Dale Earnhardt Jr
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The Rundown: Pocono Driver Grades 2. Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 88 Chevrolet, Hendrick Motorsports. Junior couldn't hold off Kurt Busch – or track him down – after the final restart and settled for his season-leading fourth second-place finish. Grade: A Runner-up finish leaves Dale Jr. a bridesmaid again A battle between teammates Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Chase Elliott opened the door for Kurt Busch, who grabbed the lead and eventually the win here in Monday's rain-delayed Axalta 'We Paint Winners' 400 at Pocono Raceway. Meanwhile, the two Hendrick Motorsports drivers were left to consider what could have been. "I just didn't do what I needed to do," Earnhardt said of a Lap 128 restart, the 10th in the 160-lap NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. "The 41 (of Busch) got a run on us and he shouldn't have. I should have done a better job there. I think if I could have gotten in front of him, I could have held that position." Earnhardt and Elliott started 1-2 as the race went green for the final time. As the two Chevrolets battled side-by-side for the lead, it slowed the progress of both enough to allow Busch to come steaming past and into the lead. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver led the final 32 laps on the 2.5-mile track, managing fuel mileage and keeping Earnhardt Jr. at bay. "It slowed both of us up," Earnhardt, twice a winner here, said of the battle with Elliott. "The 41 just had a great opportunity sitting back there behind us. "I couldn't tell where the 24 (of Elliott) was … we were in line going down the straightaway and he dove in the corner underneath me. I didn't know he was going to get there; it kind of slowed us both up pretty bad in the middle of the corner and the 41 got a great run and we couldn't defend that.” There was disappointment, but no ill will. Elliott was "just trying to get around us and he was trying to get the lead, too," Earnhardt said. "Good hard racing. I should have done a better job." It was the fourth runner-up finish this season for Earnhardt, who led briefly (from laps 124-126 again on lap 128) before Busch made what proved to be the winning pass. Elliott, a Sunoco Rookie of the Year contender, continues to draw praise for how quickly he has adapted to the faster, more competitive series. For the first time in his short career (Monday's race was his 19th), he led the most laps (51). But he realized the impact of his late-race battle with his teammate. "Obviously I made a big mistake there behind Dale in the tunnel after that restart," he said. "I wish I had been a little more patient and given ourselves a better chance, but you live and you learn." Instead of racing a teammate for the lead, and perhaps the win, Elliott finished fourth. Greg Ives, crew chief for Earnhardt, agreed with his driver that track position was key. "You saw all day the guys that got out front were able to get a good jump out there to the lead," he said. "It was good to see that we were able to stay within a half-second of the leader there for awhile." While the No. 88 entry wasn't perfect, it was strong enough to contend for the win. "Track position really helped us but we did have to work on it a little bit just trying to free up the car," Ives said. "Usually we are a little closer than that, but that's alright. We were able to work on it, everybody stayed with it and we were able to get a good finish." Officials had been forced to reschedule the race from Sunday to Monday due to rain. Earnhardt Jr. to make television debut at Michigan Dale Earnhardt Jr. will serve as a guest driver analyst in the FOX NASCAR television booth for the XFINITY Series race at Michigan International Speedway on June 11, FOX Sports announced Saturday during the broadcast of the Pocono Green 250 event at Pocono Raceway. The driver of the No. 88 will offer commentary for live coverage of the Menards 250 presented by Valvoline (June 11, 1:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), joining announcers Adam Alexander and Michael Waltrip for the entirety of the 250-mile event. This marks Earnhardt's broadcasting debut, as he joins a fleet of Sprint Cup regulars that have served as guest commentators in the past: Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer and Danica Patrick. Patrick served as a guest analyst for the XFINITY Series' Pocono Green 250 on Saturday, while Bowyer offered guest commentary at the previous series event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Earnhardt hopes to shake winless streak at Pocono Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted this week that he had become a fan of the cult series "The Walking Dead." Fitting, perhaps, because Earnhardt has found nothing but dead ends as he tries to race into victory lane for the first time in 2016. Earnhardt is winless for the season through 13 races, and his recent swoon has him hoping he can dig out of his slump at Pocono Raceway. Earnhardt’s late-career renaissance in the No. 88 Chevrolet really took off at Pocono in 2014 when he swept both races. Back at the tri-oval track, Earnhardt starts eighth in Sunday’s race. He won seven Sprint Cup races in 2014-15 and does have three runner-up finishes this season. But over the last five races, Earnhardt has been pedestrian with no finish better than 13th and two at 32nd or worse. Long NASCAR's most popular driver, Earnhardt said he wasn't worried yet his winless streak. He would clinch a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship with a victory. He already had a spot secured at the point in the season each of the last two years. Earnhardt is 13th in the points standings, and the top 16 make the Chase field. He wasn't won since Phoenix in November 2015. "At 41 years old you kind of get over that stuff," he said. "I spent the first 18 years worrying myself to death. I think we are a good enough team to make it whether we get a win or not. We are a good enough team. That is not a guarantee, I just feel confident that we will get in." So what's wrong with his Hendrick Motorsports team? Earnhardt said there were no easy answers, though more open communication in the car with crew chief Greg Ives would help. "I can really bug him to death and pick his brain and try to be as knowledgeable about the car as he," Earnhardt said. "So while we are out there on the race track and I'm driving it and I'm feeling something I can kind of think to the setup and give him some direction on the setup aside from his own ideas and plans that he has had over the week." Earnhardt hasn't spent much time out front in the clean air all season. He's led just 49 laps all season (and led in just two races) and hasn't been in the lead at any point over the last nine. Earnhardt also crashed out at Talladega and Dover. Joe Gibbs Racing has again stamped itself the class of series this season and has won six of the last nine races and Team Penske has two victories. Martin Truex Jr., coming off a dominating victory in the Coca-Cola 600, crashed the winner's field for Furniture Row Racing. FRR, though, has an alliance with JGR is considered almost like a fifth team. Hendrick hasn't won a race since Jimmie Johnson in late March. "I don't doubt that Hendrick Motorsports will be as strong as they want to be at some point in this season," Earnhardt said. "I feel pretty confident that we will be fine in the Chase. I look at the year Brad Keselowski won the championship, Hendrick cars were really good all year long. Brad and his team worked all year to try and find what advantage we had and they found it. They took that idea in house and made it their own and made it better." Earnhardt would like to find that winning formula and keep it in his house. The two-time Daytona 500 champion has never won a Cup championship, the lone void in a career that has made him a surefire NASCAR Hall of Famer. "It's been a rough month, but I think we can turn it around here," he said. "I think we should run great here. I'm not so much worried about end of the race results. I'm more concerned with consistent speed in the car and running up front throughout the day and having consistency on pit road and in the race car." Dale Jr. looks to turn the 2016 tide at Pocono Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s defense against a June swoon might just be getting the dreadful luck out of the way in May. A look at his last four NASCAR Sprint Cup races reveals an odd lot of double-digit finishes with few May flowers among the bunch. Meanwhile, teams affiliated with Joe Gibbs Racing have won seven of the last eight, putting distance on Earnhardt's No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports outfit and sewing up Chase postseason berths early. In typically laid-back fashion, Earnhardt doesn't sound overly concerned. "No, I'm not feeling any anxiety, at 41 years old you kind of get over that stuff, I'm not going to worry about it," Earnhardt said on a foggy Friday at Pocono Raceway. "I spent the first 18 years worrying myself to death. I think we are a good enough team to make it whether we get a win or not we are a good enough team. That is not a guarantee, I just feel confident that we will get in. A win would be what we expect, not just to lock ourselves in the Chase, we just expect to win." Earnhardt Jr. has met those expectations here in the past, sweeping the season's two annual races at the triangular facility in 2014. And his current season hasn't been without its positive moments, with three runner-up finishes (Atlanta, Texas, Bristol) in the hodgepodge of 2016 results. Though Hendrick Motorsports' performance this year has been robust by most teams' standards, Gibbs' Toyotas currently have the hot hand heading into Sunday's Axalta "We Paint Winners" 400 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM). There is room for improvement, Earnhardt says, but pinpointing it is another matter. "I have been racing in this series a long time and I have been asked that question dozens and dozens of times like where do you need to improve, no matter what team I was racing for, no matter what year is was. Even if you knew you wouldn't tell," Earnhardt said. "I mean you can't say, 'them guys in the body shop they need to get going' -- you are not going to throw anybody under the bus. The majority of the time you don't know. The majority of the time there is no way to really put your finger on the exact area where you are getting beat." Having 590 premier-series starts over 17-plus seasons has given Earnhardt a certain amount of perspective about how seasons can ebb and flow. He cited the recent championship charges of Tony Stewart in 2011 and Brad Keselowski the following year as examples of how fortunes can turn in the postseason. In both instances, those teams made gains from the experiences and experimentation of others. Earnhardt said replicating that sort of turnaround is possible for the No. 88. "I can see us sort of in that situation where we are looking across the garage," Earnhardt said. "Every team has enough smart people on it and if they figure out how somebody is making their mousetrap so well they will take it home and do it and make it even better. They will take those ideas that are great and improve on them and then bring it to the track and outrun that guy. That is just the nature of the sport. I'm not too worries about where we are right now. "We are not running bad. We took off at the start of the year, had some second-place finishes, thought we were right on the verge of winning and we struggled this month. It's been a rough month, but I think we can turn it around here." Dale Jr.: 'Hopefully we're going to peak at the right time' The Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet team, currently winless and 13th in points, could use a shot in the arm. After five consecutive finishes outside the top 10, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Co. might've just gotten the boost they needed Wednesday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. "This is a great opportunity to be at the track and just changing stuff (on the car)," said Earnhardt Jr., at the 1-mile track for a Goodyear tire test. "Practice on the weekends is just so hectic and so short and quick and you really can't make these long changes that take 20 or 30 minutes because you can't give away that much track time. … We don't really get to try everything we like to on the race weekends so this is really the only opportunity to do stuff that you can't get done (then)." The extra track time is crucial for the struggling group, especially coming at a venue that has heavy Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup implications both to get in it (July race) and advance (September race marks the second race of the Round of 16). After Junior experienced a stellar year in 2015 (three wins, career high in top-five and matching a career-high in top-10 finishes) with new crew chief Greg Ives, expectations were lofty coming into 2016. Unfortunately for the 88 team, so was the learning curve for an altered aero package. "Greg's an extremely smart, talented guy. He's won races in the XFINITY Series and a championship," Earnhardt Jr. said. "We won races together last year and we had a very consistent season. We started this year off very good, but some rule changes have thrown us for a little bit of a loop and we've just got to kind of get back some of that lost speed. "We had some great speed at the start of the (Coca-Cola) 600 and our car got a little bit off but we were still consistently in the top 15, where we really, I don't think, have been able to do that over the last month. … That's a great sign that we're going in the right direction and we're trending in the right direction. " … I've been in situations before where you're not running well and you're not very confident that there's going to be an answer (to fix the situation) or that the people can find the answer. It's just … I've been in some situations that were very, very difficult to be positive about, and this isn't one of them." Earnhardt Jr. said his fans demand he runs in the top five, and he agrees that's where he belongs. But only four out of 13 races in 2016 have resulted in top-five finishes, a year after notching one in nearly half the races (16). There's work to be done. He's confident that the engineers at Hendrick Motorsports have what it takes to "science it out" and regain the speed they seem to have lost over the offseason. Of course, it helps to have a little guidance from the teams that didn't. "The good thing about it is, in the garage, secrets don't last for long because it's such a small area and everybody's working on top of each other," said Earnhardt Jr., whose last win was at Phoenix in November. "When you figure out someone's idea, you've got enough smart people to take that idea and make it your own and improve it. "The season when Brad Keselowski won the championship (2012), Hendrick cars dominated the whole year. We had an advantage on the competition all the way up until the Chase. Brad and those guys figured out some of the things we had going on, they took it in-house and made it better and beat us. I think the same kind of thing happened with (Joe Gibbs Racing) last year, where they weren't doing that well, struggling to be competitive. "Stewart-Haas (Racing, whom HMS has a technical alliance with through the end of this year) and our cars were running really good all year and then they sort of looked and saw several things that we were doing better, took it back home and made it their own and improved on it and they were fast when they needed to be fast at the end of the year." At the halfway point of the regular season and with a spate of tracks that he is strong at (Pocono, Michigan, Daytona, New Hampshire) on the immediate horizon, Earnhardt Jr. has a real opportunity to take what they've learned from a two-week stint at Charlotte and a test at the "Magic Mile" -- that only included three other drivers in Denny Hamlin, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Aric Almirola -- to find a leg up on the competition and settle into consistent speed over the summer. "At this particular point in the season, it looks like we're in that boat of watching someone else be competitive. Once we figure out what we need to be doing to get that type of speed, we'll put our own little spin on it and it'll hit right when it should be right around the time when the Chase begins," Earnhardt Jr. said. "Hopefully we're going to peak right at the right time of the season, when we need to for a championship." Click here to vist the Dale Earnhardt Jr New Archive Part 3