NASCAR Cup Series

Will Hendrick make changes within teams?

Published Oct. 27, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

Jeff Hammond

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a decent weekend at Martinsville Speedway.

This actually is what he should be doing week in and week out. It was great to see he still had it in him. He has to be excited because the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is racing at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend. This historically has been a great place for the Earnhardts.

So if there is a thing call momentum, maybe he can take advantage of that. Will we see a different Dale Jr. this weekend? All we can do is hope. You expect him to run well at Talladega. Maybe last Sunday’s performance will give him the spark he needs.

It wasn’t that long ago that Dale Jr. was the Pied Piper at Talladega. Whatever he did and wherever he went, the other drivers followed. Unfortunately we haven’t seen that in the last couple years. Nobody really knows which Dale Jr. will show up this weekend. Will it be the Piper or the Pooper?

Don’t get me wrong, I am excited when he runs well. Not only does it generate excitement in the grandstand, but there are a lot of folks at home that pull for him and want to see him do well.

Dale Jr. is great for our sport. The other thing about Talladega is that Dale Jr. has more fans in that area that you can ever imagine.

It’s just always good to see Dale Jr. do well. The problem however is he doesn’t do well enough often enough for fans to depend on him.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t won a race in the last 89 attempts. If you look at his numbers while at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and his numbers since joining Hendrick Motorsports, well it has just been a colossal disappointment.

That is easily the hardest thing for his supporters to accept. They all know how good Hendrick Motorsports is while at the same time how poorly the results have been. You hear Rick Hendrick, the team owner, talk about what he is doing and going to do to make it better. I think it would do his supporters a world of good if Dale Jr. would step up and talk about what he is doing to make it better.

As we head toward the offseason, you have to expect changes with the team.

This current rendition of a science experiment hasn’t worked. Everyone is smart enough to know if you can’t see clear improvement and forward progress, well then it’s time to make changes. It’s time to try to come up with something that will energize that entire team, fans and his sponsors.

We all know that Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus are solid. Can you say the same thing about Jeff Gordon and his team and Mark Martin and his? Rick Hendrick is not only really good at looking at what is in front of him, but also at what is in the future. He already knows he has Kasey Kahne coming on board in the future and you have to assume crew chief Kenny Francis will be with him.

So you have to look at the combinations and who goes where. Where does Martin’s crew chief Alan Gustafason fit in after 2011 if Francis comes with Kasey? Do you swap the Earnhardt Jr. and Martin crew chiefs now? Or do you send Alan to Jeff Gordon and move current No. 24 crew chief Steve Letarte to Earnhardt Jr.’s team?

So the question becomes, will you have a musical-chairs scenario like we’ve seen in the past at Roush Fenway Racing and at Richard Childress Racing? To me, it’s not totally wrong to move people around within those three teams at Hendrick Motorsports after what has gone on this season.

Yes, Gordon has been strong at times and had a good season. If you look over at the win column however, what do you see? You see a goose egg.

Knowing that you have Kasey Kahne taking over the No. 5 of Martin in 2012, how do you not make changes now and next year to find the right combinations for the other two teams under the Hendrick banner?