Quietly, Earnhardt Jr. is living up to all the hype

Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick are surging, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are regrouping, the bunch at Roush Fenway Racing is on its feet again after starting so unsteadily last year. A new car and an old tire are struggling to adapt to one another, familiar faces risk missing races, and a kid from Las Vegas is proving he can win in almost any vehicle on four wheels. Eclipsed by all these dominant storylines from the first few months of the 2008 season, NASCAR's most popular driver goes quietly about his business, each week continuing to live up to the hype.

Last Sunday at Martinsville Speedway brought an under-the-radar sixth-place finish, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s fifth result of ninth or better in six Sprint Cup starts this year. Everybody's waiting for the end of that now 68-race-long winless streak, which dates back to Junior's last victory at Richmond International Raceway almost two years ago. That will come, eventually. Right now, he's doing the less glamorous but absolutely necessary under-the-basket dirty work of getting himself in contention for the championship, churning out top-10 after top-10 to solidify his place in the Chase.

"The wins will come," Earnhardt said after the Martinsville race. "We just have to be patient and be happy and mindful about the points we are getting in this stretch. We have a little bit of a period in the summer where we go to tracks that we are off and on, hot and cold at. We need to get a good base of points built up as early as we can, in case we have any kind of struggles in mid-season, so we're just trying to be guarded and smart."

They're doing that, and in the process dispelling the myth that Junior is simply a last name incapable of challenging for a title on his own merits. His detractors -- and for all his popularity, there are many of them, people who think he gets attention disproportionate to his 17 career race wins -- have been waiting for his fall, waiting for him to get into that unparalleled Hendrick Motorsports equipment and embarrass himself. It hasn't happened. If anything, the cynics have grown strangely silent as Junior's early-season march has continued. He's now fourth in points, 69 behind leader Burton. He'd be higher if he hadn't been taken out in a weeper-induced wreck at California, his one poor finish of the season.

There are no more questions about whether he can meet expectations; he's doing it every week. No, he hasn't won yet. He doesn't need to. This is the real Earnhardt, the one unburdened by the family and equipment concerns that always seemed to shadow him at Dale Earnhardt Inc., the one capable of grinding out high finishes like a golfer shooting 71s that will keep him in contention at the end. Each week, it becomes more obvious that the genuine Junior isn't the one who finished 16th in final points in 2007, or 19th in 2005. It was the one who finished third in 2003 and fifth in '04 and '06. It's the one who's cranking out those requisite top-10s heading to Texas, where he earned his first Cup victory exactly eight years ago.

How significant would it be if Earnhardt earned his first win in his No. 88 car at the same, 1.5-mile track? He daydreams about that moment, about pulling into Victory Lane in his new blue, white and green colors, about ending the winless streak, about serving notice to everyone that he's back. But he also knows how important it is to quietly climb the ladder, to record those often anonymous seventh- and eighth-place finishes, to bank those points while someone else sprays champagne.

"We have to do this every week," he said at Martinsville. "If we can't get those wins right now, it is best to get what we can get and build upon making the Chase."

But consistently high finishes bring with them their own satisfaction, especially for a driver who spent too many Sundays last year sitting in the garage because of a cracked piston or rod. "I enjoy running good and running up front and really being consistent. That's something I haven't been called in a long, long time," Earnhardt said. "So it's a good feeling how we've been going right now. We'll just keep working and keep doing the same job."

Ahead loom eight months and 30 races, plenty of time for a promising young season to go awry. But the groundwork for championship seasons is often laid in something as nondescript as a sixth-place finish at Martinsville. Earnhardt Jr. is well on his way to returning to the Chase, of rejoining that elite cadre of title contenders he never rightfully should have left. He's doing it quietly, living up to all the hype that surrounded his move from DEI to Hendrick, even if others are getting all the attention.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer