Junior wishes move could have been more 'private'
NEW YORK - Dale Earnhardt Jr. wishes his transition from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports could have been done in a more "private" way, but he believes there was no way it could have been done without it being done in the open.
Negotiations were talked about daily throughout the season until Earnhardt Jr. decided in May to leave DEI and a month later to join Hendrick. The family dynamic of his stepmother Teresa Earnhardt owning DEI and Earnhardt Jr.'s desire to own part of the team created a media frenzy for the first half of the year.
"I should maybe have been more private," Earnhardt Jr. said Thursday after receiving the NASCAR/National Motorsports Press Association Most Popular Driver award. "It would have been hard. I don't think I was given an option on that. If I had that option, I probably would have took it.
"Our fans, the public, you guys [in the media] wouldn't have stood for that to be under the rug. Y'all would have ripped it up for one. For us not saying what was going on, y'all would have speculated and decided what y'all thought and had us going in a million different directions as far as our fans were concerned."
In fact, when talking about what he would change about this season, he doesn't talk about the stuff off the track.
"If I could have changed anything, I think I would have tried harder driving my car," said Earnhardt Jr., who failed to make the Chase For The Nextel Cup and didn't win a race this year. "I drove hard, but it apparently wasn't hard enough."
Earnhardt Jr. has not talked with Teresa since the negotiations ended. Teresa decided not to sell him part of the company his father founded.
"We were still in contract negotiations and we had a meeting in her office with Max and my sister talking about one of their proposals - that was the last time we talked," Earnhardt Jr. said. "I don't want to say I'm writing her off the rest of my life. I want to do right by myself and what's important right now is what is important.
"That's what I'm focused on."
As far as his relationship with his old crew, he's happy he still has a good relationship with them.
"I don't think anybody ever thought I would truly leave," Earnhardt Jr. said. "But I hadn't really spoken about it a lot to my team. That would be foolish.
"But they knew I was unhappy. And some of them knew why I was unhappy. When I decided to leave, they probably already knew why and I probably didn't have to explain to them why I was leaving."
