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EARNHARDT AT DARLINGTON: In 13 starts at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has recorded two top-five finishes and six top-10s. He has led 135 laps and completed 4,268 of 4,365 laps.
GOING OLD SCHOOL: This weekend, Earnhardt will go retro with his No. 88 Chevrolet by running a Mountain Dew paint scheme similar to the one that Darrell Waltrip raced during 1981 and 1982. The green and white car, and even Earnhardt’s white helmet, mirror those used by Waltrip when he raced with Mountain Dew sponsorship.
D.W. AND DEW: Waltrip drove the Mountain Dew Buick to championships in 1981 and 1982. During that time he recorded a combined 24 wins, 18 pole positions, 38 top-five finishes and 35 top-10s. Waltrip won once at Darlington running the paint scheme, visiting Victory Lane on April 12, 1981. He was the runner-up at “The Lady in Black” later that year on Sept. 7, 1981.
HENDRICK AT DARLINGTON: Hendrick Motorsports has posted 12 wins, 33 top-five finishes and 56 top-10s in the 48 Cup races the team has started at Darlington Raceway.
STREAK INTACT: Hendrick Motorsports’ streak of top-10 finishes improved to 75 Sprint Cup races after last week’s event at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway when Jeff Gordon took ninth. The last time a Hendrick driver wasn’t in the top 10 was April 9, 2006. Finishing 11th, Jimmie Johnson was Hendrick’s top performer that day at Texas Motor Speedway.
TESTING AT LOWES: Earnhardt tested at the 1.5-mile Lowe’s Motor Speedway Monday and Tuesday to prepare for the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge and the annual 600-mile Memorial Day weekend Sprint Cup event.
CHASSIS FOR DARLINGTON: Crew chief Tony Eury Jr. and the No. 88 engineers chose Chassis No. 88-443 for Saturday’s race. This is the car that Earnhardt drove to a third-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway earlier this season.
TONY EURY JR., CREW CHIEF OF THE NO. 88 MOUNTAIN DEW/NATIONAL GUARD IMPALA SS (ON DARLINGTON.): ”Darlington is very unique. It’s been a driver’s racetrack for a long time. It takes a certain rhythm to get into Darlington. It’s not just a place where you can go jump in a car and be fast. Turn 1 is really tight. You have to go to the bottom, and for the last couple of years it has been really slick getting up to the wall. They’ve repaved the track since then. Me and Dale Jr. went down there and checked it out during tire testing. The track has got a ton of grip. It’s super smooth. The tire they brought there was actually too fast for the track so they’re going back and trying to chill it out a bit.”
EURY (ABOUT THE TIRE SPEED ON THE REPAVED TRACK.): “When you repave a track, I think from NASCAR’s standpoint and Goodyears’, they like to see it where, ‘OK, if I’ve got a track that’s a half a second faster I really don’t mind that.’ But at Darlington, for those guys to be going into Turn 1 as tight as it is, I think they were looking at 198 mph is what they were going into Darlington, and that’s probably a little too fast for Darlington. Before you’re sitting 182, so you’ve increased it by 15 mph going in there so it’s going to cause a whole lot of circumstances. They’ll back it down, which is a very smart deal. They can do some small things to take some time out of the cars.”
EURY (ON EARLY DARLINGTON MEMORIES.): “That was probably one of my first wins with Big E, Dale (Earnhardt) Sr. We were working on the Busch team and actually won a Busch race there. I went down there for years with my grandfather, Robert Gee. That was probably some of the first real Busch races I go to go to—went down there with Geoff Bodine. Those are the times you remember when you’re real small and you get to the go to the racetrack for the first time. Darlington has always been a really special place, and just to see the names of the people that have won there and it being such a driver’s track, special people win there. You’ve got to really have your act together. It’s a long day, and you’ve just got to have things go right.”
EURY (ON WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO WIN THERE.): “It’s on his (Earnhardt Jr.’s) list. Just like we’ve got Martinsville, we’ve got some older tracks that he’s really looking forward to trying to win there because that puts you in an elite group. I think that’s what he’s kind of looking at. It’d be kind of special. Everybody goes to Martinsville and it’s like, ‘I forgot what time it is. I need one of those grandfather clocks.’ Same thing for Darlington. If you can say you’ve won there, it would be really special.”
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