Kasey Kahne, driver of the #5 Quaker State Chevrolet, Jeff Gordon, driver of the #24 Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet, Jimmie Johnson, driver of the #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the #88 Diet Mountain Dew/National Guard Chevrolet, celebrate after qualfying for the Chase for the Sprint Cup after the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond International Raceway on September 8, 2012 in Richmond, Virginia.
(September 7, 2012 – Source: Jerry Markland/Getty Images North America)

(PhatzRadio / USA Today) — Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team scheduled a sit-down at crew chief Steve Letarte’s house the day after NASCAR’s regular-season finale.

The goals?

Reflect on a breakthrough season for Earnhardt, who ended a four-year winless skid in June.

Reassess the No. 88 team’s outlook and strategy heading into the Chase for the Sprint Cup opener at Chicagoland Speedway.

Perhaps most important for a late summer Sunday afternoon: relax.

“I’m pretty sure by the time the race is about to start, the energy level is going to be about as high as it needs to be,” Earnhardt said. “Probably higher than it should be. You’ll probably have to calm yourself down a little bit just to realize that it is 10 individual races.”

He had plenty of time to reflect on those championship aspirations this week as he prepares for his best run at a title since finishing fifth in the 2004 standings. He was ferried Tuesday to Bristol, Conn., for a whirlwind, wall-to-wall tour of ESPN’s various networks and programming. He was scheduled to spend Wednesday in Chicago on a full news media tour answering more of the same questions he has faced for much of the season.

In his fifth season with Hendrick Motorsports, is NASCAR’s most popular driver ready to deliver his first title?

“We’ll be thinking about that all week,” he said. “The season we’ve had, the opportunity that I feel like I have as a driver to win the championship.”

That championship consistency has returned for Earnhardt, who already has more top-10s this season than in any other season since 2004 (when he had a career-high six wins and tied a career high with 21 top-10s).

He has credited much of the No. 88 Chevrolet’s improvement to Letarte, who melds a fastidious approach (he kept Earnhardt on the most structured schedule of his racing career) with a compassionate practicality in team-building. When Earnhardt qualified for the Chase two races before the end of the season, Letarte tried to rest his team as much as possible during the week, granting extra days off to some of the road crew.

“This gives everybody a couple of weeks of lower-pressure racing, so when you get to Chicago, you’re hitting on all eight cylinders,” Letarte said.

The mini-break also helped put Earnhardt in a better frame of mind after he endured the stress of making the Chase in the regular-season finale last year and failed to qualify for the 10-race playoff in 2009 and 2010.

“Being in the Chase signifies that you are one of the upper-tier teams,” he said. “It’s a big disappointment when you aren’t in that group.

“The best-case scenario is to be locked in a week or two early and be able to take a little bit of a breather from the pressure you put on yourself to get as many points every week. It definitely is a lot less â?¦ a ton less stressful.”

The pressure, though, will ratchet up again for Chicagoland, and the objective for Earnhardt will be tamping down the accompanying anxiety as he did at Martinsville Speedway in April.

Earnhardt finished third after he “had done 500 miles of damage in (the first) 100 laps” of the race.

“I told Steve man, I need to calm down or we’re not going to have a car to finish because it was just destroyed down both sides of it,” he said. “You get excited over certain things, and you can get over-zealous in driving the car and making mistakes.

“The Chase isn’t won at Chicago. But it can be lost there if you screw up. We’ll all be excited going into Chicago. You just have to make sure you use your head and think smart.”