Rick Hendrick: Making Chase the goal for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and interim crew chief

Rick Hendrick has a simple mission for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s new crew chief, Lance McGrew: Make the Chase For The Sprint Cup or show enough improvement that he thinks McGrew can lead Earnhardt Jr. back into championship contention.

If that doesn’t happen, expect more changes.

Hendrick announced Thursday that McGrew would replace crew chief Tony Eury Jr., who will assume McGrew’s research-and-development duties. McGrew’s first race with Earnhardt Jr. will be next week at Pocono. Earnhardt Jr. is 19th in the standings, 203 points out of 12th, with 14 races to go before the 12-driver Chase field is set.

“The change we made is an effort to run better, and if we run better, we should have a shot at making the Chase,” Hendrick said Thursday during a teleconference with reporters. “If we miss the Chase, I’ve got to see some real momentum in this team before the end of the year. I can’t go into the offseason thinking, ‘It’s OK, and we’ll be good next year.’ You’ve got to see some improvement, or you’ve got to change something.

“NASCAR needs Dale to run well because he’s got a tremendous following. We need him to run good because he’s in one of our cars. The pressure on me is he could have gone anywhere he wanted to go [when he left Dale Earnhardt Inc.]. He picked our place to come. There is a tremendous pressure on me to get the job done. I do not ever want to let anyone in our company down, and so I feel that [pressure], and I absolutely will do whatever I’ve got to to get him where he needs to be.”

Right now, that means McGrew will be joined by team manager Brian Whitesell and Hendrick’s head chassis engineer, Rex Stump, in the running of the team. McGrew currently has “interim” in his title and will be given the opportunity to prove he should have that tag lifted.

“There’s not going to be any magic wand that’s going to turn it upside down overnight,” Hendrick said. “Our goal is to make the Chase, and we think we can do it. Some guys are going to have to have some bad luck, and we have to run a ton better. We’ve got to be up there running in the top 10, top five and going for wins.

“All I can tell you is we’re going to do all we can do, and I take more responsibility for this than Lance McGrew or Dale Earnhardt or Brian Whitesell. I can’t drive the car and I can’t crew chief the car, but we’re going to have every soul that is involved in that organization trying to make that deal better. I think we’ve been in just kind of a funk that I can’t explain, they can’t explain, nobody can explain. Our goal is to get a lot better and make a real run at this Chase and get back on track.”

McGrew, who won the 2003 title in what is now the Nationwide Series title with Brian Vickers and also guided Kyle Busch in his first full season in NASCAR’s No. 2 series, has most recently worked with Brad Keselowski in the No. 25 Sprint Cup car. He will work with Keselowski this weekend and begin work with Earnhardt Jr. next week because he has not worked on the car Earnhardt Jr. will race at Dover, while he has guided the setup on Keselowski’s car.

In the Nationwide Series, McGrew has led Vickers, Busch, Mark Martin and Tony Stewart to wins.

“He’s won with just about everybody over there,” Hendrick said. “Mark has been very complimentary of his talents. So has Tony Stewart. … Lance on the box and Brian as an engineer and Rex are as good as I’ve got, and they’ve all worked together. That’s a huge piece of trying to make something work. Junior has worked with [McGrew] on the radio and has driven his cars. So I think that part of it makes it almost a natural, and I had a spot I could move Tony into where he could make a difference.”

McGrew has worked in research and development when not doing the part-time crew chief roles for JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports. The fact that he has worked with Earnhardt Jr. should play in his favor, Hendrick said, considering that Earnhardt Jr. probably will miss working with his childhood friend and cousin Eury Jr.

“I’ve looked at [Earnhardt Jr. work] with other crew chiefs, and he does a good job with them,” Hendrick said about Earnhardt Jr.’s experience in the Nationwide Series. “Certain drivers like crew chiefs to give them information in certain ways. But I think Junior is wanting to do good, and I don’t think he is going to be set in his ways in how the crew chief has to act or react.

“It’s always a learning experience when you make a change. If I sat here and told you I knew how this was going to turn out, I would be lying to you. I just feel like we’ve got too many talented people, and he’s got too much talent to fail. Saying that, we’ll just have to tune that every week.”

Hendrick did have other options for a crew chief if he wanted to look at some of his other teams. Ron Malec has been a substitute crew chief for Chad Knaus, and Jason Burdett, a former crew chief at Michael Waltrip Racing, works on Jeff Gordon’s team.

He also could have gone outside the organization and will consider doing so if the McGrew-Earnhardt Jr. pairing doesn’t work.

“I’m open to talented people – Tony came from outside,” Hendrick said. “I’ll look at folks from the outside, but we had to make a decision based on what we know, and the reason we went inside [is] I think Lance is an excellent guy, and I know he and Brian working together makes a pretty strong tandem. You can’t go out and find that kind of talent.”

So for now, the pressure is on McGrew and not Eury Jr.

And it’s still on Hendrick.

“The pressure that I thought I would have having these guys, I was concerned with having to manage Dale Jr., the superstar,” Hendrick said. “I thought that was going to be the pressure. I never thought it would be a competition or a failing to run good pressure. [Earnhardt Jr.] has been unbelievable. I haven’t asked the guy to do one thing that he hasn’t done. He has fit in like a glove. That part, I worried about, and there was nothing to worry about.

“This pressure is the worst kind of pressure because the better you have teams do and then you have a team that is falling behind, then the world feels like you’re not paying attention to it, and I take that personally. And then you’ve got the pressure of Dale Earnhardt, the most popular driver in the sport plus the guy that the sponsors have endorsed and he’s endorsed them, and that doubles the pressure. I can tell you this is probably the most pressure that I’ve felt in racing since I don’t know when.

"Hopefully, we’re going to ease some of that here in the weeks to come. I’ve got a new kind of pressure on whether I made a mistake, but I don’t think so. I feel relieved because I feel like we’ve got a new direction, and I’ve challenged everybody to let’s go get it done, and I’m confident we will, and I feel like I have at least given everybody an opportunity to take a deep breath.”