What does NASCAR have to do to get Dale Jr. into the Chase?

[6 Shooter]

A few years ago I spent more than two hours touring NASCAR headquarters. My hosts were gracious, and they showed me everything. They showed me everything except the Secret Lab, where imaginary late-race debris is created, and the Secret Room.

I can’t prove there’s a Secret Room. When I called NASCAR on Wednesday and asked for the Secret Room, an operator told me she didn’t have such a listing. She told me in a courteous, gentle way that implied I should perhaps get more sleep and make sure I don’t spend too much time by myself.

Yes, I felt stupid making the call. But professional journalism isn’t always pretty.

Let’s assume, for the sake of this column, that there is a Secret Room. I can tell you who is in there – NASCAR’s brightest and most creative minds. And I can tell you what they’re doing. They’re trying to get Dale Earnhardt Jr. into the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

You think I’m kidding?

NASCAR was once the up-and-coming sport. Then it was the sport that had reached a plateau. Now it’s the sport that has rolled off the plateau and started the slide down.

So what happens if the 10-race playoffs, which last even longer than the NBA playoffs, go on without Junior?

What happens is fans will go more than two months without watching Junior drive a meaningful race?

What happens is, NASCAR will go head to head with the NFL without its best draw. What happens is Kurt Busch will edge Carl Edwards in a thrilling Sunday race and Montel Williams will get better ratings.

Only one athlete means more to his sport than Junior means to his, and that athlete is Tiger Woods. You know what they call a tournament that Woods elects not to play?

They call it the Wyndham Championship. That event concluded Sunday in Greensboro. You weren’t there.

Junior has been on a terrible streak since reluctantly announcing that he was leaving Dale Earnhardt Inc. First he lost Budweiser, his beloved sponsor. Then he lost 8, his beloved number.

DEI’s reluctance to part with the number is ludicrous. The only reason 8 is famous is because it is attached to the side of Junior’s car. It’s almost as if DEI looked in the mirror, tried to decide how to get even more fans to dislike it, and came up with this.

Twelve drivers make the Chase. Junior is 13th, 163 points behind Kurt Busch. If Junior doesn’t make up all those points in the three remaining races, he spends the fall doing nothing more than going for Sunday drives.

Although the Secret Room probably has soft leather chairs, NASCAR is in a tough place. Racing fans are sharp.

They, too, know about the Secret Room and the Secret Lab and other conspiracies. These fans expect NASCAR to call a news conference to announce that it will expand the Chase from 12 teams to 13.

They’re wrong.

Because Junior is only eight points ahead of Ryan Newman, NASCAR will call a news conference to announce that it will expand the Chase from 12 teams to 14.

Article

 

[Red Dogs]

Nasacar is on it's way down the hill, all because of greed and not standing up for what's right. They have become so politically correct they are loosing their core supporters like me and millions of other rednecks that got them where they were at the top of the sports world. Personaly I hope to see their ship sink and another series come along and take over but I know that will probably never happen.
As for Jr. , perhaps it's time for him to take the blame himself for his own fate instead of blaming everything on someone else ( mostly Teresa) he does not have the talent to be doing any better than he is or the drive to improve himself on his own.
I was a big Dale Sr. fan and I believe Nascar and Jr. would be a lot different if he were still alive, if you think back Nascar started going downhill soon after his death.

 

[vett boy]

Although I like Jr. as my #2 man behind Tony ,I don't think next season will do him much better.

I also think his fan base will fade some.

I've been wrong before.

 

[vett boy]

Also keep in mind we have two races left.Harvick,Busch and Truex are not in the saftey zone.If any of those three had two bad weeks and Jr. had two good ones ,guess what ?

Anyone looking for two real good tickets to Louden send me a PM

 

[Glensgages]

Although I like Jr. as my #2 man behind Tony, I don't think next season will do him much better.

This IS a guy who won multiple races in each season of his career from '00 to '04, and he STILL knows how to drive a restrictor-plate car, and he HAS run well at many races this season, only to fade-late, blow-up, get crashed-out, or fall-victim to other gremlins.

The only way to evalutae Junior's abilities are to transplant him into the #5 team's equipment, with that team intact, and NOT bring his cousin from DEI:
this way, we'll get a direct comparison between Junyah in a HMS car.

I also think his fan base will fade some.

NASCAR's popularity is fading, and fading-fast..... having cookie-cutter tracks, lucky-dog, repeated scoring-glitches, the squabble with AT&T, trying to squash drivers from having personalities, and look-alike 155-pound salad eaters who recite their sponsors ad-naseum hasn't been good for the sport:
Brian France would screw-up the recipe for ice-cubes.

Junior winning a Championship would-be a blessing for the sport, media-wise, but as a fan of his father and Junior himself, I hope NASCAR wouldn't stoop to that-level (of pulling-strings and giving him the title ) to raise their ratings

 

[vett boy]

The one thing that Tony has talked about that I agree with is when he compared NASCAR and pro wrestling.
Jr. is a good person at heart and thats why he has a great fan base.He's an easy person to like.
Would Nascar tilt the scales so Jr. had better odds of winning--I think they would.Just like wrestling.

 

[jrose7004]

I guess he'll just have to win more races to get in the chase! Simple concept really!

 

[6 Shooter]

Dale Earnhardt Jr. calls for truce with stepmother, faults critics

​

Dale Earnhardt Jr. changed his tone, if not his tune, about Teresa Earnhardt on Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

“It's about time we gave Teresa a break,” Earnhardt Jr. said.

“...As much as I am disappointed and frustrated over the fact that I don't get to keep driving the No. 8, the stuff that I read on the Internet and the stuff that I hear going on, I don't think anybody deserves that.”

Last Saturday at Michigan, Earnhardt Jr. said he never expected to be able to take the No. 8 with him to Hendrick Motorsports next year because, “I've been in these negotiations with the same person before and they never work out in your favor.”

But Earnhardt Jr. said he thinks criticism of his stepmother has gone too far.

“If people just take a step back and look, she hasn’t done anything detrimental to me,” he said.

“I’ve got a good future. I got a good opportunity in my hands. She’s doing what she needs to do, what she feels she needs to do.

“I think everybody just needs to lay off a little bit because she was married to my daddy and I know he wouldn't be too happy about it, about what's going on and what's being said about it. It bothers me a little bit.

“She has a daughter (Taylor) who goes to school and has friends and has to put up with that stuff. It's hard core, man. People have been really, really rude and over the line, way over the line with some of the things that have been said.

"I know Teresa don't know about half of it because she don't read it and she won’t put up with it. It still gets back to Taylor, or maybe it does, I don't know. Nobody deserves that. It ain't fair.”

Article

 

[Red Dogs]

I wonder who told him to say that, do you suppose Rick Hendrick had anything to do with it? Taylor isn't only Teresa's daughter she's also Jr.'s Sister, maybe a half Sister but still a Sister, why can't he stick up for his Sister instead of Teresa's daughter???
" It bothers me a little bit" sorry but it would bother me a lot if my Sister was affected by something I was responsible for, I still feel that if his Daddy was still here the boy would be in the woodshed.

 

[Glensgages]

http://insiderracingnews.com/Writers/LC/082707.html

"With the "Free the 8" battle now over, it appears all that remains between Dale Earnhardt Jr and stepmother Teresa are thirteen weeks of finishing out a once promising, but now disappointing season. It’s sad, given the time they spent together as Teresa and older sister Kelley were primarily the ones who raised Junior from 1982 onward to adulthood.


Many details are still uncertain on both sides of the equation. Who will replace Dale Jr. in the DEI #8 car? Will it still be a Budweiser-sponsored car? What number will Dale Jr. run in his new Hendrick Motorsports ride? What sponsor will it carry? Will either the new driver of the #8 or Dale Jr. achieve the future success they envision? What other owners and teams will be affected when the dominoes begin to fall as Juniors replacement is announced?

These are certainly the main story lines heading into 2008 and beyond, even overshadowing the full-time implementation of the "Car-of-Tomorrow" and Toyota’s expansion (Joe Gibbs Racing) and further development.

With Dale Jr., being by a wide margin, the most popular driver in the sport, Teresa has largely been cast as the villain in the rift between the two. She’s cast as the greedy, evil and wicked stepmother who married a star athlete, lived well off of him, and now wants to take her own cut off of the son’s earnings (through a continued percentage of the #8 royalties, had he chose to accept her offer).

Meanwhile, countless interviews given over the last two decades by both Dale Sr. and Dale Jr. attest to the integral role that Teresa had in establishing the DEI empire, and innovating the marketing of NASCAR drivers that is enjoyed by all today.

Dale Jr. has received little flak for his part in their disagreements due to his loyal fanbase, other than "defecting" to Hendrick Motorsports and becoming a teammate of Jeff Gordon (the one driver that fans of Dale Jr. & Sr. always wanted both of them to hate - though the rivalries between Gordon and the Earnhardts was professional, not personal).

As much as I am not supposed to express personal feelings as a journalist, I would be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that Dale Jr. is indeed my favorite active driver/personality in the sport. That being said, I’m not sure that he was totally forthcoming in his initial press conference with Kelley when he announced his intentions to leave DEI.

At the time, he expressed that his decision was based entirely on his desires to achieve his career goal of a Cup Championship, and his apparent belief that he would not be able to attain that objective while driving for DEI. He said that unless he could gain majority ownership, and therefore control, of DEI, that he was not confident in the organization’s ability to field the elite level equipment that would yield the elusive title.

There was some conjecture that DEI had indeed allowed a number of other ownership groups to pull ahead of DEI in the technology arms race.
The current holy grail of NASCAR technology is the "7-post shaker rig", a multi-million dollar piece of equipment that can simulate aerodynamic downforce and tire-deflection, and their effects on suspension geometry under every conceivable stress-load of racing conditions.

DEI had not purchased their own shaker rig, and it may have been the tipping point in Dale Jr.’s decision to seek majority ownership and control. Maybe this was seen by Dale Jr. as a lack of total commitment to performance as opposed to profit by Teresa. However, the DEI / Ginn Motorsports merger (under which, DEI essentially inherited the new Ginn shaker rig) took place so quickly after Dale Jr.’s departure that I’m left to wonder if he was aware of the negotiations between DEI & Ginn beforehand, and decided to leave anyhow. Regardless, in comments made in recent weeks, it’s apparent that Junior’s reasons for leaving were as much or more so personal than performance related.

Being a historian of the sport and the personalities within, I have the highest hopes that both Junior and DEI (Teresa) win Nextel/Sprint Cups, even if they have to do so separately.
Being a fan of the two people themselves, I pray that some day, before too many precious years have past, that Teresa and Junior will be able to put aside their pride and their differences, appreciate the times and experiences that they’ve shared together, and make happy a great man who’s beyond a doubt rolling in his grave as they remain apart."

 

[vett boy]

I wonder who told him to say that, do you suppose Rick Hendrick had anything to do with it? Taylor isn't only Teresa's daughter she's also Jr.'s Sister, maybe a half Sister but still a Sister, why can't he stick up for his Sister instead of Teresa's daughter???
" It bothers me a little bit" sorry but it would bother me a lot if my Sister was affected by something I was responsible for, I still feel that if his Daddy was still here the boy would be in the woodshed.

Thinkin' like that people will think your from Chesterfield.

ps.need tickets to Louden ?

 

[jrose7004]

The rumor is that Dale Jr is trying to get 38 from Robert Yates.

 

[6 Shooter]

YEP - Couple the 3 & 8, nothing like a 38 Special...

 

[vett boy]

It's also rumored that Vince Mcmann will replace Jr's sister and will become Jr's spokesmen.This is possible with the pending merger of NASCAR with the WWF.

 

[jrose7004]

Do you suppose Dale Jr is the right caliber?

 

[1stiff84]

Although I like Jr. as my #2 man behind Tony ,I don't think next season will do him much better.

I also think his fan base will fade some.

I've been wrong before.

I agree with vett boy...

As much I loved to watch Big E drive, Jr. seems way too content just being NASCAR's favorite driver. Even when he is in contention to win, something tells you he won't...and he hasn't.

Jr. shouldn't make the chase...Busch wants it more.

And on the other topic, of Teresa/DEI keeping the number 8...that is the first thing she's done right in the spirit of Dale Earnhardt in a long time. Ralph drove 8...it should stay at DEI.

 

[rascal_rascal_99]

It's also rumored that Vince Mcmann will replace Jr's sister and will become Jr's spokesmen.This is possible with the pending merger of NASCAR with the WWF.

"Pending"?

I thought they already had merged the way things have been going there!

 

[68Roadster]

I find it comical that Silly Season keeps moving farther back into the current season, i.e. people start moving before the season is half over!

On another note, whats everyones take on Tony Eury Jr? Is he a help or a hinderance to Dale Jr? Personally I feel he is just a "good 'ol boy" who can't keep up with the times. Seems more often than not that he can't get a car to drive like Jr wants it. I think Jr would benefit from a change of pace in the crew chief department.

 

[rascal_rascal_99]

Or we might find out that Jr has been running over his crew chief more because of the personal relationship...

It's going to be interesting next year to see Jr getting into a proven winning car where it'll be time for him to step up as a driver and see what he does there.

I think he's got talent...how much though, I think we're about to find out.

 

[jrose7004]

Dale Jr tried to split with Eury Jr before and that didn't work out either. Blood is thicker than water.