Rick Hendrick and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Junior may have started the negotiations for the number eight during a press conference on Wednesday. He made a reference to DEI owner and proprietor of the number eight, Teresa Earnhardt. "We have to obviously talk to Teresa about that and see what her interest is there. I'll just go ahead and throw that out there." This generated a laugh from the crowd, then he said, "It works pretty good sometimes when you let the media speak for you."

Earnhardt still has the remainder of this season to produce results for DEI. "I still gotta concentrate and focus on driving the red number eight car and as hard as I can do that throughout the rest of the year. I owe that to my guys."