Jared Turner: No excuses left for Dale Earnhardt Jr.
COMMENTARY
The 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season will be the most telling of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s career.
If NASCAR’s most popular driver goes out and wins a handful of races, contends for several more victories, makes the Chase For The Sprint Cup and poses at least a semi-serious threat for the title once the Chase commences, his critics should go ahead and acknowledge that he is probably one of NASCAR’s best wheelmen.
If Earnhardt Jr. flounders and doesn’t live up to expectations in his second season with the powerful Hendrick Motorsports organization, there’s reason to believe that he never will.
Unlike a driver whose potential no one never really knows because he is stuck with a back-marker team that can’t provide the resources to run up front consistently, Earnhardt Jr.’s struggles to achieve the level of success that many believed he would in NASCAR’s top series have transcended crew chiefs, owners and even car numbers.
At Dale Earnhardt Inc., the company founded by Earnhardt Jr.’s father, the late Dale Earnhardt, and the place where he spent his first eight Cup seasons, the most commonly heard excuse for Junior’s failure to win a Cup championship was inadequate equipment.
Even when DEI was in its heyday – from 2001 to about 2004 – it was widely believed that the company still couldn’t measure up with the Hendrick Motorsportses, Roush Fenway Racings and Joe Gibbs Racings of the world in terms of machinery and personnel.
So some observers, perhaps justifiably, gave Earnhardt Jr. a pass for not only failing to win a championship, but failing to win races on a consistent basis.
It seems to reason, though, that even if Earnhardt Jr. wasn’t given the best equipment at DEI, an outstanding crew chief might have been able to help make up the difference.
During his time at DEI, Earnhardt Jr. worked with five crew chiefs – Tony Eury Sr., Tony Eury Jr., Pete Rondeau, Steve Hmiel and Tony Gibson.
Sure, there were high points such as 2004, when he won six races and finished third in the championship race. And there were particularly lean years such as 2007 when he missed the Chase and failed to win a race.
Despite the differences between each pit boss in style, philosophy and skill, Earnhardt Jr.’s results through all the crew-chief pairings have averaged out to be … well, average.
A popular theory among the Earnhardt Jr. faithful is that his current pit boss, cousin Eury Jr., is the biggest reason for the driver’s struggles.
But can you really say that all five crew chiefs that have worked with Earnhardt Jr. haven’t been up to par?
It’s doubtful.
The point of this entry is not to question Earnhardt Jr.’s driving ability, though. With 18 career Cup wins, including a Daytona 500 triumph, over nine full Cup seasons (not to mention two Busch Series titles prior to Cup), Earnhardt Jr. has shown flashes of brilliance. He has proven he has the talent to get the job done.
The only lingering question left to be answered is whether he has the heart and commitment to do what it takes – namely showing up each weekend with his head in the game and keeping it there the entire race – to be a champion.
While Earnhardt Jr. pieced together a solid debut campaign last season with Hendrick Motorsports, his overall results – which included one win and a 12th-place points finish - were far from spectacular. As has been customary for Earnhardt Jr. over the years, he often ran well early in races only to fade near the end. And as in the past, Earnhardt Jr. continued his occasionally childish exchanges over the in-car radio with Eury Jr.
But let’s give Earnhardt Jr. the benefit of the doubt one last time.
Even though Hendrick Motorsports clearly provides all its drivers with top-notch equipment, it is still plausible that Earnhardt Jr. needed a season to work out the bugs and adjust to the culture of a new organization.
Maybe Eury Jr., who left DEI for Hendrick near the end of 2007 to reunite with his cousin, needed the same.
But with a year under his belt at Hendrick – winner of the last three Cup titles and four in this decade – Earnhardt Jr. has no excuse for underperforming anymore.
Sure, he has a five-year contract with the organization. But year No. 2 at Hendrick and No. 10 in Cup will tell the true tale of whether he can take it to the next level – and stay there.
