by Larry McReynolds

Story gallery ... Ordinal out of range

This weekend at Loudon, N.H., . I'm hearing that there will be an announcement this weekend about Michael Waltrip's future, and it involves NAPA. With Waltrip — and it looks like his sponsor — leaving Eury Jr. and the No. 15 car, what does DEI have to lose?

But I'm sure Eury doesn't have a magic wand in his back pocket that he can wave over that red car and its driver and win five races like they did last year. When a husband and wife have been married for a long time, and they temporarily go their separate ways, it's tough to come back together. They aren't going to be able to start working together like nothing happened. They're going to have to learn each other again, and then they've got to figure out what's wrong with their racecars.

As a crew chief, my relationship pecking order was God, my wife, my kids and my racecar driver. And it had better be that order if you're going to be successful. I've said it time and time again. That's what worked for the drivers with whom I had the most success, in particular Davey Allison and Ernie Irvan.

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For a husband and wife to be successful, they have to be best friends, and if a driver and a crew chief are going to be successful, they had better be good friends with each other. Jimmie Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus has told me that Kyle Busch and the No. 5 crew chief Alan Gustafson hang out together. Gustafson hangs out at Busch's motorcoach at night, and they eat and play videogames together.

I didn't play videogames with my drivers because we didn't have them back then, but I did the same things with Allison and Irvan. If we had an off weekend, Ernie and Kim would come over to our house, or my wife and I would go over to the Irvan's house. We were best friends.

Eury needs to get in the No. 8 shop, see what he's got first and then work from there. The most important thing is for those two guys to get back on the same page before the end of the year and build from there.

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FOX race analyst Larry McReynolds has more than 25 years of NASCAR experience as a mechanic, crew chief and broadcaster. He and his fellow Crew Chief Club members take you behind the wall at www.crewchiefclub.com.

"How to Become a Winning Crew Chief" will be on bookstore shelves soon, or you may order your own autographed copy from www.DWStore.com.