Hendrick not worried about adding Earnhardt Jr. to fold

Rick Hendrick has been down this road before.

With Dale Earnhardt Jr. set to come on board at Hendrick Motorsports in 2008, he'll join an already incredibly successful program in which Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson have combined to win five Cup championships and 108 races going into Sunday's event at Dover. Can it work? Will there simply be too many roosters in the hen house?

Hendrick has a long history of mixing strong personalities. The outspoken Northerner Geoffrey Bodine was already a fixture at Hendrick Motorsports in the late 1980s when not one, but two outspoken characters joined the organization. Tim Richmond dominated the sport in 1986, a year before Darrell Waltrip entered the picture.

Dale Jr. to No. 88

• Junior adds to history of 88
• Hendrick excited about future
• Questions breed questions
• Message Board: Sound off!
• Community Crew: Join now!

Bodine, Richmond, Waltrip, Ken Schrader, Ricky Rudd, Ricky Craven, Terry Labonte, Brian Vickers, Kyle Busch, Casey Mears -- Hendrick has somehow managed to integrate them all into the grand scheme of things. Some have obviously fit better into the Hendrick Motorsports mold than others, but the car owner will be doing everything in his power to make the deal with Earnhardt work.

He has to.

"Junior's got teammates now, so it's not like he's coming from a one-man operation to something that's any different," Hendrick said at his sprawling complex a couple of miles from Lowe's Motor Speedway. "He made the decision to make a change to try to better his career.

"That puts a lot of pressure on us. We've won before and we want to see him win. We're going to do everything in our power to put the best stuff around him, just like we do with every driver that's here, to make him more successful."

This, though, seems different, a much more difficult undertaking. Gordon and Johnson are Cup champions, and Earnhardt is without question the sport's most popular driver. It's a move that gives Hendrick Motorsports three of the four top names in all of NASCAR. Sign Tony Stewart -- there's a thought that boggles the imagination -- and it'd be a clean sweep.

Still, Hendrick just doesn't seem all that concerned about making things work with Junior. See, Hendrick looks at it this way. Gordon and Johnson both race to win and they're teammates, so why not race to race to win against Junior as a teammate?

"I think you treat each individual differently," Hendrick said. "You try to create a relationship. You cannot create respect. Everybody has somebody they've got to answer to. I have to answer to sponsors, and I have to answer to fans. I think the key to our success is everybody working together."

In Gordon, Johnson and Earnhardt, Hendrick has drivers with three very separate and very distinct personalities. Gordon is Madison Avenue refined, Earnhardt is the rock star and Johnson the laid-back Californian.

Hendrick knows what he has to work with. He's not about to cram Junior into a box, to try to conform him into whatever the public's perception of what a Hendrick Motorsports driver should be. Hendrick's job is to give the superstar driver everything he needs to fulfill the expectations of Junior Nation.

"I'm not going to try to change Junior's personality," Hendrick said. "What's made him popular is who he is. We're just going to try to surround him with good stuff and try to help him get to the level he wants to get to. The same with Gordon and Johnson. All of our guys are a little different. They've got their own quirks, and you adjust to that.

"You're not going to change them, and you don't want to. Each one's a brand all his own. Jimmie and Jeff have a lot of respect for Junior. He has respect for them, and Casey's friends with all of them. I think it's going to do well."

Long ago, Hendrick learned a valuable lesson as a NASCAR team owner. He can't stand pat, resting on the laurels of the success Hendrick Motorsports has enjoyed in the past. The championships and races that the team has won in the past won't mean a thing when Junior straps into a Hendrick Motorsports entry for the first time.

Hendrick has to keep moving forward, for his sake. And Junior's, Gordon's, Johnson's and Mears'.

"Most businesses I've ever been involved in, once you get it built, at some point you get to be on cruise control," Hendrick said. "You're able to sit back and watch it work. In this [racing] business, you're only as good as you were yesterday, the last race.

"The lesson is, you've got to work. You've got to come in every single day committed to being better. You can't rest on yesterday, and you can't rest on the championship you won or even the race you won last weekend because this weekend is totally different."