by Larry McReynolds

Comment

After running as well as Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran and performing as well as he did, it's got to be disheartening that they only gained three points on 12th place. The No. 8 team has had awesome runs, but crew chief Tony Eury Jr. told me last Friday that they feel lucky that they are still in contention to make the Chase with five DNF's. It's hard if you have two or three DNF's, but they've got five. The sad part is the DNF's at Indy and Watkins Glen came when they were running in the top five to top eight.

The No. 8 team just needs to keep its head down and do what it did at Bristol and everywhere else. If Harvick blows an engine or gets caught up in an early wreck early at Fontana, a 35th-place or worse finish could put Dale Jr. right back in the picture. With two races to go, it's not out of the question, but it will be difficult because he's 158 points out of the Chase. All you can make or lose in one race is 161. It's going to be quite a stretch, so the biggest team goal as Dale Jr. ends his career at Dale Earnhardt Inc. is a win in his final few races at that place.

But back to the teams that are locked into the Chase. At Bristol, I covered Denny Hamlin before moving over to Tony Stewart for DirecTV's Hot Pass. We talked with Mike Ford, Hamlin's crew chief, and asked if he's approaching the final races before the Chase any differently. He had a very interesting answer. At the racetrack, they planned to approach the races the same way. They're still trying to finish as well as they can and maybe get bonus points for winning races.

However, they've changed their approach at the shop, trying to make sure they've got the best fleet of five Cars of Tomorrow and five current cars that they can possibly have for those 10 races. They're making sure the pit crew is as good as it can possibly be. If you were watching the HotPass telecast, you heard Ford tell Hamlin to get the car in the pits if he felt a problem as it started smoking. The crew chief told his driver that he didn't need to lose that car as they build their fleet for the Chase.

While teams will probably race the same way, they will also take certain precautions under unusual circumstances. When Dale Jr. blew up and fell out of the race at Watkins Glen, Kurt Busch and crew chief Pat Tryson changed their approach a little bit. They became more conservative, but for the most part, these guys are trying to qualify and race as well as they can.

With 12 races to go, that's still a third of the season. There's a lot of racing to go. Just look at the guys that have won races that haven't been to victory lane this year: The Evernham cars, Ryan Newman, Dale Jr. and Greg Biffle. Even though we've had 14 winners this year, a lot of guys that have won races in previous seasons haven't won this year.

Bristol gets better

I've heard a lot of pros and cons about the racing on Bristol Motor Speedway's new concrete. For the most part, the drivers and teams liked the track. Could it be a little better? Absolutely. It can always be better. Any time you think you've done all you can do, and it's as good as it gets, that's when you lose momentum because you didn't move forward. But they started digging up the concrete in late March and did a tremendous amount of work in five months.

A brand new concrete racetrack is normally treacherous. When they first concreted that place back in 1992, drivers went into the wall if they moved six inches off the bottom because it was like driving on ice. But after this year's new concrete was put down, teams were able to run three-wide in three races. The Busch event was one of the best races that I've seen in a long time, and it tells me that the Car of Tomorrow just needs a little something.

Look at the lead-lap, green-flag passes. Look at Carl Edwards, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne battling side-by-side into and off the corners. It can be a little better, but it wasn't very bad. I've seen Bristol races that were a lot worse. Some people were concerned by how many laps Kasey Kahne led, but two years ago, Matt Kenseth led 415 laps when he won. In this year's spring race, Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin combined to lead over 400 laps so dominant runs aren't unusual at Bristol.

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Golfing for a good cause

After our seventh annual tournament and our fourth annual tee-off party, we look hard at raising the bar again for next year. Last year when I drove away, I already had a notepad on my armrest, jotting down quick notes while it was fresh on my mind. But I don't know anything that we could have done differently or better. The contributions and participation by so many people, especially in the NASCAR community, were just so overwhelming.

We at least wanted to net $100,000 so we could give $50,000 apiece to Motor Racing Outreach and the North Carolina chapter of the Special Olympics. They're still tallying credit cards, checks, nickels, dimes and dollars, but we crossed that mark on Tuesday and were still climbing so we exceeded our original goal. I hope we haven't hit the ceiling. What do we do to make it bigger and better even next year? We're going to try to breathe for a few weeks. It was just an unbelievable event, especially when you consider people traveled from California, Michigan and Long Island, New York, to be part of it.

While everybody wanted to walk away saying they won the seventh annual Larry McReynolds Celebrity Golf Tournament, the best golfers don't always win. It's often the team that buys the most mulligans and the most string. But not only did the winning team buy a tremendous number of mulligans and string, they actually were pretty darn good golfers. The celebrity captain of the winning team was former crew chief and ESPN's crew chief emeritus Tim Brewer. His group included my coach driver as their fourth player. While Tim works for ESPN, and I work for Turner, FOX and SPEED, when we're trying to do something good for others, we come together as one.

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FOX race analyst Larry McReynolds has more than 25 years of NASCAR experience as a mechanic, crew chief and broadcaster. He and his fellow Crew Chief Club members take you behind the wall at www.crewchiefclub.com.

"How to Become a Winning Crew Chief" is on bookstore shelves, or you may order your own autographed copy from www.DWStore.com.