Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn't hide his feelings well. If he's pissed at you, his face turns red. When he's in a good mood, you can't wipe the smile off his face.

And it isn't just off the track.

A guy led so sharply by his emotions -- as he always has been -- can't help but let a frustrating race effect future runs.

Take his rookie year, for example. After winning three races -- two points events and the all-star exhibition -- early in the season, he began to slump and bad got worse as a rift developed between him and his team (egged on a bit by Junior's partying habits).

This year, the emotions have played a big role in his race-to-race performance, again. Only this time they've been positive emotions -- and some seriously positive results.

With 11 races down, Junior's in his best points position, ever -- second place, just 20 points behind his old Busch Grand National Series rival Matt Kenseth.

"I'm excited about going to the track every week now," Junior said. "In the last couple of years, we'd be good at a race or two back-to-back, but it was like we would burn out or just not pace ourselves. We've been really focused and I have had great race cars to drive every week."

He's feeling pretty good, too, as a result.

"That means I can't wait to get to the track each week," Junior said. "Even the races where we didn't have a good finish, like Daytona or Bristol, we've run at the front until we've had some sort of problem. We can't keep beating ourselves."

He's right. If not for those two aforementioned races, he'd be the points leader right now. Daytona and Bristol brought finishes of 36th and 16th, respectively. Outside of that, there's just one other bad finish the entire -- a 33rd-place finish at Rockingham. Everything else -- eight other races -- were top-six finishes. In fact, six of them have been top threes.

"He's really got things going pretty good," Ford driver Dale Jarrett said. "He'd been getting close, you know, the past couple (years), but now they've really hit on something over there. Seems like this year you always see that red car running up front."

	Earnhardt Jr. has five consecutive top-six finishes.

The consistency has been slowly coming along in Junior's Winston Cup career. After his second-half dive in 2000, Junior had a consistent top 10 kind of year in 2001. And though 2002 appeared to be a step back (to his ways of 2000) with a second-half slump, that can be deceiving. An accident in April at California left him with a head injury which effected his abilities for most of the rest of the year. He fell out of the top 10 at season's end.

This year, he's matched the success of last year's start and stayed away from the trouble that eventually doomed him last year.

He attributes much of that to some key personnel changes the No. 8 Chevrolet Monte Carlo squad made before this season. Perhaps the most important, he said, was elevating his cousin Tony Eury Jr. from tire changer to decision maker.

"It's been a fun start to the season," Junior said. "Tony Jr. has been really good up on top of the (pit) box. He used to change the front tires on the stops and had a lot of different jobs on his plate, but this year we all decided it would be better for him to have a comfy seat up there on the box, and he's really responded. We've kept each other focused and we have been making the right choices on changes and strategy."

And, now, the consistency has a guy who was already NASCAR's most popular driver knocking down the door of becoming its best -- at least the best for this season.

He's been chipping away at the points lead Kenseth has over him the past couple of weeks, and will be the fan favorite at the next race: the Coca-Cola 600 three Sunday's from now (OK, so he's the fan favorite pretty much everywhere he goes ... but this time the fans will be his family and friends -- the esteemed members of the Dirty Mo' Posse).

"I think we've become a lot more consistent than we have been in the past," he said. "A lot of it is luck. I never really believe much in luck, but I think you put yourself in position to win races.

"That crash we had at California last year -- that really broke the stride of what we were doing. It was almost a mirror image of this season up until that point, so getting through California and coming in here (this year) and doing all right really gives us a lot of confidence."

It also gives the team a little pad. Even as he's maintained the good runs, he's not too sure about what will happen at the two road courses on the circuit.

"We need to get the good finishes at all these race tracks we can because I know if we flounder at road courses like we normally do, then we're going to need to have as many points as we can at all these other race tracks," he said.

Junior knows it's not just a matter of getting through the road courses. He's also got to make sure that he and the rest of the gang don't beat themselves. Do that, he says, and he'll be feeling pretty darn good.

"When we stop doing that (beating ourselves), we'll be the team everyone will be trying to catch."

Rupen Fofaria covers NASCAR for The Raleigh News & Observer and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at rups@theraces.com.