Junior backs up words with strong showing at MIS

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- For a guy who only two days earlier had been lambasting NASCAR for allegedly putting a poor product on the tracks much of this season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. sure looked like he was having a whole lot of fun Sunday at Michigan International Speedway.

And for a while, it looked like he might even win a race, too.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks about his third-place finish in Michigan and the chemistry that is building with the No. 88 team.

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In the end, Earnhardt had to settle for third in the Carfax 400 -- but he was coming hard over the final laps and knew he had the fuel to make it. Eventual winner Brian Vickers and second-place finisher Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, weren't nearly as sure that they could make it to the checkered flag without running out of gas.

But while Earnhardt had fresher tires and more gas than the pair running in front of him, he didn't have the time to catch them.

"The way our luck has been, I wasn't sitting there thinking I was in the catbird's seat. I was thinking maybe I'll get on the podium [with a top-three finish]," Earnhardt said.

"I know every one of those guys is real good at saving fuel. We've all gotten smarter, I think, in the last year and a half on some of the tricks you can pull to do that, some of the things we can accomplish under caution to help ourselves."

Earnhardt should know. His last Sprint Cup victory came 43 races ago at the same MIS venue, when he gambled on fuel mileage at the end and barely made it to Victory Lane.

This time, others had to sweat out the fuel-mileage game. Some lost, too. Losers in that gambling affair included two of Earnhardt's other Hendrick teammates -- three-time defending points champion Jimmie Johnson, who ran out of gas with three laps to go; and Mark Martin, who won the Michigan race in June when Johnson and Greg Biffle both ran out of gas in front of him in the final lap and a half. (Continued)