LONG POND - Steve Letarte remarked how fickle the sport of auto racing can be.
"Whatever it may be, there is adversity thrown at everyone," the crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Sunday. "That's what makes racing one of the cool, true reality TV left in the world. No one knows how it's going to end up."
Earnhardt, who captured Sunday's 33rd annual Pocono
400, knows how this season will end. Letarte will be leaving Hendrick Motorsports at the end of the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup season to join the NBC Sports broadcasting crew.
Earnhardt's voice quivered a bit when he talked about the end of a partnership which he has clearly valued. Together this season, they have achieved Earnhardt's first two Sprint Cup victories in the same season since 2004, are third in points and have virtually locked up a spot in the season-ending Chase for the Cup.
"I feel like such a lucky guy to have this second opportunity to be competitive again," said Earnhardt, who also won the Daytona 500. "I don't feel like I've got anything to prove. The opportunity to work with Steve in these last five years has been a blessing, and I feel like I made a good account of myself. I think we've got more we can do."
Earnhardt also admitted the final season has generated plenty of emotion.
"I broke down. It was the hardest thing to have to hear," he recalled when Letarte told him his plans after last season's final race at Homestead, Florida.
"But at the same time, I thought, 'We've got one year together, and as much fun as we have and as good friends as we are, we have one year.' ⦠I'm glad we're winning. It would be disappointing and sad if this is his last year and we struggled.
"But I won my first Pocono race and he won his first Daytona 500, so it's a bit storybook."
That storybook matched Letarte's previous success at Hendrick Motorsports with Jeff Gordon, with whom he won 10 races. Earnhardt moved to Hendrick Motorsports after years of failing to match the success of his late father, a NASCAR icon who was killed at the end of the Daytona 500 in 2001.
"Maybe that's why him and I are such good friends," Letarte said, "because I might be the only one in the world that doesn't wonder what it's like to be Dale Jr. He's a normal guy, he's a great guy, he's a great talent. I don't pretend I have any idea what it's like to be him."
Earnhardt, whose victory Sunday was his 21st in NASCAR Sprint Cup, said he is no longer the same driver whose famous name and underwhelming success produced bitterness.
"I don't worry about that as much anymore," he said about his detractors, many of whom have taken to social media to voice their opposition. "I'm turning 40 this year and the 'overrated' talk is way behind me. It bothered me when I was younger, but when you're older, you don't really care about those kind of things. You just kind of go along and do your job and enjoy what you're doing."
That's what Letarte plans to do with his move to NBC and its NASCAR broadcast team. He said he missed his daughter's first communion this year because Earnhardt's No. 88 car was racing in Kansas.
"This is my life. This is how I was raised," Letarte said about his work as a crew chief. "But I chose nine years ago, 10 years ago, 11 years ago now to have a family. And when I made that decision, that was not a casual decision. That was a decision for the next - forever.
"You know, I feel as much as I love my job, they have to come first."
There may have been a time when Earnhardt could not understand that career change, but he does now.
"You know, racing is an important thing, an important part of our lives, but it's not the most important thing, and he's going to be able to go do this job," Earnhardt said. "He's going to be financially set, he's going to be able to spend a ton of time with his kids, play as much golf as he wants to play.
"He's getting a steal compared to what he's doing now."
Earnhardt said Letarte is not going anywhere when it comes to counsel on and off the racetrack.
"I still have him as a big part of my life, and I think that'll continue to positively affect me in whoever I work with in the future," Earnhardt said. "I mean, you want to be around people that do that, so I'll work hard to continue to maintain a great relationship with him because he has such a positive effect on me."