CONCORD, N.C. - Dale Earnhardt Jr. did not climb into his Sprint Cup car alone last season. He was accompanied by fear. Not fear of crashing or getting busted up or being burned. Those things he could face. What scared Earnhardt was failure.

The entire racing world was watching the son of NASCAR's biggest hero as he bolted from the team his father founded and moved to Hendrick Motorsports in 2008 _ and a large part was critiquing the move at every opportunity.

The pressure was on Earnhardt to win, and win a lot, and in truth there was probably no way he could win _ not, at least, in the eyes of the critics. So there was fear.

But this year, it sounds as though Earnhardt's fears have waned.

"I got a year under my belt," he said last week. "I feel more prepared, I've got a better sense of what to expect."

And that expectation is to win races and compete for a Sprint Cup championship in 2009.

That is what some expected for Earnhardt in 2008. Experts were all trying to outdo each other with their predictions for the number of victories Earnhardt would get with the best team in the sport behind him when the season started.

People were guessing three wins, four, five, more. Not only were they predicting, they were almost demanding.

Earnhardt and Hendrick together? Only winning all 36 races would have been enough for the toughest of the critics.

Team owner Rick Hendrick listened to all that, and he quickly understood what Earnhardt was carrying with him in 2008.

"Somebody one day will write a book on him," Hendrick said during last week's media tour, "and it should be titled 'His Own Man' because he's had tremendous pressure on him to live up to standards that his dad's fans wanted and so forth. He's blessed and cursed at the same time with all that notoriety."

Earnhardt's debut with Hendrick started out well.

He won the non-points Budweiser Shootout during Speed Weeks at Daytona.

"This is exactly what we needed coming out of the gate," he told reporters that night at Daytona International Speedway.

But, of course, he needed more.

He continued to do well once he started driving for points last season. There were four top-six finishes in his first six races, and he had 12 top-10s in the first half of the season.

But there was only one victory, in mid-June at Michigan International Speedway.

And the fact that Earnhardt was in position to win other races in '08 led not to praise but to criticism for not sealing the victories.

That criticism fell hard on Earnhardt, but even harder on his crew chief and cousin, Tony Eury Jr. Bad calls, bad cars, bad leadership, said the critics.

Earnhardt heard the wails against Eury and defended his man. Eury chose not to hear.

"I'm going to be honest with you," Eury said. "I try not to read it or listen to it, and that way I don't know about it. We go there each week and try to do the best we can, but there's big expectations that people think we can do, and there are only so many people who can do it on any given weekend."

When Eury and Earnhardt arrived at Hendrick, they went to work in the race shop that had housed the teams of Kyle Busch and Casey Mears the year before.

That shop is separated from the building that houses the championship-winning teams of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. It is separated by more than just physical walls.

Eury said he kind of knew that it would take some time to get the teams in his shop up to the level of Johnson and Gordon.

"There was no certainty in that shop," Eury said. "With moving Casey around and with Kyle leaving (to Joe Gibbs Racing), nobody was really sure what was going to happen there."

What happened disappointed many and created a bit of doubt and fear in Earnhardt.

"Last year there were a lot of questions and uncertainties and insecurities about how we were going to do," Earnhardt said. "I was scared to fail trying to win."

As Earnhardt sat and talked last week, it sounded as though the fear of failing will not come along for the ride in 2009.

He talked about how he has given quite a bit of thought to how well the first half of the 2008 season went for him. He talked about how even though some considered his first year with Hendrick a disappointment, he still made the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship. He talked about the positive effects of adding Mark Martin to the Hendrick driver lineup.

And he talked about knowing why he had a good season in 2008, but not a great season.

"We've got to fix where it went wrong," Earnhardt said. "I don't think it's one or two little tiny things, but I don't believe that it's the big fix (that's needed). I think it's a couple of tweaks here and some patience and a little more professionalism and we should be fine."

Fine enough to suit the critics?

Not likely.