Earnhardt Jr. regaining confidence

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t come close to challenging Tony Stewart for this past weekend’s win in Daytona.

In years past, that failure would have put Junior and his Dale Earnhardt Inc. team in a panic. But those days of fretting over restrictor-plate wins and losses are long gone. Junior now is focused on a much bigger picture: Winning his first Nextel Cup title.

“We’re ready to run for a title,” he said. “We’re a hell of a team compared to last year, maybe better than ‘04.”

Die-hard Earnhardt fans know that 2004 was the last time Junior was a legitimate championship contender. He won six races that season, briefly led the points midway through the Chase for the championship, and finished fifth in the final standings.

He then fell to the back of the Nextel Cup standings last year in a season-long struggle that saw him win only one race, fail to make the Chase and finish an embarrassing 19th in the points.

Now he heads into this weekend’s race at Chicagoland Speedway – site of that lone win last season – on a turnaround. In the past three races, Junior has climbed from sixth to a season-high third in the standings and is a solid bet to make the Chase.

“I feel good about where we’re at,” he said. “We still need to get better. We obviously couldn’t hang with Tony and the guys up front Saturday night at Daytona. But we got out of there with little harm done, and even climbed a spot or two in the points.

“When it comes to the whole package, we’ve got a little mojo to get back. But my mojo is intact. I think that the team knows what areas we need to work on to get to where we were when winning is what we did.”