Extreme makeover

By Mark Ashenfelter

Monday, January 31, 2005

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Stroke of genius? Or fit of insanity? That's what many are still wondering as Dale Earnhardt Inc. adjusts to life after "The Swap." Outsiders certainly have their opinions, and they'll be heard all year.

If Dale Earnhardt Jr. fails to miss a beat and wins a much-coveted Nextel Cup title, Richie Gilmore will be seen as a visionary for breaking up a combination that won six races and finished fifth in points a year ago. But the moment the driver struggles, they'll boldly declare the move was crazy.

Such talk comes with the territory, a fact not lost on Earnhardt Jr. While Gilmore, the team's vice president of motorsports, proposed the changes, such a move undoubtedly required Earnhardt Jr.'s blessing. And Junior promised he'd back Gilmore's decision, which was announced in December.

"It's going to be tough. People are going to talk one way or another," Earnhardt Jr. says. "If Tony [Eury] Jr. and I had stayed together, they would have said something anyway."

Then again, it's not just outsiders who are debating the merits of switching the teams of Earnhardt Jr. and Michael Waltrip. Pete Rondeau is the new crew chief of the No. 8 team, while Eury Jr., who was officially Earnhardt Jr.'s car chief while splitting the crew chief responsibilities with his father, has taken over Waltrip's team.

Eury Sr., now DEI's director of competition, is still coming to grips with his new role. A hands-on leader, he's now expected to help oversee three Nextel Cup and two Busch series programs. Instead of working with his nephew on a daily basis, he'll spend a bit more time in an office, helping Steve Hmiel, the team's technical director, run the show while Gilmore helps Judy Queen, DEI's vice president of operations, keep the operation on course.

When the move was first discussed with Eury Sr., he wasn't really for it. And he's still not exactly a cheerleader for the changes.

"It's just something they thought they needed to do," Eury Sr. says. "That 8 car was awful close to winning a championship; they weren't very far from it. We could have tuned on that a little bit, I think, and made it better. Now we've changed everything around, which really didn't change. We just changed drivers. Michael will be driving all the 8 cars, and Dale Jr.'s driving all the 15 cars. We'll just have to see what happens."

And all of NASCAR Nation will be watching.

WHY SHAKE THINGS UP?

For years, skeptics suggested Earnhardt Jr. would never win a Cup title with the Eurys leading his team. While the combination won two Busch championships, the fussing and feuding between Earnhardt Jr. and his cousin seemed to surround the team in negative energy. But no matter how many times that was suggested, Earnhardt Jr. dismissed such talk - saying he and Eury Jr. would always shake things off at the end of the day in a way only family can do.

Gilmore, who took over as vice president prior to the start of the 2004 campaign, obviously felt otherwise. Wanting to increase the operational depth of DEI so he could focus on more aspects of the company, he felt shifting Eury Sr. to a managerial role would do the trick. It would also pave the way for additional changes.

Several scenarios were discussed, and things might have turned out differently had Richard "Slugger" Labbe not left for Evernham Motorsports. Labbe was Waltrip's crew chief until taking another role within DEI last October and would have been a candidate to lead Earnhardt Jr.'s team. That, though, wasn't an option, so Gilmore came to a decision.

"We knew it was time for Tony Jr. to become a crew chief and move up," Gilmore says. "He's been groomed for that position for a long time. ... Dale Jr. and Tony Jr. worked well together, but we felt like for them both to go to the next level, they needed to work with other people. For their whole career, they've worked together, [and they needed to] see what it was like to work with other crew members and other teams and other drivers and stay in the same organization. That was a big key, to keep everybody together and to stay at DEI."

Then Gilmore had to convince all concerned that the move was the right idea. That meant starting with Earnhardt Jr. If a driver who for years said he'd race with the Eurys forever wouldn't back off that vow, Gilmore's authority would have effectively been neutralized.

Whatever Gilmore said worked as Earnhardt Jr. accepted the idea that change wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. He still says the relationship with Eury Jr. wasn't as bad as outsiders perceived and that this wasn't a case where he felt a divorce was necessary to go forward.

"I wasn't necessarily the guy who spoke first," Earnhardt Jr. says. "I came into the shop, and as a group we looked at a few scenarios. I walked in one day, and they had it all figured out, and I said, 'OK, I'm fine with that, and we'll do this.' Like I said about Tony Jr., the two of us kind of held each other up, which maybe made it easier to do this. He had a lot of talent that wouldn't come to the surface because of our mentality and outlook towards each other.

"I think I have a lot of maturing to do as far as working with someone else that I was forced to respect, whereas I could say anything to Tony Jr. because I knew the next day we were still cousins. I put myself in this situation so I could be a better person and a little more of a professional. I was a good race car driver, but I wasn't necessarily a professional about how I was on the radio. That will be a good situation for me."

Eury Jr. was on vacation when the plan was presented to him. On a number of levels it was disappointing, because, like his father, he didn't feel the team was that far away from a championship. He thought a few minor changes were necessary but certainly not an extreme makeover of the face of DEI.

Now, though, his focus is on helping Waltrip win somewhere besides Daytona or Talladega, where all four of his Cup victories have come. Gilmore said back in October that 2005 would be the 41-year-old Waltrip's last year with DEI. Waltrip, who has driven for the team since 2001, won't go that far but says that if he's not doing well by April or May he'll certainly be driving elsewhere in 2006.

Eury Jr. made many of the crucial calls for Earnhardt Jr. the past few years, so running a team shouldn't be difficult. And he says the team approaches the year as if it has nothing to lose.

So, what exactly changed between Earnhardt Jr. and Eury Jr. for the driver to sign off on the changes?

"I don't think nothing in his mind's changed," Eury Jr. says. "It's just the circumstances that [have] come about, and they wanted to make a change. So we'll stick with it and see what happens. [But] you never know; somewhere down the road we might run across each other again."

WILL IT WORK?

While Eury Jr. didn't have much say in whether or not he'd work with Earnhardt Jr. this year, he did have a say in whether or not he'd keep his crew intact. He told Gilmore the only way he'd be comfortable was if he remained in charge of Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 8 team, which won six races last year.

"Michael needed a boost; they were a little off last year, and he went through a couple of crew chiefs," Eury Sr. says. "If anybody can spark Michael Waltrip, it's this bunch of guys right here. They're a championship-caliber team. Michael had some good runs last year but never really finished them off [with wins]. That's our goal right now, to get Michael running as good as the 8 car ran last year. But we've got to keep that 8 car running, too. That's our main goal, to have two teams that ran like the Hendrick teams [of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon] did last year. The people that run our company thought this is what it would take to do it, so it's our job to go get it done."

Perhaps the one person with no second thoughts about the changes is Waltrip. While he has quieted some critics by winning races, some persist in pointing out that he has only won restrictor-plate races. Waltrip believes he can accomplish so much more with the right cast around him.

And considering all the No. 8 team accomplished with Earnhardt Jr., it's hard for him not to enter the year with more enthusiasm than he's had in some time.

"I've never showed up to a job where the guys had much success the year before," Waltrip says. "When I showed up to drive for Dale [Earnhardt Sr. in 2001], it was a brand new team. The credentials weren't there for the 15 car. When you look at the credentials of the car for 2005, there are a bunch of guys who expect to go to victory lane. For me, that's the best part."

So where, exactly, does that leave Earnhardt Jr.? After all, he is the focal point of DEI. While an Earnhardt Jr. championship in a DEI car would put the organization over the top, things still aren't bad as long as he's winning and competitive each week.

And while there are no guarantees in racing, a new crew chief certainly runs the risk of changing the dynamic for a driver who seemed to thrive off the bickering back and forth with his uncle and cousin.

Steve Hmiel, the team's technical director, knows there's a risk involved but says the organization won't sit still. After all, Eury Jr.'s already said he won't be shocked if he's reunited with his cousin somewhere down the road.

Hmiel says one key will be for Earnhardt Jr.'s new team to stay focused if it gets off to a slow start.

"You've only got a certain amount of time to prove that you made the right move," Hmiel says. "But if everybody really thought about where they were in this business, none of us has very long to prove we've made the right decisions. Sometimes you have to change things around a little bit, and sometimes you have to change them again. That's not necessarily backtracking or going over the same ground you were over before; it's just making another adjustment."

One of the biggest adjustments may have to be made by Waltrip's former team, which operated largely out of the spotlight that has always focused on Earnhardt Jr. The media glare will be one thing, but the soft-spoken Rondeau will inevitably have to deal with the feisty Junior, who was even known to give his father a hard time over the radio when he was in the Busch Series and Earnhardt Sr. occasionally served as his spotter.

Rondeau's prepared for such situations.

"There will be times when he's going to get excited and wound up. As a rule, I don't," Rondeau says. "It takes me a little bit to get wound up. If he gets wound up in the race car, it's my job to make sure he relaxes back down because he'll be at his best if he's relaxed."

Eury Sr. says Earnhardt Jr.'s new team won't realize exactly what it's in for until the season begins. Fans and media surrounding the transporter will be the norm, meaning things will be far from peaceful.

Junior himself knows things could backfire, giving critics plenty to talk about all season. He's prepared for the challenges ahead and hopes his new team is, too.

"It's going to be a different experience for them," Earnhardt Jr. says of his crew. "Hopefully they'll handle it well. There is a lot of pressure, but I can see that this will go either way. Eventually we'll do what it takes to get it right and win. If it starts out [and we're] stumbling, we'll just have to work hard to get it right. I'm prepared for that."