Dale Earnhardt Jr. looks to end winless streak

Reporting from Sonoma, Calif. — 

Dale Earnhardt Jr. lounged on the edge of a couch in his transporter at Infineon Raceway here, his left leg braced against a wall as he awaited the question he knew was coming.

It’s now two years and counting since the popular driver in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series has won a race, and inevitably there’s the question of when Earnhardt can finally end the streak.

A year ago, an often irritable Earnhardt tired of trying to explain why his No. 88 Chevrolet couldn’t keep pace with NASCAR’s stiff competition.

“When I’m running real bad,” he recalled of that period, “I don’t like doing nothing. I get just too upset.” But lately “we’ve been running better, to where I feel comfortable discussing our drought or whatever. I definitely feel like I got a little more footing than I had last year.”

Earnhardt’s winless spell isn’t likely to end Sunday in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon, a hilly, 10-turn road course where Earnhardt has had little success. He starts 24th in the 43-car field.

But once the Cup series returns to its predominantly oval tracks, Earnhardt and his car owner, Rick Hendrick, are confident that Earnhardt — with 18 career wins — can eventually return to Victory Lane.

“I see that team getting better and better,” Hendrick said. “The changes they’re making to the cars are getting better. I’m happy with where it’s headed.”

Earnhardt’s “Junior Nation” of fans hope so. Earnhardt, 35, is so popular that his struggle is sometimes cited among the reasons why NASCAR’s attendance and television ratings have drooped the last two years.

Earnhardt’s last win was at Michigan in June 2008 — 72 races ago. And the Michigan victory came after a 76-winless streak, so he has only one win in 149 races.

It’s not for lack of effort lately, said veteran Mark Martin, an Earnhardt teammate. Earnhardt has been “driving harder than any race car driver out there,” Martin said last week. “I can see it clear as day how bad he wants it.”

None of this was expected when Earnhardt, son of legendary Dale Earnhardt, the seven-time Cup champion killed in a crash at the Daytona 500 in 2001, stunned NASCAR by moving from his family’s team to powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports in 2008.

The prevailing theory was that Earnhardt quickly would be a frequent contender because he’d be driving some of the best cars available. Hendrick’s other drivers are Jimmie Johnson, who has won the championship the last four years; Jeff Gordon, also four-time title winner, and Martin.

Instead, Earnhardt had the one win in 2008 and finished a career-low 25th in the points in 2009 even though Hendrick replaced his crew chief, Earnhardt’s cousin Tony Eury Jr., with Lance McGrew during the season. This year, Earnhardt has only one top-five finish.

Of course, Earnhardt isn’t alone in the winless column as the balance of power keeps shifting among NASCAR’s teams and drivers.

While Denny Hamlin of Joe Gibbs Racing has five wins this year, Carl Edwards, the Roush Fenway Racing driver who won a series-high nine races in 2008, hasn’t won since then, a span of 51 races. Gordon has gone 44 races without a win.

Even so, as Earnhardt’s winless streak grows, so do suggestions that perhaps the problem is more about Earnhardt’s driving skills than the quality of Hendrick’s race cars.

“That’s not true,” Hendrick said. Earnhardt “definitely has the talent. We’ve got to get all the rest of the components together. It takes strategy, chemistry, communication and it takes luck.”

What does please Hendrick is that the performance of Earnhardt’s cars is improving.

“In the past, we’d start off good and then as the race went on we’d falter,” Hendrick said. “But now we can maintain and get better as the race goes on.”

And despite not winning, Earnhardt is 14th in points, only two spots from again qualifying for the 12-driver Chase playoff.

“I feel better about our chances of getting the car to handle, to drive good, of my chances of getting a better finish,” Earnhardt said. “We still got a long way to go [but] I’m in a good place. I hated it last year, the year before that. I definitely enjoy the job more now — again.”

james.peltz@latimes.com