Earnhardt Jr. named Most Popular Driver for 12th year in a row
There were many surprises this season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Unveiling the winner of the 2014 Sprint NMPA Most Popular Driver Award Friday night during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Awards banquet at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas wasn't one of them, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. captured the honor for the 12th consecutive year.
Only NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott has won the award more times than Earnhardt Jr., having earned it a record 16 times. Elliott, in fact, was the last driver besides Earnhardt Jr. to win the award, having done so in 2002. Earnhardt thanked the many fans who voted for him.
"When we had our bad weeks, y'all picked us back up. When we won, we all celebrated together. Thank you, fans," he said at Friday's banquet.
It helped this season that Earnhardt and his No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team gave his fans plenty to cheer about, beginning with his win in the season-opening Daytona 500. He went on to win three more times, sweeping the season's two races at Pocono and then also winning for the first time in his career at Martinsville Speedway one week after he had been eliminated from the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Earnhardt ended up eighth in the final points standings, but his total of four victories represented the most he registered in a single season in a decade -- since he won a career-high six in 2004 while driving for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.
It was after this year's season-opening win that Earnhardt joined Twitter, with his first tweet a photo he snapped of himself in Victory Lane at Daytona International Speedway. He now has more than 800,000 followers and commented during Friday's festivities that joining Twitter, which he resisted for years, has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.
"I don't get a lot of the negative stuff that I was warned about," Earnhardt said. "I've enjoyed talking to my fans, the late-nighters that we've had. Sometimes I tell them what I'm drinking, and they tell me what they're drinking. We just talk about different topics. They sometimes turn into stories. It's pretty overwhelming to see that have such an impact on everybody."
It has, he added, brought him even closer to his fans. And that's saying something from a guy whose fan base is like none other in NASCAR, as proven by the results of the voting for the latest Most Popular Driver Award.
VIDEO: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s journey to reclaim NASCAR success
