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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Drivers React To Earnhardt Saga
Kyle Busch said he thinks the crew chiefs get too much blame for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s struggles...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted May 29, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 M&M's Toyota, has strong feelings about Dale Earnhardt Jr's situation. (Photo: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
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Kyle Busch, never exactly close friends with Dale Earnhardt Jr. to begin with, said Earnhardt’s troubles this year are largely of his own making.

Asked Friday at Dover International Speedway what he thought of team owner Rick Hendrick replacing Tony Eury Jr. with Lance McGrew as crew chief of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, Busch pulled no punches.

“He’s (Earnhardt) the one who brought that crew chief on,” said Busch, who was replaced by Earnhardt at Hendrick prior to the 2008 season. “He’s the one who pulled so hard to bring (Tony) Eury Jr. in. It looked like it was working there in the beginning and it hasn’t worked since the summer of last year, really. Whatever makes them better, I guess.”

Busch and McGrew worked together at Hendrick Motorsports in the NASCAR Nationwide Series in 2004. Busch said Friday that McGrew has inherited a lot of turmoil by agreeing to be Earnhardt’s new crew chief, if only on an interim basis.

“He got his hands full having to deal with what’s going on and if Junior doesn’t run well then he’s going to be the problem again,” Busch said of McGrew. “It’s never Junior — it’s always the crew chief.”

But Greg Biffle, a driver who went through a midyear crew chief change of his own two years ago when Greg Irwin took over for Pat Tryson at the No. 16 Roush Fenway Ford, thinks the move will benefit Earnhardt.

“Really the only way to go is up,” said Biffle. “That’s a good thing. When you take the reins of something the graph is gonna be naturally up, so that’s a good thing. The other thing is it gets the whole team excited and it gets the driver excited. It’s like you see somebody qualify on the pole and then they run good. It’s momentum and that’s what a new crew chief does – it’s instant momentum, whether there is any or isn’t any, it’s started that wheel at 100 miles an hour because of the camaraderie around a new crew chief and a new program and all that.”

Biffle had it work for him and thinks it will work for Earnhardt and the No. 88 crew, too. “A lot of times you see a bump in performance, even when we swap crew chiefs and teams it’s that energy level that always gives a team a little bump, so I think you’ll see him pick up a little bit,” he said. “The whole team is gonna be working hard to come up with results and I think you’ll see a little bump in performance.”


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