Rick Hendrick says improving Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team a top priority at Hendrick Motorsports

By Rea White - Associate Editor

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Hendrick Motorsports' Dale Earnhardt Jr. (left) and team owner Rick Hendrick share a laugh at Bristol Motor Speedway in March.

Jeff Robinson
NASCAR Scene

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After collecting the top-three spots in the final Sprint Cup standings, Hendrick Motorsports team owner Rick Hendrick had plenty to be happy about, but he already appears focused on improving the fortunes of the fourth driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

“I think my priority right now is the [No.] 88 team [of Earnhardt Jr.],” Hendrick told a national media conference this week. “We're working on them to try to make that team stronger. The goal going into next year now will be win races and get all four teams in the Chase [For The Sprint Cup].”

The decision to focus on improving the Earnhardt Jr. team appears logical after the magical season the rest of the organization enjoyed this year.

Jimmie Johnson won his fourth consecutive Cup title and handed Hendrick Motorsports its ninth owners title, tying Petty Enterprises for the most ever in the series. Mark Martin, in his debut season with the organization, finished second overall, and Jeff Gordon, a four-time champion himself, finished third in the standings.

Earnhardt Jr., however, enjoyed no such success, suffering a series of setbacks. A midyear crew chief change from Tony Eury Jr. to Lance McGrew failed to turn things around, and Earnhardt Jr. finished 25th in the standings, the lowest spot of his career. He earned only five top-10 finishes, two of them top-fives, this season.

With all of his drivers and crew chiefs sticking around for next year, Hendrick wants to see vast improvement for the Earnhardt Jr. group in 2010 and expects the rest of his teams will have to work hard as well to keep up with increased competition.

"I feel real good about the fact that we're rolling into the year with virtually no changes,” Hendrick said. “You know, seeing the competition get stronger, so much stronger, like the [Richard] Childress [Racing] cars and the [Joe] Gibbs [Racing] cars are there all year anyway, and the Penske [Racing] cars, it's going to be a dog fight. You know, we know we're going to have to be on our toes and work hard here now in the offseason."

Hendrick says that seeing a team go through a slump is nothing unusual. He watched Gordon endure a winless streak. and even Johnson has had stretches where he performed below his usual level of success.

That doesn't make the struggles any easier to take or the organization any less intense on improving them for the future.

"You just go through these," Hendrick said. "We know we can make the team better, and it's frustrating, and it's, you know, the driver begins to think that no matter what he does, that something's going to happen, because we just had – we've had failures. We've had wrecks. We've just had a – if it could happen, it happened to that team.

"It's been really frustrating because about the start of the Chase, the team was running better. It was probably the best car in Loudon, and it got swept up in a wreck. And we've had all the motors and all the transmissions and gears done in the same place. We had transmission failure, and we had a motor failure. The other guys didn't experience that [in] the Chase."

Hendrick says that the problem is that even when Earnhardt Jr. is running well, things seem to go poorly for him. And that is something the team is looking to remedy.

"So when he's running good, something happened," Hendrick said. "And we’ve just got to be better all the way around. I think when we do that, when Dale sees that we've stepped up in a lot of areas, it will give him the confidence he needs. So we're all over it, and we've been all over it.

"But it's really one of my focuses here, my priority – my primary focus here starting this week, starting Monday, really."