Dale Earnhardt Jr
News Archive

In Earnhardt's case, it's about more than one win With every passing week, the tension mounts. As one Sprint Cup race shifts into another, the anxiety and the eagerness and the expectation are compounded, to the point where it seems impossible and inevitable all at the same time. Dale Earnhardt's Jr.'s epic winless streak is going to end, sometime. He's running too well, too often, for it not to. And yet until it does, that combination of fretfulness and anticipation is always going to be there, rising a little higher in the throats of race fans until, miracle of miracles, the No. 88 car actually pulls into Victory Lane. And then what happens? Jubilation, of course. The citizens of Junior Nation whooping and hugging in the grandstands or in front of their television sets. Spraying of champagne, shooting of confetti, photos with team members wearing lots of different hats. If history is any indication, a candid and heart-on-the-sleeve interview session in the media center. Relief, in many different corners. And then the driver will fly home, and the car will be packed up into the transporter, and they'll try to do it again the next weekend -- which, as we all know, is where the real difficulty comes into play. Winning is what this sport is all about, of course, but a single victory can be a fleeting thing. A win at one track guarantees nothing the next weekend, particularly given how drastically different the venues can be from one Sunday afternoon to another. There's winning, and then there's building on winning, which is a completely different -- and unquestionably more arduous -- endeavor altogether. Just ask Regan Smith, who hoped to take the next step after his breakthrough victory in last season's Southern 500, but instead returns to Darlington Raceway this weekend in a points position only moderately improved from where he was 12 months ago. No question, a race victory can bring celebration and relief and renewed confidence, but ultimately it is a moment that begins to fade as the next race week dawns. Which brings us back to Earnhardt, and the breathless anticipation over that looming, streak-busting victory, and how misguided it all seems in relation to what he's doing on the race track. No question, Dale Jr. fans -- not to mention the driver himself -- are more than ready to shed the yoke of a skid that now numbers 139 races, and stretches back nearly four years. But in truth, the hard part is being in position to win every week. The hard part is what Earnhardt and his team are doing right now, and it's getting overshadowed because breaks and circumstances haven't gone their way at the end. Because let's be honest -- to some degree, we've seen this movie before. Although it's not as interminable as the current one, Earnhardt was mired in a 76-race winless skid when he arrived at Michigan International Speedway in the summer of 2008. He won on fuel mileage, and fans in the Irish Hills celebrated as if the Berlin Wall had just come down. People were out of their minds with happiness as the out-of-gas No. 88 was pushed down pit road toward Victory Lane. Earnhardt was equally as pleased to have scored his first victory for Hendrick Motorsports. "It's a pretty big day for me," the driver said then, clearly happy to shed the weight of the winless streak, regardless of how it had ended. And now here we are, three years and nearly 11 months later, still waiting on the next one. Earnhardt stood third in points after that Michigan victory, the same position he's in now, but the team couldn't keep it going and he limped home to a last-place finish in the Chase. Two extremely difficult seasons followed, both of them marked by points finishes in the 20s. The streak-buster outside the Motor City had been a mirage. Victories by nature raise hope and expectation, but they don't help you once the transporters roll into a new track the next Friday morning. One of the most sought-after victories of Earnhardt's career was followed by some of his toughest times behind the wheel. In time, the unfulfilled promise of that day in Michigan seemed almost as much a burden as the winless skid itself. So here we are again, awaiting the end of another, much longer, streak, that focus on a single victory obscuring the real progress being made. Although Earnhardt's statistics this season are quite comparable to those from the early part of 2008 -- he has one more top-10 finish through 10 races, occupies the same points position, and led far more laps then -- what we're seeing now is actually a continuation of last season, when Little E broke back into the Chase and showed signs of once again becoming the contender he is now. This is sustained performance built upon sustained performance, the most difficult thing to achieve in all of auto racing. Smith, Paul Menard, Marcos Ambrose, David Ragan, Trevor Bayne and Kurt Busch are among those who won races last year. Earnhardt did not. Who at this point is better off? It's more about winning than individual wins, and those two have less in common than it might first appear. The latter does not always guarantee the former, as we've seen time and time again. And yet even as Junior compiles top-10 after top-10, getting the kind of finishes it may not take to win races but it does take to contend for championships, the angst will continue until that winless streak number is reduced to zero. There was much hope last weekend at Talladega, but the draft proved too capricious. Darlington shapes up as an unlikely candidate, given Earnhardt's rather uneven track record there, but last season showed unusual things can happen on this surface. Hendrick has more victories at the Lady in Black than any other active organization, but its quest for win No. 200 has been derailed by a 16-race skid that's the team's longest since Jimmie Johnson won his first career Cup race in the spring of 2002 to snap a 17-race drought. So there are all kinds of winless streaks at play heading back to the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, even though Hendrick cars are fast almost every week and Earnhardt has shown himself to be a frontrunner almost everywhere the circuit has visited to this point. Should his mark be pushed to 140 after Saturday night, all eyes will eagerly look ahead two weeks to the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where a year ago Earnhardt led off the final corner before running out of gas. The count continues, the numbers as large and obvious as the clock face on Big Ben. So does the construction of a championship contender, even if it goes unnoticed. No win, no problem for Earnhardt Jr. With each race he runs and each top-10 performance he delivers in this resurgent season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. can't help but raise the hopes and expectations of a legion of fans desperate to see him finally make it back to Victory Lane. After 138 races without a win, a run of nearly four years, a sense of destiny followed Earnhardt to Talladega Superspeedway for Sunday's Aaron's 499. Why not here? Why not now? Earnhardt used to own restrictor-plate racing, after all. And he arrived having finished in the top 10 the past five races and seven of nine overall this season. Earnhardt was running as well as ever. He even had climbed to a close second in the points standings, a mere five back of Greg Biffle going into Sunday. There was talk Earnhardt could end the streak and take the points lead all at once. It would have been glorious. If only. But when the race was done, Brad Keselowski was standing in Victory Lane. Once again, Earnhardt had come close enough to make his fans believe he could win -- and maybe will win -- someday. But not Sunday. With a ninth-place finish, Earnhardt delivered his sixth consecutive top-10 performance. As for the other streak? That's now 139 and counting. Earnhardt was as high as first and as low as 31st. He led 10 laps in the first half of the race and appeared to be a contender. But he dropped back in the field in the second half. Although Earnhardt avoided the multiple multi-car crashes, he did not have a shot to win in the end. "We just didn't have a great car,'' Earnhardt said. "We've got all the tools; we just really didn't bring the best package here. Good engine. We have all the tools. It ain't nothing anybody at the shop did. Between me and Steve, we can do a better job." But Earnhardt hardly seemed disappointed. He now has eight top-10 finishes in 10 races so far, more than any other Sprint Cup driver this season and as many as he had in 2010. He had only five top-10s in 2009. "Yes, this is definitely the most consistent we've ever been, or I've ever been,'' said Earnhardt, who slipped ever-so-slightly in the standings to third place, nine points back of Biffle, who finished fifth, and two behind Matt Kenseth, who was third. "I have a great team, and they give me great cars. "I knew there would be a lot of wrecks [Sunday]. I didn't have enough car to get up in there to stay ahead of the wrecks like we did [in the Nationwide Series race Saturday]. I just kind of had to play it a little too safe. It worked out, and we ended up getting a finish and not tore up and on the hook. I'm really happy with the team, and Steve's doing a great job." Earnhardt had downplayed some of the Talladega hype going into the race, although he acknowledged that the return of pack racing -- instead of the two-car tandems that had been prevalent in recent races -- certainly favored his style. Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon didn't have to think too hard when asked how fans might react if Earnhardt had won at a track where his name is revered. "I think we all know what that would be like," Gordon said before the race. "When he does something great here, you could be a mile away from here and you know it." In the end, Earnhardt didn't have the race car to do it. But in truth, Earnhardt thinks that elusive win is likely to come elsewhere. He said as much Saturday. And where did he think his best shot might be? How about Darlington Raceway, where the Cup Series heads for Saturday night's Southern 500. "I'm kind of looking forward to going to Darlington and back to race tracks where the car handles because we're having such a good year,'' Earnhardt said. "It's not a slight on Talladega, but we're having such a good year at all these tracks, and the cars are driving so much better over time, even from last year, the cars are better. I'm kind of looking forward to other tracks as well." Let the hype begin. Again. Plate half full or half empty? Dale Earnhardt Jr. hears it every time he runs at Daytona International Speedway or Talladega Superspeedway. This is his best chance to win again. That hasn't happened in a Sprint Cup race since June 2008 at Michigan, 138 races and nearly four years ago. He did win a Nationwide Series race at Daytona in 2010, only further reinforcing the opinion that his best opportunities to revisit Victory Lane come at such restrictor-plate venues. Earnhardt has heard it all -- again and again and again. He said Saturday that he tries to mostly ignore it. "I never really took anything for granted. A lot of people have said that this weekend at the race track, but I don't pay much attention to it," Earnhardt said. "I know how this sport can be brutal and great all at the same time. You just hope you're prepared and try to run a smart race. Hopefully then you can make the right moves and beat the odds and win the race." As he prepared to run in Sunday's Aaron's 499 at Talladega, though, there was mounting evidence that this indeed may be his best opportunity in some time to put the talk about the winless streak to rest for a while. The current restrictor-plate race rules appear to be in his favor. The hot Talladega weather should play to his favor. Plus, he's coming in full of momentum and confidence. Earnhardt enters this one second in the Cup point standings, fresh off a second-place finish last week at Richmond. He also drove the No. 88 Chevrolet to second in the season-opening Daytona 500 and has five consecutive top-10 finishes overall, including third-place efforts at Fontana and Martinsville in addition to the Richmond finish. In a twist of irony, that's why Jimmie Johnson begs to differ with all those who say the restrictor-plate races are Earnhardt's best chances to win these days. The five-time Cup champion and Earnhardt's current Hendrick Motorsports teammate offers a dissenting opinion on the matter. "I think his best chance to win is on non-plate tracks, to be honest with you," Johnson said. "Here, there are so many circumstances to deal with. We don't know if you're going to overheat, get the push at the right time, whatever it may be. What I've seen out of him, if you just look at this year alone and where he is in points and how fast his cars have been and how great he's been driving, I put this lower on the list of where I would expect him to win." Johnson is in the minority on that, of course, even in the Sprint Cup garage. "If he had backed up to me at Daytona, he would have won the 500. He didn't," Denny Hamlin said of Earnhardt. "I think he's obviously got a ton of experience and a ton of wins on this track. When you look at this schedule and you look at opportunities to win, I would say that this is one of his best shots to do it." Earnhardt seemed to sit on the fence on the subject. On one hand, he admitted that Hamlin and the majority of folks likely are right. "This is probably one of our better shots," Earnhardt said. "How the drafting and everything was changed before Daytona [this year], that suits me better. And it's hotter, and I think that leans toward favoring pack racing over tandem racing, too. That's kind of in my favor, so I'm looking forward to the race. I just don't think our odds have necessarily increased because I've run so well this year." He said there are other circumstances that he figures will work in his favor, such as more big-pack racing and less tandem racing where drivers have to rely more heavily on a single drafting partner. "I feel like I'm in the best equipment that's out there, and that gives you a lot of confidence. I feel like I know what I'm doing when I come here," Earnhardt said. "I feel like if I could create the best scenario for me to come to Talladega and win a race, this is it. I've got the best car and I know how to get around the race track. "When we started tandem racing, I really didn't understand that. I really didn't like it; I really didn't want to do it. I sort of didn't wrap my brain around it and learn how to do it as quickly as some. I almost just wished it away -- and it wasn't going away." It still hasn't completely vanished. But new rules have limited the ability of the cars to do it for long, and the hotter temperatures expected on Sunday will make it even more tricky and difficult for drivers to hook up in two-car tandems for long without risking overheating. If it comes to the end, though, and Earnhardt is looking for a tandem dance partner, Johnson certainly would be a willing one. "I think the chemistry Junior and I both have, that our shop has, it was just another example of how strong that chemistry is and how much it continues to grow," Johnson said. "I'm very happy to see how fast the No. 88 car has been week in and week out. Naturally, you think of him as a favorite here at this race track -- but that No. 88 has been pretty strong everywhere. He is rising to be a favorite everywhere we go." That favorable opinion of Johnson's also got Earnhardt thinking. "I maybe feel the same way because when you come to Daytona and Talladega, the cars are so equal," Earnhardt said. "And even though pack racing definitely puts more in your hands and you definitely control your own destiny more when you're just dealing with yourself and looking for No. 1 and being greedy and selfish, there still are so many things that can happen. "Somebody could get the right push and do the right thing at the right time and win the race, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a lottery, really. I've said that before, but it really is when you come to Daytona and Talladega, trying to win these races. It's a lottery Earnhardt hasn't won on the Cup side since 2004, even though he still carries the stout restrictor-plate reputation. He's well aware of that statistic, as well. "We've always at some point been up front and running well. I haven't had a race since 2004 where I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing or I was making bad decisions or I was completely lost," Earnhardt said. "I never felt I lost my savvy here, or my mojo. I feel like we'll have a good race and if we make the right moves, we'll be up there again, trying to win." But then, he's starting to feel that confident every week -- no matter what the type of track. "I just feel like were really consistent every week, and have been at several different styles of race tracks," Earnhardt said. "I would love to win this race on Sunday. But if our next win happens to come at a track where you really have to wheel on it, get it around the corners and hustle the car, that would probably, personally, mean a little more to me because of the circumstances where we haven't won in a long time and what the critics might be thinking. If we win here, they might say, 'Go win somewhere else and really prove to us that you've got it turned around.' I don't know. That is kind of in the back of your mind a little bit." Will Dale and 'Dega be winning combination? Plenty of intangibles tilt in Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s favor this weekend -- his history of success at Talladega Superspeedway and his father's legacy of domination of the track among them. One X-factor Earnhardt doesn't buy into -- momentum. Earnhardt has reason for optimism heading into Sunday's Aaron's 499 at 1 p.m. ET, but it's not based around his runner-up finish last weekend at Richmond International Raceway. Instead, NASCAR's most popular driver suggests that season-to-date performance and confidence play more important roles. "No, I don't think momentum is a real thing," Earnhardt said. "The team is confident, we're feeling good. We feel like we're competing well -- really close to winning a race. We ain't really raced for a win yet and lost one, so I wouldn't count [Richmond]. But we're getting better at running in the top five and top 10. We'll just try to keep doing that." Being "really close" to ending a 138-race winless streak would go a long way toward appeasing a wide fan base that seems to turn its most rabid at Talladega, where Earnhardt Jr. has five of his 18 wins in the Sprint Cup Series. His most recent victory at the 2.66-mile track, however, wasn't recent at all -- coming in the fall of 2004. This season, the good has outweighed the bad, though. Earnhardt has a string of five straight top-10 efforts heading to Talladega and hasn't finished worse than 15th in nine races so far in 2012 -- leaving him second in the standings, five points behind Cup leader Greg Biffle. He was also runner-up in the season-opening Daytona 500, where the similar rules package for restrictor-plate tracks earned high marks from Earnhardt for bringing pack racing back. "I do like having more control of my own destiny and making my own decisions for myself, looking out for number one and my team all day long, trying to do whatever I can to put myself in position to win the race," Earnhardt said. "That's really what I feel like I've been doing all my life. To do anything different doesn't feel comfortable and feels odd to me." An Earnhardt win would also bring an end to Hendrick Motorsports' modest 15-race slump, which has prolonged the team's anticipation of a milestone 200th win in NASCAR's top series. Hendrick has 11 Talladega wins, second only to the 12 scored by Richard Childress Racing. Earnhardt closing in on a win, maybe at Talladega It has been almost four years since Dale Earnhardt Jr. won a Sprint Cup Series race. There have been flashes of hope in the humbling drought, and with each one, his rabid fan base holds it breath and prays for that elusive victory. Off to another solid start to the season, there is reason to believe a win could be close. Maybe even this weekend. Earnhardt goes into Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway riding a stretch of five straight top-10 finishes, and his second-place finish at Richmond on Saturday night moved him to second in the series standings. ''The team is confident, we're feeling good,'' Earnhardt said. ''Really close to winning a race.'' Lest anyone forget, he's pretty good at Talladega, too. Earnhardt has five career wins at the Alabama track, none since 2004, but he pushed teammate Jimmie Johnson to the win there last April while sacrificing his own shot at a victory. Earnhardt settled for second, and he was second in this year's season-opening Daytona 500, a restrictor-plate race just like Talladega. Working in his favor is that NASCAR spent most of the offseason trying to break up the two-car tandem style of racing that had dominated plate races the last two years. Earnhardt hated tandem racing, hated having his fate in the hands of a drafting partner, and never tried to hide his feelings. ''I feel like the style of racing we had in the Daytona 500 this year suits me better; I feel more confident in that style than I do the tandem,'' he said. ''The tandem is difficult to really commit with someone all day long. Knowing if you are going to work together and you are going to be going for the win off the corner, you are going to have to split it between the two of you one way or the other. You are going to run second or you might win. ''It is just difficult to really grasp that and feel like that is racing to you.'' The pack was broken up at Daytona, and Earnhardt had an opportunity to chase down winner Matt Kenseth on his own. Even though he failed, he liked controlling his own destiny. ''Looking out for number one and my team all day long, trying to do whatever I can to put myself in position to win the race, that is really what I feel like I have been doing all my life,'' he said. ''To do anything different just doesn't feel comfortable. It feels odd to me.'' Alas, he's not sure the finish this Sunday will play out the same way. Teams still believe that tandem racing is the fastest way to get around the track, and despite the regulations NASCAR has imposed to prevent two drivers from hooking up and pushing each other, Earnhardt believes teams will still try to find a way circumvent the restrictions. ''Every team in the garage will work toward the same goal and that is to get it back to the tandem, because that is the fastest way to go,'' he said. Even without the tandem, Earnhardt would never think he is running well enough to guarantee his 138-race winless streak will come to an end at Talladega. The race can change quickly, and a driver's day can end in a multi-car crash started by someone else. ''There's too many variables going into races at Talladega,'' he said, ''whether you feel confident winning or not.'' But, the key is that Earnhardt is confident right now and with good reason. Hendrick Motorsports and crew chief Steve Letarte are giving him good cars, and Earnhardt has seven top-10 finishes in nine races this season. His worst finish was 15th at Bristol, and he's got a pair of second-place finishes and a pair of third-place finishes. He's feeling so good that he recently said he thinks he is the best driver at Hendrick, an organization that boasts five-time champion Johnson, four-time champion Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne, who like Earnhardt does not have a Cup title. He's not backing down from that idea, mainly because he has to believe that way to win again. ''All the drivers in the garage feel like they are the best individually, and they should. That is kind of the way you have to approach it,'' he said. ''I learned a long time ago that if you don't have confidence in your car that can be problematic for you. If you don't have confidence in your crew chief, then that can be problematic for you, and if you don't have the same confidence in yourself, it's not conducive to being successful. ''You have to feel like you're here and you're the best and that is the way you should feel. In any profession, you have to have that kind of confidence.'' Earnhardt Jr. steps up his performance Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been creeping up on his first Sprint Cup Series win in four seasons, and he might have taken a giant step Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway. The best part, both crew chief Steve Letarte and Earnhardt said, was that the team finished better, second to Kyle Busch in the Capital City 400, than what the car should have -- even if Earnhardt didn't get Hendrick Motorsports' 200th Cup victory. "I feel that we've consistently done that at a few places this year," Letarte said. "Last week [at Kansas], we had a little better car than we finished, so I was disappointed to run seventh. But with testing the way it is now [there is no testing at tracks that play host to NASCAR events], the only way to do it is bring it to the track and find out [if it works]." More often than not this season, that's the way it has happened, as Earnhardt, Letarte and company have recorded seven top-10 finishes in nine starts. "I think that's the key," Letarte said. "Of course, every week you want to bring a winning car [to the track], but it's hard because there are a lot of good teams in the garage. So you want to feel, as a race team, that you performed above the level of the car that you had. This week we probably had a fifth-place car and ran second, so what goes around comes around." And that was with a brake package that Earnhardt said was his most limiting factor all night, not just after he scooted around Tony Stewart on the final restart with nine laps left only to be unable to run down Busch. Brakes had something to do with it. Leave it to Earnhardt to try to take the blame. "I got them talked into going to a different master cylinder for a little softer pedal at Martinsville," Earnhardt said. "And then we brought it here, and you are on the brake pedal so far down in the corner that it just cooked the front [brakes] and I'd get a real soft pedal pretty quick. I had a great [last] restart, and I ran really great for one lap and the pedal went back to the floor -- I just had to pump it up all the way down the straightaway and I didn't have any front brakes getting into the corner so I couldn't get in real hard [because] it would just get loose locking the rears up." Earnhardt said for all intents and purposes, Busch might have been untouchable. "Even with the brakes working, I think [Busch] was just a little bit better than us all night. But I want to thank my team; they had great stops and we gained a lot of spots on pit road. And we had a great race car. All the people at Hendrick, they do a great job, man. It's just been fun this year. "If the car was good, I could have dealt with the brake problems. If the car was faster than [Busch] we would have got there to him and maybe we'd have raced for it. I just chose a different master cylinder at Martinsville and I shouldn't have brought it here." Not so fast, said Letarte, who engineered a car fast enough for Earnhardt to score his seventh second-place finish since he last won, in June 2008 at Michigan, 138 races ago. "Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a very polite guy," Letarte said. "And he likes to take the credit for when things go wrong because he's a leader and he has big shoulders and he likes to help the team out. But it's something we decided as a team. We do everything as a team -- we win as a team, lose as a team -- and [that brake package] was in this car because we're trying to be better. We're not just trying to be OK, we're trying to be great." Earnhardt explained what he was dealing with as he raced in the top 15 positions all night. "I couldn't get enough front brake in it at the end to run as hard as I wanted to, and we just had hurt the balance a little bit on entry," Earnhardt said. "But I'm really happy to come home with second. We were running about fifth all night and just got lucky on that [last] restart to be on the inside and get a couple spots." Earnhardt's best season opening since 2008 continued as he moved to second in the standings, five points behind Greg Biffle. "I think we can feel great," Letarte said. "I think we have a winning race team, and it's time to prove it. It's great to feel that way, but at some point you have to stand in Victory Lane, and I think that we have the group that can do it." Saturday night's finish was Earnhardt's first top 10 in Richmond since 2008. "It's good [because] this is a place ... last fall was probably the most stressful race, at least of my career," Letarte said of their 16th-place finish. "We've been good here but not great, not even a top-10 car, probably a top-15 car. So it was nice to come here [and run better]." But Letarte is nothing if not a realist. "The race definitely fell our way," Letarte said. "But we had a good enough car to recover from getting blocked-in on pit road once, so it was a good night. It was a good, solid effort with good pit stops. The driver did a great job, and I thought the guys prepared the car well [and] it was overall a good, solid night." Earnhardt's race wasn't as good as his last outing at Kansas, where he never was scored outside the top 10. At Richmond, Earnhardt started 10th and never fell below 14th, though when he was blocked-in by Stephen Leicht on a pit stop at lap 204, he was running 15th immediately afterward. Earnhardt had been running sixth when that green-flag pit cycle began. Earnhardt definitely feels his day is coming. "Our team did a good job on pit road," Earnhardt said. "We're just trying to click away some good runs. We want to win a race or two here and there. If we keep running up front, that will happen." Junior predicts little change to Bristol racing If track owner Bruton Smith thinks the changes to Bristol Motor Speedway announced Wednesday will alter dramatically the nature of racing at Thunder Valley, he may be disappointed, to hear Dale Earnhardt Jr. tell it. "As far as Bristol goes, I think the racing will be the same," Earnhardt said Friday before Sprint Cup practice at Richmond International Raceway. "I think the track is going to be the same That opinion doubtless would be disconcerting to Smith, who announced a track-grinding project designed to inject a higher level of excitement back into racing at the .533-mile short track. Flagging attendance at the 160,000-seat facility prompted the move. According to Smith, grinding and lowering the degree of banking in the outside groove is designed to lessen a perceived advantage to the outside lane and promote closer racing with more contact between cars. Earnhardt doesn't believe the grinding will have the desired effect. "Just grinding that groove is going to take a little grip away from it," Earnhardt said. "Once we lay the rubber back down, which we will, it will be just like the track is now -- which I think is fine. I don't think everybody needs to get too stirred up about it." Jimmie Johnson, Earnhardt's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, says no one will know what effect the grinding will have until cars are competing on the track. "In one respect, I applaud Bruton for trying to make a change and for trying to so something, but we won't know what the race will be like until we're there," Johnson said. "Really, even in a practice, it will be tough to tell. "I think we'll have to get into the race and really see tire falloff, tire wear and what tire Goodyear brings -- all that kind of stuff -- to figure it out." Earnhardt believes factors other than the nature of the racing are major contributors to the attendance issues at Bristol. "I think the reason that attendance is down is that they spiked the hotel rates so bad there in that town, as they do most of the towns," Earnhardt said. "Gas is expensive. To stay in Knoxville or somewhere like that doesn't make a lot of sense because of how expensive gas is. "It's just not as affordable to go to events as it used to be." Junior leads Happy Hour at RIR; stokes debate Dale Earnhardt Jr. kicked off the top of a miniature anthill last weekend in Kansas when he was asked if he felt he was the best driver in the Sprint Cup garage, and he replied that he was. In Friday's interview session at Richmond International Raceway he reconfirmed his opinion and then in final practice for Saturday's Capital City 400, put an exclamation point on it by outrunning 44 other drivers. "That is a healthy debate, that is healthy among race fans as far as who is the best driver," Earnhardt said. "All the drivers in the garage feel like they are the best, individually, and they should. That is kind of the way you have to approach it. "I figured that was definitely debatable and the race fans are going to voice their opinion and that's good. I certainly don't like to rock any boats, but you have to answer the question honestly." Earnhardt's comments are almost a revelation since he's in the midst of a 137-race winless streak that stretches to June 2008. At times since then Earnhardt's self-confidence level has been questioned. But this season has started better than any Earnhardt's begun since 2008, his first with Hendrick Motorsports. And working with crew chief Steve Letarte has done wonders for Earnhardt's confidence. "He's definitely made me more accountable, would be a way to explain it for the words I choose to use and how I choose to describe the car to him," Earnhardt said of Letarte. "He's not going to put up with me verbally abusing him or the equipment. I wouldn't expect anything less than him being a professional, as well. "I think we have a good in-race relationship. He does a really good job of providing me with information and calming me that we are going to fix any issues we have. I feel confident that he has fixed enough issues and improved the car during enough races that I don't really get as worried about it when something isn't quite right. I know that the chances of it getting improved and fixed are really good. "I've got great confidence in him and his abilities to orchestrate the weekend as good as I would expect. We get along really good because of that confidence between each other. I think there is good trust there, too." And for Earnhardt, that creates a positive ripple effect. "I learned a long time ago that if you don't have confidence in your car that can be problematic for you," Earnhardt said. "If you don't have confidence in your crew chief then that can be problematic for you and if you don't have the same confidence in yourself it's not conducive to being successful. "You have to feel like you're here and you're the best and that is the way you should feel. In any profession, you have to have that kind of confidence." On Friday at Richmond, that translated to a best lap of 21.8 seconds, an average speed of 123.853 mph, in the 24 he turned in Happy Hour. That was better than Carl Edwards, Landon Cassill, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch. However, despite Earnhardt's confidence, Mark Martin might be the early favorite for Saturday night, as Martin was quickest in first practice, when he said he set one fast lap to lock in the final spot in Friday's qualifying order, and then concentrated on race runs. Martin's best single lap in the first practice was 21.309 seconds, an average speed of 126.707 mph, but more importantly, Martin had the best 10-lap average in Happy Hour, 121.302 mph, near the end of his practice. Martin also had the eighth-best 10-lap average in the first session. But Earnhardt, who won three Richmond races using the previous version of the premier series race car, still has no lack of confidence at RIR, or anywhere else. That's a little strange here, though, since Earnhardt has only one top-10 finish in 10 "new car" races since 2007. He hasn't led a lap at Richmond since September 2008. "I like short tracks," Earnhardt said. "This has been a good one for us for a couple of races. I have always enjoyed running here. It's a fun track. Not your typical short track with the way the front straightaway is. "It definitely makes each corner unique from the other and the way you drive the track can change throughout the race. It's a lot of fun for a driver. I enjoy racing here. I think it will be a good race." Redskins fan Dale Earnhardt Jr. expects big things from RG3 Just as his fan base is hopeful he can win again, Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes his Washington Redskins can do the same with Robert Griffin III coming to his favorite NFL team. The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver and avowed Redskins fan took delight in Griffin's selection Thursday night in the NFL draft, expressing confidence that the former Baylor quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner will reverse the team's recent misfortunes. "I hope it's a good deal and hope the 'Skins are successful, I hope that Robert's successful," Earnhardt said Friday morning at Richmond International Raceway before practice for Saturday night's Capital City 400. "He seems like a good guy. It'll be fun to be a Redskins fan and see how that plays out this year and see how well he does. I know all the Redskins fans are excited and expecting big things, and so am I." On balance, Junior's victory prospects are higher than his football team. Though winless since June 2008, a span of 137 races, he stands fourth in series points and is coming off a berth in last year's Chase for the Cup. Anybody attending a Cup race knows his fans want more, loudly cheering any pass for the lead before leaving with anticipation that he'll finally return to victory lane the next week. While Earnhardt is similarly hungry, his race-to-race approach is an example for Redskins fans to follow with their expectations for Griffin. "You always go into every season hoping for the best," said Earnhardt, with six top-10 finishes in eight races, "and trying to justify the players and the position they're in, what the team's potential can be, wishing them to the playoffs and justifying how that might happen. And then the season plays itself out. This year's no different." Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart Guesting on The Cleveland Show The Cleveland Show feels the need for speed. NASCAR stars Dale Earnhart Jr., Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart will guest-voice on the Fox series next season, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively. In the episode, Cleveland (voiced Mike Henry) convinces Donna (voiced Sanaa Lathan) to lighten up and have a few drinks when she takes her run for local office way too seriously. "Unfortunately, they party way too hard — and wake up on the infield of a NASCAR track. It's up to guest stars Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne to race Donna and Cleveland home," executive producer Rich Appel says. Earnhardt, Kahne and Stewart join a long list of athletes who have lent their voices to the show, including Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James and David Ortiz. The Cleveland Show will air two new episodes this Sunday — one at 7:30/6:30c and another at 9:30/8:30c with guest stars Darren Criss and Fergie. Junior has 'fun' despite questions in Kansas Imagine, if you can, riding around a race track at nearly 190 mph, eyeballing your competitors' suspension settings and wondering how you could replicate that configuration and make your car's package more competitive. Welcome to Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s world. The Hendrick Motorsports driver's solid season continued with a seventh-place finish in Sunday's STP 400, where Earnhardt said his car was "fun." The fact that he was never outside the top 10 in 267 high-speed, slip-sliding laps proved it -- despite that nagging little setup issue. "For whatever reason, that last run we were really loose," said Earnhardt, who told crew chief Steve Letarte over their in-car radio that, 'they are kicking my [butt] getting in [to the corner].' "When you look at all the guys I'm racing around, their track bars are on the ground and we're running ours about three inches higher, probably. We've just got to figure out a way to get that down and get the car to rotate [in the center of the corner] and get the rear grip in the car." Those little shortcomings aside, the fact is the first eight races of Earnhardt's season have given him his best run with second-year crew chief Letarte and best overall start since 2008 -- his first season with Hendrick. That was also the last year he won a race. Sunday, Earnhardt dropped a spot in the standings to his old buddy Martin Truex Jr., who jumped from fourth to second and knocked Earnhardt back into his former slot. Earnhardt's winless drought grew to 137 races, but neither that nor his organization's failure to win owner Rick Hendrick's 200th Cup Series victory could dampen Earnhardt's enthusiasm. "The car was fun to drive and we've had a great weekend," said Earnhardt, who started seventh, only the third time this season he's seen the green flag in the top 10. "The day went really well [but] we never really cured our problems on the track. But we had a good car and it was a real consistent team, so we've got that going for us. We've just got to get a little bit more to get to where we can try to win some races. We are [close]." Earnhardt said that goal involves more than Hendrick's looming, iconic landmark. And Earnhardt made a point to indicate there was no frustration involved on his part. "Well, you want to win for Rick and you want to win for yourself and your team," Earnhardt said. "Everybody here needs a win for one reason or another. We're all working really hard. I'm not really focusing on [the 200th] or honing in on that too heavily." As usual, Earnhardt's thinking big-picture. "You've just got to think about what your car is doing and what you need to do to help your car and make your car faster, and the wins eventually take care of themselves," Earnhardt said. "We've just got to keep working and not really think about the big prize, but just think about the little things we need to work on every day." Yet, Earnhardt also seems fixated on the vision of getting his rear kicked on corner entry, while watching showers of sparks trail out from behind his competitors' slicker-handling cars. "I wish we knew [what we were missing]," Earnhardt said. "Getting that track bar down... Looking at everybody around me -- man, they're on the ground and we're running ours quite a bit higher. [So] when I need to step on the gas, the right rear [tire] is just not hanging on. So, it's really loose into the corner. Everybody around me can barrel into the corner pretty hard and I'm just not [able to]. "So, we'll work on it and try to see if we can get closer to what's fast and what's winning races." Earnhardt finally dismissed the thought that more caution flags at Kansas might've helped their situation. There were only three in the race, one week after there were only two at Texas, another 1.5-mile speedway. The last 65 laps Sunday, when Earnhardt was particularly loose, were under green. "Well, who knows -- we could have dialed it right out," Earnhardt said. "You just never know what would have happened. The green flag runs, when we had a good car, were helping us and helping us hold our track position." Earnhardt's closing comments exemplified the "fun" he derives from utilizing his driving abilities in Kansas and everywhere else. "So, I like long runs because that's when the drivers get to do some work," Earnhardt said. "Everybody can run about the same [speed] for 10 or 15 laps. But when you get a good, long green-flag run, everybody's cars start sliding around and you start to work on people." HUNTING FOR HERITAGE Dale Earnhardt Jr. is starting to peck around in his past, and his sudden interest in genealogy has created ripples throughout the family. Earnhardt said he never knew much about his relatives beyond Ralph Earnhardt, his grandfather and the father of the late Dale Earnhardt. Dale Jr. wound up hiring an expert to help establish a family tree, and that led to a family reunion of sorts. ''Never thought past Ralph all these years,'' he said, ''and I started getting into his father and Ralph's grandfather, and I found their burial plots, so me and my grandmother Martha, and my sister and my mom Brenda and my girlfriend rode up there one day.'' The graves of relatives born in the early 1800s were found near Concord, N.C. ''It's really cool to stand there over somebody that was responsible for you being there, and that was pretty neat,'' Earnhardt said. ''I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Once I got into it, I started realizing the importance of it.'' Earnhardt: No second fiddle for me As far as driver status goes, Dale Earnhardt Jr. recognizes he might not have the longevity or accomplishments at Hendrick Motorsports of four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon or five-time champion Jimmie Johnson, but Earnhardt doesn't believe his teammates are better drivers than he is. "There is a bit of a pecking order, and it really comes down to what you've done lately," Earnhardt said Friday at Kansas. "I think that Jimmie and Jeff will always carry a certain role in that company that I will probably never achieve, just due to them being there that long and having that trust built up with Rick [Hendrick] and all the employees there -- and their accomplishments, obviously." Asked whether he thought Johnson was a better driver, however, Earnhardt was emphatic in his response. "No, he's a hell of a race car driver, but I feel like I'm the best," Earnhardt said. "I think that's the way you have to feel. I feel like I'm smarter than everybody, and I can drive better than everybody, and I know a lot of people ain't going to agree with that, but I feel pretty strong about it." 'I'm ready to win': Earnhardt feels like he's creeping ever closer to finally ending 135-race drought Texas Motor Speedway has been a special place to Dale Earnhardt Jr. from his very first race here. That April afternoon in 2000 brought not only his first victory in NASCAR's premier series, but also the realization that yes indeed, he could make a successful livelihood at the top level of his sport. "You're just really relieved, because you want to race cars for a living, and you want to be good at it," Earnhardt said Thursday. "You don't want to struggle your whole life. So winning that first race cracks that mold away from all that and gives you a little more clear vision on what your future might be. Because there are so many unknowns and worry. ... You want to be a part of it so bad. This is what I wanted. I wanted to drive cars all these years and be a part of it like I have. But before that, before that moment, you didn't know if that was going to happen and work out for you." It did work out, that day in Fort Worth a dozen years ago spawning a career that to this point has netted 18 victories on what is now known as the Sprint Cup tour. Now Earnhardt is back in Texas, this time with fewer doubts about his future and plenty of confidence in his potential, and perhaps on the verge of a breakthrough that would be even more seismic than his maiden voyage to Victory Lane all those seasons ago. Earnhardt stands second in points after back-to-back third-place finishes. With 10 top-10s in 19 starts, Texas is a track where he historically runs very well. It all prompts a natural question -- is this the week that his 135-race winless streak, which now encompasses parts of five seasons, finally comes to an end? "We're getting closer. I feel like we're getting closer," Earnhardt said. "I don't really know what the measuring stick is, but hopefully it's real close. I'm ready to win. I'm ready to go to Victory Lane. I've been working with these guys, and they're working so hard. They're giving me really, really good cars. They deserve to win races. I think the team deserves it. Ready to make that happen. We're just going to keep trying. We're getting closer, though. That's the bright spot." That much is obvious, given that Earnhardt stands just six points behind series leader Greg Biffle, has finished third or better in half of the races so far this season and is behind the wheel of contending race cars each and every week. Things are going so well for NASCAR's most popular driver that this past off weekend felt like a month. He couldn't wait to get to Texas, to get back in his No. 88 car, to be back around crew chief Steve Letarte and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates. These days, the races can't come fast enough for Earnhardt, who sees each one as a chance to record his first victory since Michigan in the summer of 2008. "I just know that I enjoy what I'm doing, and I enjoy the season that we're having, and I like going to the race track with the team I'm working with and the way things are going," he said. "It's my favorite thing. It's what I want to do. When I'm not doing that, that's what I want to be doing. Taking a week off is always a good time. We always make a good time out of it and have fun. ... But the races just can't come quick enough for us. I'm enjoying working, I'm enjoying racing. I feel like we're gaining on getting to Victory Lane, so obviously you want the races to come as fast as they can come so you can gain closer and closer and try to win us a race." The improvement in the No. 88 team, which finished seventh in final points last season after a pair of campaigns in the 20s, isn't lost on the rest of the garage. Matt Kenseth, Earnhardt's friend from their days racing one another in what's now the Nationwide Series, says he's seeing more of Earnhardt these days both off the track and on. Just like old times, they're racing for position more often near the front, and Kenseth is enjoying it as much now as he did then. "He has been running really well, and we have gotten to race for position and stuff like that. For me, that is really fun," said Kenseth, who stands fourth in points. "It has been a long time now, but we used to race for wins and tried to run with him for championships in the Busch Series and stuff. We moved up to Cup the same year and raced for Rookie of the Year and wins and stuff. It is so competitive in this series that sometimes you might go a couple months without racing each other. It has been enjoyable to be around him on the track more. I think the better you run, that everybody gains confidence." Earnhardt's confidence seems to be increasing with every passing week. He gave eventual winner Kenseth a run in the final laps of the Daytona 500. He led 70 laps at Las Vegas. He was in the mix in the end at Martinsville. Almost every week, Earnhardt is in position -- and sooner or later, it seems, the drought-buster will arrive. "Now that he is running in the top five every week and leading laps and doing the things he is doing," Kevin Harvick said, "it's just a matter of all the stuff falling together." Harvick: 'I feel sorry' for Earnhardt Jr. amid win drought For Dale Earnhardt Jr., the topic remains unavoidable despite recent strong performances. It's been 135 races since his last NASCAR Sprint Cup victory. When will he win again? Kevin Harvick can sympathize. He went winless for 115 races following his 2007 Daytona 500 victory, finally ending the drought in April 2010 at Talladega Superspeedway. "We went through it right at 100 races," Harvick prior to Thursday's Sprint Cup practice for the Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. "But just to live it on a weekly basis and have to answer some crazy questions. … I feel sorry for him sometimes." As much as he'd like to know the answer, Earnhardt said Thursday he isn't facing the question all that often — at least to his face. "I haven't really had to answer that question too much," he said. "People know I'm not Nostradamus, so they don't ask me questions about the future." On the racetrack (consecutive third-place finishes) and on paper (he's second in the points standings with four top-10s in the first six races), Earnhardt Jr. appears on the cusp of a breakthrough. So, could this be the week? Texas is the track where Earnhardt produced his very first Cup victory in 2000. "We're better this year than we were last year and better than the year before that," Earnhardt said. "We're getting closer. … They're giving me really, really good cars and (we) deserve to win races. "The races just can't come quick enough for us. … I feel like we're gaining on getting to victory lane, so obviously you want the races to come as fast as they can come." Harvick can envision an end in sight to Earnhardt's winless streak, but not necessarily the end to the questions. "Running in the top five, he doesn't have to dodge (the question) nearly as much as he did before," Harvick said. "But the pressure that this sport puts on you in general: The first thing you (news media) guys will ask him after he wins a race is, 'When are you going to win championships?'" On the racetrack (consecutive third-place finishes) and on paper (he's second in the points standings with four top-10s in the first six races), Earnhardt Jr. appears on the cusp of a breakthrough. So, could this be the week? Texas is the track where Earnhardt produced his very first Cup victory in 2000. "We're better this year than we were last year and better than the year before that," Earnhardt said. "We're getting closer. … They're giving me really, really good cars and (we) deserve to win races. "The races just can't come quick enough for us. … I feel like we're gaining on getting to victory lane, so obviously you want the races to come as fast as they can come." Harvick can envision an end in sight to Earnhardt's winless streak, but not necessarily the end to the questions. "Running in the top five, he doesn't have to dodge (the question) nearly as much as he did before," Harvick said. "But the pressure that this sport puts on you in general: The first thing you (news media) guys will ask him after he wins a race is, 'When are you going to win championships?'" Earnhardt's car starts salute at White House The annual White House Easter Egg Roll has been rolling strong for 134 years. This year's version had an element of rolling thunder to it. The No. 88 National Guard Chevrolet driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. made a special appearance at The Ellipse in the nation's capital Monday, helping to kick off a patriotic initiative "NASCAR Unites -- An American Salute." The six-week program is designed to unify the NASCAR industry and fans in celebrating America and supporting military families. Adding a unique twist to Monday's celebration was the sight of an 800-horsepower race car adjacent to the National Mall, greeting the estimated 36,000 attendees at the White House event. The car debuted a spirited red, white and blue paint scheme, designed to rally support for the initiative. Three NASCAR executives and their families took part in the festivities, which included concerts, colorful eggs, face-painting and a story-telling session with the First Family. On hand were: Marcus Jadotte, NASCAR vice president of public affairs and multicultural development; Kim Brink, managing director of brand, consumer and series marketing; and Sandy Marshall, executive director of the NASCAR Foundation. "I cannot think of a better way to launch the program than having Dale Jr.'s National Guard car at the White House Easter Egg Roll event," Marshall said. "It was great to see the families so excited to see a Sprint Cup car near the White House lawn." Besides Earnhardt's star-spangled No. 88, other racers in all three national series will sport distinctly American paint schemes and trim packages. Defending Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, current Cup points leader Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski and Danica Patrick are some of the drivers already on board. The initiative will be at its most visible at races around two traditional national holidays -- the May 27 Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the July 7 Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway, right after Independence Day. A total of nine tracks will be involved during the six-week span. The significance of the announcement and the Charlotte track's long-running history of celebrating Memorial Day wasn't lost on Charlotte mayor Anthony Foxx, who attended his first egg roll with his family. "NASCAR's support of military families is legendary," Foxx said. "There couldn't be a better time than Memorial Day to recognize our veterans and to do it in such a way that NASCAR is doing it this year. It's so appropriate given the solemnity of the day and that we are so grateful for the veterans who have given their lives and their time to our country." Crew chief swap reunites Eury Sr. and Earnhardt JR Motorsports has implemented a crew chief swap to its No. 88 and No. 5 Nationwide Series teams, general manager and co-owner Kelley Earnhardt Miller announced Thursday. Crew chief Bruce Cook has taken over responsibilities for the No. 88 Chevrolets driven by Cole Whitt. Until now Cook has spearheaded the organization's third team -- a part-time entry primarily driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- while lending assistance to the company's two full-schedule teams. That role will now fall to Tony Eury Sr., who takes charge of the No. 5 team while continuing his role as JR Motorsports' competition director. Tony Eury Jr.'s role as crew chief for Danica Patrick and the No. 7 GoDaddy.com team remains unchanged. "Our teams have a tremendous responsibility not only to perform at the standards we set for ourselves but reflect the commitment to excellence of our sponsors," said Earnhardt Miller. "Our on-track performance isn't meeting those standards, and we felt a change was necessary." The No. 5 car will race at Texas next weekend with Earnhardt Jr. The crew chief change reunites Earnhardt Jr. with Eury Sr. The pair won 15 Cup Series races between 2000 and 2004 as well as Nationwide Series championships in 1998 and 1999. The grouping of Cook and Whitt gives one of the series' hottest young drivers a crew chief that just last year won six Camping World Truck Series races, one Nationwide Series race, and a Truck Series owners championship. Through five races this season, the No. 88 Taxslayer.com team has one top-five and two top-10s. Whitt, a rookie driver from Alpine, Calif., is currently sixth in the series point standings. His best finish, to date, is a fourth at Daytona. JR Motorsports' last win came with Jamie McMurray on Sept. 4, 2010. "Both crew chiefs are very important to this process, and they are completely capable of elevating our teams back to where they are consistently competing for wins," said Earnhardt Miller. "Bruce's demeanor is probably more suitable in the developmental process of young drivers, and Tony Sr. has the experience and familiarity with Dale Jr. that can help get our 5 car to Victory Lane." Earnhardt Jr. has two races remaining on his 2012 Nationwide Series slate -- Texas on April 13 and Talladega on May 5. The No. 5 car could possibly compete in three to five more races with another driver. Dale Earnhardt Jr. understands pressure on Danica Patrick, says she needs to relax Danica Patrick has spent the last month giving herself pep talks after each disappointing race in her first full season of NASCAR competition. Typically the line goes something like the one she delivered after blowing an engine at Auto Club Speedway in California: “We all want to see great results happen. I’m reminding myself I just have to be patient,” she said. Patrick knows that she can’t control things like engine failure or getting run into by her teammate in the Nationwide Series race at Daytona, which both led to poor finishes. Yet it sounds as if she wants to blame herself for those things. Dale Earnhardt Jr., her car owner at JR Motorsports, knows exactly where she’s coming from. He knows what it’s like when the results on the track seem like the sole responsibility of the driver. He knows what it’s like to see only the finishing position and not how the driver ended up in that spot. “I know what it feels like … when you’re under the pressure and nothing is going right and you’re pissed off and you don’t know how to fix it and you don’t have the authority to fix what you think is wrong,” Earnhardt said last week. “And you’re asking yourself if you’re the problem and all kinds of things are happening to you all the time and your head ain’t on right.” Earnhardt has been there. After winning twice early in his rookie season in 2000, he went a full year without another victory. Then after winning 13 races in the next four years, he has won just three since 2005 and none since 2008. So he understands why Patrick might need to remind herself to be patient when she’s struggling. “Everything is always easier from the other side of the fence,” Earnhardt said. “As a driver, you put a lot of pressure on yourself and when you don’t finish where you should finish, you get really mad at yourself.” Patrick is 17th in the Nationwide standings five races in her first full NASCAR season, which includes 10 Cup events with Stewart-Haas Racing in preparation for a full-time Cup ride in 2013. She has no top-10 finishes in the Nationwide Series, which likely troubles her after posting three top 10s during a partial NASCAR schedule last season. “What she did last year, she came in so open-minded, there were no goals, no nothing and she could enjoy it,” Earnhardt said. “If something bad happens or not everything goes right, what was to be expected? So there wasn’t as much pressure as I think there is now. “She needs to revert back to not worrying about people’s opinions and expectations. She needs to just really enjoy what she’s doing, enjoy the pure aspect of driving cars and racing and competing and (remember that) not every day is going to go like you want.” Earnhardt believes Patrick has suffered from a mix of bad luck and her team not being as strong as some others in the Nationwide Series. But Patrick sees her teammate Cole Whitt, who unintentionally wrecked her in the season-opener at Daytona, sitting sixth in points. Meanwhile, she has finished on the lead lap only once and finished better than 15th only once—12th at Las Vegas. She believes she should finish in the top five and challenge for wins, Earnhardt said. “(Top-fives) aren’t unrealistic goals for her,” Earnhardt said. “But when you’re a driver, you don’t see what the rest of the world sees. You see everything as a bigger problem, you make everything bigger—the stress and the pressure, you make it bigger.” One thing Earnhardt and Patrick have in common is feeling pressure from large fan bases. They hate to disappoint their legions of fans. “She feels like everyone is expecting her to come in and win,” Earnhardt said. “And if she doesn’t, she’s going to hear nothing but negative things about it. “She needs to tell herself, or hear from other people, that it is a long process and she has time to grasp it and she can relax and let that happen naturally.” But as Earnhardt knows, that’s easier said than done. The son of a NASCAR legend, he’s been hearing it since his early days in Cup. “It’s hard to swallow when you don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle,” he said. “… She’s really still green and still learning a lot. She’s going to be here. She will drive racecars for somebody. I’m glad she chose us.” Confidence making the difference for Earnhardt You can hear it in his voice, you can see it in his eyes, you can sense it in his demeanor. The confidence is there, as plain as the red No. 88 on the side of his race car. Yes, it's still relatively early in the season, and no, he still hasn't won in 134 races, a veritable eternity on the Sprint Cup tour. But there's plainly something different about Dale Earnhardt Jr. this season, something that's reflected on the race track, and makes you think less about that long winless streak and more about the potential victories that lie ahead. It's not something that can be added in a pit stop, not something that can be tweaked in a car adjustment. It takes a very long time to build, yet can erode like tires on an abrasive track surface. The great intangible in auto racing is confidence -- not necessarily a belief that everything is going to go right, but that all the pieces are in place to make it happen. And these days Earnhardt has it, thanks to dependably solid cars almost every week, thanks to strong runs that have him third in Sprint Cup points, thanks to a combination of factors that make the prospect of the No. 88 in Victory Lane sound not impossible, but inevitable. The last time he felt like this was 2004, when he won a career-best six times, and finished fifth in final points driving the No. 8 car for Dale Earnhardt Inc. Since then he's seen the team his father created torn apart, hit rock bottom in a pair of disappointing seasons with powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports, weathered one long winless skid only to start another, and slowly built himself back up. Now, it's all coming to a culmination. Crew chief Steve Letarte spent last season rebuilding the confidence of a driver whose struggles took a visible toll. The result was a seventh-place finish in points and a few near-misses at Charlotte and Martinsville. Now the cars are rolling in, and they're as good as anything Earnhardt has had under him in some time, and the combination of being in the right place mentally and mechanically has NASCAR's most popular driver in a position he hasn't occupied in a very long time -- a genuine threat to win almost any weekend. "I feel good. I feel the best I've felt personally, confidence-wise, as I can remember in a long time," he told reporters earlier this week during a sponsor event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. "I just want it to keep going. In the big span of things, you're not here for a very long time. I feel like I've got a lot of career left to right the ship. I know how difficult it is to be competitive and compete in the series. I'm just appreciating it and hope it continues, and we can have a solid year and win some races." Could Martinsville be the place? It's certainly possible, given that Earnhardt has recorded three consecutive top-seven finishes there, and his average result of 13.04 at the flat half-miler is fourth-best among active drivers behind those of Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Jeff Gordon. Although his most recent victory came at 2-mile Michigan and he's thought of mostly as a restrictor-plate specialist, Earnhardt did come up racing late models, and he's very comfortable on short tracks. Of course, his first time at Martinsville he remembers running over just about everything, and the record books bear it out in a 26th-place finish. Gradually he improved, helped by one prolonged test session in which he found a setup that suited him. "That was the turnaround to become competitive there," Earnhardt said. "We've had so many good runs there. That's one of my better tracks," he added. "I've always been really good at the short tracks and got good, solid finishes. I've been really consistent at those places. We've had great runs at Martinsville. A string in the mid-'00s, we were just really good. We've been able to kind of maintain that since I started driving for Rick [Hendrick] and getting good information, because they won a lot of races there. We've sort of combined our history, now working with Steve and all his success with Jeff at that track. Things should work well for us there, and they have. I was a little disappointed we ran seventh last time. We definitely feel we've got some areas to be improved this weekend." And yet, the seventh-place finish in the fall wasn't his most notable disappointment in southwest Virginia last season. That came a year ago, when Earnhardt led 17 laps and was in position to win the race -- and surely ignite a momentous celebration in the grandstands -- until Kevin Harvick overtook him with only three circuits remaining. Looking back, there was only so much he could do "I don't know what I could have done, other than probably get myself wrecked blocking him, or wreck him and probably get wrecked by someone behind him," Earnhardt said. "I don't' think I could have done anything different [for] a better outcome for me. If I would have done anything different, the outcome likely would have been worse for me. He was super-fast, and no denying how quick they were at the end of that race. I'd have liked to have been as quick as he was. It just turned out on that run, his car came to life and he drove it good enough." Of course, that didn't make the runner-up finish any easier to take, particularly on a day when Earnhardt's winless streak stretched within one week of the century mark. In the car, with the final laps running down and Harvick behind him, even he allowed himself to hope. "When you take the lead with 20 laps to go, you feel like, 'Hey man, I might win this race. I hope this car runs this good the rest of the race.' Then it started to slip and slide a little bit," he said. "I started to realize it would be quite difficult to win the race. I was still leading at that point. It was a good experience even though we did lose, and that was really hard to deal with coming so close. I took a lot of positives away from it. I think that weekend helped us instead of hurting my resolve or taking me down a notch because we lost. It still helped us as a team and me as a driver." And every little bit helps, particularly when we're talking about knocking off the decay of a difficult half-decade in which Earnhardt sunk to his lowest professional point while millions watched. Down deep, given what we've witnessed in the past season plus five races, is there any doubt that this is the same driver who was one of the steadiest and most successful on the circuit in the middle 2000s? As so many competitors have reminded us through the years, good drivers don't just forget how to drive. Maybe they wind up in situations that isn't a right fit, maybe they take over equipment that isn't up to par, or maybe they go through periods that make them doubt themselves. Confidence is a fleeting thing, easy to lose and very difficult to regain. The absence of it can derail a career, an abundance of it can make the difference between one driver and another. Deep down, if the equipment is good and the situation is right, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is that same driver who enjoyed all those glory years with DEI. Since then, though, he's seemed to be missing one important ingredient, and everyone wondered what it was. Now we know. "I don't really know how to measure confidence, but we feel pretty good about what's going on and what's happening to us and how the thing is going down," he told reporters Friday at Martinsville. "Some tracks you just don't hit it on, and we have a handful of those tracks. But we're starting to run more consistently up front at more race tracks. ... But the confidence is good, the confidence is up real high. There's still some things we want to improve on, but races can't come for our team fast enough. We're really enjoying being on the track and working." Dale Earnhardt Jr. tackles Tiger, Tebow, love of cooking Dale Earnhardt spent Wednesday afternoon sliding a Camaro around the Charlotte Motor Speedway infield in a commercial shoot featuring drifting, a Fast and the Furious-style of racing. "It was really hard," NASCAR's most popular driver said. "I didn't do as (well as) I thought I was going to do, but I kind of knew that. It's just like people watching NASCAR and saying, 'Man, that looks easy. How hard can that be, going around in circles?' That's what I thought about drifting until I got out here. I was like, 'That's not very easy at all.' " Though he struggled (Earnhardt gave himself a 2 while giving an 8 to fellow Sprint Cup driver and shoot participant Juan Pablo Montoya), the Hendrick Motorsports driver emerged in a loose mood that mirrored the exhibition of freewheeling driving talent. During a wide-ranging interview with a small group of writers afterward, Earnhardt covered myriad topics stretching from Tiger Woods' recent win to the Tim Tebow phenomenon to his passion for food. A few of the highlights: Q: You're in the midst of a long winless streak, and Tiger Woods just ended a two-year skid last weekend. Did you have a chance to watch it, and would you relate to the expression of relief on his face? A: I ain't watched it. I'm a big Tiger fan, and I've been pulling for him to succeed. I related to the pressure he was under the last couple of years and all the doubts about his abilities and whether he would get back to where he wanted to be. I felt like I kind of knew where he was mentally. For him to come back and win gives me confidence in my ability to do the same thing. I'm not in any way trying to compare myself to him. I just see there are similarities and comparisons. There's things I can draw from his experience and what he's going through that I see and can relate to his deal. So hopefully, I can win a race and know what that feels like. I'm sure it would be a huge relief. I think we're really close. Q: Some fans have taken to comparing the attention you receive in NASCAR with that received by Tim Tebow in the NFL. Any thoughts on that? A: I don't know. I haven't really thought about that one. Do I need to work on my throwing motion? Is my throwing motion OK with everyone? Everybody happy with it? (chuckling) I don't know. That guy is under too much damn pressure. I'll tell you that. I like him and think he's a good guy, but man, I think he lives under twice the microscope I ever did. He's incredible. He doesn't really fan the flames on that (exposure). He just does his own thing. But I don't know. I guess that ain't a bad guy to get compared to. Q: Hendrick Motorsports has been sitting on win No. 199 for nearly six months. If you get the 200th victory, will that overshadow the milestone for team owner Rick Hendrick? A: I don't think he'd have a problem with that (laughs). No, I believe if anyone wins in our company, the win overshadows the 200th as far as the media coverage. Doesn't matter who wins. When you're inside the company, inside those doors, then the driver side isn't quite as important. The 200th win will be the big deal at the next company luncheon. Q: Bristol Motor Speedway is planning to make unspecified changes to improve the racing; has track owner Bruton Smith consulted you? A: No, he doesn't have to talk to me. He can talk to whoever he wants. They'll make a good call. I'm excited they're willing to put in the effort. It's an expensive process. That guy on a whim basically spends a lot of money to fix stuff. Not a lot of track owners willing to put in that kind of expense on a whim and just say, 'The hell with it.' They might ruin it even worse. That's possible. I think the track is pretty good how it is. I think if they soften up the left-side tire the way that tire worked at (last week's race at Fontana, Calif.) — don't use the same tire — but the way it rubbered (Fontana) up, man. That was awesome. That was the perfect combination of tire and track that Goodyear has had in a long time. If we can figure out a way to get that to happen at Bristol, that'd be good for everybody. I think trying tires is definitely the cheapest route. How's that hurt anything? You're trying. Q: What are you doing around the house these days? A: Hobbies? I don't know. I really don't do a lot when you come down to think of it. I sit down at the house and wait for the next weekend, wait for the next race. I watch a lot of TiVo. I TiVo shows like The Office and Restaurant: Impossible. It's where this cook goes into these restaurants, and he fixes them. They're in trouble and about to be closed because they're in trouble. I like shows like that. I watch a lot of TV. I like to cook. I cook a lot of meals. Jeff Gordon had Flash Gordon as his intro song to Bristol. It reminded me of the Queen song, which was a movie I used to watch when I was little. I've gotten into collecting records, vinyl. I've got a record player. We built these big cases to hold the records, and they're nicely stacked in these nice cases. I'm really into collecting records. I love listening to music. Like when I get home from the race on Sundays I go to the basement and I listen to records all night until I get tired, because my adrenaline is going and I don't want to go to sleep. I might do that all day Monday. I might do whatever I have to do during the day and in the evening go downstairs and listen to records. Just play pool, whatever, piddling around. Just sit there all night listening to vinyl. Anyways, we were listening to Flash Gordon. And because I've got it on this Queen album, it had just played. I was like, 'Man! 'Remember that movie?' And my buddy Sonny, my property manager, was like, 'Yeah!' Then I went to Bristol, and that was Jeff's intro song. I was like, 'Man, we've got to get that movie and watch it.' So that's what we're doing (Wednesday night). Eight o'clock. My house. I think the movie is pretty corny, too, but in a way it's funny and kind fun to watch. I kind of like fantasy football. When I'm not doing that I'm doing (ESPN) Streak for Cash, so I'm on the computer sort of looking for odds on these random soccer games in the middle of the world somewhere. Or like college lacrosse. I'm learning all kinds of (stuff) about these teams that I never would ever have paid attention to otherwise. Q: What do you cook? A: I do a lot of tacos, steak and chicken and salad (with) steak and chicken. I can cook French toast. I can cook anything. Anything. I think I'm good. I've cooked for my boss when I was trying to get hired. I have Rick (Hendrick) over and cooked him a dinner with my sister. I cooked for my girlfriend, my mom. I like to cook. I get on the Internet and Google the recipes and try to make it. Q: What did you make Rick Hendrick? A: Steak. I don't really get too crazy. I can make my own French onion dip for chips. One day I was craving French onion dip for chips, and I didn't have any. All I had was ranch. So I got on Google and figured out the recipe and made it. Q: Can't you just get people to do that? A: No. I've got a lady that does a little cleaning around the house, and if I asked her to cook, I'm sure she would. I feel bad asking her to do it, because it's easy to do. So I just do it. But I like to do it. I enjoy learning how to cook, because I like to eat. Eating is good. Eating is fun. I watch a lot of cooking shows. Q: How do you feel about the world-famous hot dogs at Martinsville? A: They're good. They just need to stay the way they are. They're really good, especially when they're freshly made. Like if you can go up there and get lucky enough to get them made right on the spot. Damn, it's good. But when they sit in that wrapper for a while they get soggy. Q: How many can you eat in one sitting? A: Probably just six. They're small, man. But on a whole weekend, I'll hit 20 pretty easy. I'll get three as soon as I get there, three for lunch, probably take two on the helicopter home. That's eight right there. In two days you've eaten eight. And then I'll get three more for Sunday before the race. Q: What about your teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon? A: They're against it. (Crew chief) Steve (Letarte) won't eat them. He's a health freak. Which I am. I've been doing better. I've lost a lot of weight. But (a Martinsville hot dog) is one of those things. It's tradition, so it's important. Earnhardt keeps carrying flag for Hendrick stable Kasey Kahne is battling back from a near-disastrous start. Jeff Gordon is watching something else go wrong every week. Jimmie Johnson is showing only a glimpse of the consistency he once used to win five consecutive championships at NASCAR's highest level. Meet Dale Earnhardt Jr., standard-bearer at Hendrick Motorsports. That's certainly the way it's been through the first five weeks of this Sprint Cup season, as consistently strong runs by NASCAR's most popular driver have made him the class of what has long been NASCAR's best organization. It happened again Sunday at Auto Club Speedway, where Earnhardt was one of several drivers to stay out of the pits during a caution for rain, and parlayed that move into an eventual third-place finish when wet weather forced officials to call the event 71 laps short of its scheduled distance. "We drove the car up to fifth before the weather came. We had been watching the weather all day. We felt certain if it started to rain, it wasn't going to stop," Earnhardt said. "We made the right choice by staying out and building ourselves into the top three." It was no fluke finish for Earnhardt, who was in the top 10 for almost the whole race before recording his second-best finish of this young season. In the process he moved up three positions to third in points, making him easily the highest-ranking driver in a Hendrick Motorsports stable that's suddenly juggling one problematic issue after another. There's Kahne, who pulled himself off the top 35 bubble with a 14th-place finish Sunday but still languishes low in the standings. There's Johnson, who had smoke emitting from his No. 48 car just as the rain came and was bailed out by the weather. And there's Gordon, who saw another great car go for naught -- this time because of a pair of pit penalties that relegated him to a 26th-place finish. And then there's Earnhardt, who maybe hasn't won since 2008, but is sailing along despite all the havoc around him. "Jeff had a little trouble on pit road. Jimmie, they decided to come down pit road because they thought it was not going to run all day. They've been beating us most of the weekend," Earnhardt said. "We've really been competitive, though. I like how our season is going so far. If we can keep going like this, we might get some opportunities like we did last year of winning some races and seal the deal eventually." Sunday, his teammates weren't as fortunate. Johnson had one of the better cars in the race, but smoke began billowing from beneath his vehicle shortly after NASCAR threw the caution for rain. A radio problem only complicated the issue, which turned out to be a severed oil line. Johnson watched his oil pressure plummet, fell backward in the running order, and yet salvaged a 10th-place finish when the race was called due to weather. "I really don't know what had happened," Johnson said during the red flag before the race was ended. "I was just idling along and my friends pulled up alongside of me and were pointing. They said, 'You're smoking.' I heard it over the radio and I could obviously see and smell it, but I don't know what really caused it yet. It's just a wild change of events, because when I came to pit road and took four tires, I wanted it to dry up real quick. Now I'm sitting here praying for rain." He got just that. "If we did go back to green-flag racing, we would be multiple laps down," crew chief Chad Knaus said. "We don't really know what happened to the car just yet. We've got to get it in here and take a look at it." Gordon wasn't as fortunate, and added another chapter to his litany of 2012 frustration. At Daytona, he was caught up in a wreck. Last week at Bristol, he was knocked out when Earnhardt's tailpipe inadvertently cut down the left-rear tire on his No. 24 car. Friday in Fontana he spoke about feeling some pressure to get good finishes to match good cars like the one he had Sunday, which ran in the top five for much of the event. But it all unraveled on pit road, where Gordon first had to serve a stop-and-go penalty that put him a lap down, the violation coming when he dragged a fuel can -- and the fuel man attached to it -- out of his pit box. Later, taking two tires to try to gain track position, his crew was flagged for having a tire get away. Gordon finished 26th in the race, and dropped to 25th in points. Meanwhile, Earnhardt just keeps rolling along, propelled by crew chief Steve Letarte, good finishes, and strong cars almost every week. "I'm really happy," he said. "I'm performing better. Most of the credit has to go to Steve and the team. Those guys did a great job today on pit road. We had some really good stops. Steve is doing an amazing job. He deserves most of the credit for how well we're running. He's giving me really good cars, cars that are fun to drive, relatively easy to drive." Runner-up Kyle Busch, in the interview alongside Earnhardt, couldn't let that go. "Must be nice," he said. "They're not easy to drive." Earnhardt laughed. "Compared to the last several years," he added, "they've gotten easier." Mistake-free run leads to third-place finish for Dale Earnhardt Jr. Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t have the best car at Auto Club Speedway, but he made no mistakes and his Hendrick Motorsports team was flawless on pit road. That led to a third-place finish in the Auto Club 400, which was shortened to 129 of the scheduled 200 laps because of rain. Earnhardt Jr. was running fifth when the rain came and second-place Denny Hamlin and fourth-place Jimmie Johnson both pitted under caution just before the race was red-flagged and eventually called. “I was pretty certain by watching the weather and studying the weather all night long and all day today that once it began to rain, it wasn't going to stop,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I was surprised that some guys came down pit road and gave up track position.” Earnhardt Jr., who moved up three spots to third in the Sprint Cup standings, improved his track position by pitting early in fuel runs and because his team made no mistakes on pit road. He started with a loose car and had hoped to tighten it up during the race but there was little time for adjustments on pit road because the race went green until it rained. “We started short-pitting at the beginning of the race,” said Earnhardt Jr., who started 14th. “We sort of played our hand early, didn't have an opportunity to do anything other than what we had planned from the start when we got toward halfway. “That really worked in my favor.” What also worked was that he didn’t make any mistakes, and neither did his team. Last week, a speeding penalty cost Earnhardt Jr. several spots. Two weeks ago at Las Vegas, a four-tire pit stop – when others took just two tires – mired him in traffic. “It was nice to have a week that is uneventful; (that) was a really nice change,” Earnhardt Jr. crew chief Steve Letarte said. The team executed in a race when other teams made costly mistakes on pit road. “You have to execute – you can’t be too fast on pit road, you can’t have a pit-stop penalty, you have to executive and I feel our team did a very good job of that,” Letarte said. “Last year, I would say through green-flag cycles, whether it was me pitting too long or Dale [having trouble] on and off or [with our] pit stops, that was one of our weak points. So to have a race that basically went green and go from 14th to third is a great momentum builder.” Earnhardt finds solace after late-race incidents By his own admission, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is going to have to do some damage control this week. The Hendrick Motorsports driver was racing for position with teammate Jeff Gordon on Lap 359 of Sunday's Sprint Cup event at Bristol Motor Speedway when he made the slightest contact with the No. 24 car. But it was evidently enough for the exhaust pipes peeking out from beneath his vehicle to cut down Gordon's left-rear tire, and send the four-time champion spinning up into the outside wall. Gordon, who had one of the stronger cars in the early-going, lost dozens of laps for repairs and finished 35th. In perhaps a bit of cosmic retribution, Earnhardt was in line for a good finish until he was penalized for being too fast on pit road during the afternoon's final round of stops, and wound up 15th. "I'm upset that I screwed myself on pit road speeding there. I'm pretty upset about that," Earnhardt said. "Otherwise, I feel bad about running into Jeff's car, and I had a good day other than that. I had a good time. Long green-flag run, man. That put us all to the test. I was watching for somebody to fall out of the seat. I don't know who did and who didn't, but I was watching for a couple of them to pull over." Earnhardt ran in the top 10 for most of the day, and almost certainly would have finished there if not for the late penalty. Gordon spent much of Sunday before the accident in the top five, and seemed one of the contenders for the victory until he and Earnhardt raced side-by-side late in the race. The contact between the two cars as they came off a corner was almost unnoticeable, but it was just enough -- and the cars were aligned just so -- for the edge of the exhaust pipes on the No. 88 to cut down a tire on the No. 24. "I think we bumped more than we should have is the way it looks like," said Gordon, who fell six spots in points to 23rd. "We definitely didn't hit in the right location, because I think the tailpipe or something just cut the left-rear immediately. We didn't hit that hard. We were a little bit too tight and he was pretty good on the restart there, and we were racing hard. I know that it wasn't intentional, but it certainly ruined our day. ... There were times we had the best car out there and I think we could have got back to that before this thing was over." After the incident, Earnhardt immediately radioed his crew an apology to be sent to Gordon. He said following the race that he would sit down with his teammate this week to ensure everything is fine between them. "I'm going to have to do some damage control this week. I know Jeff understands what was going on out there, but his boys work real hard on their car, and they had a good run going. They had a potential win, or good finish going too, and they deserve it," Earnhardt said. "We were racing really hard. It was fun," he added. "If there is a track where you can lean on each other a little bit, then this ought to be the place. We just barely rubbed down the back straightaway." If anything, the speeding penalty seemed to eat at Earnhardt more, and with good reason. Earnhardt was sixth when Tony Stewart bounced off the wall to bring out the event's final yellow, but has to go to the rear of the lead lap after his vehicle was ticketed for speeding. NASCAR added two additional timing lines to each side of Bristol's split pit road this weekend, in reaction to an August race when some drivers took advantage of the gaps between the timed areas by speeding between them. "I was told I was speeding on the back, but if anywhere, I was speeding on the front," Earnhardt said. "I don't know. This place is probably hard to tell exactly what is happening. I don't really trust those timing lines too much. If they say so, I guess we were speeding. It's a difficult way to give up a good finish. We ran hard. We worked hard all day." Earnhardt fell two positions to sixth in points with the finish, but took solace in an afternoon where his No. 88 car ran with the leaders almost the entire race. His effort at Bristol came one week after he led 70 laps at Las Vegas before finishing 10th. "We're showing all the signs of any of these other guys capable of running up front and maybe winning us a race or two this year," Earnhardt said. "We're going to keep it up. I'm going to take all the positives I can out of this one. We ran good. We didn't run good last year. We struggled and just kind of limped around and made something out of nothing. [Sunday] we ran good, and I feel good about that." Dale Earnhardt Jr. says hitting Mark Martin 'petty,' 'foolish' Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday that running Mark Martin into the wall last week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was “petty” and “foolish” and shouldn’t have happened. Earnhardt Jr. was racing Martin, his former Hendrick Motorsports teammate, at Las Vegas when Martin cut him off late in the race. Earnhardt Jr. then hit Martin from behind, forcing the Michael Waltrip Racing driver into the wall. Earnhardt Jr., who led 70 laps early in the race, wound up finishing 10th while Martin finished 18th. Earnhardt Jr. said after the race that he was frustrated with Martin. The two had a similar incident last season at Michigan. “To me, personally, there’s an unwritten etiquette that when a guy is running the top, even if you’re clearing him, passing him, if you barely clear him off the corner – I’m coming 10 miles an hour faster off the top of the race track – you stay low,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Don’t knock a half-second off my lap time being a jerk about it. Stay low.” Earnhardt Jr. said Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway that he and Martin talked shortly after the race and settled their differences. “[We] handled our little issue immediately after we got home and I feel pretty good that we got that sorted out,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Me and him talked and I agree that he should have let me have the top, but it’s his prerogative really to do what he wants, and to run into the back of somebody and put them into the fence for such a … it was a big deal to me at the moment, but in the grand scheme of things it was kind of petty and I put him in the fence for it and that was kind of foolish of me.” Notebook: Junior a popular sight at front of field By Lap 56 of Sunday's Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had led more laps in one event this year than he had during the entire 2011 season. Earnhardt was the class of the field early in the race, leading 70 of the first 73 laps. But a four-tire pit stop on Lap 74 -- when most other lead-lap cars took two tires -- left Earnhardt mired in traffic, and he was unable to return to the front of the field. Nevertheless, the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet finished 10th and gained one position to fourth in the Sprint Cup standings, 18 points behind leader Greg Biffle. "We didn't keep up with the race track," said Earnhardt, who led a career-low 52 laps last year. "The car was really fast at the start of the race. I didn't give that information to [crew chief] Steve [Letarte]. I don't think I gave him a good enough understanding of where our race car was, even though it was really fast. The track got really tight on us at the end of the race -- something that I should have had a handle on and should have known better and should have not let happen. "We just didn't have our adjustments going throughout the day to keep up with the track as it tightened up on us. The [car] was really good all weekend. We had good speed. Hopefully, we can keep bringing cars like that to the race track, and we'll get some opportunities to win." Dale Earnhardt Jr. itching to get going after lackluster Phoenix Coming off what he considered a somewhat lackluster day at Phoenix International Raceway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. arrived at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday ready to get into a race car. It had only been five days since he had strapped into his Hendrick Motorsports car, but Earnhardt Jr. said he itched to get going. “I’m just ready to work – I’m ready to race,” Earnhardt Jr. said prior to practice at the track. “It seems like it’s been a month.” It’s not surprising that the Hendrick Motorsports driver wants to get back in a car. He wants to put the Phoenix 14th-place finish – a better finish than the way he ran during the race – behind him. He comes to a track where he finished eighth last year, a key moment in his relationship with then-new crew chief Steve Letarte. “We come in here pretty confident,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “This is where we sort of put our best foot forward last year and we feel pretty confident – just ready to get going. We struggled all weekend last year and for whatever reason, hit on something for the race. “We won’t panic if things aren’t really going our way [Friday] or going on into [Saturday] morning. We would like to see some good results and get it in qualifying because we need to improve that package from last year.” Things went Earnhardt Jr.'s way Friday as he posted the fourth-fastest speed in qualifying for a solid starting spot Sunday in the Kobalt Tools 400. "We showed up really good off the trailer and we were real good with our speed and real happy," Earnhardt Jr. said. "The run was a good run. I’m pretty happy with how we ended up. We struggled in qualifying last year and wanted to work on that this year, and this is a good result so hopefully we’re making some gains there.” Earnhardt Jr. has a little more confidence in the Vegas car just because of the tire. He put some of the blame on the tire Goodyear brought to Phoenix, a newly paved and reconfigured 1-mile oval. “Phoenix is a bit of an anomaly because the tire … is not a short-track tire really or not a tire that I would use there,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It made for a very difficult car to drive and it made for a very narrow window as far as how close you could hit the setup.” The bottom line is that Earnhardt Jr. believes his team should field a better car than it did last week, where he qualified 29th, cracked the top 20 during the race and took advantage of some others running out of fuel near the end. He will need to run better if he wants to maintain or improve his fifth-place spot in the Cup standings. “We should run better than that,” he said. “Even on our bad days, we should be able to be a little more competitive than we were and we did get fortunate to finish where we did because we really weren’t that strong all day long. “I finished ahead of some cars that had beat us all day long.” Dale Earnhardt Jr. adds wrecked Montoya car to collection A (mangled) piece of racing history has landed in the woods surrounding Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s property in Cleveland, N.C. Thanks to a familiar connection, NASCAR's most popular driver recently acquired the destroyed Juan Pablo Montoya's No. 42 Chevrolet that famously slammed into a jet dryer under caution during the Feb. 27 Daytona 500. Collecting crashed race cars is a hobby of Earnhardt's, and the latest addition is the only one that's caused a fiery on-track explosion and a two-hour delay in NASCAR's biggest race. And when Earnhardt found it through Chris Heroy, a former Hendrick Motorsports engineer who is the first-year crew chief for Montoya, he jumped on getting it imprecisely added to his car graveyard, adjacent to his backyard replica Western town known as Whisky River. "I got about 50 or 60 cars out there, and I didn't buy any of them," Earnhardt boasted Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "(Heroy) calls me, and I get my property manager to go over there and load it up and bring it over. "We get a forklift or a tractor with a forklift or frontend loader and just carry it into the woods and just set it out there somewhere." Earnhardt said the car ranked in "the top two or three" among his prized collection of twisted sheet metal. Could the jet dryer be next item to summoned to his wooded acreage? "I'd like to have it, but I don't know where it is. Probably somewhere in Daytona or NASCAR might be studying it somewhere, who knows," Earnhardt said. "I think we'll just stick to race cars out there." Dale Earnhardt Jr. looking for another boost at bumpy Las Vegas Dale Earnhardt Jr. entered 2012 just as he has entered every season since joining Hendrick Motorsports five years ago – looking to snap a long winless streak and get off to a solid start so he can make the Chase For The Sprint Cup. He hasn’t found victory lane this year (and hasn’t since 2008), but Earnhardt Jr. sits fifth in the standings after a second-place finish at Daytona and a 14th last week at Phoenix. Now he heads back to the track that jumpstarted his 2011 rebound. He finished eighth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2012, a second consecutive top-10 finish that put him in the top 10 in points, where he stayed for 32 of the remaining 33 weeks after two seasons finishing outside the top 20. “We ran good at Vegas last year and did well on the intermediate tracks, so we feel pretty good going in,” Earnhardt Jr. said in his team news release. “The team definitely wants to go there and put on a good run. I like the race track, I like racing there, and it’s a good area, too. It’s a fast track and has a lot of bumps, but it’s a fun track.” Having fun to Earnhardt Jr. is important, and he appears excited after the first two races of the season. “I don’t see his attitude being any different than any other year,” Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon said last week. “He comes into every season pumped up and excited and optimistic, just like everyone else. “I think that their finish at Daytona definitely adds a little to that, so his confidence I think is good and strong right now, especially after coming off of a decent year last year.” The Las Vegas track represents the first intermediate track of the season. Of the 26 races that comprise the regular season, nine are at 1.5-mile or 2-mile tracks while five of the 10 Chase races are at intermediate tracks. “It’s an area we put a tremendous amount of effort on last year,” said crew chief Steve Letarte, who is in his second year working with Earnhardt Jr. “Las Vegas is one of the races that really catapulted our season. “We went out there, and we didn’t run great, but we ran solidly in the top 10, which gave the No. 88 team momentum last year that we can compete with the guys that are winning races. We feel that right now, and we’re excited to get to Las Vegas and showcase the equipment we’ve been working on.” Letarte will bring the car that most recently finished 11th at Homestead-Miami Speedway last year. “The unique part of Las Vegas is turns 1 and 2 are a little bumpy at the bottom, but the top is a little bit smoother,” Letarte said. “It’s very hard to get through there consistently and be good in [turns] 3 and 4. “Traffic is usually very tight in Las Vegas and the wind can be a factor there so you have a lot of things that play into it. It’s a hard place because you only go there once a year so your notes are from a long time ago.” Hendrick cars look for big rebound in Phoenix It was a strange Speedweeks for Hendrick Motorsports. In the end, amid what driver Jeff Gordon called "the carnage" of eight damaged or completely ruined race cars, it was left to Dale Earnhardt Jr. to carry the banner of HMS. And he and his No. 88 Chevrolet race team were left to do it alone. They did well, too, with Earnhardt coming home in second behind Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth. Earnhardt also finished second in his Gatorade Duel that preceded the 500 at Daytona International Speedway. So while his usually stout Hendrick Motorsports teammates were struggling to keep their cars on the track, Earnhardt experienced a serenity of sorts that has often escaped him in recent seasons. "It was weird," Earnhardt said from Phoenix International Raceway, where qualifying was held Saturday for this Sunday's Subway Fresh Fit 500. "That was one of the calmest, most stress-free [Speedweeks] I've ever been a part of. We didn't do a lot of practicing, we didn't really put ourselves through a lot of work. We just kind of kept the car together and got through the races in one piece. It was amazing to me how low stress it was." His teammates could not say the same. The trouble started when Jeff Gordon's No. 24 was collected in an accident in practice for the Bud Shootout. One day later, Gordon's car ended up getting flipped in a horrific accident in the Shootout itself. The Hendrick troubles didn't slow there. Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevy also suffered damage during the Shootout and Kasey Kahne finished three laps down in that race because of damage to his No. 5 Chevy. Then Kahne wrecked during a Daytona 500 practice session, killing another car. In the 500 race itself, Johnson got taken out in a wreck after completing just one lap and the engine blew in Gordon's car on Lap 81 of what turned out to be a 202-lap event -- taking out two more HMS cars. Kahne got caught up in an accident on Lap 189 that completed the carnage and brought the final total of damaged or totally ruined Hendrick race cars to eight for all of Speedweeks. "I've never seen so much equipment torn up as what we saw this last [Speedweeks] at Daytona. It was incredible," Gordon said. "That's just the tight racing, competitiveness, how easy it is to make a little mistake and cause a lot of carnage and take you out of a race." Then there was Earnhardt. He put nary a scratch on his No. 88 Chevy through the entire Speedweeks and turned heads with his runner-up finish to race winner Matt Kenseth in the 500. "You always know that Junior is going to be strong at Daytona, so it was great to see him finish [second]," Gordon said. "It was unfortunate that it was him up against the two Roush [Fenway Racing] Fords there because he didn't have a lot of support there to have a chance at beating those guys at the end. "I think really even as strong as [those Fords] were, I think that our cars were strong enough to battle with those guys. It would have been nice to be up there to give him some more support and be able to work together to try to win that race. It was still a great effort by him." Earnhardt said he just isn't sure what it means for the bigger picture that is a 36-race schedule. He said he'll know more after this weekend at PIR, a 1-mile track where he won twice before it was recently reconfigured. "Yeah, Daytona really doesn't show what we're capable of," said Earnhardt, whose seventh-place finish in the final point standings last year was his highest since 2006. "We ran good and that's good for our confidence. But we'll see how we can make that work for us the next couple of weeks. I'd like to win here. I've won some races here at Phoenix." If practice times mean anything, Earnhardt was left with a mixed bag following Friday's only two Cup practices. He improved in the second and final practice, with his fastest lap of 137.636 miles per hour ranking 11th on the speed chart [and still only third among the Hendrick drivers, with Gordon fifth and Johnson seventh]. But he was the slowest of all the Hendrick drivers in the first practice, when he ranked just 31st on the chart. Gordon said it was neat to see Earnhardt come so close to winning in Daytona. He admitted he would like to see him close the deal completely soon -- not just for Earnhardt's own sake but for the overall good of the sport. "I think that obviously being as popular as he is and the attention being on him win or lose, when he wins it's a positive for the sport," Gordon said. "But I don't see his attitude being any different than any other year. He comes into every season pumped up and excited and optimistic just like everyone else. "I think that their finish at Daytona definitely adds a little to that, so his confidence I think is good and strong right now -- especially after coming off of a decent year last year. I think right now if you look at what happened last year with the Chase and the championship and all the excitement that happened in Daytona -- Junior finishing second and the great battle, Danica [Patrick], the great ball of flames, it all got a lot of attention. There's a lot of momentum with the sport right now. Whatever is going to keep that momentum going, I'm all for it. I hope it's a win from the 24 car that can keep it going, but if it's the 88 and 24 then OK, I'll take that, too." At end of 500, two cars weren't better than one For two weeks, they said, the tandem would win the race. Despite the fans' disdain for it, despite NASCAR's attempts to deemphasize it, drivers in the sport's premier division seemed almost certain that at the end, a two-car draft would be what claimed the Daytona 500. In the final laps early Tuesday morning, those two cars belonged to Greg Biffle and Dale Earnhardt Jr. So Earnhardt's No. 88 hooked up with the back end of Biffle's No. 16 in a green-white-checkered restart -- and the tandem draft still couldn't catch eventual winner Matt Kenseth, who claimed his second title in the Great American Race. "This new package really didn't come down to tandem racing at the end," Earnhardt said. "I mean, me and Greg were pushing like heck and we couldn't get to Matt. So they have definitely made some strides in trying to make that not the definite way to win in a Sprint Cup level." The tandem certainly seemed to be the difference-maker in last weekend's Budweiser Shootout, when Kyle Busch used the slingshot around Tony Stewart in a final-lap, two-man duel to claim the exhibition season opener. Yet a similar situation didn't play out in the rain-postponed Daytona 500, in which Kenseth led the final 38 laps. As it had shown in winning the second of two 150-mile qualifiers on Thursday, the No. 17 car was just too strong. "Even on them restarts when Dale Jr. tried to push me, I tried to give him air and stay with him, but our car just ran so good, he couldn't quite keep up and stay attached to us," Kenseth said. "So I had to make other moves to keep the momentum up. I think when you come to plate racing, a huge, huge percentage of it is the car and how fast the car is. But I think Thursday was really good for us, because we learned some things in them last few laps that I think probably helped a little bit [Monday]." Still, the drivers behind Kenseth were surprised they couldn't make up ground. "Once we got straight, I pushed the gas down, I thought that we'd drive up on the back of the No. 17 without a problem," Biffle said. "It must have just pushed enough air out in front of my car that it pushed the No. 17 car out about five, six feet in front of me, and I couldn't get any closer. I thought, well, I need to get out from behind him because then we'll be able to go by him. So on the back stretch I moved up a little bit, and Matt is not stupid. We had no run at him. We were all going the same speed." When Biffle moved over, Kenseth did the same. In retrospect, Biffle said he probably should have slowed down to try and put some distance between him and Kenseth, so he and Earnhardt could pair up and try to make a run at the leader. "Then we could have moved up beside him coming off the corner, and then Junior and I would have had to dice it out to the line," he said. "That's probably what I should have done, is just anchored down the brakes down the backstretch and put distance in between us. [That's] the only way we probably would have got a run at him. But I thought for sure I didn't need to do that. Of course, Monday morning quarterback, I'd do it now, but I didn't think I needed to. I thought [Earnhardt would] shove me right up to his back bumper. He had all night. I had no doubt it would happen then." But it didn't, and instead it gave the impression that Biffle was blocking for his Roush Fenway teammate. Earnhardt, who eventually overtook Biffle for second place, didn't see it that way. "This is the Daytona 500, and I don't know what it pays, but it's a lot of money. And his team, I know that they're teammates, but his group of guys that specifically work on that car or travel down here to pit the car during the race, his crew chief, Greg himself, they work way too hard to decide to run second in a scenario like that," Earnhardt said. "I'm pretty sure that if I know Greg, and ... if he had an opportunity to get around Matt and had a chance to win the Daytona 500, he would have took it immediately. He's trying to do what he could do. If I were him, I can't imagine what his game plan was in his head, but if I were him, I would have tried to let me push him by and then pull down in front of Matt, and force Matt to be my pusher and then leave the No. 88 for the dogs. But that didn't work out." It didn't for either of them. And although Earnhardt seemed pleased with his Daytona 500 run early Tuesday morning, he knew at some point the internal second-guessing would begin. "I'm very happy," he said. "I'm really in a good place. I'm not frustrated at all, I promise. I'm in a great mood. I run second here a lot, though, so I know I don't feel it right now, but I know later [Tuesday] and [Wednesday] and the rest of the week it's going to eat at me what I could have done to win the race. So that is kind of frustrating." Junior's confidence on the rise at Daytona Dale Earnhardt Jr. left Daytona frustrated and furious last July. One of his favorite tracks, the place forever linked to his family name, had become a bore. Junior disliked every aspect of the newfangled tandem racing at NASCAR’s superspeedways: the blind pushing, the feeling of not being in total control and the need for constant communication. “It was a foolish freakin’ race,” he said after a 19th-place finish. His outlook has changed considerably since. Between some NASCAR-mandated changes, results during testing and 54 wild laps in the exhibition Budweiser Shootout, Earnhardt’s concerns have been alleviated. Now, he might even be considered a front-runner heading into Thursday’s qualifying race and Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500. “I do feel like I have a better shot at winning in this current style of racing,” Earnhardt said Wednesday. “I do feel more confident than I did coming down here and tandem drafting. I never felt really great about that. It is a completely different style of racing and it’s not what I enjoyed. “I definitely feel better about this.” Still, Earnhardt and others believe tandem racing in the final laps will determine the outcome in the qualifying races and “The Great American Race.” But not having to push, pull, sweat and swap for 200 laps around the high-banked track means everything to NASCAR’s most popular driver—and maybe even more fun to his legion of fans. After all, Earnhardt won the 2004 Daytona 500 and has a dozen other victories at NASCAR’s most storied track. It’s also the place where his father, seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt, won 34 races and died on the final lap in the 2001 opener. So Daytona has become synonymous with the Earnhardt legacy. It will always be an important place for Junior, for better or worse. He knows it, and so does everyone around him. And now that the racing has returned, at least in part, to the pack style Junior enjoys and seems to thrive in—it was just two years ago that he stormed through the field on the final lap and finished second to Jamie McMurray in a thrilling finish—it only makes sense that he would be a favorite again. Nonetheless, he knows he needs good fortune to stay out front. “I really wouldn’t know what to tell you do to as far a series of moves or what kind of mind-set to have,” said Earnhardt, whose winless streak is at 129 races. “There is no sure strategy that is going to keep you out of a wreck or having you lead the race off turn four. You just have to go throughout the race and hope you continue to make every decision right, kind of like a line of dominos; you just hope everyone that falls hits the next one. “Eventually, you come off the last corner and you are in position to try to make that last decision that is going to win the race. That is about it. I think you just have to have good instinct about drafting and what is happening around you. … You have to be really selfish and always want to help yourself and always do what is going to help you, which is really not my personality, but for whatever reason I’m pretty good at it. Hopefully it will work out for us.” It worked to perfection in 2004, a victory Earnhardt still savors nearly a decade later. He vividly remembers the raucous celebration in Victory Lane, the unremitting adulation from fans and media, and the flattering comparisons to his late father. “I had no idea what winning that race would feel like until I won it,” Junior said. “I didn’t know what to compare that to. When you win that race, it is really hard to explain. All the things that you want out of life and all the pressures you put on yourself or you feel from other people, all the things you want to accomplish; everybody sort of has this mountain in front of them that they put in front of themselves that they want to climb. “For a moment, or for a day, you are at the top of that mountain.” Nothing else matters, he said. Little things that can be bothersome are distant memories. “You just feel like you have realized your full potential,” he said. “Everything is sort of just maxed out for the day. All the things that you wanted to achieve. Obviously you set a lot of goals for yourself, and that is just one of the goals. But just for a moment, just for that one day, whether it is 30 minutes or an hour after you cross that finish line, you feel like it can’t get any better than this.“It is a pretty incredible emotion. I feel so lucky to have had that opportunity to experience it. It is such a special moment.” Those memories come flooding back every time he sees a replay of the race, especially the celebration. He would love to create a second version Sunday. And considering that pack racing is back, he has as good a chance as anyone. “Some of the greatest drivers come through this sport and don’t win it,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem right, but only certain ones get that opportunity.” Dale Earnhardt Jr. says winless streak cost Hendrick $1M Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday his extended losing streak has cost Hendrick Motorsports $1 million in bonus money, a figure that gnaws at NASCAR's most popular driver. The 129-race streak, which dates to a race at Michigan International Speedway in June 2008, disqualified Earnhardt's No. 88 car from NASCAR's Winners' Circle contingency program, which offers team bonus money for winning races. Earnhardt's winless seasons in 2009 and 2010 kept the team from claiming the 2011 bonus. "I just want to win anywhere," Earnhardt said before practice for the Daytona 500. "I just want to get it done." Earnhardt, who will start second in Thursday's first of two Gatorade Duels (2 p.m. ET, Speed), twin 150-mile races that set the field for Sunday's Daytona 500, won the Great American Race in 2004. "Every time I see a replay of me and my crew celebrating below the flag stand, it all comes back so clearly," said Earnhardt, an 18-time winner in Sprint Cup who finished seventh in the points standings a year ago. "Every time I see it I just think about how fortunate I was to have won that race. Some of the greatest drivers come through this sport and don't win it. It just doesn't seem right. Only certain ones get to see that opportunity." Dale Earnhardt Jr. won't lay back in Daytona 500, more comfortable with pack racing Dale Earnhardt Jr. spent the last two restrictor-plate races hanging out in the rear of the field, trying to avoid the wrecks and waiting to make his move. The strategy allowed him to make it to the final lap of the race but was far from a winning one. He ended up being involved in a wreck on the final lap at Daytona and couldn’t draft his way to the front with teammate Jimmie Johnson at Talladega. He doesn’t plan on laying back again in the Daytona 500 on Sunday at Daytona International Speedway. “I’m not good at riding in the back because I’ve never made it back to the front,” Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday prior to Sprint Cup practice. “Me and Jimmie [Johnson] tried to do that the last couple of trips when the tandem [draft] was all you did all day long and didn’t get to the front. “When it came time to get to the front, we were either not fast enough or they were too far ahead or the track was too blocked. I don’t think I’ve ever used that style and made it work for me.” The 2004 Daytona 500 winner and a six-time winner at restrictor-plate races, Earnhardt Jr. has not won a restrictor-plate race since October 2004, a span of 28 races at Daytona and Talladega. That’s not the only drought that tugs at the Hendrick Motorsports driver. Earnhardt Jr. takes a 129-race winless streak into the season’s opening race, having not won since June 2008 at Michigan. On the preseason Sprint Media Tour, the four Hendrick Motorsports drivers were challenged to produce the organization’s 200th win (Hendrick currently has 199), and Earnhardt Jr. said, “I’ll take 201, 202, 203. I’ll take any of the wins this year. I just want to win.” “I just want to win anywhere,” Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday at Daytona. “I just want to go ahead and get that done so I can think about the next one and get the streak over with and get back to victory lane. … It would help our team. It will validate what me and [crew chief] Steve [Letarte] have been trying to do the last couple of years.” Earnhardt Jr. said not having won in three seasons cost his team about $1 million last year because it was no longer eligible to participate in NASCAR’s Winner’s Circle program, which rewards recent winners with additional purse money in exchange for promotional appearances. “We need to get the zero out of the win column for us to have a great year,” crew chief Steve Letarte said. “It’s that simple.” Going into the Gatorade Duel qualifying races Thursday, Earnhardt Jr. believes he can find the right drafting partner at the right time to be a contender tomorrow and during the Daytona 500 on Sunday. NASCAR’s new restrictor-plate rules, which has created more pack racing and less tandem drafting, fits Earnhardt Jr.’s style better. He still believes a two-car draft still could break away and win the race, but says it will develop more naturally than drivers pairing off throughout the whole race. “This style, definitely I’m more comfortable with,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I’m a lot more in control of what’s happening. In the [Budweiser] Shootout, I was able to formulate a plan and get to the front and take the lead. “I would see something that I wanted to do and try to go do it and it would happen. That was a good feeling.” Earnhardt enthused about rest of Speedweeks These days, the biggest thing going on with Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s position in the Sprint Cup Series is he appreciates crew chief Steve Letarte and his men's hard work. Especially since that's placed their No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet near the front of the field. That was never more evident than after Sunday's qualifying run for the Daytona 500, when Earnhardt failed to defend his 2011 pole or sit on the front row for the third consecutive year. But he did end up third and thus, will start on the front row for Thursday's first Gatorade Duel qualifying race. "We were kind of struggling to run with [Jeff Gordon, Saturday] and we all pretty much had the same engine," Earnhardt said of his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, who qualified sixth. "We probably got a little better wind and we made some changes in our car, as well, trying to find more speed. "I've got to thank my crew for working as hard as they could, not being complacent and taking whatever they could get. They really went after it and I had a shot at the pole." On an equal level -- and probably an even more important one here at Daytona International Speedway considering how a proverbial puff of wind or slip of the steering wheel can wipe out multiple cars -- Earnhardt accepts the hand he and his 48 competitors trying to establish their positions for Sunday's Daytona 500 have been dealt. Surprisingly enough, considering his car was a potential Budweiser Shootout winner last Saturday night before someone else's miscue -- "something that happened that should not have happened," Earnhardt said -- destroyed it, Earnhardt's enjoying the current state of superspeedway racing, which he called a throwback. "I like it better [but] it can get even better than this [and] we still need to keep trying to make it even better," Earnhardt said. "It was fun to be able to be offensive and go up there and try to take the lead. I think the fans really enjoyed all the lead changes we were able to have and everybody out there being able to work on their own deal -- not really having to have a partner all the time to make something happen. "The closing rate is a little fast. Guys will go flying backwards and forwards. I think we have really made a lot of great improvements and I have more of my destiny in my hands in this type of racing." That's an interesting statement considering his disgust at what happened to him Saturday night. On Sunday he said he didn't feel the need to prepare himself for any emotional letdown getting wrecked as an innocent bystander might cause. "That's the way it's always been," Earnhardt said. "I didn't feel like we had much control over our own destinies with the package we had last year or the year before. And ever since I've been racing in restrictor-plate racing, you never know when you're going to punch your ticket and be part of the wreck. "You never know when it's going to be your turn and that's always been the way it is, so you kind of got used to that, over time. With what we saw the other night, the cars don't really handle, so everybody's really brave and that makes for a lot of accidents and really exciting racing." Earnhardt mastered the art of plate racing enough to win seven races between July 2001 and October 2004, including five-of-six in one stretch at Talladega and the 2004 Daytona 500. It definitely puts him in a position to opine on style -- particularly when it created as much destruction as witnessed Saturday night. "You don't have to move around -- you just hold your damn car where it needs to be and not drive around like an idiot," Earnhardt said of Saturday night's juking and jiving that created three multi-car wrecks and wiped out half the starting field. "If you want to drive your car in a straight line and be sensible it is possible [not to wreck]. "There is no chaos out there. Yes, there are guys moving around, but it's not necessary. They are not doing it because they are hot or there are problems with their engine running hot or anything like that. They are just having a good time. Everybody is enjoying it." Other than the fans whose favorites' cars were lying, wasted, in the garage that might be a fair assessment of fandom's take on the current style of racing. Earnhardt's locked rock-solid on how he feels about it, based on how his 54 laps in the Shootout went. "I felt like I was doing a good job [Saturday night], I had control of my race and had potential to win the race if I made all the right moves -- that is all I can ask for," Earnhardt said. "I like this kind of racing better. At least I know what to expect. I feel like I have a better chance with this style than I did last year for damn sure." And that includes his next race Thursday. As wild as the Shootout's action was and as much as is at stake this weekend, Earnhardt didn't predict any let-off Thursday given the confidence his starting spot gives him. "Starting on that front row gives you that kind of feeling," Earnhardt said. "[Starting] third on back, you feel like you need to race because somebody's going to try to take your third starting spot in the 500 if that is where we were to end up. Somebody's out there to take it from you in those qualifying races so you have to run hard. "We're just going to try to go hard because we've got great race cars and we've tried to take care of them and be careful and that's not worked, so we're going to go back to racing. Rick [Hendrick} said he's paid a lot of money to see us up front -- not running around in the back [laughing]." And for better or worse Earnhardt, whose primary 2011 Daytona 500 car was wrecked less than 20 minutes into Wednesday's practice, forecasts the same as what everyone saw last Saturday, this Sunday in the Great American Race. "A lot of the same [though] maybe being 500 miles guys might use a little better judgment -- but I wouldn't count on it," Earnhardt said. "It is a heavy duty race, a pretty big deal to win and it's going to be a lot of guys pretty excited about their prospects of winning it. Still, pretty much any car can win. The lottery's still there for the whole field [so] we will just see how it works out." Dale Earnhardt Jr. still frustrated with Daytona rules, anxious to control his own destiny There was a time when no one looked forward to racing at Daytona more than Dale Earnhardt Jr. Not anymore. Earnhardt Jr., who still is frustrated with NASCAR’s restrictor-plate rules, admits he is more anxious to get to Phoenix or Bristol or other unrestricted tracks than he is racing in Saturday’s Budweiser Shootout and the Daytona 500 next week. “Daytona, this is probably the worst odds for me all year because of the way the racing is here,” Earnhardt Jr. said at NASCAR Media Day Thursday. “This is going to be a fun experience, but I’m looking forward to getting to Phoenix and the rest of the tracks to start getting control of my destiny and trying to make some things happen for me and win some races. “This is race is going to be fun and this weekend will be enjoyable, but I am looking forward to going to Phoenix because I know I have better odds there. I look forward to going to tracks where I’m driving the car and I can make a difference.” NASCAR has been trying to eliminate or reduce the two-car draft, which became prevalent in the restrictor-plate races in recent years. It tried a bevy of new rules during preseason testing at Daytona and finally settled on a package that includes a smaller spoiler, softer rear springs, smaller restrictor-plate holes and changes to the radiators and cooling systems to cause the cars to overheat quicker. Earnhardt Jr. credits NASCAR for working hard on the changes, but says he still has no idea what to expect. “I don’t know what is going to happen in the Daytona 500 and I don’t even have a clue what the racing is going to be like right now, and that’s kind of frustrating but that’s just the way it is,” he said. “Right now, I have no knowledge and it is frustrating as a driver to go into a situation like that. Everything we are going to have to learn we are going to have to learn really fast in just a few hours of practice.” Earnhardt Jr. says NASCAR is moving in the right direction, however. “NASCAR has been working really hard trying to put it back into the drivers' hands and give the drivers control of their destiny instead of pairing up and trying to take care of each other out there on the race track,” he said. “You want to be stubborn and look out for yourself only, so they are trying to go that direction. “I give them a lot of credit for trying really hard and making a lot of good changes. We’ll see. Everybody has got to be anticipating and it’s got to be exciting for everybody, fans, media, anticipating what is going to happen.” The racing at Daytona changed after NASCAR repaved the track after the pothole fiasco in the 2010 Daytona 500. The new, smoother asphalt created more grip, which allowed two-car tandems to run faster than big packs of traffic. Earnhardt Jr. says he would have never advocated the track being repaved had he known it would lead to this kind of racing. “Carl Edwards was right,” he said. “He’s the one who said they shouldn’t have repaved it. Maybe they should have just paved a few spots. I didn’t like it as rough as it was, but I really, really loved the lack of grip.” Earnhardt Jr., who won the 2004 Daytona 500 and the July race at Daytona in 2001, said he prefers the racing from 2001-'04 at Daytona. “Those races were awesome, the Gatorade Duels, in 2001, were spectacular. That’s the kind of racing we want,” he said. Right now, he believes the Daytona 500 is ripe for another upset. He says practically anybody can win under the new rules. “Everybody, at least 35 have a good shot at it,” he said. “You just don’t know who is going to come off Turn 4 battling for this thing anymore.” Dale Earnhardt Jr. wonders how he let Tony Eury Sr. leave as his crew chief at DEI One of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s most notable moves as the owner of JR Motorsports was hiring Tony Eury Sr. as competition director and crew chief. Not only is Eury Sr. his uncle, but Earnhardt Jr. certainly wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Asked recently what he felt were the biggest mistakes of his career, Earnhardt Jr. pointed to Eury Sr. being replaced by Pete Rondeau as his crew chief during the 2004-2005 offseason at Dale Earnhardt Inc. Eury Sr. and Earnhardt Jr. had combined for 15 victories in his first five Cup seasons. Eury Sr. also had been the crew chief for both of Earnhardt Jr.’s championship seasons in what was then called the Busch Series. But after a six-win season in 2004, DEI officials wanted to move Eury Sr. into a management role and Earnhardt Jr. gave the move his blessing. “I was just ignorant, man, just naïve,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I didn’t realize what I had. I had a great team around me, had a great leader. I thought I knew more than everybody else around me and I didn’t.” Rondeau didn’t last a full season with Earnhardt Jr., and Steve Hmiel took the role on an interim basis (and won a race) before Tony Eury Jr. took over as crew chief. Earnhardt Jr. worked with Eury Jr. for two years at DEI and then a little more than a year at Hendrick Motorsports. Eury Jr., who won two races with Earnhardt Jr., is now a co-owner and crew chief at JR Motorsports. How did Eury Sr. get replaced as his crew chief? Earnhardt Jr. just shakes his head. “We had won a lot of races and did really well,” said Earnhardt Jr. “I think that year we had won six races. So for whatever reason, we split up and I feel like I had a lot of responsibility in that decision and I regret doing that because he was good.” While he possibly could blame the people making the decisions – his stepmother, Teresa, owned the team and Ty Norris was running the operations – Earnhardt Jr. wouldn’t go down that road. “I was in the meetings with the other people at DEI and talked myself into being in favor of it in one way or another over the months that we went over this,” said Earnhardt Jr., who hired Eury Sr. at JRM in July 2007. “I felt like that definitely was a mistake. I’m not putting it on anybody’s shoulders. I’m taking my responsibility for part of that decision.” Top 20 Countdown: No. 12 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2011 finish: 7th Our 2012 predictions: • Jay Hart: 11th • Jay Busbee: 11th • Nick Bromberg: 14th • Geoffrey Miller: 14th Crew chief: Steve Letarte Offseason action: Gained Diet Mountain Dew as a new primary sponsor to go along with National Guard. 2012 outlook: Fifty-two. That’s how many laps Dale Earnhardt Jr. led last season. That’s six fewer than Joey Logano, a third as many as Martin Truex Jr. and 3 percent of Kyle Busch’s total. Why bring this up? Because if Junior is to snap his 129-race winless streak, he needs to put himself in position to win, and aside from Martinsville (1) and Charlotte (1), he didn’t do that often enough in 2011. And if momentum counts for anything, the news isn’t good for Earnhardt. From June 19 on (a span of 22 races), Junior had just four top 10s and only a single top-five finish. This late-season swoon is right on course with a disturbing pattern (if you’re in Earnhardt’s camp) since he joined Hendrick Motorsports. In four seasons with HMS, Junior has notched 41 top-10 finishes. Of those, only 12 have come in the second half of the season. There is little doubt Junior will come out firing on all cylinders. He’ll be in the mix to win the Daytona 500 and likely notch enough solid finishes early on to put him into Chase contention no matter what he does during the summer months. The question is whether or not he can sustain his effort throughout the course of a 36-race season. The key may just be getting back to victory lane – and soon. Because while Junior says he is relaxed heading into this season and insists he and crew chief Steve Letarte gained a mountain of information in 2011 (their first year working together) that will help them in 2012, the winless streak still weighs on him. It’s as if he enters every season full of positivity, but every additional loss sucks some of that out of him. By midseason, he’s left completely dry. His tank is once again full, but to keep it that way and avoid another second-half meltdown he must get to victory lane – fast. Point of interest: When asked if Junior’s winless streak hurts the sport, Brian France replied, “It hurts. It hurts. He is trying to win and get his team to have the confidence to not only win one but rip off more. He did improve and made the Chase. He’s a big franchise. He’s the most popular driver in NASCAR, so it would help us if he would win.” 2011 statistics Finish Poles Wins Top 5 Top 10 7 1 0 4 12 Priority shift: Letarte's willingness to push has led to a more garage-anchored Earnhardt Prior to his pairing with crew chief Steve Letarte last season, the life of Dale Earnhardt Jr., at least at the track on race weekends, was quite simple. The philosophy, in a nutshell, was to show up and drive. That is all. Letarte changed that when he moved over to sit upon the pit box of the No. 88 Chevrolet Earnhardt drives for Hendrick Motorsports. Having helped guide veteran Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon to five consecutive Chase berths as Gordon's crew chief, Letarte had a certain way of going about his business that was unlike anything Earnhardt had previously experienced. "I never really had anybody ask that much of me as far as a crew chief goes," Earnhardt said recently at the HMS shop. "They were more like, 'Just be there with your helmet when it's time to drive, and be ready to drive.' But he's asked me to do other things separate from the driving job itself. He's got expectations of what he wants me to do as a driver that help him be a better crew chief." What has been required of Earnhardt is more of a full-time commitment to the team. He fills out post-race forms just like team engineers do, describing what he believed was going on with the car during certain stages of a race. He sits in on more team meetings -- sometimes morning, afternoon and night in between on-track practices. The public perception often has been that Letarte is a good fit for Earnhardt because the upbeat Letarte is such an open cheerleader in interviews and on the team radio during races. But it turns out his most important attribute is as taskmaster. Upon becoming Earnhardt's crew chief, he told his driver bluntly that he expected Earnhardt to arrive at the job long before his first practice run and be prepared to stay late on days at the track. "He wanted me there early," Earnhardt said. "I was grumbling about it at first, but he just said, 'That's the way it is, man.' ... As soon as I got to the truck in the morning, I never left until the day was over with. I never did that my entire career until [last] year. I would go back to my bus in between practices. I was never there early, or did any of those things in the 10 years before that." Letarte chuckled when told of Earnhardt's self-admission about grumbling. "I guess I didn't even care about his grumbling, because I didn't even have to sell [the idea to him]. I just told him, 'This is the schedule. This is how we're going to go about our business.' He never really grumbled to me," Letarte said. "He was there; he was there on time and ready to work. I appreciate that about him. He's the ultimate professional -- and from everything I've seen, I would expect him to continue being the ultimate professional. "He's a huge part of the team. He's the only guy in the car, and we need him to be a part of it. He's never said anything but 'Sure, I'll be there.' And he's always said it with a smile on his face." The payoff The hard work paid dividends as Earnhardt made the Chase last year for the first time since 2008 -- the first year he drove for Hendrick -- and finished seventh in the final point standings, his highest finish since fifth in 2006 when he was still driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc. Team owner Rick Hendrick, who orchestrated the move to have Letarte become Earnhardt's crew chief, insisted that the Letarte-Earnhardt duo has barely scratched the surface of their true dual potential. "Nothing surprised me, but I never realized what a cheerleader Stevie could be -- or how much Junior could take tough love. Stevie knew just when to deliver that, and when to put his arm around him," Hendrick said. "I think a lot of the other guys were scared of him, and so they would hold it in and then get mad and say something, and then Junior would get mad and we didn't go anywhere. "But now Stevie knows exactly when he can pull that trigger, or just riding to the races with him and just how to work on him in more relaxed settings like that. I give Stevie a tremendous amount of credit. They haven't shown their true potential yet, but I think you'll see it this year. The communication, the confidence level ... I just wish we had put them together earlier on. I had no way of knowing it would be as good as it is." And what exactly does Hendrick see as their "true potential?" As good as they were together last year, they never won a race. Earnhardt still hasn't won since June of 2008 at Michigan, carrying a 129-race winless streak into this season that has to wear on the driver like a set of bad tires that he wishes could have been changed hundreds of pit stops ago. "I just feel like they'll win races and they'll be back in the Chase. I think they'll be better than they were last year," Hendrick said. "They made a huge step last year from where they were. We hit on some things at the end of the year that they really liked. It's amazing how close these cars can be, but then how different some of the setups need to be from driver to driver. Sometimes it takes a while to get all of that to fall into place. "I just feel like the relationship between those two ... Stevie is not going to lay down; he's not going to accept Junior not being [a true pro]. And Junior needs that confidence that his crew chief is doing what he needs to do, and not slacking off because Junior's maybe in a bad mood or he doesn't want to do what the crew chief wants him to do that day. Stevie, that just rolls right off his shoulders. He doesn't care about that. The mutual respect is unbelievable there." What's next? Letarte said one of the keys to his developing such a trusting relationship with Earnhardt so quickly is that he refused to buy into anyone else's perception of the situation before he stepped in to form his own opinions. Even though he had worked at Hendrick since 1995, when he was only 16 years old, and obviously knew a great deal about Earnhardt, Letarte's first opinion was that you never really know a man until you get close to him. "I personally never asked anyone their opinion of Dale Jr., nor did I listen to anything about him that was ever offered to me," Letarte said. "I went to Dale Jr. and introduced myself as if we had never met, and we started the process with a completely blank slate. So I had no expectations of what he would be like, and I think he's been great. ... I had no other expectations other than my expectations of his commitment and what I expected him to do as a race car driver. But I had no other expectations based on past history. "In my opinion, when you line up on Sunday with 43 cars on the grid, what you did yesterday or last week or even how many championships you've won, it doesn't matter. Forty-three guys have a chance to win the race." As it so happened , Letarte and Earnhardt became fast friends away from the track as well as clicking as coworkers on it. "It's just very easy to spend time around him, and I think he thinks the same of me," Letarte said. "We get along really well. We're friends. He spends time with me and my family. He respects what's important to me, and I respect what's important to him. We have a level of respect between us that all great friendships are built upon, and I think we have one. "It's very hard to go into battle with someone when you don't have a great foundation. I don't think you have to be friends, but you have to respect one another. Fortunately, we are friends -- but we also respect one another. I never question his desire; I hope he never questions mine. That allows us to go into battle and when things get tough, we can be very matter of fact about what the issue is -- and not have to work through a whole bunch of other mud to get there." Earnhardt added simply, "We seemed to really click right from the get-go." As for this year, they'll again play summer basketball together -- Earnhardt is a "decent shooting guard" and the much taller Letarte more of an inside force. They'll also probably cook out once or twice and hang out. But in between all that, and much more importantly, they expect to be more competitive than ever on the race track. Earnhardt said he's even looking forward to those early-morning skull sessions in the garage on race weekends. "I understood once we got to doing it that I found that place enjoyable and that I wanted to be there," Earnhardt said. "It's been good. He's an easy guy to be around. None of this works is he doesn't have the right personality. He deserves a lot of credit. He took on a tough job here; it's a tough little gig for him. But he's done well with it so far. "I don't ask a whole lot of him other than not to change. The guy he was last year was perfect. The more of that, the better." Dale Earnhardt Jr. relaxed, confident but still looking to snap winless streak As Dale Earnhardt Jr. entered his interview session during this year’s Sprint Media Tour, he had a much different outlook than a year earlier. In 2011, he was coming off his second consecutive year in which he failed to finish in the top 20 in the Sprint Cup standings. He also knew that not only would the media ask him about his struggles, but also want to talk about the 10-year anniversary of his father’s death. Now a year later, Earnhardt Jr. is coming off a season in which he didn’t win but at least finished seventh in the standings. “I didn’t know what we would talk about today,” Earnhardt Jr. said with a laugh. “I felt like we wouldn’t have anything to discuss other than the typical thing that you might ask everybody – how you get better.” Well, so how does Earnhardt Jr. get better coming off a season where he posted four top-five and 12 top-10 finishes? “You never really know what to change, what to do better,” he said. “You’re going to drive. Guys are going to work. How to beat the best team in the sport, when you look at what you’ve got, nothing really stands out that this is what you’re missing. “You just kind of keep trying. Talent evolves in this sport, technology evolves in this sport and teams are good and somebody else comes and takes their spot. Hopefully we’re the next guys that go in that spot. That’s about all you can hope for.” The way to get better is to win a race. Earnhardt Jr. has not won since a June 2008 race at Michigan, a span of 129 races. He came close in 2011, with late leads at Martinsville and Charlotte but didn’t get it done. Kevin Harvick had a better car at the end of Martinsville and Earnhardt Jr. ran out of gas on the final lap at Charlotte while leading. It still was what many considered a successful year, his first with crew chief Steve Letarte. “We definitely took a step in the right direction with the changes we made last year,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I don’t know what our potential is past that, but we’re going to work hard to see if we can find it and find more and be more competitive. We were close to winning a few races and hadn’t had that in a long time. “Working with Steve, he gave me the opportunity, whether it was our strong performance or his strategy, one way or another, he’s given me the chance I didn’t have. I felt closer to winning than I felt before.” Letarte liked the feeling of being close. He didn’t like the feeling of not getting it done. “2011 was a good year,” Letarte said. “I really, really enjoyed it. It was a really good year. I think it’s time for us now to have a great year. I think we need to get the zero out of the win column to have a great year. The relationship between Letarte and Earnhardt Jr. quickly blossomed. Letarte was able to take his driver’s feedback and make changes that helped the performance of the car. Too often in previous years, Earnhardt Jr. had difficulty improving the car throughout the race. It started as early as the third race of the season at Las Vegas, and Earnhardt Jr. immediately had more confidence than in the past. “I think I got better at being particular in my feedback,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I know I did get better in my communication with my crew chief and being particular in the problems I was facing. “In the past, I would get frustrated and my comments would be broad and generic and not assisting anyone in any real manner. I think I’m a lot more specific in, ‘Hey this is a problem, this is where I think it lies, I’ll let you think about that and work on it and I expect you’ll fix it.’ So it’s been good.” Now Earnhardt Jr. has the confidence that the team can build off of what was successful last year. They won’t enter race weekends guessing as much as they did at the start of 2011. They also started using some ideas from Kenny Francis, the former Red Bull Racing crew chief who, along with driver Kasey Kahne, joins Hendrick this season. “This past season gave us a lot of information that we’ll be able to work with,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We can go into a lot of races with a lot of expectations that we didn’t have this past year, a lot of anticipation about the cars, what we were fighting, what our problems were all race long and stuff like that.” While there’s confidence, there also is still that nagging question of when will they win and what they will do to challenge more for a championship. “There is comfort there but we have to do better,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We have to come in and we have to improve. Still there is some pressure, still some expectations that are higher than we had last year. So you feel some pressure there and some tension, but I think it’s quite positive.” That positive feeling allowed Earnhardt Jr. to spend the offseason not worrying about his team. He didn’t spend it wondering if he will ever get out of the slump. All he had to do was think about how to take what should be a competitive car to victory lane. “I’m relaxed,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I had a good offseason and I didn’t really have a whole lot of things going on. All I’ve got to think about is doing better than I did last year and are we doing what we need to do as a team to do that. … I feel closer to winning races. “I feel like the potential is there for us to make that happen, which is a good feeling, [one that] gives me a lot of confidence that this year could be the year we get it done.” Dale Earnhardt Jr. wants Steve Letarte to keep strict demands in place for 2012 When talking about how to make his 2012 season better, Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t talk about what should change but instead what shouldn’t. It might sound strange, but one of Earnhardt Jr.’s concerns going into the new season is that Steve Letarte will relax a tough love approach on the sport’s most popular driver. That tough love has helped turn around Earnhardt Jr.’s performance on the track. Team owner Rick Hendrick paired Letarte and Earnhardt Jr. beginning with 2011 after Earnhardt Jr. spent two seasons outside the top 20 in the standings. Last year, Earnhardt Jr. made the Chase For The Sprint Cup and finished seventh overall. He didn’t win a race – he hasn’t since 2008 – but Earnhardt Jr. couldn’t complain about the improvement that came when Letarte took over. “Steve was really vocal in telling me things he expected out of me that I wasn’t doing as a driver,” Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday at Hendrick Motorsports. “He saw things that I could change. He was really strict. I really liked that. “I told him, ‘I need to hear these things. I need you to hold me to a certain standard.’ … This offseason, I said, ‘We’ve been together a year and hopefully you’re not relaxed too much to where you’re less dependent on me to do those things.’ I want the same style. I want him to be a field general when it comes to managing the team.” Earnhardt Jr. would be glad to know that Letarte doesn’t plan on going soft. “If he feels he needs more structure, that’s fine,” Letarte said. “I can assure him that this is kind of who I am. The day I’m not this demanding is the day I won’t be a very good crew chief. “You have to be demanding. That’s my job.” A demanding style is the only way Letarte knows how to work as a crew chief. It’s the way he’s acted with all the drivers he’s ever been a crew chief for – all two of them, Jeff Gordon and Earnhardt Jr. “Jeff Gordon sat down in 2005 with me – I idolized the guy [because] I grew up in his race team,” Letarte said. “He made sure I knew that he expected me to treat him like any other driver on any Saturday night anywhere I would be. “So I did. I managed him as he asked me to manage him. I guess maybe it became my style.” Letarte’s style requires Earnhardt Jr. to get to the hauler earlier in the day and give detailed notes after each race weekend. Earnhardt Jr. said there are a variety of ways to be successful – he ran well for Tony Eury Sr. even though he wasn’t required to be at the hauler earlier or make detailed notes – but this is what Letarte wants. “I never really had anybody ask much of me as far as a crew chief goes – just be there with your helmet and be ready to drive when it’s time to drive,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “[Letarte’s] asked me to do other things separate to the driving job itself. “It helps him do his job better.” While he can’t pinpoint a race where he felt Letarte’s demands proved their worth, Earnhardt Jr. said it works for Letarte weekly as far as getting cars ready for the race track. “All those little things count and they matter,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Now they can go back on that stuff this year and look at those notes I provided and maybe have a better idea of what to expect for the race. “It’s all about preparation. … There’s things that happen in the races particular to the car itself that you’ll make a note of, and the next time you go back to that race track, you read those notes and go, ‘Wow we forgot to talk about this’ or ‘we can fix this.’” Letarte said Earnhardt Jr. bought into the program right away although Earnhardt Jr. said “I was grumbling about it at first” as far as being the track earlier than before. “I found that place to be enjoyable and wanted to be there,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It’s been good. He’s an easy guy to be around, too, which helps a lot. None of this works unless he has got the right personality.” Not only is Earnhardt Jr. getting to the hauler earlier in the day, he also spends more time there during the day. Part of it is that he likes hanging out with Letarte, so it doesn’t always feel like work. “As soon as I got in the truck in the morning, I never left until the day was over with,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I never did that my entire career until this year. I always went back to the bus between practices. I was never there early and never did any of those things in the 10 years I raced before that. “I don’t think it held me back. I don’t think I was realizing my full potential [though]. Maybe you can call it holding me back. He made me understand those things I thought were trivial were important to him, important to his ability to do his job.” Hendrick raises the bar after season with no title At Hendrick Motorsports, excellence is literally written on the walls -- or one of them, at least. One wall in the organization's team center is made of etched-glass blocks that contain the date and location of each of the company's 199 race victories in NASCAR's premier division. Overhead, banners hanging from the ceiling commemorate all of the team's championships, among them 10 in the Cup Series. It all combines to send a subtle but unmistakable message, that success here is measured only by being the very best. At Hendrick, nobody gets a banner or a glass block for a good points day. As understood as all that is, though, it's still somewhat jarring to hear the man in charge stand up and say it. But that's just what Rick Hendrick did Wednesday when NASCAR's preseason media tour stopped at his sprawling campus, and his reaction to a relative down year in 2011 was to make a simple pronouncement -- that a title in 2012 isn't just hoped for, but absolutely expected. It felt as if the boss had already placed an order for another banner, or cleared space in a trophy case for a sterling silver cup. "I usually hedge a little bit, but this year I'm not," Hendrick said. "I think I'm going to be real disappointed if we don't have all four cars in the Chase, and I'm going to be real disappointed if we don't win the championship." That's a strong statement even for a stop on the media tour, where the swell of optimism reaches its high-water mark, and every organization -- big or small, fully-sponsored or under-funded -- believes it has a chance. And it comes on the heels of a somewhat uneven 2011 campaign for Hendrick, one in which Jimmie Johnson had his championship streak snapped at five, Dale Earnhardt Jr. saw his winless skid continue, Mark Martin went winless in his final full-time season, and Jeff Gordon won three times but fell apart in the Chase. There were no Hendrick drivers in the top five in final points for the first time since 2000, when the team was just a three-car outfit. And the response to that is -- championship or bust? It certainly is at Hendrick, the most successful organization in modern NASCAR history, where the reaction to a down season is to raise the bar. "I think we're all culturally trained to be successful, and when we're not successful, we know we have to do something to react," said Chad Knaus, crew chief for Johnson's No. 48 car. "We've made some adjustments to the team, we've all made some adjustments as a company to go out there and do what we're supposed to do. It's not like there's a sounding bell that's rallying the troops. There's not a shotgun going off. There's nothing like a shock awareness. We just all know that we need to do better, and it's part of what we do. We're supposed to win races." The interesting thing is, this mandate of a championship in 2012 doesn't necessarily stem from shortcomings in the previous year. Oh, it's clear that efforts at Hendrick have been renewed -- preseason testing schedules are ramped up, Hendrick's mechanics and engineers have picked apart every rule change, and the owner says his organization is more prepared at this point in the year than he's ever seen before. Johnson feels rejuvenated having shed his championship obligations, and even the ultra-intense, workaholic Knaus took his first vacation in about a decade. No question, this is a team bucking in the starting gate, ready to prove that 2011 was an aberration. But Hendrick's championship expectations for this year stem not from the past, but from potential. He looks across his lineup and likes what he sees -- Johnson and Knaus angry, Gordon and crew chief Alan Gustafson clicking, Earnhardt and crew chief Steve Letarte coming off a Chase berth, newcomer Kasey Kahne and crew chief Kenny Francis making the move after a strong finish to last year. As far as the owner is concerned, there are no weaknesses, and no excuses should somebody else hoist the Sprint Cup in South Florida this November. "Looking at last year, I didn't know how Dale and Steve were going to work. I didn't know how Jeff and Alan were going to work. I thought they would be good, and they were much better than I anticipated," Hendrick said. "I had Mark, knowing it was his last year. I had Kasey waiting to come. I didn't know if we were going to get Kenny, and then I get Kenny and their engineer and Kasey, and they are here and they're fitting in like they've been here forever. Then all of the sudden, I know -- I've got a better 88 team. I've got a better 24 team. I've got a pissed-off 48 team, and I've got a something-to-prove 5 team with a guy who had one of the best Chases of anybody. So that gives me the confidence that, if we don't blow it up, we're going to be good." As usual at Hendrick, so much of that centers on the No. 48 team, which over the course of five consecutive championship campaigns has emerged as the organization's flagship program. That reign ended last year, when the cars often just weren't fast enough, Johnson didn't win enough to intimidate the opposition, and he was reduced to a bystander as Tony Stewart outdueled Carl Edwards for the title. "I'm as hungry as I've ever been. I know that this organization is. I know that Chad is and the 48 team [is]," Johnson said. "What Rick [said], and his disappointment if all four cars aren't in the championship, and the same for the champion not being one of these four cars, I share that. I certainly know what my team is capable of. I know what I'm capable of. And I have lofty goals for myself this year, and I hope I can execute those things." Knaus reached the same place via a different route -- one that took him to South Africa, his first vacation in years, and a getaway that led him to miss Preseason Thunder testing at Daytona. He was still in regular contact with car chief Ron Malec and engineer Greg Ives at the race track, examining lap data and texting directions to his team on the other side of the world and in the middle of the night. He also visited Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was once imprisoned, got an up-close look at wild animals on safari, and took almost 2,000 photos. "I'm not going to say taking a trip reenergized me, and I found some golden orb down there that made it all worthwhile," Knaus said. "That's not how it worked. But I will tell you that being able to have fun a little bit helps. It helps the mind. I'm not super-familiar with that aspect of life, clearly. But I enjoyed it. Came back, and I'm ready to go. I feel great. I'm ready. I think it's going to be a great season for us." Hendrick is glad his sometimes high-strung crew chief got away. "We told Chad a couple of times, you can't be on the chip all the time. If you run as hard as you can run and never take a breath, you're going to burn out," he said. "One day you'll just walk out and say, 'I'm done.' You need to get out and enjoy yourself, feel refreshed and come back. I see, instead of him being so wound up he's off the floor, he's walking through the shop telling me I need to go to South Africa and see the animals." Assuredly, the old Chad will be back soon enough. Hendrick hopes this season to also see a little more of the old Hendrick Motorsports, the one that wins races and titles in bunches, and adds more glass cubes to the wall and more banners to the ceiling. "We've got a lot of the questions answered," said the man with 199 career victories in NASCAR's premier division. Well, all but one. "I've been hauling around these '200 win' hats for six months," he joked. Given the potential and seeming renewed purpose within his organization, you have to think that pretty soon, he'll be handing them out. A little bit of Dodge City in Junior's back yard There's a barbershop that advertises haircuts for a quarter, a jail with real locking cells, and a church with a steeple. There's a post office, a bank, and a hotel with bunk beds in the rooms upstairs. There's the Blazin Saddles Tack Shop and the Silverado Saloon, the latter of which features a pool table and genuine bottles of booze behind the long, polished bar. Welcome to Whisky River, a Western town that seems so authentic, you almost expect to see Matt Dillon, Seth Bullock or Josey Wales tromping down the muddy thoroughfare that runs through the middle. On this day, it's playing host to the filming of a shoot-'em-up commercial for this year's Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But this is no movie set -- this is Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s private fantasyland, a little piece of Dodge City or Deadwood built on his 200 acres of property north of Charlotte. "Dale Jr.'s a real low-key guy, and likes to have fun with his friends, and this is definitely the place for that," said Paul Menard, one of four active drivers involved in the commercial shoot, and a former teammate of Earnhardt's at Dale Earnhardt Inc. "It's got a little history. It's a cool place." The idea stemmed from practicality. The bar in the basement of Earnhardt's former house near DEI -- the once-famous Club E, which was featured on MTV's Cribs program -- began to be more trouble than it was worth. "I was thinking, man, I want to have something I can have parties at, and not worry that I'm tearing my house apart," Earnhardt said. Online, he found someone who would build 1,000-square-foot tree houses, and toyed with that idea until his sister, Kelley, warned him that he'd probably fall out. Then one day Earnhardt was watching a rerun of 60 Minutes which featured a segment on country-singer Willie Nelson, who had bought property in Texas that contained an Old West movie set. The set had originally been only building fronts, but Nelson finished the structures and made them usable. Earnhardt loved the idea and set about building his own Western village from scratch, hiring out-of-work carpenters to do the construction, and -- befitting a driver with a flair for a nostalgic -- using wood from Kannapolis' old Cannon Mills, which once stood near where the statue of Earnhardt's father is today. "We drew it on a sheet of paper and built it on cinder blocks," Earnhardt said at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, where he took part in the Preview '12 fan event held Saturday. "It got bigger and bigger." For a first-time visitor, the reality is somewhat staggering. There are saddles and wagon wheels and rocking chairs, hitching posts and barrels and upstairs balconies, stagecoaches and lanterns and animal skulls. Climb on up to the second floor of a hotel called the Hilton, where there are three rooms with bunk beds inside. Head on over to the livery, where there are tools for leatherworking and changing horseshoes. Watch out for the jail, where there are two cells that can be padlocked shut, and a gallows outside for more unfortunate criminals. Belly up to the Silverado Saloon, where there's a piano and a full bar and all manner of animal heads, hides and skulls on the walls. For Charlotte Motor Speedway, it was the perfect place to film an All-Star Race commercial featuring Menard, Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart and Mark Martin as double-crossing poker players, who end the ensuing argument with six-shooters drawn. Earnhardt has also used Whisky River for projects filmed by his own production company, Hammerhead, as well as for things like birthday parties and Halloween hayrides for family members and friends. For a driver with a definite appreciation for history who has always liked Clint Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns, it seems a natural extension of himself. "More than anything, I think it helps people see the personality in me," said Earnhardt, who built Whisky River about six years ago. "Because that's important for me, that people know me, get to know me, and understand me. ... That's kind of like looking through someone's record collection. It kind of shows you a little bit about them." As far as the commercial shoot, though, there was one caveat -- as was the case last year, Earnhardt wouldn't appear in it, because he's not yet guaranteed a berth in the All-Star Race. "Not unless I'm locked in," said Earnhardt, who last year gained entry to the event through a fan vote. "It would be a little bit arrogant. Self-assuming is never a good quality." If Whisky River shows Earnhardt's nostalgic side, then other areas of his property show how playful he can be. Scattered throughout the woods of his property are dozens of race cars, sometimes barely visible through the trees, which line a trail system. Earnhardt started with one, the shell of a backup car to a then-Busch Series primary vehicle that he used to lead every lap of a race at Daytona in the early 2000s. "We used it for target practice," he said. Now he has between 40 or 60 cars out there, and he's lobbying his former Nationwide driver, Brad Keselowski, to get him an IndyCar from Roger Penske since that series is moving to a new model for this year. "That would be the coolest thing to sit out there in the woods," he said. Where did he get all the old cars? "We just called around to some shops, said, 'Man, if you've got any junk you want to get rid of, we'd love to have it here,' " Earnhardt said. "First it was a collection of four or five cars. We called them yard ornaments. Then we started planting them in the woods. We built a lot of trails, and they're just things to look at and stumble upon as you're cruising around." There are more than just old race cars on Earnhardt's spread, which a sign identifies as Dirty Mo Acres. There are life-sized plastic animals, bear and deer and buffalo. In a pasture behind a white fence, there are real cattle and a pair of real buffalo -- Laverne and Shirley, which were a gift from a buffalo rancher who toured the property as the winner of a contest to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims. Looming over a dirt go-kart track is a real Unocal 76 orange ball from Talladega. Crest a hill, and there's the strange, somewhat jarring sight of a well-dressed man seated on a bench -- it turns out to be a mannequin Forrest Gump, without the box of chocolates but wearing a Dirty Mo Posse hat. Earnhardt, his sister, and his mother, Brenda, all have homes on the property. Earnhardt once fiercely guarded his privacy, concerned about people prying into his personal life. In recent years, though, he's allowed a little more access into his world, as evidenced by the commercial shoots the past two years at Whisky River, and letting a few reporters to poke around his Western town -- which in NASCAR circles has often been a topic of conversation, even if few have actually seen it. "It took a little time to get comfortable with letting people know that I'd built that, and I had that," Earnhardt said. "For a long time, it was something personal to me, and that was nice. But I don't know. After a while, I got less worried about peoples' opinions about it." This weekend, opinions seemed decidedly positive. Even Junior Johnson, the NASCAR Hall of Famer who started his career running moonshine through the woods and hollows of western North Carolina, could appreciate it. "It's a neat deal," said Johnson, who plays a bartender in the commercial. "If you like that kind of stuff, it's fun." One of Earnhardt's representatives sent the driver a photo of Johnson, wearing a green vest and a cowboy hat, behind the bar in the Silverado Saloon. Whisky River and the "Last American Hero" seemed made for one another. "Having that picture of Junior behind the bar," Earnhardt said, "makes it worth putting that thing up." Dale Earnhardt Jr. involved in wreck, drives teammate Jimmie Johnson's car during Daytona test Dale Earnhardt Jr. had his practice session at Daytona cut short by a wreck Saturday afternoon, but left Daytona International Speedway feeling good about what transpired over the three-day test. Earnhardt Jr. had an eventful final hour of practice as he was involved in an accident and then got into the car of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson. Although their teams share the same shop, Johnson’s car had different features, Earnhardt Jr. said. “They’re built differently and they wanted me to drive Jimmie’s to see what I thought about it,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “They’re absolutely two different types of cars and they drive differently. “There’s some plusses and minuses to both. But Jimmie’s car was real nice.” Overall, Earnhardt Jr. was happy with the test. He had been a vocal critic of the two-car tandem style of racing at restrictor-plate tracks. Fans apparently agreed, and over the three days of testing, NASCAR changed the restrictor-plate package – the plate, grille opening and radiator water release valve – three different times to try and cut the gap in speed from the two-car draft to the traditional pack racing. Drivers tested in a pack for several laps Friday afternoon and then for a short time Saturday until the accident, in which Juan Pablo Montoya slid into Earnhardt Jr., who spun and hit Jeff Burton. Earnhardt Jr. said he did not feel the cars were unstable drafting in a pack and was comfortable at the 205 mph speed drivers posted in the pack draft Friday before a decrease in the restrictor plate Saturday. “I was real comfortable,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “When we had the accident [Saturday], they were three-wide for several rows there in that pack and I was just sitting there watching. “You couldn’t go do anything because they were all three-wide so I was just kind of sitting there. I don’t know what happened in that deal but somebody ran over us.” NASCAR made progress in trying to encourage pack racing, Earnhardt Jr. said. “I don’t know if anybody can really predict what is going to happen or what we need or what package will provide what they want,” Earnhardt Jr. said following the test. “NASCAR did a lot of changing, made a lot of effort to learn and we learned a lot. I’m sure they’ll take all that [data] back. I don’t think we’re even close to finished fooling with it. I think they’re still thinking about switching things around.” Earnhardt Jr. said all the changes make it difficult to evaluate how well the test went for his Steve Letarte-led team. “The hard part about it as far as us testing is we don’t really know how to test or what to test until we have a final understanding of what the package is,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “But the preparation and the extra stuff that you might bring down for Speedweeks is doubled. “Steve was talking about we might have to bring a whole separate hauler just in case this changes or this changes and you have got everything together [to make changes].” Say what? NASCAR filled with memorable quotes Dale Earnhardt Jr., after running out of fuel in the final corner while leading the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway: "To be honest, I know there's disappointment about coming so close , but our fans should be real happy about how we're performing, how we're showing up at the race track, how we've adapted. We've definitely improved things, and we want to keep getting better and better and better. ... We're definitely going in the right direction. I felt like a true frontrunner tonight. I've felt like that sometimes this season. But the 600 is a true test. Charlotte is a true test of a team, and we performed well all night long." More than 50 drivers scheduled to appear at NASCAR Preview 2012 in January NASCAR has set the driver appearance schedule for the NASCAR Preview 2012, scheduled for Jan. 21 at the Charlotte Convention Center. The preview is part of a weekend of festivities, which begin with the NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony Jan. 20 and the unveiling of the inductee displays in the hall Jan. 22. Tickets are $10 in advance ($20 including admission to the hall of fame) and $15 at the door, with additional packages available to include the hall of fame induction ceremony. Wristbands for autographs will be handed out at 7 a.m. on the day of the event, which also will include NASCAR-related booths and displays, show cars and other activities. The tentative schedule of driver appearances for autographs (all appearances scheduled for two hours): 9 a.m.: AJ Allmendinger, Jeff Burton, Bobby Labonte, Joey Logano, Mark Martin, Jamie McMurray, Casey Mears, David Ragan, Justin Allgaier, Jeffrey Earnhardt, Timmy Hill, Blake Koch, Travis Pastrana, Timothy Peters 9:15 a.m.: Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth 10:15 a.m.: Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson 11 a.m.: Marcos Ambrose, Clint Bowyer, Paul Menard, Regan Smith, Brian Vickers, Aric Almirola, Trevor Bayne, Brian Scott, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Brad Sweet, Cale Gale, Justin Lofton, Todd Peck. 11:45 a.m.: Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski. 12:15 p.m.: Greg Biffle 12:30 p.m.: Kasey Kahne, Ryan Newman, Michael Annett, Elliott Sadler, Mike Wallace, Dakoda Armstrong, Johnny Sauter, Parker Kligerman 2:30 p.m.: Danica Patrick, Martin Truex Jr., Austin Dillon, Morgan Shepherd, Kenny Wallace, Joey Coulter, Ty Dillon, Brendan Gaughan, Tim George Jr. 2:45 p.m.: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya 3:15 p.m.: Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart Earnhardt's outlook for the future bolstered by the improvements of past year For Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most disappointing moment of the 2011 season came before the season had really even started. He had won the pole for the Daytona 500, a big boost for a driver who was trying to rebuild his career with a team and crew chief that had worked with Jeff Gordon the year before. But four days before the main event, he got tangled up with Martin Truex Jr. in a practice session, and his No. 88 car rocketed into the wall. He would have to go to a backup vehicle, and start from the rear. It was only part of a trying Speedweeks for NASCAR's most popular driver, who during the 500 suffered a cut tire with one lap remaining in regulation, and then was caught up in a crash. Those things, though, were outside of his control. But crashing in practice? Under the gaze of a crew chief, Steve Letarte, and a team that had been moved over from the No. 24 program during a Hendrick Motorsports personnel swap the previous offseason? These were guys who were used to contending for Chase berths and race wins, and Earnhardt wanted to show he was worthy of them, and instead his car wound up wadded into the SAFER barrier. "It's all about first impressions, and that's the first impression I had given my new crew as a driver," Earnhardt said recently. "I was upset, because I wanted to impress those guys, and I wanted to make them believe in me as a driver. I wasn't doing a good job at that moment, and it was very disappointing at the time." From the fan base, so eager for that breakthrough, so hopeful after changes that appeared capable of snapping Earnhardt out of a two-year funk, you could almost hear the collective sigh. And indeed, Earnhardt did go winless in 2011, showing a goose egg in the victory column for the third consecutive year. But over the course of this past season, Earnhardt recaptured other, less tangible things that tend to get eclipsed by a winless streak that's now stretched to 129 races. By finishing seventh in final points, by nearly winning at Charlotte, by pushing teammate Jimmie Johnson to victory at Talladega, by running well at Martinsville and Homestead and other places, by returning to competitive relevance after two years in the wilderness, he rediscovered confidence and contentment -- factors that, as much as a crew chief change or faster race cars, could lead to the real breakthrough down the road. Everybody focuses on the wins, or the lack thereof. But in truth, finishing seventh was a major step forward for a driver who had placed 21st and 25th in points the previous two years. Letarte, famous for his cheerleading style over the radio, was brought over to reinforce his driver's belief in himself, and by all indications did his job very well. Too many times, Earnhardt has arrived at Champions Week after the season just to pick up his Most Popular Driver trophy and go home. This year, he got to stay and give a speech during the awards ceremony itself. All these things add up, and collectively they help improve the frame of mind for a driver who carries a burden of expectation like nobody else in the sport. "Deep within myself, I'm real happy about how I improved. I'm happy to be competing again, and I feel like I'm almost where I want to be. Outwardly, I want to express a lack of satisfaction, and we need to get better, and we've got more to do, and we've got to run faster. Those are the truths. But to myself personally, I am happy. I feel like I'm in a better place," Earnhardt said. "Personally and professionally, I feel like I'm in a better place than I was. And I'm having fun, and I really enjoy driving. I got involved in racing to be happy, because it made me happy. And then the last couple of years, I wasn't getting the happiness out of it. I was wondering how long I could go along in racing unhappy, and keep doing it. But this year it turned all around, 180 degrees, and I'm enjoying it again. I didn't want the season to come to an end. This is the way I wanted it to be. I'd like to run better, and there are some truths there as far as performance goes that we need to face. But as a whole, and especially me personally, I feel much more excited about my future." Given how long the NASCAR season is, and given how easy it is for a driver and a team to fall into a hole they can't crawl out of, that kind of outlook is crucial. In fairness, Earnhardt has been beaten up a lot over the past few years, and there have been times over that stretch when it's been easy to see the toll it's taken on the guy. Earnhardt is a very self-aware person, cognizant of his standing in the sport and the expectations placed upon him, and when things aren't going well you sometimes get the sense that he feels he's letting people down. And let's be honest -- over the previous two seasons, there were more than a few people in the grandstands who thought Earnhardt was done, that Rick Hendrick had thrown everything at the No. 88 team save Chad Knaus, and things still were trending in the wrong direction. How do you possibly reverse something like that, a program with so much negative momentum that it's in danger of being sucked into the dirt? By first building back up the driver, as it turns out. Letarte has always taken a lot of heat as a crew chief, from both Gordon and now Earnhardt fans who think he doesn't win enough, or sometimes makes head-scratching pit calls. But as a motivator and confidence-builder, he's done absolute wonders with Earnhardt, once a solid championship contender who in back-to-back seasons with Dale Earnhardt Inc. finished third and fifth in final points. Those days seem like a hundred years ago -- to everyone but the driver himself, who still uses those 2003 and '04 campaigns as a something of a competitive barometer, and believes he has the potential to get back to that level. "I feel like I can compete like that again," Earnhardt said. "I feel like I still have the same tenacity and stuff to be able to put forth the effort every week and do what counts. I feel like I can do that." Of course, the winless streak looms over all of it, like a black cloud that won't move out of the way. As Earnhardt proved this year, he can make some serious strides without winning a race. And as he showed in 2008 -- when he won for the first time in two years, but sank to a 12th-place points finish that preceded the frustrations of the next two seasons -- winning doesn't necessarily mean progress. Like everything else, Earnhardt deals with the skid in a practical manner. "It doesn't really get old. It's part of the deal," he said. "We didn't win. It's obvious. It's an obvious stat. It's hard to ignore. It bugs me because I know what winning feels like, and I want to have that feeling again, I want to enjoy something like that again in Victory Lane, I want to go through all that experience. It's fun. It's the reason you show up. It's the reason why you keep going, to try to think you might be able to do that again." Does the pressure to end it, though, increase with each passing year? "The pressure is there," he said, "but it's like the difference between 100 degrees and 110 degrees. Hot is hot." This past season, though, there were enough signs to make anyone confident that the streak is nearing its end. Charlotte, Martinsville, Kansas, Talladega -- Earnhardt could have won all four of them in 2011, had a few things unfolded differently. The opportunities were there, opportunities that for the most part had been absent over the previous two years, those bleak campaigns during which fans wondered if Earnhardt would ultimately end up making circles for his own team. You don't hear much of that anymore. A level of confidence has returned to the No. 88 team, and it permeates everyone from its fans to the driver, who can't wait to get back into the race car and pick up where he left off. In more ways than one, that practice crash at Daytona seems a very long time ago. "We just want to get back to the race track as soon as we can, and get back to work," Earnhardt said. "I was enjoying driving there at the end of the year. I thought we were making some gains, learning some stuff .... [I'm] just looking forward to getting to the race track, trying to build on that." Dale Earnhardt Jr. leads NASCAR drivers in diecast sales in 2011 Dale Earnhardt Jr. sold the most diecasts of any driver in 2011, but he needed more than one version of his car to do it. The new sponsors for Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick lifted their diecasts to the top of Lionel’s NASCAR individual car diecast sales in 2011, and then Trevor Bayne’s Daytona 500 upset had his car in third. Earnhardt Jr. cars were in spots four, seven and nine. Lionel, in its first full year as the main supplier of NASCAR-licensed diecasts, released its top 10 list of sales for 2011. “The interesting thing about our top 10 list is that it proves how much NASCAR fans love a good story,” said Howard Hitchcock, Vice President of Lionel NASCAR Collectables. “Trevor Bayne driving the Wood Brothers to victory lane at the Daytona 500 is one of the most compelling stories in the history of the sport. And while we realized Trevor’s win was beyond big, our team had little idea just how popular the diecast would be.” None of those single-car sales could match the overall performance of Earnhardt Jr. “There’s no denying that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is still the sport’s most popular driver from a merchandise perspective,” Hitchcock said. “Our sales clearly reflect that and there is consistently strong demand for any Dale Jr. car.” Among the top 10 was one of Lionel’s classic diecasts – one of Dale Earnhardt’s No. 96 Cardinal Tractor Ford from 1978. Lionel’s top-10 diecasts for 2011, measured by sales: 1. Jeff Gordon No. 24 AARP/Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet 2. Kevin Harvick No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet 3. Trevor Bayne No. 21 Motorcraft Daytona Win Ford 4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 Amp Energy Chevrolet 5. Tony Stewart No. 14 Mobil 1 Chevrolet 6. Dale Earnhardt No. 96 Cardinal Tractor Ford 7. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 National Guard Heritage Chevrolet 8. Tony Stewart No. 14 Office Depot Chevrolet 9. Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 88 Dale Jr. Foundation/Vh1 Save the Music Chevrolet 10. Kevin Harvick No. 29 Budweiser Military Tribute Chevrolet Year in Review: Earnhardt returned to Chase in first season with Letarte It might be a good thing for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to make sure he has Steve Letarte's cell number on his frequent caller plan, because based on how they conversed in 2011 -- and how that resulted in a solid Chase effort -- they're about to spend a whole lot more time talking in 2012. For the first time since 2006, Earnhardt's average finish was at least one position better than his average start. He averaged a 19.6 starting position, but a 14.5 finish. And that, he said, was the key to his optimism with Letarte. Perhaps too much. "There's been so many times throughout the season where literally for the next 48 hours after the race, all I wanted to do was text him and call him and keep bugging him about how great a job he did, and how awesome the car was and how happy I was with the car getting better throughout the race," Earnhardt said. "It's so frustrating when you're racing and you can't improve. And you work and work, and you don't get better. "There were races where we were getting so much better and being more competitive. I just wore him out, bugging the heck out of him about it. He looks at it like, 'Hey, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's my job.' And it wasn't a big deal. He brushes it off. But it just really pleased me a lot to be able to have a guy that I could count on, on top of the box, making changes on the car that were working. It was really enjoyable." The early part of 2011 showed a consistently strong Earnhardt the Sprint Cup Series hadn't seen in a while. After a 24th-place finish at Daytona -- despite winning the pole -- Earnhardt rolled off seven consecutive finishes of 12th or better. It was a welcome change for both him and Junior Nation. Earnhardt gives credit to the growing bond among him, his new crew and Letarte. "The team and myself sort of evolved into the union that we made over the offseason, as we all got together and changed a lot of things around," Earnhardt said. Coming off of three consecutive finishes outside the top 10, Earnhardt cruised into Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. He was among the 10 fastest cars in only one of the three practices and qualified 25th. Letarte worked his magic, and a fuel-mileage gamble almost paid off. Earnhardt finished up just a quarter-lap short of his first checkered flag in 104 races and ended up seventh, but afterward knew he'd taken the only shot he had. "I just do whatever my dang crew chief says, but I believe that was the right call," Earnhardt said. "Because if we'd have pitted, I don't know where we would have finished. We'd have finished wherever David Ragan finished [third]. ... But think about it, man. Winning the 600, that would be awesome. I had to try. Had to try." Earnhardt followed that with a runner-up finish at Kansas and a sixth-place run at Pocono. But that's where things went slightly off track, and Earnhardt wasn't back in the top 10 until the series returned to Pocono seven races later. He was ninth there, and had only three more top-10s in the final 15 races of the season. He finished seventh in back-to-back outings at Martinsville and Texas in the Chase, and 11th in the finale at Homestead-Miami. Those runs at the end of the year gave him something to build on for 2012 despite leading only two laps in the entirety of the Chase. "We ended on a relatively decent note," Earnhardt said. "We wanted to finish well at Homestead because I haven't run well there in a long time, and we went into that race really trying to capitalize on the opportunity there -- to finish the season on a positive note." Another positive for Earnhardt? He made his return to the Cup Series award ceremony -- it was his best points finish since 2006 -- this time in Las Vegas. The last time he got to speak on stage, the event was still being held in New York. "It's good to be back at the big dinner again," he said with a laugh as an introduction to his speech. But what was missing from the night? For one, more highlights of him, especially in Victory Lane. For another, the chance to pull the belts tight and turn left for a few hours. "Sitting here again, seeing all the pictures and the accolades that come along with guys who have made it to Victory Lane, my face isn't in those highlights. I want to be in there next year," Earnhardt said. "Looking at the pictures and listening to the highlights and people talk, I'm ready to go back to the race track now. After the last several years, I've really looked forward to the offseason and enjoy the break we have. But this year, I'm really looking forward to getting back to the race track whenever we can, because I just enjoy working with Steve. I enjoy exploring and finding new things with him through the mechanics of the car. I'm ready to go, and I think that says a lot about our possibilities next year and our potential to have a good season." Dale Earnhardt Jr: Notes-n-Nuggets: • Thirty-seven years old from Kannapolis, N.C. • Finished seventh in the standings in his 12th full-time season. • Fifth time he finished in the top 10 in the championship standings. • Started the 2011 Chase in the 10th position. • His best 2011 finish: second at Martinsville and Kansas. • Is the only Chase driver to not win a race in 2011. • His winless streak is now at 129 races (Michigan 6/08). • Season numbers: zero wins, one pole, four top-fives, 12 top-10s, 52 laps led, two DNFs, finished on the lead lap 29 times, average finish of 14.5, 15.1 during the Chase. • The 2004 Daytona 500 winner; 1998, 1999 Nationwide Series champion. • Extended his contract with Hendrick Motorsports through 2017. Dale Earnhardt Jr. happy personally and professionally, having fun again You might think that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is deeply disappointed at not winning a Sprint Cup race for the third straight season. And you might think that he’s a tad disappointed at finishing seventh in the final points standings after making the Chase For The Sprint Cup for the first time in three years. He is. But mostly, Earnhardt Jr. is just happy. Happy that he ran much better than he did in 2009 and 2010. Happy that he returned to the Chase and almost won a couple of races. Happy with his personal life. And just genuinely happy to be having fun again. All in all, to Earnhardt Jr., 2011 was a good year. “Deep within myself, I am real happy with how we improved and I’m happy to be competing again and I feel like I’m almost where I want to be,” Earnhardt Jr. said in interviews last week in Las Vegas, where he was honored as NASCAR’s most popular driver for the ninth straight year. “Outwardly, I want to express a lack of satisfaction and we need to get better and we’ve got more to do and we need to run faster. Those are the truths. “But, personally, I am pretty happy. I feel like I’m in a better place. Personally and professionally, I feel like I’m in a better place than I was. I’m having fun and I really enjoy driving.” That wasn’t the case in 2009 and 2010, when Earnhardt Jr. struggled at Hendrick Motorsports and was one of the sport’s biggest disappointments. But he had a brighter, more positive outlook this season, thanks mainly to new crew chief Steve Letarte and a much more competitive team. And the end result is a much brighter outlook toward the future. Earnhardt Jr., 37, attended NASCAR Champions Week and the Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony with girlfriend Amy Reimann and was honored as one of the sport’s top 10 drivers after finishing seventh in the final standings. After finishing 25th and 21st in the standings the previous two years, Earnhardt Jr. had a lot to be happy about. “I got involved in racing to be happy, because it made me happy, but the last couple of years I wasn’t getting any happiness out of it and I was wondering how long I could go along in racing unhappy, and keep doing it,” he said. “But this year it turned all around, 180 degrees, and I’m enjoying it again and I didn’t want the season to come to an end. “This is the way I wanted it to be. I’d like to run better, and there are some truths there as far as performance goes that we need to face, but as a whole, and especially me personally, I feel much more excited about my future.” After scoring just five top-five finishes combined in 2009-10, Earnhardt had four in 2011, including second at Kansas and third in the first Chase race at Chicago. He also was leading on the final lap at Charlotte in May before running out of fuel. His 12 top-10 finishes were his most since 2008, his first year with Hendrick. More importantly, Earnhardt Jr. returned to the Chase. Though he stumbled after a strong start, he had top-11 finishes in three of the last four races to climb to seventh in the final standings. “There was a little bit of pressure to make the Chase and I take a lot of pride in having a pretty reasonable finishing position in the Chase,” he said. “There is some tough competition in there and we beat a few guys and that gives us some confidence going into next year.” What Earnhardt Jr. didn’t accomplish, however, is winning a race for the first time since 2008. He takes a 129-race winless streak into next season. Though he is constantly reminded of the winless streak and under tremendous pressure to return to victory lane, he insists it doesn’t bother him. Does the pressure mount the longer the streak lasts, the more the dubious number grows? “Not really,” he said. “The pressure is there, but it’s like the difference between 100 degrees and 110 degrees. Hot is hot. “It doesn’t really get old. It’s part of the deal. We didn’t win, it’s obvious; it’s an obvious stat and it’s hard to ignore. “It bugs me because I know what winning feels like and I want to have that feeling again and I want to enjoy something like that again in victory lane. I want to go through all that experience; it’s fun. It’s the reason you show up and the reason you keep going, to think you might be able to do that again.” At this point, winning again would be a huge relief, he says. “When you win a race, you’re like, all the things that you went through that you didn’t like are worth it because of that moment and you validate everything that you worked for,” he said. “It’s like a discovery – you discovered the potential that you are trying to achieve. So there’s a lot of relief and happiness at that moment, and that’s something that I would love to experience.” Earnhardt Jr. longs for the days when he was one of the sport’s most competitive drivers and top contenders, winning 15 races from 2000-2004 for Dale Earnhardt Inc., his father’s team. That streak included a third-place finish in points in 2003 and a six-win season in 2004. “It’s close enough that I can recall how competitive we were and certain things about our performance and measure it up to what we’re doing now,” he said. “I don’t think that we’re that competitive yet, but we definitely have that potential, and that’s what we’re trying to get to.” And after last season’s improvement, he believes he can get there. “It doesn’t seem like a long time ago, it seems pretty fresh,” he said. “I feel like I can compete like that again. I feel like I have the same tenacity and stuff to be able to put forth the effort every week and do it when it counts. I feel like I can do that.” Earnhardt Jr. attributes much of last season’s improvement to Letarte, who had worked with Jeff Gordon for five seasons before replacing Lance McGrew as Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief last year. Letarte’s enthusiasm, positive outlook and leadership wound up being exactly what Earnhardt Jr. needed after the two worst seasons of his career. “He helped me be calm and stay the course throughout the races and [to] not give up and [to] keep going and get the best finish we can,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “And we did in a lot of races where he sort of rallied us and helped us regroup and get going. “He’s a great leader of the team and his organizational skills and his people skills are really good. They really contributed to our performance every week.” Because of their relationship and the improvement last season, Earnhardt Jr. says he can’t wait for 2012. “I’m happy that Steve is happy,” he said. “He seems to really enjoy the relationship and working together. “We didn’t achieve a few of the goals, like winning a race and a few other things, and we want to go get that opportunity, and the only way to do that is to be at the race track and be competing, so I am looking forward to being in that position again and being back in the position to win races and I know that he will give me that opportunity again next year.” 2011 Stewie Awards Best "Driver2Crew Chatter" -- The No. 88 crew helps Dale Earnhardt Jr. mark his pit stall in the STP 400 at Kansas. NASCAR After the Lap: Top 10 List Chase drivers held nothing back Thursday at the third annual fan-favorite NASCAR After the Lap held at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas., co-hosted by ESPN pit-road reporter Jamie Little and Miss Sprint Cup Monica Palumbo. A list of the top-10 unfiltered, driver "tell-all" comments are outlined below. No. 1 Ryan Newman was asked if he purchased his boss (2011 Champion Tony Stewart) anything special after winning the championship. "No!" Little: "Ryan, you told me earlier there was a waxing appointment but that no appointment was long enough to cover Tony's needs." No. 2 Question for Kyle Busch: "Kyle, we hear your wife cooked her first Thanksgiving this year. How did she do?" Busch: "It was good. That's what she said." No. 3 Little: "There are a lot of single women in Vegas." Stewart: "Why do you think I'm just happy to be here?" No. 4 After comments about brothers Kurt and Kyle Busch dressing alike and being confused for each other, Kurt Busch responded: "When the fine comes in the mail, they know how to spell our name right." No. 5 Question: What if Delana Harvick (wife of Kevin Harvick) showed up (to the race) without a fire suit? Special guest and Blue Comedy Tour comedian Bill Engvall: "We talking no suit at all? Cus, that would be awesome." Harvick: "If she walked out without a fire suit and I missed the race, you'd know why." Matt Kenseth: "At least for the first 10 laps." No. 6 Dale Earnhardt Jr. was asked about his future wife. "Yea, she's real." Engvall: "Not real's a blow-up doll." Little asked if she was a blonde. Jeff Gordon: "She's like Snooki ... he hasn't noticed." Earlier in the show, Stewart had commented: "For the first three episodes, I didn't even know Snooki had a head." No. 7 Stewart was positioned in a chair next to Little who was standing nearby: "Why do you think she sat me next to her? Always sit the fat kid next to the tall girl." No. 8 Kurt Busch noted that he was "camera shy. I think the best form of communication is cussing." No. 9 Stewart: "I felt uncomfortable [Thursday] for the first time in a long time because I was changing next to Carl." Carl Edwards: "You'll always have me beat with that back hair." Stewart: "Hey, I'm out here working hard to represent all fat kids." No. 10 Gordon took center stage by break dancing for fans. Junior consistent in 2011, but still lacking Buoyed by a seventh-place finish in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Steve Letarte were in excellent spirits at Wednesday night's Sprint media reception at the Wynn. Both know, however, that more will be expected in 2012, and tops on the list will be a race win. Earnhardt qualified for the Chase for the first time since 2008 and recorded his highest points finish since his fifth-place showing in 2006, when he drove for family-founded Dale Earnhardt Inc. Nevertheless, Earnhardt and Letarte failed to accomplish their foremost goal of the season -- winning a race a breaking a drought that reached 129 races at season's end. The stark reality is that 2011 was a year of mixed results for Earnhardt. He posted 29 lead-lap finishes, his best total since 2006 (30 lead-lap finishes), and the second-best mark of his career. Leading laps was another matter. Earnhardt posted the lowest total of laps led in his career -- 52 in 36 races. His previous low was 146 laps led in 2009. By way of comparison, Earnhardt led 896 laps in 2008, his first year with Hendrick Motorsports. The obvious conclusion is that Earnhardt made the Chase with consistent finishes but rarely had the speed to challenge for a win. It's equally apparent that he and his No. 88 team expended so much effort in qualifying for the Chase that they had little left for the final 10 races, half of which Earnhardt finished outside the top 15. "I read that stat, and I was kind of surprised," Earnhardt told Sporting News after Thursday's Myers Brothers Luncheon at Bellagio, where he was honored as Cup's most popular driver for the ninth consecutive year. "I really didn't take note of how many laps we led, but I remember, 15 races into the season, thinking to myself and talking to the media, that I had top-10 cars every week I started, and I'd really never had that before. "And then we went back at the end of the season and looked back at the laps led, and we didn't do anything. We didn't do any work there. We're running inside the top 10 and we're running more competitively, but there weren't really any races, aside from maybe one or two, where we were a lead car -- running second third, on television, on the podium. "We need to do a better job of that next year, and that's just simple speed." Earnhardt doesn't take popularity for granted One run of NASCAR dominance ended this year, when Tony Stewart snapped Jimmie Johnson's streak of five consecutive championships in NASCAR's premier division. But another continued Thursday, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. was awarded the sport's most popular driver trophy for a ninth year in a row. Earnhardt received the award at the annual National Motorsports Press Association/Myers Brothers Luncheon at the Bellagio, and the trophy will go into the case near his sister Kelley's office at JR Motorsports along with the others. And yet, Earnhardt said he never takes the award for granted, and understands there are some other drivers who may be in a position to overtake him one day -- including a certain former open-wheel star whom he helped get started in NASCAR. "I don't take it for granted, I don't assume I'm going to win it again," he said. "I know when Danica [Patrick] runs in the Cup Series, that she will be a candidate for the award right off the bat. She's quite popular and will definitely bring a new fan base to the sport, as well. And with what Tony has accomplished this year has to endear him to a lot of fans and people who potentially weren't Tony Stewart fans in the past. They may have become Tony Stewart fans. You never know. Anyone who wins this award, it's a great honor, and I'm hoping to continue to win the award again next year, if I'm fortunate enough to do that. If not, I'll be happy and proud for whoever does." Earnhardt helped launch Patrick's NASCAR career, fielding a JR Motorsports No. 7 car for the driver as she competed in a part-time Nationwide Series schedule the past two seasons. But the bigger threat to his near decade-long reign as most popular driver may well be Stewart, whose championship was received with delirious fervor when it was clinched last month at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Earnhardt acknowledged as much in his speech, paying tribute to the new champion. "I'm glad they didn't take the vote on the last race," he said. "because it would have gone to that man right there, Tony Stewart." Earnhardt, a keen student of NASCAR history, said he's always had an appreciation for the award dating back to when Bill Elliott -- who won it a record 16 times, including 10 in a row -- used to dominate it. Earnhardt won similar awards during his late-model days at Myrtle Beach Speedway. Thursday, though, the award was much easier to accept after a competitive season that saw Earnhardt finish seventh in final points, a vast improvement after placing in the 20s the previous two years. Then, he came to Las Vegas only to accept his most popular driver award. Now, he's fully a part of Champion's Week, and will speak at the awards ceremony on Friday night. "The one thing that's probably the most bothersome is, your fans, they put all this effort into voting for this award and winning this award so you can come get it, and then you go out on the race track and you don't do anything to deserve it, or you don't feel like you do," Earnhardt said. "You don't feel like you give them any reason to cheer. They spend money, they invest, they show up, and there's no reason for them to be excited about it. So that's been a bit of a disappointment over the last couple of years. But when you do run well, and consistent ... it's easier to accept something that somebody is trying to honor you with." Cup Series award winners Driver No. Bill Elliott 16 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 9 Richard Petty 9 Bobby Allison 7 Fred Lorenzen 2 Darrell Waltrip 2 Darel Dieringer 1 Dale Earnhardt 1 Bobby Isaac 1 Junior Johnson 1 David Pearson 1 Fireball Roberts 1 Curtis Turner 1 Joe Weatherly 1 Rex White 1 Glen Wood 1 Cale Yarborough 1. Earnhardt again named NASCAR's most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. was named NASCAR’s most popular driver for the ninth consecutive year. Earnhardt’s string of most-popular-driver awards is only one shy of Bill Elliott’s record 10 straight titles. Elliott won the award 16 times overall and 10 straight from 1991 through 2000. He then asked to not be included any more in the voting. “I’m pretty sure my fans wear this award as a badge of honor, as they should because the award is theirs,” Earnhardt said Thursday at NASCAR’s year-end luncheon. “Their efforts allow me to be here today to accept it so I not only thank them but congratulate them on winning the most popular driver award. “It’s a privilege to compete in front of millions of fans every week and the credit goes to them for the success the sport has had since the beginning.” Earnhardt also joked he was glad voting was not based solely on the season finale at Homestead, where Tony Stewart used a powerful drive to win the race and his third championship. “It would have gone to that guy right there, Tony Stewart,” said Earnhardt, who congratulated the driver, crew chief Darian Grubb and the Stewart-Haas Racing team. “Their performance in the Chase is one for the history books.” Earnhardt finished seventh in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship— his best showing in six years. Later, Earnhardt cleared up speculation about his love life and said he’s not engaged to longtime girlfriend Amy Reimann. Earnhardt got people talking during a “Newlywed Game” program for the 12 Chase drivers held Wednesday in downtown Las Vegas. Asked by host Bob Eubanks which driver wife would win a wet T-shirt contest, Earnhardt answered, “I’m going to say my future wife.” Talk immediately began about a potential Earnhardt engagement. “We’re good,” he said. “I’m enjoying my relationship but I’m in no way ready to be married.” Dale Jr. would be OK with Dillon taking 3 to Cup Austin Dillon won the Camping World Truck Series championship on Friday night driving a vehicle that bears the iconic No. 3. Next year, he'll pilot a car on the Nationwide Series adorned with the same numeral. And if he ever takes that same number up to the Sprint Cup tour one day -- well, there's one person who wouldn't have a problem with it. That would be Dale Earnhardt Jr. "Austin's ran that number. I just look at it differently," Earnhardt said Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. "I don't look at the numbers tied to drivers as much as the history of the number. The number is more of a bank that you just deposit history into, and it doesn't really belong to any individual. Austin's run that number, and you can't really deny him the opportunity to run it. It just wouldn't be fair." Dale Earnhardt made the number famous, driving it in six of his seven championship campaigns at NASCAR's top level and cultivating a legion of passionate fans in the process. No one has driven a No. 3 car full-time at the Nationwide or Sprint Cup levels since Earnhardt was killed on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Dillon, grandson of Earnhardt's former car owner Richard Childress, began using the number in the Truck Series when he debuted on that tour in 2009, and will take the numeral with him to the Nationwide circuit next year. Childress, who ran the number himself before becoming a car owner, has not pronounced any plans to take his grandson Cup racing with the No. 3. When Dillon made his Sprint Cup debut earlier this season at Kansas, he drove a No. 98 car. The Truck Series champ is likely to make a handful of Sprint Cup starts next year, given that Childress' race team is contracting from four to three full-time cars. But given the family connection, fans still wonder about the prospect of Dillon driving a No. 3 in NASCAR's big leagues one day. Earnhardt points out that the number predates his father. "Dad did great things," Earnhardt said. "He was a great ambassador for the sport, and we're still as a whole reaping the benefits of what he did and what he accomplished. He put us in front of a lot of people. But even before that, that number was Richard's. Richard drove it; somebody else drove it before then. There's a lot of guys in the '50s and '60s that ran that number with success. ... When you put the color and the style with it, it's a little iconic to the sport." To his credit, Dillon has embraced the history of the number, and shown nothing but respect for its history. Earnhardt Jr. recognizes that. "Austin's a good kid," Earnhardt said. "He seems to have a great appreciation for what's happening to him and what's going on around him. I would be happy if he wanted to keep [driving the 3]. He kind of had to know when he first started that running that number -- if he got this far into the deal, he would have to cross a few bridges like that. That was a tough decision I guess at first, to start running the number for him, knowing what pressures he might face down the road. But I think it would be fine by me for him to do that. I think it's got to get back on the race track one of these days. It can't be gone forever." Glance at the 12 drivers in the Chase DRIVER: Dale Earnhardt Jr. CHASE POINTS: Seventh, -102 POSITION CHANGE: None CAR: No. 88 AMP Chevrolet TEAM: Hendrick Motorsports WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK: Never contended and finished 24th. CAREER HOMESTEAD STARTS: 11 BEST HOMESTEAD FINISH: 13th (2000) Earnhardt anxious to find superspeedway solution Dale Earnhardt Jr. has made no secret of his dislike for the current method of two-car drafting on NASCAR's biggest superspeedways that enables cars to turn their fastest lap times. Testing at Daytona International Speedway has been characterized as so dull by some drivers, they said a monkey could do their job at the track. But when NASCAR scheduled a one-day test Tuesday "in an effort to evaluate and prepare aerodynamic baseline packages for the Jan. 12-14, 2012 Preseason Thunder Test in Daytona," Earnhardt said there was no question he'd be there. "It's really important," Earnhardt said. "I want to be able to give them the best feedback I can to give them the solutions they're looking for so that we can, with confidence, go into Daytona in February and expect to put together a great show for the fans that will be there and that will be watching on TV." NASCAR expects at least seven cars from five teams to attend the session, including Earnhardt Jr. and JR Motorsports' Nationwide Series driver Aric Almirola for Hendrick Motorsports, David Ragan and Richard Petty Motorsports ally Marcos Ambrose for Roush Fenway Racing, Joey Logano for Joe Gibbs Racing, Martin Truex Jr. for Michael Waltrip Racing and Joe Nemechek in his own NEMCO Motorsports car that's primarily doing engine testing, a team spokesman said. While part of the test is the continuing evaluation of the Electronic Fuel Injection system NASCAR will debut in 2012 and the appropriate air-restrictor to use with it to limit top speed, the greater purpose is assumed to be finding a way to break-up the effectiveness of tandem drafts. Earnhardt said that's his main purpose in coming to this test. Earnhardt won seven of his 18 career Cup Series victories at Daytona and Talladega when mass-pack drafting was the norm. Although he pushed his Hendrick teammate, five-time defending Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, to Johnson's win earlier this year at Talladega, Earnhardt would like to revert to the former style of drafting and said he'd gladly alter his team's normal test plan to achieve it. "My big goal is to help NASCAR accomplish what their goals are in the test," Earnhardt said. "Apparently they put this test together last-minute for a reason. We'll go down there and they'll let us know exactly what they're wanting to do, what they're trying to accomplish, what they're trying to try. "It's a little bit different than what your typical goals are when you go testing. Most of the time they're a little more personal, like you're trying to do whatever you can to make your car fast, work with your team, learn, put together notes. "This test here will be a little different where you're working with NASCAR and the goals will be a little different. You'll have to open your mind up a little bit to try new things and try to give the best feedback you can." Earnhardt said he's thought about ways to affect the desired changes but was taking a wait-and-see attitude. "I think that the ideas that I have that I hope that we'll try are very similar to theirs," Earnhardt said. "I'm sure they're going to bring every feasible option and we'll try to get that out on the race track." Earnhardt said the limited number of cars might have the biggest effect on what they can achieve. "The difficult part is going to be simulating race conditions," Earnhardt said. "Say they bring out a small spoiler, this, that and the other. We got to go out there and try to push each other around the race track with it, hope that that doesn't work. It could be potentially a dangerous situation. You got to be careful and you hope to have a safe test." Earnhardt said his plan was to be the ultimate team player. "You want to help NASCAR -- I want to help NASCAR," Earnhardt said. "I want to be an ambassador for the sport, do my part, make the sport better. That's what [Tuesday] will be about." NASCAR plans to have cars on track from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET and after a half-hour lunch break, from 1:30 to 5 p.m. Spectators can view the test for free in a section of the Oldfield Grandstand with access through the lobby of the Daytona International Speedway ticket office. Qualifying the Chasers: Phoenix Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Qualified 22nd) -- Earnhardt is still alive for his first Cup championship, but barely. If Edwards finishes 26th or better or Stewart finishes 23rd or better, Earnhardt is eliminated. It's too bad, because Earnhardt seems to finally be hitting his stride. Back-to-back seventh-place finishes at Martinsville and Texas have Earnhardt on the upswing heading to a track where he's been decent. Aside from a rough two races in 2009, Earnhardt has finished 14th or better in five of the past seven races, all in the No. 88. Chase elimination scenarios for Kobalt Tools 500 Nine drivers still have a mathematical chance at the Sprint Cup championship with two races remaining, but three find themselves on the cusp of elimination after Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. And Jimmie Johnson could win Sunday and still find himself removed from title consideration. Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman were mathematically eliminated at Texas. This week, it's Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and even Johnson who find themselves in a situation where they cannot control their destiny. NASCAR has not officially released elimination scenarios, but a review of points available and possible tie-breakers reveals these unofficial numbers: If Carl Edwards finishes 34th or better -- or Tony Stewart winds up 31st or better -- Kurt Busch will be eliminated, even if he wins and receives the maximum number of points. If Carl Edwards finishes 28th or better -- or Tony Stewart winds up 25st or better -- Gordon is out, too. Edwards can add Earnhardt to the elimination list with a 26th-place finish, or Stewart can do the same by finishing 23rd. And five-time champion Johnson could win Sunday but be eliminated from contention if Edwards winds up second. The elimination scenarios for Brad Keselowski, Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick are more complicated, and involve multiple variables too complicated to explain here. Finally, there is a very slim chance Edwards could make the season finale a coronation. If he wins and Stewart finishes 43rd -- and Keselowski, Kenseth and Harvick are all subsequently mathematically eliminated -- Edwards would clinch the championship at Phoenix. Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Having respect for those in charge makes rulings easier to accept Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t need to know “the line” that he would have to cross to incur a harsh NASCAR penalty. He’s comfortable as long as he knows who is making the decision and that NASCAR will be consistent is in its rulings. The Hendrick Motorsports driver said Tuesday that he’s pretty much good with the decisions as long as he respects the person making them. “I want to be able to respect that person and I want to admire them and look up to them, and I do have that with [NASCAR President Mike] Helton,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Hopefully that will be the case throughout the history of the sport. “When you have somebody in there that you feel is making those decisions that you can’t respect or don’t admire and can’t look up to and appreciate, then it’s very difficult. I feel we’re in a good place with the way NASCAR handles things, manages things and the people that are making those decisions right now.” Earnhardt Jr. believes NASCAR made the right decision in parking Kyle Busch last week after Busch intentionally wrecked Ron Hornaday by turning him into the wall during the Camping World Truck Series race Friday night at Texas Motor Speedway. “I thought that the punishment fit the crime,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “NASCAR has done similar things in the past when the same situation has happened. I like the mentality that they've had over the last year or two with letting us sort of settle things on the race track, but there's a line you can't cross. “NASCAR knows where that is. I'm glad that that's there. I'm glad there are some things that just aren't going to be put up with.” Helton said that action was over the line – one that may not be crystal clear, but one that he says “we’ll know it when we see it.” “I don't really care where the line is,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I don't need a firm understanding of what's right, what's wrong, where everything lies. “I just want NASCAR to be a sanctioning body that's fair. I want them to punish wrongdoing and award people for doing things the right way and just continue to go down that path.” Brad Keselowski, who was at NASCAR’s Hall of Fame on Tuesday along with Earnhardt Jr., said the line is always changing. Keselowski said NASCAR had to do something to keep retaliation from escalating. “The problem with retaliation is that no matter how good you are as a driver, you never know what’s going to happen,” said Keselowski, the victim of retaliation twice by Carl Edwards last season. “You could just simply spin that guy out. You could flip him up in the air. You don’t know. That’s why you have to stop it from happening either way.” Earnhardt Jr. said he has made similar mistakes as far as losing his cool. “I was kind of shocked that it happened,” Earnhardt Jr. said of the Busch/Hornaday incident. “I know as a race-car driver you forget really how many people are watching and what's going on. I've made similar mistakes, done things that I regret. “I know Kyle probably wishes to move past it. I'm sure he's going to learn a lesson from it one way or another. He'll be a better driver and a better person for it in the end.” Keselowski said all the drivers took notice. “If you don’t stop the infant when he’s young, you can’t expect him to be any different when he grows older,” Keselowski said. “We’re all a bunch of infants as drivers. We all continue to grow and evolve and if we continue to get away with things, we’re just going to try to get away with more when we grow older.” Glance at the 12 drivers in the Chase DRIVER: Dale Earnhardt Jr. CHASE POINTS: Seventh, -79 POSITION CHANGE: Plus 2 CAR: No. 88 AMP Chevrolet TEAM: Hendrick Motorsports WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK: Finished seventh for the second consecutive week, his third top-10 of the Chase. CAREER PHOENIX STARTS: 18 BEST PHOENIX FINISH: 1st (2003, 2004) Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes to help end 'boring' tandem racing NASCAR has scheduled a last-minute test Nov. 15 for Daytona International Speedway, ostensibly for Sprint Cup teams to fine-tune a fuel injection system that makes its debut in 2012. But Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be driving in it and said if it were only fuel injection, "I probably wouldn't have signed up for it." NASCAR's most popular driver is expecting the primary thrust will be eliminating the two-car trains that became prevalent in the four restrictor-plate races at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway. "Apparently, they put this together last minute for a reason," Earnhardt said Tuesday in an appearance with fans and news media at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. "They'll let us know what they're trying to accomplish, and I want to give the best feedback we can to give them the solutions they're looking for so we can go into Daytona in February with confidence to put on a great show for the fans." The tandem racing was a novelty that seemed to wear thin quickly. Through polling data and social-media platforms, Daytona and Talladega officials have said a majority of fans dislike it. Talladega drew its smallest crowd last month for a Cup race since NASCAR began providing estimated attendance figures in 2003. Earnhardt has been an outspoken critic of the tandems. He called it "boring" after last month's Talladega race because it encourages sandbagging and doesn't match the excitement of the former pack-style racing that featured a few dozen cars racing inches apart at 200 mph. NASCAR is expecting at least six to eight cars at the test. Among the ideas expected to be tested include a different restrictor plates (which are placed over the carburetor and reduce horsepower by limiting airflow to the engine) and a smaller spoiler that might decrease handling and make it harder for two cars to stay connected. "They'll bring every feasible option, and we'll try to get it out on the track," Earnhardt said. "The difficult part is simulating racing conditions. (With the) smaller spoiler, we have to try to push each other around track and hope it doesn't work. "It could be a potentially dangerous situation, but you have to do your part. Hopefully, we'll have a safe test and help NASCAR make the sport better." Earnhardt expects Hendrick Motorsports to bring another car and said gathering data would be the more, the merrier. "A perfect situation is 43, and the worst is two," he said. "Anywhere in the middle is an unknown. If you can get 15 to 20 guys in a pack, and you can't (do the) two-car push, that's a good sign. "I'm just worried about how we're going to find out how you can't push. Is it going to be a wreck we're going to cause to say, 'Man, we ain't doing that anymore!' Are we going to almost wreck and say, 'Alright, now we can't push anymore because we're almost wrecking doing it.' Because that's what is going to take if you eliminate the two-car tandem drafting. It'll be because it'll wreck somebody or spin someone out. "The reason we never did it before was we would spin each other out in the corner. I wrecked (Jeff) Burton at Talladega in '08 or '09, and you had to be really careful if you pushed anyone in the corner, and you never really thought about doing it because of that reasons. That's where we're going to have to get back to and hopefully we don't have to find out the hard way in testing." Brad Keselowski, who also participated in Tuesday's event, said the key to fixing the two-car drafting is two-fold: change the cars so they don't punch as big a hole in the air — "We never saw it with the older-style cars because they were like driving a school bus" — and wait for the tracks to lose grip (both were been repaved in the past five years). The Penske Racing driver, though, said "NASCAR has an answer coming" in 2013 with a redesigned car with a nose that won't allow for pushing while also being more aesethetically pleasing. "It's remarkable; a very, very attractive car," Keselowski said. "We're going to get back to more of the conventional look of what you see on the street. That's great news for the sport." Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn't thinking 2012 yet, except for Daytona test later this month Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t thinking about 2012 even though he pretty much is out of the 2011 title hunt. The only time he will be thinking about 2012 is in a couple of weeks, when he tests Nov. 15 at Daytona International Speedway. The test is being called a fuel injection test, but NASCAR will look at different ways to possibly limit the two-car draft. All teams can go to the Nov. 15 test, but NASCAR doesn’t expect the entire garage to attend. Earnhardt Jr., who dislikes the two-car tandem draft, wanted to go to the Daytona test. “Absolutely, I was hoping to get the opportunity as soon as we could,” Earnhardt Jr. said Friday at Texas Motor Speedway. “I like going to Daytona, I like the area and I am glad that NASCAR is putting together the opportunity to try some things, and get innovative on improving the draft, improving the races at Daytona and Talladega.” NASCAR hopes to get a good baseline with a possible different spoiler and restrictor-plate combination that could decrease the amount of time drivers could spend in the two-car draft. A three-day test already is scheduled for Jan. 12-14. “If we can answer some questions now, it is going to give us a better opportunity to continue to improve when we get into January,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “If we can go ahead and knock some of the work out of the way, ‘X’ off the things that don’t work, see some potential and take that back to the house and work on it, maybe when we go in January we can really take those next several steps that are going to be essential to get in the drafting and racing more like we want I guess.” As far as the final three races of 2011, Earnhardt Jr. isn’t thinking next year as he sits ninth in the standings, 73 points behind leader Carl Edwards. “We just go to every race track every week trying to find something, trying to find speed,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It ain’t really about trying to prepare for any certain time or any certain thing, you just go to the race track every week and you try what you can to get it as good as you can, be as good as you can. “That might happen tomorrow, it might happen next year, you just never know.” Earnhardt Jr. will start 16th on the starting grid Sunday in the AAA Texas 500. He is still looking for his first win of the year and first with crew chief Steve Letarte, who took over the Earnhardt Jr. car this year and put him in the Chase for the first time in three seasons. The key to their improvement will be communication. “I am more vocal now, because I am a lot less frustrated,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “When I get frustrated, I shut my mouth because I don’t want to say something that I am going to regret. A lot of times I will clam up a little bit. “I have not been that frustrated this year, I think I have been able to be real vocal with Steve and my group. I think that is when you can express yourself. It is best when you do communicate, it is best when you have your intentions and ideas and thoughts out there on the table for everyone to understand.” Qualifying the Chasers: Texas Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Qualified 16th) -- Earnhardt's stats at Texas aren't horrible, but most of his success came while in the No. 8. Since adding the extra eight, Junior just hasn't found his mojo in the Lone Star State. Since joining Hendrick, Earnhardt has just two top-10s at Texas, both in spring races. He also has four finishes outside the top 20 and his two top-10s are his only lead-lap finishes in that stretch. One good thing for Earnhardt, he finds his way to the front. In five of seven Texas events in the No. 88, Earnhardt has held the lead. One little nugget worth mentioning -- Earnhardt's first Cup Series victory at came at Texas in 2000. Glance at the 12 drivers in the Chase DRIVER: Dale Earnhardt Jr. CHASE POINTS: Ninth, -73 POSITION CHANGE: None CAR: No. 88 AMP Chevrolet TEAM: Hendrick Motorsports WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK: Notched only his second top-10 of the Chase with a seventh-place finish. CAREER TEXAS STARTS: 18 BEST TEXAS FINISH: 1st (2000) Earnhardt enjoys dishing out M'ville punishment In a wild race that featured drivers trading shots -- some deserved, some cheap -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave better than he got in Sunday's Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Earnhardt was the catalyst for the race's first caution, when he bounced off the curbing in Turn 1 and sent Kurt Busch spinning. He also was involved in an incident with fewer than three laps left, when he knocked Denny Hamlin into Brad Keselowski and sent Keselowski's No. 2 Dodge spinning. Earnhardt also battled with David Ragan, trading numerous blows in a four-lap battle that ended with Earnhardt moving Ragan up the track and passing his adversary. It was short-track racing in its purest form -- and Earnhardt loved it. "I felt like I was doing more of the beatin' on people than I was getting beat on myself," said Earnhardt, who finished seventh. "There was definitely some fun stuff happening out there, and a lot of times you just kind of have to laugh it off. It was fun. "It was a lot of beatin' and bangin' right from the drop of the green flag, but I think the fans really enjoy that. I'm sure it was great fun to watch on TV and in the stands, and it was great fun in the race car -- the most fun I've had in a really long time." No more riding around at the back for Junior Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s days of riding around at the back of restrictor-plate races are over. NASCAR's most popular driver said he and drafting partner Jimmie Johnson learned their lesson last weekend at Talladega Superspeedway, where the Hendrick Motorsports teammates hung out in the back for much of the race, hoping to sprint to the front at the end. But three cautions in the final 20 laps derailed that plan, and the two were resigned to mediocre finishes for the second consecutive plate race. No more, Earnhardt said at Martinsville Speedway. "At the end of the race we collectively decided that we learned our lesson, and that we won't do that again," he said. "Given the opportunity to run that race over, we would have just thrown ourselves into the fight and tried to run as hard as we could and taken whatever risks needed to be taken to stay toward the front. Hindsight is 20/20, but when we get that opportunity again, I don't think that's a strategy we'll ever use again." Although Earnhardt was clearly unhappy with running at the back for much of the race -- he called it "boring" in the immediate aftermath last weekend -- he emphasized that the strategy was a team decision. Cautions at the end scuttled the plan, and the result was a 25th-place finish for Earnhardt and a 26th-place finish for Johnson, which put the reigning champion 50 points behind Carl Edwards coming to Martinsville. "I don't ever recall a disagreement," Johnson said. "What Junior and I did was in the days leading into the Talladega race, our crew chiefs took the responsibility to call the race and tell us when to go and what to do. Junior and I both agreed that inside the car it's tough to understand the big picture. And we find that it's really easy for us to get overly excited and feel like we need to go up in and race. And with the strategy we all agreed to put in play, it was to ride and wait and at the very end of the race, go, and get up in there. "And we took direction from our crew chiefs as we were instructed to do and those last cautions really hurt our plan. That's what really got us. And then on the last restart, we were sitting there in 20-something place with two laps to go. Junior was in front of me, and my car was overheating. I've got to get in front of him to try to get a push, and with two laps, it just didn't play out as we had hoped it would. But we were just sitting in the cars taking direction." Earnhardt said he understood the plan going in, and bought into it. "I wasn't a victim of it," he said. "I bought into the same idea that the two crew chiefs and that Jimmie had, and we all did that together. And we all made the choices that got us our poor finish together. And no one person out-ruled or overruled the other. Everybody sort of collectively sunk the ship as the race went on. And it was disappointing." Dale Earnhardt Jr. knows retaliation can come quick and easy at Martinsville Drivers can, and often do, get mad at one another at any NASCAR track. But when the series travels to Martinsville, where space on the 0.526-mile track is at a premium, tempers can go off the charts. There have been wars of words, retaliation with the race cars and physical altercations outside the cars. So what gives? “At Martinsville, whoever you are angry at is likely within reach,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday at Martinsville while teams waited for the rain to subside. “So it is hard to contain yourself, to do the right thing, do the professional thing, to act accordingly, whatever you want to call it,” he said. “That is where you get in the gray area and struggle within yourself about what to do.” Martinsville, one of only three tracks under a mile in length that Cup events, is the shortest circuit. Navigating it’s tight, flat turns while trying to avoid contact from the front, the rear and either side, can make every lap an adventure. Cars that aren’t up to snuff can become rolling roadblocks, holding up traffic and making it difficult for a driver to put a great deal of distance on the competition. Unlike the 1.5-mile and larger tracks, a driver who feels he’s been taken advantage of at Martinsville often doesn’t have far to look to find the person responsible for his misfortune. “Most of the time you do not have the opportunity to so readily retaliate on somebody at the bigger tracks or wherever else,” said Earnhardt Jr., who will start ninth in Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500. “But here you know if a guy gets into you, more than likely you have the next corner to give it back to him; sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t and it just depends on who it is and how badly you think they used you up and whether you like them to begin with. “It is really hard to contain yourself and you have to think down the next straightaway whether you want to do something, what do you want to do and are you going to look like a jerk doing it? You just have to make that call.” The Hendrick Motorsports driver brings a winless streak of 125 races into Sunday’s event. He is ninth in points, 74 behind Chase For The Sprint Cup points leader Carl Edwards. In his last Martinsville start, Earnhardt Jr. finished second, losing the lead to eventual race winner Kevin Harvick with just four laps remaining. “I’m looking forward to the race and trying to run as good ... as good as we did last time, maybe improve a little bit,” he said. Qualifying the Chasers: Martinsville Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Qualified ninth) -- Earnhardt has just one top-10 in the six Chase races, but that could change at Martinsville. Earnhardt's average finish of 13.3 is fourth among Chasers and while Earnhardt hasn't won at Martinsville, he has nine top-fives and 12 top-10s in 23 starts. Since joining Hendrick, Earnhardt has found some of the success he had in the early 2000s. In seven races in the No. 88, Earnhardt has two runner-up finishes and three more top-10s. In his past two starts at Martinsville, Earnhardt finished seventh and second and led 107 laps. Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes for another chance to win at Martinsville Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn’t forgotten about his near-miss at Martinsville Speedway last April. Passed by Kevin Harvick with less than four laps remaining, Earnhardt Jr. missed a chance to ditch that pesky losing streak – now at 125 races heading into the Tums Fast Relief 500 at the 0.526-mile paper-clip-shaped oval this weekend. The second-place finish at Martinsville has bothered Earnhardt Jr. ever since that missed opportunity for a victory. While he has had a good season – he made the Chase For The Sprint Cup for the first time in three years – he sorely wants to get back to victory lane. “Every time you lose a race, especially losing one that close, you run it through your mind for months and month’s maybe, about what you could have done differently,” Earnhardt Jr. said earlier this month. “Any time you recall an event like that where you came close to winning it, you think about what you could have done differently. “You never know what might have been the outcome, had I done something different. I would not have raced anybody dirty, but maybe I could have done a better job putting laps together while I was out there in front, done a better job of not slipping up into one and doing things to give him an opportunity to get under me and things like that.” Earnhardt Jr. obviously wants another chance at Martinsville, the oldest and shortest track on the circuit. “I wish I could try that again,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I don’t know, Harvick was pretty fast but I sure wish it had ended differently. “There are a lot of things you definitely would like another shot at in life. But we don’t get that. You have to look forward. You have to look in the direction you are going.” Earnhardt Jr. participated in a tire test at Martinsville in August and likes racing at NASCAR’s oldest track. “I definitely look forward to going to Martinsville because I love short-track racing and I like Martinsville and the challenges it has,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It has such different challenges than most race tracks, it is fun for me. I think it is a great race to watch, too.” Earnhardt Jr. has five top-10 finishes in his last seven races there – including a pair of second-place finishes. He has led 107 laps in the last two events there and will take the same car he had there in April. “You’ve got to be able to roll around the middle,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “You’ve got to be able to have good forward bite there. Getting in the power and getting the power down is real important.” Glance at the 12 drivers in the Chase DRIVER: Dale Earnhardt Jr. CHASE POINTS: Ninth, -74 POSITION CHANGE: None CAR: No. 88 AMP Chevrolet TEAM: Hendrick Motorsports WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK: Waited with Johnson too long to try to move to the front, finished 25th. CAREER MARTINSVILLE STARTS: 23 BEST MARTINSVILLE FINISH: 2nd (2011) Click here to vist the Dale Earnhardt Jr New Archive Part 2