TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Call me crazy, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked like the most unexcited excited driver in the history of NASCAR during Friday's announcement that Lance McGrew had been elevated from interim to full-time crew chief.
Junior said all the right things, how he and McGrew had developed a close relationship and had the team headed in the right direction despite the lack of results.
Earnhardt said he was excited at least three or four times.
He just didn't look excited. He looked more like the groom at a shotgun wedding with an almost deer-in-the-headlights expression, as he spent most of the press conference staring straight ahead.
Maybe he was focused on the upcoming first practice at Talladega Superspeedway. Maybe he got a bad can of Amp that drained his energy instead of spiking it.
Maybe some girl had just broken his heart or he was worried about being recognized in his Halloween costume.
I'm not the only one who noticed it. Several colleagues agreed something was missing.
AP Photo/Glenn Smith
Lance McGrew got the "interim" tag taken off his crew chief title. He'll be back in 2010.
Earnhardt had the kind of serious look we would have expected from points leader Jimmie Johnson, who has more to lose Sunday than anybody if he gets caught up in the so-called "big one."
The championship is Johnson's to lose. Earnhardt has nothing to lose, mired at 24th in points.
And yet Johnson was cracking jokes as though he'd already wrapped up his fourth straight title and Earnhardt looked the way one would expect him to if he were nursing a four-point lead going into the season finale.
Earnhardt seemed almost as beaten down as he did two weeks ago when he said his next full-time crew chief needed to be a dictator.
Maybe that's it. Earnhardt is that beaten down. McGrew mentioned he was surprised to see his driver so "beat down" when they were paired in June.
"I expected him to be a lot more positive and a lot more understanding of the situation, I guess you'd say," he said.
McGrew also said there's been a light in Earnhardt's eyes and a strut in his step lately that hasn't been there before.
"The steps are in place to get there," McGrew said. "I'm excited about that."
McGrew appeared excited. He smiled a few times, making a funny face when Earnhardt was asked if his crew chief could be a dictator. He talked with enthusiasm about changes he and Alan Gustafson, who works as Mark Martin's crew chief in the same building at Hendrick Motorsports, planned to improve the shop.
Getting Earnhardt to match that enthusiasm and excitement actually might be McGrew's greatest challenge. Even Earnhardt admitted the team needed an attitude adjustment, "showing up feeling like you're the team to beat or there's no reason to feel like you're a long shot."
"I can't speak for everybody on the team," Earnhardt added. "My confidence was pretty down earlier. It's gotten better. It's still nowhere near where I want it to be, but every week we seem to improve on that."
A lot of pressure comes with being the most popular driver in the garage and being with a team that is underperforming. Earnhardt shouldn't be excited about much of anything that has happened this season.
It has been a disaster, and Talladega -- where Earnhardt has six wins and once had a string of seven straight races finishing first or second -- may be his last realistic chance to win this season.
But Friday's announcement, whether it was put together to thwart rumors that HMS might consider hiring soon-to-be-former Kyle Busch crew chief Steve Addington or because the timing was right, should have been exciting.
Call me crazy, but Earnhardt just didn't look excited.
David Newton
