After two disappointing finishes at Daytona and Atlanta, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be looking to get his 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season back on track in Sunday’s Kobalt 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX) at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
And Earnhardt’s odds of a strong finish in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet are actually pretty good.
While he’s yet to win here, three times in his career, Earnhardt has finished in the runner-up spot at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas track.
His most recent second-place finish came here in 2014, when he was leading when he took the white flag, but ran out of gas on the backstretch, allowing Brad Keselowski to steal the victory.
But that wasn’t as disappointing a result as it could have been.
Prior to Las Vegas in 2014, Earnhardt had won the season-opening Daytona 500, locking himself into NASCAR’s playoffs.
That meant he could afford to gamble on gas mileage at the end of the race, because if he didn’t win, it didn’t matter if he finished second or 42nd, as he’s already punched his playoff ticket at Daytona.
In the last four Vegas races, Earnhardt’s worst finish was eighth and his average finish was 5.75, all of which bodes well for a good run on Sunday.
“I like the steep banking at Las Vegas, said Earnhardt, who comes into Sunday’s race ranked 33rd in points. “They reconfigured it many years ago and it’s much more fun with the steeper banking.”
And after Las Vegas, comes Phoenix, where Earnhardt has multiple race victories, followed by several other tracks he’s partial to.
“I’m looking forward to the next couple of racetracks – there are a lot of fun racetracks coming up,” said Earnhardt. “I love the low-downforce package. The cars are hard to drive and everyone is out there being challenged. It’s awesome.”
