Earnhardt Jr. steals Martin’s engineer

UPDATE Although his skill as a driver is questionable, there is not a doubt that NASCAR Sprint Cup’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the most popular race car driver in North America. And the bosses that run NASCAR have made no secret of the fact that a win by Earnhardt in any of its 36 points races would cure any ails the series might have (only in American motorsports are the best athletes not the main stars).

NASCAR boss of bosses Brian France repeated that mantra on Monday in an appearance on ESPN’s NASCAR Now program.

“He’s the biggest franchise in NASCAR," France said. “It would be great if he continues to figure out the chemistry of the team.

“He’s done that, and I think his confidence is finally back to where it was a few years ago. He went through a pretty good slump, so it’s nice to see him competing at a high level."

05/01/11 [Editor's Note: NASCAR is desperate to get Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning races so Hendrick Motorsports is giving the 2nd generation driver the best people from the entire team to try to get the team's worse driver to win] That change in engineering on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team that Earnhardt talked about a little last week but wouldn't go into details? He got Mark Martin's engineer. Rumor has it that Chris Heroy, moves to join Dale Jr.'s team to be the race engineer there. He replaces Tom Stewart, who moves into a position where he'll work with both the 88 and the 5 team. hamptonroads.com