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closeCousins let hard talk fly - without hard feelings
Earnhardt Jr. and his crew chief don't hold back when they get riled at races
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Friday, Jun. 20, 2008
Driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. celebrates his LifeLock 400 victory with team owner Rick Hendrick (left) and crew chief Tony Eury Jr., at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich., Sunday, June 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Bob Brodbeck)
While working together on the No. 88 Chevrolets, there are times when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., sound exactly like members of the same family.
The kind of family you might see on “The Jerry Springer Show.”
They are cousins. But sometimes when they're discussing the race car or debating pit strategy, they sound less like people who share Thanksgiving dinners and more like folks who'd like to choke each other.
“Our team would look around like, ‘What is going on?'” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It takes people awhile, but as unhealthy as it sounds, it's healthy. It's how we get our end result.”
The cousins got the result they've been seeking for more than two years on Sunday at Michigan International Speedway when Earnhardt Jr. played out Eury Jr.'s fuel-mileage strategy to win the LifeLock 400. It ended a 76-race winless streak in points races for the sport's most popular driver and, at least for a moment, got Eury Jr. off the hook with the legion of “Junior Nation” fans who'd grown impatient waiting for that day to come.
Earnhardt Jr. has said time after time that he's behind Eury Jr., and he brought his cousin with him to his Hendrick Motorsports team this season. He wants to race with Eury Jr., not against him.
“He's one of the few people in this world where I can lay it down,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I can tell him like it is, and even if I'm wrong, terribly wrong, he doesn't change exactly how he feels about me.
“I'm fortunate. I know there are other great crew chiefs out there; but in my mind, he'll be considered one of the greatest, and I don't want to get beat by him.”
Eury Jr. was the car chief when Earnhardt Jr. moved up to the Cup series, working alongside Tony Eury Sr., who was the No. 8 team's crew chief at Dale Earnhardt Inc. But by the final race of the 2004 season, the last time Earnhardt Jr. was a serious contender for the Cup championship, the cousins had battled so much they were barely speaking.
Dale Earnhardt Inc. moved Eury Jr. to Michael Waltrip's team. By midway through 2005 though, Earnhardt Jr. realized that he wanted to work with Eury Jr. again. They're actually far more civil to each other now than they were before the year apart, but that doesn't mean it's all sunshine and lollipops.
Part of that is maturity and perspective, Eury Jr. said.
“I've been doing this for 14 years,” he said. “I've seen a lot of stuff come, and I've seen a lot of stuff go, and you realize right quick that life is short, and you've got to enjoy it while you're here.
“I can remember times that this was all I breathed, and when you lose certain things in your life, you learn to understand that racing isn't everything. I guess that's probably the biggest thing that's went over me in the past, and if I can see Dale Jr. happy, and I can run top five, and I can see my pit crew happy, and everybody is enjoying their jobs, and we can come here week in and week out, I'm perfectly happy with that.”
Still, these guys aren't the Osmonds.
“I'm his worst critic; he's my worst critic,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We want the best for each other. We want to see each other have an amazing time at this, and see each other just experience so much success.
“But if I feel like he's not going down the right path on any given Saturday or Friday, we talk about it, and we talk about it in our own way.
“There are times where we get together in the room, close the door, and we just go at it. And it's great, because I don't want to stand around in the garage biting my lip and get angry. We've got to go at it, and it's great. Because by the time it's over, we get the result we want, and especially with this opportunity and this equipment.
“You get better and older in the sport, and you become more professional in the way you talk and how you handle things, and there are things you quit saying, and there are times you stick your foot in your mouth less often. But there's one thing that I'll never change, and that's how Tony Jr. and I work together.
“People have just got to get used to it; that's just how we are. As long as we work together, which I hope is forever, we're going to go at it because that's just how we want the best for each other.”