Making car better is more than just crew chief's job

Maybe it's because he looks comfortable in a camouflage ball cap and speaks with a good-'ol-boy twang. Maybe it's because he doesn't have an engineering degree or a reputation as a mechanical genius. Maybe it's because he calls the shots for NASCAR's most popular driver, representative of a fan base for whom nothing is ever enough.

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Regardless, the pit box must seem like anything but a pedestal these days for Tony Eury Jr. A botched call that might have cost the No. 88 team a shot to win at Watkins Glen, cars that seem to be great early but rarely get better, a middling position in a Chase filled with other drivers making more dramatic moves -- it all adds up to heat for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s crew chief. Sure, he helped snap that ugly two-year winless streak, got his driver into the Chase, and has Junior lined up for his best points finish since 2006. But the masses want more. There isn't another person in NASCAR who catches such criticism for performing consistently well.

Because really, that's what Eury has done. The ill-informed out there like to dismiss him as the weak link in the chain, when in actuality Eury's touch with the new car has set the stage for everything Earnhardt has accomplished this year. Remember, it was the crew chief who made the move from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports weeks before last season ended, allowing him to learn the ways of his new organization and lay the groundwork for a season that would see Earnhardt return to his place among the sport's elite.

Yet still he's a pariah, the one blamed for every shortcoming, the one faulted every time a car that was in first place midway through a race winds up sixth or seventh. Here he is, with a driver running for the championship, and based on public perception you'd think he was struggling to stay inside the top 35. There's a sizable segment of Junior Nation out there that wants a risk-taker, wants a mechanical mastermind, wants someone else. It's as if Eury is the coach of a college football program that's winning, but not winning quite enough to satisfy a booster club whose aspirations don't quite mesh with reality.

Well, reality settled in Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and it came in the form of car owner Rick Hendrick -- who in so many words told Earnhardt to quit complaining and start giving his crew chief better information over the radio. He did it in his own way, of course, that genteel, fatherly manner that made it sound less like an order and more like advice. In radio conversations with Earnhardt and comments made later to the media, Hendrick mentioned Eury's name only sparingly. But it all came across as a tacit endorsement of a crew chief whose shortcomings may stem from the fact that he's not getting enough help.

"I know Tony will be better, and can help him more if [Earnhardt] is calmer when he is giving him information," Hendrick said. "When you say, 'I am so loose, I am so loose,' but you have to talk a little bit about your drive off and your entry so you know if you are going to fix one, are you going to hurt something else? I have had the benefit of listening to a lot of drivers over the years."