Waltrip's crew chief, Pete Rondeau, was moved to the
No. 8 team as Earnhardt's new crew chief.
In the swap Junior also lost several key crew members
who had taken him to 6 wins the previous season. To make
matters worse the decision was made at DEI to allow Tony
Eury Jr to take the cars he had built for Dale Jr to
Waltrip's team, and Junior was given Waltrip's cars.
Earnhardt and Rondeau got off to a promising start,
finishing 3rdin the Daytona 500. But the 2 never gelled,
and by race No. 12 in May Rondeau was out as Dale
Earnhardt Jr's crew chief.
Dale Jr explained that a comfortable level of
communication was never there between Rondeau and
himself.
"We found ourselves, I guess a lot of times, just
kinda out of touch in the middle part of the race. There
was a lot of things," Earnhardt said of Rondeau. "I
didn't feel like personally I was getting a lot of
information about what changes were being done on the
car and I'm sure that I wasn't giving him enough
information about what those changes were doing."
Steve Hmiel, DEI's technical director, was named as
interim crew chief beginning with the Memorial Day
Weekend Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte. It would be Hmiel
who would get Dale Jr his only win of the season in
July.
With 30 wins as a crew chief for Mark Martin and
Richard Petty, Hmiel certainly had the credentials to
serve as Earnhardt's pit captain. What's more, the 2
also had a great line of communication. On race days
Steve Hmiel had been Junior's spotter.
But Hmiel wasn't interested in another full-time gig
as a crew chief, and speculation centered around Tony
Eury Jr coming back to the No. 8 team.
In the meantime the duo of Steve Hmiel and Dale
Earnhardt Jr endured a string of bad races, not
finishing higher than 17th in their 1st 5 attempts
together.
Then in July at Daytona they managed a 3rd place
finish. The following week at Chicago Earnhardt claimed
his only win of the season thanks to a fuel mileage call
from Hmiel.
The last race to qualify for the Chase to the
Championship was set for Richmond in September, and
Earnhardt failed to qualify for 1 of the 10 spots in the
Chase.
The following week he would have his 3rd crew chief
of the season. Tony Eury Jr was once again paired with
Earnhardt, this time as crew chief.
Although the 2 are cousins, bad blood between them
had forced the initial separation.
"We didn't change the teams because of a performance
issue, we changed it because of an attitude issue
between me and Tony Junior" Earnhardt said. "We changed
it, maybe not for the right reasons, but the change did
what it was supposed to it. It fixed his attitude and it
fixed my attitude."
"It's not always greener on the other side for either
one of us. We both look at each other and talk to each
other today totally different. I think that gives us
that opportunity to work together in the future that we
wouldn't of had if we would have run ourselves totally
apart."
For the final 10 races Earnhardt scored 3 top 10's,
but he also had 4 finishes of 34th or worse. 3 of those
were due to crashes.
At Talladega in October Dale Jr was involved in a
huge wreck on lap 20 that took him out of the race. The
crash was caused when Jimmie Johnson bump-drafted
Elliott Sadler in turn 1, sending Sadler spinning.
Johnson then hit Sadler in the left quarter panel,
leaving Dale Jr nowhere to go. Junior hit the No.48 car
of Johnson, heavily damaging both cars.
Dale Earnhardt Jr was out of the race early at his
best track; he had won at Talladega 5 times previously.
In the October race at Charlotte NASCAR considered
calling the race early due to widespread tire problems.
About every 20 laps or so someone was losing a
right-front tire. Goodyear blamed the problem on low air
pressure, while race teams blamed the problem on a tire
compound that was too hard.
On lap 62 Dale Jr blew his right front tire, sending
the No. 8 Chevy hard into the outside wall -- leaving
him next-to-last with a 42nd place finish.
