Weekend That Was: RCR (cont'd)

Junior approves

Dale Earnhardt Jr. applauded the announcement that DEI and RCR were combining their engine departments. The irony, of course, is that only eight days prior to the DEI-RCR announcement, Junior made one of his own and said he would be leaving DEI when his contract runs out at the end of this season. Among the first to say they would be interested in talking with him about driving for them was Childress at RCR.

Combining horses

Eight days after Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced he would no longer drive for DEI when his contract expires after this season, Richard Childress Racing and DEI announced they were combining their Chevrolet engine departments.

• Complete story, click here
• Coverage: Junior leaving DEI

"I think that's a great move," Earnhardt said of the merger. "I was telling Richie Gilmore [at DEI] last year at this time that the Chevy teams ought to consolidate down to one engine program. Depending on the teams you brought in, that would cut the costs tremendously.

"That's probably going to cut 25 to 30 percent off the engine-shop expense on each side -- hopefully, if they do it correctly -- and I think it's an awesome idea because the sport is getting so dang costly now. They should be able to get an advantage from it. As far as performance-wise, both of them have got a little bit to offer each other, I'm sure."

Well, Harvick's RCR-built Chevy engine seemed to work pretty efficiently on Saturday night. And if all goes well, Junior will find out by early July how much better the combined DEI-RCR engine product is -- as he will finish out this season driving the No. 8 for DEI before moving on to his new team.

Still trucking

Steve Hmiel, technical director of DEI, made it a point to dispel the notion that the company founded by Junior's father and now headed by Junior's stepmother and Dale's widow, Teresa Earnhardt, is headed for a bleak future just because the favorite son has said he's leaving.

"There's a company there that has fed people's families and bought them cars and given them a real nice place to work for a long time," Hmiel said. "That thing made it through February of 2001 [when the elder Earnhardt died in a last-lap wreck at the Daytona 500] and it's going to make it through all of the rest of the Februarys that Teresa wants to make it through. And Teresa wants it to go on forever as Dale Sr. did.

"It was a shock that Dale Jr. would walk away. That's his decision. But I'm telling you there is a company there that lives and breathes and takes care of people and insures people and pays people every other Friday. That has never changed through our darkest hour.

"It makes me feel bad that somebody would think another company could do a better job for Dale Jr. than we could. But our job is to make it a viable company, a place where drivers want to drive and people want to work at." (Continued)