BRISTOL, Tenn. ? Inside the world's fastest half-mile Friday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was preaching a concept that ran counter to the cacophony of 43 cars roaring around the high-banked concrete.
AP
An optimistic yet cautious Dale Earnhardt Jr. meets the press at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tenn., on Friday.
AP
An optimistic yet cautious Dale Earnhardt Jr. meets the press at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tenn., on Friday.
Restraint.
"I think we just got to temper our excitement over what we've seen so far," Earnhardt said before Sprint Cup Series practice at Bristol Motor Speedway.
"There have been some positive results. You got to temper your mood a little bit and just keep working hard, staying focused, realizing how much further in the season we got to go."
There is a valid reason why NASCAR's eight-time most popular driver isn't getting overly excited about back-to-back top 10s that have him ranked 10th entering Sunday's Jeff Byrd 500, the third race of the season.
He is only five spots ahead of where he stood after three races last season, which he finished 21st in points and outside the Chase for the Sprint Cup for the fourth time in six years.
He was ranked 10th after three races in 2008, the last time he made the Chase. Yet he finished 12th in points with only three top-five finishes in the second half of the 36-race schedule.
So at a track known for producing a flurry of yellow flags, caution seemed a natural approach for Earnhardt as he waxed philosophical about his best start in three years.
"It's realistic to be patient about your expectations," he said. "It's just early in the season and we got a long, long way to go, a lot of tracks to go race at, a lot of different setups to be working on, ideas that will come and go."
The man making sense of compiling all that information into a well-tuned No. 88 Chevrolet is new crew chief Steve Letarte, and that was one topic on which Earnhardt was expansive in his enthusiasm.
Hendrick Motorsports swapped three of its four drivers between crews during the offseason, aligning Earnhardt with Jeff Gordon's former crew chief. The result has been a calmer and more measured tone on the radio from a driver known for having in-race meltdowns.
"It's the clean slate, the different personalities," Earnhardt said. "It's allowed me to sort of reboot a little bit. Me and Steve are getting along really good, and the environment around the garage and trailer and stuff is good. Hopefully we can maintain that.
"That's going to be the challenge really, is me and him maintaining the positive attitude, maintaining the communication and the consistency of how it's working right now. That's going to be the part that is the hardest, and that will determine whether we will succeed or not, is whether we can keep that going over the entire season. The season is long. You get (ticked) off. Things don't go right. You just got to get through those points when they happen. The littlest thing, you got to be able to manage it and not let it ruin things. I have a hard time not letting things ruin my day. I've always had that problem."
The rapport didn't seem quite as smooth the past season and a half with Lance McGrew, who is working with Mark Martin this year.
"Lance was put in a very challenging and tough position," Earnhardt said. "He did a really good job how he handled it. We got along good. I think me and him did as good as we could under the circumstances. I wish we'd have done better. I know he wishes we would have done better."
Martin is enjoying the new partnership with McGrew and thinks the change also has benefited his teammate.
"Junior's well on his way to a recovery," Martin said. "It's been a tough stretch for him. I think he is incredibly committed this year and is feeling comfortable and more confident."
Gordon, who had Letarte as crew chief from 2005-10 before being paired with Alan Gustafson, said he has noticed Earnhardt is providing more detailed information during Hendrick's weekly debriefing sessions with drivers.
That likely is a byproduct of working with Letarte, a fastidious and measured team leader as well as an enthusiastic cheerleader who doesn't let his drivers get down during the course of a race.
"That's what he's great at, and that's what he's doing right now," Earnhardt said. "He gives you the impression that when you get yourself in a hole or the car isn't responding like you think it should, you get the impression that you'll get it fixed.
"He does a great job at just keeping you in the game. You're part of the puzzle, and everybody needs to be pulling in the same direction."
Unity seems to be the theme for Hendrick's four drivers, too. Despite leaving only five-time champion Jimmie Johnson's team intact from the 2010 season, the offseason overhaul seems to have had minimal impact on chemistry or results. Earnhardt, Martin and Johnson are ranked in the top 12, and Gordon (who won at Phoenix) would be if not for a crash at Vegas.
"If I was running that place, I would have made that call" to shuffle personnel, Martin said. "I think it was a good move and everyone is very motivated right now. We're going to be working on different stuff as the season progresses until we all settle on one group of hardware and migrate toward that.
"All four teams are trying to find the newest combination of things to really set us on fire. It takes awhile to evaluate all of that and hopefully we will all run good now and all run better this summer."
more golf news more baseball news more soccer news sports football
No comments:
Post a Comment