NEWS & NOTES
MOST RECENTLY AT INFINEON: With 10 laps remaining in last year’s event at Infineon Raceway, Earnhardt was making a pass on the outside for the eighth position when another competitor made contact with the No. 88 Chevrolet and sent it spinning. The field went by before Earnhardt straightened his car and returned to the road course in 35th. He picked up nine positions to cross the finish line 26th.
EARNHARDT AT INFINEON: Dale Earnhardt Jr. has scored four top-15 finishes in 10 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts at Infineon Raceway. Earnhardt, driver of the No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet, has completed 97.9 percent of all the laps he’s attempted (1,086 laps of 1,109 total) at the Sonoma, Calif., road course.
ROAD COURSE TESTING: Last month, Earnhardt and the No. 88 team tested at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, S.C., in preparation for this weekend’s race in Sonoma. All four Hendrick Motorsports teams attended the one-day test.
POINTS AFTER MICHIGAN: After finishing seventh last week at Michigan International Speedway, Earnhardt advances two positions to the 14th in the Sprint Cup championship standings. He trails teammate and 12th-place Mark Martin by 81 points.
CHASSIS CHOICE: This weekend, crew chief Lance McGrew and the No. 88 team will unload Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 88-514. The car was tested last month at Kershaw, and Earnhardt raced it twice last year—at Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International.
HENDRICK AT SONOMA: In Sprint Cup competition at Infineon Raceway, team owner Rick Hendrick holds track records in the following categories: victories (five), top-five finishes (23), top-10s (33), pole positions (nine) and laps led (517). Jeff Gordon owns all five of Hendrick Motorsports wins there.
QUOTES
DALE EARNHARDT JR., DRIVER, NO. 88 AMP ENERGY/NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET (ON INFINEON.): “The team has done a lot of testing so hopefully we’ll see the results on the track. We had a good run last year but got wrecked there at the end. I’d like to get a top-10 at Sonoma, and we’ve been close. Road racing is out of my element but I enjoy it.”
LANCE McGREW, CREW CHIEF, NO. 88 AMP ENERGY/NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET (ON PREPARING FOR THE SEASON’S FIRST ROAD COURSE.): “We’ve done a lot of testing through the course of the offseason, through the end of last year and a lot with the beginning of this year because we thought the road courses were definitely somewhere where we were very weak last season as a company. Alan (Gustafson, No. 5 crew chief) and I decided at the end of last year that we were going to put a lot more effort into it. We’ve done a lot of offseason testing, and we culminated that a few weeks ago with a test with all four of our drivers. We are seeing some benefits to that, and I feel the cars are way more drivable and faster.”
McGREW (ON SEEING IMPROVEMENTS ON THE TRACK.): “I guess we will wait and see. I think the cars are considerably better than what they were last year. We’ve got a better handle on getting the cars to turn the way you want them to turn and having good forward bite off the corners. The proof is in the pudding. We had a reasonable car there last year and were running top 10 until we got turned with a few laps to go. I felt like we went to Watkins Glen and struggled. You have to do well at both tracks, and we’ve worked really hard to do that this year.”
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