LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Dale Earnhardt Jr. had to find his mobile device. He had saved a photo of himself standing next to the scoring pylon — a smile on his face, his index finger raised to flash No. 1 and, even better, the No. 88 lit up atop the leaderboard — and he wanted to share it with Junior Nation.
Hours after taking the checkered flag, Earnhardt followed through on his promise to post the picture to more than 680,000 followers on Twitter.
"#JrNation, @poconoraceway is ours today. What a win! I hope you all enjoyed today as much as I did. We won! We won!" he tweeted.
He sure did. And he's starting to make a habit of collecting checkered flags.
Earnhardt spun Brad Keselowski's trash into Victory Lane treasure, pulling away down the stretch Sunday at Pocono Raceway for his second win of the season and a sure spot in the Chase field.
He paired his first career win at Pocono with his Daytona 500 championship for his first multi-win season since 2004.
"I feel like I'm such a lucky guy to have this second opportunity again to be competitive," Earnhardt said.
As strong as Earnhardt ran in the No. 88 Chevrolet, Keselowski gift-wrapped the win when he yielded the lead with five laps left in a desperate attempt to clear debris from his grille and cool his overheated engine.
Keselowski's gamble backfired — he couldn't get the draft needed from the lapped traffic to clear his car and make one final pass on Earnhardt for the win. Keselowski's No. 2 Ford still had the oomph in the engine needed to finish the race, and he had his second-straight runner-up finish.
"It was definitely a mistake because the engine made it," Keselowski said, rubbing his face. "It probably shouldn't have."
Junior shook off the rising red gauges in the No. 88 that could have had his car meet a similar fate.
"They were still within good reason to stand on it and give it hell," he said.
Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin and rookie Kyle Larson completed the top five.
Earnhardt gave Hendrick Motorsports four straight wins, following Jeff Gordon at Kansas and Jimmie Johnson's victories at Charlotte and Dover. Johnson overcame a pit road accident to finish sixth.
Earnhardt's second win means he is guaranteed to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field. He won for the 29th time in 519 career Sprint Cup starts.
"When we won at Daytona, man, it made the rest of the year a lot more relaxing, a lot easier," he said. "It makes it fun because you can just go to the track and just race, not worry about points."
Here are five other things of note from Pocono Raceway:
SHR'S DAY: Kurt Busch posted his first top-10 since his win at Martinsville nine races ago. He salvaged a rough day for Stewart-Haas Racing that saw fellow drivers Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick drop from contention with various issues. Stewart held the lead and was in great position late to win until he was busted for speeding on pit road and was dropped to 31st. Harvick was running second when had tire trouble. Stewart finished 13th, Harvick 14th, and Danica Patrick was 37th after she smacked the wall with 22 laps left. Stewart blamed himself for coughing up the lead. "I don't know how I got through the (dashboard) lights like I did, but I got to where I blew through all the lights and didn't have any on the (tachometer) so I had no clue that I was over it. I gave my guys grief last week with a sixth-place run when I thought we should have run in the top-three. Then I threw it away this week."