Earnhardt Jr. standing out for all the wrong reasons

At the beginning of every week, Hendrick Motorsports executive vice president Marshall Carlson e-mails an inspirational quote to each of the more than 500 employees who work at the organization's sprawling campus. Monday, it was a maxim from Publilius Syrus, a writer from the days of the Roman Empire: "Where there is unity, there is always victory." It seems more than appropriate, given the trips being made to Victory Lane by different drivers on what certainly appears to be NASCAR's deepest team.

No big deal

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Casey Mears agree that what happened in Phoenix was just a racing thing and won't carry over at Talladega.

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Hendrick rolls into Talladega Superspeedway this weekend having won three in a row, with each of those victories being notable for different reasons. Jimmie Johnson won at Martinsville to record his fifth triumph in his last six starts in the south Virginia short track. Jeff Gordon won at Texas, snapping a 47-race winless streak with his first career victory on the big tri-oval. And last weekend at Phoenix, Mark Martin won for the first time in more than three years, and in the process became only the fourth driver 50 or older to prevail on NASCAR's premier level.

Three different drivers from a single team winning three consecutive races is rare, but far from unheard of; Hendrick has accomplished the feat twice -- most recently with Johnson, Gordon and Casey Mears in 2007 -- as did teams owned by Carl Kiekhaefer in 1956. Now it's time to see if Hendrick can hit the superfecta, and take four in a row. And at big, fast Talladega, everyone knows what that means.

All eyes are on Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Of course, that's nothing unusual. NASCAR's popular driver should rightly be viewed as a threat anytime the series pulls into the north Alabama restrictor-plate track, given his record there. Earnhardt has won five career Cup Series races at Talladega, including four in a row during the Dale Earnhardt Inc. plate-track heyday. Since then, good finishes at Talladega have been substantially more difficult to find; in his last eight starts there, he's cracked the top-10 only twice, and failed to finish four times. Still, there's no question that he not only knows the place, but likes it -- something that can't be said for every driver -- and feels completely comfortable in that hornet's nest of a draft. (Continued)