Dale Earnhardt Jr. admits frustration with season; is willing to wait on crew chief decision
Dale Earnhardt Jr. (right) and interim crew chief Lance McGrew talk earlier this season. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
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CONCORD, N.C. – Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he doesn’t feel qualified to make the decision on whether interim crew chief Lance McGrew should return to his No. 88 team next season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
McGrew replaced Tony Eury Jr. at the end of May, but the team has continued to struggle. Earnhardt Jr. has just two top-10s in 18 starts with McGrew and five top-10s on the season.
Earnhardt Jr. is 22nd in the standings entering Saturday night’s NASCAR Banking 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Team owner Rick Hendrick recently said a decision on Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief for 2010 is expected in the near future.
“I haven’t talked to Rick about it,” Earnhardt Jr. said Friday at Lowe's. “I don’t have the credentials to make the call, you know. If I told you that I wanted to be with Lance next year I wouldn’t be telling you that out of my knowledge and expertise and talent. I'd be telling you because, well, it’s fun hanging out with him. Whoever I work with needs to be a dictator, you know what I mean?
“The most success I had was with [former crew chief] Tony [Eury] Sr., and you know how he runs his [stuff]. I don’t think I’m the guy to leave that decision up to because I wouldn’t make the right one. There’s probably better people to make it, especially in the organization. There’s a lot of smart people around there. I’m just waiting on somebody to make the call, man, just put the damn team together and just say, ‘This is what you’ve got, and this is what you’re going to do next year.’”
Earnhardt Jr. made no attempt Friday to hide his frustrations about his season, one in which he’s failed to win a race and was never in serious contention to make NASCAR’s championship-determining Chase For The Sprint Cup.
His frustrations appear to be continuing this weekend. Earnhardt Jr. was only 39th in qualifying Thursday night for Saturday night’s race at Charlotte.
“Last night we were top-15 in practice, and we went out to try to qualify, and we were one of the worst cars here,” he said. “We don’t know why or have any answer for it. All the other [Hendrick] cars qualified fine and did well, backed their times up from practice, and we didn’t even get close. We looked ridiculous last night. It’s like really encouraging one day, and then the next day it’s equally discouraging, and that gets really old. I’m about to the end of my rope on it.”
While Earnhardt Jr. has shown more speed in recent events, he has been hampered by accidents, including one late in last weekend’s race at Auto Club Speedway in California that cost him a possible top-10 finish.
“I’ve been riding it out, but I think there comes a point, though, where you don’t want to ride it out no more. You just have had enough,” said Earnhardt Jr., a winner of 18 Cup races but only three since the beginning of 2005. “It has been a long year. I really don’t want the year to be over with because I like going to the race track every week and racing, but all year it has been so low. The highs have been not very high, and lows have been terribly low, so it’s hard to want to get back up and try again the next week when you take such a beating, but I don’t know what else to do. …
“I don’t know what’s next. I was thinking about that last night. I really don’t know what the logical next step would be because we seem to be getting better, but even getting better is not satisfying me at all.”
Earnhardt Jr. is in the second of a five-year contract with Hendrick, the organization he joined in 2008 after eight Cup seasons with Dale Earnhardt Inc., the team founded by his father, the late seven-time Cup champion Dale Earnhardt.
While Earnhardt Jr. has struggled this season, his three Hendrick teammates are in the Chase and in contention for the championship. Teammates Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin are one-two in the series standings and swept the front row in qualifying at Charlotte.
“Rick’s put me in a great position but I haven’t made the most of it or for whatever reason we’re just not getting it done, so I don’t know what to do,” said Earnhardt Jr., who scored his lone victory with Hendrick at Michigan in June 2008.
Earnhardt Jr. says he can’t even find comfort knowing that the next three tracks on the schedule – Martinsville, Talladega and Texas – are traditionally among his best.
“I mean, I just want to run better,” he said. “We’re not running good enough. Even when we’re creeping inside the top 10 like we were last week, it ain’t good enough. So it’s really frustrating, just trying to get better, but I don’t know what the answer is. I’ve tried to think about what the answer is, and I don’t know what the answer is.”
