Hendrick on top of the leaderboard
Dale Earnhardt Jr. reached the top of the speed charts on Tuesday morning at the Daytona International Speedway in an attempt to bring his crew chief’s predictions true. On Monday Tony Eury Jr. predicted that Earnhardt Jr. would drive the Hendrick Motorsports car No 88 to the four victories in the coming season. This is the first time Earnhardt will captain the No. 88 Chevrolet for the first time in February. Eury Jr. had a pretty rough year with Dale Earnhardt Inc. as one after another some of NASCAR’s superstars left the team in search of better avenues. He too moved to Hendrick in the beginning of this year. He sounded very upbeat when speaking about the team’s chances in the year.
“I’d be very disappointed if we don’t win at least four, to be honest,” he said. “I mean, I just look at the races that we had problems with last year, and we were running in the top three and in contention.”
Earnhardt Jr.’s lap which clocked a speed of 185.820 mph made him the fastest single-lap driver in the test drive session at Daytona in the past two weeks. It is also the highest overall single lap time in the Sprint Cup series. The drivers will now begin in multi-car drafting from the afternoon.
If the rain stays away on Wednesday there will be two more drafting sessions but if the day is washed out Thursday is scheduled as an additional day but on that day the weather doesn’t look too promising. The Toyotas are right at the top of the leader board on Tuesday with Michael Waltrip, Brian Vickers,Dale Jarrett and Tony Stewart being the others in the Top- 5. With three powerhouses- Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Eury Jr. and Hendrick Motorsports coming together we can’t disregard them right now.
Filed under: Teams
