NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr.: ‘We know we can’ win Chase playoff

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday he’s more calm and prepared than he’s ever been heading into NASCAR’s Chase for the Cup title playoff.

“I feel older and wiser, I guess, definitely more calm,” Earnhardt said in an interview during a daylong media blitz in Los Angeles to promote the Chase. His other stops included an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

The 10-race, 16-driver playoff starts Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., where Earnhardt has one Sprint Cup Series win, in 2005.

The popular Earnhardt, who turns 40 next month, enters the Chase with three Cup wins so far this year, including the Daytona 500, in the No. 88 Chevrolet prepared by his team Hendrick Motorsports.

That victory total is the highest that Earnhardt has tallied in a single season since winning six races in 2004, which was the inaugural year of the Chase format.

“I remember how naive and young I was then,” Earnhardt said. “I didn’t know it at the time or feel unprepared. I’m just so much better prepared now. I feel much more suited to try to accomplish the goal.”

Earnhardt noted that in last year’s Chase, he had eight top-10 finishes during the Chase. But that came after engine trouble in the first Chase race left him with a 35th-place finish and spoiled his title hopes.

But the Chase format is radically different this year. It now features eliminating four drivers at a time after the third, sixth and ninth races so that only four remaining drivers have a shot at the title at the season finale at Florida’s Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Regardless, “we’re a better team this year, and that team last year was good enough . . . our team’s ability was overlooked,” Earnhardt said. “We know we can do it.”

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