Junior's twin worlds of popularity, performance

The official awards banquet isn't until Friday night, but that didn't stop Jimmie Johnson from adding to his trophy collection one day early. At NASCAR's annual Myers Brothers Media Luncheon, the three-time champion received an award for leading the most laps. He received an award for winning the most poles. His crew chief won an award, his pit crew won an award, his sponsor won an award, even one of his engine builders won an award. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. upstaged them all with one thing.

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Facial hair. Lots of it. "I called him 'Mountain Man' when I first saw it," Jeff Gordon said of the Grizzly Adams-like growth sported by his Henrdrick Motorsports teammate. Hey, Junior is going hunting with some of his uncles in a few days. And he had never grown a beard before.

"I figured, I'd see what happened," Earnhardt said. "I got through the itching and I was all right."

Besides, it's not like the guy has to be all clean-cut for the annual year-end awards ceremony, a black-tie affair held within the refined, opulent environs of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Despite making the Chase after a one-year absence, despite winning a race to snap that 76-event winless skid, Earnhardt isn't on the program for Friday night. His late-season swoon relegated him to 12th in the Sprint Cup standings, and only the top 10 appear on stage. Junior was in New York on Thursday to pick up his sixth consecutive most popular driver award, a trophy only Bill Elliott (16 times) and Richard Petty (nine times) have won more.

It was one of those moments when Earnhardt's popularity and performance, not always directly proportional, stood side-by-side. Clearly, there is no driver that fans adore more. He earned 1.2 million votes in balloting for his latest most popular driver award, which was never in doubt. His value to sponsors is rock-solid even in a recessed economy. He moves merchandise and sells tickets. But even Earnhardt, smart and savvy guy that he is, realizes his on-track performance isn't quite where many believe it should be.

"I don't know what I'm doing to get that," he said, sounding somewhat confused by his own popularity. "I don't know what I'm doing to make that happen. I'm just lucky."

It's easy to forget, with his two-year-long winless streak and his acrimonious departure from Dale Earnhardt Inc. still fresh in the memory, that this is still a driver who's won 18 times on NASCAR's premier circuit and was a championship contender right down to the wire in 2003, 2004, and 2006. The expectations were stratospheric when he joined Hendrick, then a seven-time championship organization, prior to last year. And he seemed to deliver, running as high as second in points early in the season, benefitting from the months of ground work that crew chief Tony Eury Jr. had laid, and finally unshackling himself from that long winless skid with a fuel-mileage run at Michigan.