Earnhardt Jr. And Letarte Return To Early Season Results

Beginning the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season as a new driver/crew chief duo, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte were unsure how soon success would come, but were resolved to reach it.  Within a few weeks, the 88 team was finishing near the front week after week.  What was exciting to watch was not that they were dominating.  They weren’t.

For several years Earnhardt had been experiencing an occasional good run coupled with weeks of disappointing finishes.  In most of those races Earnhardt would race near the front until something went wrong with the handling of the car.  Soon after losing the handle on the car he would drift toward the back of the pack.

Many people supposed that Earnhardt had lost his nerve.  They thought that his inability to wrestle with ill-handling cars showed a lack of desire and hunger.  Often fans and commentators alike said that Earnhardt was done.

Others thought Dale Jr. was just distracted.  They said he was so focused on trying to appease his fans’ expectations for him to be as good as his late father that he was overwhelmed.  Or they would suppose that his bar-opening, late-sleeping, and fun loving life was not disciplined enough for him to ever meet his true potential.

All the while, Rick Hendrick, Earnhardt’s boss and owner of Hendrick Motorsports, was trying to figure out just who Earnhardt needed behind him to help him compete.  He originally tried Tony Eury Jr., Earnhardt’s cousin, with whom he had some success at DEI.  After that combo fell apart, Hendrick matched Earnhardt up with Lance McGrew, a previous winning crew chief in the Nationwide Series with multiple driver and a technical thinker who had headed up Hendrick’s R&D team.

After limited successes, disappointing progress, and too much radio traffic of short tempers, Hendrick decided to make changes at the end of the 2010 season.  Hendrick decided to pair Earnhardt up with Letarte, the crew chief of the 24 car and Jeff Gordon.  Gordon and Letarte had cooled from some earlier successes and were in need of a new spark. 

With Letarte we were told Earnhardt was getting a cheerleader.  We was to be the eternal optimist that could handle Junior’s tirades and redirect his energy into the race.  For the most part, in the first half of the season that is what happened.  Along with getting better communication and seemingly more dedication from Earnhardt, Letarte was able to make good changes to the car throughout the race and keep Junior focused on pulling out a good finish.

Monday that is what happened again.  After a summer long run of poor finishes, conservative setups, and worrying over a fleeting possibility of a Chase berth, Earnhardt and Letarte finished a race off similar to their spring finishes.  Earnhardt had a mediocre car most of the afternoon, staying in the mid teens and rarely making waves.  However, after adjusting time after time, Earnhardt looked strong in the final run of the race.  He made several passes, getting into the top 10 for the first time of the race, and then with help from cars with poor fuel mileage, Earnhardt rose to 3^rd by the checkered flag.

With their first top 5 finish since Kansas in early June, Earnhardt and Letarte also have scored his best first race finish of the Chase since he finished 3^rd at Loudon in 2004.  In 2004 Junior began the Chase with 5 wins and a favorite to win his first championship. Although he won at Talladega, he then fizzled out after wrecks in both race 6 and 7 of the ’04 Chase.

This year Earnhardt and Letarte are the underdog’s in the Chase, merely happy and relieved to have made the cut.  Perhaps their relief coupled with a change in luck from the summer could help the duo do well and end their first season with hints of a great year next year.  Or perhaps they could make this year a great year.  Either way, I guarantee Earnhardt will finish higher than 13th.

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