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Earnhardt Gets Most Popular Award

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 30, 2007

NEW YORK - Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't make the Chase or win a race in 2007, and yet he still managed to draw the most attention at a Champions Week media availability with top 10 drivers and a few others Thursday.

Earnhardt was included because he had just been presented with the Most Popular Driver award at the National Motorsports Press Association's Myers Brothers Awards Luncheon, a postseason staple during which numerous awards are given.

Wearing a light gray suit, Earnhardt said that in winning the most popular driver award for the fifth consecutive year, he's making up for all the times his father didn't win the award. He also said his cousin/crew chief Tony Eury Jr. seems stressed out in his new job at Hendrick Motorsports.

Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s only most popular driver award came in 2001, after he was killed in the season-opening Daytona 500. Bill Elliott, a contemporary of the elder Earnhardt, won the award (voted on by fans) 16 times before withdrawing his name from the ballot in 2002.

"Bill was a great driver and won the Most Valuable Driver award several times," Dale Jr. said. "But we always felt as Earnhardts that their voting was spiked, so to speak. So we're getting some revenge."

Earnhardt is moving from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports and says that after finishing 16th in the standings the new season can't come soon enough.

Eury moved to Hendrick a couple of months earlier, and Earnhardt said his cousin already is feeling the pressure of living up to the standards of a team that finished first and second in the points with Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon.

"Tony Jr. talks of 7 o'clock meetings every day," Earnhardt said. "He seems really stressed to me. But his mentality is positive and focused."

Earnhardt said Gordon advised him after the season to be prepared for a work ethic that "might be a little more intense than I was accustomed to as a driver." For the crew chief, Earnhardt said, "it's possibly the same."

BANQUET TONIGHT: The main Nextel Cup awards ceremony is tonight at the historic Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan. ESPN Classic and ESPN360.com will televise it starting at 9 p.m., and the program will re-air on ESPN2 at midnight.

STEWART CONTRACT: Joe Gibbs Racing wants to sign Tony Stewart to a new contract, even though his current contract runs through 2009. But Stewart said Thursday he doesn't plan to negotiate during the offseason.

"It's flattering they already want to do this and get it done and out of the way, but I'm taking this offseason off. I need it desperately."

RELUCTANTLY DAPPER: With Thursday's luncheon dragging on for nearly three hours, Clint Bowyer got a little restless.

"I've never worn a tie before, and it's killing me," he said.

Bowyer, who came up on the short tracks of Kansas, is making his first appearance at Champions Week after finishing a surprising third in the standings. Next on his schedule is a hunting trip with team owner and hard-core outdoorsman Richard Childress.

"The scary thing is, he's never shot a gun before," Childress said.

HOT LAPS: Brooksville native and Hillsborough High grad Chris Anderson got to accept the Mechanix Wear Most Valuable Pit Crew Award for champion Johnson's pit crew. ... Gordon's car chief, Jeff Meendering, is moving to Petty Enterprises as Bobby Labonte's crew chief.

Tony Fabrizio

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