Keith Brock is currently an Information Systems Technician at WVUP in Parkersburg, W. Va.. He has loved sports for as long as he can remember, and his favorite teams are the Reds and Pirates. He has been married to a wonderful woman for seven years and has a beautiful little girl. The 2008 NASCAR season could be one of the most stressful years in Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s racing career. Why? Because he will be under the microscope just as much as his rookie year in 2000, if not more.
Many people feel that he got his shot at racing because of his family name, and while the name Earnhardt probably did open some doors for him, Earnhardt Jr.'s stats show that he has earned his way. While running in the former Busch Series, Dale Jr., as he is mostly called, won two consecutive championships in 1997 and 1998. He has 22 career victories in 96 career starts in the Busch Series or Nationwide Series as it is now known. As for his Sprint Cup stats, he has 17 wins in 291 starts.
So why hasn't he been more successful? Dale Jr. has been successful in NASCAR's top division, unfortunately it hasn't been lately. After the 2004 campaign, many race analysts predicted he would join his father as a Sprint Cup Champion in 2005. After the 2004 season, he has won only two races, with the last being at Darlington in 2006.
Why hasn't he been successful? A major reason was internal conflict. It was no secret that Dale Jr. had a strained relationship with his stepmother Teresa. It supposedly stemmed from it being her idea to send him to military school. Then, after the death of his father in 2001, the relationship progressively went downhill.
Their relationship reached a boiling point last year when his contract was up for negotiation at DEI, the company his father started and Teresa runs. It's also the only racing organization in which he has worked in his Sprint Cup career.
The negotiations were tough, as Dale Jr. felt it was time for him to take control of his family's company. Many others in the racing business agreed with him.
DEI was no longer the competitive team that it once was. Dale Jr. stated on more than once occasion that money needed to be spent on research and development and testing. Teresa just acted like he was blowing smoke.
In order for the team to test their engine and cars, DEI ended up using the testing facility that Dale Jr. built with his own money for his Busch team. When Dale Jr. finally saw that there was no way the relationship would work, he shocked the racing world and signed with Rick Hendrick.
However, the move was not really that shocking. Dale Jr. needed to be his own man and there was no way he could do that racing for DEI. The poor relationship with Teresa, and the fact that he was working at "the family business," made it impossible to be his own person. He knew that, as painful as it was, he would have to leave DEI.
While many thought he would sign with his father's old team, Richard Childress, it wouldn't have been a wise move, because he would have still been under his father's shadow, just as it had been working at DEI. It would have been even worse driving his dad's old car.
Many fans wondered what to expect from Dale Jr. when the 2008 season started. Well, it has been a good one so far. He won the Bud Shootout, one of the Gatorade 125s and he finished a respectable ninth in his new ride in the Daytona 500. In addition, just last week, he finished second to Carl Edwards in the race in Las Vegas.
If he continues this pattern, and there's no reason he shouldn't, then 2008 will be the year that Dale Jr. proves once and for all he was not just riding his father's coattails.