Dale Earnhardt Jr Sees Progress

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday that he and his Hendrick Motorsports team are making progress in getting the No. 88 Chevrolet Impala SS back up to speed.

“You show up every week thinking you can win and hoping you can win,” said Earnhardt, who is working his third race weekend with new crew chief Lance McGrew. “So it’s not too soon to think about that and try to realize that is your ultimate goal. We seem to have good communication. … The communication seems to be going good and I hope to be realizing some success from it soon.”

Earnhardt qualified a disappointing 30th for Sunday’s LifeLock 400 at Michigan International Speedway, race No. 15 of 36 on the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule and event that he won last year. Still, despite qualifying poorly, Earnhardt is convinced he and McGrew are on the right track.

Earnhardt finished 27th last Sunday at Pocono Raceway — his third finish of 27th in the last five races — but he was relieved to learn that the ill handling on his car was due to a mechanical failure.

“In Charlotte we ran so poorly we didn’t have a mechanical piece on the car to point at and go, ‘That broke,’ or ‘That fell apart,’ and you feel terrible and you have no answers,” said Earnhardt. “We had a really good car in practice at Pocono and when the race started it felt pretty good for about 20 laps and then it just got so loose and we couldn’t fix it all day. We came back to the shop and found that part in the front suspension that had failed. It was good and it totally made sense. Actually in the middle part of the race I commented over to my engineer that I thought that part had failed. It was pretty good to be able to point at something and go well here’s the problem. At least you can start forming better solutions when you know what your problem is.”

Earnhardt said he can see a difference in just a few weeks working with McGrew. The frustration that he and his cousin and former crew chief Tony Eury Jr. had permeated the entire team, causing a distinctly unpleasant environment.

“We’re just putting our foot down and trying to work hard,” said Earnhardt. “The guys have got a better attitude. The team was really beat down over the last several months and that’s gotten better. That affects me and affects everybody. We just really want to see some results and things like that in the next couple of weeks to give us an assertion we need to move forward and keep improving. I think we will.”

One boost to Earnhardt’s spirits has been the support he’s gotten from the entire organization. “We’ll just see how it goes,” he said. “I feel pretty good about it. I think Rick (Hendrick, team owner) has gone far beyond what I anticipated in trying to get us assistance and trying help me. More so I’m surprised by how much the crew chiefs and drivers are participating and trying to help us. Everybody is just really trying to help and it feels great. That kind of thing has got to give you some confidence going in because I see that they want it to work just like
I do.”