NEW SPONSOR FOR DALE JR. NEXT YEAR AND OTHER STUFF

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a new sponsor for 2015-17 in Nationwide Insurance.

The soon-to-be-former sponsor of the NASCAR Nationwide Series will be a primary on the No. 88 Chevrolet for 12 races in 2015 and 13 races in 2016 and 2017, according to the announcement.

“We are really excited to be able to announce the sponsorship with Nationwide as it continues to grow," Earnhardt Jr. said Friday at Talladega. "We have had a relationship with them for a very long time. It’s been successful on both sides. I’m really thrilled to be able to go to the next level with them and allow Hendrick Motorsports to be part of that. 

"It’s a great fit.  We’ve had a lot of fun together and I’m excited to be able to continue that relationship.  It’s a good thing for me.  We were obviously looking for a good fit and looking for something that would work out well.  I can’t imagine a better scenario and I think Nationwide is very excited to get going and start working together in the Cup series.  Our current partners National Guard and Diet Mountain Dew are very excited about it as well to have them in the fold.  Just a lot of good things."

The fact that Nationwide left a major series sponsorship to jump to the 88 car is somewhat telling. 

“I think it says a lot about the direction that Nationwide wanted to go after their involvement in the sport for some time," Junior said. "That they wanted to move forward and do something new with their objectives.  I also believe from what I’ve been hearing behind the scenes that the opportunities and search for a title sponsor in the Nationwide Series won’t be a challenging one that there is some good interest there.  Those type of sponsorships although both of them are involved in the sport they kind of accomplish different things.  I think this is a direction that Nationwide wanted to go after what they were doing was effective.  There will be some opportunity and there is some good interest to fill that void.  I think that the Nationwide Series currently is very healthy due to what Nationwide has been able to accomplish in the series. 

“Also as the sport has sort of reset and rebounded from the economical struggles that we had several years ago the teams are getting healthier and we are seeing a lot more interest on teams wanting to get on the quarter panels and the hoods of these race cars. Whereas for a long time there was a lot more interest to be an official sponsor of the sport and more tied to the sport as a whole.  Now we are seeing a lot more interest in guys wanting to get back on the quarter panels and hoods of these cars.  I think that is really important to the health of the sport overall.” 

That gives rise to the need for more than one primary sponsor, Junior said.

“Yeah, I think that is true. I don’t know that is a sign of anything positive or negative.  I just think it’s an evolution of how sponsorships have changed.  Much like we used to think it was a wild thing when a guy would have two race cars out there.  Instead of now a days there are owners that have four race cars and three race cars and that is the norm.  It’s just the way things kind of evolve over time.  I think that it’s really a lot busier when you have multiple partners and it’s a lot more entertaining and interesting as a driver for sure to have so many partners to work with.  And have so many people across so many different – that can reach such an audience.  I’m really enjoying having multiple people to work with each year.  We all sort of learn from each other and how to market and how to reach as many people as we can.  It’s been very effective and we have had a lot of success with it.”

While he was answering questions, Junior was asked about what he expected from the new knockout qualifying for the first time on a restrictor-plate track like Talladega.

“Nobody knows," he said. "I just don’t know.  We will just have to see. The guy that gets the pole is going to have to hit it just right.  We built a brand-new race car so our willingness to take risks is going to be pretty limited throughout that process.  We just you know need to get into the field with the car it doesn’t matter where you start other than just picking on pit road.  Not sure exactly what our approach is yet.  We’ve still got some conversations to have between Steve (Letarte) and our teammates and just sort of feel out everybody’s opinion about what they want to do and how they want to try to accomplish the best result they can.  I don’t think right now anybody has any answers.” 

It's a given that Junior is a plate ace, and his confidence is pretty high this weekend.

“I'm pretty confident.  We as a team I think improved our emphasis on our plate cars to be able to improve their performance.  I think that started to show in the last 12-16 months.  When Steve (Letarte) and I first started working together our confidence and really our focus was more on improving ourselves as a whole.  We really didn’t focus on the plate stuff as much as we needed to improve everywhere.  We had to kind of put our emphasis on the plate track on hold for a while to try to get our team in the right direction.  I think that started to happen to where we were running well enough everywhere where we could start to put a little more care and preparation into our plate track cars.  That is definitely showing in the results.  You show up here sometimes and you have great race cars that do a lot of good things and are very effective when you are moving around in the draft.  There are times when you show up and for whatever reason the same car that I ran second with at Daytona a year or two ago wouldn’t hardly run down here for some reason.  We just couldn’t get anything accomplished and we would get stuck in the pack and boxed in where we couldn’t go anywhere and the car just wouldn’t react the way we needed it to in order to be able to move forward and be aggressive with the passes that we wanted to make.  It just depends on whether you hit everything just right and it all starts with preparation at the shop and I think we have been doing a real good job at that here lately.”