The No. 88 team then had two bad weeks, with a 30th-place finish at Watkins Glen due to a late race crash with Kasey Kahne. The next week, Earnhardt blew a right front tire while running in the Top 10. The damage was enough that he finished 26 laps down, in 36th place. This evaporated his Chase cushion, but with finishes of 10th at Bristol and 8th at Atlanta, he was able to rebuild this cushion. At Richmond, the last race of the regular season, Earnhardt only needed to finish 32nd or better to make the Chase. A 13th-place finish did this, and he entered the Chase seeded in ninth place. This was the first time in Earnhardt's career that he had made three straight Chase appearances. In the first Chase race at Chicagoland Speedway, Earnhardt suffered an engine failure, placing him last in Chase competition. He bounced back at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, leading 17 laps and finishing 6th. The result was good enough to move Earnhardt up to 11th in Chase for the Sprint Cup standings with eight races left in the season.