Dale Earnhardt Jr. shopping for more sponsors for No. 88

Dale Earnhardt Jr. won’t have Diet Mountain Dew as a sponsor for as many races in 2013 as he did in 2012, but he’s not worried about Hendrick Motorsports finding sponsors for those races.

NASCAR’s most popular driver will have sponsorship from the Army National Guard for 20 races next year and Diet Mountain Dew for an unspecified number. Mountain Dew sponsored 16 races this year while another Pepsi product, Amp, sponsored four. The National Guard had 18 races this year. Earnhardt is not worried about having an unsponsored car at Hendrick. The organization has had Hendrickcars.com on Kasey Kahne’s car for select races this year when it didn’t sell sponsorships.

“We have more demand than we have supply pretty much," Earnhardt said. “We’ve got a majority of the season with the Guard and Diet Mountain Dew is going to back off a little bit and that makes it a bit of a challenge to fill that small of a gap.

“If it were a bit larger gap, it would be easier to fill."

The Hendrick marketing department is having talks with several companies to fill the unsold races on the No. 88 car, Earnhardt said.

“Every sponsor on the car wants to be the top guy, and it’s a bit hard to have a top guy when you’re trying to work with multiple sponsors," Earnhardt said. “It’s just a little bit of a balancing act.

“Hendrick and all their people are just taking their time, sorting it out. We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire and really good potential stuff going and we’ve just got to kind of decide which one is going to work out, which one we want to work with." Sporting News