So what's next for Dale Earnhardt Jr? And Teresa?

  
Too much smoke surrounding Dale Earnhardt Jr. early in Saturday's Daytona 400 (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
   So Dale Earnhardt Jr. had another rough day at the office here Saturday.
   Just when things started looking up for him, things go south again.
   Barely July and already wait till next year?
   Earnhardt early Saturday night found himself the cheese in a big-crash sandwich, and finished 39th.
   His hopes to make the championship chase are rapidly diminishing.
   And then what to make of the future of his stepmother Teresa Earnhardt, whose four-team Cup operation in 2008 wound up this season as half of Chip Ganassi's two-car operation…with word that Ganassi's GM deal is on the ropes and that he may be looking for a Toyota deal?
   Earnhardt's best run this season was second at Talladega in April; that was the last time he led a lap. His only other two top-10s, a 10th at Las Vegas in March, and an eighth at Martinsville in March.
   What did Earnhardt see early in the 400:
   "I couldn't really tell," he said. "A couple of guys got together, and I just tried to stay high, and David Reutimann was crossed up, and we got together with him pretty hard, and tore the upper A-frame off the chassis.
    "So the car is tore up too bad to get back out there.
    "We'd just got it driving good, just freed it up enough to where it could go up through there. And we was just trying to get around them.
     "Everybody was in the way at that point, and we were just picking them off one at a time.
    "I saw some guys getting together in front of me. And the track's real slick; it's not wide enough for three-wide or two-wide racing sometimes. These cars are just sliding around, and everybody had to be careful.
    "I guess there were a couple of guys going for the same piece of real estate. I tried to stay high because I thought they would spin down off the wall. And David got crossed up trying to miss them, and we hit him.
   "I thought we had a shot of getting up there and mixing it up with the leaders.
   "But it tore the upper A-frame off the left front and drove it into the exhaust, so all the exhaust is tore off the left side of the motor, and we ain't got time to fix it."
    And tied in perhaps with his own Cup tour travails – the 2010 game plan for his own JR Motorsports. After Brad Keselowski's breakthrough Cup win at Talladega in April, it appeared Keselowski  could well be running at least a partial Cup schedule for the Rick Hendrick-partnered JR Motorsports next season.
   However that game plan may be falling apart.
   Earnhardt himself says it all depends on sponsorship: "The way I see it is that Brad has a ton of opportunities, and doors are all wide open for him.
    "We have to look at what our chances are, and secure the funding to move to the Cup series, before we can actually put that in front of Brad. We have to do that as a company first, regardless of who is driving it. We've got to know whether we've got that kind of money to run it.
    "Brad is going to have plenty of opportunities, and he's going to make the right decision. I'm sure whatever decision he'll make will be a good one."
   Sounds like Keselowski better be knocking on doors.

  
Dale Earnhardt's luck doesn't seem to be getting much better (Photo:Getty Images for NASCAR)