Return to Michigan has Earnhardt feeling positive

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- One year ago, all the pieces seemed in place. Dale Earnhardt Jr. coasted home on fumes to win at Michigan International Speedway and snap a 76-race winless skid. He and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. had a strong position in the standings and a solid handle on the new Sprint Cup car. All the promise and potential that his move to Hendrick Motorsports held appeared to be coming to fruition.

2008 Flashback

Relive Dale Earnhardt Jr's first victory for Hendrick Motorsports last year at Michigan.

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And yet here he is, once again at Michigan in the springtime, and once again trying to put the pieces together. Given all that Earnhardt has been through over the past year -- from finishing last in the Chase, to getting off to a slow start this year, to having his crew chief reassigned -- that skid-busting victory on the 2-mile oval last June seems a very long time ago. And yet, NASCAR's most popular driver feels that familiar old burst of confidence just by walking through the gates.

It helps that Earnhardt is continuing to build on his relationship with new crew chief Lance McGrew, who succeeded Eury two weeks ago at Dover. It helps that he has a good car, which was second-fastest behind Hendrick teammate Mark Martin in Saturday's final practice for the LifeLock 400. It helps that everyone associated with the No. 88 program can see little glimpses of progress.

"The communication with the team is good. Lance is doing a great job. All of the other guys on the road crew have stepped up, and what that means to me is, when I come in here and I can see the different disposition on everyone's face, I'm more positive about what kind of lap time I'm going to get ready to run in the car," said Earnhardt, who will start 30th in Sunday's event.

"Lance and I have been talking during the week about everything that comes to mind, and having consistent discussions to try to understand where each of us is at, what our opinion and attitude is. I think it just feels like this should be turning around and should begin to work, and I feel confidence. It gives me confidence. I know that in this sport, you can be great one day and not so great the next. We ran really, really bad and it was very frustrating during the race last week, but even though I didn't know at the time what had went wrong with the car, even at the end of the race I said I still see a lot of positive things happening with the team and feel good about Lance."

Earnhardt's results thus far with McGrew have been mixed, with a 12th-place finish in their debut at Dover followed by a 27th-pace run last weekend at Pocono. But Earnhardt takes comfort in knowing that his Pocono car was good in practice, and that the loose condition he fought during the race was the result of a broken front suspension part the team identified only after the vehicle was brought back to the Hendrick shop.

"It totally made sense," Earnhardt said. "Actually, in the middle part of the race, I commented over to my engineer that I thought that part had failed. It was pretty good to be able to point at something and go, 'Well, here's the problem.' At least you can start forming better solutions when you know what your problem is."

Team owner Rick Hendrick has commissioned a small army to help turn the No. 88 team around, complementing McGrew with a dedicated team manager and chassis engineer. And then there's the driver himself, who has committed to becoming more professional and being more adaptable to change. Although this revamped team has yet to crack the top 10, Earnhardt can already feel the difference.

"The guys have got a better attitude. The team was really beat down over the last several months, and that's gotten better. That affects me and affects everybody. We just really want to see some results and things like that in the next couple of weeks to give us an assertion we need to move forward and keep improving. I think we will," he said.

"We'll just see how it goes. I feel pretty good about it. I think Rick has gone far beyond what I anticipated in trying to get us assistance and trying help me. More so I'm surprised by how much the crew chiefs and drivers are participating and trying to help us. Everybody is just really trying to help, and it feels great. That kind of thing has got to give you some confidence going in, because I see that they want it to work just like I do."

Now Earnhardt is back at Michigan, the site of his first Hendrick breakthrough last year. Is it too soon in the rebuilding project for him to hope for a repeat performance?

"You show up every week thinking you can win and hoping you can win," he said. "So it's not too soon to think about that and try to realize that is your ultimate goal. We seem to have good communication. We had a pretty good practice [Friday], but a bad set of tires so we didn't get to make a real hard mock run. I was pretty happy with how things worked out. The communication seems to be going good, and I hope to be realizing some success from it soon."