Dale Earnhardt Jr. Sets Track Record, Earns Pole Position

Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t in the top 10 at the moment but the NASCAR driver still believes that he can capture the Sprint Cup.

Earnhardt Jr. has his work cut out for him but he does have a little bit of momentum heading into Sunday’s race at Dover International Speedway. The NASCAR driver set the track record on the Monster Mile with a 161.849 mph lap and earned the pole position for this weekend’s race.

This is Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s second pole position of the season and the 13 of his career.

The driver said: “With this track being concrete, you have a lot of data, but you gotta make a lot of gut decisions, but you don’t have a lot of reliable gut decisions to go off of… When the car is good, you can make a few mistakes — you can miss a few marks and still be good.”

But Earnhardt Jr. is still a little reserved about his chances on Sunday.

The driver said: “Every week the car is different from day to day. We had one of the best cars Saturday and on Sunday we were just a fifth-place car. Every day is going to be different.”

Fox Sports notes that Earnhardt was the points leader early in the season but has now fallen to 11th place. After blowing an engine at the Chicagoland Speedway Earnhardt fell 62 points behind leader Matt Kenseth.

The NASCAR driver is hoping to “regain our ground and get back into this thing” with a win on Sunday.