January 20 2011 Last updated at 03:49 PM ET
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt, Jr. spent a portion of his lunch break Thursday visiting with reporters at Daytona International Speedway, where his No. 88 AMP Energy Chevrolet was a respectable 11th fastest in the first morning session of a three-day test for the Feb. 20 Daytona 500.
This year's 53rd running of the Daytona 500 marks 10 years since his father, NASCAR's seven-time champ Dale Earnhardt, was killed on the last lap of NASCAR's biggest race. And while fans and the racing media are paying special attention to the sad milestone, Earnhardt said he thinks about his dad every day anyway.
"You think about your parents all the time,'' Earnhardt said, alternately bowing his head and then looking off in the distance, as he endured the inevitable questions. "I think about him and my mother all the time, especially getting back to racing.''
Earnhardt said his father would approve of the new $20 million pavement job gracing Daytona's 2.5-mile high banks. This week's test is the first time the majority of teams have tried the new surface. But Earnhardt didn't appear as concerned about the challenges of a new race surface as much as his desire to get out of a competition rut.
Earnhardt hasn't won a race in two and a half years and his 21st place finish in the 2010 standings was the second-worst of his career. The worst was a 25th-place ranking in 2009. Earnhardt will break in his third crew chief in as many years with NASCAR powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports. Steve Letarte -- formerly Jeff Gordon's crew chief -- will now lead Earnhardt's No. 88 team, which will share a shop with teammate and five-time reigning Sprint Cup Series champ Jimmie Johnson.
"I feel good about the position I'm in now and I feel pretty confident about it and I'm looking forward to going into the season and working hard for it,'' Earnhardt said. "We'll just see how it goes.
"When you're running good you can put up with about anything. It's not fun being on the radar when you're running like crap. But last year we sort of fell off the radar altogether.
"You know, I want to be in racing for a very long time and I know that I can drive good enough to run well,'' Earnhardt continued. "I'll stick around until I get it right. It's just eventually going to have to happen.''
Earnhardt acknowledged that it's been tough to belong to his "Junior Nation" of late and even compared it to being a Washington Redskins fan -- as Earnhardt is.
"I'm really sick of how we've ran over the last several years and ready to see something different, ready to get to the track and see different results."
-- Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
"Sometimes you think this isn't the right way to go, but you're still a fan,'' Earnhardt said of his fellow Redskin devotees. "You still, as a fan, decide to go into the season just as devoted and ready for success. ... or the same failure.
"I'm really sick of how we've ran over the last several years and ready to see something different, ready to get to the track and see different results.''
And when it comes to this track in particular, Earnhardt can't help but be a bit sentimental. The questions about his dad have only just begun, with hundreds of journalists scheduled to interview him next week during a schedule press tour of NASCAR team shops followed by the annual "NASCAR Media Day" on Feb. 10 when reporters from around the country descend on Daytona Beach to unofficially kick-off Speedweeks and the season-opening Daytona 500.
Interestingly, Earnhardt's recollections of his father have less to do with racing than with ordinary, father-son relationship in an extraordinary family.
"(My dad) was a lot of things to a lot of different people,'' Earnhardt said. "He was intimidating, as they say. He was like that as a father when he was at home. You wanted to please him all the time, make him happy and you wanted to somehow get a response.
"The qualities that I enjoyed about him, I tried to emulate those as best I could and keep those qualities as well, because I felt like it made him a good person.''
No comments:
Post a Comment