Pressure is on Junior

Earnhardt must back his popularity with first-rate finish

MOORESVILLE -- If Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn't win a championship now, he will become NASCAR's version of Anna Kournikova.

You remember her. Magazine covers. Drooling fans. Giddy sponsors.

But when all that was stripped away, when it was just Kournikova vs. the woman on the other side of the tennis net, she couldn't win a championship.

She was a great doubles player, she reached No. 8 in the world in singles, she lit up every room she walked into -- and she never won a singles title.

So what will Earnhardt do now when he drives for the best team in NASCAR? There will be no excuses about inferior equipment to fall back on. What happens when it's all stripped away except for Earnhardt, the car, the asphalt and all the other guys who have more checkered flags to their credit than he does?

That's the key question after Earnhardt made it official Wednesday, announcing his five-year deal to drive for Hendrick Motorsports starting in 2008 in what Rick Hendrick labeled a "wow" kind of day.

We know Junior is a good driver. He has won 17 races in NASCAR's top series (in that respect, he's better than Kournikova). But can he be great?

We don't know the answer yet. He hasn't been great, never finishing better than third in overall points. He hasn't won a Cup race in more than a year. He's the best brand name in NASCAR, but yearns for more.

I admire Earnhardt for leaving the safety of the family business for this step out into "the real world," as he called it. He said he will have to "straighten up a bit." And he has given himself the best chance he can at a title, joining a Hendrick Motorsports lineup that will read like the 1927 New York Yankees.

Earnhardt has traded frosty stepmother Teresa for a warm father figure in Hendrick, but let's not pretend that this relationship won't have ups and downs, too.

Earnhardt wouldn't go so far as to predict his own championship at Hendrick Motorsports, but he came very close. For a man who told me once he was very motivated by his fear of failure, he seemed almost exuberant.

"I've always said I've done more in the sport than I anticipated," Earnhardt said. "I just wanted to be able to pay my bills. ... It seems like to me just three years ago when I was three months behind on my power bill, living in that double-wide trailer with Kerry [Earnhardt, his half-brother] ... "

It was a long way from there to Wednesday.

But if Earnhardt is to avoid the Kournikova rap, there are many laps to go.