After four wins in 2014, can Junior do even more with new crew chief?
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Team: Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet
Rank in final 2014 standings: Eighth
Wins: 4 (Daytona International Speedway in February; Pocono Raceway in June and August; Martinsville Speedway in October)
Year in photos: Recap Earnhardt Jr.’s 2014 season
Strides: Earnhardt’s eighth-place points finish was his third top-10 result in the past four seasons and his four wins was the most since 2004. He won for the first time in his career at Pocono, where he swept both events, and at Martinsville. The two Pocono victories marked his first sweep at a track since Talladega in ’02. The Martinsville win upped his career win total to 23 and was especially gratifying.
“This is so special,” Earnhardt Jr. said of the Martinsville win. “I try not to get too caught up in the emotion of it because it’s a team deal, but this is very personal and very special to me to be able to win here.”
Earnhardt Jr. qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup for the seventh time.
In addition to the breakthrough wins at Pocono and Martinsville, he managed personal bests at Darlington where he was runner-up, and Sonoma where a third-place run was his first career top-10 on the California road course. He equaled his best finish at Las Vegas (second) for the third time in his career.
Setbacks: Earnhardt Jr.’s struggles in the Contender Round saw his title hopes end early as he had finishes of 20th or worse at Kansas, Charlotte and Talladega. Needing a victory to keep his championship hopes alive in the Contender Round finale at Talladega, where he has five career wins, Earnhardt Jr. was involved in a late-race accident that relegated him to a 31st-place finish.
The 2014 season was also the first since 2009 that Earnhardt Jr. failed to win at least one Coors Light Pole Award.
Quoteworthy: “I expect the cars to have more speed eventually; it may take us a couple of races or a couple of months to get there but I think our cars will be faster and give us an opportunity to run better (in 2015).”
What’s next: Besides a few changes among those going over the wall on race day, Earnhardt Jr. will have a new crew chief in Greg Ives and a new car chief in Travis Mack.
Ives, who guided Chase Elliott to the 2014 XFINITY (formerly Nationwide) Series title, steps in for Steve Letarte while Mack (Elliott’s car chief) replaces Jason Burdett.
The return of engineer Kevin Meendering to the No. 88 team is expected to help smooth the transitions.
“That’s going to help a ton,” Earnhardt Jr. said, “because Kevin has all this information on what’s worked with me. All drivers like things a little different. So Kevin’s going to be real influential in getting Greg up to speed.”
While he won’t rule out the possibility of a few rough spots as the team comes together, Earnhardt Jr. said he isn’t worried.
“I don’t know that we will struggle,” he said. “I expect us to come out and be competitive. By midseason I expect us to be a better race team than we were last year.
“I think Greg is a talented crew chief. He has many advantages that will make us a better team. Steve was the strategist, one of the best guys on the box when it came to strategies, fuel mileage and stuff like that. It’s too soon to tell exactly where we are there. Greg’s been running in the Nationwide Series for a couple of years and their strategies are kind of mapped out already because of the tire rule and so forth. You can’t really pull a lot of little levers and get things done, get crazy. …
“But I know the engineering side is getting stronger because of Greg’s history as an engineer.”