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DALE EARNHARDT JR.
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JUST DALE
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COME ON IN... WELCOME TO JUNIORS PLACE. HE IS OUR DRIVER. I HAVE HUNDREDS OF PICS TO LOOK AT SO JOIN IN .... THIS IS ABOUT RACIN" AND FUN !!!
COME ON IN... WELCOME TO JUNIORS PLACE. HE IS OUR DRIVER. I HAVE HUNDREDS OF PICS TO LOOK AT SO JOIN IN .... THIS IS ABOUT RACIN" AND FUN !!!
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texas
jr qualified 9th...lets hope for a great run sunday...he needs it and his fans need it...to win would be awesome...lets all cross our fingers...toes...whatever we can...lets go racin and get a #88 win...
Kyle Bush's new crew chief (yes it applies)
Not to be snarky, but wasn't it Kyle's contention that Jr. couldn't drive and they always put the blame on the crew chief? So who's the problem in the Busch camp...probably the crew chief right?
Just an observation - see it does pertain to Jr.
Just an observation - see it does pertain to Jr.
McGrew will remain with Jr and the 88
Hendrick Motorsports said Friday at Talladega, Ala., that McGrew will remain with the No. 88 team in 2010. – Associated Press file
Hendrick Motorsports promoted Lance McGrew, who had been Earnhardt’s interim crew chief since May, to the full-time position, effective immediately.
The move brought some much-needed clarity to the future of Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet team. On Friday, Earnhardt was 17th fastest in final practice. Qualifying is scheduled for 12:15 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday for Sunday’s Amp Energy 500.
As recently as two weeks ago at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Earnhardt expressed frustration and disappointment with his performance and said he had no idea who the leader of his team would be in 2010.
“This is kind of the time of the year where everybody is looking for direction and hoping you can get a lot of momentum at the end of the season,” said McGrew.
“That is kind of what we are trying to do by setting the record down that I am going to be with the team next year and getting everybody pulling in the same direction.”
Since joining the powerhouse Hendrick organization at the beginning of the 2008 season, Earnhardt has seen a few highs and many lows.
He won the season-opening Budweiser Shootout in 2008, the June Cup race at Michigan and made the Chase. But he struggled down the stretch and finished 12th in the series standings.
Earnhardt’s performance took a dive this year. He had seven finishes of 27th or worse in the first 15 races.
The former crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., was reassigned in May when McGrew was brought in on an interim basis. Earnhardt said McGrew didn’t need any coaxing to take the job full time.
“I didn’t convince Lance. I think Lance sees a good race team in front of him. He tells me sincerely that he believes in my talent as a driver and feels like that with the right situation, that we can have a lot of success,” Earnhardt said.
“Being a crew chief is a very, very tough job and very thankless. Lance understands that as well as anyone. I feel confident that he can handle the pressures of the job and I feel confident with him on the box.”
Since McGrew took over, Earnhardt’s on-track performance has improved, but he has been plagued by late-race incidents – not all of his doing – and other issues, such as a broken transmission at Charlotte and multiple tire failures at Martinsville.
“I was really surprised when I first started working with Dale and his confidence was beat down as much as it was; I expected him to be a lot more positive and a lot more understanding of the situation, I guess you’d say,” McGrew said.
“Since then, I’ve definitely seen a light in his eye and a strut in his step as he comes to the car. Like I said, we don’t have the bottom-line finishes to back up what I feel like we’ve started to achieve, but the steps are in place to get there.”
DAle and the CMA Nov 11
Earnhardt Jr. presenting at CMA Awards: #88-Dale Earnhardt Jr. will make a pit stop with country's finest when he appears as a presenter at the Nov. 11 Country Music Awards, the Nashville-based CMA tells People Magazine. Earnhardt is part of a round of presenters announced by the CMA for ceremony, which will air on ABC. Others include LeAnn Rimes, Kellie Pickler, Julianne Hough, and nominees Randy Houser (for new artist and video of the year) and Jake Owen (for new artist), along with the network's Robin Roberts and the stars of ABC's Wednesday night comedy The Middle, Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn
Response to adversity will define Earnhardt's care
No question, being Dale Earnhardt Jr. has its advantages. Enough energy drinks and beer to keep a refrigerator stocked for life. Enough cash to fill a starting field's worth of Brinks trucks. No problems getting dates on Friday nights during off weekends. That cool Western village in the backyard. Instant access to all the best simulator racing leagues. No wait for a table at any Charlotte-area TGI Friday's. A brand-spanking-new Camaro (we hope) sitting in the driveway -- in fire-engine red, of course.
But would anybody trade places with the guy right now?
Childress believes
The car owner who won six Cup championships with Dale Earnhardt is confident Junior will someday have a championship of his own.
"Junior can still drive a race car, he can compete, he can win, and he will win a championship someday," Richard Childress said last week at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
"It's just a matter of going through a few of these peaks and valleys. I spoke to him a couple of times trying to give him encouragement -- because we've been there."
Childress doesn't believe Earnhardt already has seen his best days and he doesn't believe NASCAR's new race car, introduced in 2007 after Earnhardt had posted 17 of his 18 Cup wins, will prove a permanent impediment to the driver's success.
"He's got a lot more he can do and a lot more he will accomplish," Childress said. "I see so many bright spots. I watch these guys, and I see the bright spots when he's on the racetrack, when he's racing, when he's driving.
"These cars are different than the other cars, but I really believe that, once he gets that combination and gets that feel, he's as good as anybody when it comes down to winning with these cars."
Earnhardt: End of my rope
Junior's struggles mount
These days, the answer to that question isn't quite the automatic affirmative it once was. These are dark times for NASCAR's most popular driver, as evidenced by his downright despondent comments last week. He's weary of struggling on the race track, and it shows.
Earnhardt has always been smarter and savvier than many people give him credit; his upbringing as the son of a seven-time champion, his personal endorsement deals, and his own successful Nationwide operation have helped him learn the business inside and out. So for him to basically throw up his hands and say something like "put the damn team together" seems an almost unmitigated act of surrender.
It's not, of course -- Earnhardt will be right back in that No. 88 car Sunday at Martinsville, fighting the same battle all over again. He really has no other choice. The profession he's chosen is a public and unforgiving one, and Earnhardt knows that. If he really does feel he belongs "in the upper percentage of our sport," as he said earlier this month at Kansas, the only way out is to get through it.
Jeff Gordon did it, fighting through an 88-race winless streak that had people questioning whether he could still compete. Dale Earnhardt the elder did it, fighting through a 59-race skid that had people questioning whether the sport had passed him by.
So many of the great drivers in NASCAR have faced tests that left them doubting their confidence and ability, and yet found ways to persevere. Darrell Waltrip endured a winless 1990 season that left him 20th in points, yet came back to reach Victory Lane five more times in his career. Jeff Burton appeared all but finished after four winless seasons, the last of which included his departure from Roush Racing, but has since won four times in Richard Childress cars. Bobby Allison went winless for more than two years, yet came back to claim a championship. Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick -- the latter of whom is trapped in a free fall every bit as trying as Earnhardt's -- have all missed the Chase.
Viewed in that context, Earnhardt's struggles of late don't seem all that unusual. Even Jimmie Johnson's charmed career will one day be put to the test. The cyclical nature of the sport all but guarantees it.
"Every driver that I've had drive for me has had a period somewhere in that stretch where their confidence is shaken," said Rick Hendrick, Earnhardt's car owner. "That's just normal. I mean, I feel the same way about trying to know what to do to fix things sometimes. It's like, maybe I need to ask somebody else. But nothing will help a driver's confidence any more than a couple of back-to-back runs and good finishes. He knows he can do it, and we know he can do it. It's just frustration, and it's just [him] beginning to doubt. Everybody doubts everything, and that's just normal."
And really, Junior's troubles are magnified by his popularity, which during this kind of season can become an irritating and ill-fitting yoke. The guy won a race last year. He made the Chase last year. Is he yet to live up to the true potential of his union with Hendrick Motorsports? No question. Is he enduring a terrible season fraught with pit-road mistakes, mechanical troubles, and poor efforts on the race track? Absolutely.
But people act like he's in the midst of a 10-year losing streak or something. He's won more recently than Harvick, than Clint Bowyer, than Juan Montoya, than Ryan Newman. So let's not quite label the guy as finished just yet.
Even so, this season, which began with a wreck in the Daytona 500 and never really got any better, has been a particularly brutal one. Last year's Chase crater job was supposed to be the low point, but it wasn't. Neither was the inevitable separation with cousin and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. The bad runs are just awful. The good runs -- like his effort at Kansas, where he might have had a shot to win had he been around at the end -- get ruined by things like dropped lug nuts and snapped engine belts. It's been 52 races since Earnhardt last won, but it seems like 500.
No wonder he's "at the end of his rope," as he said last week. Given the spotlight he's always in, and the pressure he always feels, and the expectations he always shoulders, who wouldn't be?
"Sometimes when you feel like you're snake-bit, it's hard to show up and try to pretend that everything is great," Hendrick said. "But I can tell you this ... we're all committed to each other, and we're just going to keep digging. I told them, 'This can't last.' We've got too many smart people over there to not fix it. We've been right on the edge of it. If we could have finished two or three of those races and not have been swept up in a wreck, we wouldn't be really talking about it.
"But it's just so much pressure when these guys are running like they're running and you've got three cars that are in the [Chase]. And we don't hide from it, we just know we've just got to work harder, and we've got to. I think what Dale was saying was sometimes people doubt his commitment, and it's eating him up. But we're going to get it. I just hope it's soon."
There's plenty of work to be completed first, like figuring out the crew chief situation on the No. 88 car for next season. But given the success of his three Hendrick teammates, the pieces seem to be in place. For all he's done -- and 18 Cup wins and a pair of championships on the then-Busch circuit are nothing to dismiss -- how Earnhardt responds to this period of adversity will ultimately define his career. It will break him, and he'll wind up reunited with his old Earnhardt team or driving for his own JR Motorsports operation. Or, he will work harder than ever before and once again unleash the championship contender so many people believe he has within him.
Men like Gordon, Allison and Earnhardt the senior once faced similar forks in their respective career paths, and we all know how things worked out for them. If Dale Earnhardt Jr. truly believes he belongs in the upper echelon of NASCAR drivers, then there's only one real alternative. The time for despondency is over. His legacy is on the line.
