Will Little "E" Improve Without Eury JR?

When Dale Earnhardt Jr. made the jump to Hendrick Motorsports the racing world was set ablaze with high expectations for the third generation driver. I among many others was in that category. Rick Hendrick is one of the top teams in NASCAR racing and has been for years. He has the best equipment, good sponsorship, and seemingly endless resources. So what is the disconnect between the 88 car and success?

Just about anybody will tell you that the whole problem is Tony Eury Jr. I was on that bandwagon for quite some time that all you had to do was get rid of Eury and Earnhardt would instantly be in victory lane celebrating win upon win upon win with his team contending for the Sprint Cup Championship. With Lance McGrew atop the pit box the 88 team had a decent finish at Dover coming home in the 12th spot. Nothing to usually brag about but after a dismal 40th place finish just one week prior my hat comes off the the whole 88 organization. It was definitely an improvement over the usual running of Earnhardt's team.

I would argue the point, however, that this is not solely because of the Crew Chief shakeup. Rick Hendrick has made a lot of changes to this entire race team trying to make it run better, not just changing the position who is calling the shots on Sunday. You also need to keep in mind that a lot of mistakes on pit road are costly and the driver can be blamed for this on the 88 team as of late. It is hard to make changes to the car if you completely miss your pit. Not to mention that if the Crew Chief and the Driver cannot effectively communicate than they Will never be able to contend on the level that Rick Hendrick and JR Nation expect. When Earnhardt tells his team "i don't know, it is awful just fix it" it makes it very hard to adjust to.

I believe that Junior will continue to do better if for only one reason that he can communicate with his new interim Crew Chief much more clearly and effectively than he could with Eury. But, he also has to be patient in the car and avoid making costly mistakes on pit road. There are good things ahead for the 88 team with the changes that Rick Hendrick made but lets not lay all the blame at the feet of Tony Eury Jr. Dale caused a lot of the issues his race team was having.

This weekend the 88 team roles into Pocono where Junior will be making his 17th start there. He has four top fives and five top ten finishes over his last 16 starts