Family ties remain strong between Tony Eury Jr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Hendrick Motorsports' Tony Eury Jr. will work as Brad Keselowski's crew chief in Saturday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
JOLIET, Ill. – Tony Eury Jr., who is back at a NASCAR Sprint Cup track for the first time this weekend since ending his role as crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., says there are no ill feelings between he and his cousin and that the two maintain a close bond outside of racing.
Eury was Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and then Hendrick Motorsports before being reassigned within the Hendrick organization after this year’s Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Eury is at Chicagoland Speedway this weekend working as crew chief for Brad Keselowski, who is making one of several scheduled Cup starts this season in Hendrick’s part-time No. 25 Chevrolet.
“It was kind of emotional for both of us,” Eury said of how he and Earnhardt Jr. felt when told by team owner Rick Hendrick they would no longer be together. “In no way shape or form am I going to let this sport get in between me and Dale Jr. – that’s the biggest thing. It was a job, I enjoyed being around Dale Jr., but still do. He’s family; we go deeper than this racing deal and I’ve always wanted him to have the opportunity if he has to be with somebody else, if that brings him up a scale, then I’ve always been for that.
“So I’m just looking forward to working with Brad. Me and Dale Jr. have got plenty of hunts planned together, going to do things outside of racing and to be honest with you, I don’t think we’ve really talked a whole lot of racing when we do talk, so I think that’s pretty cool.”
Eury, who won two races as Earnhardt Jr.’s Cup crew chief after several years as Earnhardt Jr.’s car chief, says his emotions were mixed upon learning he would be reassigned to a research-and-development role at Hendrick that allows him to occasionally serve as crew chief for the company’s part-time Cup team.
“In one shape and form it was like, ‘Cool, I’m glad this is over with’ and the next one it was like, ‘I feel like I let my cousin down.,’” Eury said. “I’ve done a lot for him, he’s done a lot for me, but we enjoy racing together. I think a lot of people put him on a pedestal that he doesn’t need to be on. They put a lot of pressure on him to be somebody that he’s not going to be. Dale Jr. is a great race-car driver, but I just think that he’s got so much pressure on him that he doesn’t enjoy it right now. I just told him, ‘Man, you just need to start enjoying yourself more.’ And that’s kind of where I was at.
“You get blasted in the media and you have to go home. My wife wouldn’t even watch the race. You’d come home and she’d say, ‘Where’d y’all finish?’ because she doesn’t want to sit there and hear the negativity on it. I fought it for a long time and at some point in time you have to weigh it and say, ‘Is it worth it?’ And it wasn’t.”
Eury believes that Earnhardt Jr. has been bothered by the steady pressure that comes with being NASCAR’s most popular driver. Beginning with a disastrous performance in the season-opening Daytona 500, Earnhardt Jr.’s season has never really gotten on track as has just three top-10s in 18 starts.
“My personal opinion is you guys [in the media] put so much pressure on him after Daytona that Dale Jr. just basically had had enough, if you want to get down to it,” Eury said. “We went to Daytona and had a shot at winning that race, had some problems on pit road, but we ain’t going to slam Dale Jr. We’re going to pick him up and say let’s go to Vegas. We went to California and we blew up, so there’s two negative weeks and you guys were all over him and it just brought him down.
“I think we didn’t have a strong enough finish to bring him back up, so every week the hole gets deeper and deeper and deeper and it’s like you’re throwing a squirrel into a hole. It’s not coming out. It says, ‘I’ll dig the other way to get away from it.’”
Another factor in Earnhardt Jr.’s struggles is what Eury calls “a rollercoaster with him as far as communication.”
“I’ve had it out [with him] and the media’s blasted me for having it out with him when we first started,” he said. “We went to a more conservative role where we didn’t say anything, we got blasted because we didn’t talk enough. I mean at Atlanta, I think we finished 11th this year and the first thing you read in the paper is ‘The end’s near because they’re not talking.’ So you’re like, ‘OK, so which way to do they want it?’ So we basically just quit talking on the radio because there’s different ways we can do it. It’s unfortunate that it had to come to that, but we still believed in each other and that’s all that matters.”
Eury believes Earnhardt Jr. has had better lines of communication with his replacement, interim crew chief Lance McGrew. The pair has three top-15s in six starts together but no top-10s.
“He’s a lot more open with Lance and Lance hasn’t got those chewings [out] yet to be able to be quiet,” Eury said. “They’ll be on the way but that’s a good thing. Dale Jr.’s just more open right now.”
