The colours were familiar but most else was completely new as Dale Earnhardt Jr began the prelude of his transition from DEI with a first outing in a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Monday.
Earnhardt, who joins Hendrick at the conclusion of the 2007 season, returned to the Atlanta tarmac - along with 46 other Nextel Cup drivers - for the first day of a two-day test immediately following Sunday's Pep Boys 500, as the series gives teams more time to hone the Car of Tomorrow ahead of its full-time 'introduction' in 2008. The test is the last of seven NASCAR-sanctioned outings this season, but the first full-scale session for the new car at a 1.5-mile track, so Earnhardt was researching not only his new team, but the 'new car'.
“We're just sort of driving the cars, making sure nothing scared me, making sure there are no big problems, anything like that,” he said during a lunch-break visit to Atlanta's media centre, “The cars drive really good and [are] very comfortable. One's got a seat that I've been running in for a long time. The other's got a new carbon-fibre seat. We're trying that out, getting used to that, getting the bugs out of it.”
Earnhardt is driving the #5 Chevrolet during this week's test, rather than the #88 machine he will campaign in his first season with Hendrick, and both machines available to him at the test happen to carry a red-and-white paint scheme that echoes his current #8 Budweiser Chevrolet.
"The #88 is not until next year and the 5 car is now," team boss Rick Hendrick explained ahead of the test, "We're bringing back the All‑Star racing car, and it's exactly like it was when we started with the same #5 [in 1984]. It's a little bit of history coming back."
Other than a few laps in the #5 this spring at Texas Motor Speedway, where he stepped in for current driver Kyle Busch, the Atlanta session marks Earnhardt's Hendrick baptism, and he immediately reported differences between the Hendrick and DEI machines.
![Dale Earnhardt tested for the first time with Hendrick Motorsports at Atlanta in October 2007 [pic credit: image.net]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/393500.jpg)
