EARNHARDT JR. NOT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT A NEW DEAL WITH DEI RACER: NEGOTIATIONS WITH TEAM `DIFFICULT'.

Byline: TIM HADDOCK Staff Writer

Much has been made of the comments attributed to Teresa Earnhardt in the Wall Street Journal in reference to her top driver and stepson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., questioning his commitment to racing stock cars.

It has been the focal point of the contract negotiations between Earnhardt Jr. and Dale Earnhardt Inc. to renew a deal that expires at the end of the season.

Earnhardt Jr. started his NASCAR Cup career in 1999 with DEI, the team his father, the late Dale Earnhardt, started. Earnhardt Jr. has never driven a Cup car for another team.

But negotiations do not seem to be going well, despite what DEI director of motor sports Richie Gilmore and sister Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, who also handles her brother's business affairs, have said.

Gilmore and Elledge both said they expect a deal to completed with DEI by midseason. Gilmore told ESPN it could be done as early as May.

Earnhardt Jr. was not so optimistic.

He said during a teleconference Monday from Daytona International Speedway in Florida, where most of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series teams and drivers are testing and preparing for the season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 18, that getting a new deal done is going to be ``difficult.''

``It's just tough. To get a new deal done it's going to be very difficult, but I feel like we can get it done,'' Earnhardt Jr. said. ``It's just there's some things involved that, you know, I think you guys maybe can guess what they are, but there's just some things involved that I want out of the future involving the company, and it's very difficult for everybody to see eye-to-eye there.''

Earnhardt Jr. said he wants to stay with DEI. Negotiations have been ongoing for the past four months, Elledge said last week on the Sirius ``Morning Drive'' satellite radio show.

Money, Earnhardt Jr. said, was not an issue. The comments Teresa Earnhardt made in the Wall Street Journal, in which she said: ``Right now the ball's in his court to decide on whether he wants to be a NASCAR driver or whether he wants to be a public personality,'' were also not much of a concern to Earnhardt Jr.

``Well, I don't want to really get too personal, but Teresa is my stepmother, and I have a mother at home that I have a very good relationship with,'' Earnhardt Jr. said.

``Mine and Teresa's relationship has always been very black and white, very strict and in your face. It is what it is. -- It ain't a bed of roses, but there's really, you know, it's not -- I don't know how to explain it honestly.

``The relationship that we have today is the same relationship we had when I was 6 years old when I moved into that house with Dad and her. It's always been the same. It hasn't gotten worse over the last couple years or last couple months. It's always been the same, the way I felt about her then is the way I feel about her now.''

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(color) There's a chance Dale Earnhardt Jr. might not race with DEI, the NASCAR team his father founded.

Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images