Dale Earnhardt Jr. Scores Emotional Martinsville Win

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., driver of the #88 Chevrolet SS, celebrates his 4th win of the season with his crew

Garry Eller/HHP and General Motor

One week after being eliminated from the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. played the role of Chase spoiler on Sunday, charging back from fifth place with five laps to go to hold off his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon for his first-career Martinsville Speedway victory in a bittersweet win for the entire Hendrick organization.

Earnhardt pulled off a three-wide pass following a restart on lap 495 to jump to second place and then moved race leader Tony Stewart aside with four laps to go to score his fourth victory of the season.

Ryan Newman finished third, followed by Stewart and Joey Logano.

Earnhardt's victory comes just days after the tenth anniversary of a tragic plane crash that claimed the lives of ten people, including team owner Rick Hendrick's son, Ricky Hendrick, brother John Hendrick and John's two daughters.

"Oh, man. We've been trying to win here for so many years. And this place is so special to me. I've wanted to win here so bad," said Earnhardt, Jr. "This means so much to all of us. It's just real emotional. I lost my daddy a long time ago and I know how hard that is. I can't imagine losing the magnitude of people that Rick (Hendrick) lost. My heart goes out to him during this weekend

"I'm just real proud to be able to win at Martinsville in a Hendrick car. They always win here. I love that his cars are good here to get to victory. So, this honors them."

Earnhardt, who was eliminated from the Chase for the Sprint Cup following last Sunday's race at Talladega, becomes the first non-Chase driver to score a win in the 10-race Chase, taking away one of three potential automatic berths into the final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Now out of championship contention, Earnhardt was able to put it all on the line for a victory – and a coveted Martinsville Speedway grandfather clock.

"I could care less about all the points right now. We love winning races," Earnhardt said. "Winning races is the best thing. I ain't worried about points no more. I'm trying to get trophies. I've wanted that grandfather clock ever since I was a little boy and I got is today. My team, we all came together and made it happen. I couldn't be prouder. We're going to drink a lot of beer tonight."

Sunday's race was the opening event in the three-race "Eliminator Round", which will see the top four in points advance following the Nov. 9 race at Phoenix to a winner-take-all race at Homestead on Nov. 16.

And so far the Eliminator Round has lived up to its moniker, as three of the surviving Chase contenders finished 20th or worse, starting off the round in a huge hole in the points standings.

Kevin Harvick, who made the biggest charge of the afternoon moving up from 33rd starting spot all the way up to sixth, ended the day with a 33rd-place finish after getting a spin involving follow Chase driver Matt Kenseth on lap 229 which put him behind the wall for 43 laps waiting on repairs to his no. 4 Chevrolet.

Having saved his season with a clutch victory last weekend at Talladega, Brad Keselowski was dealt a devastating blow to his championship hopes after breaking a transmission on lap 438, trigging a six-car crash that collected Chase contender Carl Edwards and brought out the first of two red flags. Keselowski spent nearly 30 laps in the garage and ended the day 31st.

A second red flag with 10 laps to go triggered by a crash involving Kyle Larson and Marcos set up the final shootout to the finish.

With Earnhardt and Clint Bowyer holding the top spots, the leaders came to pit road on the ensuing caution flag while Stewart stayed out along with Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. and David Ragan.

On the restart, Stenhouse and Ragan were pushed aside as Earnhardt came up with a head of steam on the inside, going three-wide on the backstretch to move into second spot.

Stewart, who didn't stand a chance against cars running four fresh tires, quickly had a mirror-full of Earnhardt, who dived to the inside in turn three and giving Stewart a shot in the door to move him up out of the groove, giving Earnhardt the top spot as they came to the start/finish line.

Gordon also slid past Stewart on the inside and started to chase down Earnhardt, but didn't have enough laps to catch him, coming up two car-lengths short at the line.

It was Gordon's 28th top-five finish at Martinsville – top among all active drivers – and a Hendrick sweep of the top two to honor the victims of the 2004 plane crash.

"I have to say what an incredible tribute that is. A 1-2 finish. That's the best way you can possibly pay tribute to those we lost here 10 years ago," said Gordon. "To have a 1-2 finish is pretty awesome. I would have loved to have gotten that win to move on to Homestead, but this is surely a great start for us.

"It was a great performance and a really good finish. Finishing second isn't as big of a deal today, it's actually really a good finish and good points day compared to if a Chase driver would have won. I wanted to get that win to get ourselves locked in, but we have two more great tracks coming up

Though Gordon missed out on an easy ticket to the next round, he leaves Martinsville as the series points leader by three points over Newman. Logano, Kenseth and Hamlin round out the top five in points.