NASCAR: Earnhardt closer to playoff bubble with MIS crash

Following a crash on Sunday at Michigan International Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. suddenly finds himself uncomfortably close to the NASCAR playoff bubble with 11 races remaining in the Sprint Cup regular season.

The incident began shortly after a restart on lap 61 and was triggered by Chris Buescher sliding up Turn 2 and making contact with Earnhardt and AJ Allmendinger. Both were sent into the wall by the rookie and finished 38th and 39th, respectively.

Buescher immediately accepted the blame over his team radio but that wasn't enough to pacify Earnhardt from behind the wall.

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"We were in the middle there and (Buescher) ran me into the left-rear quarter panel and knocked us in the fence," Earnhardt said. "He must have just lost the nose of his car. I hate it, but you have to try to take care of each other out there.

"We all try to race hard and I wish he would have taken better care of us. He just lost the car and hit the quarter panel. It happens though. I'm angry but I won't be too upset about it later."

Earnhardt felt like he had started to turn his season around with a runner-up last weekend at Pocono but will lose that momentum heading into the coming off-week. The result drops him to 12th on the provisional Chase Grid and just 30 points ahead of the playoff cutoff.

He's still searching for his first victory of the season.

"It's frustrating right now because we had a good car and I was happy with the way it drove," Earnhardt said. "We had good speed but we just needed to continue to work on getting track position and we were doing that. We won't get a chance to get the finish I think we could have gotten today."