Dale Earnhardt Jr. solid at Kansas, but needs a little more speed in his car - NASCAR

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had another solid race Sunday, another day when he had a top-five car but not one quite fast enough to get him to the front at Kansas Speedway.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver ran in the top five for much of the STP 400 and wound up finishing seventh.

Earnhardt believes his car might not handle as well as some others because its track bar — a rear suspension bar — appears higher on his car.

"For whatever reason, that last run we were really loose," Earnhardt said. "When you look at all the guys I'm racing around, their track bars are on the ground and we're running ours about three inches higher probably.

"We've just got to figure out a way to get that down and get the car to rotate and get the rear grip in the car."

But Earnhardt didn't have much to complain about as he only dropped to fourth in the standings, 21 points behind leader Greg Biffle. Though he finished outside the top five, he was close enough that if some of the leaders had trouble, he would have been right there to take advantage of it.

"We never really cured our problems on the track, but we had a good car and it was real consistent," Earnhardt said. "We've just got to get a little bit more to get to where we can try to win some races."

Earnhardt believes he's close to getting that elusive victory as his winless streak stretched to 137 races.

"When I need to step on the gas, man, the right rear is just not hanging on," Earnhardt said. "So it's really loose into the corner. Everybody around me can barrel into the corner pretty hard into (Turn) 1 and stuff and I'm just not.

"I'm really loose in. So, we'll work on it. We'll try to see if we can get closer to what's fast … to win races."