Review

OK, now that Thanksgiving is over, I thought I would do a little year in review. Each week(hopefully) I will take one driver and review his entire year. That should take us all the way to Daytona in February.

First up, who else but Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Jr's year started off as good as it could. In his new ride with Hendrick Motor Sports, everyone expected him to come out of the box winning. Well, he did. He won the Bud Shoot out and then turned around and won his Gatorade Duel 150. And with that folks started making predictions about how many wins Jr would have during the year. Darrell Waltrip said Jr would win at least 6 races. That's a pretty tough number for anyone, but for a new team? Sometimes I think people expect TOO much from Jr. But if anyone could do it Jr could, right?
Wrong. For the first half of the year, Jr was the carrier of the Hendrick banner. He finished ninth in the Daytona 500, then had a miserable fortieth place finish at the rain soaked California Speedway. But he rallied to a second at Vegas, third at Atlanta, fifth at Bristol, and sixth at Martinsville.
Then we get to Texas. After winning the pole, everyone thought this would be where the winless streak ended. Nope. Twelfth, one lap down. After a seventh at Phoenix and a decent tenth at Talladega, it was on to Richmond, the site of Jr's last win 2 years ago. Fans were on their feet with just a few laps to go and Jr leading the race. Then the unthinkable happened. Denny Hamlin, who is a moron by the way, decides not to pit even though he has a flat tire. Well, said tire blows out and causes a caution to come out. That erases the huge lead Jr had on Kyle Busch. When the green came out, Jr takes off with Busch in tow, and I knew it was gonna be bad. Busch tried to pass Jr but couldn't hold his car and slid up the track, wrecking Jr in the process. Jr ended up fifteenth, in a race that should have been his. Oh well, that's just good hard racing.
Then a fourth at Darlington, fifth in the Coke 600, and a wrecked car and thirty-fifth at Dover. After a fourth at Pocono, we headed to Michigan. Dale Jr wins the LifeLock.com 400 with no fuel in the tank. The crew had to push him to victory lane, but they didn't care. The winless streak was finally over.
But the abysmalness was about to begin. The only bright spots for the rest of the year were few and far between. As a matter of fact there were four, yes four, over the next twenty-one weeks. Fourth at Richmond, fifth at New Hampshire, a wonderful second at Martinsville, and sixth at Phoenix. Now, that doesn't mean he didn't run well. He led laps, and a lot of them, The team just could not finish off races. They would start off blistering the field, then somewhere around the half-way point, things would fall apart. An adjustment would take the car the wrong way, or a set of tires would be bad, or even a call to pit(or not) at all.
My point is, as a team they are not ready to win a championship. They will be, but as a whole they are gonna have to work on communication to make sure the problems get fixed. Maybe this off season they can get better.
Who knows, next year at this time I may be saying "Dale Jr is the new Sprint Cup Series Champion!"

We can all hope!