NASCAR Capsules: Earnhardt Jr. in shadow 10 years after dad's death

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — There's a restaurant outside North Carolina Speedway where all the racers used to go for steak and socializing whenever NASCAR was in town.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. knew the routine, had lived it with his famous father. But he was a reluctant participant when he began his racing career, once recruiting his publicist to skip the steak in favor of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their motel room.

Earnhardt didn't think it would be a problem until his father came through the door of their adjoining room, saw the half-eaten loaf of bread and his son watching "Batman" reruns. The Intimidator lit into him.

"As he was opening the door, he was hollering, 'Y'all got 15 minutes to get ready to go and eat,'" Earnhardt recalled, "and once he opened the door to see what we were doing, he was really upset because we weren't more professional. He thought we should do what other drivers do, and what he was doing is the best thing to do. So he thought we were kind of lazy.

"Tons of moments like that ... where we would be lazy, do something goofy, and Dad would just get so mad for us not taking things more seriously."

Those are the memories of Dale Earnhardt his son has chosen to share in the days leading up to Friday, the 10th anniversary of his father's death on the last lap of the Daytona 500. He's chosen to keep to himself the personal thoughts, feelings and heartache that accompany that violent afternoon, and the decade of difficulties it created for NASCAR's most popular driver.

Try as he might, he can't replicate the success of his father. He's stuck in the shadow. He goes by "Dale," and that's what his circle calls him, but he's just "Junior" to most people.

He can't please a rabid fan base, much of it inherited, that demands a championship.

Worst of all, he can't shake the pressure that comes from being the namesake of an icon who was polarizing in life but has become mythical in death.

It clearly weighed on him in his preseason appearances, each one a peppering of questions about his father. With a blank stare and monotone answers, he patiently sat through every session, trying to be respectful but making it so very clear he can't wait for the anniversary to pass. He seemed tired — almost absent — but insisted he's "happy inside."

But he also acknowledged that appearances no longer paint a picture of the carefree, beer-drinking rock star who was such a stark contrast to his blue-collar father.

"I'll see these videos of me from five years ago, definitely a more jubilant, cheerier guy," Earnhardt said. "I think I've become more reserved, maybe due to how I've seen me be judged or analyzed. I've sort of changed my outward approach a little bit toward everybody.

"But I'm telling you, if I can get back to the racetrack and I can win a race and run well, it'll get a whole lot easier."

And that's the true burden — the losing, the failure — that he's faced the last five years.

He has won just three races since 2005, and none the last two years. He's been to Victory Lane only once since his ballyhooed 2008 move to Hendrick Motorsports, a marriage that paired the most marketable driver in NASCAR with the winningest team.

Only Earnhardt has yet to challenge for a title, has missed the 12-driver Chase for the Championship the last two years, and takes a 93-race losing streak into Sunday's Daytona 500.

Before an accident in Wednesday's practice wrecked his pole-winning car, he was slated to start first, which raised hope that the prodigal son could end his miserable slump in the biggest race of the NASCAR season. Eyebrows were immediately raised at how the stars seemed to be lining up, with ESPN executives on the defensive after commentator Tony Kornheiser intimated on his "Pardon the Interruption" show that the fix is in by NASCAR to get Earnhardt to Victory Lane on the anniversary of his father's death.

"I can tell you for sure that ESPN doesn't agree with what he said," said Rich Feinberg, the network's vice president of motorsports.

Three-time Daytona 500 champion Dale Jarett, now an ESPN analyst, didn't try to mask his anger in defense of Earnhardt's honest qualifying effort and the work he's put forth trying to turn around his career.

"Dale Earnhardt Jr. is in a very good race car down here. He's always run well here if you give him good equipment," Jarrett said. "He's my pick to win this race. Is it because it's the 10-year anniversary of his father's death? No. It irritates you that that perception is out there, but I can assure anyone and everyone it can't happen, to set something up."

All talk of a fix was dismissed following Earnhardt's accident, which will force him to now start at the back of the 43-car field on Sunday.

But the truth behind his strong qualifying effort goes back to Rick Hendrick, who has once again shaken up his organization to benefit Earnhardt. Just days after Jimmie Johnson won his fifth consecutive championship, the team owner overhauled his driver-crew chief lineup to pair Earnhardt with Steve Letarte, who had spent the past several seasons with Jeff Gordon.

It's Earnhardt's third crew chief in three years, and Hendrick said the pressure never ceases in trying to get his driver back to Victory Lane.

"Everybody expects me or Dale to wave some magic wand and he's going to lead every lap and win every race," Hendrick said. "He's just under the microscope every minute. He and I have told each other, 'Look, the people that love you are going to love you. The people that don't? Let them blame me.'

"I'm there for him, and I can't tell you how I would handle what he's trying to handle, and that is carry on his father's name, have a business that he takes care of, make everybody happy, and the sport needs him to do well. He's getting it from everywhere. He has no safe zone."

The safe zone could be the cockpit of his No. 88 Chevrolet, the only place Earnhardt can seemingly find relief.

His mood lifted once he arrived in Daytona, and his confidence grew after leading laps in last weekend's Budweiser Shootout and winning the pole for the main event. He wants to be better, he wants to win, and he figures that's the best way to honor his father's legacy.

"The only thing that really concerns me is my performance on the racetrack. It's the only thing that affects my mood and my personality," he said. "Our performance needs to get better, and it has been very disappointing and upsetting. My concern is that we're going to fix that. That's the only thing I think about.

"The anniversary of my father's death, just regular wear and tear, responsibilities — those aren't on my mind as much as just sheer performance. Enough is enough was last year. I'm ready to get going and get to the race track and see if we can turn things around."

-- Jenna Fryer

Earnhardt wrecks Daytona 500 car

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Instead of leading the field to the green flag in the Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start from the back of the pack after wrecking his primary race car in practice.

Earnhardt still could win Sunday's season-opening race — he'll just have his work much harder to do so. Earnhardt mangled his pole-winning car in practice Wednesday, colliding with five-time defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and sliding into a wall.

"We've got plenty of race cars," Earnhardt said. "I ain't worried about how fast we'll be or whether we'll be as good. We'll be fine. But it never feels good tearing them up."

Earnhardt was pushing Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, in a two-car draft when Johnson had to back off the gas for slower-moving traffic in front of him. Earnhardt plowed into Johnson's back bumper and nearly spun him out, but Johnson saved his car from skidding.

A second pack of cars led by Martin Truex Jr. closed quickly on Earnhardt's bumper, causing the No. 88 Chevrolet to spin across the track and into the inside wall.

Johnson said he had to slow down suddenly when a pack of three cars ahead of them on the track — driven by Robby Gordon, Michael Waltrip and David Gilliland — drifted high from the bottom of the track toward the top.

"I was running out of space, and I thought that hole was going to close, and I lifted, and I got turned sideways from behind," Johnson said.

The accident was largely a function of the two-car drafting style that has become the fastest way around Daytona International Speedway this year. Working together, two cars are so much faster than a single car or a larger pack that Earnhardt says other drivers have to watch the closing speed of the cars coming up behind them.

"You've got to pay attention out there, man," Earnhardt said. "You want to come out here and race, you've got to pay attention."

Hendrick Motorsports immediately pulled out a backup car for Earnhardt. He will have to forfeit the top starting spot in his qualifying race Thursday and Sunday's season opener.

Earnhardt's wreck wasn't the only big development in an eventful Wednesday at Daytona, where NASCAR continued to tinker with its rules.

The track opened with NASCAR officials ordering a change to the restrictor plate designed to back speeds off the 206 mph mark reached earlier in Speedweeks. The move to a smaller plate is expected to slow cars by 2-3 mph when they are drafting.

Waltrip topped 206 in last weekend's exhibition Budweiser Shootout.

"I don't think you are going to hear one driver complain about that because it isn't going to affect the racing," defending Daytona 500 champion Jamie McMurray said. "You really can't tell in the car, when everyone is moving the same speed."

The Nationwide series also made a move to reduce speeds, changing the size of the tapered spacer that serves a similar function as a restrictor plate in the Cup series.

The changes have all come since Saturday night's race, which had a very different style of racing than the big drafting packs everyone had grown accustomed to at Daytona and Talladega.

New pavement at Daytona created a smooth, fast surface, and teams have capitalized by figuring out that a two-car draft is the fastest way around. Reviews on the new style have differed, and NASCAR issued two technical changes following qualifying on Sunday designed to limit the amount of time two cars can stay hooked together.

Four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon believes fans simply need to accept the new style of racing.

"I think there is some very exciting and entertaining aspects of it," Gordon said. "I've had a lot of people have mixed emotions and several people have said to me, 'Hey, I thought that was pretty cool. It wasn't what I'm used to, but it's pretty cool.' So, I just don't think you're going to be able to change that."

Meanwhile, Earnhardt will have to figure out how to work his way through the field.

It is the third car Earnhardt has used during Daytona Speedweeks. He also wrecked one in last weekend's exhibition Budweiser Shootout.

The team will repair the Shootout car, and it will become his backup car for Sunday.

"I didn't feel good about getting out there practicing, and didn't think I needed to be out there practicing," Earnhardt said. "I just had a bad feeling about it. We come running up on some guys that didn't have their heads on straight and got into an accident."

-- Chris Jenkins

Will shakeup affect NASCAR powerhouse Hendrick?

He was calculating moves to make Johnson and his three teammates better. It didn't take Hendrick long to figure them out, either.

Two days after Johnson hoisted his fifth consecutive Sprint Cup trophy, Hendrick made significant changes to his organization. It's the kind of shop swap that could keep NASCAR's most dominant team, Hendrick Motorsports, atop the ultra-competitive racing world.

"We needed to shake it up and have a real reason to come back with some enthusiasm and some self-inflicted pressure," Hendrick said. "We were behind in a lot of areas, so we had to catch up."

Catch up? Hendrick? Really?

By Hendrick's standards, the four-car team fell way behind in 2010. Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were winless.

Gordon, a four-time series winner, was mostly a non-factor and finished ninth in points. Martin and Earnhardt failed to make the 12-man Chase for the championship and finished 13th and 21st, respectively.

The mediocre results came a year after Johnson, Martin and Gordon gave Hendrick an unprecedented sweep of the top three spots in the final points standings.

So Hendrick responded by moving everyone except Johnson and longtime crew chief Chad Knaus.

Earnhardt, who has just one victory in three seasons with Hendrick Motorsports, was paired with Gordon's crew chief, Steve Letarte. Earnhardt moved into the same shop as Johnson and Knaus, and Hendrick believes Letarte's strong personality will help rebuild the waning confidence of NASCAR's most popular driver.

"Everything is new," Earnhardt said. "Sort of wipe the slate clean, so I'm a little nervous. But I think we'll be able to carry it."

Gordon was teamed with Martin's crew chief, Alan Gustafson.

"When a move that big is made, it sparks up a lot of conversation about why would that have happened and what caused that to happen," Gordon said.

Martin switched to Earnhardt's crew chief, Lance McGrew. Earnhardt and McGrew spent the last 60 races together, extending Earnhardt's losing streak to 93. Martin and McGrew have worked together previously and even won a Nationwide race in Las Vegas in 2008.

"Magic is sort of intangible," Martin said. "It's not something you can reach out and touch, and we had magic going on in 2009 and we had magic going on in 1998 and I am aware of it. And I am working hard to try and create it and maintain it through 2011 with Lance and my team."

Johnson's team got an adjustment, too. Hendrick shook up Johnson's entire pit crew in hopes of fixing the most noticeable chink in the defending champ's armor.

"This team is tough," Knaus said. "We've got the depth at Hendrick Motorsports that allows us to go out there and make changes and seamless changes to our cars and our race teams where it doesn't affect us too much."

Hendrick called a companywide meeting after the Nov. 7 race at Texas, where Johnson's crew was benched in the middle of the event and Denny Hamlin outran the No. 48 team to take the lead in the championship standings. No personnel decisions were made during that meeting.

But it certainly was the catalyst for Hendrick's overhaul.

So far, the reviews have been strong.

Earnhardt and Gordon swept the front row in qualifying for Sunday's season-opening Daytona 500, and all four cars were fast in practice Wednesday. Earnhardt, though, wrecked during the session, moved to his third car of Speedweeks, and will have to start in the back of the pack Sunday. Otherwise, there have been few issues.

"Hey, the honeymoon's still going on," Hendrick said. "Until they've run four or five races or 10 races they think they've solved all their problems. Sometimes, if you come back the same, you stay the same. We needed something to stimulate us and a reason to get excited about this year."

Hendrick made improving Earnhardt's team his top priority before the 2010 season, but marrying the No. 88 with Martin's No. 5 team didn't work the way he had planned. It also hurt Martin's production.

Now, Hendrick is trying to get three teams back up to speed with Johnson and Knaus. Not many would consider such bold changes, but Hendrick had to take plenty of chances to rise to the top of the sport in the first place.

"We're going to be better. I just feel it," Hendrick said. "We took some things for granted. Maybe we were in the bunker mentality a little bit a year ago because of (our success in) '09, and the economy and everything else and just watching the world, and didn't pay enough attention to we needed to work harder."

-- Mark Long

Big-name free agent frenzy not expected in NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The clock is ticking on the contracts of marquee drivers like Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton, Mark Martin and Juan Pablo Montoya, all of whom are poised to hit NASCAR's version of free agency as this season develops.

It raised more than a few eyebrows in NASCAR's garage area at Daytona International Speedway, particularly a line that claimed Vickers is the greatest driver never to win a Sprint Cup championship. Although the line was written by the author, the general tone of the article had rival drivers giggling at his bravado.

"He has never lacked confidence," five-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson said Wednesday. "I felt like that came through in the article, too."

Vickers, who is sponsored by energy drink Red Bull, was forced out of NASCAR last season after doctors found clots in his leg and lungs. Treatment included blood thinners, two procedures to close a hole in his heart and the insertion of a stent into his left leg. He considered quitting, but ultimately decided to return for the 2011 season.

According to Maxim, he also took up a hard-living lifestyle. In the article, he calls four-time series champion Jeff Gordon — a married father of two — to come out and party in New York City and complains that Gordon is no longer fun.

"All I can say is that's not for me," Gordon said. "I've had great times over the years, but I'm a family guy and I try to represent my sponsors in the way they want to be represented. And it is different for him. He's young, single, he's got Red Bull as his sponsor. I don't know how (NASCAR) would perceive it.

"What I was going to say to him is the next time he's out with a writer from Maxim magazine and he's having a good time, he can forget my phone number or about calling me to join them."

Vickers, a one-time champion on NASCAR's second-tier series, had two career Cup victories and a career-best finish of 12th in points (2009).

Gordon and Johnson are both former teammates of Vickers, who now drives for Red Bull Racing.

FIXED FUSS: ESPN's motorsports division distanced itself from commentator Tony Kornheiser's suggestion that NASCAR is fixed because Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the pole for the Daytona 500.

"I can tell you for sure that ESPN doesn't agree with his opinion," said Rich Feinberg, the network's vice president of motorsports. "But that's the nature of commentary, and not all the time are we going to get a rosy picture when people are offering their opinions."

Three-time Daytona 500 champion Dale Jarrett was angered by the insinuation, which Kornheiser made Tuesday when he said, "there are people in and around the NASCAR world, not just drivers but people who cover the sport as well, who are winking at this one."

Jarrett insisted it's far too difficult for NASCAR to rig its races, and intimating otherwise is an insult to the teams that work so hard for NASCAR's biggest race of the season.

"To set something up, there's too many people that would have to be involved," said Jarrett, now an ESPN analyst. "You couldn't keep something like that quiet. It's unfair to the competitors and to the people who work their tails off to put a quality product out there. We have a very good sport with a lot of integrity out there and to have it questioned is unfortunate."

ESPN broadcasts the entire second-tier Nationwide Series, and the second half of the elite Sprint Cup Series. It's contract includes nine of the 10 Chase for the Sprint Cup championship races.

The network struggled with ratings last season, particularly during its 1 p.m. Chase races, which squared off against the NFL. Asked if it was counterproductive for ESPN to have programming that lampooned NASCAR, Feinberg acknowledged it makes motorsports' job more difficult.

"It presents challenges for us, and we have to work our way through that," he said.

THE NEXT ELLIOTT: Hendrick Motorsports has signed the 15-year-old son of former NASCAR champion Bill Elliott to a driver development deal.

Chase Elliott, a high school freshman, will receive support from Hendrick Motorsports as he races Chevrolets for Bill Elliott Racing. His schedule this year is expected to be a combination of super late model, pro late model and NASCAR regional touring series events this season.

Last week, NASCAR lowered the age limit to 15 for its regional touring series events. Drivers must be 18 to compete in NASCAR's national series.

"The apple hasn't fallen far from the tree with Chase," Rick Hendrick said of the son of NASCAR's 1988 champion.

"I've always admired Bill's ability in a race car and how he handled himself with the fans. I see those same traits in Chase, with his natural driving talent and an awareness of what he needs to do away from the track to be successful. He comes from a great racing family, and it shows. We think it's a terrific situation."

Chase Elliott won 13 late model races last year and had 37 top-10 finishes in 40 starts. He's already 2 for 2 in 2011 after sweeping the Speedfest late-model features last month at Lanier National Speedway in Braselton, Ga.

SUPER GUEST: Wisconsin native and Green Bay Packers fan Travis Kvapil will have safety Nick Collins as his guest for the Daytona 500.

Collins is a Florida native and attended Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach. He worked at times on the cleanup crew at the speedway.

"It's a privilege to be invited to the Daytona 500, and it will be cool to go back home where I spent my college years," Collins said. "My son loves NASCAR, so this will be a big deal for him, too. We'll be rooting for Travis. It was cool of him to invite us."

Kvapil attended the Super Bowl.

-- Jenna Fryer

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