Full Throttle

Never let it be said Dale Jr. and his business manager/sister Kelley Earnhardt Elledge aren’t consistent in their current contract negotiations with DEI owner Teresa Earnhardt.

Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, fresh off a successful recovery from a surgical procedure performed in late March, again restates what they have wanted all along. Majority interest in DEI.

“Fifty-one (percent) is the right number because that gives us control,” said Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, Junior’s sister and business manager. “We’ll take 75 or 95 or whatever we work out. At the end of the day, 51 gives you control.”

“And we want control.”

A common negotiating tactic is to ask for the moon and in the end accept something far less. Earnhardt Elledge seems to have covered both eventualities with this statement. We’ll take 95% or 51% but nothing less than control in how the company is run.

The following quote does nothing to dispel that thought.

“The idea is that the company would be left to the children, and we want to make sure that there is a formidable business left there and we can take on for our generation and then our children and then on and on,” Earnhardt Elledge said. “It’s very important to us. It’s just a matter of us getting on the same playing field.” (boldface mine)

Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there, but that sure reads like a slam on Teresa and how she’s been running DEI.

“The business is not where it could be over the last several years,” Earnhardt Elledge said.

And neither does that remark. It would be interesting to hear Teresa’s response and plans on how to win a championship for DEI.

I don’t expect to as she seems to prefer playing the part of a media recluse, but I believe for whatever reason both Dale Jr. and his sister have lost all confidence in Teresa and her ability to produce anything other than a “media star.”

I said this before the season began and I’ll say it again: Forget the CORN, the changes to the Chase and the entry of Toyota, whether Junior says with DEI or is forced to move somewhere else is the story of 2007.

IN OTHER Junior news, JR Motorsports has signed seven-time Supercross champion rider Jeremy McGrath to a developmental driver contract, with Monster Energy Drink as his primary sponsor, according to the SportsBusiness Journal.

Like Supercross star Ricky Carmichael, who began driving for Ginn Racing last month, McGrath will run a series of late model races before potentially working his way into a Busch Series car.

UPDATE: Dustin Long provides another Kelley Earnhardt Elledge quote that confirms her thoughts on how DEI is being run:

“The biggest things is resources. There has been change up over there (personnel changes) … and different folks and there hasn’t been someone solid in the business putting the resources back into the race team.

Just for them to come over and use our pulldown plate that’s a resource that they don’t have that most teams have and now they have Max (Siegel, new VP of operations) and he’s seen the need for it and he’s like “you shouldn’t be going to Jr. Motorsports to be doing this.” They see it. They know what they need. They’ve got a three-year plan on what their capitol expenses need to be. It’s just a matter of the timing now and getting that in places. They lack resources.”

It doesn’t get much plainer than that.

If the long established DEI team has to go to the year old JR Motorsports for equipment needed for the construction of new cars it’s a very sad state of affairs.

Dale Earnhardt Jr, NASCAR, DEI, NEXTEL Cup, Sports, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle