With Chase looming even Junior seems anonymous

Monday through Wednesday is the worst part of each week. Right now Dale Earnhardt Jr. wants to be at the race track, wants to build on those small steps of progress he's found with crew chief Lance McGrew, wants to continue the slow and painstaking effort of turning the No. 88 team back into a contender again.

He'd be at the race track every day if he could, searching for ways to get faster, but the schedule won't let him. So Monday through Wednesday he sits there, frustrated by inaction, taking care of all the other duties that come with being a NASCAR star but wishing he was strapped into a car going 180 mph.

Crew chief Lance McGrew's move to Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 Chevrolet hasn't been a quick fix for the Hendrick Motorsports team in terms of results, but McGrew has seen plenty of progress since replacing Earnhardt's cousin Tony Eury Jr. before the May 31 race at Dover, including a third-place finish on Sunday at Michigan.

Q: How has your communication with Dale Earnhardt Jr. evolved over the past two months?

A: When you haven't worked with anybody before, there's a communication gap. I don't understand when he says the car is tight how much of an adjustment to make, or when he says the car is loose how much of an adjustment to make. So there's an amount of time that has to go by there, and situationally, you have to put yourself in all these positions where you know what adjustment to make.

Q: What has been your main focus in learning what he needs in the car?

A: I don't really think it's been one thing. We've really worked on the cars. We've worked on the communication, not only between Junior and myself, but among the engineers and him. I definitely feel like we've seen a lot of improvement over the first quarter of the season compared to the last eight races.

Q: Does it concern you that the finishes haven't reflected the progress you've seen so far?

A: I'm definitely disappointed ... because this is a bottom-line sport, and on Monday morning when the paper hits and everybody sees that we finished 12th or 14th or 16th or 35th, that's all they understand. They don't understand that we ran 10th all day and had a problem at the end or ran top six all day, like [at Indianapolis] and had a motor problem unfortunately. It's bittersweet. I'm happy to see progression, and I think everybody on the team is excited about how we've been running. Obviously, we're not where we want to be yet, but we're making steps that way.

-- Sporting News Wire Service

"I just try to keep coming back to the race track," Earnhardt said. "I want to be at the race track, because I feel like if I'm at the race track working with Lance, we're getting closer to turning it around."

Efforts like Sunday's third-place result at Michigan surely help, but in no way will this be a quick transition. Earnhardt is in a hole so deep that his strong run on the 2-mile track lifted him four places in points -- and he's still not even in the top 20.

As the season has gone on and Earnhardt's position has stagnated, it's become clear that there will be no magical turnaround. This is a slog, a sweaty, roll-up-your-sleeves reclamation project that's going to take up the rest of the 2009 season.

Oh sure, there will be moments, glimpses like Sunday that make you wonder what the No. 88 is capable of when it all comes together. But right now Earnhardt and McGrew are like mechanics, their heads under the hood and their oily forearms deep in the machinery, showing no signs of coming up for air anytime soon.

It's kind of a strange phenomenon. Earnhardt is still NASCAR's most popular driver -- according to the latest update on the Web site that tabulates fan votes for that award -- and still gets chased through the garage area by autograph-seekers every time he pokes his head outside of his team transporter.

He still has enough clout to rattle the NASCAR hierarchy with comments like he made Friday on his desire to see changes made to the current Sprint Cup car. He's still the marketing force he's always been, able to sell everything from blue jeans to stints in the National Guard. All those things exist regardless of his fortunes on the race track.

But from a competitive standpoint, it almost seems as if Earnhardt has faded into the background, become just another in a long line of drivers struggling to just finish out the year.

When Earnhardt last missed the Chase, in 2007, he was at least in contention until the final weeks of the regular season; heading to Richmond for that year's pivotal cutoff race, he was 13th in points. This year, though, there is no such drama. So as the first 26 races wind down, and as the focus narrows on the 14 or so drivers who have a chance to contend for the championship, fewer and fewer reporters beat a path to Earnhardt's hauler or seek him out after a race. He's just another guy who's not going to make it.

In a sport now built around a 10-race playoff, a third-place run at Michigan doesn't hold attention for very long. The all-powerful Chase, the end-all, be-all of the Sprint Cup Series, is so omnipotent that it can make even Dale Earnhardt Jr. seem anonymous.

And you know what? He probably doesn't mind. With his departure from Dale Earnhardt Inc. and subsequent joining of Hendrick Motorsports, this is a guy who has been the center of the NASCAR universe for more than two years now. His every move, from his feud with stepmother Teresa to his homecoming with Rick Hendrick to his choice of car number to the opening of his nightclub to his backyard western village to his uneven results in the No. 88 car, have been chronicled in the minutest detail. His profile is so high that his crew chief makes bigger news than most other drivers. Viewed in that context, it might be refreshing to be just another guy working on your stuff.

Right now that's just what he is, no different than Casey Mears or Reed Sorenson or Martin Truex Jr. or the dozens of other drivers for whom the Chase is a mathematical impossibility, and the only realistic goal is getting better for next year. At an appearance at Atlanta Motor Speedway last week, Earnhardt seemed to indicate that McGrew would be back.

"As of now, he's the man for the future, and he's the guy that we're all placing our confidence in to make the correct decisions," he said. A day later at Michigan, though, he was very clear that the rebuilding process is ongoing. At the moment, he's content to play a supporting role.

"We're still not seeing the type of stuff that we need to see to feel like we're going to be able to turn it around," Earnhardt said. "We're working hard. I've got a lot of confidence in Lance. He has a lot of confidence in me. And I think we get along really well and we're working really, really hard together. Our teammates, not just the drivers, but the crews and the crew chiefs are all trying to bond together to try to build the teams up, especially, specifically, our team," he said.

"We want to be able to help our teammates in the Chase. We want to be able to be an asset to the company before the end of the season toward their quest for the championship. And that's what's most important, I think, for us, is to feel like we have a hand in controlling everyone's destiny and be a part of it. So, we're trying to become better, and we have reason to do that before the end of the year, not only for ourselves, but for the company as well.

"Lance is a company guy. I've always kind of been that way in the past, and try to do the right thing on and off the race track to help the company at that specific moment," Earnhardt added. "So it's sort of a goal of ours, not only to get ourselves turned around, but to try to be an asset to the other teams throughout the Chase, and be in some way, performance-wise, supportive to them."

That's vintage Earnhardt -- a savvy driver who understands his sport and his place in it, and is able to see much more than just the viewpoint provided by the seat of his race car.

Maybe next year he'll be back in the playoff hunt, showing flashes of that championship potential so many believe he has within him. Time will tell. For now, though, even Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been relegated to the role of bit player in a larger saga. Even NASCAR's most popular driver has been rendered somewhat anonymous by the looming Chase.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer.