When Dale Earnhardt Jr. moved from his family’s team to the powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports at the start of this season, it sent shock waves through stock car racing.
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. moved from his family’s team to the powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports at the start of this season, it sent shock waves through stock car racing.
He won the opening race of the year—the non-points Budweiser Shootout sprint at Daytona International Speedway—in his new No. 88 Hendrick Chevrolet.
Now, his fans hoped, Earnhardt was on the way to his first Sprint Cup championship, which, after all, was the reason he moved to Hendrick.
Except it didn’t work out that way.
With only two races left in the season, including today’s Checker O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, Earnhardt’s season has been a glass half full and half empty.
He has only three top-five finishes since his win at Michigan and has struggled in the Chase, coming to Phoenix next to last among the playoff’s 12 drivers.
Even so, “I’m real happy with how things have worked out,” Earnhardt said Friday. “I would have liked to perform better on the race track the last half of the season.
“I’m real pleased with where I’m at and who I’m working with and real lucky and fortunate to have the opportunity that I have with Rick [Hendrick] and all the employees there,” he said.
Rusty Wallace, a former Cup champion and now a racing TV analyst, said “performance-wise, I personally think that he did every bit as good with his old team as he’s doing with his new team.”
Of course, Earnhardt and his team know that Earnhardt’s enormous popularity raises expectations that might never be fully met no matter how well he drives.
His fans are “not going to be satisfied until he’s the champ and has won the most races of everybody,” Eury said. “We know there’s a goal out there that the fans want us to meet and a lot of times we’re not going to meet that.”
| 
|