NASCAR turns to Earnhardt Jr. to turn fortunes around

Dale Earnhardt Jr. not only carries the pressure of living up to his family name, but of breathing life into his sport's popularity. Chris Livingston/Icon SMI

There is a bronze statue in Rockefeller Center, Atlas bearing the world upon his shoulders.

Perhaps NASCAR should find a spot somewhere on the grounds of its new Hall of Fame in Charlotte, or, more appropriately, on a pedestal rising from Lake Norman -- where all those young race car drivers can see it from their lakeside homes -- for its own symbolic rendition of one man hefting the unyielding weight for all.

He'd be clad in a green and white firesuit, have a day's growth on his chin and possess a look in his eye reminiscent of his daddy's, when he held NASCAR aloft for so many years.

With prosperity and meteoric growth no longer a foregone conclusion in NASCAR, everyone, including the sport's leaders, is finally willing to say out loud what it has quietly known since Dale Earnhardt died on the last lap of the Daytona 500 in 2001: Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the most important man in the sport. And the sport needs him to succeed.

"He's our Michael Jordan from a marketing standpoint. ... To have him successful, is, I think, good across the board for the sport," said Mark Dyer, president of Motorsport Authentics, and former NASCAR vice president of marketing.

That wasn't the feeling only a few years ago, when NASCAR chairman Brian France almost touted the fact that the Chase for the Championship, the 10-race playoff format that had left the sport's most popular drivers -- Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon -- at the station in 2005 would work just fine with or without the sport's biggest stars. The sport was the thing, not the men.

Earnhardt Jr., suffering at Dale Earnhardt Inc., under an increasingly unproductive professional and personal relationship with his team owner/stepmother, Teresa, missed the Chase again in '07, an event not as easily dismissed with concerns rising over sinking television ratings and stagnant attendance at some races.

It would be impossible to make a definitive connection between the two events, but NASCAR officials know Earnhardt Jr. is good for business, and business could be better right now. Still, it came as somewhat of a surprise when France began suggesting in recent weeks that an improvement in Earnhardt Jr.'s performance -- he's winless in 62 points races dating to May 2006 -- could be fortifying to a series that sees itself as laid on bedrock.

Atlas, make that Junior, had shrugged. And NASCAR needed him to pick the sport back up.

"He's the marquee driver that we have, no different than a marquee franchise that other sports enjoy," France said at his annual state-of-the-sport address in January. "If Dale Jr. has a big year, that will help. He's got the biggest fan base. It will energize that fan base, no question. ... He's got to earn that. I don't think anybody wants to have success any more than he does. If he does, it will benefit us."

Gordon, himself a titan of fan appeal and one of the sports's true mainstream commodities, recognized early the force of Earnhardt Jr.'s power, feeling the wrath of thousands of his fans and the thwack of their beer cans on his race car after winning on Earnhardt Jr.'s virtual home turf at Talladega. Gordon opined in '03 that the ever-improving Earnhardt Jr. had a potential no other driver in the sport had: "If he wins the [Sprint Cup] championship -- game over for anybody else. We're not even going to exist out there." -- if he ever married high-level success with his already stampeding appeal.

A 17-race winner in eight full seasons, Earnhardt Jr. has finished third ('03) and fifth twice each in the points race, and would seem to finally be ready to make everyone else disappear after joining Gordon at Hendrick Motorsports, which won 18 of 36 races last season and helped Jimmie Johnson win a second-consecutive championship.

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