Sometimes Dale Earnhardt Jr., mired in the worst slump of his career, thinks of leaving his troubled No. 8 team and heading off to drive his father’s fabled No. 3 for owner Richard Childress.
Sometimes he wants to reunite with Tony Eury Jr., who moved over to be crew chief for Michael Waltrip’s branch of Dale Earnhardt Inc. in the now-notorious swap of crews and cars.
Then his voice cracks with emotion as he says he thinks the world of his current crewmen and wants to stick with them. He promises they’ll be taken care of, whatever happens with him.
“Who knows?” he says. “I don’t know if any of us right now, even me, can guess where we’ll be in six months. As far as who’s driving for whom, and who’s crew chief for whom.”
Few get inside the plush office/lounge deep inside the No. 8 Budweiser team’s big transporter–and nobody gets inside Earnhardt’s head–unless he wants them there.
Come on in.
Meet Dale Earnhardt Jr., not the pop-culture icon but the human being, age 30, eyes watery with flu, stretched out on a huge L-shaped leather sofa, looking you in the eye.
One thing about Dale Earnhardt Jr. is he always looks you in the eye.
He’ll do his best to explain what happened, what is happening and what might.
Just please understand that “I have to be careful about what my feelings are, and conveying those feelings to people . . . because of this team right now,” he says. “I want to keep them focused and motivated.”
So his sentences may be as torn and mixed as his emotions.
No hope in sight
He is winless this year, and doesn’t count on winning again in the near future. Steve Hmiel, the DEI technical director who has come in to troubleshoot as interim crew chief, estimates it could be months before Earnhardt’s cars run well enough to win again.
Earnhardt is 18th in points, far from the top 10 that will qualify for the Chase for the Nextel Cup, NASCAR’s playoff system. That’s a terrible plummet for NASCAR’s most popular driver.
He won six races last year, made the Chase, and was a contender for the title until he wrecked himself out at Atlanta by gunning all-out for a race win, not just a decent finish for points, with two races remaining in the playoffs.
Now, Earnhardt is even beyond the safety-net rule that any driver within 400 points of the leader makes the Chase even if he’s outside the top 10. Earnhardt is 543 points behind leader Greg Biffle.
“I guess you have to come to the conclusion that it’s a great possibility that we won’t make it this year,” he says.
That’s not an easy conclusion to accept, for a man whose father won a record-tying seven NASCAR championships.
Six of those titles were won in Childress’ No. 3, a number Childress still has rights to but has kept off the tracks in remembrance of Earnhardt Sr., who was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500.
Moving on an option
Does Little E ever wonder if it might be better if he just moved on out of the DEI team his father founded and went to the Childress team his father drove for?
“Yeah!” he says, cheer suddenly rising in his hoarse voice, his eyes brightening. “And I think about that. And that’s still . . . that’s always an option.”
As the only man alive who could carry “3” on his door panels with public approval and indeed celebration, and with his Budweiser sponsorship willing to follow him wherever he goes, it would seem he could pick up the phone and virtually be there.
“Right,” he confirms. “Yeah.
“Richard and I haven’t really sat down at a desk to talk about it, but he owns the No. 3, and I want to drive the No. 3 race car before I retire. I’ve told Richard I want to finish my career in his race car.
“Or in a No. 3 car if he and Teresa [Earnhardt] can come to some agreement, or whatever.”
He means a transfer of ownership of the number. His stepmother, Dale Earnhardt’s widow, Teresa, owns DEI and has the ultimate say, although Richie Gilmore runs the company for her. She rarely comes to races or appears in public, and doesn’t speak with the media.
Earnhardt Jr. is under contract to her through 2007. But could something be worked out, and how long would it take?
“Oh, if everybody was for it, less than 24 hours, I would assume,” Earnhardt says. “But I don’t see that happening. I mean, not everybody’s gonna be cool about it. I don’t think Teresa would want me to leave in the first place.”
Is there any way he and Childress and Budweiser could work it out themselves, or would the entire decision rest ultimately with Teresa?
Earnhardt pauses, ponders.
“I don’t know if I want to be hypothetical with that,” he says.
The big swap
Flashback to last off-season, late fall and early winter, when the decision was made for the Earnhardt and Waltrip branches of DEI to swap not only their crews and all shop personnel but also their entire fleets of custom-built Chevrolets.
The decision has proved disastrous for the No. 8 branch, although Waltrip–with Earnhardt’s people and hardware–has improved this season. But that is relative. Waltrip, too, is winless this year.
During the decision process, “Teresa and Richie were really leaning on getting me and the Eurys separated,” Earnhardt says.
The Eurys, Tony Sr. and Tony Jr., were the only crew bosses Little E had ever worked with. Dale Jr. and Tony Jr. are first cousins–their mothers are sisters.
From Dale Jr.’s Busch Series grooming years (championships in 1998 and ’99), the Eurys graduated with him to the Nextel Cup level in 2000. There, Earnhardt won two races his rookie year and three the next, and they were established as a top team.
Team structure was that Eury Sr. was crew chief, in charge overall, and Eury Jr. was “car chief,” in charge of car construction and preparation.
But they all bickered, even argued vehemently at times. Having played together since they were toddlers, Tony Jr. and Little E found it hard to talk to each other professionally.
“I knew Tony Jr. was talented, but we were little kids toward each other,” Earnhardt says. Plus there was father-son squabbling between the Eurys, and there were arguments between Tony Sr. and Earnhardt via radio during races.
Even as the bickering seemed to reach its peak, last year was their best year together, with six Cup wins and a serious run at the season title.
“I wasn’t the one who walked into Richie’s office and said, `You gotta get us apart,'” Earnhardt says. “I would never have done that.”
As discussion of the swap intensified last fall, “We were all talking,” Earnhardt says. “I’d go into Richie’s office for an hour and then take off, and Steve [Hmiel, as DEI’s overall technical director] would go in there for an hour, and everybody . . .
“And every two days the scenario changed as to what we were gonna do.”
Earnhardt became so frustrated that “I was like, `Whatever y’all want to do, do. I’m just tired of coming in here every day and the scenario being different.’ I wasn’t for or against it. I was going with the flow. I said, `Y’all just do what y’all want to do and let me know.’ So that’s what they did.”
Out to prove a point
The order came down. The swap was on. Eury Sr. would be promoted out of either branch of the team to overall team manager. Eury Jr. would become Waltrip’s crew chief, and take all his people with him. Crew chief Pete Rondeau and his personnel would work for Earnhardt.
“When we first made the change, Tony Jr. and that team were out to prove they could run good without me,” Earnhardt says, “and that I wasn’t carrying them. They felt like people looked at them in that sense. So they were out to prove everybody wrong.
“They thought they were getting the shaft with Michael at first. They thought they were not getting a good race car driver with Michael, and that they were gonna take Michael and make him a winner, and that would prove they were the ones building the good race cars.”
So they set to work with a vengeance on the No. 15 NAPA cars. Meanwhile, Earnhardt’s new personnel were unsure of themselves, and the No. 8 side of the operation wasn’t aggressive enough in preparing cars for significant NASCAR rules changes for ’05, according to Hmiel.
Eury Jr.’s group “worked all winter moving forward [with the new technology],” Hmiel says, “where our [No. 8] guys didn’t work all winter, and now we’re kind of sweeping up the mess.
“We went 90 to 120 days when our competitors were working like mad, raising hoods up, raising front fenders up, looking at springs, and we were just sitting on our tails.
“They didn’t decide they weren’t going to work. They just got down the wrong path, didn’t react quickly enough. They probably didn’t realize they were in trouble soon enough.”
Beaten by nemesis
Earnhardt’s domination on restrictor-plate tracks vanished. He finished third in the Daytona 500 and then 15th at Talladega, while the driver his fans love to hate, Jeff Gordon, won both events.
On non-restricted tracks, things got even uglier. He has finished 20th or worse six times, and 30th or worse four times.
Rondeau was fired in May, before the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, and Hmiel took over. Earnhardt finished 33rd there, then 22nd at Dover, then 33rd at Pocono after falling behind with a blown tire, then 17th at Michigan in mid-June on a mediocre run.
And Hmiel says there’s just too much catch-up work to be done to predict winning anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Waltrip, who has only four career wins–all on restrictor-plate tracks–to show for 487 Cup starts, has been running better on non-restricted tracks, where he used to fare terribly. He actually outran Earnhardt at Phoenix in April, finishing second to Earnhardt’s fourth.
So as for Eury Jr. and the former No. 8 crew, “I feel like they’ve proved their point,” Earnhardt says.
Eury Jr.’s team and cars are looking “pretty sweet,” Earnhardt says. “I don’t want to insinuate anything. It’s still not halfway through the season.”
But there could be a consolidation that reunites Earnhardt and Eury Jr., which likely would send Waltrip looking for another job.
Truex his protege
Earnhardt’s protege, Martin Truex Jr., will graduate from Busch to Cup next year with DEI, bringing his crew up with him as a package.
“You’ve got one team coming up, and I don’t know whether we’re going to be a two- or three-car team,” Earnhardt says. “Right now it’s looking like a two-car team.”
If it’s two cars, somebody has to go, and that likely means Waltrip, whose contract runs out at the end of this season, unless Earnhardt himself departs. Waltrip has acknowledged all season he may soon be looking for a ride but figures he’ll find something.
Of all three drivers, “[Truex] is the best lock,” Earnhardt says.
One possibility is to “take these two [current] teams and make one good team,” Earnhardt says, meaning consolidating the 8 and 15 operations. If Hmiel returns to his higher-up job at DEI, that would leave Eury Jr. as the obvious crew chief.
That would leave the question of what to do with current No. 8 personnel, about whom Earnhardt cares deeply.
“I feel like these guys have got a lot of worries on their minds about what the future holds,” he says. “But they don’t need to worry about anything. The good people, the ones who are working hard and focusing and have got their heads on right, will always be taken care of.”
And now with Hmiel at the helm, “These guys are all working hard. They all get along. They all hang out together away from the track.
“I mean, it’s a good group of guys,” and this is where his voice breaks with feeling for them.
“And I don’t know why . . . I can’t . . . There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with Steve. I look at those cars and there’s nothing wrong with them.”
“This is such a fast-paced business that you can’t sit and watch for 90 days and then expect to make it up in 30,” Hmiel says. “It may take us 90. It may take us 180. But I don’t think we have 180 days.”
Resigned to struggle
Every time Hmiel finds one area where the No. 8 cars are mechanically behind and fixes it, another problem is created. Wheel-travel on the front was increased, but that made the tires rub the fenders. So the fenders had to be raised, then the hoods in turn must be raised . . .
One thing after another. So much to do just to get Earnhardt running decently again, let alone winning.
When he goes home on a weekday night, what Dale Earnhardt Jr., human being, feels is “a lot of disappointment,” he says.
All his NASCAR career he has had the very best of everything. Maybe, he reckons, this is for the best.
“Maybe I needed to struggle,” he says, “to test my character, or toughen my skin.”
Nobody can accuse him of being handed everything by his old man anymore. And, yes, in these worst of times, he thinks of his father.
“He definitely would have had this straightened out by now,” he says. “That’s not to offend anyone who’s in charge now. And I’m sure that Richie Gilmore has sat in his office, wishing he could talk to him just one more time. Well, hell, we all have.”
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ehinton@tribune.com
