Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Son of legendary seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, the late Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr. begins his ninth season on the Cup Series circuit in 2008 as new driver of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. The 2004 Daytona 500 winner and two-time NASCAR Busch Series champion was recently voted NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver for the fifth year in a row. Winner of 17 career Cup Series races, Earnhardt finished 16th in the series point standings after fnishing fifth in 2006 in the No. 8 Dale Earnhardt, Inc., Chevrolet. Earnhardt’s finish of fifth in the points in 2006 was his fourth career finish in Cup Series top-10. He scored a victory at Richmond in May of that year. In 2004, Earnhardt again finished fifth in Cup Series points with a career-high six victories, second only to the eight achieved by Jimmie Johnson. Earnhardt’s victory in the Daytona 500 made the Dale Earnhardt, Sr./Dale Earnhardt, Jr. tandem only the third father/son combination to win The Great American Race, along with Lee and Richard Petty and Bobby and Davey Allison. He won two restrictor-plate races and was the only driver to post top-10 finishes in each of the four restrictor-plate races that year. In 2003, Earnhardt finished a career-high third in Cup Series points while posting victories at Talladega in April and Phoenix in November; his Talladega win was his record fourth straight at the superspeedway. In 2001, Earnhardt finished eighth in Cup Series points, scoring a trio of dramatic, emotional victories. The first win came in July at Daytona, the first race there since his father’s death in the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18. He held off DEI teammate Michael Waltrip, to whom he finished second in February, for that win. The next victory came at Dover in the series’ first race back after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and he punctuated that win with a victory lap carrying an American flag. The third win came in October at Talladega, the site of his father’s final career victory a year earlier. The Talladega victory also earned him a $1 million bonus in the No Bull 5 program, helping him to a season total of $5,827,542 in winnings – more than his father won in any of his 26 seasons in the series. Earnhardt won back-to-back Busch Series championships in 1998 and 1999, his only two full seasons of Busch Series competition.
