Picture those agonizing winless streaks in NASCAR, the kind that grip a driver’s soul and keep fans on the edge of their seats, lap after lap, praying for a breakthrough. Bill Elliott’s got the toughest one on record—a brutal 226-race dry spell, seven years of grinding from his 1994 Mountain Dew Southern 500 win at Darlington to his next at Homestead-Miami in 2001.

Martin Truex Jr. felt that weight too, clawing through 218 races between his first Cup win in 2007 and his next in 2013. For fans, watching a favorite driver go winless feels like being stuck in a never-ending caution flag, especially when it’s someone carrying a name as big as Earnhardt.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. lived that struggle in the late 2000s and early 2010s, a stretch that tested his fire and had the whole NASCAR world chee

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