Dale Earnhardt Jr. expects Tony Eury Sr. to not miss a race despite sternum injury
JR Motorsports crew chief Tony Eury Sr. suffered minor injuries in an auto accident Sunday. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
LOUDON, N.H. – JR Motorsports crew chief Tony Eury Sr. has a “torn up sternum ” and a sore rib after an auto accident earlier this week, but team co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes Eury will be with the Nationwide Series team and driver Brad Keselowski at Dover next week.
“He’s pretty stubborn and … really, really tough,” Earnhardt Jr. said about his 55-year-old uncle who is now resting during an off weekend for the Nationwide Series. “The way he would probably look at it is is he’ll be in just as much pain no matter where he’s sitting, so he might as well be at the track working.
“He’s like a father to a lot of those guys on that team, and he has to be there for them to perform the way they should perform. Without his presence, they’re not the same group.”
Earnhardt Jr. said getting a phone call about the accident Sunday night was numbing for him. Not only is Eury Sr. his uncle, but Eury Sr. was his crew chief for both of his Busch Series titles and for his first five seasons as a Cup driver.
“It was a really, really scary deal – to be sitting at home and to get a call like that is very, very frightening,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He’s a real important person to me and impossible to replace, not only professionally but he’s an important person in my life.
“He’s meant a lot to me keeping me straight all these years and I won a lot of races with him, too. He’s doing good, though. He’ll be OK. He’s going to be 100 percent.”
In a little bit of a lighter note, Earnhardt Jr. said Eury Sr. is learning just how painful it was for Earnhardt Jr.’s father when he won a pole at Watkins Glen with a broken sternum in 1996.
“He said that in the hospital when he was sitting there – he commented to Tony [Eury] Jr. that he just could not believe how tough daddy was to have qualified with that, as painful as it was,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Dad and Pops were close. They knew everything about each other, And that’s just one more thing they have in common now.”
