In case you weren’t watching, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s streak of 104 winless races was about half a mile from ending when his No. 88 Chevy slowed in turns three and four at Charlotte. He was out of fuel. Kevin Harvick scooted on by for the improbable win, and Jr. coasted to a 7th-place finish.
After the 500 on Sunday I literally said, “Have you ever?”
Mike Joy, the founder of the “Have you ever?” saying (at least in my mind) could only say one thing as Harvick drove around the 1.5-mile track on a victory lap: “Have you ever?”
Not sure that I have, but on Sunday it seemed that the unexpected was the norm.
Coming off of turn four in the 100th Indianapolis 500 rookie J.R. Hildebrand looked like he was going to pull off a crazy upset. However, he got to high trying to pass a lap-down car and whacked the turn four SAFER barrier, riding along the wall all the way to a second place finish behind Dan Wheldon who won his second Indy 500.
J.R. Hildebrand was this close to winning the Indy 500 on Sunday when he hit the wall somewhere in the sight of this photo, which I took from my seat at last year's Brickyard 400. He limped along the wall to a second place finish
So how could NASCAR one-up that ending? By having the sport’s biggest name snap his nearly three-year losing streak of course.
Except that Dale Jr.’s fuel cell had other plans.
Kevin Harvick, who ironically enough is driving the car that Earnhardt Jr.’s late father used to drive at Richard Childress Racing, scooted on by the coasting car of Earnhardt at the entrance of pit road and took NASCAR’s longest race.
“I knew when I got out of the car I wasn’t going to be the good guy,” Harvick said. “But that’s just the way it works. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. And fortunately today was our day to win.”
That was what Kevin Harvick said in 2007 after beating Mark Martin to the line by .02 seconds in the Daytona 500. But it might as well have been from Sunday night’s race.
Nate Ryan, USA Today’s NASCAR writer stated that Harvick felt almost the same way after getting out of his No. 29 last night. “Harvick was sincerely contrite about denying NASCAR’s most popular driver’s first trip to victory lane in nearly three years,” Ryan wrote.
“I feel like complete crap, to tell you the truth,” Harvick said after the race on Sunday night. “Man, when I saw that thing slowing down, I was like, I really want to win the race, but why can't it be on a day when we're running bad or have something going wrong.
“Everybody sitting up here would say we want (Earnhardt's team) to win, and they're so close to winning and both times they had a chance. We are going to do what we have to do to win the races, and today it all just worked out strategy-wise that we won. But I feel so stinking bad for him, and I know how bad he wants it. But it'll happen. They keep running like that, it'll happen.”
Earnhardt Jr. echoed those sentiments telling Jeff Gluck of SBNation.com, “It was a long race and a really hard race – and I haven't ran good here in a long time,” he said. “But we ran really, really good here tonight. And I'm really happy about that.
“Wins are going to come, we've just got to keep working. We're going to get our share.”
And his late father’s car owner said the same thing.
Richard Childress said, “We all want to see Dale Jr. win. Like Kevin said, he's going to win his races, and I'll be the first one there to congratulate him because I am an Earnhardt fan at heart, no doubt.
Childress (right) signs an autograph for a fan in the garage at last year's Brickyard 400
“But I pull for my guys and I want to see them win, and I'm really proud of everybody on this Budweiser team for what they did, and Junior will win.”
And when he does all of NASCAR will breathe a collective sigh of relief. It’s been a while since the No. 88 was this competitive, and if Dale Jr. keeps knocking on the door, he’ll be in Victory Lane soon enough.
As long as he has enough gas to make it there.
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