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Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks with crew chief Tony Eury Jr. in the garage area. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images Photo) ยป More Photos
Don't believe the hype. Or at least the hype about the hype.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Thursday that far from being tired of all the talk surrounding his blockbuster off-season move to Hendrick Motorsports, he's actually happy to carry the discussion forward. Real happy, in fact.
"I'll be honest with you, Daytona can get here when it gets here," said Earnhardt during Wednesday's NASCAR/Lowe's Motor Speedway Media Tour stop at the Hendrick shops. "I'm enjoying talking about it. I'm enjoying everything. Every minute of it. I couldn't wait for the sun to come up today so we could get this on."
Earnhardt, perennially NASCAR's most popular driver, spent the first eight years at Dale Earnhardt Inc., the race team started by his late father in 1996. But an increasingly strident relationship with step-mother Teresa Earnhardt, a relationship Dale Jr. said last year was never good in the first place, led the driver to bolt for Hendrick Motorsports, where he has been welcomed with open arms by teammates Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Casey Mears.
And while presumably Earnhardt has the burden of high expectations on him not to mention a desire to return to victory lane for the first time in nearly two years so far at Hendrick, things have been great. Earnhardt was fast during Daytona testing, leading one session and finishing second in two others.
"It's been so much fun, every bit of it. It's really given me a renewed energy and excitement for my career," said Earnhardt. "For everything off the race track, those things have become easier for me and more enjoyable. And I know the race cars look amazing when I go into the shop. They just look so good from the inside out, it just gives me a lot of excitement about getting the season started."
Team owner Rick Hendrick, too, has embraced Earnhardt. It was natural, maybe even inevitable, that the two would gravitate to each other because of
Both the driver and team owner had huge voids in their lives as well, Earnhardt, of course, losing his father to a fatal last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500, and Hendrick losing his only son, brother and eight other friends, colleagues and family members in a plane crash near Martinsville, Va., three and half years later.
And while it might be inaccurate to say the men are surrogate father and son to each other, there's no doubt Hendrick is equally pleased to have Earnhardt driving for him.
"That has been the most unbelievable fun thing for me, is how much fun we've had together," said Hendrick. "And me just giving him some of the real-life experiences that I've been through. I enjoy doing things with him - we've been fishing together and done some things. Just to see him, he's yearning for. His daddy taught him something that's probably the most important thing that he's got from anything. He and (sister) Kelley both respect people."
So far, the pairing has exceeded expectations on both sides. But the real litmus test will begin next month at Daytona, when Earnhardt will begin trying to mount a championship charge against fierce competition, much of it at Hendrick, where Johnson and Gordon have combined for six titles and Mears has shown improvement.
Hendrick is taking nothing for granted. "As far as I'm concerned, right now we're tied for last place with 45 other teams," he said. At least until Daytona, that is.
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