Qualifying, media troubling Junior
Sunday, Mar. 22, 2009
Dale Earnhardt Jr. got two free passes and managed to match his season's best with a 14th-place finish on Sunday, but said the fact he qualified so poorly on Friday set the No. 88 team back.
"We had great pit stops and we just had terrible track position," he said. "I made some mistakes on our qualifying lap and made our qualifying effort so bad that we never had track position all day. We had a good, competitive car, a top-10 car for sure, and just could never get there."
Earnhardt said his team needs to focus on working hard and staying positive, but said some in the media are making that hard to do.
"It's not that hard to stay positive until you get around the media," he said. "You guys have got to take a little responsibility for being so hard on everybody.
"Some people are going to argue that you all are just calling out to the reality of a situation, but we're trying to work hard and trying to do our job and that's what we do every week.
"Somebody seems to think we still belong here and so we keep showing up."
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