Shut up and drive!

I can hear it now, more than seven years after his death -- Dale Earnhardt's gruff admonition to fellow drivers with complaints about racecars, racetracks, tires or NASCAR rules they didn't particularly like.

As much as anyone, Earnhardt was willing to play the hand he was dealt, and that might be a lesson to those who have followed in his tire tracks.

Almost as soon as the engines stopped whining after Sunday's Samsung 500 Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway, another kind of whining began -- from the drivers. Jimmie Johnson was the latest to join the chorus, complaining about the aero-dependency and lack of downforce, specifically the lack of forward bite, on NASCAR's new racecar.

Johnson didn't sound like a driver who had just finished second to Carl Edwards in a 339-lap marathon at the 1.5-mile track.

"I was really shocked today in how bad the cars drove in traffic," said Johnson, who chased Edwards for the final 106 laps. "At the last two intermediate tracks, our stuff had bigger problems than worrying about how the car drove.

"I really think we need to look at some changes to help these cars not be so aero-dependent. They are safer, they are doing a lot of things the right way, but we really need to look at making some changes so these cars can have a little more downforce. So when we get into low downforce situations, there is more grip in the car."

Admittedly, the new car isn't perfect. Its general tendency is to be loose entering a corner (with the rear end tending to slide out), snug in the center of the corner (or difficult to turn) and loose again on corner exit. It's also true that the car is every bit as much engineering-dependent as it is aero-dependent.

Achieving an ideal setup for the car requires analyzing a set of interrelated variables. Trial-and-error crew chiefs need not apply. In other words, before calling for a round down on the panhard bar or a half-pound increase in air pressure in the right rear tire, there had better be seven-post rig data or a computer simulation to back it up.

Johnson said the handling of the new car was such an issue that he was scared to race side-by-side with another car. In fairness to the two-time Cup champion, Johnson's isn't the only voice that has called for improvements to the car this year.

Tony Stewart was strident in his criticism of the car/tire combination at Atlanta. Sunday's third-place finisher, Kyle Busch, has been a vocal critic of the new car, but after the race, he deflected questions on whether the car had rendered the racing boring.

No, the Samsung 500 wasn't the nail-biter that Texas hosted last spring, when Jeff Burton beat Matt Kenseth with a last-lap pass, or last fall, when Johnson held off Kenseth during an exhilarating closing run. But remember, the new car is a work in progress, and as teams learn the intricacies of its operation, the racing will improve -- as it already has done at tracks the Cup series has visited for the second or third time.

The new car proved its mettle Friday afternoon when Michael McDowell put its safety enhancements to the acid test in a jolting collision with the Turn 1 wall. McDowell walked away, and on Saturday he was in sufficiently high spirits to crack jokes during an interview session. That, in itself, should be enough to earn a stamp of approval.

An icon in another sport, Jack Nicklaus, used to visit the locker room before a major championship and listen to what his fellow competitors were saying. Nicklaus took particular note if a player was complaining about the difficulty of the course, the thickness of the rough, the speed of the greens or the way the bunkers were raked. One by one, Nicklaus would check them off as players he didn't have to worry about that week.

Edwards has won three of the seven races this year. Maybe the fact he thinks driving the new car is fun has something to do with that.

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"I don't want to get on a rant here, but let me state my position very clearly," Edwards said. "I've heard people say that the races are boring, and people always want something to complain about -- if it's too hard to drive, you don't get enough side-by-side racing.

"The fact is that these are the 43 best drivers in the world. The cars have 900 horsepower and go 200 miles an hour, and the track is slippery and the tires are slippery, and that's a spectacle -- and that's what it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be easy for everyone. It's not supposed to be driving down the interstate. I'm tired of hearing people complain, the media making up stories about how terrible it is and stuff.

"This is auto racing."

Sounds a lot like "Shut up and drive" to me.