By now Teresa Earnhardt must realize the simple, undeniable truth. How can she not? The only way she and Dale Earnhardt Inc. can emerge from contract negotiations with her stepson, driver and fledging NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt Jr., some semblance of a winner is to lose.

Young Dale holds all the trump cards, and he is playing them ever so carefully with a touch of understated class that only endears him even more to his legions of fans and even unattached but highly interested bystanders to this family drama.

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On Tuesday, Earnhardt Jr. invited the media to see his new JR Motorsports shop in Mooresville, a 66,000-square-foot facility that currently is home to his Busch Series operation. But of course what everyone wanted to know was how contract talks are going between Junior and DEI, the company founded by Junior's late father and Teresa's husband.

Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, the NASCAR driver's sister who is running point in the negotiations for her famous brother, told reporters that if a deal is going to get done with DEI, it needs to happen by June 1. And she made it clear that the hard part of the negotiations, at least in her mind and in Junior's mind, have been completed and laid out for approval.

Now it's up to Teresa and her point man, DEI president of global operations Max Siegel, to do what they should have done months ago: acquiesce to the reasonable demands of the youngsters in the family.

"We need to have a decision by no later than June," Elledge said.

The deadline makes sense. Plans need to be set in motion for 2008, even though it's still early in the 2007 season. Sponsors and drivers and other employees who work at DEI and/or with Junior need to know what's up for the immediate and long-term future.

More importantly, for Junior to completely focus on driving, he needs to know and put his own mind to rest.

Elledge has been talking earnestly with Siegel even though she has yet to return to work full-time as president of JR Motorsports since undergoing surgery on March 23 to have a growth removed from her pancreas. If that isn't enough of an indication of how urgent she and her brother are to put their signatures to the deal of their choice, then Teresa is even more clueless than even her worst critics would suggest.

But Teresa Earnhardt is not stupid. She may be stubborn. She may be overly protective of a DEI empire she helped build from the ground up. But she is not dumb.

She is savvy in many ways of business. She has rightly preserved the image of her late husband and the black No. 3 Chevrolet he drove to so many victories before his tragic death in the 2001 Daytona 500. No one uses anything that had anything to do with her husband without her approval, and DEI no doubt has profited greatly from this approach. (Continued)