LONG POND - Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s victory Sunday in the GoBowling.com 400 not only gave him a sweep of the 2014 events at Pocono Raceway, it also continued Hendrick Motorsports' recent dominance at "The Tricky Triangle."

The win gives HMS five straight victories at the track, dating back to August of 2012 when Jeff Gordon started the streak with a triumph in the rain-shortened Pennsylvania 400.The incredible run has included wins from all four current HMS drivers, with Earnhardt Jr. winning twice, while teammates Jimmie Johnson (June 2013), Kasey Kahne (August 2013) and Gordon have all pulled into Victory Lane once.Although Hendrick wasn't able to attend the race, his presence was certainly felt in Victory Lane afterwards."That was Rick," Earnhardt said after getting off the phone with his owner. "I just thanked him for how he has changed my life and how he has supported me and this whole team and how lucky we are to have the power that we have, the cars that we have."It's all because of Rick. He just puts great people in the right places and he has a knack for what he is doing. I wanted to thank him and make sure he understood how much I appreciate him even in this time where you kind of forget to thank everybody or you are just happy you won. I wanted him to know how much it meant to me that I got the chance to drive this car and we got a win today."Earnhardt Jr. may not have had the most dominant car on Sunday afternoon, leading only one time for the final 14 laps. But much like the June race at Pocono, crew chief Steve Letarte made the right calls when it mattered most, getting the No. 88 the track position and clean air it needed for the final restart."Yeah, he's the guy you need to talk to," Jr. said of Letarte. "I'm in the car and I cant even figure out what's going on. I trust what he does, decisions he makes."Steve's strategy was perfect at the end and I don't' know if anybody knew what was going on but that was pretty awesome. It takes a really, really smart guy to understand what to do to take those gambles. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't. I can't believe we swept Pocono."Despite Earnhardt's praise for his crew chief, Letarte wasn't quite ready to take all the glory."Well, I'd like to take credit, but it's a whole group effort," he said.Gordon, who was out front at the halfway point, appeared to have the best car throughout much of the race, leading a race-high 63-laps in the 160-lap event."We had the dominant car," Gordon said, "but you had to have track position and you know, there at the end we didn't have it."While he was unable to go back-to-back after least week's triumph in Indianapolis, Gordon was still able to notch a few milestones on Sunday afternoon by logging his 24,000th career lap led in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in addition to notching 1,000 laps led at Pocono."I am still really happy with the way our car performed today," said Gordon. "It's just so awesome and encouraging and has my confidence sky high and I just can't wait to get to the next race."Kahne took his 10th top-10 of the season with a 10th-place finish after starting from the 12th position."I was happy with my Farmers Insurance Chevy," Kahne said. "We struggled at the end on different restarts. It was hard to control all day for us, but we still had a decent car and I'm happy about that."Hendrick Motorsports is strong at Pocono. Long straightaways and tons of horsepower."Johnson, a three-time winner at Pocono, suffered tire trouble on lap 113 that torpedoed his day and relegated him to a 39th-place finish."It wasn't the best weekend, but we gave ourselves a chance at a win, if not a top-five, and came up a little bit short," Johnson said.NOTES…The win is Earnhardt's 22nd victory in 526 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series … This is Earnhardt's second career season track sweep, and first since Talladega in 2002 … Earnhardt is the first driver to sweep Pocono since Denny Hamlin in 2006.