In a move that has surprised exactly no one who’s been paying any attention to NASCAR this year, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is leaving DEI, the company his father founded. This stems from an ownership fight with his stepmother, Theresa. In the words of my friend Leah who is a MUCH bigger NASCAR fan and follower than I:

What can you say? Theresa’s a bitch and it hurts DEI, not Junior

And there’s the biggest thing out of this. This move doesnt’ hurt Dale Jr. at all. He’s still the most popular name on the curcuit and will have no trouble landing a prime job on a great team. But without Jr. DEI will struggle even more. From some of the talk I heard on the radio last night there wouldn’t be much surprise if they even stopped fielding cars within the next few years and Theresa turned DEI into a purely entertaining oriented company aimed at milking Dale Earnhard Sr.’s legacy.

Another interesting tidbit I heard on the radio: one rumor going around is that Junior could end up at Richard Childress Racing (the team his father drove for before founding DEI) and that RCR might just roll out the old black #3 for Junior. Dale fans would go nuts over that - but in a good or a bad way?