Take Five With No. 88 crew chief Lance McGrew

By Reid Spencer - Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

Thursday, August 27, 2009

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Crew chief Lance McGrew’s move to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 Chevrolet hasn’t been a quick fix for the Hendrick Motorsports team in terms of results, but McGrew has seen plenty of progress since replacing Earnhardt’s cousin, Tony Eury Jr., before the May 31 race at Dover, including a third-place finish Aug. 16 at Michigan. McGrew recently talked to Reid Spencer of The Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service:

Spencer: How has your communication with Dale Earnhardt Jr. evolved over the past two months?
McGrew: When you haven’t worked with anybody before, there’s a communication gap. I don’t understand when he says the car is tight how much of an adjustment to make, or when he says the car is loose how much of an adjustment to make. So there’s an amount of time that has to go by there, and situationally, you have to put yourself in all these positions where you know what adjustment to make.

Spencer: What has been your main focus in learning what he needs in the car?
McGrew: I don’t really think it’s been one thing. We’ve really worked on the cars. We’ve worked on the communication, not only between Junior and myself, but among the engineers and him. I definitely feel like we’ve seen a lot of improvement over the first quarter of the season compared to the last eight races.

Spencer: Does it concern you that the finishes haven’t reflected the progress you’ve seen so far?
McGrew: I’m definitely disappointed … because this is a bottom-line sport, and on Monday morning when the paper hits and everybody sees that we finished 12th or 14th or 16th or 35th, that’s all they understand. They don’t understand that we ran 10th all day and had a problem at the end or ran top six all day, like [at Indianapolis] and had a motor problem unfortunately. It’s bittersweet. I’m happy to see progression, and I think everybody on the team is excited about how we’ve been running. Obviously, we’re not where we want to be yet, but we’re making steps that way.

Spencer: The car you ran at the Brickyard was the first one you built from the ground up. How big of a difference did that make?
McGrew: It’s the first new car build we’ve done since I’ve been there. I don’t like to say it’s the first new car that I built and I did this and I did that, because I’m not like an “I” kind of guy. We basically just went in – myself and the guys in the shop – and we said, “Look, this is what we feel is important in the car,” and we’re going to build it this way. And, honestly, it’s pretty much of a carbon copy of what the 5 [Mark Martin] does. So there’s really no point in doing anything different.

Spencer: Has Junior had to learn a new language in communicating with you, as opposed to Tony Eury Jr.?
McGrew: I think that he’s open to a lot of different suggestions, and it’s not like, “I used to do it like this,” or “I used to do it like that.” He’s definitely on board with how things are going, and if we ask him to describe things a different way, he’s all about it. I think he’s pretty excited about how things are going. Obviously, he’s disappointed about the finishes as well, but we all realize that if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, keep drawing the team together and keep making smart decisions as a team, the performance will show that.