Nascar and Racing Dale Earnhardt Jr

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Catching up on the news and notes trackside at Daytona International Speedway.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. met with reporters briefly Friday and seemed pretty much resigned to the fact that he won't be making the 12-driver Chase for the Championship this season. He's currently ranked 19th, 285 points behind 12th place Juan Pablo Montoya with nine races remaining before the Chase field is set Sept. 12.

"It's going to be a real challenge for us to make the Chase,'' Earnhardt said. "We're still mathematically in it but we're not trying to catch just one guy. .. we're trying to catch four or five guys. And it's unrealistic to expect all them guys to have enough trouble.

Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona will mark the official midway point of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Naturally, it's a great time to review what we've seen so far from the Cup boys, their teams, the series and the tracks. First, we'll start with the not-so-hot performers:

Motorsports FanHouse Grade: F

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - It's been easy to see why the season for driver No. 88 has earned a failing grade. He's been slowly -- very slowly -- improving of late, but still has no chance for the Chase in 2009 and has one track left with a great chance to win at -- Daytona.

Where: Michigan Int'l Speedway
Time: Sunday 2:00pm/EDT
TV/Radio: TNT, MRN Radio
Twitter: At-track updates at FanHouseRacing
Forecast: 75 degrees, Partly Sunny
Distance: 200 laps (400 miles)
Pole Winner: Brian Vickers
2008 Winner: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
It's now been a full year since NASCAR's most popular driver was in victory lane and a Dale Earnhardt Jr. win on Sunday would be a nice-sized upset -- though we can't really expect it.

A year removed from Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s last victory and a week removed from Kyle Busch's controversial guitar smash, the latter couldn't help but sway the conversation back to the driver who has become his primary off-track target.

And this time, Busch not only went after the commander of the No. 88 ship, but Earnhardt Jr.'s army of fans, too.

"I got no issues with Junior; it's his fans that are crazy," said Busch.

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There's been a lot of hubbub recently over Dale Earnhardt Jr. becoming the Frank Sinatra Jr. of NASCAR. However you feel, everybody should agree on one thing.

Thank goodness the Junior Nation wasn't running the show back in 1776. If it had we'd all have British accents and be curtsying before royalty.

Sure, he didn't get the race win and he certainly didn't challenge for it. The No. 88 didn't finish in the Top-10 and it never led a lap.

But was Sunday's Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway a rousing improvement for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s, uh, lackluster season? Can we really say a 12th-place finish is a good thing for a Hendrick Motorsports driver?

Well, in this situation, your darn right we can -- even though driver No. 88 may not exactly agree.

DOVER, Del. (AP) -- Kyle Busch couldn't resist taking a poke at the driver who replaced him at Hendrick Motorsports.

Busch's career has skyrocketed since signing with Joe Gibbs Racing, while Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s sagging career has hit an all-time low. On Wednesday night, team owner Rick Hendrick had enough, firing Earnhardt's longtime crew chief Tony Eury Jr. in an attempt to salvage the season.

Mark Martin was worried about taking an anti-inflammatory pill so the 50-year old veteran driver called up the head of NASCAR's new drug testing program to see if he could take an Advil without violating policy.

Greg Biffle was concerned enough about taking a simple over-the-counter pain medicine to help with an injury, he just opted to tough it out.

We still don't know what Sprint Cup driver Jeremy Mayfield tested positive for two weeks ago, resulting in him becoming the first Cup driver indefinitely suspended under a new random drug testing policy. And it has prompted many drivers to publicly ask for a definitive list of can-dos and should-nots.

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TALLADEGA, Ala. -- It wasn't Junior but his junior, Brad Keselowski, who seemingly came out of no where to survive a wreck-filled, spectacular last-lap crash and win his first ever NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday.

Keselowski, who drives full time for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the triple-A Nationwide Series, was behind Carl Edwards about 100 yards from the checkered flag. As Edwards tried to block Keselowski's final push to win, the cars collided, launching Edwards' Ford airborne, which flipped wildly in the air. His car bounced off the hood of Ryan Newman's car and then rolled, roof up, hard into the catch fence along the front grandstand.

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