Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaves DEI
"He changed his number!!" 
There was once a time when a woman running out of a grocery store, full-on panic sweat rolling while yelling those very words, had NASCAR fans howling. "Oh, yeah, right," they would say to their buddies. "Like THAT would ever happen."
But happen it did. And with Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s move to Hendrick Motorsports, an era was ushered out. No more ultra-cool red and white No. 8 Budweiser cars, and no more watching Junior grow up the way you watch a nephew turn into a man.
Now that he's with the most powerful team in the sport, Earnhardt has -- in a gutsy and admirable move -- tossed excuses out the window. There's no more talk of inferior equipment, or of being pulled into the operations side of a race team. Undoubtedly, once the marketing blitz is over that reminds us all to forget about beer forever ("Here, have an AMP instead!"), Junior will only have to worry about driving race cars.
He'll do so, too, as a teammate to 2-time defending Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson and 4-time champ Jeff Gordon. And while we've had the No. 8 to look at since the passing of Dale Earnhardt Sr. seven years ago, now we'll have an awkward green and white machine with gaudy twin red 8's on its side.
Earnhardt left behind the team bearing his name for a team capable of winning a Cup championship -- now. Early on in 2008, at least, he'll just be trying to get back to victory lane -- a place that shut him out for the entire '07 slate.
He's got a new number. A new marketing ploy, and, hopefully for his legions of biased supporters, new results.
*****
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