'We will have some things to be proud of' - Earnhardt

There will be no throwing in the towel from Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Greg Ives (pictured above). Not that anyone would blame them at this point, as an early exit Sunday at Watkins Glen because of a valve spring issue resulted in Earnhardt's seventh DNF in 22 races. It is also his ninth finish of 30th or worse on the year and third in the last six races. But Earnhardt and Ives both said Sunday afternoon that despite the repeated issues plaguing their Hendrick Motorsports team, they will keep upbeat while trying to improve.

"You pull together as a group. You get all the guys together, and you ask everybody if they are in and if they are ready to push hard the rest of the season and stay motivated and stay plugged in," Earnhardt said. "These guys are. But we have to hold each other up and lift each other up when it gets difficult like this.

"We're a pretty close group. I don't anticipate the challenges and adversity we are facing to be detrimental to our team going forward. We have to be able to deal with stuff like this. This is racing, and you are going to have to go through these kinds of days. It's been a difficult year, but I've had more challenging times for sure. I still feel like we will have some things to be proud of before the end of the season. It's just not going to be this weekend."

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Unfortunately for the No. 88 team, it has not been as simple as fixing or improving on one thing. Earnhardt has been caught up in crashes (like leading in the Daytona 500), had the radiator knocked out (Martinsville and Indy), suffered engine issues (Pocono), or simply lacked the balance and speed necessary to compete with the teams who are at the top of the leaderboard each weekend.

Making the sting feel a little worse, Earnhardt announced in April he would be retiring after this season. Going out with a whimper instead of a bang will not leave he or Ives content.

"It's tough. It's frustrating," Ives said. "I hate it. I hate it for the fans. I hate it for Dale not being able to run like he wants and then finishing these races early. It's kind of what you make out of the bad times that is going to make the good ones even sweeter.

"That's the way life is sometimes. You have things you run into, and it's how you overcome them. I know we're capable of bringing fast cars – we've shown glimpses of it this year, but it's one of those things. You can't get caught up in things that happen out of your control; we can only focus on the next week and bringing a good car. It's up to us to keep that mentality."

When asked how he will keep his team going, Ives also pointed to overseeing a group of resilient individuals. And he also believes there have been races where the team has shown what it is capable of.

"We've shown that we've had good cars. Michigan, Indy, I thought we had a good car (as well as) Texas, Kansas," said Ives. "You look at several different racetracks where we had good cars and just weren't able to capitalize, whether it was a lug nut changing our button (on the air gun to reverse) and losing 10 spots at Indy and then being in position where you have to be defensive as far as when you pit.

"Those are the things that are frustrating. We know, not only as a team but as a company, that we have to continue to push and get better to catch those guys. Everybody's got the bullseye on the 18 (Kyle Busch) and 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) right now."

At 23rd in points and over 250 points from a spot on the playoff grid, Earnhardt will need to pull off a win in the next four races if he is to contend for a championship in his final season. Earnhardt has not won a Cup Series race since November 2015 at Phoenix. Even if he were to fail to make the playoffs, Earnhardt said he hopes to experience the feeling of winning one more race before he vacates the car.

"We're a team that's in our third year together – '15 was great, '16 we had good times, bad times and half the season was spent without Dale, so it's difficult to be put in these scenarios," continued Ives. "Whether or not we had a car capable of finishing fifth, 10th, eighth, that doesn't matter; I just want the opportunity.

"Getting out of the race early at Indy, that sticks because at that point it's about surviving and making all those laps. That's what even Watkins Glen is; it's about surviving the whole race and putting yourself at least in a position – we're not even in a position now because we're out of the race. We can speculate where we're going to finish, but until you run all the laps, it doesn't matter.

"We've just got to go out there confident in each other. It's easy for anybody to get down but it's the tough ones that rally together, pull themselves in rather than push away, and that's what we're going to focus on doing."