start with, Pocono is like no other track in the world. It has three distinct corners, all modeled on famous tracks of the past. Turn 1 is the most traditional on the circuit, banked at 14 degrees and modeled after the turns at the now-defunct Trenton (N.J.) Speedway. That track was huge in the heyday of the open-wheel cars in American racing, and shares some of the unique nature that Pocono provides today. The 1-mile speedway was traditional in most ways, except for the dogleg in the middle of the backstretch heading to Turn 3.
Turn 2 at Pocono, dubbed the Tunnel Turn because it happens to be where the only tunnel into the massive speed plant is located, is modeled after the corners at Indianapolis, right down to the angles and the nine-degree banking. It is also the toughest turn to set up for, as it comes at the end of the Long Pond Straight and leads into Turn 3, which is even more diabolical. That flat, long curve is based on one of the turns at the Milwaukee Mile and is banked at a paltry six degrees. That is as near flat as you’re going to get outside a parking lot, and not a lot of cushion to get a 3,400-pound stock car turned and headed down the longest front straight in the country...at least among tracks that host NASCAR races.
With all that, it’s no wonder that crew chiefs stress and drivers get deep frown lines under their helmets when they roll down pit road to go practice.
Since Joe and Rose Mattioli carved Pocono out of the dense forests in eastern Pennsylvania, it’s been a track that some drivers love and others don’t. It’s apparent that Dale Jr. likes Pocono.
In his early career, he developed an affinity for the place.
In his second full season as a NASCAR Cup Series driver, he finished second in the second race of 2001, leading 31 laps before losing a late battle with eventual winner Bobby Labonte. Earnhardt Jr. had led 29 laps prior to Labonte’s tracking him down to lead the final three. That was a near-miss for Earnhardt Jr., whose first three finishes at Pocono were 19th, 13th and 20th.
In 2003, the young driver finished fourth and third, respectively, at Pocono, and in the first race of 2004 he was a solid sixth. His next five races were somewhat less special, as he averaged an uncharacteristic finish of 29.4. In 2007, however, he was back to loving the Tricky Triangle. He won the pole for the second race and finished second to winner Kurt Busch, who led 175 of the 200 laps. Earnhardt Jr. led eight of the remaining 25, however.
The following year, in his first trip to Pocono as a member of Hendrick Motorsports, Earnhardt Jr. drove to fourth place in the National Guard/AMP Energy Chevrolet.
In 2013, after a long dry spell and a couple of winless streaks, the old Pocono mojo came back with a vengeance. Earnhardt Jr. logged a third-place run in the first race at Pocono and followed that with a fifth-place run seven weeks later.
In 2014, the mojo turned bullet-proof. Earnhardt Jr. was a top contender for the title in 2014, winning the Daytona 500 to start the season and leading the points for four of the first six weeks.
Starting eighth in the first race, Earnhardt Jr. was in position to take advantage of a mishap suffered by Brad Keselowski.
Keselowski was in control of the race as it wound down, with Earnhardt giving chase. As Keselowski exited Turn 1 with five to go, he zigged up the track to clear debris from his grille. Earnhardt Jr. kept his foot in it and blasted past down the Long Pond Straight toward the Tunnel Turn. Despite a spirited response from Keselowski, Earnhardt Jr was able to lead the final five laps to notch his first Pocono victory and drawing within 22 points of the leader with many races yet to run.
“Heh, heh...good job!,” Earnhardt Jr. cracked on the radio following the checkered flag. “Awesome car. We didn’t have the best car, but it was good enough!” It was his second victory of the season after Daytona, and the first at Pocono.
It was an omen of what was to come, too.
When he got back in July that year, the script was the same. Starting ninth, he took the lead for good on lap 147 and held off Kevin Harvick by .228 seconds for his second straight triumph at Pocono and third of the season.
“It wasn’t about luck this time,” Earnhardt Jr. said following the second win on the 2.5-mile track. "We were determined to go home from the last win and improve the car. Steve [Letarte] and the guys studied and improved the setup. We had a little luck on the win the last time with Keselowski having the debris and we wanted to be in the driver's seat this go-round with a faster car."
Letarte, known as a thinking man’s crew chief and a tireless worker, did not let the grass grow under his setup between races.
"I feel we unloaded a better car for the second Pocono than we did the first Pocono," Letarte said after the second win. “You cannot ever assume a winning car is going to be good enough the next week. While we were excited to win (in June) and we'll take it, there was room for improvement, so we worked very hard between that race and this race."
Letarte might have had a better car for Earnhardt Jr. the second time around, but he certainly had to earn his paycheck on top of the box to get the sweep.
Every race at Pocono is a fuel-mileage race. It just is. You can’t be off on calculations, because if you run out and miss pit-in, you’re going to lose at least a lap getting back around...if you even can.
Letarte gambled on strategy, taking Earnhardt Jr. off the track with 39 laps remaining to give him four fresh Goodyear Eagles and fuel, and after a 13-car crash eliminated some stout cars five laps later, Letarte brought him back in for fuel only with 29 laps left.
"All we needed to get there was a gallon or two while the rest of the guys in front of us needed four tires and a full tank," Earnhardt Jr. said "We were on pit road for two seconds in the box and they were in their pit stalls for 12-14 seconds. We were able to leapfrog those guys. We weren't technically leading the race when the (next) caution came out, but we were ahead of those guys on where we needed to be.
"It takes a really, really smart guy to understand what to do and take those gambles. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't. I've got a lot of faith in Steve and the strategy he used today gave us the opportunity to get by some guys that we probably weren’t going to pass on the race track."
The twin victories at Pocono were just the second season sweep of his career, and he was the first driver in nine seasons to sweep both races. Denny Hamlin did it in 2006.
While he only has two victories at Pocono and a chance at one more before he steps out of the car and into the world of television, Earnhardt Jr. made them count. The 2014 season stands as one of the best he has had, with four victories and a superb chance at the title, but sweeping the Tricky Triangle added a bit more to the special nature of that thrilling season.