Johnson-Earnhardt Jr. Collaboration Paying Off at LinesMaker

Johnson-Earnhardt Jr. Collaboration Paying Off

CONCORD, N.C. (NASCAR/Newsfeed) — Two cars, one roof. That’s been stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for Rick Hen­drick since 2002, when the cham­pi­onship car owner expanded to accom­mo­date a fourth Sprint Cup pro­gram head­lined by a then-unknown dri­ver named Jim­mie John­son. Hen­drick paired the new out­fit in a build­ing with the more expe­ri­enced team of Jeff Gor­don, and the result was an explo­sive pro­gres­sion that net­ted 71 com­bined vic­to­ries for the sta­ble­mates dur­ing the ensu­ing eight years.

So three sea­sons ago when Hen­drick faced the prospect of rebuild­ing a No. 88 team that was lan­guish­ing deep in the stand­ings, he used the same approach. This time the intended ben­e­fi­ciary was Dale Earn­hardt Jr., who was mired in 25th place while his team­mates swept the top three posi­tions. Hen­drick paired a now-multiple-time cham­pion John­son with Earn­hardt in a rechris­tened 48/88 build­ing, hop­ing the suc­cess of one would rub off on the other.

It took time, the devel­op­ment not occur­ring nearly as rapidly as it had dur­ing the first days of the 24/48 build­ing years ear­lier. But this Memo­r­ial Day week­end, the fruits of that union are obvi­ous — Earn­hardt and John­son both enter Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 with top-five stand­ings in points, they’re both com­ing off strong runs in last weekend’s Sprint All-Star Race, and they’re both seen as favorites to claim NASCAR’s longest race.

“In the No. 48 and No. 88 shop, there is a lot of excite­ment,” John­son said, and with good rea­son. A six-time win­ner at Char­lotte, John­son claimed last weekend’s non-points event by run­ning away from the field in the final 10-lap seg­ment. He backed that up by qual­i­fy­ing third for the Coca-Cola 600, then posted one of the top-five speeds in final Cup prac­tice Sat­ur­day. Although Earn­hardt qual­i­fied 12th for the race and didn’t fare as well in final prac­tice, he’s back in the same car that won last weekend’s Sprint Show­down pre­lim­i­nary race and took the fourth and final seg­ment of the main event.

“Every time we come to the race track this year, I feel like just judg­ing on the per­for­mance at that par­tic­u­lar track the year before that we’ve been bet­ter, faster and have had more speed. And I feel like I got that again this past week­end at the All-Star Race,” Earn­hardt said. “Had a good judge of how much bet­ter of a race team we are. So I feel like we should come in and com­pete this week­end, and if we’re for­tu­nate and do the right things as far as pit strat­egy goes, to put our­selves up toward the front like we did last year.”

And hope­fully, have enough fuel to get to the fin­ish line. Per­haps the most ago­niz­ing moment of Earnhardt’s 140-race win­less skid came in this event last sea­son, when he held the lead off the final cor­ner but ran out of gas. Kevin Har­vick won, while Earn­hardt coasted home in sev­enth, among much gnash­ing of teeth in the grand­stand. At the time, Earn­hardt took the close call as a pos­i­tive sign. Over time, though, it began to eat at him.

“It was tough to come so close last year and not win the race,” he said. “My ini­tial reac­tion was that I was happy that we actu­ally rolled across the fin­ish lane in sev­enth. … I was really relieved that it wasn’t worse than that. And then after a while you start think­ing about, oh yeah, we really came close to win­ning a race. It was really unfor­tu­nate there wasn’t just a lit­tle bit more gas in the car or what­ever to get us to Vic­tory Lane, because that would have been a great way to cap off a pretty good week­end. So it was a bit frus­trat­ing over time. But we ran good, and … I’ve said it all year long, that I think we’re a lit­tle bit bet­ter team than we were last year.”

That much is evi­dent in the stand­ings. A tough night at Dar­ling­ton two weeks ago snapped a run of six straight top-10s in points events, and Earnhardt’s car on All-Star night was clearly one of the best in the field. That same chas­sis is back for the 600, which the dri­ver sees as unfin­ished business.

“If the car is good enough, and we’re good enough and do every­thing we need to do, we’ll be right there with an oppor­tu­nity to win a race,” Earn­hardt said. “And that’s what you have to con­cen­trate on.”

John­son is using a car dif­fer­ent from the one he drove to vic­tory last week­end — given that 600 qual­i­fy­ing is held on a Thurs­day, he said it would have been a push for his team to have the same car ready for this week. His 600 car also is dif­fer­ent in terms of setup, and judg­ing from qual­i­fy­ing and prac­tice, what­ever changes crew chief Chad Knaus made were the right ones. Now John­son, who snapped a 16-race win­less streak two weeks ago at Dar­ling­ton, aims to reassert him­self at a track where he’s won six times, but just once since it was resur­faced in 2006.

“We are really pleased with where our cars are right now,” John­son said. “I have been sit­ting up here telling all of you [in the media] that we are close, and it is com­ing, and look at the laps led and all that stuff. I’m glad to be able to back up what I have been talk­ing about over these last few months. It really just boils down to the hard work that has come through the engine shop, chas­sis shop, our engi­neer­ing staff and the crew chiefs. We have a bet­ter prod­uct this year. We have been able to be close to Vic­tory Lane a few times so far this year, and then we got it done the last two weeks.”

Strangely enough, the resur­gence of the two cars com­ing out of Hendrick’s 48/88 shop come as the organization’s other two vehi­cles — the No. 24 of Gor­don and the No. 5 of Kasey Kahne, which also are housed together — are try­ing to shake rough starts. For now, though, John­son and Earn­hardt are the clear standard-bearers on what recently has been NASCAR’s best team. And there’s no rivalry between them, which per­haps helps fos­ter their com­bined success.

“We’re good team­mates,” Earn­hardt said. “I think we work really well together. I think we com­ple­ment each other. The two teams com­ple­ment each other quite well. They’ve been together for a cou­ple of years, so there’s a real great bond in that shop. It’s kind of like one whole group. It’s really hard to see the line between the two teams.”

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NASCAR rac­ing news see: Johnson-Earnhardt Jr. col­lab­o­ra­tion pay­ing off.

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