The Other Shoe Drops...

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s contract is signed, and the third-generation superstar will be with Hendrick Motorsports for the next five seasons, through 2017.

That means that the other shoe has dropped, and he can go on finding his way back to where he was in 2004, when he won six races and was the leader in the clubhouse at Atlanta, before the four-letter word led him to a four-letter place (h-e-double hockey sticks).

Of course, he’d been there since ’01, when Daddy was killed at Daytona, but that’s another part of the story.

Since that 2004 season, his funk has been…well, funky. His average finish that year in 36 races was 12.1. In 2009, it was 23.3. The 2004 season was with DEI; the 2009 season was with Hendrick.

We won’t get into what went wrong. It’s never just one thing, and with Dale Jr. it isn’t worth covering well-spaded ground. Suffice it to say, it’s a pick-‘em proposition. The cars, his head, the tire, his head…new crew chiefs, old crew chiefs…his head, all combine to produce exactly…what?

A bunch of sponsor dollars, one victory and eight Most Popular Driver Awards, is about it.

I for one am glad that Junior has time to fix whatever derailed his career back in the day. One main part of that, his relationship with his stepmother, has been canceled out by the move to HMS. Rick Hendrick assumed at least a part of what was lacking when his dad was killed at Daytona, and while Junior is about to be 37 years old, he’s still a kid in a lot of ways.

Here’s hoping the kid makes a storybook comeback from the depths of whatever God-forsaken punishment he’s serving, and wins races and competes for titles and gets back to that pillar he was halfway up when the world came crashing down.