Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 | 1:37 p.m.
Call 911. Dale Earnhardt Incorporated driver Paul Menard announced a week ago that he was leaving DEI and was taking his sponsor, the home-supply company Menard’s, with him to Yates Racing. The U.S. Army is leaving Aric Amirola’s car next season and Regan Smith’s car has competed this year without full sponsorship. As of right now, Martin Truex is the only DEI driver with a full-time sponsorship for next year.
I wonder if Teresa Earnhardt lays awake at night thinking of a way to convince Dale Jr. to return to her race team. Even if she offered Dale 81 percent of the company, I bet he wouldn’t return.
In a recent Associated Press story, Kevin Harvick said, “For God sakes, they (DEI) let Dale Earnhardt Jr. go—that’s a tough deal to recover from when you let the most popular driver in the sport go from your organization.” Assume for a minute that Dale Jr. was still driving for Teresa. Would the organization be in its current situation?
From a performance standpoint, things probably wouldn’t be much better than Dale’s 2007 season with DEI. But from a financial standpoint, DEI would at least have a solid sponsorship for the No. 8 car. And if Budweiser wasn’t part of the deal, I bet there are a number of corporations, even in this economic climate, which would want to have their logo on the hood of a car with Dale Jr. behind the wheel. Have you noticed how many fans are wearing AMP Energy Drink jackets at the races?
To this day, I can’t for the life of me understand why Teresa let Dale go. There may be those of you who believe Dale’s request to own 51 percent of the company was a deal breaker. But the cost of keeping the most popular driver in the sport might have been worth every penny if it meant the survival of the race teams.
Maybe life support in the form of a merger is the solution. Short of that, I’m afraid Tony Stewart may have been right when he said, “Without Dale Earnhardt Jr., DEI will become a museum.”
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