MARTINSVILLE -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. returned to the top five at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday.

It's fair to say he did it the hard way.

Unlike any of the five straight top-five finishes Earnhardt recorded at Martinsville between 2002 and 2004, he spent most of the DirecTV 500 dealing with trouble.

His fourth-place finish didn't come after starting near the front or steering clear of trouble, which is Earnhardt's usual short-track strategy. From the drop of the green flag, Earnhardt was in trouble.

A multi-car accident on the second lap inflicted heavy damage to the right front of his Chevrolet. That led to concern that the brakes would not get the necessary supply of air to stay cool.

Earnhardt ran in the rear of the entire field after multiple pit stops for repair.

He then battled back into the top five near the midway point, only to run into more trouble.

Earnhardt's attempt to pass the lapped car of Ryan Newman led to contact and sent his car into the inside wall on lap 315, dropping him to 18th place.

It took him the rest of the race to recover, but recover he did -- much to the delight of his many fans, as well as his crew.

"I'm just really proud of the whole effort everybody has given me this year," Earnhardt said. "We had a hard year last year. This company has bounced back really hard and I try to do my job on Sunday."

Any time Earnhardt is in the position to compliment his crew, it's a positive for his DEI team.

Since Pete Rondeau, who started 2005 as Earnhardt's crew chief, was relieved of his duties and eventually replaced by Tony Eury Jr. for the last 10 races of last season, the DEI team has had its ups and downs.

Earnhardt's struggles were not immediately relieved by Eury's return.

Earnhardt stumbled to a 19th-place finish in the points standings and still has not won since last year's victory at Chicago with interim crew chief Steve Hmiel in charge.

But Eury's and Earnhardt's chemistry has appeared to be getting back to where it was when the two won six races together in 2004.

"You always remember days like this when you've worked so hard to come back," Eury said. "We're pumped up right now. We're pretty happy.

"I think the biggest difference is when things like today happen we don't get flustered. We work our ways out of the hole and get good finishes."

This was Earnhardt's best finish at Martinsville since the spring race of 2004, before the speedway put a fresh coat of asphalt on the straightaways and new concrete in the turns. After qualifying 29th Friday, Earnhardt said he thought his team's Martinsville setup wasn't up to par with the ones it used to race on the old surface.

But now it seems Earnhardt's team has found a combination that works.

"We've run a different style car here the whole first five years and we've run this car three times and I've been with him once," Eury said. "So we knew kind of what we had last fall and it wasn't good enough so we really worked hard today."

As Earnhardt got out of his car on the frontstretch after the long but successful day, a loud chant of "Junior, Junior" came from the stands.

It was a fitting cap to a day that turned out to be one of Earnhardt's best at Martinsville.

"It made me feel good," Earnhardt said. "You know you run the race and you try to do your best and finish as good as you can. You normally only hear a couple good jobs when you're walking out of the track because everybody's busy leaving. Normally, you just hear it from the team and get a pat on the back and this that or the other. To hear the fans, that was awesome."