Dale Earnhardt Jr. had his worst career finish in his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career in 2009. (Photo: Getty Images)

* Dale Earnhardt Jr. flops at Hendrick Motorsports – In a season that saw teammates Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon finish 1-2-3 in the points standings, Junior careened home a career-worst 25th. A non-winning streak that began in June 2008 continued after crew chief/cousin Tony Eury Jr. was replaced by Lance McGrew. Makes me wonder if even Chad Knaus could resurrect Junior’s fortunes.

* Danica Patrick takes aim at stock car racing – Count me among the observers questioning Danica’s desire to go ARCA/NASCAR racing, interrupting an open-wheel career that is best graded as Incomplete. Open-wheel drivers with much thicker resumes have tried to switch and failed. But those guys didn’t have GoDaddy.com founder/CEO Bob Parsons throwing around money for his client, either.

* Eddie Gossage beats cancer – It was headline news in Dallas/Fort Worth when Gossage, president and promoter extraordinaire of Texas Motor Speedway, disclosed in September his cancer was in remission. Gossage never has revealed what form of the disease he beat with chemotherapy over the summer. My prayer now is that industry friends Jim Hunter and Marcy Scott win their cancer battles.

* Jerry Cook voted into International Motorsports Hall of Fame –Growing up in Rome, N.Y., Cook and Richie Evans were my equivalent of David Pearson and Richard Petty in NASCAR’s National Modified Tour. Between them, Cook (six titles) and Evans (nine) dominated that series from 1971 to ‘85. It was cool to reconnect with Cook, at age 65, as he joined Evans on the IMHOF’s roster of heroes last spring.

* RacinToday.com launches, and is up-and-running – Largely in response to the void created by the shrinking/disappearing American daily newspaper, managing editor Jim Pedley (and his two-person tech staff) launched the site on March 27. Thanks for the career life preserver, Jim, and boost to my self-esteem. And kudos to my five writing colleagues for continuing to raise the motorsports journalism bar.

John Sturbin covered college sports, baseball as well as the NHL and Dallas Cowboys while working at the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. He was their fulltime motorsports beat writer from 1995 to 2008.

John can be reached at jsturbin@racintoday.com