ORLANDO, Fla. — If this whole crew chief hysteria sounds familiar, that's because it is.
Of course, last year's discussion was on a much smaller scale. It was about Jeff Gordon. The mid-30s, might be past his prime, already has four championships Jeff Gordon. It was odd that he wasn't winning, but NASCAR nation wasn't all that torn up about it. It did, however, question his drive, his ability and especially his crew chief.
How silly all that seems now.
Now the hysteria surrounds Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR's most popular driver, and the whole discussion has reached an unbearable shrillness. During the last three weeks the calls for Earnhardt's crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., to be deposed and beheaded have grown louder and louder. News organizations and fans alike have said Earnhardt's partnership with his crew chief and cousin is preventing Earnhardt from winning.
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Soon enough this will all seem silly, too, for a very simple reason.
Rick Hendrick knows what he's doing.
"I can tell you this," Hendrick said on Wednesday. "Both of these guys, both Junior and Tony have told me, that if they . . . need to be split, that they understood. And that's my call, and I'm not ready to make that call, not even close."
Trust him a little, Junior Nation. His patience worked for Gordon.
What's often used as evidence for how poorly Earnhardt and Eury work together is that Earnhardt has won only three races in the last five seasons. But there are reasons for that.
Three of those seasons were at Dale Earnhardt Inc. when Earnhardt worked for his stepmother under increasingly miserable situations.
"Miserable," is exactly the word Earnhardt used when he described to me his mental state right before he moved to Hendrick Motorsports.
Leaving DEI made Earnhardt happy, practically giggling at what lay ahead. But happiness and comfort are only one factor in winning races, as Earnhardt discovered in 2008.
At first, everything was perfect.
Earnhardt won the Bud Shootout, then his leg of the twin 150 races, thus turning himself into the favorite for the Daytona 500. How quickly we forget that, as the rest of Hendrick Motorsports floundered (and Hendrick pointed this out himself), the No. 88 team was their best.
Junior's only points win came at Michigan, and that was on fuel mileage.
Which brings us to the other thing everybody forgets about last season: only 12 drivers won races and only six won multiple races. Three — Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson — combined to win 24 of the 36 races.
Not one person at Hendrick Motorsports is saying Earnhardt's winless 2009 performance is OK, and neither am I. It's simply not up to the standards of that organization.
But neither was Gordon's 2008 performance.
Hendrick worked to fix the 24 team's issues, but he didn't panic. He didn't fire Gordon's crew chief Steve Letarte. The team got better, and now Gordon leads the points standings.
And as Earnhardt struggles to find his footing, he constantly jumps to Eury's defense. Last week he went so far as to say he didn't care if he and Eury were perfect together or not, working with Eury makes him happy.
It sounds like Earnhardt is choosing happiness over winning. The thing is, the two aren't mutually exclusive. When he's happy, all other things equal, he runs better. Say what you will about his 2008, but it was dramatically better than his 2007.
Wednesday morning Hendrick held a meeting with Earnhardt, Eury, and several top competition people at Hendrick Motorsports. It lasted nearly three hours. They talked about how to improve and what it would take to run better this weekend in Martinsville.
"These guys are working their butts off no different than Stevie and Jeff did, and I've got to believe in the next few weeks, we are going to see some real success out of that crowd," Hendrick said. "It's just one of those things that, you know, you can shuffle the deck and start all over, but when you see little things, a little tenth here, a tenth there, with the people in the team, with the preparation, with the plan getting to the racetrack . . . I think it's going to pay us some huge dividends."
When it does, everyone will finally calm down.
But they should already because this Rick Hendrick guy, he knows what he's doing.
Trust that.
