by Lee Spencer

Dale Jr. shake-up

Tony Eury Jr. is for Dale Earnhardt Jr., as HMS tries to turn around the struggling No. 88 team. It had to hurt Rick Hendrick to split up Dale Jr. and his cousin, but here's hoping the No. 88 can rebound soon. Spencer: With his crew chief out and the heat on, Dale Jr. says he'd leave his ride to help the No. 88. But he'd rather fight on. Crew chief-driver splits are nothing new. Here's what the No. 88 has to do to get back on track. Rick Hendrick finally came in and split up Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Eury Jr. But he should've acted sooner. Video: Rick Hendrick talks about the big change to Dale Jr.'s No. 88 team.

"Eventually the only person who will have to answer about my success is me," Earnhardt said. "I have to be the one that answers 'how much did I live up to my father's name? How much did I live up to his wins and what he accomplished? How much did I live up to everyone else's expectations — all my fans and the media's expectations?'

"Obviously when you put yourself at Hendrick Motorsports, you're in the best equipment and you should win races. And if you don't that really sort of makes for a hard argument that you had any business being there in the first place."

Hendrick is certainly holding up his end of the agreement. On the competition side, Hendrick has assembled his top engineering lieutenants to offer Earnhardt the best opportunity to reach those goals.

Team manager Brian Whitesell and chassis wizard Rex Stump have joined team engineer Tom Stewart to develop a gameplan to revive the No. 88 team. Lance McGrew, who assumes the crew chief's job next week at Pocono, was initially expected to work with Brad Keselowski on the No. 25 Chevrolet this weekend. Since that team failed to qualify, McGrew will remain at the track to work with and observe the No. 88 crew.

"I think Lance on the box and Brian as an engineer and Rex are as good as I've got and they all work together," Hendrick said. "So that is a huge piece of trying to make something work."

How great of a challenge will it be to rebuild the team of NASCAR's Most Popular Driver? On Thursday, Earnhardt said the crew chief that ultimately accepts the responsibility to lead the No. 88 team full time in 2010 "Is either cocky, confident as hell or crazy."

This weekend, that guy will be Whitesell, a Virginia Tech engineering grad and 17-year Hendrick Motorsports veteran, who has been thrust into the troubleshooter role before. In 1999, after Ray Evernham parted ways with the No. 24 team and Jeff Gordon after three championships, Whitesell, 45, filled a similar role. The pair ran three races together and won two of the events before Robbie Loomis assumed the crew chief's role for the 2000 season.

Gordon calls Whitesell "an all-around incredibly smart guy" with tremendous determination. Whitesell spotted for Alan Kulwicki before the champion's death and started at Hendrick as a truck driver for the No. 24 team. Since 1992, he's worked his way into an invaluable position within the company.

"He really orchestrated how we reorganized the No. 24 car when we added the No. 48 to Hendrick Motorsports," Gordon said. "And he had a lot to do with making the new building a two-car operation under that building, which in turn went to adding the other building for the No. 5 and the No. 88. So he's the guy that did the timeline for that. He had worked in a factory before so he understood assembly and how important it is to orchestrate all that.

"He understands how a race team works. So he's a guy that's certainly a key asset to Hendrick Motorsports. And then, in a time of need like this, he can be a crew chief. It seems like his skills are better suited from an engineering standpoint within the team, whether it be at the track or at the shop; not as a crew chief, but he can do a great job with that as well."

McGrew, 41, won the NASCAR Nationwide championship with Brian Vickers in 2003 and led the driver to his first Cup win at Talladega in 2006. McGrew has won with the biggest names in the sport — Gordon, Tony Stewart and Mark Martin. Hendrick praised McGrew's ability to call a race and described him as "a super-strong crew chief and really a field general."

Now, McGrew will be the miracle worker for the No. 88 crew.

"I don't know if any crew chief would sit here and tell you it's not a little daunting to have the most popular driver in your stable," McGrew said. "Yes, I have been very fortunate to work with a lot of different drivers and seeing a lot of different personalities. I believe it's going to be extremely challenging and its going to require a lot of work not so much on the equipment side but just on the personal side because I feel like you have to have a relationship with your driver and you have to have a relationship with your team in order to be successful.

"For me, I'm not the most outgoing person in the whole world and obviously the media blitz is not exactly what I prefer to be doing right now. It's part of the job and it's something I'll have to work on as well."

On the one instance Mark Martin was paired with McGrew at Las Vegas for the Nationwide Series race, the duo won. The driver has such admiration for McGrew that he was on his short list as a crew chief before Martin moved to Hendrick Motorsports.

"I really like working with him," Martin said. "He's a very capable crew chief and he's a very strong, take charge kind of guy. I like that. He's seems to take charge of situations pretty strongly and I think that's a really good thing.

"That will be good for Junior and I enjoyed that as well working with him. He's an incredibly knowledgeable guy."

Under new management, Earnhardt qualified 22nd at Dover on Friday. His average starting position at the track entering this weekend was 12.4. Earnhardt doesn't expect results overnight but he's optimistic the effort is present to turn the team around.

"We've got to work hard over the next six months to try to give ourselves that argument and move forward and I think we can do that," Earnhardt said. "I'm really confident in myself as a driver and I think we obviously have great race cars and amazing engines. Lance is a really talented guy that can bring a lot to the table and I think me and him get along really good. We've got a great support system around us, not only with Brian and everybody, but other teams as well. We really have everything we need.

"Hopefully, with a new attitude and a different type of communication and a different approach entirely to going to the race track, obviously, with someone else leading the team it's going to all be different. Hopefully that will work and hopefully that will get us what we want."