Things looking up for Casey Mears

Casey Mears has a much better feeling about his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team compared to this time a year ago.
He is part of the four-driver mega team at Hendrick Motorsports. His teammates are Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Using the Daytona 500 as a gauge, Mears has a number of reasons to be encouraged. Gordon and Johnson, who have their team in one shop at Hendrick Motorsports, had their share of problems at Daytona. But Earnhardt Jr., who works with Mears at Hendrick, won the Budweiser Shootout, one of the Gatorade Duels and was leading the Daytona 500 late in the race before dropping back and finishing ninth.
Mears was among the race leaders at the end of the race, but ran up the track and into the wall with less than 10 laps to go. He lasted longer than Gordon or Johnson, who withdrew early with mechanical and handling problems.
“I think that Junior winning those first couple of races is showing that, hey, they’ve come in and done a good job,” said Mears, driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. “I think the equipment is there. The No. 5 and No. 88 (Earnhardt Jr.) side has definitely stepped up and matched that of the No. 24 (Gordon) and No. 48 (Johnson).”
Even though the teams are divided into two shops, Mears said he has noticed a difference in how they have been working this year.
“The meetings that we had in Daytona were very encouraging,” Mears said. “To see all four drivers really interacting and working well together, we didn’t have that before. It was the same idea, but it didn’t seem like it went as smooth,”
Mears inherited Kyle Busch’s team from last year. Busch left Hendrick for Joe Gibbs Racing to make room for Earnhardt Jr. to join Hendrick. Earnhardt Jr. also brought some crew members from his team at Dale Earnhardt Inc. with him to Hendrick.
“Junior has done a really good job of coming in and fitting in really well, so that was encouraging too,” Mears said. “The biggest thing that I’ve pulled away from, the first couple of events when I look at the events and the races, the 150s and the Shootout from my side of things, I’m in a very good position as opposed to last year. It was a great team, a great group of guys that I had last year but we came in last minute and changed the crew chief the week before Daytona. There was just a lot of unorganization, we were building a team.”