DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It's not about winning a championship anymore for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Sprint Cup's most popular driver is all but eliminated from title contention heading into tonight's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

AP

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is 19th in points, with six drivers and 285 points separating him from the final Chase spot.

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Earnhardt is 19th in points, with six drivers and 285 points separating him from the 12th and final spot in the Chase for the Championship.

The final 19 races give the driver of the No. 88 National Guard Serving America/AMP Energy Chevrolet a chance to correct some of the problems that have dogged him this season.

It's a long list.

"Making the Chase is the goal, but at the end of the year when you're done racing Homestead, and you've finished the last lap and get out of the car, what kind of feeling do you want to have?" Earnhardt said.

"The one I want to have is that we fixed it. That we've got something we can feel good about and work on and get our stuff ready for next year and feel like we can get the job done. Right now, that's not how we feel as a team."

It's been a tumultuous year for Earnhardt. Like every other driver in the Hendrick Motorsports stable, his year started with title hopes.

They didn't last long. A 27th-place showing in the Daytona 500 was a precursor of what was to come. A second-place showing at Talladega in April got Earnhardt up to 15th in points.

But that has been the high-water mark for him, as he followed with showings of 27th, 27th and 40th place. His cousin and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. paid for the struggles with his job after Earnhardt finished 40th on May 25 at Charlotte, but the switch to new crew chief Lance McGrew hasn't helped much.

In the five races with McGrew, Earnhardt hasn't posted a top-10 finish. He has just three this season.

"We're still mathematically in it," Earnhardt said. "We're not just trying to catch one guy. We're 200-and-something points behind. It's unrealistic to expect all of them guys to have enough trouble."

There have been flashes of improvement. He ran as high as third last week at New Hampshire before finishing 13th.

"It's important for him and that team to come together and get in sync, and it could take a little while," teammate Jeff Gordon said last week. "All it takes is one win, one streak of good finishes and he's going to go."

Maybe tonight's race will get him going. He won the July race at Daytona in 2001 and the Daytona 500 in 2004.

"We've got a little more to go," Earnhardt said. "We've got to get better. At the end of the year we want to have some wins. We want to have some consistency and end it going, 'All right, I can't wait until next year.' "

Tony Stewart: Forget the fact that Stewart benefits from starting on the pole. He's had success here, too, winning the July race in 2005 and 2006. He didn't run well in either practice, but he knows how to work the draft.

Kurt Busch: Busch has never won at this track, but he's run well here at times before being victimized by accidents. He was consistent in both practices and has nine top-10 finishes in his Daytona career.

Brian Vickers: He knows how to win on superspeedways, with his first Sprint Cup win coming at Talladega. He was also one of the fastest cars in practice, posting the fifth-fastest lap in the first practice and the fourth-fastest in the second one.