The big story in NASCAR this week is the $225 million lawsuit filed by a former employee that levies serious racial and sexiest claims against the sport. We still haven’t had ample time to sift through the 40 pages and collect our thoughts, but we hope to soon. Something that you may have missed over the weekend: Dale Earnhardt Jr. actually won a race. He’s the most recognizable name and face in the sport, and finally extended a lengthy drought. Our NASCAR guy, Nick Bromberg, wonders what took him so long.

Forget that it was Father’s Day, a fuel mileage race or Dale Earnhardt Junior’s first win in 76 points paying races. None of that really matters.

Sure, those are nice storylines, and it makes for a great highlight package on ESPN. (Think they were on cloud 9 when they realized they could package a Junior win with a US Open playoff and the NBA Finals on the Sunday night Sportscenter?) Instead, this win is the validation for the choice he began to make a year ago when he decided to leave the organization that his father handed over to his stepmother after he passed away in the 2001 Daytona 500.

Of those 76 races, 61 of them were with DEI. Blown engines. Bad luck. Other parts failures. You name it, it probably happened to Junior since he had last won at Richmond. He knew that DEI wasn’t a top class organization. They weren’t going to compete with Hendrick, Gibbs, Roush and Childress. Oddly enough, those teams were the teams floated around as Junior’s options. He hadn’t forgotten how to drive. Heck, if you can’t beat em, join em. Junior knew that too.

Junior’s career at Hendrick started off with a bang, winning the Budweiser Shootout and a Duel qualifying race for the 500. But as he quietly (ok, not so quietly; you can’t get away from Junior during television coverage) racked up the solid finishes, everything kept pointing back to the winless streak as he solidly entrenched himself in the top 10 in points.

Thanks to that win and some ballsy fuel strategy by his crew chief and cousin Tony Eury Jr., Dale Jr. is third in points, and has a 10 point bonus when the Chase starts. He can watch as the pressure shifts to Gordon and Stewart and can call Danica and ask her how to handle the “when will you win again?” questions.

Junior will never be in the discussion for the sport’s best driver. But he’s one of the best, and now on a top tier team. Eventually winning was inevitable, but drivers like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart haven’t recorded a win in 2008 either. It’s kind of hard to win when Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch are hogging Victory Lane. (I would like to point out that I somewhat kind of maybe predicted this win back when I wrote about Junior after the Richmond race. Check the calendar)

The parity in NASCAR lends itself to winless streaks, and no driver is immune. But if there was ever any doubt about Junior’s decision to move to Hendrick Motorsports for the rest of his career, it’s safely out the window.