July 6, 2009
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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When Dale Earnhardt Jr., moved to Hendrick Motorsports last season, fans expected him to have immediate success and to be contending for championships. After all, he is the most popular driver in NASCAR and is driving the best equipment in the garage. Winning is to be expected, right?
Earnhardt got off to a fast start last year, won a race at Michigan, but fell off at the end of the season, finishing the Chase in a dismal twelfth place. He has struggled so far this season, posting only three top tens.
Rick Hendrick made the decision to replace his long time crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., with Lance McGrew a month ago. So far, the move has not produced the desire results, at least not yet. He has moved up one spot in the points, but is it too little too late?
Before Daytona *, where he always expects to run well, Earnhardt finds himself 285 points out of twelfth place and there are five drivers embroiled in a fierce battle, within 17 points of each other, for that position.
“We have quite a ways to go to be able make the Chase,” Earnhardt said in a nascar.com article by Dave Rodman. “We're trying to catch four or five guys, and it's unrealistic to expect all those guys to have enough trouble, and for us to top-10 'em to death ain't going to get it done. We've got to run better, and even though we have improved, it seems, we still need to get better.”
Getting better is one thing, but living up to what his fans expect of him is impossible. There have always been unrealistic expectations for the man. It is simply not possible for him to win every weekend, or win a Championship every season. On the other hand, he has his critics as well, many of whom believe that he is overrated.
Still, he is not mathematically out of contention for the Chase and if the right circumstances played to his favor, he could make it, but it is not likely. There are still eight races until the cutoff for the Chase at Richmond, and with a win or two and consistent top ten finishes, who knows what could happen?
The crew chief change could be what he needed, but it came too late in the season and Earnhardt was mired too far back in the points to for the change to have much of an effect.
However, with his new crew chief, he is starting to show signs of his potential. He ran as high as third at Loudon, but finished thirteenth after a cycle of green flag pit stops just before the race was cut short by rain.
Despite his situation this season, Earnhardt intends to keep the big picture in mind. If he can’t make the Chase this year, he intends to focus on getting better for next year.
"Making the Chase is the goal, but at the end of the year, when you're done racing at Homestead, and you run the last lap and you get out of the car, what kind of feeling do you want to have?” Earnhardt said. “The one I want to have is that we fixed it, that we've got something that we can feel good about and work on and get all our stuff ready for next year."
*Earnhardt finished 39th after crashing on lap 77 at Daytona.
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