Martin brings veteran's outlook to youthful DEI (cont'd)

Earnhardt will be Martin's teammate only for the remainder of this season, when he'll leave DEI for a new ride with six-time champion Hendrick Motorsports. But the lessons he's learned from the brushy-haired veteran will follow him to his new home.

"He taught me and he taught Matt Kenseth and a lot of guys that raced against him in the Busch Series so much about racing and etiquette and patience and how much there is out there in your racecar. I've seen him do things in a racecar that I just couldn't believe. Those are the things that you have to see with your own eyes to understand," Earnhardt said.

"He would go down in the corner at Charlotte in the Busch car in '98 or '99 and just do a lot of things that I didn't know were possible. You just don't know the limits when you're at that age, and when you're where I was experience-wise, he was out there teaching me and Matt and a couple of other guys how to get it done and how to do it right. So we built up a pretty good respect for each other since then. He's always spoken well to me personally and about me within the media. We just have a pretty good respect for each other and I think we have a good friendship."

Earnhardt said he hasn't spoken to stepmother and DEI principal owner Teresa Earnhardt since he announced his intentions to leave the team. Martin's presence gives him comfort that Truex will have a veteran teammate to lean on after he leaves for Hendrick. And Earnhardt's decision to move wouldn't have been different, he said, even if the merger bringing Martin about had happened earlier.

"We all forget, you know," he said. "I didn't leave because we didn't have a seven-post [shaker rig]. I didn't leave because we didn't have 25 CNC machines. It didn't have anything to do with whether we were a three-, two- or four-car operation. In racing, you always have to progress. You can't sit still, and everybody at DEI knows that. That was just something I wanted to aid in and be a bigger part of, but the things that are happening now are great for the company. I believe they're going to be good things for the company. I don't think it's a bad move, but it wouldn't have changed my opinion, I don't believe."

Earnhardt also points out that the Ginn-DEI merger won't be painless. "The hard part about it is, they've got 700 employees now and they've got to get down to about 400," he said. "In Mooresville, 300 people are going to be losing their jobs, and that's the tough part about it."

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