More confident Dale Jr discusses season, McGrew and more

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is in the top 10 in points for the first time since 2008, talked to the media Friday had quite a few insights. Here's a few of the things Dale Jr. said Friday.

 

Q: Jimmie Johnson says that he sees you putting more pressure on yourself and allowing others to do it to you to make you better. Is that accurate?

 

DALE JR: "I don't feel uncomfortable. Me and Lance (McGrew) have just, he made a lot of changes in the offseason and he made a lot of calls that he had to make and he had to pull the trigger on a few things, the guys and myself included, really sort of forget, erased what happened in the past and tried to start fresh and imagine a better future for ourselves and imagine ourselves being more competitive.

 

"The changes helped a lot, the people that we moved in, moved around. (Mentioned his new engineer has been "a big help''). The relationship with Lance, I've worked with about six different crew chiefs. We're not kin or related, we have to respect each other more becuase I think of our different backgrounds and upbringings, but  the longer we work together, the more respect we have for each other. I read in an article where he said there's a lot of respect back and forth. He backs me up a litlte bit more than I'm used to, I guess. He sort of has my back in a lot of situations.

 

"The reason why I was able to keep my composure (at Bristol after his rant) is becuase I knew he wanted the same result that I wanted. I knew that he was pulling for me, we were on the same path and on the same page even though I was upset, I wasn't upset at him. I was upset at NASCAR (for the speeding penalty). I wasn't upset at anybody on the team, I just had to get it off my chest.

 

"I just think the reason we're running better is because of the changes we've made in the offseason mainly and that has given us some confidence, the guys that were already there are more confident because of those changes. Everybody can sort of see a little different step in our walk. Last year when we were struggling, say we showed up and unolad the car and it was a litlte bit off, it was really easy to accept it and just, disappointed as hell, there was no reaction of we can fix it. You didnt' really have that feeling of confidence that that could happen. Say it was the practice before qualifying in any of those races in those last 10, that was sort of the feeling that I had. I figured if we did fix it, oh well. If we didn't that wouldn't surprise me either.

 

"But this year you  had that feeling that anytime there's this little thing that goes wrong, you've got that little switch that comes on where you go, we can probably fix this and this is not a problem because we just have so much more communication going on It's good. Lance has done a lot of great things and he started off when he came as a crew chief building a few cars that he thought needed to be a little different in some ways and I drove them and liked them and then in the offseason once he understood that that was his position and his right to do so, he made the changes to the team. He deserves a lot of credit.''

 

Q: How long has it been since you were confidence you could fix things as you are now?

 

DALE JR: "Probably three-quarters of the way through the first season with Rick (Hendrick). We were running pretty good all year and then it went all to hell.

 

Q: Lance hit a tender spot in the Bristol race, how far can a crew chief push somebody? Are you a guy that might need to be coached in a different way?

 

DALE JR; "Every situation is different, and the good people know exactly what each situation calls for at the very moment. Throughout my career everybody has always sort of said that I wasn't focused, didn't have it, especially when my daddy was alive and he was out there running like he does, like he was, everybody would compare me to him and say that I lacked so much determination, didn't have th willpower, all that he had. He wore it on his sleeve. I don't really do that. Even after he passed away, I still got I don't have focus and this, that and the other.

 

"So, that's sort of followed me throughout my career. So, any time somebody would say that I laid down or insuitated that I might or whatever it just sort of pisses me off a little bit, which I have a right to feel however I want to feel, get upset about things I want to get upset about. I'm just a human being. The thing about a really good crew chief, he'll know exactly what to say and for each situation. Lance knew to cheer me back to my game and steer me in that direction with a little pep talk and he did it. That's what I needed. Maybe at times it's his job, maybe it ain't. Maybe it's my job to keep my head together but if he sees me going off in the wrong path, he cares enough to want to fix it. He helped me out a lot at that moment (at Bristol) because I was really, really upset about how (the speeding) went down. I wasn't thinking about what I was supposed to be thinking about, my  job. He did the right thing.

 

"I go on the Internet and listen to all these audio files of everybody else and I don't see or hear anything that's really any different. To be honest, what happened at Bristol on the radio, hell that probably happens to half the field during every race at some point. It's really not all that uncommon. There's some lines you just don't cross when you're pissed off and you're talking dirty, even if you're really mad at your crew chief, there's just lines that you don't cross. As long as we don't cross them, we'll be in good shape. We've got to be able to speak up and when we feel strongly about something, but we've just got to have respect at the same time. I think we've done that. He knew Sunday that I wasn't mad at him, but I needed to tell somebody what I was mad about. and why I felt that way.''

 

Q: How much do you feel you've learned with pushing yourself?

 

DALE JR: "I don't really feel like I've had to change a bunch. The thing about Lance is, Lance just works on my confidence all the time, which that's what I need. The bulk of the work of the weekend is really on Fridays and Saturdays. During that time, there's little moments where he goes, "We're going to get this little bit right here, we're going to work and you're going to do this for us and we're going to do this and that's going to get us to where we want to be on the time chart.' That's kind of refreshing. He just asks you to step up a little bit and he really sort of does that to the whole team at the same time. He says, all right everybody step up a little bit. That's really a lot of fun, especially when it works, which it does most of the time. Even if it only worked half the time, it's worth the effort. It's good.He has just done a good job. He's got a good group of guys around him and they keep improving and I'm happy to be working with them.''

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