Dale Earnhardt Jr.: 'Hopefully next year will be better'

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Mired in what is statistically his worst Sprint Cup season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t ready for 2009 to be over.

Earnhardt Jr. stopped short of calling 2009 his worst season, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver who was considered a championship contender in February yet is now 24th in the driver standings is trying to look forward on the final race weekend of the year.

“I wouldn’t declare this my worst season,” Earnhardt Jr. said following qualifying Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. “It’s been hard. This is our worst season statistically and performance, all the signs point to it being far worse than any other. But a lot of good things happened, too. It’s been interesting. Every year is worth going through no matter how it works out.

“Hopefully next year will be better. I want to keep racing because I think we need more racing. We’re not good as a team yet. We need to race more. We don’t need to say, ‘All right, let’s get this year over with and get ready for next year.’ We need to race more so I wish the year wasn’t over. Unfortunately, it is and we have to try during the offseason to fix what we can without being able to go to the race track and seeing if that’s working. Hopefully when we show up at Daytona, we’ve made the right calls.”

Earnhardt Jr. entered the season with high hopes, paired with crew chief and cousin Tony Eury Jr. But that relationship ended in May, when Eury Jr. was replaced by Lance McGrew. At the time McGrew took over, the Earnhardt Jr. was 19th in the standings.

“I see improvement,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “But we’ve got a lot of work to do over the offseason. We have got to really focus and challenge ourselves to be as good as we can next year. I think the team – these guys are really good people, they work hard and they deserve better. Hopefully we can evolve and learn and prepare ourselves for next season and have a better year. … It’s going to be a challenge for us, but I feel real, real confident in Lance. I feel good about my guys and hope that the racing gods are kind to us when next year comes around.”

How Earnhardt Jr. feels has been a source of debate this year. At times, he’s seemed optimistic. At other times, he’s seemed completely frustrated.

“I feel better than I did earlier this year, but I’ve got a long ways to go to get back my confidence that I need,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “When the car is there, it’s easy to be confident, have swagger and all that. We sort of live and die by how each day goes. Every lap in practice, if it starts bad, it affects the tone. It’s really hard to stay positive. That’s the hardest part and the one thing that I focus the most on is maintaining my attitude throughout the day because confidence ain’t quite there where it needs to be.

“Every little thing that happens during the day, whether it be race day or on Saturday or Friday can sort of really change how you feel and your confidence in the car and your ability to go out there and get it done, the team’s ability to make the car better, whatever, on the next run. That needs to get better and that’s what I’ve worked the hardest on is trying to show my guys that even if we try this and it didn’t work, I feel good that we can go back out and improve.”

To do that, Earnhardt Jr. and his team need to confidence – in each other.

“I need to believe that they believe and vice versa,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “If they get the feeling that I don’t believe in them, then we are done, That’s the worst thing I can do. It’s a two-way street between every boy on that team.”

And so far, Earnhardt Jr. does have that confidence in McGrew, who worked in what was then the Busch Series with Ricky Hendrick, who was friends with Earnhardt Jr.

“[McGrew] has made some good changes, and we’ll see hopefully some more of that as we get closer to Daytona,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He’s already done some pretty good changes at the shop. He’s done a pretty good job of helping us improve as a team. I know it’s hard to see and the results don’t say that at all. If I didn’t feel confident in this, I’d have a hard time showing it, I suppose.”

Earnhardt Jr. certainly didn’t show confidence last month at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, where he said he was frustrated and at the end of his rope. The driver said those comments helped fuel a recent National Enquirer story that implied he was depressed and out partying too much – something that Earnhardt Jr. denies.

“I got all tore up about how we qualified in Charlotte and got in front of you guys and sort of really said how I feel, but a couple of the metaphors that I use, such as the ‘end of my rope’ and all of that stuff really kind of put me within range of those guys,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “So they played target practice on that.

“I actually researched online how many people had sued the Enquirer and how many people had won, but reading through my article they sort of twist the sentences around to where they’re not really calling you out hard. They’re worded so that you really can’t go after it. It really doesn’t bother me that much. A lot of people say any publicity is good publicity. We’re [nearly] 25th in points and we’re relevant for the National Enquirer.”

As far as good publicity, Earnhardt Jr. tried to generate some good publicity for teammate Jimmie Johnson, who only needs to finish 25th or better to clinch his fourth consecutive Cup title.

“You’ve got to give Jimmie his credit,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He’s earned the respect that we should give him. He’s a hell of a person. He doesn’t cause any trouble. He’s not too vanilla. If you get to know Jimmie, he’s got a great personality. He’s great for representing the sport. … You definitely would have to put him there with my father, Richard [Petty] and David Pearson.

“You definitely would have to put him there now. He was already there before in a lot of people’s lists, but four in a row, man. Why can’t they go for five? Their team is that good.”