Remember Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Well, it's Richmond, and his kind of track.....maybe finally some magic in the works?

  Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn't had much to talk about this season....maybe he can surprise everyone Saturday night (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   RICHMOND, Va.
   Well, for Dale Earnhardt Jr. it's been wait-till-next-year for most of the summer.
   Earnhardt didn't make the championship chase. Heck, he has only won one tour event in three years. And that crew chief shuffle back in the late spring, well, it's only sort of worked.
   Earnhardt should have won Michigan straight up three weeks ago; crew chief Lance McGrew put him in the perfect position at the end. But Earnhardt wound up only third.
   Still, that's a start.
   Or is it.
   Has Junior Nation given up on him?
   Every time it looks like Earnhardt is on the verge of a breakout, things just go flat.
   Richmond International Raceway – where Earnhardt last won flat out, back in the spring of 2006 – should be a good place for Earnhardt and McGrew.
   But they'll be playing in the shadows, because this is the last race before the Sprint Cup championship chase, opening next weekend at Loudon, N.H., and only four men are locked into the title run, leaving more than half a dozen looking to make the playoff cut. And the men on that list of wannabees are all neck-and-neck going into Saturday night's Chevy Rock and Roll 400.
   Of course it's all but a foregone conclusion that either Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon will win this championship. The rest, they're not even playing for second place, it seems.
   Kyle Busch, 14th in the standings at the moment but who should make the cut, based on his past performance here, is the one man who could upset the Hendrick threesome.
   But the rest of the bunch, well, one of them could provide a surprise, but it's highly unlikely. We've had more than seven months to judge each of them and their teams, and no one else quite measures up to the Hendrick gang.
   Can anyone stop the Rick Hendrick juggernaut?
   If Hendrick wins yet another championship, will NASCAR change the rules, as it did when rival Jack Roush's Matt Kenseth ran away to the 2003 title…and as it did when Jack Roush had the temerity to put five teams in the playoffs?
   Yes, Hendrick has some of the best drivers on the tour, of course. And Chevy stuff is pretty strong (even Richard Childress' guys appear to be starting to get with it).
   But, hey, Toyota's Denny Hamlin, the closest rival to the Hendrick-powered guys is almost 400 points down. And everyone else who will make the playoffs is well over 500 points down.
   That's parity?
   Yes, NASCAR resets the standings at midnight Saturday night, with the top-12 essentially rezeroed. Still, it's hard to image all three of the Hendrick-engineered front-runners collapsing down the stretch. If anything, Johnson and Gordon tend to kick it into a higher gear.
   Beating Hendrick this fall? Forget it.
   So the question may be what should NASCAR do for next year's chase? How about a new 'home run' rule, so that a driver can hit a home run by winning a race? Say, a 100-point bonus. The problem now, as it's been for years, is that a driver – consider Carl Edwards last Sunday at Atlanta – can lost as much as 150 points in a single race….but even with a dominating victory the following week, that driver might only pick up 15 or 20 points. The risk-reward ratio is out-of-whack.
   NASCAR also – looking ahead to bringing Danica Patrick on-board, and bringing in new rookies (Joey Logano should have been the trigger here) – should reopen testing. The rich teams can test anywhere they want to, and in secret. Check the balance of power in NASCAR this season and consider.
   So, reopen testing – and do it at the real Sprint Cup tour tracks, and with the real race tires.
   And add that home run rule.