DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't want to get pulled into a conversation about what it means for his former Sprint Cup operation to finally have an ownership presence in the shop and at the track -- a presence it now has in Chip Ganassi.
He's talked about his stepmother, Teresa, who co-owns Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Ganassi after their offseason merger, enough to know that the subject typically gets twisted or turned into something unpleasant.
Then he kept talking.
And talking.
He didn't say anything bad about Teresa, whose decision not to give him at least 50 percent of Dale Earnhardt Inc. led him to leave for Hendrick Motorsports before this past season and ultimately left the company in such financial stress that a merger became necessary.
But he did acknowledge what we've all known for a long time -- that DEI needed a strong ownership presence beyond the board room, one that it hasn't had since Dale Earnhardt was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
"You all know just as well as I know what that was like and what was going on over the last several years," Earnhardt said between Wednesday's practices. "I don't care to really comment about it and get my name in that article about it."
But, he said, Ganassi will provide Daytona 500 pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr. and the entire organization with "something they haven't had in a while, and that's definitely a race owner and a guy that's in tune with what's being done and what changes are being made and what direction they're going.
"Teresa, it's not a knock on her," Earnhardt continued. "She had [ownership] thrown in her lap and it's up to her and only her what she wanted to do with it and how involved she wanted to be. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks or how everybody feels about her either being at the track or not being at it."
Translated: It is what it is.
"If she don't want to be there, it's her life and her decision," Earnhardt said. "You can't get too critical of her on that."
But he admitted it was tough for Truex, particularly during contract negotiations last season, to see other owners such as Rick Hendrick and Richard Childress be so involved and "how they were compared and think that would be nice."
Earnhardt definitely believes he's benefited from having such an active owner in Hendrick.
"It's awesome," he said. "Rick knows everything about what's happening with my race team. I can go up to him and ask if he heard about such and such and he was part of making that decision two weeks ago.
"It's a really good feeling because you know when you're discussing your career and your contract and how well you're doing or how well you're not doing -- you know the guy's going to shoot you straight and give you a sincere answer because he knows what's going on because he knows everything about the team and whose fault it is when it ain't running good."
Glad he didn't want to get pulled into it.
Sellout expected
Daytona International Speedway president Robin Braig expects a sellout for Sunday's Daytona 500. He expects the 1,000 tickets remaining to be gone over the next day or so.
He also suggests there should be an asterisk beside the sellout because ticket prices were dramatically cut. A $99 seat on the backstretch was reduced to $55. Many of the seats in suites that didn't sell to corporations also were sold at a discounted price.
David Newton
