Reactions in garage vary on DEI, Ganassi merger

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- The company his father founded essentially will cease to exist, at least in the form that his father intended.

But Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that he has learned to move on. So the son of the late Dale Earnhardt -- who founded the Dale Earnhardt Inc. racing organization in 1996 with the hope that Dale Jr. might someday run it -- admitted to mixed feelings about the news that DEI is merging with Chip Ganassi Racing.

DEI, Ganassi merge

Teresa Earnhardt and Chip Ganassi will combine their slumping race teams next season, an effort to stabilize their organizations in a tough economic time.

• Complete story, click here
• Head2Head: Good move?

"I just ain't got much to say about it anymore," said Earnhardt, who left DEI at the end of last season to drive for Hendrick Motorsports after his stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt, rejected his bid to buy a majority share of the company. "I did, but I'm so far past it and a little bit farther removed from it. I don't have the initial knee-jerk reaction about it no more when those kinds of things happen to 'em. I'm more on the sidelines with everyone else now, just viewing from a distance. I still have emotional connection with it where I want it to work and I want it to do good. But a lot has changed. It's difficult to feel any real close connection to it anymore."

That isn't true, of course, for everyone in the garage. Driver Regan Smith, for instance, enters this Sunday's Sprint Cup Series season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway poised to capture Raybestos Rookie of the Year honors. But the driver of the No. 01 Chevrolet currently fielded by DEI has no idea what lies ahead for him in the immediate future.

As speculation continued to swirl about the new combined operation running Chevrolets next season (Ganassi currently runs Dodges), DEI officials weren't offering any further information on that, or on who the yet-to-be-named driver of the organization's fourth car might be. The release announcing the deal named Juan Montoya, Martin Truex and Aric Almirola as drivers, but did not name a pilot for the merged team's No. 41 car.

That leaves Regan Smith, the DEI driver who nearly won the Sprint Cup event at Talladega earlier this season, in limbo. Smith's No. 01 car is without a sponsor and will be folded into the new four-car team, while the driver effectively is a free agent.

"My name wasn't on the merger release, but I'm definitely talking to a lot of people," he said. "I wouldn't say I'm any closer by any means, but I would say there's a lot of interest, and I'd say everyone knows the teams available in the garage, and every single one of them has interest in me. We've just got to see how some financial stuff plays out here in a few weeks, and go from there." (Continued)