Earnhardt-Hendrick racing relationship has roots in Topeka

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 17 years old when Rick Hendrick offered him the deal of a lifetime.

Junior was hanging around Ken Schrader’s motor coach in 1991 and waiting for his dad to arrive at an ARCA race in Topeka when Hendrick, who was making the move from driver to full-time owner, asked the youngster if he’d like to race for him.

Hendrick took out a napkin, scribbled a lifetime contract, and Earnhardt signed it.

“We were just joking around,” Earnhardt remembers now. “We don’t have the napkin. Rick doesn’t have the napkin, and Dad wasn’t really thrilled about it. He didn’t see the joke.”

Earnhardt went on to race for family-owned Dale Earnhardt Inc., winning NASCAR Nationwide championships in 1998-99 and becoming the Sprint Cup series’ most popular driver for the last 11 years.

Though the napkin hasn’t been seen since that day in Topeka, neither party ever forget they once had a deal.

“I bumped into him at Myrtle Beach (S.C.) at a Nationwide race … and he was winning the championship,” Hendrick recalled. “I said, ‘You know I have a contract with you.’

“He said, ‘I thought you forgot. Do I get Corvettes for all my crew?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ … I wish we could find that napkin.”

Earnhardt and Hendrick finally consummated their agreement with a more official and binding document when Earnhardt left DEI in 2008 and signed with Hendrick Motorsports.

Success was not immediate. Earnhardt, given the same resources that powered Jimmie Johnson to six Sprint Cup championships, won just two races in 214 starts from 2008 to 2013.

But now Earnhardt is living up to the potential Hendrick saw in the raw-boned teenager. Earnhardt opened the season by winning his second Daytona 500, and he’s won three races in all, his best season since winning six times in 2004.

He comes to Kansas Speedway for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 as one of 12 drivers remaining in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, a championship his father won a record-tying seven times. But the closest Junior’s ever come was third, in 2003.

“It took a while,” Hendrick said of Earnhardt’s recent success. “But it’s a combination of things. It’s pressure to come into our organization when the spotlight was on him, and everybody thought he’d win a lot. It didn’t work out with he and his cousin (crew chief Tony Eury Jr.). … His confidence was low.”

Earnhardt’s fortunes were no better in 2009-10 under crew chief Lance McGrew, but he found an accord with Steve Letarte, who was moved from Jeff Gordon’s team to Earnhardt’s in 2011.

“I hated it took so long to get the chemistry right,” Hendrick said, “but sometimes in this sport, you never get it right. The sport is so competitive right now and that chemistry is such an important part of any team. He never gave up. We knew he could do it. We just had to get all the parts right.

“Now I can go to races without fans jumping me, ‘When is Dale going to win?’”

Earnhardt, too, wondered if he would win another race when he went 143 starts without a victory before winning at Michigan in 2012. But Hendrick showed his belief in him by signing Earnhardt to a contract extension in 2011 to drive the No. 88 Chevrolet through 2017.

“He had every right in the world to replace me with another driver and nobody would have said a thing about it,” Earnhardt said. “We weren’t running good enough, and it would have made perfect sense to everybody if he would have went that route.

“But he stuck with me, and said we were going to make it right. And he put me with Steve, and Steve was in a place where he was looking for something new, and I was definitely needing something new, and it worked out.

“We are finally doing the things on the race track that we dreamed about when we first started working together.”

Letarte will be leaving after this season to become an analyst for NBC Sports, but Hendrick already has announced that Greg Ives will take over next year.

Ives is crew chief for Chase Elliott, who is leading the Nationwide Series in the No. 9 Chevrolet owned by Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports, so there should be some continuity to next season.

As Earnhardt turns 40 next week, Hendrick thinks he has the maturity to handle another crew chief change or anything else thrown his way.

“He’s matured so much,” Hendrick said. “Being around Jimmie and Jeff and those guys has helped him a lot. So it feels good to see him as happy as he is in life, with his girlfriend … and having a year equal to almost anybody in the sport.”

Earnhardt, too, said he’s found equanimity at 40.

“I just wanted to make it, and being the son of a guy that was so successful, the more success he had, it seemed like the harder it would be for me to make it,” Earnhardt said. “I would just be sort of a chapter in that whole thing, but I’m real happy with what I’ve been able to accomplish and who I have been able to work with and the friends I’ve been able to make.

“Definitely having this birthday come up makes you reflect quite a bit back on — not so much the decisions or any regrets you have — just the fun stuff you have done and is the next 40 years going to be just as good, because the first 40 were pretty great.”

This story was originally published October 3, 2014 at 7:10 PM with the headline "Earnhardt-Hendrick racing relationship has roots in Topeka."