Almirola earns full-time '09 DEI ride

The 24-year-old from Tampa, Florida has been sharing driving duties of the car since the second half of last year with Mark Martin. This season he is set to compete in a scheduled ten races, while the NASCAR veteran does the majority of the season.

"This is an incredibly exciting opportunity," said Almirola. "When you get into racing, you always dream of competing at the highest level and I've had the chance to do that on a limited basis for the past two seasons.

"Now I will have the opportunity to race the car full time and I could not be more excited about driving the No. 8 car each week for Dale Earnhardt Inc."

In eleven Sprint Cup Series starts thus far, all but one for DEI, the rookie driver has scored an eighth place finish at Bristol as his best result and qualified third a week later at Martinsville.

DEI also announced that Mark Martin will leave the team at the end of the season to race for a different squad next year. The 49-year-old believes Almirola is ready to tackle a full season after showing his potential in many of his appearances this year.

"There is no doubt Aric is ready to go full time," said Martin. "Aric is an incredible talent and a true student of the sport. Having him run a full-time program in the No. 8 was always part of the plan, but his development has allowed us to accelerate things."

Almirola arrived at DEI when the team merged last season with Ginn Racing. Before that he had driven for Joe Gibbs Racing, where he got through their driver diversity programme, being of Cuban descent.

He has one NASCAR victory to his credit, which he claimed when he started a Nationwide Series race at Milwaukee last year filling in for a delayed Denny Hamlin, who later took over from him and won the event.