WAY TO GO JUNEBUG!!
This is a bonus clip from the movie "Together: The Hendrick Motorsports Story"
Kelly Bires
Birthdate: August 25, 1984
Hometown: Mauston, Wi
Marital Status: Single
Like most hot-shoe drivers, this Wisconsin native got the racing bug early by nailing down two Regional Karting Titles by the age of 12 and two National Titles by 14. He entered the Allison Legacy Car Series at 15 and in two years, he won the two most prestigious awards. In 2000, he was Rookie of the Year. In 2001, he was the Series Champion. Clearly, Bires has a pretty short learning curve when it comes to going fast and turning left.
After moving up to the late model ranks in Wisconsin in 2002-2004, Bires ran competitively for two years locally before moving to Charlotte to pursue a career in NASCAR. It was to the detriment of his competitors when he showed up in the ASA Late Model Series in 2006. His stunning performance speaks for itself seven wins, four poles, 15 top-five finishes and no finishes out of the top-10 in seventeen starts. Without question, he was the runaway winner of the series championship and Rookie of the Year honors.
JTG Representatives took notice of his dominant year and signed Bires to drive one of their two NASCAR Truck Series entries in 2007. In a major plus for Bires, he received tutelage from veteran Mark Martin, who teamed with him earlier in the year in the truck series. A mid-season opportunity allowed Bires to finish out the year behind the wheel of the No. 47 Clorox car in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. The rookie sensation made his debut at the Meijer 300 race at Kentucky Speedway, where he wowed competitors by finishing seventh after starting 26th. It became clear that Bires and the No. 47 team were a perfect pair. Bires finished his promising rookie season earning two top-10 finishes.
The following year in 2008, Bires continued to run for JTG, competing in the full season and earning one top-five and six top-10 finishes. In 2009, Bires was again tapped for a part-time schedule, driving select races for Kevin Harvick, Inc., as well as Braun Racing, and CJM Racing. In five competitive starts, Bires earned two top-five and three top-10 finishes. Additionally, Bires made one ARCA start at Talladega in 2009 where he led 35 laps before finishing ninth.
In 2010, Bires is slated to drive the No. 88 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- Penske Racing on Tuesday announced that Brad Keselowski will compete for the team full-time, beginning with the 2010 season.
Keselowski, 25, will drive the No. 12 Penske Dodge in the Sprint Cup Series -- replacing David Stremme -- and also will run a full-season schedule in the Nationwide Series.
"We are very excited to welcome Brad to the Penske Racing family," team owner Roger Penske said. "Brad has shown terrific success on track the past several years and has quickly established himself as one of the top young stars in racing. He comes from an impressive family background in motorsports. He is a proven winner and a welcome addition to our team."
A third-generation driver, Keselowski has won at every level in which he has competed. He is third in the Nationwide Series standings, with three wins including a dramatic victory in August at his home track at Michigan. Keselowski also scored his first Cup Series win earlier this year at Talladega and he has three top-10 finishes in eight Cup Series starts this season.
"Penske Racing is one of the top teams in all of motorsports and I am honored to join Roger Penske's organization and compete for wins with his Cup and Nationwide Series teams," Keselowski said. "This is a great opportunity for me to continue competing in the Nationwide Series and to run my first full season in the Cup Series with a strong and experienced team."
Growing up working for his family's team, K Automotive Motorsports, Keselowski followed in the footsteps of his father Bob, a 23-year veteran driver who won more than 50 races and the 1989 ARCA Series championship. The younger Keselowski joined NASCAR in 2004, racing for his family's team in the Truck Series. Expanding to Nationwide Series competition in 2006, Keselowski's career began to blossom.
He finished third in the 2008 Nationwide Series championship, the highest standing for a regular series racer, earning two wins while also being named the Most Popular Driver in the Nationwide Series.
Keselowski, the sought-after NASCAR phenom who won a Sprint Cup race at Talladega earlier this season in a part-time car, has signed a multi-year contract to compete for Penske Racing, beginning in 2010.
The deal puts Keselowski in Roger Penske's No. 12 Sprint Cup car, where he will replace current driver David Stremme, as well as in a new, full-time Nationwide Series ride where he will compete as a teammate to Justin Allgaier.
"I want to be the guy that comes to Penske Racing and gets them their first NASCAR championship. I want to be that guy," Keselowski said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. "For everything that's been accomplished here, that's the one thing that's missing, and I want to be the guy that gets it done."
And yet, the decision to take the Penske offer was far from a simple one for Keselowski, who's been tied to Earnhardt's JR Motorsports Nationwide team -- and, by extension, Rick Hendrick's juggernaut Cup Series operation -- for most of his career at NASCAR's national levels. Keselowski talked with Hendrick about potentially finding a place at Hendrick Motorsports, something that would allow him to continue to compete for JR Motorsports, but eventually became impossible given the four-car limit NASCAR has placed on organizations in its premier division.
Penske's courtship of Keselowski, a fellow Michigander, was no secret. But after Keselowski's stock rose following his victory at Talladega in April, Hendrick asked for a few months to try to find a place for him. Given his existing relationship with the Hendrick camp, Keselowski obliged, and said Penske fully understood. Within the last month, though, it became clear that Hendrick wouldn't have room, and Keselowski accepted the Penske offer.
"He worked as hard as he could," Keselowski said of Hendrick. "He told me something that I thought was pretty interesting, that he worked much harder on my deal than he ever had to work on Jimmie [Johnson's] or Jeff [Gordon's] or any of them trying to find a way to keep me in the camp. It became obvious that it just wasn't in the cards. Too many things were going against us with the team limit and so forth, and this opportunity [with Penske] was sitting there."
Keselowski will replace Stremme, who hasn't finished better than 13th this season. Keselowski, a third-generation driver, has three Nationwide victories this year in addition to his Cup Series triumph. He is also currently third in Nationwide points driving for JR Motorsports, the Earnhardt-owned organization that gave him his big break when it hired Keselowski for what began as a three-race tryout in 2007. They've won five races together since.
"Without a doubt, the hardest part was leaving JR Motorsports," Keselowski said. "But what made it easier for me was to have Dale's blessing to do it. Without it, it would have been much harder to do. And Dale, make no mistake, was the catalyst for my career, the one who called me up and said he believed in me even though other people within his company didn't. He's the one who took the risk, financially and with his reputation, to put me in that car, and I'm eternally grateful to him for that."
In the end, it was Earnhardt who encouraged Keselowski to take the Penske opportunity. The two drivers recently had a conversation in which Earnhardt advised Keselowski to go where he had the opportunity to grow.
"He was actually one of the people who pushed me fairly hard to take this deal," Keselowski said. "As surprising as that might be to some of the people or the fans or the media, he brought up one of the good points that stuck with me when I made this decision, which was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life. And that was, when you have the opportunity to grow, and take on new challenge, and you're capable of conquering those challenges, you need to take it. You need to grow when you have the opportunity to grow, not only in your career but as a person. This is a great opportunity for me to grow."
And now, that the decision has finally been made?
"I feel like a lot of weight has been lifted off my shoulders," he said. "It's been a lot to carry around for the last couple of months. ... I feel a huge relief. I'm ready to dig my hands in deep in the dirt and get it going."
BROOKLYN, Mich. -- For a guy who only two days earlier had been lambasting NASCAR for allegedly putting a poor product on the tracks much of this season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. sure looked like he was having a whole lot of fun Sunday at Michigan International Speedway.
And for a while, it looked like he might even win a race, too.
In the end, Earnhardt had to settle for third in the Carfax 400 -- but he was coming hard over the final laps and knew he had the fuel to make it. Eventual winner Brian Vickers and second-place finisher Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, weren't nearly as sure that they could make it to the checkered flag without running out of gas.
But while Earnhardt had fresher tires and more gas than the pair running in front of him, he didn't have the time to catch them.
"The way our luck has been, I wasn't sitting there thinking I was in the catbird's seat. I was thinking maybe I'll get on the podium [with a top-three finish]," Earnhardt said.
"I know every one of those guys is real good at saving fuel. We've all gotten smarter, I think, in the last year and a half on some of the tricks you can pull to do that, some of the things we can accomplish under caution to help ourselves."
Earnhardt should know. His last Sprint Cup victory came 43 races ago at the same MIS venue, when he gambled on fuel mileage at the end and barely made it to Victory Lane.
This time, others had to sweat out the fuel-mileage game. Some lost, too. Losers in that gambling affair included two of Earnhardt's other Hendrick teammates -- three-time defending points champion Jimmie Johnson, who ran out of gas with three laps to go; and Mark Martin, who won the Michigan race in June when Johnson and Greg Biffle both ran out of gas in front of him in the final lap and a half.
Johnson attempted to make it 51 laps between fuel stops this time, when in the June race he failed to make it more than 47. It turned out to be a bad gamble and he ended up with a 33rd-place finish to show for it.
As good as Johnson and his crew chief, Chad Knaus, have proven to be overall during the past several seasons, playing the fuel-mileage gamble game obviously is not their forte.
"I'm certainly frustrated," Johnson said. "We've won one race on fuel mileage, ever. It's just not what we are good at. I think it is a little too risky for us to even try it.
"We got lucky once in Phoenix. Outside of that, we always come up short."
Knaus added: "We had the fastest car by a bunch and I hate it for Jimmie and I hate it for all my guys."
Martin was running just outside the top 10 when he ran out of fuel Sunday, relegating him to a 31st-place finish.
Meanwhile, Earnhardt had no such concerns because he pitted earlier while the rest of the top cars stayed out on the track, hoping for a late caution that never came. Earnhardt said afterward that he had to talk crew chief Lance McGrew in letting him come to pit road to take on gas and four tires at the time, figuring it would pay dividends later.
"I knew we had to come in for fuel. Initially, he did not want to," Earnhardt said. "But I was like, 'You know what? Eventually we're going to have to pit and that's going to put us in the back, so why don't we go back there now -- instead of waiting until later when we'll only have a handful of laps to make it back up?' We made the right move."
The third-place finish was Earnhardt's best since grabbing second at Talladega in April. In the 13 races between that one and Sunday's, Earnhardt had finished no higher than 12th and came home in 26th or worse nine times.
He said he is hopeful Sunday's strong run is a harbinger of better times ahead for him and his No. 88 Chevrolet team. They began the season projected as a championship contender, but struggled so badly that team owner Rick Hendrick eventually replaced Tony Eury Jr. with McGrew as crew chief -- a move that hadn't paid many tangible dividends until Sunday.
"We just haven't had nothin' to smile about," Earnhardt said. "So I'm just real happy for Lance and real happy for my guys, my team. Hopefully, this will take a little of the load off of Rick and our sponsors. Hopefully, this will lift them up a little bit and help us build some momentum in the right direction.
"It was a good run [Sunday]. We've seen some other hints where we've been getting better at some other tracks over the last two months. But we finally put a race together where we can appreciate the finish, instead of just having a good car here and there."
Built in 1909 as an automobile proving ground, the speedway was built as a 2.5-mile rectangle by its four founders because that was the largest track that could be constructed on the land available.
The first event was a hot-air balloon race, followed by three days of racing in August 1909. However, the crushed stone and tar track was so dangerous that work began immediately on repaving the entire surface with more than three million bricks.
The track hosted three separate race weekends in 1910, but poor attendance forced management to re-think its plans for 1911, choosing to run one large event instead.
The first 500-Mile International Sweepstakes was held on May 30, 1911, and with the exception of two world wars, remains a Memorial Day fixture.
Ray Harroun took nearly seven hours to complete the 500-mile distance in 1911, while Arie Luyendyk won the 1990 edition in a record two hours and 41 minutes.
The track and grounds deteriorated badly during World War II -- and plans were made to replace it with residential housing. But Terre Haute businessman Tony Hulman stepped in and purchased the speedway and began a series of improvements to the facility that continue to this day.
Several NASCAR teams were invited to a one-day test session at the speedway by track president Tony George in 1993, and the inaugural Brickyard 400 was held one year later.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- With his Nationwide Series driver, Brad Keselowski, saying he wants to be in the Sprint Cup Series next season, JR Motorsports owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday he still loves the Nationwide Series but he's open to all options.
Earnhardt was the 1998 and '99 champion of what was then known as the Busch Series, driving for his family's Dale Earnhardt Inc. team. After partnering his team with Rick Hendrick this season, he's been considering moving his operation to Cup in 2010.
"Going into the Cup Series is going to be quite a challenge for anybody to find the kind of financial support that you need," Earnhardt said. "The Nationwide Series is still as exciting to me as it was when we first got into it. Although the parity and the makeup of the series changes it seems year to year, it's still an interesting series with a lot of great personalities and it's still fun for me. We've been able to bring Brad in and progress him through the series and he's got a great opportunity to move on and he'll hopefully be a fixture in this sport, as a whole, over the next several years -- and that's really what we wanted to achieve. Hopefully, we'll have that opportunity again with someone else once Brad has completed his cycle, if you will.
"I enjoy that. I enjoy kind of bringing people in and having a part in getting them there. So that's what's exiting about the series for me as an owner. It's easier to secure financial support for that series when you're talking about the entire sum of money that it takes to compete. It's a little bit of a challenge to convince corporate America why that series versus any other series. But nothing comes easy."
And that's certainly the case as NASCAR continues to consider bringing a version of the new Sprint Cup chassis to the Nationwide Series in some form, perhaps as early as next season.
"I don't know what the Nationwide cars will look like next year," Earnhardt said. "I haven't had any conversations with anyone in the sport about the car. I haven't had any diagrams or ideas or drafts in front of me to look at. So I'm just waiting in the wings like everybody else, I assume.
"I'm sure that we as a company sort of didn't turn our nose up at it but we really didn't involve ourselves any in the equation of developing the car. We have our budget worked out to where we can run this year with what we have but we don't have the money to develop this car. You'd be lucky to be able to do it just under $150,000 in just an early or pre-season development. So before you even run a race, you've spent a couple hundred thousand dollars and we do not have that as a company. So we can't involve ourselves in the development of it so we are sort of like everyone else, waiting on whoever that team is -- whether it will be RCR or Roush or whoever that is that will be a part of developing that car with NASCAR and building this car and seeing what kind of car they produce. Without a doubt I'm sure it'll be a safer race car [but] the car we have now in the Nationwide Series, in my opinion, is the ultimate race car."
If they only had time to sand it and recoat it, he said. Just one more time. Then it would really shine.
Although, he admitted with a laugh, then his group in the Nos. 5/88 team shop paint bay would be urging Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 team to race the wrapped backup car instead of the hand-painted primary one.
Sipka, Donnie Floyd, Scott Nicholls and Glen Bobo spent two days and used 14 coats of DuPont paint to prepare the No. 88 Chevy for Saturday's 400-mile NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. Race coverage begins on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. ET on TNT.
Click here for more shots of the ACU (Army Combat Uniform) special paint scheme.
During the process, the crew sandwiched two stencils between three colors – desert tan, olive green and light green – before applying a coat of black paint to the top half of the Chevrolet. Finally, they pulled the stencils off when the last coat of paint had dried. Each piece of stencil the group removed revealed another color and gave the Chevrolet its camouflage look.
Earnhardt will unveil the paint scheme on Wednesday to National Guard soldiers and fans during the 2009 Battle of the Bands at the Bandshell in Daytona Beach, Fla. The event, which is open to the public, starts at 5 p.m. ET.
Earnhardt said he is honored to run the ACU camouflage paint scheme, which pays tribute to the National Guard soldiers who dedicate a portion of their time serving their nation, state and local communities.
"Working with the military means a lot because they are a big part of our sport overall, and to carry them on my car every weekend makes you pretty proud."
LOUDON, N.H. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. had one of the most satisfying 13th-place finishes in his NASCAR career Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Gas strategies and a rain-shortened race probably cost the crowd favorite a better finish, but Earnhardt ran well throughout the day, spending most of the 273 laps in the top 10 and running quite a bit in the top five.
"We ran good today," said Earnhardt, in only his sixth race with crew chief Lance McGrew. "I want to thank Lance and the team. ... They did a good, man, giving me a good car. I had fun today. I hope we can keep this up.
"Being around fifth and looking at the top five, that was great," he added. "Seeing the leaders most of the day in your windshield is better than where we have been."
Earnhardt moved up one spot in the standings to 19th with nine races remaining until the start of the Chase for the championship, which will include only the top 12 drivers.
"We are inching so slowly up back in to where we need to run," he said. "It is taking a while but, hopefully, we keep moving forward."
SONOMA, Calif. -- Rick Hendrick will meet with Brad Keselowski this coming week to discuss their 2010 options. Under consideration is placing the young driver with a team affiliated with Hendrick Motorsports.
Among the possibilities: a third entry at Stewart-Haas Racing, a full-time ride with James Finch's team, or staying put at JR Motorsports but moving that team to the Sprint Cup Series. Keselowski currently drives the No. 88 in the Nationwide Series for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who could move the team up to NASCAR's premier series.
"That's something that Dale and Kelley [Earnhardt, vice president and general manager of JR Motorsports] are looking at," Hendrick said before Sunday's race at Infineon Raceway. "That's a possibility."
After Keselowski drove Finch's car to his first Cup Series victory with a surprise April win at Talladega, he agreed to a period of exclusive negotiations with Hendrick about a long-term contract. Keselowski wants to run in the Cup Series next year, but NASCAR's four-car limit means Hendrick doesn't have an open seat for 2010.
"We're looking at different options with some of our external situations with other teams, and I told Brad that I want him to have the best opportunity," Hendrick said. "If we can't give it to him, then I want him to have the best. He wants to do something that is somehow associated with our company and we're working on it and hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have something sorted out.
"He'll be running Cup. Whether he'll be running them all or whether he'll be running 75 percent of them or what, I don't know."
Keselowski is running a limited schedule this season for both Hendrick and Finch, and could do it again next year. Hendrick believes NASCAR would allow him to field a fifth car next year for Keselowski in seven races.
Business is good
Hendrick Motorsports wasn't spared from General Motors' funding cuts earlier this week, but the team owner said he was prepared for the reductions.
GM cut all funding to its Nationwide and Truck Series teams, and it reduced its support of Sprint Cup Series teams as the manufacturer restructures under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Both Richard Childress Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing have acknowledged funding was reduced to its programs in meetings with GM earlier this week.
Hendrick had the same meeting, but had already made changes to his four-car organization in preparation for the cuts.
"I've been kind of, for a year or better, thinking that this could happen," Hendrick said. "We've been trying to address things and do things a little bit differently. We've been trying to cover our bases for about a year. Everybody is having to make adjustments, but it's not going to change the way we race or how we show up on the race track.
"I've been telling our guys the only way I could see GM surviving long-term was to go into bankruptcy. I've been saying that for over a year, so we've been kind of expecting it."
Hendrick also is in a unique position of potentially replacing the money through his leasing programs with other race teams. SHR buys cars and leases engines from Hendrick, and Stewart has said he's considering adding a third team next season -- which would give Hendrick even more business.
Another potential partner is Red Bull Racing, which is considering leaving Toyota for Chevrolet next season. If the team does switch, it would likely lease motors from Hendrick. Red Bull general manager Jay Frye had a similar arrangement when he ran now-defunct Ginn Racing.
"I'm going to stop racing and build cars and sell motors," joked Hendrick. "You don't turn down any business these days. Probably what I'll see, we'll convert some of the other programs if it comes to pass.
"We've worked with Jay Frye for so many years, and Tony and them, that's a seamless deal for us."
"'Most loved' (means) everybody likes you. The most popular is whether you're doing good, bad or whatever. They write about you and talk about you. You've got more people calling in to radio shows talking about me than you do Junior. You got more writers and everyone in the media talking about me than talking about Junior."
(Jealous, jealous, jealous)
"Seems to me there's a pretty big difference."
(Yeah, the only difference is that they are two different words.)
No comment yet from Dale, but I'll be sure to add them if I find any.
Opened in 1968, then-Sears Point Raceway was constructed on 720 acres of property that was a working dairy farm in the early 1900s. The facility hosted its first official event, an SCCA Enduro, on Dec. 1 of that year.
Since then, the facility has grown and expanded into one of the premier motor sports venues in the country, hosting 340 days of racing activity each year, including the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, NHRA POWERade Drag Racing and the IndyCar® Series.
BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Kyle Busch was at it again Friday, bigger than ever, insulting vast new masses -- Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s whole fan base.
And Lance McGrew, Earnhardt's new crew chief, laughed loud and long at that.
It started when Busch was asked about the public controversy over his smashing a trophy guitar in Victory Lane after winning a Nationwide race at Nashville last week.
"It was fun and a lot of people enjoyed it and thought it was different -- the sport's not so vanilla," Busch said.
And then, as has happened every couple of weeks lately, Busch just couldn't help himself.
"A lot of people hated it and I guess those are the ones with '88' [Earnhardt's current car number] tattooed on their arms," Busch continued, his little smile growing ever more mischievous. "Or maybe still '8' [Earnhardt's old car number]."
His cannon thus primed and loaded, Busch fired: "I've got no issues with Junior -- it's his fans that are crazy, but that's all right."
Then Busch poured it on. With all the hoopla over the guitar smashing, "Sounds to me like the most popular driver award goes to Kyle Busch this year, right?" he said.
The obvious reference was to Earnhardt's perennial recognition -- by fan balloting, cheers in the stands and merchandise sales -- as far and away NASCAR's most popular driver.
At the very idea Busch would call out Earnhardt's legions, McGrew could manage only "That's pure Kyle" between spells of laughter.
McGrew, who replaced Tony Eury Jr. as Earnhardt's crew chief 15 days ago, once worked with Busch in the Nationwide Series when Busch was at Hendrick Motorsports.
"He's amazingly talented -- unbelievably," McGrew said of Busch. "But, boy, when he says something -- what comes up comes out. There's no doubt about it."
McGrew found the good laugh useful. He and Earnhardt had a lot more on their plates Friday than just the jab du jour from Busch.
Earnhardt is defending champion of Sunday's Lifelock 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
Or, put another way in light of Earnhardt's dismal slump -- which led to his separation from Eury -- this weekend marks a full year since Earnhardt has won a Sprint Cup race.
Further, Earnhardt had to deal with the removal of cash support from Chevrolet from his own JR Motorsports, which fields Nationwide cars, due to Chevrolet's bankruptcy.
Earnhardt had so much on his mind Friday that he didn't understand my question -- or maybe I wasn't clear enough -- about Busch's latest shots.
I termed them "the latest Kyle-ism" to Earnhardt, and other journalists standing near us told me, after he'd returned to his hauler, that he must have thought I said "columnist" before I told him the latest.
But leave it to my ESPN colleague Marty Smith to point out that at least part of Earnhardt's answer was entirely applicable.
"My fans handle themselves well and they're good people," Earnhardt said. "So I think anyone who would be calling them out and stirring them up is causing problems not only for himself but everyone else in this sport."
Perhaps the driver who best understood how much Busch had bitten off this time was Jimmie Johnson, Earnhardt's Hendrick Motorsports teammate.
"Kyle, I'm sure, at points, regrets stirring up the pot," Johnson said. "But at other times I think he thrives on it …
"He's already got the fans on him, but now I think he's getting them upset in a whole new wave," Johnson continued. "Who knows? He's probably loving it."
Clearly, Busch is. His latest volley came on top of his remark two weeks ago at Dover, Del., about Earnhardt's crew chief change, that "It's never Junior; it's always the crew chief."
That on top of "I'm proud of the fact that I'm outperforming a guy [Earnhardt] that replaced me at Hendrick," which Busch said at Martinsville in March.
And that on top of "There's probably too much pressure on one guy's shoulders who doesn't seem to win very often," which Busch said at Bristol, also in March.
Since Earnhardt replaced Busch at Hendrick Motorsports and Busch moved to Joe Gibbs Racing at the beginning of 2008, Busch has won 11 Cup races to Earnhardt's one.
But Earnhardt on Friday expressed hope that he could actually break his year-old slump here Sunday.
Isn't it too soon in the rebuilding process to think about an outright win?
"Oh, no," Earnhardt said. "You show up every week thinking you can win and hoping you can win. So it's not too soon to think about that."
As for Chevrolet's cutting of funding to his Nationwide team, Earnhardt characterized the manufacturer's cash percentage of his budget as "small, very small. The sponsorships obviously are the biggest part of our budget. Our relationship with Chevrolet was more just about brand loyalty."
Earnhardt and McGrew were at first deeply disappointed in their 27th-place finish at Pocono last Sunday, their second outing together. But they were relieved to find the reason -- a broken suspension part -- when they returned to the Hendrick compound.
"When you get a call from Mr. H [team owner Rick Hendrick], obviously that's going to concern you," McGrew said. "He was curious about what happened last weekend, and so were we."
So they did a sort of autopsy of their car. "We found a little mechanical issue," McGrew said. "We feel like we nailed that down, and we understand what happened, and did some stuff to keep it from happening again."
Even the mechanical failure was a boost to Earnhardt's confidence in his midrace diagnostics.
"In the middle part of the race I'd commented to the engineer that I thought that part had failed," Earnhardt said. "It's pretty good to be able to point at something and say, 'Here's the problem.'"
As for Earnhardt's general state of mind, "I think he's fine," McGrew said, and broke into baseball pitcher rehab lingo. "We're working on getting his slider back, a little confidence back, and trying to stay on the same page. So far, so good."
Earnhardt had become notorious for grumbling to Eury on the radio during bad outings, but at Pocono, "He really didn't," McGrew said.
"He's definitely trying. There is no doubt about it," McGrew continued. "I can definitely tell. He wants to be more involved in the whole program. He's asking better questions. He's giving better feedback. He's definitely engaged."
So Busch has backed off Junior. And taken on his legions.
And just think: There are still 21 more Fridays left in the season for Busch to meet with the media.
