Junior had been in serious talks with both Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress to drive for their teams, but in the end Hendrick won out. Much speculation as to why that was, but it’s probably just as simple as Junior going with the team that gives him the best immediate shot at winning a championship.

I imagine most Junior fans are happy to see him with a shot to drive a much more competitive car, but man, there have to be some heads exploding in the land of Junior fans as far as trying to wrap their head around the notion that Jeff Gordon is now a teammate and not the dread enemy.

“The main factor is the ownership part,” Earnhardt Jr. said Thursday at NASCAR’s annual preseason media day at Daytona International Speedway. “It has nothing to do with money and nothing else really. … My father has been gone for five, six years now. I want majority ownership. That’s basically it.”

It’s pretty rare that tricky situations involving death, inheritance, money, and family would be pretty clear-cut, as far as the correct resolution, but I think this is one of those situations.

Give Junior majority ownership. It’s just that easy.

(Contact me for bank wire details as far as where you can send my consulting fee, Teresa.)

I’ll admit that I’m a Junior fan and would tend to side with him, even if it was less clear-cut, but there’s no logical reason to be stubborn and fight the fact that he wants to be in charge of DEI. From a sheer dollars and cents prospective, it’d be a huge mistake to force him out of DEI over this issue, as he’d just make Richard Childress a whole boatload of money if you do that, money that would have otherwise remained in your boat.

As far as the operations of the team itself and results on the track, DEI hasn’t exactly had a laser-sharp focus of late, and this year could be even more schizophrenic if they don’t resolve Junior’s status soon. Would Junior be a great owner and whip everything immediately into tip-top shape? Honestly, I doubt it, as I don’t think he’s really ready for that role and responsibility. But it also wouldn’t make things any worse, and he’d be pretty damn personally motivated to go out there and post awesome results on the track, if he did get a majority ownership stake.

The last piece of the pie is simply the family tradition of racing. Ignoring everything else, does anyone honestly think that Dale Senior would want to see Junior forced out, when his desire was to step up and run DEI? They obviously didn’t have the most copacetic, peaceful of relationships, but I just can’t believe that he’d be happy with the current state of affairs, especially if this culminates in Junior leaving for another team, or to start up his own.

Which is a really long-winded way of saying give Junior what he wants. It’s the right thing to do, from whatever angle you want to examine the situation.

Texas Motor Speedway completed a project Friday to alleviate “Dale’s Dip” — a 200-foot section of track between Turns 1 and 2 that got its name after complaints by NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. last fall.

The process to “pump up” the surface below the track and raise targeted areas was expected to take only two days, but wasn’t finished until Friday. The depth of the dip over the track’s south tunnel was no more than 2 inches at any point.

The process involved drilling 15-20 half-inch holes, inserting copper tubes through the asphalt into the soil below and then injecting a special structure urethane.

Hopefully Junior will continue to run well at TMS sans dip, as his 7 top ten finishes there are the most of any Cup driver.

“Dale Earnhardt was the perfect fit for Wrangler in the 1980’s and today his son carries on the tradition,” said Craig Errington, director of marketing, VF Jeanswear mass-market male brands. “Just like his father, Dale Jr. is one of the most talented drivers of his generation, as well as one of the most popular. We cannot imagine a better fit for the Wrangler brand.”

Dale Jr., recently voted NASCAR’s most popular driver for the fourth year in a row, will continue to appear in Wrangler Jeans Co. advertisements, in-store signage and product ticketing, and will continue to ignite excitement among fans through various consumer promotions.

“The Wrangler brand always has been and very important to me and my family,” said Dale Jr. “I remember watching my daddy drive the blue and yellow ‘Wrangler Jean Machine’ before I was tall enough to reach the pedals. I’m proud to have that Wrangler logo on our car and uniforms.”

Nostalgia aside, does anyone actually buy Wranglers? I mean, I’m no jeans snob, by any stretch of the imagination, but I haven’t seen a pair of Wrangler jeans since junior high.

“I think that if he’s smart, he’ll do what’s best for him and I hope that’s at DEI, I really do,” Gordon said during a press event for Hendrick Motorsports. “Is that reality? I think it’s gone too far. When it gets ugly in the media, it’s usually very, very difficult to rebound from that.”

“I think that you’ve got a little stubbornness going on there,” Gordon said. “Junior is in the seat to be able to write his own ticket, he can do whatever he wants. He can go to any team, he can start his own team, he’s got the sponsors who are going to back him, the fans that are going to back him.

“He’s really in the power position, and if Teresa is not recognizing that, then shame on her … if she doesn’t recognize that DEI will have a tough time surviving without Junior, I think she’s making a big mistake.”

Hard to argue with that, on all sorts of levels. It’s pretty rare to see any contract situation in professional sports that has escalated to public sniping at one another like that get resolved happily in the end.

One of ‘em probably has to go at this point, and Teresa doesn’t seem too eager to simply turn everything over to Junior, so it may very well be Junior that leaves DEI for new digs, whether with another team or starting a team of his own.

“It’s hard when you have what I call a deadbeat owner that doesn’t come to the racetrack,” Harvick told reporters during a stop at Richard Childress Racing.

“You always see Richard Childress. You always see Chip Ganassi. All these owners, they all come to the racetrack. It’s not just a money pit that somebody says, ‘Well, I can make money off of Dale Jr. I can make money off of Dale Earnhardt.”

Earnhardt, who is in the final year of his contract at DEI and currently participating in tense negotiations for a new deal, squirmed on the podium as he was asked to respond.

“You’re killing me,” Junior grumbled. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t think there is a comment for that remark.”

Junior did go on to defend Teresa more strongly, pointing out (correctly) that she’s had to deal with a ton of crap in the last five years.

That’s not to say that some other owners haven’t dealt with a ton of crap and still managed to make it to the racetrack (Hendricks Motorsports, for one), but they weren’t suddenly forced to the forefront like Teresa Earnhardt was, either.

Give her some credit for not simply cashing out and exiting stage left like many people would have done.

`We are moving full speed ahead with negotiations, moving ahead as we normally would,” Teresa Earnhardt said Thursday night in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where she was promoting the documentary “Dale.’

Asked if she was committed to keeping Junior behind the wheel of the No. 8 Chevrolet, she didn’t waver. “Absolutely.”

Junior’s contract expires at the end of this season, and his status with the company has been in question since Teresa Earnhardt seemingly questioned his commitment in a December article in The Wall Street Journal.

Which, you know, sounds logical and all, but you have to wonder how she let things get to the point where they are now (with both of them sniping at one another publicly in the press) if she’s so dang committed to keeping Junior at DEI.