MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Nov. 9, 2017) – As the last rays of sunshine filter over the Estrella Mountains on Sunday, they’ll be looking over Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s career at Phoenix Raceway. It’s a pretty good one, truth be told, and while his days as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver are down to a precious few, there’s always time to look back and appreci88te.
For the record, the 43-year-old father-to-be will have run an even 30 races on the 1-mile desert oval, winning three times, notching nine top-five and 14 top-10 finishes (not counting Sunday’s results, of course). Winning 10 percent of your races at any track, at least in this day and age, is pretty good, and the possibility still exists that he might make it four-for-30 on Sunday.
Two seasons ago in 2015, before the concussion that caused him to miss half the 2016 season reared its ugly head, Earnhardt Jr. won at Phoenix. That stands as his last NASCAR Cup victory, and it came in a rain-shortened race.
Earnhardt Jr. led the final 21 laps for what was his 26th triumph, and he ended the day standing under an umbrella on pit road, talking to the TV cameras.
“You like to win them at the checkered flag, but a win is a win,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of guys out here who want this thing to get going again, for a chance to race into the final four, but for myself, if I’d have had four or six inches at Talladega, I’d be going to Homestead too.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
That’s sort of the way racing works. Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you.
In 2004, Earnhardt Jr. definitely got the bear.
He entered the race fifth in points, in the first year of the Chase. He would have been higher in the points had he not had a slip of the tongue in Victory Lane at Talladega and endured a 25-point penalty for using inappropriate language. That would change after a stirring late-race restart in which he outran both Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon over the final green-white-checkered to earn what would be his 15th career NASCAR Cup Series triumph.
It was important for Earnhardt Jr. to show well at Phoenix, as he was coming off back-to-back finishes of 33rd at Martinsville and Atlanta. He did.
Leading 118 of the 315 laps, his victory was among the most dominant of his career.
“I didn’t want to lose that race,” he said in a raucous Victory Lane. “I told Tony (Eury) Sr., as far as covering the field, that’s the best we ever did it. We’ve had good cars and won races, but nobody could run with this car today. I didn’t want to lose this race.”
He didn’t, and he went to Darlington a week later full of momentum. He finished 11th that day and dropped to fourth in the standings, and in the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, he was 23rd. That put him fifth in the final points that year. That season was perhaps his strongest overall in terms of victories and championship contention, but he was not able to win the big trophy. At 29 years of age and just approaching the fullness of his talent as a racing driver, surely there would be other chances at the big prize.
“We’ll win what we can win,” he said that day in Victory Lane. “If we get that big trophy, we get it. If we don’t, we’ll get it next year. There’s always another year.”
In 2003 at Phoenix, a young Earnhardt Jr. could have said the same thing. He won the race at Phoenix for his ninth career triumph, leading the final 51 laps of a crash-strewn race to trail championship leader Matt Kenseth by 228 points with two races yet to run. This was pre-Chase—some say the 2003 season spurred the creation of the playoff-type point system because Kenseth won early in the season and just out-finished everyone else over the remaining races—and Earnhardt Jr. still had work to do to earn that big trophy.
He was 13th at Rockingham the next week and 24th at Homestead, losing second place in the points to an upstart kid from California named Jimmie Johnson.
Now, in 2017, there won’t be another year.
One last ride in the desert sunshine awaits, and Earnhardt Jr. has shown over his career that he can win on the 1-mile oval. Will he? That remains to be seen, but if past history is a guide, it’s not wise to count him out this last time.