NASCAR Thread.

[Studentdriver]

It's a done deal.

Earnhardt Jr.'s crew chief replaced

By David Newton
ESPN.com
Archive

CONCORD, N.C. -- Tony Eury Jr. is out as the crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Team manager Brian Whitesell will be the crew chief this weekend at Dover. Lance McGrew will take over next week on an interim basis for NASCAR's most popular driver.

"Our performance hasn't been where it should be," Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick said in a prepared statement announcing the change. "It's impossible to pin that on any one factor, but a change is the right decision at this point. We have a plan in place, and we're going to move forward with it."

The team said Whitesell, who won two of seven races as Jeff Gordon's interim crew chief in 1999, and Rex Stump, the team's lead chassis engineer, will support McGrew on a full-time basis, with team engineer Tom Stewart on the No. 88 pit box to assist with race strategy.

"We're going to put our full resources toward improving the situation and winning races," Hendrick said. "It's going to be a collective effort that includes all of our drivers, all of our crew chiefs and all of our engineers. Everyone in our company will be involved on some level."

Eury will move from the crew chief position into a role in the team's Hendrick Motorsports' research and development group.

"I have mixed feelings, and that's just natural," Eury said. "But I enjoy working at Hendrick Motorsports, and this is where I want to be. I'll do whatever I can to help all of our teams and try to be a part of another championship. I think a new challenge will be good."

Hendrick said he discussed the move with Eury on Wednesday night. "I want him here, he wants to be here, and he's going to be a big contributor to our future success," Hendrick said. "I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the job he's done and for the caliber of person that he is."

Hendrick indicated on Tuesday that a change was being considered when he did not give Eury the vote of confidence he has given him on several other occasions this season.

"Could it change?" Hendrick said following a meeting with NASCAR officials at the Research and Development Center. "We're talking about things. We're going to make decisions as the days go by, but we haven't made any decisions as it stands now."

Earnhardt is 19th in points, 203 behind Hendrick Motorsports teammate Mark Martin for the 12th and final Chase spot, after finishing 40th in Monday's rain-delayed, rain-shortened-Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

That was the third straight race in which NASCAR's most popular driver had finished 27th or worse since a second-place finish at Talladega.

That apparently forced Hendrick's hand.

"We're always concerned when we have a car not run well," he said. "We're always meeting and trying to figure out how to make it better. We've got to come up with a plan and we've got to work toward that.

"We thought we had a pretty good plan coming to Charlotte. I was fairly pleased with the All-Star race and thought we would do better [Monday.] We weren't."

Earnhardt, as he has been much of this season, easily had the worst finish of the four Hendrick Motorsports cars on Monday. Jimmie Johnson was 13th, but ran up front most of the day before getting caught back in the field during the final caution for rain. Gordon was 14th, but felt he had a car that was "coming" before rain stopped the race after 227 of 400 laps. Martin was 17th after running up front early.

"We just missed the setup," Hendrick said. "I can't explain why. We basically were the same for all four cars. They all fought a lot of the same problems early on. As probably a group we were off. We've been better at Charlotte than we were.

"Junior, we never could get that car adjusted back."

Hendrick's lack of commitment to the Earnhardt-Eury partnership came two months after he said there were no plans to separate the two.

"I have no intention of making any changes," Hendrick said the Wednesday after the March 22 race at Bristol. "I have all intentions of making it better. These guys are working their butts off ... and I have to believe in the next few weeks we're going to see some real success out of that crowd.

"My philosophy is you tweak it and inch forward before you cut it apart and completely rebuild it. I see a lot of effort from everybody on the team."

Hendrick said then Earnhardt and Eury each told him they would part if he didn't feel they were working well together. Eury told ESPN.com two weeks ago if Earnhardt didn't make the Chase, he wouldn't blame Hendrick for making a change.

Earnhardt's relationship with his cousin has come under question many times over the years. It came to a head after a rough start to this season that had NASCAR's most popular driver 35th in points after two races.

Earnhardt came to Eury's rescue at Bristol, saying he felt bad for him.

"He gets criticized so bad," he said. "Everybody in this room ... knows how smart of a guy he is, certainly knows he's a good mechanic and a solid crew chief.

"He just wanted to do this for a living just like I do. I'll take the fall. I'd rather be crucified than him. Every time I read in the paper that people are on his case I feel like I'm sending my brother to jail for a crime I committed."

Three straight poor performances apparently sealed Eury's fate.

http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/nascar/cup/news/story?id=4211821

 

[RACECAR]

Now we'll see if this will provide any results.

 

[L_Hamilton]

I hope so. For Jr's sponsor's sake.

 

[TS]

I hope so. For Jr's sponsor's Rich Hendrick's sake.

Fixed.

If Jr. doesn't start running up front with the 24, 48 and 5, Jr. Nation is gonna start putting blame on the boss for not providing their man with the same equipment. Despite that not being the case, because you know them Junior fans refuse to say that their driver isn't as good as the other Hendrick drivers.

 

[Studentdriver]

I can't imagine that Hendrick gives a damn what "Junior Nation" thinks.

 

[TS]

I can't imagine that Hendrick gives a damn what "Junior Nation" thinks.

He may have been feeling some pressure coming from that side when he thought about making the crew chief change, but I would think that he only made that decision just based on Jr.'s sub-par performance so far this year, not on what his fans thought.

 

[TS]

Any of you folk catch the finish to the Nationwide race today?

Spoiler

Brad Keselowski won, but after Joe Gibbs teammates Joey Logano and Kyle Busch tangled on a restart with 3 laps to go

 

[Metar]

Waiting for an upload on Racing Underground of it..

 

[TS]

Any of you folk catch the finish to the Cup race today?

Spoiler

Cause that battle between Stewart & Johnson in the closing laps was awesome to watch! Johnson ultimately won though.

 

[DaddyVDUB]

Yeah I happened to catch it , J Johnson flexed his muscle and showed he IS the class of NASCAR his team is just plain BETTER than the rest. Oh and he showed his tremendous driving skill in running down and setting up smoke for the win. 👍 Looks like Dale jr just is'nt that good.

 

[nissan tuner]

Dover has one hell of a racetrack! And what an exciting finish!

 

[Northstar]

Anyone think we may be down to a 2 manufacturer series soon?
Dodge is basically out anyways but the FIAT merger may effect that. GM is bankrupt so they may have to pull out if they have to cut their motor sports budget.

We may be down to Ford & Toyota. Could you just imagine the #24 DuPont Ford driven by Jeff Gordon passing the #29 Pennzoil Toyota.

 

[WallRunner]

Nope, I can imagine the Generic #24 of Jeff Gordon without Chevy decals or backing passing the similarly set up #29 of Kevin Harvick though.

Thing is teams run their own engines that are built at their own shops based off a manufacturer's design. If GM or Dodge pulls out they'll take the Chevy/Dodge logos off the cars but still run just like they used to. (Much like NW teams with no manufacturer backing still run the decal/shape package of the car they are driving.)

One thing that could occur though, that I am assuming the rules allow, is that the teams would be able to modify the shape of the nose of the car that is normally made standard by the manufacturer, and experiment with it to find better aerodynamics.

From,
Chris.

 

[Northstar]

The only problem is that they can only run that way for 3 years on a old design(I learned that from when Dodge switched to the Charger but Penske ran the Intrepid body for a couple races.). That is just for models though, not sure about what happens if an entire brand pulls out, it might be even shorter.

 

[TS]

If GM or Dodge pull out of NASCAR, it wouldn't affect the teams directly, they would just most likely lose factory money for use on R&D.

Rick Hendrick said yesterday that he would stick behind GM, not only as owner of Hendrick Motorsports, but as owner of 27 GM dealerships.

 

[Northstar]

Apparently GM isn't going to pull out of any series it is currently in. However I wouldn't be surprised if Dodge pulled out since they just aren't very competitive anymore. Penske will go back to racing Fords and RPM will switch to Chevrolet's.(Just my predictions).

 

[TS]

Apparently GM isn't going to pull out of any series it is currently in. However I wouldn't be surprised if Dodge pulled out since they just aren't very competitive anymore. Penske will go back to racing Fords and RPM will switch to Chevrolet's.(Just my predictions).

There was a rumor a couple years back that Penske would switch to Toyota, about the time that rumors that Gibbs would also switch, but Penske stayed with Dodge and everyone knows what happened with Gibbs.

Petty's team would probably switch to Chevy if Dodge left, they ran Pontiac's in the 80s and 90s when Dodge pulled out the first time.

 

[toyota_gt1]

Alright boys, don't forget about the Prelude to the Dream later today. First time i'm gonna get to watch it live on pay per view. Can't wait.

Man I haven't been here in a long time. The GT5 E3 news drug me here. It's good to be back.

 

[Metar]

One thing that could occur though, that I am assuming the rules allow, is that the teams would be able to modify the shape of the nose of the car that is normally made standard by the manufacturer, and experiment with it to find better aerodynamics.

I thought with the CoT, even that is standard? As in, only the grille and lights stickers make the difference?

 

[TS]

I thought with the CoT, even that is standard? As in, only the grille and lights stickers make the difference?

Not exactly, each nose on all the cars are "cut" so the decals used fit flush on the nose, so without the decals (like on test mules) you can still tell which car is which by looking closely at the nose.

 

[Metar]

Ah, I see. I always thought it looked slightly different - the Camry and Chevy look a little flatter compared to the Fords and Dodges - but discarded that as a trick of the stickers. The Camry road car looks surprisingly close to the NASCAR sticker-package, too.

 

[TS]

Woot, double file restarts in Sprint Cup starting this weekend at pocono!

 

[mwoodski]

Woot, double file restarts in Sprint Cup starting this weekend at pocono!

Badass!

 

[RACECAR]

Damn, NASCAR fans have got some exciting stuff to cheer about this week.

 

[Metar]

...and I still haven't watched the Dover race. The file is there on my PC, but finals got in the way. At least RU now has a regular NASCAR uploader whose torrents "pay back" to 1:1 ratios, so I can watch it guilt-free.

 

[Nicksfix]

Damn, NASCAR fans have got some exciting stuff to cheer about this week.

For those watching this weekends race,you may want to keep your eyes and ears peeled for any information about Nascar being in GT5.Who knows,maybe one of the announcers may get on this subject and leak a little more information.

 

[TS]

mikemulhern.net

POCONO, Pa.

Drivers says NASCAR officials are telling them now changes are coming with controversial car-of-tomorrow, but no one seems to know what NASCAR might do, or when.

"I think they're going to go look into the engines -- to maybe reduce horsepower," Denny Hamlin says.

"Maybe do something to the cars…but it's tough to say whether they're going to add downforce or take it all away.

"But I think they are going to make changes to the car. And I think it's going to be after a lot of meetings with team engineers and finding out what we need to do to make them better."

Two of the biggest problems with the new COT is --- that it doesn't want to turn in the corners, so teams are doing really farout things with the chassis to help it turn (once reason apparently for some of the Dover tire issues); and that it has such a high center-of-gravity and so much right-side weight that it eats up right-side tires.

Kyle Busch says "I'd like to see NASCAR do something to help these cars – either by taking 100 pounds out of these cars, or taking some right-side weight out.

"We've all gotten smarter in building these cars, and now we all have maybe 200 pounds of lead, or rather tungsten, in the car (as ballast)."

So, if you were one of the head honchos at NASCAR's R&D department, what changes would you make to the COT to make it better? (taking it away is not an option)

 

[Metar]

As Busch suggests, if right-side tyre wear is the issue, then the best way to go is:

A) Increasing downforce. Unintuitively, more downforce, and the resulting increase in grip, actually reduces tyre-wear and graining. Front downforce, preferably to help the car turn.
B) Moving more ballast to the bottom-left side, both improving the handling and decreasing loads on the right side tyres.

More importantly, I think, is the downforce in traffic issue that drivers have been complaining about. To solve that, they might do what the OWG did in Formula 1, and run a wind-tunnel and test drivers running two cars in various positions, and see what can be done to improve the situation.

And perhaps design a special "Superspeedway Car" designed to allow safe racing without restrictors?

 

[opendriver]

So, if you were one of the head honchos at NASCAR's R&D department, what changes would you make to the COT to make it better? (taking it away is not an option)

Sealed engines?

 

[mwoodski]

.

And perhaps design a special "Superspeedway Car" designed to allow safe racing without restrictors?

That would need the biggest wickerbill/wing angle EVER, haha.

I'm not too sure what I'd do to be honest.