Weekend That Was: Junior (cont'd)

Don't forget Marcis

Oh, and who can forget the king of driver-owners? That would be Dave Marcis, whose 35-year career as a driver ended with his retirement in 2002.

For 32 of those years, Marcis also was a car owner -- in a part-time capacity for some seasons; a full-time driver-owner in others. He was his own owner in 642 of the 883 career Cup starts that he made, but only once, at Richmond in 1982, did he get to Victory Lane as a driver-owner. He had four other Cup victories, but they all came when he was driving for someone else.

Not about the dough

Former Cup champion Waltrip, now a television analyst, cautioned that no one should believe where Junior ends up next is going to be all about the money.

"This is just Phase One of his plan -- to say he's not going to be at DEI," Waltrip added. "Just because someone walks up with a pile of money and says let's do a deal, he can't go on just that. He's got to look at what they offer, and not just the money side.

"This kid is not about the money. ... He wants to win a championship."
(Watch Waltrip's one-on-one interview with Junior)

Waltrip said he knows which owners he would focus on trying to hook up with if he was in Earnhardt's position.

"If I was in Junior's shoes, there are two owners I would be very interested in driving for: Rick Hendrick and Richard Childress. Childress makes sense because his dad drove for him -- but maybe it doesn't make sense if you think about the big picture," Waltrip said. "Rick Hendrick is one of my best friends. Rick Hendrick will take care of you. He'll treat you like a son. That would be important to me."

What about DEI?

For DEI to continue to function in the post-Junior era as a major entity in Nextel Cup racing, it will have to make as big a splash as possible when it comes to hiring Earnhardt's replacement, Waltrip added.

"Now it becomes a matter of egos and wills," Waltrip said. "When I left [car owner] Junior Johnson, he went out and hired Bill Elliott. It was like, 'You were pretty good, but I can get somebody better.' There is always that kind of attitude in racing. [It's like,] 'You left here, you'll be sorry.'"

Yeah, well, the question is who can DEI possibly hire for next season that will make folks forget they let the favorite son slip away?

Pit stops

• It's tough when you win the Busch race and come in second in the Cup race and still leave town fuming and disappointed, but such was the case for Denny Hamlin after last weekend's events at Darlington. His charge from 16th to second over the last 63 laps in the Cup race was amazingly swift and furious, but he was equally furious with his teammates because pit-stop mistakes were what forced him from the front to 16th in the first place. He also thought a caution flag should have been thrown when David Gilliland's engine blew up with two laps left in the Dodge Avenger 500. That would have set up a green-white-checkered finish that almost certainly would have guaranteed him of catching eventual race winner Jeff Gordon, whose car was overheating. (For story, click here; for video, click here)

• Two Saturday night Cup races in a row postponed until Sunday? Here's hoping it doesn't happen again this Saturday when the Nextel All-Star Challenge is supposed to go off at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte. The preliminary weather report is good, so knock on wood.

• Good for driver Chris Bristol, who has signed with Troy Williams Motorsports' Grand National Busch Series East team. A previous sponsorship snafu had left Bristol, one of NASCAR's earliest Drive For Diversity success stories, without a ride this year. He is set to drive in seven events for Williams Motorsports, which said it is taking Bristol on as a full-time team member with the hope that a full-time sponsor can be found soon. Bristol was the first African American to win a pole and a race at Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, N.C., back in 2003, and repeated those accomplishments at famed Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway two years later.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.