It doesn’t appear that the famed No. 3 Chevrolet will return to action next year, or that Tony Stewart will have a teammate to teach him manners anytime soon.
It looks like Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR’s most recognizable figure, will join red-hot Hendrick Motorsports to help forge the most dynamic driver lineup of all time.
Earnhardt, 32, will announce his plans for 2008 and beyond this morning. According to The Associated Press sources, that likely will be with Hendrick.
For Rick Hendrick, who already fields cars for four-time series champion and current points leader Jeff Gordon and defending series champion Jimmie Johnson, this Bud’s for you.
Hendrick will gladly pay Earnhardt the sport’s heftiest salary and accept Budweiser into the corporate family while taking a percentage of Junior’s huge merchandise sales.
Hendrick takes on a magnificent driver who captured two consecutive Busch Series titles before winning 17 Nextel Cup races and qualified for the Chase in two of the three years of the playoffs.
Now Junior will be a superstar driver with a superstar team. Hendrick drivers have combined to win 10 of 14 races this year.
Many fans wanted Earnhardt, who announced May 10 that he would leave Dale Earnhardt Inc. at the end of the season, to sign with Richard Childress Racing. RCR fielded the car for seven-time series champion Dale Earnhardt Sr., and still owns the rights to the late hero’s No. 3.
Childress is reportedly hunting in New Zealand this week, not the best place to be if he were going to sign Junior.
Joe Gibbs Racing also was believed to be in the mix, partly because Junior wants to continue to run Chevys, the engine used by Hendrick, RCR and Gibbs. But J.D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing, is on vacation this week.
Stewart is Gibbs’ top driver and will have to continue to figure out how to be like Junior, a great driver and a great person, on his own.
The confusing part about Junior joining Hendrick is this: Hendrick already has four entries, the new maximum allowed by NASCAR, and Gordon, Johnson, Kyle Busch and Casey Mears are under contract through 2008.
But Busch supposedly has asked out of his deal, which is as dumb as it sounds, and even more surprising when considering his father works for the team.
Other than that, the Junior signing makes perfect sense. Hendrick has good history with the Earnhardt family. Earnhardt Sr. gave Hendrick his first NASCAR win, in a 1983 Busch Series race, and Budweiser was the primary sponsor on Hendrick’s No. 25 car in the 1990s.
Removing himself
Owner/driver Michael Waltrip, who has qualified for only two races, will remove himself for the two upcoming road-course races in Sonoma, Calif., and Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Former two-time Cup champion Terry Labonte will replace Waltrip, who is 56th among 58 drivers in the standings. Having Labonte in the No. 55 gives the entry an automatic starting position as a champion’s provisional.
Waltrip said he thought of hiring Labonte after being bumped out of Sunday’s Pocono 500 lineup by Bill Elliott, the 1988 series champion who took a champion’s provisional.
“That kind of got me to thinking,” Waltrip said.
Footnotes
Speed channel will carry the Earnhardt news conference live. … Chevrolet has won 12 consecutive races and 13 of 14 this season, but a Chevy has not won at Michigan International Speedway – host of Sunday’s race – since 2001 (Gordon), a span of 11 races.
SPOTLIGHT: MARK MARTIN
Part-timer in playoff position
Martin, who is running a part-time schedule in the twilight of his career, continues to run like he’s in his prime. Despite missing three races, Martin is 12th in the standings and would qualify for the playoffs if the season ended today. He ended seventh Sunday at Pocono, Pa., for his seventh top-10 result in 11 starts. Only five other drivers, each having started all 14 races, have more top-10s than Martin. Martin’s terrific season is even more surprising considering he’s driving an entry that finished 27th in the standings last year after starting all 36 races. Joe Nemechek had just two top-10s in the No. 01 Chevrolet in 2006.
ON THE MOVE: RYAN NEWMAN
Road of improvement
Newman finished a disappointing 18th in the 2006 standings, so his current No. 13 position might not seem like much improvement. But the Penske driver, who was runner-up Sunday to winner Jeff Gordon, has four poles (second behind Gordon’s five) and six top-five finishes (tied for 10th). Newman, 29, is in his sixth full season. He ended sixth, sixth, seventh and sixth before last year, when he failed to win a race for the first time in a season.
THIS WEEK’S RACE: CITIZENS BANK 400
NASCAR heads to Michigan
10:30 a.m. Sunday, TNT
Where: Michigan International Speedway, Brooklyn, Mich. (oval, 2 miles, 12 degrees banking on frontstretch, 5 degrees on backstretch, 18 degrees in corners)
Distance: 400 miles, 200 laps
Qualifying: Friday, 11 p.m. (tape), Speed Channel
Last year: Matt Kenseth won the spring Michigan race. Kasey Kahne won in the fall.
Staff writer Mike Chambers can be reached at 303-954-1357 or mchambers@denverpost.com.
