Response to adversity will define Earnhardt's career

No question, being Dale Earnhardt Jr. has its advantages. Enough energy drinks and beer to keep a refrigerator stocked for life. Enough cash to fill a starting field's worth of Brinks trucks. No problems getting dates on Friday nights during off weekends. That cool Western village in the backyard. Instant access to all the best simulator racing leagues. No wait for a table at any Charlotte-area TGI Friday's. A brand-spanking-new Camaro (we hope) sitting in the driveway -- in fire-engine red, of course.

But would anybody trade places with the guy right now?

Childress believes

The car owner who won six Cup championships with Dale Earnhardt is confident Junior will someday have a championship of his own.

"Junior can still drive a race car, he can compete, he can win, and he will win a championship someday," Richard Childress said last week at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"It's just a matter of going through a few of these peaks and valleys. I spoke to him a couple of times trying to give him encouragement -- because we've been there."

Childress doesn't believe Earnhardt already has seen his best days and he doesn't believe NASCAR's new race car, introduced in 2007 after Earnhardt had posted 17 of his 18 Cup wins, will prove a permanent impediment to the driver's success.

"He's got a lot more he can do and a lot more he will accomplish," Childress said. "I see so many bright spots. I watch these guys, and I see the bright spots when he's on the racetrack, when he's racing, when he's driving.

"These cars are different than the other cars, but I really believe that, once he gets that combination and gets that feel, he's as good as anybody when it comes down to winning with these cars."

-- Sporting News Wire Service

• Earnhardt: End of my rope
• Junior's struggles mount

These days, the answer to that question isn't quite the automatic affirmative it once was. These are dark times for NASCAR's most popular driver, as evidenced by his downright despondent comments last week. He's weary of struggling on the race track, and it shows.

Earnhardt has always been smarter and savvier than many people give him credit; his upbringing as the son of a seven-time champion, his personal endorsement deals, and his own successful Nationwide operation have helped him learn the business inside and out. So for him to basically throw up his hands and say something like "put the damn team together" seems an almost unmitigated act of surrender.

It's not, of course -- Earnhardt will be right back in that No. 88 car Sunday at Martinsville, fighting the same battle all over again. He really has no other choice. The profession he's chosen is a public and unforgiving one, and Earnhardt knows that. If he really does feel he belongs "in the upper percentage of our sport," as he said earlier this month at Kansas, the only way out is to get through it.

Jeff Gordon did it, fighting through an 88-race winless streak that had people questioning whether he could still compete. Dale Earnhardt the elder did it, fighting through a 59-race skid that had people questioning whether the sport had passed him by.

So many of the great drivers in NASCAR have faced tests that left them doubting their confidence and ability, and yet found ways to persevere. Darrell Waltrip endured a winless 1990 season that left him 20th in points, yet came back to reach Victory Lane five more times in his career. Jeff Burton appeared all but finished after four winless seasons, the last of which included his departure from Roush Racing, but has since won four times in Richard Childress cars. Bobby Allison went winless for more than two years, yet came back to claim a championship. Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick -- the latter of whom is trapped in a free fall every bit as trying as Earnhardt's -- have all missed the Chase.

Viewed in that context, Earnhardt's struggles of late don't seem all that unusual. Even Jimmie Johnson's charmed career will one day be put to the test. The cyclical nature of the sport all but guarantees it.

"Every driver that I've had drive for me has had a period somewhere in that stretch where their confidence is shaken," said Rick Hendrick, Earnhardt's car owner. "That's just normal. I mean, I feel the same way about trying to know what to do to fix things sometimes. It's like, maybe I need to ask somebody else. But nothing will help a driver's confidence any more than a couple of back-to-back runs and good finishes. He knows he can do it, and we know he can do it. It's just frustration, and it's just [him] beginning to doubt. Everybody doubts everything, and that's just normal."

And really, Junior's troubles are magnified by his popularity, which during this kind of season can become an irritating and ill-fitting yoke. The guy won a race last year. He made the Chase last year. Is he yet to live up to the true potential of his union with Hendrick Motorsports? No question. Is he enduring a terrible season fraught with pit-road mistakes, mechanical troubles, and poor efforts on the race track? Absolutely.

But people act like he's in the midst of a 10-year losing streak or something. He's won more recently than Harvick, than Clint Bowyer, than Juan Montoya, than Ryan Newman. So let's not quite label the guy as finished just yet.

Even so, this season, which began with a wreck in the Daytona 500 and never really got any better, has been a particularly brutal one. Last year's Chase crater job was supposed to be the low point, but it wasn't. Neither was the inevitable separation with cousin and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. The bad runs are just awful. The good runs -- like his effort at Kansas, where he might have had a shot to win had he been around at the end -- get ruined by things like dropped lug nuts and snapped engine belts. It's been 52 races since Earnhardt last won, but it seems like 500.

No wonder he's "at the end of his rope," as he said last week. Given the spotlight he's always in, and the pressure he always feels, and the expectations he always shoulders, who wouldn't be?

"Sometimes when you feel like you're snake-bit, it's hard to show up and try to pretend that everything is great," Hendrick said. "But I can tell you this ... we're all committed to each other, and we're just going to keep digging. I told them, 'This can't last.' We've got too many smart people over there to not fix it. We've been right on the edge of it. If we could have finished two or three of those races and not have been swept up in a wreck, we wouldn't be really talking about it.

"But it's just so much pressure when these guys are running like they're running and you've got three cars that are in the [Chase]. And we don't hide from it, we just know we've just got to work harder, and we've got to. I think what Dale was saying was sometimes people doubt his commitment, and it's eating him up. But we're going to get it. I just hope it's soon."

There's plenty of work to be completed first, like figuring out the crew chief situation on the No. 88 car for next season. But given the success of his three Hendrick teammates, the pieces seem to be in place. For all he's done -- and 18 Cup wins and a pair of championships on the then-Busch circuit are nothing to dismiss -- how Earnhardt responds to this period of adversity will ultimately define his career. It will break him, and he'll wind up reunited with his old Earnhardt team or driving for his own JR Motorsports operation. Or, he will work harder than ever before and once again unleash the championship contender so many people believe he has within him.

Men like Gordon, Allison and Earnhardt the senior once faced similar forks in their respective career paths, and we all know how things worked out for them. If Dale Earnhardt Jr. truly believes he belongs in the upper echelon of NASCAR drivers, then there's only one real alternative. The time for despondency is over. His legacy is on the line.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

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