Despite leading 80 laps of the AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. failed to win yet another race this season, losing this time to a close teammate.
Five-time Sprint Cup champion and teammate Jimmie Johnson went on to barely win the race, despite Earnhardt's dominate performance.
"It sucks to lose regardless of who wins," said Earnhardt, whose team shares a building with Johnson's at Hendrick Motorsports, according to Sporting News. "It's probably harder to run second than it is fifth or 10th.
"When you have a car like we had today, you don't get good cars every week, you'd like to capitalize."
Earnhardt, who started on the pole, made things a little harder on himself early on in the race by failing to slow down during an early round of green-flag stops and missing the pit-road entrance, according to USA Today.
He was forced to drive around the track again to pit, falling from first to eight.
Earnhardt was able to get back up to second, and even had the advantage of running on four tires versus Johnson's two towards the end of the race. He still couldn't pass Johnson for the lead.
"I joked with the boss (Rick Hendrick) after the race that if it wasn't for Jimmie Johnson, I'd have had a heck of career," said Earnhardt's crew chief Steve Letarte, who worked with Jeff Gordon before being paired up with Earnhardt in 2011. "I finished second to him once in the points and I'd have to check the stats but it feels like 10 or 11 times I've finished second to him on the racetrack."
Earnhardt's performance at Dover was still his best finish since March, when he finished second at Fontana. He was also the runner up at the Daytona 500 earlier on this season, once again to Johnson.
Earnhardt is also disappointed that he wasn't able to win despite having one of the best cars of his career.
"His car was good. I mean, I had to run perfect laps to maintain the pace that he had just to not let the lead get any bigger, just hope that he'd start coming back to me there at the end," Earnhardt said. "It was just a little bit too late."
Earnhardt is now 57 points behind Chase leader Matt Kenseth with seven races to go.
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