Weekend That Was: Junior

Perhaps the best decision Dale Earnhardt Jr. made last week was the one he didn't make.

Illustrating a level of savvy and understanding of all aspects of his sport that one might think he doesn't possess at first cursory glance, Earnhardt could only chuckle at the media speculation that he was leaving his current job as driver of the No. 8 car for Dale Earnhardt Inc. to begin his own Nextel Cup team at his fledging JR Motorsports operation.

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He is way too smart for that.

Once it became clear that Earnhardt was going to be leaving DEI at the conclusion of this season, reports initially ran rampant that Junior was going to immediately expand his JR Motorsports organization and enter the NASCAR fray as a Cup owner/driver. Not only was he going to do it for himself, but most of the initial reports had him bringing fellow DEI driver and good friend Martin Truex Jr. along for the ride -- or should we say in one of the supposed rides.

It didn't take long for Junior to set everyone straight on that. He loves what he is getting into as an owner at JR Motorsports, but at this point he has no plans to expand into the Cup side. He even said he's resisting the urge, however strong, to occasionally run an additional Busch Series car for himself out of his own shop.

"We'd have to hire some more people, which I'm against," he said.

He went on to joke that his sister and esteemed business adviser, Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, who also happens to be president of JR Motorsports, "would have no problem with that," while making it clear that he would make the final decision and that he's very careful about how he spends his own money in this crazy racing business.

"We're that small of a company where those are pretty big decisions," he said about the possibility of expanding by even a handful of employees.

Of course, had he made the decision to start a couple of Cup teams, or even just one, he would have had to hire a whole lot more people and pay them a whole lot more. Plus, he would have had to sink millions into upgrading his just-opened facility in Mooresville, N.C. Even then, there would be no guarantees of the type of immediate on-track success that Junior desperately is seeking.

J.D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing, said the other day that whenever his organization has added another Cup team in the past, it has been roughly 18 months before all the kinks were worked out and folks within the company felt that team could truly be competitive on a weekly basis. And that's coming from an established Cup operation.

Going it alone, Junior would have found it tough going not only right from the start but for the foreseeable future as well. He and his sister have not completely ruled it out, but it does not appear to be an option that they hope to have to resort to -- and no one expects them to have to resort to it, either.

"There is time to start our own Cup effort if that's what we choose to do. Just like with this decision [to announce he's leaving DEI], there's a time when that wouldn't be feasible," Earnhardt Elledge said. "We have our work cut out for us to engage with other teams and listen to what the options are. Our first choice would be to drive for another top competitive team, and our last choice would be to form our own Cup team."

To 3 or not to 3

Now that Dale Earnhardt Jr. has decided to leave his late father's race team at season's end, David Caraviello says he should do himself a favor and stay out of the car his dad made legendary.

• Complete story, click here
• Junior wants time to think
• Gibbs undecided on Junior
• Complete Story Archive
• Junior Video Page

History would not be on their side if they had to resort to their last option. The only current driver-owners in the business on the Cup level are Robby Gordon, currently 30th in owner points and seemingly fighting impossible sponsorship battles every week; and Michael Waltrip, who hasn't made a race since the season-opening Daytona 500 and is languishing in 49th place in owner points (plus his No. 55 car officially has Waltrip's wife, Buffy, listed as the owner).

Alan Kulwicki was arguably the most successful owner-driver in recent history, winning the 1992 championship by 10 points over Bill Elliott. But even Kulwicki struggled to stay competitive much of the time -- registering only five victories in 188 career starts in seven-plus seasons before dying in a plane crash.

Junior wants so much more. To get it, he needs to focus on driving and not all the headaches that come with owning a team. And he knows that some established team will be willing to pay him millions to stay out of the ownership business.

"I love driving cars," he said. "The business itself gets pretty hard sometimes outside the car. But I know when I get behind the wheel, that's why I'm there in the first place. I can't wait to race and I can't wait to get to the track."

But he can wait to be a car owner at the Cup level. There is plenty of time for that down the road if he ultimately so chooses, presumably after he wins more races and contends for championships while getting paid handsomely to drive for someone else.

More numbers

Others who were driver-owners with varying degrees of success in NASCAR Cup history include Bobby Allision, Ricky Rudd, Darrell Waltrip, brothers Geoffrey and Brett Bodine, Richard Childress, Buddy Baker, Joe Nemecheck, Morgan Sheperd and Elliott.

Allison won six races in cars he owned during two decades, beginning in 1965 -- finishing second in points in 1970 and fourth in 1971 and 1974, respectively.

Rudd's best seasons as a driver-owner came during a three-year stretch between 1994 and 1996, when he finished fifth, ninth and sixth in the standings. But he slumped to 22nd in 1998 and was forced to shut down his operation after he failed to win a race in 1999.

Waltrip totaled 53 top-10 finishes and five wins in his first four seasons as a driver-owner after leaving Hendrick Motorsports, and finished in the top 10 in driver points in three of those seasons. But he failed to win another race after 1992 and registered only 14 more top-10s before going to drive for DEI six races into the 1999 season.

Geoffrey Bodine won four races as a driver-owner, including three in 1994, but never finished in the top 15 in points during the course of five seasons and 99 starts. And his brother, Brett, failed to win a single race in 228 starts while pulling double-duty.

None of Elliott's 44 career victories came when he was driving for himself. In 186 starts as a driver-owner, the best he could do was one second-place finish at Michigan in 1997.

Others who were winless as driver-owners included Childress (157 starts), Baker (82 starts), Nemecheck (61 starts) and Shepherd (42 starts).

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.