For the second week in a row, Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. started the day strong only to have it go away in the end. At both Watkins Glen and Michigan International Speedway (MIS), the No. 24 and No. 88 powered to the front and looked to be contenders early on, yet in both instances the consistency needed to be there at the end was missing.

Four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon seems to have been bitten the hardest over the past few weeks. Uncharacteristic struggles at Watkins Glen left Gordon with a 29th-place finish on a track he has four wins at. This poor performance was followed up by Sunday's more than disappointing 42nd-place finish at MIS.

Gordon was highly critical of his pit crew early in the going of Sunday's 3M Performance 400 and things only got worse as the race went on. After a second poor pit-stop - in which he came in fourth and left fifteenth - Gordon was mired in the middle of the pack. On the ensuing restart, hard three-wide racing led to contact with teammate Jimmie Johnson. Johnson was forced to pit road with a cut tire, while Gordon soldiered on. That did not last long, however, as Gordon's right front tire quickly gave way sending him hard into the outside wall.

"We shouldn't have been back there to begin with," Gordon pointed out. "I rarely ever look at the actual incident itself and try to blame anything. I usually go much further ahead to the fact that we were back there to begin with because we should have come out of there in the top five and been up there just running our own race. Instead, we're back there in the middle of the whole mess and trying to run three and four wide and that's what happens."

The poor finish dropped the driver of the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet three spots in the series standings to ninth. Only 56 points ahead of Denny Hamlin in twelfth and still winless in 2008, Gordon explained the team?s position in the points should motivate them to work harder.

"I feel like we've been in a situation where we've kind of been just stuck in the middle and I don't want to be where we are in the points right now, but in some ways, this is an easier position to be in because we just go out there and run hard every weekend and we can take changes and do things that can maybe get us that win," Gordon explained. "We've been stuck in the middle where we can't take too big a risk. You can't risk fuel mileage, you can't risk putting two tires on. We've got to stay with four tires. And we can't get too risky with our set-ups, all that stuff. You're just trying to ride along there and not make mistakes. And now a mistake is made and I'm just glad we were running good finally."

Gordon's newest teammate at Hendrick Motorsports - Dale Earnhardt Jr. - has shown a bit of his old self as over the past few weeks. Much like was the case last season; Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief and cousin Tony Eury Jr. have failed to seal the deal when it mattered most.

Poor pit strategy at Watkins Glen cost Earnhardt Jr. a great finish after leading a number of laps. Eury Jr. urged his driver to stay out longer than any other car before hitting pit road. During the first round of green flag stops, Earnhardt Jr. lost a number of spots once the other leaders had fresh rubber. Late in the race, Earnhardt Jr. was once again the lone leader on the track when a caution flag flew before he had the chance to pit his car. This time, Junior and the No. 88 team were unable to recover, settling with a 22nd-place finish.

This weekend's result was primarily on the driver. Once again, a strong car early on faded as the race progressed. The frustrating afternoon culminated with a damaged race car after Earnhardt Jr. made hard contact with the outside wall with less than twenty-laps remaining. Earnhardt Jr. ended the day in 23rd-spot after spending much of the day in the top-10.

"It's been the same old story," Earnhardt Jr. said. "We show up fast but we can't put a whole race together. So we've got to do some homework. We've got to science it out and figure out what the heck is going on, because we are sure fast when that race starts. But I've been like that my whole career."

Despite the recent set backs, Junior seems have no regrets about his move to the team. "It ain't had that many bumps," Earnhardt Jr. said of 2008. "Last year had a lot of bumps."

These two teammate's situations, while extremely similar, are actually worlds apart. For Earnhardt Jr., things could definitely be worse - just think back to this time last year. The driver of the No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet currently sits fourth in the series standings, with one win (MIS in June). While he has slipped a bit in the points, this team will definitely be a Chase contender and has the ability to do so. However, for Gordon the situation could go one way - or the other.

After two disappointing weekends, Gordon is now concerned about making the Chase. Without a win thus far in 2008, this team fell into the clutches of those behind them. This team has won a race with Jeff Gordon behind the wheel for fourteen years and this year has been one of the hardest to do so.

"I've had crazier years," Gordon explained. "But this is definitely been a frustrating year, up and down, and one that only challenges our whole team to see what we're made of and I don't see that as a bad thing."

"That's all we can do," he added. Perhaps a jab at one his former teammates, Gordon went on to say, "As another option, if my having a temper tantrum was going to fix things, I'd do that too, but I know that's not going to fix it. All we can do is go out there and focus and do our jobs. We've had one of the best weekends we've had in a long time and that was just really unfortunate."

While in danger, this team simply stumbled a bit. If they can figure out their issues - something Hendrick teams have been successful at in the past - things should be fine for the No. 24 team. If not, things will definitely interesting at three weeks from Saturday in Richmond.