Rick Hendrick 'disappointed' in Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Chase results
CONCORD, N.C. – Team owner Rick Hendrick says he is “disappointed” that driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t finish in the top 10 in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports.
Earnhardt Jr., who began the Chase For The Sprint Cup as the No. 4 seed in the 12-driver field, finished last among the championship-contending group after posting just three top-10s in NASCAR’s 10-race playoff.
He won’t be speaking at the season-ending awards banquet in New York City on Dec. 5 when the top 10 points finishers are honored.
“I’m disappointed. I felt like we were so good early on, and we just had tremendous little gremlins bite us here from tire problems to things that you just can’t control,” Hendrick said on Tuesday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway following a luncheon honoring the Raybestos Rookie of the Year in each of NASCAR’s three national series. “All of those things that happened to him could have happened to Jimmie Johnson. He could be fifth in the points, and Jimmie could be third in the points. So racing luck has got a lot to do with it, but I think when we look back on the year and we look back at what he’s accomplished and how he’s fit into our organization and how happy he is and [crew chief] Tony [Eury Jr.] is, we’re going to go to work to make it better for next year. That’s the good news: there is next year.”
Earnhardt Jr., who joined the team this year after leaving Dale Earnhardt Inc. at the end of 2007, opened the season with a win in the non-points-paying Budweiser Shootout at Daytona and posted 11 top-10 finishes in the first 15 points races, highlighted by a win at Michigan International Speedway in June. But following the victory at Michigan, Earnhardt Jr. recorded just five top-10s over the remaining 21 events and failed to find victory lane again.
“I think he learned a lot,” Hendrick said. “There’s no way you can put a team together in their first year and they be as good as the 48 team [of Johnson] because they’ve been together. That’s the chemistry that’s going to get better on Dale Jr.’s side as we roll into next year with a year under our belt. We’ll look at areas and things that we can improve in, and we know him better, our engineers know him better now, and we know what he needs and what he wants, and we’ll be working to make that better. This sport’s always about trying to improve in every area, so we’ve got some improving to do.”
Hendrick is hopeful that the addition of Mark Martin to the four-car organization can help Earnhardt Jr. and the entire Hendrick effort in 2009. Martin is taking over the No. 5 Chevrolet driven the past two seasons by Casey Mears, who is moving to Richard Childress Racing.
“I think Mark Martin being there is going to help us, going to help us a lot,” Hendrick said. “He is a really strong asset to any organization, and I think we’ll all huddle. We’ve actually been meeting some today and the rest of this week on looking at how we can be better, so that’s the plan. Hopefully, Junior will be. He might get his first championship next year. Who knows?”
