Junior in search of that a-ha moment
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The professional life of Dale Earnhardt Jr. is beginning to mirror an episode of "House." Someone has an ailment no one can diagnose. To the rescue comes a team of trained specialists – the best, mind you – who throw out idea after idea, run test after test, prescribe med after med, only to see the patient get sicker and sicker, that is until the brilliant Dr. House has his "a-ha" moment.
Under Rick Hendrick's roof, Earnhardt has gotten the best care NASCAR has to offer, only his on-track performance isn't getting better. Despite all of Hendrick's efforts – from transferring Junior out of a second-tier facility in Dale Earnhardt Inc. to assigning him a new crew chief midway through 2009 – Earnhardt's Cup career remains in critical condition.
His chart reads as follows: one win in his last 134 starts; one Chase appearance in the last three seasons; a 25th-place finish in the standings in 2009; zero championships.
These are desperate times for Earnhardt. At 35, time is running out on him to change the course of his Cup career.
But if there's one man who can help, it's Hendrick, the brilliant manager who has won nine championships with three different drivers and most recently resurrected the career of Mark Martin, the quinquagenarian who came out of retirement and nearly dethroned the seemingly unbeatable Jimmie Johnson.
Recognizing the severity of Earnhardt's situation, Hendrick has called for all hands on deck of Junior's No. 88. He's reassigned engineers, brought in members of his research and development team to focus specifically on Earnhardt's car, and over the offseason he ordered the merger of the 5 (Martin) and the 88 (Earnhardt) garages, a structure that's worked well for Hendrick's other two teams – Johnson and Jeff Gordon.
While not an act of desperation, the merger almost has to be Hendrick's a-ha moment if things are to turn around for Earnhardt.
A year ago, the 5 and 88 teams were not working in tandem. Their numbers totaled 85 people, but on one side of the garage 43 were working on one thing, while just across the room 42 others were working on the exact same thing. From the vantage point of Martin's crew chief Alan Gustafson, it was counterproductive.
"You'll go over the same things that the other guys went over and you won't get as far," Gustafson explained. "We needed to improve. We needed to be more efficient. We needed to play off each other more. We needed to make that shop operate as one."
Getting the people in the shop to work together, however, is only part of the equation. Earnhardt has to buy in, too. And according to Johnson, Earnhardt has been "on his own little island" since arriving at Hendrick Motorsports in 2008.
"If he really embraces the teammate standpoint and is right there alongside with Mark day in and day out, they'll get it figured out," Johnson said. "It may take changes in driving style, a lot of things that aren't familiar to him, but he's gonna have every opportunity."
And so the pressure mounts.
When Earnhardt decided to leave DEI following the 2007 season, the buzz was he would have no more excuses, not driving in Hendrick's equipment. Then, when his performance started to slip, the blame shifted to his former crew chief Tony Eury Jr., who was finally replaced last May. Now, with Junior and new crew chief Lance McGrew having most of a season under their belts together, and with Hendrick stepping in to address the communication issues, there are no more outs for Junior. From here forward, it's on him.
"I'm used to [the pressure]," he said. "There's days and moments where you feel a lot of pressure. For the most part, I get through the day without a lot of problems.
"I've had a pretty good rough patch," he continued. "Haven't won hardly any races in the last two to three years. But, you know, I'm 35 years old. If I wanted to, I could probably race another 15 years. I've probably got a pretty good chance of putting together another season like I had in 2004 [when he won six races and finished third in the standings] sometime in that 15 year span."
And if he doesn't, he says he's fine with it, not because he doesn't want to win, but because he likes to think his popularity – the Rolling Stone feature, the spot on MTV Cribs, you know, the kind of things his detractors criticize him for – will have helped introduce the sport to the mainstream. And if that's his legacy, he's OK with it.
In other words, he doesn't need his racing career to be saved.
"I would like to think that I put the sport in front of a lot of people that never would have seen it before," he explained. "So maybe, you know, like I said, I'm in it to win races and I want – when I'm done, you know, I want everybody to appreciate what I did on the racetrack. But hopefully I can do even bigger things aside from that."
