Last week Joe Danneman, FOX19 Sports Anchor, and blog frequenter, posed a thought: “What if Dale Jr. won at Kentucky?”
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| Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car sits in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway garage area before practice for last year's Brickyard 400 |
I think that would qualify as pretty darn big time.
There is no bigger name in the nation’s No. 2 sport, and although Dale Earnhardt Jr. has won exactly two races since May of 2006, he continues to be the main draw for fans everywhere. Love him, hate him, or feel indifferently about him, Dale Jr. taking the first ever checkered flag in the Sprint Cup Series at Kentucky would make for some big-time headlines.
The last time Dale Jr. won a race was three summers ago, in June of 2008 at Michigan. A few weeks back, in NASCAR’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, Jr. held the lead on the final lap, but when he dropped into turn three, his No. 88 shut off. He was out of gas.
Kevin Harvick whisked by NASCAR’s most popular man and won the Coke 600, leaving Jr. fans the world around disappointed in coming so close yet again.
This season has been a season of rebirth for Earnhardt Jr., who was paired with Steve Letarte in the great Hendrick crew chief swap at the end of last season. Letarte and Earnhardt Jr. have been pretty consistent all year, scoring two runner ups (Martinsville and Kansas) and having finished in the top ten eight times.
Although Jr. winning at Kentucky would be a heck of story line, his best chance, at least according to some experts, would be to cross the finish line first at Daytona, a track where he’s scored three wins since he began racing there in 2000.
Jr., however, isn’t looking forward to Daytona
“I’m not looking forward to going to Daytona, not with the way the (two-car) drafting is there,” he told reporters after finishing 41st on Sunday at Sonoma. “But we’ll just have to see if we can get lucky out there. What's after Daytona? I'll be glad to go there.”
Did you hear that? Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be glad to get to Kentucky Speedway. This could be fun.
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I’ve got plenty of opportunities here in the next day to ask drivers some questions. Today at noon Tony Stewart is on a video teleconference with Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville area media members to make up for his rained out chance to talk last Tuesday at Kentucky. Jeff Gordon is on the NASCAR national video teleconference at 3:15 p.m.
I’ll be listening in on both, and hopefully I can sneak a question or two in to Smoke in the hour he’ll be talking with us. I might ask Gordon a question, but that’s a national feed, so odds are some of the bigger, more important folks will be asking questions.
And tomorrow I have an opportunity to go one-on-one with Jeff Burton via a video feed. Mark Martin’s former teammate will have ten minutes with me from Atlanta Motor Speedway where he’ll be taking Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson/Ochocinco around the track.
I’m not interested in Chad, just Jeff Burton and any thoughts he can provide about Daytona, Kentucky and Indy…oh, and how is Ward doing?
Got any questions for Smoke, the original four-time champ Gordon, or Jeff Burton? Tweet them to me, or leave a comment here. It gets e-mailed to me. I’ll see what I can do.
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