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VIEWS FROM THE GRANDSTANDS KAY BELL What’s Wrong With Junior? NASCAR’s most popular driver is raking in the bucks in endorsements, but his racetrack performance is bust October, the crowd rose as one to its feet and cheered wildly, as if on cue. Why? Dale Earnhardt Jr. had taken the lead. He stayed out front for 90 laps around the paperclip- shaped short track before eventu- ally falling back to finish seventh. The next week at Talladega, the scenario repeated itself as Junior led a race-high 24 laps. But before he could make it to the finish on the supersize superspeedway, where he’s won five times, he wrecked Jeff Bur- ton in an entirely avoidable acci- dent, lost 25 laps getting his own car fixed up and finished in 39th place. I Earnhardt remains one of LOOSE LUGNUTS The big switch I’m still getting over the bold move Chad Knaus made late last season to com- pletely switch out Jimmie Johnson’s pit crew with Jeff Gordon’s over-the- wall squad in the middle of the Texas race and then keep the No. 24 crew with the 48 team for the rest of the season. Afterward, Knaus insisted the move was no big deal because of the close relationship between the teams, while some observers saw it as a rare sign of desperation on Knaus’ part. I fall in the middle of those two points of view. This was clearly a big deal, despite Knaus’ protestations. I don’t see it as des- perate, though, but rather a gutsy decision that further cements Knaus’ status as NASCAR’s best, most creative and most ruthless crew chief since Ray Evernham back in the 1990s. Checkers or prison stripes I got a huge chuckle in the days leading up to the Formula 1 Brazilian Grand Prix, when a Brazil- ian prosecutor threatened to throw Brazilian driver Felipe Massa in jail for six years if Massa let his Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso pass him during the race. Special Courts 34 TRUCKERS NEWS JANUARY 2011 Prosecutor Paulo Castilho apparently was upset that Massa, well down in the standings, would be ordered by his Ferrari bosses to finish behind Alonso to aid Alonso’s bid to win the F1 driver’s title. Doing so, Castilho contended, would constitute “sport- ing fraud,” though it was never clear whether there is even a law in Brazil covering such a thing. What is clear, though, is that Castilho doesn’t understand Formula 1, which is unapologetically a team sport. And fortunately for all involved, Alonso qualified well ahead of Massa and stayed there as Red Bull’s Sebas- tian Vettel easily won the race. A racer’s racer If you have any doubt that Tony Stewart is the ultimate racer, check out what he did while awaiting the Sprint Cup race in Phoenix. He took a side trip to the 5/16-mile clay oval at South- ern New Mexico Speedway in Las Cruces for his first-ever start in a Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series race, which paid a whopping $6,000 to the winner. Stewart started on the front row of his heat, but finished 14th after he bumped another car and flipped over several times on the race’s 12th lap. World of Outlaws legend Steve Kinser earned the vic- tory that night. n the middle of the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville in Dale Earnhardt Jr. NASCAR’s most popular and best- paid drivers and, with 18 career Sprint Cup victories, one of its most accomplished performers. But after winning a whopping six times in 2004, he’s returned to Sprint Cup victory lane only three times, and not at all since the Michigan race in June 2008. He hasn’t even finished in the top 10 in points since 2006. And as the 2011 season kicks off — coincidentally, with the Daytona 500, where his father, the great Dale Earnhardt Sr., was killed 10 years ago — I can’t help but wonder whether Junior’s best days on the track are in the rearview mirror. Personally, I hope not. I became a fan early on, drawn to his shy smile, refreshingly honest answers to questions and appealing person- ality. The guy was the son of one of NASCAR’s all-time greats, yet he lived for years in a doublewide and seemed happy as a clam. Now he’s a gazillionaire and looks miserable, and I wonder if there’s a correlation. According to Forbes, he rakes in around $34 mil- lion a year and regularly pops up in dozens upon dozens of adver- tisements, TV shows, music videos, computer games and more. At this point, the driver he most reminds me of is Danica Patrick. She also has much more money and popularity than success, is dra- matically overexposed and seldom seems like she’s enjoying what she’s doing. The fact that she’s driving NASCAR