There’s been a lot going on in NASCAR the last few days, like many fans who have written in, Earnhardt’s result in the Coca-Cola 600 makes me wonder why Rick Hendrick doesn’t take a hard look piece by piece of what is going on with the No. 88 bunch.
Clearly, Hendrick Motorsports had teams and associates run 10x better than Dale Jr. did Monday — Jimmie Johnson led laps and finished 13th, Jeff Gordon was 14th and Mark Martin was 17th. Meanwhile, sister organization Stewart-Haas Racing added second-place (Ryan Newman) and 19th-place (Tony Stewart) finishes to its record.
It’s time to figure out what is going on here.
It simply isn’t fair to Dale Jr, his fans and his sponsors to not take a hard look at all the facts of what is going on with that team. Yes, I think it’s finally time for Rick Hendrick to say ‘OK, enough is enough and we have to have answers.’ It will be interesting to see what comes out of all that. I mean let’s face it; it’s embarrassing to anyone wearing a No. 88 uniform now to be in the situation they are in. Fox Sports
Team owner Rick Hendrick, who has previously said he doesn’t plan to make changes to Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s team, wasn’t as definitive on Tuesday.
“Could it change?” Hendrick said following a meeting with NASCAR officials at the Research and Development Center. “We’re talking about things. We’re going to make decisions as the days go by, but we haven’t made any decisions as it stands now.”
Hendrick did not specifically say the change would be to break up Earnhardt and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. before this weekend’s race at Dover. But in the past when discussing changes he made it clear that wasn’t a consideration.
He wasn’t so clear on Tuesday with Earnhardt 19th in points, 203 behind Mark Martin for the 12th and final Chase spot, after finishing 40th in Monday’s rain-delayed Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
“We’re always concerned when we have a car not run well,” Hendrick said. “We’re always meeting and trying to figure out how to make it better. We’ve got to come up with a plan and we’ve got to work toward that.
“We thought we had a pretty good plan coming to Charlotte. I was fairly pleased with the All-Star race and thought we would do better Sunday. We weren’t.” ESPN
Earnhardt ran near the back of the pack Monday and was two laps down in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, his worst showing since last season’s finale in Homestead, Fla.
Earnhardt wasn’t involved in a wreck and didn’t have mechanical problems at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. His car handled poorly all afternoon.
When the race was over, Earnhardt was left with his third consecutive finish outside the top 25. He’s also been 20th or worse five times in the last six Sprint Cup events.
“We just missed a setup,” Hendrick said. “I can’t explain why because basically we’re the same, all four cars. They all fought a lot of the same problems early on. Probably as a group, we were off. We’ve been better at Charlotte than we were yesterday. I was disappointed; our teams were disappointed. We’ve got to go back and look at what we did.
“We just never could get (Earnhardt’s) car adjusted back.” Associated Press
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