Where will Dale Earnhardt, Jr. finish this year? It depends on whether he and Tony Eury, Jr. can finish the season more like the start of 2008 and less like the end of it. (Photo: Jason Smith, Getty Images)
Editor’s Note: This is the third of 10 stories in SPEEDtv.com’s “Countdown To Daytona” preview of the upcoming 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s debut season with Hendrick Motorsports exploded out of the gate at Daytona with wins in his first two races, but sputtered to a disappointing conclusion in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, where he dropped to the 12th and final spot among the Chase drivers.
Now for some drivers, that would mean wholesale changes on the team, and Internet chat boards have buzzed for years that Earnhardt will never win a championship without getting a crew chief who isn’t a blood relative and therefore doesn’t have the kind of combustible relationship that Earnhardt and his cousin Tony Eury Jr. have. Not that Eury is deficient as a crew chief, mind you, it’s just that he and Earnhardt tend to be pushing each other hard — too hard, some might suggest.
But anyone expecting big changes from Earnhardt and the rest of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports team is likely to be disappointed. Always someone fiercely loyal to his inside circle of family and friends, Earnhardt will have Eury atop his pit box again this season, with most of the team intact as well.
Still, NASCAR’s perennial most popular driver will be hoping for better results this time out. Earnhardt began the 2008 season with victories in the Budweiser Shootout and his Gatorade Duel 150 qualifying race, both at Daytona International Speedway. During NASCAR’s 26-race regular season, Earnhardt cracked the top five in points after the spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway and stayed there for 23 consecutive races, despite winning only once in that stretch.
On the other hand, Earnhardt’s Chase run was a disaster for the most part. After a solid fifth-place effort at Loudon, N.H., to open NASCAR’s playoff round, Earnhardt finished 24, 13th, 28th and 36th in the next four races. Worse yet, a wheel-bearing failure in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway resulted in a 41st-place finish in the race and a 12th-place result in the Chase.
“When the season is coming to an end it's like a double-edged sword,” says Earnhardt. “It's just like it is when the season is getting ready to start: Part of you wants to keep going and part of you is ready for some time off. At the end of last year you don't want to end the season on a bad note like we did with a part failure. We certainly would have liked to have gotten a top 10. I would have been able to settle with that a lot more easier than I did with how we finished. It's very bittersweet to make the Chase and to have run well the first half of the season and to have such a struggle especially with the Chase there at the end.”
