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Earnhardt Jr. has hot number

Whatever it is next year, it will be a bestseller

03:12 PM PDT on Tuesday, August 28, 2007

By GREGG PATTON
The Press-Enterprise

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. says he’s going to turn the page, now that it’s clear he won’t be driving his signature No. 8 car next year.

If Sunday looks like the last go-round at California Speedway for Junior in his familiar red Budweiser wheels, that doesn’t mean his fans are ready to see him drive some other, pedestrian number unworthy of his special, uh, eight-ness. Think of all those “8” flags proudly flying from pickups and camper shells that will have to be ceremoniously shredded and torched when the season ends, and Teresa Earnhardt, head of Dale Earnhardt Inc., snatches the iconic digit back from Junior.

She must know she just blew Stepmother of the Year.

Anyway, Junior’s army of followers is steamed. An Internet petition is circulating in protest, ever since DEI and his future team, Hendrick Motorsports, reported that no deal was reached to keep driver and number together next year.

Seems kind of dumb that DEI would want to keep the “8,” since it has no particular mystique without Junior inside. After all, when former driver Dick Trickle briefly had the number in the mid-1990s, it didn’t mean anything, other than, more than a decade later, it gives me a chance to check “Get the name ‘Dick Trickle’ in a column” off of my life’s to-do list.

Maybe Teresa thinks the “8” will maintain its aura, as long as any Earnhardt is driving it. So when she rolls it out to the local Safeway, NASCAR fans will go wild in the parking lot. They may, but for the wrong reason.

Junior, he has no choice but to look ahead. He has a better chance of actually winning this Sunday at California Speedway than reclaiming his old numeral, and we all know how that’s gone for him in Fontana the past 10 years.

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter what numeral Earnhardt ends up with since he can’t have the “8.” Any number that he drives will be NASCAR’s newest, must-have piece of merchandise. He’s the sport’s most popular figure. He made the No. 8 car a national icon, it didn’t make him.

Put Junior in the “pi” car, sponsored by the Cal Tech math department, and you’ve got yourself a merchandising juggernaut.

In the meantime, the more pressing matter is that Earnhardt will have to drive his rear bumper off the next couple of races just to make it to The Chase, NASCAR’s version of the postseason, which includes only the top 12 drivers in the point standings. His rabidly loyal fans eventually will let go of their No. 8 fixation and latch onto whatever number car Junior straps himself into. More important for him Sunday is shaking his Fontana jinx and scoring some meaningful points.

The “8” was great, but right now, for him, the only number that counts is “12.”

http://www.pe.com/sports/breakout/stories/PE_Sports_Local_D_nascar_patton_30.20631e4.html