The only time Dale Earnhardt Jr. got to celebrate in Victory Lane during the 2006 Nextel Cup season was at Richmond. Credit: Autostock

Looks were deceiving for Earnhardt Jr.'s results

Junior notes team must improve if it wants to win championship

On paper, things didn't look all that great for Dale Earnhardt Jr. this year. Only one victory. Only two top-fives in the 10-race playoff. No poles, but forget the Ryan Newmans -- he had only one top-five start.

No plate wins. Back-to-back last-place finishes in July. Only 444 laps led. Tony Stewart won as many races in the last 10 weeks than Earnhardt has won in 100.

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And yet, pound-for-pound, it was probably his second-best season, not far removed from his epochal six-win campaign of 2004.

For all of Earnhardt's appearances in rap videos, commercials, etc., his on-track performances seem to rank somewhere near the bottom when it comes to attention, which is exactly what he was stressing when speaking in New York three weeks ago.

His one win in 2006 stands out like 10 sore thumbs, but Earnhardt pointed out that it could have easily been four times that number.

"There was a lot of great drives that we had that we won't ever get the recognition besides from us," Earnhardt said.

Earnhardt nearly ran down Kasey Kahne at Atlanta despite running 32nd with just 100 laps to go.

An early wreck at Martinsville left his car looking like a Southern Modified. Another rally -- fourth place.

A last-lap crash at Talladega that inspired countless jokes and one memorable YouTube video, where a New England-based Baby Boomer cried, "Jimma Johnsun jus' crah-ashed him," took Junior from leading the race to a 23rd-place finish.

	Dale Earnhardt Jr. said his negative comments when the team runs poorly are not meant to accomplish anything. Credit: Autostock
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"There were some times in certain races where you got to see what our guts looked like," Earnhardt said. "That was really good, because we could get hacked so much for having that question mark over our heads of, 'Well, they just race and just take what they can get.'"

If that perception was true, then Earnhardt never would have done what he did on Oct. 22, when he spun while trying to pass Kahne for fourth place at Martinsville. It was a boneheaded move, sure -- certainly one of the dumbest of the year. But it showed that he cared deeply about trying to win.

There have been several instances where Earnhardt tended to be overly critical of his team. The most notable occurred at The Brickyard, when he famously (and correctly) said, "We can't make the Chase with 30th-place racecars."

Earnhardt said that his negative comments are not meant to really accomplish anything. They are merely something he uses to leave frustration behind.

"We have got to really prove to everybody that our melancholy attitude is just a facade, a self-defense mechanism to keep us from going crazy over a bad run," Earnhardt said. "You have got to leave that stuff at the racetrack. If you take it home it can ruin just about everything that you touch. It has all been self defense to keep myself from going crazy.

"We want it bad and we want to win bad. We want to be successful."

The scene at The Brickyard only served to amplify the fact that Earnhardt and DEI have lagged behind other teams, particularly Richard Childress Racing, on the flat tracks. Which leads us to ...

Junior: DEI must run well at all types of tracks

It took Earnhardt until mid-season in 2006 to finally make progress on the high-banked, downforce-critical speedways, which make up a majority of the schedule.

His only win of 2006 came in the spring at Richmond, but he didn't replicate that success at the short track in the fall.

	The numbers say Dale Earnhardt Jr. may be the best driver without a title. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Selected drivers since 2002 Driver St. W T-5 T-10 D. Earnhardt Jr. 180 12 57 88 R. Newman 180 12 52 81 J. Burton 180 1 20 57 K. Harvick 179 8 39 70 G. Biffle 150 11 30 50 K. Kahne 108 7 30 41 C. Edwards 85 4 24 43 Ky. Busch 78 3 19 31 THE NEXT FIRST-TIMER With Jimmie Johnson winning the championship, which driver is now the best without a title?  •   Complete story, click here

"We need to become more of a total package. We are never the total package," Earnhardt said. "We got better on the mile-and-a-halfs, and we got worse on the short tracks. We need to do everything good and we seem to improve in little areas and then drop the ball in another one where we were great."

DEI gave Earnhardt invincible cars on the eight restrictor-plate tracks in 2002 and 2003 -- he won four times -- but that edge has dropped off in recent years.

Hendrick Motorsports won three of the four plate races in 2006, but Earnhardt led late at Talladega in the fall, and he said that regaining Daytona-Talladega superiority is a priority.

Coincidence or not, DEI performed better on the plate tracks when it was a three-car team. The addition of Paul Menard in 2007 will only help the organization catch Hendrick's plate program.

"We have been getting better, you know," Earnhardt said. "We were leading the race at Talladega and we had pretty good cars at the 400 [at Daytona].

"We have been getting better, we are improving the motors, we have some people coming in to work on us for the motors that have really helped out a lot. That is the biggest deal."

Best Nextel Cup regular without a title?

With Mark Martin's workload morphing into a partial schedule, Earnhardt's name has already been thrown as heir to the "best driver without a championship" moniker.

One would think that the title is almost an insult. Earnhardt laughed when he was asked what he thought of it.

"That is quite a compliment," Earnhardt said. "I ain't never been called the best driver at anything. I feel like personally, myself, I am the best driver out there.

"That is a great compliment and it takes the sting, I guess, off not having won that championship yet."

Calling Earnhardt the best driver without a Nextel Cup title is a bit premature. It is not an important title, but my vote goes to Kevin Harvick, who showed no weaknesses in 2006.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.