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Earnhardt Jr. finally righted the ship Saturday night with a solid fifth-place finish in the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. But unfortunately for Earnhardt Jr., he couldn't help his quest to make the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship. That's because the man he's chasing for the coveted 12th and final Chase spot had a pretty good night himself. Kurt Busch came home sixth at Bristol, only giving up five points to Earnhardt Jr. in the process.
After starting 17th, Earnhardt Jr. guided his DEI No. 8 home to the fifth position, only his second top five in the past seven races.

"Well all I can do is be WFO and run as good as I can run," said Earnhardt Jr., who now trails Busch by 158 points with only two races left before the Chase cutoff. "Kurt runs good here. It's going to be hard to get any here but we were able to finish a spot ahead of him. I'd say you're doing pretty good because he wins a lot here."
The clock is certainly ticking on Earnhardt Jr., who is in danger of missing the playoffs for the second time in three years.
Junior knows all that, but is getting tired of talking about the championship situation every week and sometimes having his on-track performance overlooked in the process.

"Y'all make it pretty miserable because that's all y'all talk about," Earnhardt Jr. told the media after Saturday night's race. "I shouldn't tell you that you dictate my mood. Now you know but anyways, when we don't make it everybody makes a big deal out of it. They talk about it pre-race, they talk about it post-race for a couple weeks and it is a bummer. It's a bummer when you see that and have to watch that and read it and whatnot."
"You kind of want to go under the radar when you can't get it done but maybe we can get us a win. I'll be more ticked off if I don't win a race this year because I've run good all year. We've had so many opportunities, you know? And you won't get credit for running fifth and blowing up, running second blowing up. You just won't."

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