Earnhardt Gets Over the Hump

The roar from the crowd told the story after Sunday’s NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway: Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back.

The fan favorite finally appears to have broken out of a nearly season-long slump.

A sellout crowd of about 100,000 at the Joliet, Ill., track was howling its approval as the jubilant Earnhardt celebrated his first victory of the season by smoking the tires of his No. 8 Chevrolet and hugging crew members in the infield grass.

“I was worried I was going to go winless this year,” the relieved Earnhardt said after taking the 16th victory of his career and his first since November in Phoenix. “Now, let’s go out and do it again, win some more.”

Earnhardt and his team had to beat dominating Matt Kenseth with late-race strategy. Kenseth led 176 of the 267 laps on the 1 1/2 -mile oval but finished second after choosing to change four tires and falling behind on his final pit stop in the USG Sheetrock 400.

“We obviously didn’t have the best car today,” Earnhardt said. “Matt Kenseth had the best car, hands down.”

But this turned out to be Junior’s day.

Since opening the season with a third-place finish in the Daytona 500, Earnhardt has had a mostly miserable season and little to smile about until he finished in third place last week in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. He started 25th on Sunday and spent most of the race hovering near the back of the top 10.

Jimmie Johnson, the series points leader, came back from a lap down to finish third, followed by Brian Vickers and Tony Stewart.

“It’s been a long time coming, man,” Earnhardt said. “It’s a lot of emotion, more than I can handle right now. For these guys, all the darts they’ve had thrown at them this year. It’s just awesome.

“I thought we had a top-10, maybe a top-five car,” he added. “My guys on pit road won the race for me. Got me out front with two tires.”

Kenseth, who has not won since March 2004 at Las Vegas, was disappointed.

“Our car was awesome,” he said. “I’m trying to be a gracious loser, but it’s a tough one.”

Stewart, still aching from a crash on Friday that forced him to go to a backup car and start from the rear of the 43-car field, was trying to win his third in a row and repeat his victory last year at Chicagoland.

“If we’d have stayed out like I wanted to, we’d have won the race,” said Stewart, who has now finished third, second, first and fifth in his last four starts at Chicagoland.

Greg Biffle, second in the season standings, finished 11th and fell from 73 to 108 points behind Johnson. The victory moved Earnhardt to 13th place, 115 points behind 10th-place Kurt Busch and 491 points behind Johnson.

For four-time series champion Jeff Gordon, who finished 33rd, it was his sixth finish of 30th or lower in eight races.

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Justin Wilson passed Oriol Servia with 11 laps to go and held on to win the Toronto Molson Indy Champ Car race.

The race ended under caution when A.J. Allmendinger, Wilson’s teammate for the RuSport team, crashed as he was closing on Servia for second place. Allmendinger brushed the wall then careened across the track into a tire barrier.

Mario Dominguez then slammed into Allmendinger’s stopped car to bring out a caution with seven laps to go. The race ended when officials were unable to get the track cleaned during the allotted time the series had to finish the event.

“It’s hard to believe. The last few laps under caution, I was just hoping it would not go back under green,” Wilson said.

Alex Tagliani finished third and was followed by Jimmy Vasser and Sebastian Bourdais, who overcame an early accident with Paul Tracy to finish fifth and reclaim the series-standings lead.

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Juan Pablo Montoya won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone for his first victory of the season and fifth of his career.

The driver from McLaren-Mercedes was followed by Formula One points leader Fernando Alonso of Renault and Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren.

Montoya led nearly the entire race. The Colombian started third on the grid and swept into the lead seconds into the race, passing pole-sitter Alonso.

“I think the race was won on the first turn,” Montoya said. “From there on it was a matter of the strategy and a question of how hard you can push.”

It was Montoya’s first victory since the last race of the 2004 season in Brazil. The former Indy 500 champion sat out two races early this year because of an injured shoulder and had not had a top-three finish.

“It’s been such a frustrating season that when I crossed the line I was excited,” he said.

Alonso has 77 points after 11 of 19 races. Raikkonen has 51, and Michael Schumacher, who was sixth, remained third with 43.