Junior’s down, but not out

LAS VEGAS – Two races most certainly do not make a season, as Jimmie Johnson proved last year by bouncing back from 27th- and 29th-place finishes in two of the first three races to win his record-tying third consecutive Cup championship.

But the deeper the hole, the harder it is to climb out of. Jamie McMurray can attest to that; he dropped to 36th in the standings after the first five races last year and had to work like a dog all year to finish a respectable 16th.

McMurray is the perfect example of why Dale Earnhardt Jr. needs a strong run Sunday in the Shelby 427 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Poor finishes in Daytona and California certainly haven’t sunk his season, but if NASCAR’s most popular driver isn’t careful, he could find himself out of championship contention before the Obama girls finally get their dog. (FYI, the pooch is expected to arrive next month.)

Earnhardt heads into the desert 35th in the standings, the result of the nine-car accident he was involved in at Daytona and a failed motor last week in Fontana. One was at least partly his fault, the other the fault of his race team.

Either way, it’s got him in the back of the Sprint Cup standings with a long drive ahead to the front.

He said he’s up for the challenge.

“I’m looking forward to these next couple of weeks – to seeing how we’re doing on the track and seeing how what we did over the offseason is paying off,” he said. “We’ve had some great cars, but the results haven’t reflected that.”

Earnhardt has had worse starts in his career, most notably two years ago, when he opened the 2007 season with a 32nd-place finish at Daytona followed by a 40th at California. It put him in a similar hole in the standings, but he rallied and nearly closed in on the top 10 before fading in his final season with Dale Earnhardt Inc. and finishing 16th in the points.

It’s a whole new ballgame now for Earnhardt, who has to deal with much higher expectations now that he drives for Hendrick Motorsports. A seat with the most powerful team in NASCAR comes with perpetual pressure to perform, and Earnhardt must deliver.

But deliver for whom?

Not for Rick Hendrick, who wooed Earnhardt during his frenzied free agency with the promise of providing him souped-up Chevrolets and a big fat paycheck if he’d drive them. And he doesn’t have to deliver for his legion of race fans, who embraced him when he was no more than the unproven son of their hero, then lionized him following Dale Earnhardt’s 2001 death.

Rather, Earnhardt owes it to himself.

He’ll tell you he’s proud of his body of work, and he should be. A pair of championships in the now-Nationwide Series got him a promotion to Cup, where he’s won 18 races and made the Chase for the championship three of five times.

But he’s only legitimately challenged for the title once, in 2004, when his win at Talladega moved him to the top of the leaderboard with seven races to go. Of course, he infamously cursed during a victory lane television interview, costing himself 25 points and the lead in the standings. He never recovered and wound up finishing fifth.

He then spent three seasons barely hanging on as his DEI equipment fell far behind his competitors, forcing Earnhardt to ignore those who wondered if, well, he’s just an average driver with a famous last name.

Earnhardt also will tell you he doesn’t care about the whispers, and if he never wins a Cup championship, he swears he’ll be satisfied with his career.

But it can’t be easy to be so scrutinized, and any homecoming queen will tell you life in the limelight is not always the glamorous joyride it appears. Earnhardt learned those lessons early – he was a still-growing-up 25, in just his second Cup season, when the spotlight swarmed him following his father’s death.

Sometimes it’s been brighter than others, but the light has mostly shined favorably on NASCAR’s golden boy.

Now, after two rookie mistakes in Daytona before the wreck with Brian Vickers, and then the engine failure, this disappointing start to the season has cast Earnhardt in a far different light for one of the first times in his career.

Although it took him a week, he eventually took responsibility for his role in the Daytona wreck. But the engine failure – again, not his fault – has put him so far down in the standings that whatever surge he plans to make will be closely followed. Every success will be celebrated, every mistake scrutinized.

Fortunately for Earnhardt, he can turn things around in Vegas, where he’s notched three top-10 finishes in nine previous starts and is coming off last year’s second-place showing. Crew chief Tony Eury Jr. is bringing back the same car, which also won the pole and led 31 laps in Texas last April.

It won’t be the end of the world if Earnhardt doesn’t have a decent run on Sunday, and there’s certainly plenty of time to turn things around. But he can’t wait too long, not with such a competitive Cup field of championship contenders.

If he doesn’t start a climb toward the top soon, this season could spiral away from him. He’s claimed he’ll still be able to sleep at night if he never grabs a Cup title, but it’s doubtful he really wants to find out.