BY: TOBY CHRISTIE
DAILYPITSTOP.COM

Chip Ganassi Racing and Dale Earnhardt Incorporated merged five years ago and have since used the name: Earnhardt Ganassi Racing With Felix Sabates.

With Teresa Earnhardt, controlling interest of DEI, being inactive in the day-to-day operations of EGR, and the team being able to move on financially without her, Chip Ganassi has branched back out and renamed his team Chip Ganassi Racing With Felix Sabates, according to a report on The Sporting News.

The change will mean very little to the casual race fan, as the No. 1 and No. 42 cars will still circle the race track on Sundays, but it’s a sad announcement for diehard Earnhardt fans.

Dale Earnhardt had grown his team into an empire. From 1995 until the time of his death in 2001, Dale Earnhardt Inc. had taken home three Camping World Truck Series championships, two Nationwide Series crowns, and they took the 2001 Daytona 500.

From 2001 until 2006 the team grew into a contender for a Sprint Cup championship with Dale Earnhardt Jr. behind the wheel of their No. 8 Chevrolets.

Disagreements between Earnhardt Jr., and his step mother eroded the chemistry that the organization had built, and by the end of 2007 Earnhardt Jr. was on his way to Hendrick Motorsports. Many fans said the team’s shop would be turned into a museum, which effectively happened when DEI and Ganassi Racing merged in 2008.

Now the exile of the Earnhardt name from Ganassi’s team is the final blow in the destruction of Dale Earnhardt’s organization.