Amelia is back.
The No. 88 Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Jr., a car so good on superspeedway tracks that it earned its own name, has apparently been restored from a Daytona 500 wreck. According to team crew chief Greg Ives, she’ll be back on the track this weekend.
For all those asking, it is time. Amelia will be making her return to the track this weekend. @TeamHendrick did a great job fixing her up.
— Greg Ives (@Ives_Greg) April 25, 2016
Amelia — formally known as Chassis No. 88-872 — has been Earnhardt Jr.’s primary car for the past five races at Daytona and Talladega. In 2015, Earnhardt Jr. won twice in four restrictor-plate events, with one win at Daytona and one at Talladega. He finished third (Daytona 500) and second in the fall Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega.
In the 2016 Daytona 500, Earnhardt Jr. was charging toward the front of the field when his car whipped around on him and smashed the inside barrier, crumpling sheet metal and denting the frame. He would finish 36th in the race.
“We’re going to have Amelia … I’m excited about that,” Earnhardt said in this week’s “The Dale Jr. Download” on Dirty Mo Radio. “We know how she ran last year. We’ve just got to run Talladega like we have to win it, just like we did the last time we were there. We did a good job.
“If we run it like that, we’ll be up front at the end.”
WATCH: Daytona wreck cripples car
Amelia, named after Amelia Earhart, became something of a Junior Nation sensation when Dale Jr. revealed he had named the car.
“A car gets named when you drive it long enough to see a personality, typically,” Earnhardt said earlier in 2016. “… The fact that we’re going to keep running it, I said, ‘We gotta name it’ and we were thinking of a woman who has accomplished something that was an awesome person that was something we could be proud of.
“Amelia Earhart was the first thing that came to my mind.”