Dale is giving up engines altogether until he's out from DEI since their engines were doing him no good anyway.

I’m alive, I promise. I’d like to apologize to readers for the lack of a column last week, and also to our editor, Mark Haverty, who has understood and compromised far beyond what would have been considered polite.

In the coming weeks I’ll still be a little spotty. See, folks, things have been in turmoil for me lately, what with some courses I’m taking to advance my insurance education, vacation to Walt Disney World for nine days, a new job and my birthday all happening between today and the 26th of the month, things have been a little rough.

I’m not the only one who’s had a rough month. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. spent three or four weeks under intense scrutiny by both media and fans alike. His crime? Failing to make the Chase for the Nextel Cup. An egregious error to be sure, but in my opinion, not of his own doing.

Junior has been the victim of several DNFs this year. Had he even finished those races, it is possible he could have made the Chase. There were so many ifs, ands, buts and alsos running around in the past week I felt like I was in a story problem from high school calculus.

If Kurt Busch did this…. But if Kevin Harvick did that… What if Busch and Harvick…

Ugh. I’m just sick of it and I’m glad it’s over. And I think in a way, Junior is too. He’s caught in a sort of limbo, this favored son of the south. He can’t seem to do the right thing, no matter what the situation. While I doubt he would admit this to anyone but his closest friends and confidants, I would bet money that he is happy to be out of the Chase pressure. Here’s why:

Yes, of course he wants to win championships. Yes, of course he wants to win races. Yes, of course he wants to be considered among the top ten (or twelve, however you like it) of his sport. Junior has unwavering loyalty to his crew, and I think that these last ten races will give the Bud crew a chance to hang out together, enjoy their last few races as a cohesive unit, and go for broke without the specter of imminent failure hanging over their heads.

For what it’s worth, I personally hope that Junior can eke out a win before the year is over. He deserves it, his fans deserve it, and the people who let his contract fall through deserve to see it too. Let me also point out that the people who say that Junior isn’t a good enough driver to sit in a Hendrick car will be reassured if Junior takes the checkers somewhere along the line.

I also have been waiting all week to comment on the Junior Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond. ESPN’s crew royally mucked up this one. First, as mentioned, it was all Junior, all the time. Second, there were six missed restarts. I read one article where it was listed as “five missed restarts and one almost-missed”. Well, if this “almost-missed” is the one I am thinking about, the green flag had already waved and viewers were treated to the leaders entering turn one. To me, if you don’t see the leaders cross the start/finish line as the flag waves in front of them, you haven’t seen the restart.

In addition to all this iniquity, the reporters were working overtime to make “donkeys” out of themselves. Junior was hounded once and then hounded again, almost as if ESPN wanted him to break down or lash out, preferably both. I turned off the post-race coverage after Kyle Busch was interviewed (Can someone get the poor kid some Clearasil? His unfortunate blemish was like the rest of him: red and angry.). I later learned that Johnny Sauter and David Ragan were all but ignored even though both scored career-best finishes in the top ten. Ragan was even keeping pace with the leaders and didn’t crack under pressure. Frankly, I think both of them would have been great interviews. But, alas, it seems that ESPN signed off and SPEED picked up the slack.