Lance McGrew sees improvement in Dale Earnhardt Jr. team as group returns to Dover
Hendrick Motorsports' Dale Earnhardt Jr. (right) talks with interim crew chief Lance McGrew. // LaDon George, NASCAR Scene
The last time Dale Earnhardt Jr. headed to Dover International Speedway, he was working with a temporary crew chief for the race and beginning his relationship with Lance McGrew.
McGrew had been named interim crew chief for the team just a few days before the Dover race. He was already scheduled to work with Brad Keselowski that race weekend, but when Keselowski missed the field for the race, McGrew and Earnhardt Jr. joined ranks a week early. They finished 12th in that first outing.
Since then, they've been working to improve the Hendrick Motorsports team's program with somewhat inconsistent results. Earnhardt Jr. has two top-10 finishes in the 14 races since that time, but he has also been enjoying some good runs in other races before being sidelined by an incident. Such was the case last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, when he was running fourth with 17 laps to go before being caught up in a crash.
McGrew says that he's learning the nuances of working through a race with the driver and feels that they are gaining ground. Earnhardt Jr. is 21st in the point standings heading into this weekend's race.
"I think it's going good," McGrew said of his relationship with the driver. "It's definitely been challenging because of the way he describes things and the way I am used to things being described is different. So that's been an adjustment. But I think as a whole, at the race track we are performing better. We still aren't getting the finishes I feel like we deserve, but I'm definitely seeing progress."
They’ll try to continue that progress in this weekend's AAA 400 at Dover, where Earnhardt Jr. has seven top-10 finishes in 19 Cup races at the track. His 12th-place finish this spring was his best in the last three races at the track.
Now Earnhardt Jr. has a plan for attacking the track, trying to build on last week's run and complete it with a solid finish.
"Dover has basically one groove, and it's right on the bottom," he said. "So trying to get around the bottom of the race track and trying to keep the nose down and keep the front of the car turning and gripping is really the most important thing. There's really not a second or third groove that works all day long. The guy that runs around the bottom and can do it the quickest is the best."
