?Little E? finding consistency he missed last year

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is driving with a consistency he never found during a disappointing 2005 season during which he failed to qualify for the Chase for the championship.

Now that he?s found some stability, Earnhardt plans to challenge for the title.

Earnhardt has a win and six top-10 finishes this season, good enough to put him a solid fourth in the points standings and put aside a miserable end to last year. He?ll start 11th in Sunday?s Pocono 500, the second straight week he?ll start from that spot. Earnhardt moved up one spot and finished 10th at Dover.

?We?ve wanted to have consistency our entire career,? Earnhardt said. ?I?m real glad about that. We?ve got a win. We?ve got a lot of 11ths and top-10 finishes. That?s what I wanted, so I?m real happy. Things couldn?t be better.?

Things couldn?t have been worse last year when he was never really in contention for a Nextel Cup championship. He finished 33rd at the June Pocono race, the second time he finished in that spot in three races. Earnhardt had a whopping 13 races where he finished worse than 30th.

He ended the year a career-worst 19th in the final standings. Earnhardt was 15th in the standings at this point last season.

This season, he has only one finish in the 30s and hasn?t been worse than 11th in any of the last four races.

?This is probably the best group – as far as having an assembled group – this is the best I?ve had from top to bottom,? Earnhardt said. ?With the team being really strong and deep in talent, I think this is as good as I?ve ever had.?

Always one of the sport?s most popular drivers, Earnhardt seems to have benefited from reuniting with his cousin and crew chief, Tony Eury Jr. They reunited with 10 races left last season, and were able to break a 27-race winless streak with a victory this year at Richmond International Raceway.

?I?m very happy and very lucky and very fortunate that these guys can stand me enough to work on the car all year and be around me all year,? Earnhardt said. ?I?m real fortunate to have an opportunity to drive for them again.?

GRIPES: After years of complaining that the Pocono 500 needed to be shortened by 100 miles, some drivers have a new gripe: a lack of shifting on the 21?2-mile track.

This is the second year of a change in the gearing rule at Pocono that prevents downshifting in the sharp turns on the triangular layout. Points leader Jimmie Johnson, who won twice here in 2004, found the track lost a little something last year when it eliminated shifting.

?I think it?s a little less challenging around the race track,? he said. ?I feel that we maybe put on a little better show when we were shifting.?

Drivers used downshifting to gain quick acceleration exiting the sharp turns. The rule is designed to cut rpm and reduce the number of engine failures. Drivers suddenly had to get used to the difficulty of passing without the sudden burst of power provided by downshifting.

?You slow down so much coming into the frontstretch and into turn one that your natural instinct is to downshift,? said Jamie McMurray. ?When everyone is kind of in the same situation, it?s not that bad.?

Oh, and about the length of the race, often considered one of the most boring on the circuit? The drivers still want that sliced by 100 miles.

?This is a place that if it was 400 miles, I don?t think anyone would complain about that,? McMurray said.

LAME DUCK: Donnie Wingo has a lame duck driver again.

Last year, it was Jamie McMurray who bolted Ganassi Racing for a spot at Roush Racing, and now it?s Casey Mears who decided this week to leave Ganassi at the end of this year for a likely spot at Hendrick Motorsports.

Wingo was the crew chief for McMurray, and has the same job for Mears. He said the decisions that depleted the team have had an effect on morale.

?When you go home and sit down and think about it, you get pretty upset,? Wingo said. ?There?s nothing really else you can do about it.?

Wingo said he didn?t know why the drivers were leaving Ganassi, but there was nothing the team could do other than try to find the best possible replacement for next season. While he said it was difficult to not take the decisions personally, Wingo said he had no doubt that McMurray last season and Mears now remained committed to a strong finish.

?They don?t have anything to gain by laying down and not doing their job,? Wingo said.