Junior missed goal

Driver wants to be a champion, not his father

Look, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that if you write about Dale Earnhardt Jr., race fans are going to get fired up, especially when you're talking about drawing conclusions about his performance or his standing in NASCAR.

The reason I wrote a blog last week about what Jimmy Spencer said on last week's prerace show is that I felt people would be interested in hearing what Spencer said when we asked him to expand on his remarks when he was on "The Morning Drive" on Sirius NASCAR Radio.

I love it when people accuse reporters or people who write on the Internet of "just trying to get hits" or merely writing something so people will read it. Well, duh. What are we supposed to do? Look for obscure things to report about people nobody gives a dang about?

But anyway, back to Earnhardt Jr.

If you're a Dale Jr. fan and you believe that "the media" has put unreasonable expectations on him as a driver, I would point out to you that the reason he said he was going to Hendrick Motorsports was to win races and contend for championships.

The media didn't say that, he did.

He made the Chase for the Sprint Cup this year but was never, ever a factor in it. He won just one points race, and, more to the point, his team did not seem to get better as the season went along. Indeed, he was much stronger earlier in the season than later. Was that because his team fell off or because other teams got better at a faster rate than his did? I don't know, but it doesn't matter.

When the championship is on the line during the Chase, your team has to not only be at its best, it has to be better than everybody else.

I will guarantee you that Earnhardt Jr. was disappointed that his team didn't wind up beating any other team that made the Chase.

On the other hand, I also will guarantee you that if you're one of the Dale Jr. haters who thinks you're insulting him by saying he'll never be as good as his father, you're never going to hear Earnhardt Jr. himself argue with that. Though he has said he wants to be a champion, he has never said he wants to be his father. In fact, he has gone out of his way to say he knows he'll never be that.

And this just in, nobody else will be, either.

Dale Earnhardt will be in the first class to enter NASCAR's Hall of Fame.

There's absolutely no question or argument about that. He, Richard Petty, David Pearson and Bill France Sr. are slam dunks for the inaugural class.

Earnhardt changed the sport, and he was one of the great figures in all of American sport.

If you're trying to hold Dale Jr. -- or any other current driver -- up to the Earnhardt standard, he's absolutely going to fall short.

But there's nothing wrong with measuring Earnhardt Jr. to the standards he set for himself, which are, by the way, the same standards any top-tier driver should be reaching toward.