Getting Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team back on track is Rick Hendrick's top priority now that Jimmie Johnson has his record fourth consecutive NASCAR championship.
"We're all over it, and we've been all over it," Hendrick said on Tuesday in a conference call. "It's my primary focus here, starting Monday."
Johnson gave Hendrick Motorsports its NASCAR record 12th championship in Sunday's season finale, and Hendrick drivers swept the top three spots in the standings. Mark Martin finished second and won five races this season, while Jeff Gordon finished third and had one victory.
Earnhardt, meanwhile, went winless and was a distant 25th in the final stndings in his second season driving for Hendrick.
Hendrick changed Earnhardt's crew chief midway through the season, and assigned additional engineering support to his team. Although his performance began to improve toward the end of the season, bad luck and mecha! nical problems left Earnhardt with very little to show for his efforts. Earnhardt had just five top-10 finishes all year, and admittedly struggled with his confidence.
"I've seen this happen with Jeff Gordon ... you just go through these (slumps)," Hendrick said. "We know we can make the team better and it's frustrating. The driver begins to think that no matter what he does, something is going to happen.
"We've had failures, we've had wrecks. If it could happen, it happened to that team. It's just been really frustrating."
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