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Is No. 8 No. 1 on DEI's engine list?
By SceneDaily Staff Report
Monday, October 22, 2007
RUSTY JARRETT / GETTY IMAGES
Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he may not be number one on the Dale Earnhardt Inc. engine list, but with four drivers in the Chase For The Nextel Cup receiving engines from the same source, that's what he would expect.
Appearing on Speed's Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain Sunday night, Earnhardt Jr. was asked if he felt that DEI was giving him the right stuff as far as engines were concerned. Earnhardt Jr.'s engine had what he thought was a valve spring break Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, though the motor did last until the final lap before it failed. Earnhardt Jr. seemed headed for a top-10 finish but ended in 23rd after he limped around the final lap.
On the show, Earnhardt Jr. said that there is certainly no conspiracy to keep him in weak engines.
"I would expect that I might not get the best motor out of the group," he said. "Obviously, all the [Richard Childress Racing] drivers are in the Chase and have a great opportunity to win the championship. You've got [DEI teammate] Martin Truex Jr. in the Chase, also. I would expect that those guys would probably get the best product, and that's what you'd expect.
"For years and years, other drivers I've raced with normally got those motors to help them qualify or help them race. We're only talking about a couple of horsepower here - nothing to really complain about. I'm sure that's probably still the case."
Earnhardt Jr. says he thinks that the teams have struggled with engine power since the merger of the DEI and RCR engine programs.
"As recently as two months ago, I talked to DEI about having a motor that's fast down the straightaway at places like Michigan and California," he told Despain. "I'd never had that kind of power before, and it was really awesome. But since the merger, I think the teams have struggled and had a lot more failures, and it's spread across the board even to the RCR camp. Hopefully, for DEI's future, they'll figure this stuff out and not have these kinds of issues. I'm not even in the Chase, and it's frustrating for me."
He says that he knows everyone is working hard to fix the engines and reiterated that there isn't a conspiracy to give him weak motors. That doesn't necessarily mean, thought, that his are the same.
"Maybe they're putting things in my motors that they're sort of R&Ding," he said. "Maybe they're R&Ding some valve trains and things like that to see if they can run that stuff next year. We're also a little behind on the RO7 motors compared to Hendrick [Motorsports] and some of the other organizations. So, we're going through a lot of the bugs that these other teams have already figured out."
Mentioned Drivers: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
2009 Sprint Cup Race for the Chase Standings
Driver Standings after the Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500
| 1 | Jimmie Johnson | 6492 |
| 2 | Mark Martin | -108 |
| 3 | Jeff Gordon | -169 |
| 4 | Kurt Busch | -211 |
| 5 | Tony Stewart | -285 |
| 6 | Juan Pablo Montoya | -289 |
| 7 | Greg Biffle | -321 |
| 8 | Denny Hamlin | -352 |
| 9 | Ryan Newman | -411 |
| 10 | Kasey Kahne | -476 |
| 11 | Carl Edwards | -520 |
| 12 | Brian Vickers | -666 |
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