Man at work: Hendrick Motorsports' Lance McGrew learning about Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Dover
Hendrick Motorsports' Lance McGrew will be Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s interim crew chief next weekend at Pocono Raceway. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
DOVER, Del. – Lance McGrew’s job for the Autism Speaks 400 weekend at Dover International Speedway changed a little bit Friday night.
Brad Keselowski failed to qualify for the race, so McGrew will work the rest of the weekend preparing for his new job as crew chief for Hendrick Motorsports’ Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Team manager Brian Whitesell remains as crew chief for the remainder of the Dover weekend because he helped set up the Earnhardt Jr. car while McGrew had concentrated on the one for Keselowski. McGrew takes over as interim crew chief Monday heading into the race at Pocono Raceway.
“We had a little unfortunate luck yesterday, got a little too free in qualifying,” McGrew said Saturday morning at Dover. “So I get to hang out, I get to listen. That’s an advantage, just getting to hear conversations on the radio – look and listen to the changes.”
The learning process of what Earnhardt Jr. wants in a car began in earnest Saturday morning. Even though McGrew has worked with him a couple of times in the Nationwide Series, he still will need to learn what Earnhardt Jr. wants. McGrew has worked with several drivers in the last few years, including Mark Martin and Tony Stewart, but it still takes time to learn the driver.
“It’s a learning curve every time,” said McGrew, who is replacing Earnhardt Jr.’s cousin, Tony Eury Jr. “Working with Mark at Vegas, he wanted something different than what Tony wanted in Daytona, Kyle [Busch] wanted in the past. Everybody likes certain things. There are some things that I don’t care how you do it, they don’t like it.
Everybody else can be doing it and they hate it. You have to have the ability to cycle through those things rapidly or you’re going to be behind the eight-ball.”
McGrew plans to use the typical system of asking a driver to grade the car from 1 to 10 as far as how it feels.
“I need to understand what his 5 is – that 5 is different for everybody,” McGrew said. “[The car] is finicky. Fortunately for us, I’ve got crew members to lean on, crew chiefs to leave on, a fantastic engineering department, one that I’ve been pretty heavily involved with the last few years. It’s not like I’m without the ability or without the knowledge or without the guidance to make that decision.”
While he could not have anticipated that he would be Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief, McGrew said he has watched races at home and wondered what changes he could make.
“All of us like to armchair quarterback,” McGrew said. “I do the same thing to the 48, like, ‘Chad [Knaus] what are you thinking?’ Given the opportunity at that point and place at that time, I may have made the entire opposite decision or I might have made exactly the same one and on Monday look at it and say, ‘What was I thinking?’ ”
Starting next week it will be up to him. He has two days left before he takes charge of the No. 88 team.
“I’ve gotten together with some of the guys at the shop and talked about doing some things just a little different way,” McGrew said. “I don’t think this thing is broken by any means. Sometimes it just takes a little different perspective.”
