By Sam Atwell

I think the attempt by Dale Earnhardt Junior to answer questions about his team, actually caused more questions to be asked. Even though they moved up to 19th in the point standings, they still had a mediocre run on Sunday. The debate is on about the future of crew chief Tony Eury Junior. Should Eury Junior take all the blame? Nope. There is enough blame to go around. There have been driver errors aplenty this season. Any criticism of Eury Junior is met with a bristling defense by Earnhardt Junior. He says it is his fault for the way they have run this season. He says it is unfair for Eury Junior to be under the microscope, but that is what you get when you are with the fan favorite. If there is going to be a fall guy in this scenario it is going to Eury Junior. You can’t make a change in driver for the 88 team.

The bulk of Dale Junior’s success came when Tony Eury Sr., was his crew chief. He has only two wins with Tony Eury Junior as his crew chief. To say they haven’t lived up to the expectations at Hendrick Motorsports would be an understatement. The 2008 season started with such promise, they were the most consistent team at Hendrick for the first part of the season. Then somewhere along the way it seemed the wheels came off. It hasn’t gotten any better. They have successfully avoided dropping out of the top 35, but there needs to be some marked improvement in the performance of the team in short order or there will be some changes made.

So is the problem in race decisions? Yes. Is it the driver and his focus and attitude? For the answer to that question I think we need to take a look at an answer Junior gave to a question in Bristol.  He try’s to explain the difference between racing to win and racing for fun. He said that it is up to the professionals and the experts to figure out what we need to do to be a winning race team. He says he just wants to have fun, like racing late models and going to the track with his buddies, that’s where he is at. Junior may have given the biggest insight into the performance of his team and that is the desire of the driver to be a champion. The next time his cell phone rings it may not be his buddies wanting to hang with Junior, it might be reality calling.

Tags: Dale Earnhardt Junior, Hendrick Motorsports, Tony Eury Junior