There's been a lot of talk about where Dale Earnhardt Inc. is headed, how it got there and if it will ever be relevant with the sport's big teams anymore.

Consider that DEI is on a 53-race winless streak (dating back to Martin Truex Jr.'s win at Dover in June 2007). That's longer than Jeff Gordon's winless drought. It's also longer than the winless drought Tony Stewart ended last weekend at Talladega. DEI's winless streak is also its longest since 2000.

As it suffers through that, three drivers will have left the team by the end of this season: Dale Earnhardt Jr. (after last year to Hendrick), Mark Martin (after this year to Hendrick) and Paul Menard (after this year to Yates Racing). Truex doesn't seem to concerned with the loss of Menard a big deal but the other two (and sponsors) are.

While Regan Smith's near win last weekend at Talladega (and Paul Menard's second-place finish) proved a respite from the negative talk about the team, there's still a lot of work to do. DEI recently added Bobby Hutchens as VP of competition. He had played a key role at Richard Childress Racing before moving over to DEI. Hutchens talked about what he's trying to do at DEI from getting drivers and crew chiefs together for weekly meetings in the shop to working more on engineering (an area of expertise) to soothing wounded feelings from the hit DEI has taken recently. Here's some of what he said in an interview this weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway:

WHAT IS YOUR FOCUS?  “There’s a couple of things.  I think the biggest thing right now is moral support.  They’ve got an awesome race team here with Regan [Smith].  DEI as a company has a lot of good people; they’ve got a lot of racers in the company.  They’ve got a lot of really nice racecars, competitive racecars.  Me personally I’ve got a little bit of a short term plan and a long term plan for some things. 

"We’ve started working a lot harder in the seven-post and chassis area to hopefully help the crew chiefs and the engineers that travel to the racetrack.  We’re trying to concentrate and focus our engineering efforts toward making our racecars fast.  I think the biggest thing is just having somebody here that they can talk to and say ‘Hey, my car is not driving well’ or I don’t like this, I do like that.  We started having a meeting now every Monday now the four drivers, four crew chiefs and myself and  I think that’s been a bigger part of what we’ve tried to accomplish in the eight weeks that I’ve been here than anything, just the communication thing.  Once they sit down in a room together they realize they all have the same problems and how we solve those problems is on my shoulders and the crew chiefs and the guys back at the shop. Until you define what those are and attack them it kind of manifests and keeps growing week to week and these guys get frustrated. It's just not a good situation, so hopefully we've opened up some communication channels that'll only grow as we move forward.''

DO ALL THE DRIVERS NEED TO HAVE THE SAME DRIVING STYLE?  “I don’t think so.  I told these guys it’ll take us a year but we’ll start looking at trends on the seven-post.  We’ll start looking at trends at the racetrack when we’re looking at setups and balances and grip numbers as we go and you’ll start understanding.  Each guy won’t drive the same thing, as much as we all like to say yeah, we can put the same setup in ‘em and they can do it.  It don’t happen that way. 

"If it did you’d see more cars out here running closer together teammates-wise, you know.  Lots of time they may be running the same speed but how they got there is a totally different situation.  Yeah you’d love to be able to do that and that’s where we’ve got to start.  We’ve got to assume that they can do that and then work our way backwards kinda.  But for the most part I feel like the guys here at DEI do drive a lot alike from what I’ve seen so far. 

"Giving them the same thing week to week is on our shoulders as a company to make sure that our bodies are the same.  Our chassis are the same, our shock billing, everything that goes into that.  You can talk about the piece of paper and say yeah, all that’s the same, but our component pieces really are what we’re talking about being the same.  They had a really good system before I got there and being with the measure and metrology department, the cars and the parts and the pieces, they do a really good job of that.  We just got to expand on that and make that better, also.  There are a lot of things that are just awesome with this company.  Our biggest issue is trying to find sponsors right now.  That’s our number one goal today and hopefully keeping Regan here. He’s done an awesome job for our company.  I think it would have pretty neat for our sport last week for him to have that W.''

WHY DID YOU WANT TO COME AND WORK FOR DEI?  “I’ve been around it all my life, being at Richard’s and what not, so I knew a little bit  about how it worked.  Richard and Teresa talked to me about coming over here and trying to help ‘em sort out some things.  They didn’t really have anybody in the position that I’m in.  My title is Vice President of Competition but that’s a little broader.  I guess the biggest thing that I saw when I walked in when I was thinking about doing it was all the equipment and the tools they have and the people and the racers and knowing that it’s all there that they can come out here and compete and win races and hopefully compete for a championship.  It’s going to be a challenge to put all that together and that’s kind of what I look forward to.” 

HAS IT BEEN DIFFICULT TO KEEP THE EMPLOYEES FOCUSED ON THE TASK AT HAND?  “I think over the past two weeks especially, since Paul announced that he’s leaving.  We probably spent more time doing a little TLC in the shop or at the track trying to take care of the guys.  We’ve got a strong company and we need to keep it that way.  And unfortunately the first people we’ll lose are the good people because the other guys in the garage are going to be trying to go after ‘em. 

"We’ve all kind of made a pact we’re going to stick through this and see where we’re at.  Hopefully at the end of the season we’ll be able to have four cars next year just like we’ve got and be able to go on down the road because I think in today’s racing environment we’ll have to have four teams to be able to compete with the Hendricks and the Roushes and the Gibbs and the RCR cars.  Two cars would be hard to do that with.  Three cars will be hard to do that with.  We’ve got to have four to be able to gain that technology and to gain the advantages in the shops far as efficiencies and that kind of thing because cost-wise then comes into play.  You can build and put these things together a lot cheaper if you’re doing more of ‘em.” 

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