News & Notes
POINTS POSITION: With his ninth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. advanced two positions to sixth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship standings. He trails leader Carl Edwards by 21 points and is only five points behind fifth-place Kurt Busch.
TALLADEGA STATS: In 22 Cup starts at Talladega, Earnhardt has scored five wins, eight top-five finishes and 11 top-10s. He scored a record-setting four consecutive wins at the 2.66-mile superspeedway from October 2001 to April 2003.
LEADING LAPS: Earnhardt has led all but two of the 22 Sprint Cup races he has entered at Talladega for a total of 696 laps. He has led more career laps at only two other venues: short tracks Martinsville (865 laps) and Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway (743).
TALLADEGA SUCCESS: Earnhardt’s five wins at Talladega are the most for him at any track and rank him third all-time among drivers at the Alabama oval. Earnhardt’s father, Dale Earnhardt Sr., earned 10 wins at the track, while Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon has recorded six.
IN THIS RACE: Earnhardt Jr. has finished 13th or better while driving the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in the spring race at Talladega and owns an 8.3 average finish during that time. Last year, Earnhardt finished 13th. In 2009 he took runner-up honors and in 2008, he crossed the finish line 10th at the superspeedway.
SUPERSPEEDWAY STATS: In 45 combined Cup starts on the superspeedways of Daytona Beach, Fla., and Talladega, Earnhardt has recorded seven wins, 16 top-five finishes and 24 top-10s. He has led a total 1,091 laps on NASCAR’s superspeedways.
CHASSIS CHOICE: This weekend, crew chief Steve Letarte will unload Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 88-629. This chassis first was raced to a 13th-place finish in the Gatorade Duel in February. The team tested this chassis at the Goodyear tire test at Daytona last December.
LAPS IN THE TOP 15: According to NASCAR’s loop data, Earnhardt leads all drivers in laps run in the top 15 (1,496 of 2,285) during the past 12 races at Talladega.
DRIVER RATING: According to NASCAR’s loop data statistics, Earnhardt ranks second in the driver rating category at Talladega with a 92.7 score. The driver rating is a formula that combines the following categories: wins, finishes, top-15 finishes, average running position while on the lead lap, average speed under green, fastest lap, most laps led and lead-lap finishes. The maximum points a driver can earn in each race is 150 points. The driver rating number is used pre-race as a prediction tool and post-race as a performance evaluator.
TALLADEGA DOUBLE: In addition to his duties behind the wheel of the No. 88 National Guard/AMP Energy Chevrolet, Earnhardt will pilot the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race on Saturday. In seven Nationwide starts at Talladega, Earnhardt has one win, three top-five finishes and five top-10s. This marks Earnhardt’s third Nationwide start this season. Most recently, he drove the No. 5 Chevrolet to third-place finish in the Nationwide event at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway last month.
HENDRICK AT TALLADEGA: In 54 Cup events (170 starts) at Talladega Superspeedway, Hendrick Motorsports has 10 wins, 42 top-five finishes, 63 top-10s and has led 1,970 laps.
BOWTIE BONANZA: Chevrolet has won 34 of the last 54 Cup events held at Talladega, and Hendrick Motorsports has accounted for 10 of those victories. Gordon most recently went to Victory Lane there, sweeping the 2007 events in April and October.
APPROACHING 200: With Gordon’s win in February at Phoenix International Raceway, Hendrick Motorsports has earned 195 Cup victories. The organization ranks first in NASCAR’s modern era for wins and second all-time behind Petty Enterprises, which has 268 victories.
TOP 10 AGAIN: Hendrick Motorsports has had at least one driver finish in the top 10 during the last 19 Sprint Cup races. The last event when a Hendrick Motorsports driver did not finish in the top-10 was at Bristol Motor Speedway on Aug. 21, 2010. Gordon was the highest finisher with an 11th-place result.
Quotes
DALE EARNHARDT JR., DRIVER, NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD/AMP ENERGY CHEVROLET (ON TALLADEGA.): “You have to have luck at Talladega. It is just a lottery, especially with the smaller restrictor plate now. I don’t particularly like the style of racing we had at Daytona. I’d rather just have control of what I’ve got to do and not have responsibility for someone else. It’s a little bit more than I care to deal with. That is the way the racing is but, I don’t know if it will be like that at Talladega.”
STEVE LETARTE, CREW CHIEF, NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD/AMP ENERGY CHEVROLET (ON TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY.): “There’s not a whole lot that a crew chief does at Talladega. You just sit back and don’t run it out of gas and hope you put a good piece together at the shop. I’m excited to go there. Obviously Dale runs well there, and he has a legion of fans there. I can’t think of a better place to go win.”
LETARTE (ON STRATEGY AT TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY.): “Don’t wreck (LAUGHS). There are multiple ways to get through Talladega, but I usually leave it up to the driver. I’m not a driver. I know what it looks like from pit road, but I can’t completely understand how they draft and how they go about their business. I think this is going to be a new Talladega. This is going to be the first one after the two-car drafts that we saw in Daytona. No one really knows what’s going to happen, but it’s going to look like Daytona. It’s going to be couples skate at the roller rink, and you want to make sure you have a good partner throughout the day.”
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