Earnhardt hopes change puts him on winning track

CONCORD, N.C. -- The late Dale Earnhardt built a race team that was supposed to win championships for his son. In his sixth full season, the team is no closer to capturing a title than it was the day it was formed.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. began preparations Thursday for the Coca-Cola 600 with a new crew chief after Pete Rondeau was let go after just 11 races.

The shake-up smacks of panic at DEI, where Junior's flagship team has yet to win a race this season and has led just five laps the entire year. He heads into Sunday's race 11th in the points standings with just five top-10 finishes.

"We found ourselves a lot of times just out of touch in the middle part of races," Earnhardt said. "There was a lot of things. I didn't feel like personally I was getting a lot of information about changes that were being done on the car. I am sure I wasn't giving him enough information.

"I felt like we needed to make a change. I wanted to give it a good shot ... but it was a situation where we want results now, we are looking for results now."

Junior had results with the crew chief combination of Tony Eury Sr. and Tony Eury Jr., his uncle and cousin, whom the elder Earnhardt put in charge of his son's team. The tandem led Junior to two Busch Series titles before moving up to the Cup series in 2000.

He went on to win 15 Cup races with the Eurys, including a career-high six last year and the Daytona 500. But Junior and his cousin fought like brothers, and the team was torn apart at the end of the season.

Eury Jr. was moved over to teammate Michael Waltrip's crew, and Junior said the infighting makes a reunion with the Eurys unlikely.

"It's just hard to leave those guys because my Dad put me with those guys," Earnhardt said. "Tony Sr. told me on several occasions that he and Dad had conversations about us winning championships together."

Now Earnhardt will chase his first Nextel Cup title with Steve Hmiel running the No. 8 Chevrolet. Hmiel, the longtime technical director at DEI, will try to implement engineering and technology to get Junior back up front.

The one knock on the Eurys was that they struggled to embrace engineering advances the way most of NASCAR's top teams have. Rondeau apparently shied away from using computer knowledge, as well.

"We'll use engineering unilaterally, we'll bounce aerodynamic things off of each other, our tire guys will work together," Hmiel said. "It will be more similar to what the teams that are winning all the races are doing and that's talking among themselves and using all the assets that are available to them to become a better race team."

Earnhardt admits his team has lacked the technology to be an elite team.

"We've never had a full grasp on being a dominant team within any part of the season," he said. "It comes down to the engineers during the offseason as to who can figure out where you need to be before you ever get to the race track."