Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick are surging, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are regrouping, the bunch at Roush Fenway Racing is on its feet again after starting so unsteadily last year. A new car and an old tire are struggling to adapt to one another, familiar faces risk missing races, and a kid from Las Vegas is proving he can win in almost any vehicle on four wheels. Eclipsed by all these dominant storylines from the first few months of the 2008 season, NASCAR's most popular driver goes quietly about his business, each week continuing to live up to the hype.
Last Sunday at Martinsville Speedway brought an under-the-radar sixth-place finish, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s fifth result of ninth or better in six Sprint Cup starts this year. Everybody's waiting for the end of that now 68-race-long winless streak, which dates back to Junior's last victory at Richmond International Raceway almost two years ago. That will come, eventually. Right now, he's doing the less glamorous but absolutely necessary under-the-basket dirty work of getting himself in contention for the championship, churning out top-10 after top-10 to solidify his place in the Chase.
"The wins will come," Earnhardt said after the Martinsville race. "We just have to be patient and be happy and mindful about the points we are getting in this stretch. We have a little bit of a period in the summer where we go to tracks that we are off and on, hot and cold at. We need to get a good base of points built up as early as we can, in case we have any kind of struggles in mid-season, so we're just trying to be guarded and smart."
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