Make-or-break year? Darnell says he must perform well this season
By Jared Turner - SceneDaily Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008
- TEXT SIZE: Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Reset Text Size
- No Comments. Leave a Comment
- Digg This
- Add to Del.icio.us
- RSS Feeds
Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images for NASCAR
A year ago this weekend, optimism abounded for Erik Darnell.
The Craftsman Truck Series driver was only a few months removed from being named the series’ 2006 rookie of the year.
He was in the early stages of his second season with one of NASCAR’s most powerful organizations, Roush Fenway Racing. And he was returning to one of his best tracks, Kansas Speedway.
Then at Kansas, all the pieces came together. Darnell went out and snagged the only real prize that had eluded him as a rookie: a win, which he captured in convincing fashion.
More victories seemed likely to follow.
But they didn’t.
One year, a crew chief and nary a win later, Darnell’s optimism has been tempered by a sense of urgency heading into Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 250 at Kansas.
The 25-year-old knows now is the time to run up front if he hopes to convince Jack Roush or another Sprint Cup team owner that he deserves a ride in NASCAR’s top series.
Latest Headlines
“I honestly believe this is probably going to be it for me,” Darnell said in a phone interview with SceneDaily.com this week. “This is going to be my make-it or break-it year, so I’ve definitely got to show some results, and we’ve got to run well, and so far we’ve been doing that.”
Four races into his third truck campaign with Roush Fenway, Darnell is eighth in the series points standings, four spots better than he finished in 2006 and 2007.
The campaign started well for Darnell when he earned the pole for the season opener at Daytona, and he led before a cut tire foiled his shot at victory.
Following an 11th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway and a 12th-place result at Atlanta, Darnell placed fifth in the series’ most recent outing last month at Martinsville Speedway.
Though he’s still not where he wants to be, Darnell is pleased with his team’s progress. Despite the win at Kansas last year, 2007 was an overall disappointment for Darnell. Not only did he fail to find victory lane a second time; he wasn’t a serious threat for the championship, which he considered a legitimate goal at the beginning of the season.
“I honestly thought we’d end up with a couple more wins in 2007. It’s kind of frustrating to say that Kansas was the only one,” Darnell said. “We had some strong runs, but we never were able to put together a whole race and get another win out of it. We ended up second one or two times and just never quite got it. I think we should have had one already this year, and we don’t, which is frustrating. So to go back to the track where I have won at before, I think might make it a little bit easier.”
Last year at Kansas, Darnell led 92 of 167 laps on a day when his Ford was clearly the class of the field. But the momentum of the win didn’t carry over. Darnell finished no better than 15th in the next five races.
By mid-September the situation was so grim that Roush Fenway officials swapped the crew chief and crews on Darnell’s No. 99 team and Roush Fenway’s No. 50 truck, which was being shared by several drivers.
The move appeared to help Darnell at first. He finished second at New Hampshire in his first race with new crew chief Matt Puccia and placed fifth in the next event at Las Vegas. But he went on to record just one top-20 in the season’s final six races.
“It just seemed like we had that monkey on our back, and we just never could get it off,” said Puccia, who replaced John Quinn atop Darnell’s pit box.
Even if Darnell rebounds with a career year in 2008, it may be hard to land a Cup ride with Roush Fenway. The organization is already maxed out with five Cup teams and must eliminate one of those teams to meet NASCAR’s four-car limit coming in 2010. It’s present Cup drivers have expressed no desire to leave. Is Darnell concerned that proving himself may not be enough to earn a Cup ride at Roush Fenway?
“That’s a tough question, but that’s the situation that we’re in right now,” he said. “And not only myself, but we’ve got Colin Braun in the trucks as well. He’s already shown quite a bit of potential this year. Should me or him both do well enough to where they might want to move us up, it might only be able to go to a Nationwide car just because they have everybody in place on the Cup side right now. I guess that stuff’s all depending, too, on where everybody ends up after this year.”
The Nationwide Series seems to be a logical destination for Darnell next season should he piece together a strong 2008 and remain at Roush Fenway. Last weekend, Darnell made his Nationwide Series debut at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course in Mexico City, where he qualified 14th and finished 26th.
“I’d be lying if I said I’d want to make my [series] debut on a road course,” said Darnell, who is scheduled to make three more Nationwide starts this season for Roush Fenway. “I think I would have much rather liked to have done it on an oval. Nonetheless, it was a good experience, and I actually had a lot of fun doing it. It didn’t turn out quite the way we would have liked, but all things considered, it was a decent weekend.”
Another decent season won’t satisfy Darnell in the truck series.
“He’s definitely hungry,” Puccia said. “I saw the fire in his eyes even just going to Daytona this year. He doesn’t accept defeat. He accepts defeat about as good as I do, and that’s not very well.”
Darnell has accepted the reality that he must perform if he hopes to move up or even stay put.
“I really feel like I’ve got to go out there and prove myself this year and show that I do belong here,” he said. “And so far I think that I’ve done that pretty well. … I guess being with a big organization like Roush, Jack’s pretty high on performance and getting the job done, and I’ve got to show him and show them that I’m the guy for this job.”
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Erik Darnell
No Comments
Be the first to comment on "Make-or-break year? Darnell says he must perform well this season". Login or sign up for a free account below to post your comment