No Junior in New York caps off disappointing season (cont'd)

He eventually did win one race -- at Michigan in June -- but even some saw that as being tainted because he did so only by milking fuel mileage. He might have won another earlier at Richmond, but he got run over by Kyle Busch.

The fact is, he led laps in 22 of the 36 races on the season. Only Johnson, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch led more miles. Only that triumvirate, in fact, rated ahead of Earnhardt Jr. in driver rating and average running position.

Outside looking in

But while he placed fourth in some of those key statistics to Johnson, Edwards and Busch, Junior literally lagged miles behind when it came to actually chasing down victories. The aforementioned Terrific Three accounted for 24 Cup victories between them.

Junior never won again after Michigan in early summer.

He made the Chase, starting the 10-race "playoff" seeded, appropriately enough, in the respectable but hardly feared fourth position. Arguably the only driver who faded from real contention for the title more quickly than he did was Busch, who tumbled from first all the way to 12th among Chase drivers before coming to his final resting place in 10th following more late-race troubles for Earnhardt in the season finale at Homestead.

That left you-know-who in 12th in the final standings.

Hendrick admitted he was disappointed in this, citing at one point that it was the result of having "tremendous little gremlins bite us, from tire problems to things you can't control."

The truth is, it wasn't all the fault of those tremendous little gremlins. There were some things that could have been controlled and weren't. Crew chief Tony Eury Jr. might have gambled more at times for victories, risking those precious "positive points finishes" in the process. The entire No. 88 team might benefit from Earnhardt not panicking and ripping into them every time he feels something vibrate in the car after running in the top five most of the day.

The great drivers just deal with this stuff. The great crew chiefs just get it fixed if the car isn't turning the way the driver wants. The great teams work together and keep chipping away even when nothing seems to be going their way.

Let's just say the No. 88 team didn't always deal with even the slightest of adversity in the most positive of ways -- like, say, the No. 48 Chevy team of Johnson or the No. 99 Ford team of points runner-up Edwards.

"I was super excited about the way the season started," Earnhardt said at Homestead. "I couldn't wait to get to work this year. It was a long year, and we worked really hard. It went good sometimes and it went poorly other times. For the most part, I was real proud of just getting this season in the bank and getting done and looking forward to next year."

Yeah, well, most of the rest of us expected a whole lot more than that. Most of the racing world expected Junior to at least be walking up on stage this Friday night at the Waldorf-Astoria.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.