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| Is Junior ready to win it all? |
“With the way we ran last year,
getting a real sense that we were starting to compete at the level as a team
that had the opportunity to win the championship, that felt really good,” said
Earnhardt today. “It got really exciting.
“I think we have an opportunity,” he
said. “Our time is now. We have a chance, if we can just find some more pieces
and keep improving. We have steadily gotten better over the last couple of
years (and) if we can continue to do that, keep applying ourselves, keep working
and not get complacent about certain things, then we can be one of those teams in
Homestead with a shot at it. I really believe that.”
Earnhardt
said he has taken a different approach to preseason testing this season than in
year’s past, becoming more involved in what is being done to his race car.
“You don’t really have to pay attention to
what they are putting on the car, what they change,” he admitted. “If you don’t
ask, rarely will a crew chief include you in that conversation. They will do
whatever they are doing to the car and tell you to go try again.
“If I do it that way, I get really
bored and have a hard time getting through the day. What I like to do, and it takes
pretty little effort, is just plug into what they are doing. I get out of the
car, asked what they changed, why they changed it, why they think that is going
to be better, what’s next, why they think that is going to work. I try to
really plug into the kind of technical things they are doing to the car. That
helps me get to clicking. The day goes by fast when you are plugged in like
that.”
Earnhardt
said he looks forward to doing a more testing before the season begins next
month at Daytona International Speedway.
“Our opportunities to test (have
been) limited at this point,” he said. “We will obviously be at Charlotte next
week with everybody else, and then we will have some opportunities after that
to go to Nashville and Pikes Peak. We probably won’t go to Walt Disney World due
to the rising costs and being able to acquire the race track, (but) we will go
to Nashville… two or three times before we end up going to Las Vegas or
Phoenix.
“We need to learn as much as we can
learn,” said Earnhardt. “We have got a lot of rule changes in the cars. A lot
of things are different, so we need to find where our package needs to be and
get a good comfortable idea of where to start when we go to the different
tracks.”
NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver also
said he is confident in his team’s ability to adapt to the new Gen-6 race car
quickly.
“I think that being with Hendrick is
going to be a real advantage,” he said. “I’m not really that worried about it. I
just like to be at the race track working. I think `momentum’ means you keep
plugging away and you keep working. For us to sit around and hope that when we
show up in Vegas, we are going to have plenty of time to figure things out…
that is just a pipe dream. You have got to go to work. You have to test and put
in the time to be better. You’ve got to go to the race track.”
Earnhardt
also said he is happy with the overall direction of the sport, something he has
been critical of in the past.
“It’s hard to come up with something
I would change (or) something I would do differently,” he said. “I’m pretty
happy with how things have been. I feel like that the sport is in a good
healthy place. We have a good opportunity to grow. With this car, we have a
chance to do something great and make a big impact. I think all the pieces are
there.
“We have made a lot of changes that
were hurdles and speed bumps, but double file restarts and a lot of the changes
that have happened in the last several years have really improved the sport. I
think the racing is as exciting as it has been in a long time. It always is
changing and it always will, but I think we have improved it.”
Earnhardt
also said he feels no lingering effects from the two concussions he suffered
late last season; injuries that sidelined him for two weeks and eliminated him
from title contention.
“I feel really good,” he said. “It was good to get in the car
at the end of the year and be able to run a couple of races and get any kind of
doubts or questions about yourself or your recovery out of the way. I feel
really good down here. I feel good, ready to go. I’m glad I did it the way I
did (and) I think it gave me a good opportunity to get better faster and come back
sharp.
He predicted that NASCAR’s new
Sprint Cup race car will “be really similar to the old cars at Daytona. They
have a splitter (and) they have relatively the same package in the back. There
is a lot less downforce, so I don’t know what that is going to do (or) how the
cars may handle. We might be able to get cars moving around and guys getting
loose, having to work on getting the cars tied into the race track, which would
be good.
“What made Daytona a lot of fun was
when the surface was really slick and you had to work on the handling of the
car. I’m excited to be able to do that again. The track surface is aging, but
it’s still relatively in good shape as far as grip level goes. The tires are
really bullet proof (and) don’t really fall off or wear out that much. I expect
the cars to look similar to what we saw in drafting here in the past.”
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