[Robertdjr]

CONCORD, N.C. (May 28, 2009) – Hendrick Motorsports today named Lance McGrew as interim crew chief of the No. 88 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team of driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. beginning with the June 7 event at Pocono Raceway. Team manager Brian Whitesell will lead the team this weekend at Dover, Del.

"Our performance hasn't been where it should be," said Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports. "It's impossible to pin that on any one factor, but a change is the right decision at this point. We have a plan in place, and we're going to move forward with it."

Whitesell and Rex Stump, Hendrick Motorsports' lead chassis engineer, have been assigned to support McGrew on a full-time basis. Whitesell, who won two of seven races as Jeff Gordon's interim crew chief in 1999, will join McGrew and team engineer Tom Stewart on the No. 88 pit box to assist with race strategy.

"We're going to put our full resources toward improving the situation and winning races," Hendrick said. "It's going to be a collective effort that includes all of our drivers, all of our crew chiefs and all of our engineers. Everyone in our company will be involved on some level."

Tony Eury Jr. will move from the crew chief position into a key role with Hendrick Motorsports' research and development group. Eury posted one victory, one pole position, 19 top-10 finishes and 11 top-fives in 48 races with the No. 88 team.

"I have mixed feelings, and that's just natural," Eury said. "But I enjoy working at Hendrick Motorsports, and this is where I want to be. I'll do whatever I can to help all of our teams and try to be a part of another championship. I think a new challenge will be good."

"Tony and I talked through this last night," Hendrick said. "I want him here, he wants to be here, and he's going to be a big contributor to our future success. I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the job he's done and for the caliber of person that he is."

McGrew, 41, earned the 2003 NASCAR Nationwide Series championship with driver Brian Vickers. He won the October 2006 Sprint Cup race with Vickers at Talladega, Ala., and most recently led Cup rookie Brad Keselowski to a seventh-place finish May 9 at Darlington, S.C.

As a crew chief, McGrew has posted victories in all three of NASCAR's major touring series: Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck. He has won races with drivers Vickers, Jeff Gordon, Ricky Hendrick, Kyle Busch, Mark Martin and most recently Tony Stewart Feb. 14 at Daytona Beach, Fla.

A native of Baton Rouge, La., McGrew has experience working with Earnhardt. Last season, the pair ran three Nationwide Series races, posting top-10 finishes April 5 at Texas Motor Speedway and May 24 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. They also finished 15th on March 8 at Atlanta.

Official Site of Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR Racing & Team Store

[LSC9901]

This may or may not be the answer, but at least they are trying something different. Be a real kicker if Jr should win. Wonder what he'll have to say about TEJ now ?????

[DodgeFB]

We all knew it was coming. Now will it be what the boy needs to win?

[mike honcho]

bout time..

[bob101]

Tony Eury Jr. will get labeled the problem no matter what from now on I think.

People don't like to admit but sometimes you can stick two talented people together and not get anything out of it. Sometimes that's how people work. There's no doubt in my mind that you could take someone like Chad Knause and put him with another perinial top 10 like Tony Stewart and they may not produce what each is doing now....

Well anyway they got the ball rolling.

[nascaraddict]

I don't think that Tony Eury Jr. should get all the blame here. I think that there's big difference in the equipment, and the dollars spent at Hendrick racing between Gordon / Johnson, and Earnhardt, Martin. It may be just a image thing, but that's the way it seems.

[Robertdjr]

One of the changes I find interesting is the additon of Rex Stump to help McGrew. For those of you who don't know about Rex, he built the T-Rex car that Jeff Gordon ran in the 1997 All-Star race. That car was so fast, after the race, NASCAR rewrote rules so it couldn't be used again.

Here's an old article about it...

Evernham pushed envelope with T-Rex Chevrolet - ESPN

[NASCAR Gnome]

This is a process of elimination.

Just like in pro team sports, where usually, you don't fire the players before the coach gets canned, I get the feeling that this move will definitely carry with it a huge consequence for Dale Junior. Either he gets better results - and everyone gets to kick Eury around for being inept - or, and this is the big one, if Junior continues to show poorly, then we will know who is the culprit is in this fiasco!

Now, of course, the last part of this equation is the equipment and we all know the legendary status of HMS equipment, so I think it's safe to say that it's not the hardware's fault. The question waiting to be answered is who IS at fault? The crew chief or the driver? Time will tell soon enough...

[flflash47]

After watching Lil E's car the past few races is been my opinion they needed to put a Good chassis man on it and then tell Lil E to Shut Up and Drive It. I honestly think thats why Jr. ran so much better when Pops was his crewcheif......Pops always had Jrs respect.

[Robertdjr]

Dale Earnhardt Jr. on crew chief change:

When Rick Hendrick announced he was replacing his cousin Tony Eury, Jr. as crew chief of the #88-National Guard/AMP Energy Drink Chevy, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was up in Michigan helping to promote the June 14th Sprint Cup Series race at MIS. Measuring his words carefully, Junior was clearly saddened by the split, but also said he understood why the move was made.

“It was a very difficult situation. Obviously, when me and Tony Jr. went to work with Rick we expected to have a lot of success and be in a totally different situation than we are now. It's really disappointing, I guess, that we aren't making that happen. It's a situation, it's a relationship that's very important to me, the one with Tony Jr. We are family and it was a pretty big risk, I guess, for me and him both to make the move. We really wanted it to work. Unfortunately, we didn't succeed.

Being this is a business, Rick and the guys decided we needed to go in a new direction. I'm supportive and confident in the decisions that they make. They have a lot of great success. Obviously, there is no arguing they know how to run a race team. I want to be in a good position where I run as well as I can. We have a lot of sponsors and a lot of responsibilities to put ourselves in that situation if we want to be able to race every weekend. I'm pretty confident. I still have a good resolve and a good initiative and motivation to get up and get to the race track every weekend and try to see when we'll turn this thing around.

Rick and the guys are positive about the decision that we've made to make the change in crew chief. They seem confident about the decision. That kind of makes me feel pretty good about it. It makes the team feel good. At least their aware of the situation and they're willing to make changes and do whatever it takes.”

Junior also went out of his way to say that Hendrick had shown plenty of patience.

“To Rick's credit, they waited a lot longer to make this change than they probably would've considering me and Tony Jr. have a relationship like brothers. They gave us more time than anyone else probably would have gotten to try to make this work.

To Tony Jr.'s credit, he tried everything he knew to try to give me what I needed at the race track. He worked and has always worked harder than anybody I know in the sport. The guy has devoted his entire existence to working on race cars. He's sacrificed extensive amounts to be where he is today. So it's really, really disappointing that it didn't work out, because we gave everything we have to be there. I think me and him deserved to have it work out, so it's really frustrating, but I've been through a lot tougher things. Situations like this come and go and you move forward.

You've got to go out and perform under the circumstances the best we can this weekend. We'll band together and go do the job the best we can.

I feel confident, I told Rick, me and Tony Jr. were aware of how delicate our situations was over the last several weeks. We knew we needed to step up our performance somehow, someway to be able to keep our situation intact. Me and Tony Jr. both told Rick throughout the last six to 10 weeks when they were looking at us closely to make the decisions they needed to make as a company and we would both support them whichever decisions they made.

So that's what's happening.”

[Stewart Fan]

Well this had to be done! You can't keep a job when your car is outside the top 15 every week.

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by nascaraddict

I don't think that Tony Eury Jr. should get all the blame here. I think that there's big difference in the equipment, and the dollars spent at Hendrick racing between Gordon / Johnson, and Earnhardt, Martin. It may be just a image thing, but that's the way it seems.

If that were true, then Gordon/Johnson would have more wins than they do and Earnhardt/Martin would have none. The equipment is the same, they've made a big point about that since last year when Jr. agreed to jump to HMS.

One of the things that came out several weeks ago is that every HMS team has given their setup info to #88, but it's been summarily rejected by DEJ. And they've been brainstorming at HMS trying to find the solution to Jr's problems, without any luck.

It ain't the equipment (it's first class all the way), and it ain't the people (they may not all be first class, but they didn't get there by being "no-class"!) That only leaves how the equipment is being used, and I suspect that DEJ and TEJ aren't on the same wavelink so their communications are always getting jumbled: TEJ is giving DEJ something different than he wants and TEJ isn't getting (understanding) what DEJ is saying about it. And because of that, DEJ is second guessing TEJ and TEJ is second guessing DEJ.

It's called a downward spiral.

The new crew (McGrew, Whitesell & Stump) are proven winners who are going to be focused on one thing: getting Jr in the winner's circle. And they're gonna do everything but drive the car for him. Money won't be a problem. All Junior needs to do is show up and do what he know how to do and leave everything else to the "new crew"...

[Bassdogs]

Its pretty hard for anyone not to have seen this coming. And I for one agree that it should have happened a long time ago, maybe when Jr made the move to HMS. Not that Eury Jr is standing there with the smoking gun in his hand, but he is the odd man out in this equation. I disagree with the statement that you could put Tony S with Chad and you might not get the same results. Maybe not the exact same, but I know where my betting money would be. E Jr is the guy that Hendricks hired not his cousin. Now its time for Jr to cut the cr*p and deliver.

[Robertdjr]

Originally Posted by Bassdogs

And I for one agree that it should have happened a long time ago, maybe when Jr made the move to HMS.

If you'll look back at some of my posts when Junior decided to go to the Dark Side, I said he did not need to bring TEJ with him. According to Junior, the reason for his jump was to turn a new page in his career with a fresh start. But he was to loyal/stubborn to leave TEJ behind. So for the last 1.5 years, that page has not been turned, in my opinion. Now we'll see if it finally has...

And it's already started...Whitesell and Rex took the 88 cars back out of the haulers and changed the setups to make them more basic, more in line with the 5, 24 and 48. It's a baseline that Whitesell can start with this weekend at Dover.

[Twistarhymes48]

im so glad to hear that I like Jr. but he hasnt done anything all year but im betting he will ***** and moan about that change until hes blue in the face