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Big year expected for Little E
2006 Rewind
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TOP 20 DRIVER COUNTDOWN
Ordinal out of range Watch the Daytona 500 on FOX, February 18 at 2 p.m. ET. |
What a life this man leads, Mr. Dale Earnhardt Jr. After a miserable 2005 season which saw six DNF's and a 19th-place finish in the point standings, Little E bounced back to finish fifth in points in 2006. But in the end, all anyone wants to talk about is the fact that his restrictor-plate prowess is eroding and that his father had already won a championship at this same stage of his life.
Meanwhile, a major documentary film is being released about his father, including an interview when Junior is very frank about their sometime-distant relationship. Yet all anyone wants to talk about is his relationship with his stepmother.
What the hell do you people want?
At the age of 32, Earnhardt has already won 17 races, including a Daytona 500, and is already the second-best driver in the history of the Talladega Superspeedway. In seven seasons he's finished inside the top 10 in points four times, including top-five efforts in three of the last four, and he's won races on plate tracks, short tracks, intermediate tracks, and flat tracks. If Brian Vickers hadn't wrecked him on the last lap at Talladega in October, we might be talking about Dale Junior, defending Cup champ.
"It's just the expectations people have always had of me," admits the man entering his eighth full season. "To be honest, the pressure they put on me isn't any worse than the pressure I put on myself. I want to win and I want to do it at DEI. Trust me...no one wants to win the championship here more than I do."
Why He Will Finish 5th
In the not-so-distant past you wouldn't have heard a statement like the one above coming from Dale Jr. He was still a kid then, but he's all man now, proven by the more active leadership role he's taken within the No. 8 Budweiser team. His first move was a misstep, parting ways with cousin and crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., at the end of the 2004 season. But when Eury returned for the stretch run of '05, the team snapped back to the Cup-worthy form it had shown in '03 and '04.
With Eury at the helm last season, Junior was obviously more comfortable with his role as driver and team co-captain. He routinely called out the engine department when he thought they needed it, and did the same with his pit crew during races. The team is in place, the formula is there. Now he just has to maintain the current upswing while minimizing the B.S. that constantly surrounds DEI. A task much easier stated than accomplished. See, "NASCAR Media Tour 2007: The Family Feud."
"It really is a compliment that people are so concerned with my family," he admits. "I think that fans especially have always felt so close to us because they loved Dad. But in the end, we have to tune all that out and take care of business at the racetrack."
That's an excellent point. Teresa Earnhardt will never go over the wall to change a tire nor will she ever be found down in the engine shop tweaking carburetors. Only Dale Junior and his team have control over the kind of cars that they put on the track, no matter what people might try to tell you. This means that only the Bud team truly controls its own destiny, not their relatives in the front office.
The All-Telling, All-Knowing Stat: 20.4
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Send your questions & comments to Ryan |
In 14 career road course starts, Dale Jr. has posted an average finish of 20.4, easily his lowest among the five types of tracks #&151; road course, restrictor plate, intermediate, flat, and short. His Achilles heel is Infineon, where he has never finished higher than 11th and owns a career-worst average effort of 23.3. As long as Infineon remains a gaping hole in his schedule, it will be impossible for him to maintain any summertime consistency.
Fantasy Lock: Richmond
No, no Talladega or Daytona...and not even Texas. The 3/4 mile oval in the Commonwealth is Little E's best track in almost every major statistical category. He owns personal bests in wins with three, including last May, top fives (5), top 10s (9), and average finish (9.9). Another good bet is Bristol, where he's so good the track is centering their current ticket sales campaign around the No. 8 car.
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