Hendrick Motorsports
There is an unmistakable quality about NASCAR’s most popular driver—one that stock-car racing fans and corporate America can’t seem to get enough of.
He’s genuine. Relevant. Down-to-earth. Likable. All these adjectives convey the essence of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s appeal.
Saturday’s Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway makes official what has been evident for months: Earnhardt Jr., 34, won’t qualify for NASCAR’s postseason for the second time in the past three years.
Barring a surge over the final 10 races, Earnhardt Jr. will end the season with the worst points finish of his career. But in terms of popularity, earnings and endorsements, he leaves his rivals a distant second.
Forbes magazine ranked him the world’s 10th highest-paid athlete in its latest list, raking in $34 million.
Voted NASCAR’s most popular driver for six years running, Earnhardt Jr. dusts the field in souvenir sales, accounting for roughly 25 percent of sales on NASCAR.com Superstore, the most reliable gauge of merchandising. And when he jumped from the red No. 8 Chevrolet to the green No. 88, his share was far higher, with fans replacing their red T-shirts and caps with green.
On that count, Earnhardt Jr. is a force like none other, boasting the benefit of his father’s famous name and an image as an iconoclast among a field of cookie-cutter drivers.
Lauren Hobart, vice president of marketing for Pepsico energy drinks, whose AMP brand sponsors Earnhardt Jr.’s car, says the company considers the relationship tremendously successful.
Earnhardt Jr. started competing in NASCAR’s top ranks in 2000 after winning two championships in the sport’s minor leagues. The next year, his father, a seven-time NASCAR champion, was killed in the season-opening Daytona 500.
After a falling-out with his stepmother, partly over his failure to contend for a championship, Earnhardt Jr. left for Hendrick Motorsports, the gold standard, whose drivers have won eight of the past 14 championships.
But the story didn’t unfold that way. He narrowly qualified for the 2008 postseason. After a poor start in 2009, Hendrick fired his longtime crew chief (and cousin), Tony Eury Jr. in May, but Earnhardt Jr.’s performance has slipped further since, from 19th to 21st.
Still, as long as he’s viewed as being hungry to win, his fan base will likely stay intact, suspects Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports marketing executive. For that, Ganis says, Earnhardt Jr. has his lineage to thank.
“If he was not his father’s son—if his father was not as popular and successful as he was, if his father did not die tragically on the racetrack, if Dale Jr. was instead John Smith Jr.—he would have nowhere near the level of endorsement opportunities he has before him,” Ganis said. “He is benefiting significantly from the legacy left by his father. Now, he has capitalized on that and performed rather well on everything other than the racetrack itself. But the legacy of his father is an absolutely integral part of his popularity.”
